erving without theorizing. During this long-continued devotion
to concrete science, an immense quantity of raw material for abstract
science has been accumulated; and now there is obviously commencing a
period in which this accumulated raw material will be organized into
consistent theory. On all sides--equally in the inorganic sciences, in
the science of life, and in the science of society--we may note the
tendency to pass from the superficial and empirical to the more profound
and rational.

In Psychology this change is conspicuous. The facts brought to light by
anatomists and physiologists during the last fifty years, are at length
being used towards the interpretation of this highest class of
biological phenomena; and already there is promise of a great advance.
The work of Mr. Alexander Bain, of which the second volume has been
recently issued, may be regarded as especially characteristic of the
transition. It gives us, in orderly arrangement, the great mass of
evidence supplied by modern science towards the building-up of a
coherent system of mental philosophy. It is not in itself a system of
mental philosophy, properly so called; but a classified collection of
materials for such a system, presented with that method and insight
which scientific discipline generates, and accompanied with occasional
passages of an analytical character. It is indeed that which it in the
main professes to be--a natural history of the mind. Were we to say that
the researches of the naturalist who collects and dissects and describes
species, bear the same relation to the researches of the comparative
anatomist tracing out the laws of organization, which Mr. Bain's
labours bear to the labours of the abstract psychologist, we should be
going somewhat too far; for Mr. Bain's work is not wholly descriptive.
Still, however, such an analogy conveys the best general conception of
what he has done; and serves most clearly to indicate its needfulness.
For as, before there can be made anything like true generalizations
respecting the classification of organisms and the laws of organization,
there must be an extensive accumulation of the facts presented in
numerous organic bodies; so, without a tolerably-complete delineation of
mental phenomena of all orders, there can scarcely arise any adequate
theory of mind. Until recently, mental science has been pursued much as
physical science was pursued by the ancients; not by drawing conclusions
from obs