encies as well as results,
prepares materials to be collated with the decision previously made by
mental and moral science concerning the question of what ought to be (9).

A definite conviction on this metaphysical inquiry seems perhaps to be
involved in the very idea of criticism, and necessary for drawing the
moral from the history; yet the independence of our historical inquiry
ought to be sacrificed as little as possible to illustrate a foregone
conclusion. It will be more satisfactory to present the evidence for a
verdict without undue advocacy of a side in the metaphysical
controversy.(110)

The execution of this design of analysing the intellectual causes of
unbelief will necessarily involve to some extent a biographical treatment
of the subject, both for theoretical and practical reasons, to discover
truth and to derive instruction. This is so evident in the history of
action, that there is a danger at the present time lest history should
lose the general in the individual, and descend from the rank of science
to mere biography.(111) The deeper insight which is gradually obtained
into the complexity of nature, together with the fuller conviction of
human freedom, is causing artistic portraiture and ethical analysis to be
substituted for historical generalization. The same method however applies
to the region of thought as well as will.

Thought, as an intellectual product, can indeed be studied apart from the
mind that creates it, and can be treated by history as a material fact
subject to the fixed succession of natural laws. But the exclusive use of
such a method, at least in any other subject of study than that of the
results of physical discovery, must be defective, even independently of
the question of the action of free will, unless the thoughts which are the
object of study be also connected with the personality of the thinker who
produces them. His external biography is generally unimportant, save when
the individual character may have impressed itself upon public events; but
the internal portraiture, the growth of soul as known by psychological
analysis, is the very instrument for understanding the expression of it in
life or in literature.(112) It is requisite to know the mental bias of a
writer, whether it be practical, imaginative or reflective; to see the
_idola specus_ which influenced him, the action of circumstances upon his
character, and the reaction of his character upon circumstances; befor