§4. The Divisions of Science

262. If then we are to have an order or suborder of physiognosy consisting of the study of kinds of matter and their natural forms, it is a requirement of logic that biology should be reckoned as a family of that order or suborder. It must no doubt be admitted that the study of the kinds of matter, chemology, is one thing and the study of the kinds of forms that matter may take is another. These will be two suborders of the order of classificatory physiognosy, or the study of physical kinds. But into which of these suborders biology should be placed is not so clear. Perhaps it should constitute a third suborder.

263. In addition, we must recognize a third order, descriptive and explanatory of the accidents of individual systems, apart from the study of the classes to which they belong.

264. Is there a somewhat parallel division of psychognosy? »Anthropology« is a word sometimes used in so broad a sense that it covers all psychognosy, or would do so, were the study of animals and of non-biological manifestations of mind not arbitrarily excluded. Of anthropology, so understood, the late Dr. Brinton ¹⁾ proposed a classification, an outline of which may usefully be put before the reader. It includes, in the first place, four grand divisions of somatology, ethnology, ethnography, and archeology. The first of these is purely physical, except that it strangely includes psychology, so that it does not now concern us. The fourth is purely descriptive, and largely physical. It will afford no help. Ethnology is made to include five departments, as follows: 1. Sociology. 2. Technology, embracing the fine and useful arts. 3. Religion. 4. Linguistics. 5. Folklore. Ethnography treats of the different races of men, and is largely physical. I have no objection to admitting that zoölogy must perforce take some cognizance of the instincts of animals, just as on the other hand, it is quite evident that their minds can never be understood without taking some account of their anatomy and physiology. But for all that, if we are to admit that the study of animals' bodies is a study of efficiency, while the study of their minds is a study of finality, a distinction the truth and unescapableness [of which] will only be emphasized the more we study the different phases and facets of the subject, then we must acknowledge that those two studies of animals' minds and of animals' bodies are widely different, however much they may overlap. But in truth the overlapping is quite trifling. Very little psychology is needed by the biologist; and no very deep biology by the psychologist.

265. Dr. Brinton's classification is artificial. He would hardly himself have contested that judgment. Of almost any subdivision of it, it may be said that no man could judiciously devote himself to all those studies exclusively. Probably no man ever did, if we read Brinton's explanation of what each includes. But the classification has a fault even worse than that of being artificial. There can be no objection to a man's engaging at one time in tracing out final, or mental, causation, and at another time in tracing out material, or efficient, causation. But to confound these two things together is fatal. That circumstance constitutes a certain measure of justification for the warfare that has been waged, in many quarters, upon »final causes"; and it equally justifies the dislike often felt to physical explanations. Longfellow used to say that he hated sciences. I can sympathize with him. For he lived so entirely in the psychical world, that science to him meant an endeavor to turn finality into efficiency; or as he would say, to refute poetry. It is most narrow not to consider final causes in the study of nature; but it is nonsense and utter confusion to treat them as forces in the material sense. Dr. Brinton, along with ethnologists generally, appears to be oblivious to this, throughout, and to look upon the study of the psychical from a psychical point of view as essentially inexact. To ask whether a given fact is due to psychical or physical causes is absurd. Every fact has a physical side; perhaps every fact has a psychical side. Its physical aspect — as a mere motion — is due exclusively to physical causes; its psychical aspect — as a deed — is due exclusively to psychical causes. This remains true, though you accept every doctrine of telepathy, table-turning, or what you will. If I can turn a table by the force of my will, this will simply establish the fact that something between me and the table acts just as a stick with which I should poke the table would act. It would be a physical connection purely and simply, however interesting it might be to a psychologist. But on the other hand, as my hand obeys, in a general way, my commands, clutching what I tell it to clutch, though I leave to its better judgment all the menu of just how my general order is to be carried out (and so I do with my rapier, directing its point to move so and so, but how it is done I never know), so the table-turning experiment would, I suppose, show that I could give similar general orders to the untouched table. That would be purely psychical, or final, causation, in which particulars are disregarded. Meantime, one may note that the table certainly will turn, if I really and truly will that it shall without being too meticulous about ways and means.

266. Three items only of Brinton's somatology belong to psychognosy. They are, first, prosopology, so far as that refers to the dubious science of physiognomy; second, psychology, and third, criminal-anthropology. A great part of his ethnography simply considers men as biological forms. So, too, the physical geography, geology, and paleontology that he includes. This latter I had not supposed belonged to the science of man. On the other hand much of psychognosy is omitted; such as the study of animal and vegetable instinct (both of which, especially the latter, throw much light on man's nature), theology as such (supposing there is such a science), economics, esthetics (so far as it is neither philosophy on the one hand, nor practical science on the other), and history in all its many branches (and it seems to me strange that Dr. Brinton, who makes almost everything else pertain to the science of man, should think that history does not do so), and biography.

