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.