There is considerable merit in this attempt,
though it is liable to obvious criticisms, of the same nature as his own
upon Gall. But the characteristic thing is, that while presenting all
this as hypothesis waiting for verification, he could not have taken its
truth more completely for granted if the verification had been made. In
all that he afterwards wrote, every detail of his theory of the brain is
as unhesitatingly asserted, and as confidently built upon, as any other
doctrine of science. This is his first great attempt in the "Subjective
Method," which, originally meaning only the subordination of the pursuit
of truth to human uses, had already come to mean drawing truth itself
from the fountain of his own mind. He had become, on the one hand,
almost indifferent to proof, provided he attained theoretic coherency,
and on the other, serenely confident that even the guesses which
originated with himself could not but come out true.
There is one point in his later view of the sciences, which appears to
us a decided improvement on his earlier. He adds to the six fundamental
sciences of his original scale, a seventh under the name of Morals,
forming the highest step of the ladder, immediately after Sociology:
remarking that it might, with still greater propriety, be termed
Anthropology, being the science of individual human nature, a study,
when rightly understood, more special and complicated than even that of
Society.
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