267. Let us now, with Dr. Brinton's list before us, endeavor to survey psychognosy and make out its orders. In the first place, final causality, which is the object of psychical science, appears in three guises; first, quite detached from any biological organism; second, in biological individuals as vehicles; third, in societies, ranging from the family to that public which includes our indefinite »posterity.« These distinctions, when we thus consider them together, impress us with a certain grandeur. It may be that this explains what, at any rate, is a fact, that the question has often pressed itself upon me whether they ought not to form the basis of the first division of the class of psychical sciences. But this would be merely, or mainly, a division according to the nature of the objects of study. We ought to classify the sciences according to their own natures; and not according to the nature of their objects in the least, except so far as this affects the nature of the studies of these objects.^P1) But before taking anything of that sort into account, we ought to look for a division based on the differences of the intellectual factor in the work of science, such as has been found to constitute the three orders of physiognosy; to wit, the nomological, the classificatory, and the descriptive. These orders appear more and more clear, the further the subject is examined. Mind has its universal laws, operative wherever it is manifested, although these may be modified according to the mode of its incarnation or other manifestation. In studying the universal properties of mind, the student will, no doubt, have occasion to remark some of the peculiarities of different modes of manifestation of mind. It may easily happen to a young student that this study of special kinds of productions of mind comes to fascinate and absorb him far more than the thinner and abstracter science of mind's universal truths. It may happen to another student that while he makes elaborate studies of a special form of psychical fruit, he will never cease to pursue those studies with a view to their affording some clue to the general secrets of mind. Just so, a man may study the systems [of] crystals for the sake of their teachings concerning the nature of elasticity, as Rankine did, or in hopes of learning from them something about light, as Brewster did; or on the other hand, being interested in crystals and their classes, with a view to gaining a better comprehension of them, he may make studies of their cohesion, as Haüy did; and with either of these motives, he may produce a memoir which, in itself considered, might very well be classed either as a contribution to nomological physics or to crystallography. Take a larger view of his work, and there will be no possible doubt that Brewster and Rankine were physicists, while Haüy was a botanist turned crystallographer.

268. What shall we classifiers do with studies which might equally belong to either of two groups? Shall we, for the sake of convenience, allow a little artificiality to enter into our classification, so as to give such a study an undoubted place? That would be compromise. Now we ought always to be willing to compromise judiciously in practical matters, never in theoretical science. But if there be any such thing as natural classification, it is the truth, the theoretical truth, which is not to be sacrificed to convenience. It may be different with a classification of sciences designed to govern the alcove-arrangement of a library. That is a question for separate discussion. I will only remark here that the purposes of alcove-arrangement are so multifarious, that it will not in many cases happen that the integral convenience of any one artificial arrangement is markedly superior to that of the natural arrangement. The natural classification of science must be based on the study of the history of science; and it is upon this same foundation that the alcove-classification of a library must be based. The natural classification of science is to be a classification of men of science; and because each great man's works are published in collected form, the alcove-classification of a library must also be a classification of men. At any rate, for our convenience in this chapter the plain truth untampered with alone will answer. Where it happens that the truth is that the defining lines between natural classes are not absolutely definite, it is that truth which we want stated.

269. Mind has its universal mode of action, namely, by final causation. The microscopist looks to see whether the motions of a little creature show any purpose. If so, there is mind there. Passing from the little to the large, natural selection is the theory of how forms come to be adaptive, that is, to be governed by a quasi purpose. It suggests a machinery of efficiency to bring about the end — a machinery inadequate perhaps — yet which must contribute some help toward the result. But the being governed by a purpose or other final cause is the very essence of the psychical phenomenon, in general. There ought, therefore, one would think, to be under the order of psychonomy, or nomological psychognosy, a suborder which should seek to formulate with exactitude the law of final causation and show how its workings are to be traced out.

270. But under this universal law of mind, there are other laws, it may be equally ubiquitous yet not so abstract. There is, first of all, the great law of association (including fusion), a principle strikingly analogous to gravitation, since it is an attraction between ideas. There are, besides, other general phenomena of mind not explicable by association. The laws of all these phenomena will be studied under a second suborder of special nomological psychology.

271. As a second order, we have psychotaxy, not a very good name for classificatory psychognosy or the study of kinds of mental manifestation. This order falls into two suborders, the one embracing studies of mental performances and products, the other of incarnations, or ensoulments of mind. To the latter suborder I would refer all studies of the minds of insects and (when there are any) of octopuses, of sexual characteristics, of the seven ages of human life, of professional and racial types, of temperaments and characters. To the former suborder, I would refer the vast and splendidly developed science of linguistics, of customs of all kinds, of Brinton's ethnology generally.

272. A third order of psychognosy is descriptive and explanatory, but not in any predominant degree inductive. Those sciences which are mainly descriptive, which tell, for example, what an explorer has found, which give accounts of systems, as metrology, chronology, numismatics, heraldry, or examine individual productions of man, will form a descriptive suborder; while those which narrate sequences of events and show how one leads to another — History in short, whether of individuals, or of communities, or of fields of activity, or of the development of minds, or of forms of social institutions, will form a second suborder.