ble observations of
his own, and collected a considerable body of information from reliable
sources, he presented the whole subject in a new light and showed that
a natural history of mind might be written and that this method of study
offered a wide and rich field for investigation. Of course those who
regarded the study of mind only as a branch of metaphysics smiled at
the philosophical ineptitude of the mere man of science. But the
investigation, on natural history lines, has been prosecuted with a
large measure of success. Much indeed still remains to be done; for
special training is required, and the workers are still few. Promise
for the future is however afforded by the fact that investigation is
prosecuted on experimental lines and that something like organised
methods of research are taking form. There is now but little reliance
on casual observations recorded by those who have not undergone the
necessary discipline in these methods. There is also some change of
emphasis in formulating conclusions. Now that the general evolutionary
thesis is fully and freely accepted by those who carry on such
researches, more stress is laid on the differentiation of the stages of
evolutionary advance than on the fact of their underlying community of
nature. The conceptual intelligence which is especially characteristic
of the higher mental procedure of man is more firmly distinguished
from the perceptual intelligence which he shares with the lower
animals--distinguished now as a higher product of evolution, no longer
as differing in origin or different in kind. Some progress has been
made, on the one hand in rendering an account of intelligent profiting
by experience under the guidance of pleasure and pain in the perceptual
field, on lines predetermined by instinctive differentiation for
biological ends, and on the other hand in elucidating the method of
conceptual thought employed, for example, by the investigator himself in
interpreting the perceptual experience of the lower animals.
Thus there is a growing tendency to realise more fully that there
are two orders of educability--first an educability of the perceptual
intelligence based on the biological foundation of instinct, and
secondly an educability of the conceptual intelligence which
refashions and rearranges the data afforded by previous inheritance
and acquisition. It is in relation to this second and higher order of
educability that the cerebrum of man shows so la
|