Of these eccentric thinkers there have been
various types, but they have all a family likeness. According to them,
there has been too much analysis and too little synthesis, too much
division of the mind into parts and too little conception of it as a
whole or in its relation to God and the laws of the universe. They have
thought that the elements of plurality and unity have not been duly
adjusted. The tendency of such writers has been to allow the personality
of man to be absorbed in the universal, or in the divine nature, and to
deny the distinction between matter and mind, or to substitute one for
the other. They have broken some of the idols of Psychology: they have
challenged the received meaning of words: they have regarded the mind
under many points of view. But though they may have shaken the old, they
have not established the new; their views of philosophy, which seem like
the echo of some voice from the East, have been alien to the mind of
Europe.

d. The Psychology which is found in common language is in some degree
verified by experience, but not in such a manner as to give it
the character of an exact science. We cannot say that words always
correspond to facts. Common language represents the mind from different
and even opposite points of view, which cannot be all of them equally
true (compare Cratylus). Yet from diversity of statements and opinions
may be obtained a nearer approach to the truth than is to be gained
from any one of them. It also tends to correct itself, because it is
gradually brought nearer to the common sense of mankind. There are
some leading categories or classifications of thought, which, though
unverified, must always remain the elements from which the science or
study of the mind proceeds. For example, we must assume ideas before we
can analyze them, and also a continuing mind to which they belong;
the resolution of it into successive moments, which would say, with
Protagoras, that the man is not the same person which he was a minute
ago, is, as Plato implies in the Theaetetus, an absurdity.

e. The growth of the mind, which may be traced in the histories of
religions and philosophies and in the thoughts of nations, is one of the
deepest and noblest modes of studying it. Here we are dealing with the
reality, with the greater and, as it may be termed, the most sacred part
of history. We study the mind of man as it begins to be inspired by a
human or divine reason, as it is modified