pening at
every turn into new vistas, shows the same sort of vegetation. Yet to
observe that consciousness is automatic is not to disclose the mechanism
by which it evolves. The theory of spontaneous growth offers less
explanation of events, if that be possible, than the theory of
association. It is perhaps a better description of the facts, since at
least it makes no attempt to deduce them from one another.

[Sidenote: and will another.]

If, on the contrary, a relation implied in the burden or will of the
moment be invoked, the connection established, so far as it goes, is
dialectical. Where a dialectical correspondence is not found, a material
cause would have to be appealed to, Such a half-dialectical psychology
would be like Schopenhauer's, quite metaphysical. It might be a great
improvement on an absolute psychology, because it would restore, even if
in mythical terms, a background and meaning to life. The unconscious
Absolute Will, the avid Genius of the Species, the all-attracting
Platonic Ideas are fabulous; but beneath them it is not hard to divine
the forces of nature. This volitional school supplies a good
stepping-stone from metaphysics back to scientific psychology. It
remains merely to substitute instinct for will, and to explain that
instinct--or even will, if the term be thought more consoling--is merely
a word covering that operative organisation in the body which controls
action, determines affinities, dictates preferences, and sustains
ideation.

[Sidenote: Double attachment of mind to nature.]

What scientific psychology has to attempt--for little has been
accomplished--may be reduced to this: To develop physiology and
anthropology until the mechanism of life becomes clear, at least in its
general method, and then to determine, by experiment and by well-sifted
testimony, what conscious sublimation each of those material situations
attains, if indeed it attains any. There will always remain, no doubt,
many a region where the machinery of nature is too fine for us to trace
or eludes us by involving agencies that we lack senses to perceive. In
these regions where science is denied we shall have to be satisfied with
landscape-painting. The more obvious results and superficial harmonies
perceived in those regions will receive names and physics will be
arrested at natural history. Where these unexplained facts are mental it
will not be hard to do more systematically what common sense has done
already