crease of our knowledge of those circumstances that necessarily engender it. In England a speech like this would, no doubt, have raised a storm of theological indignation. In Germany the clergy is distinguished by its absence from scientific meetings. The separation of natural science and orthodoxy is complete, and no opposition was therefore offered to these remarks."
The tendency of English science to occupy itself more or less with religious questions has several causes. In the first place, there is a large and cultivated clerical class whose professional duties are nominal, and who devote themselves earnestly to scientific studies. These mingle in the scientific societies and associations, and bring with them the bias of theological doctrine. Much money has, moreover, been expended in England, in the way of prizes, to be given to writers for making scientific books, for the advancement of theological views; and, as shown by the Bridgewater treatises, some of the most eminent and influential scientific men have sanctioned this practice, which has been much imitated by others of inferior ability. Such a course could hardly fail to arouse reaction and stimulate controversy. But, besides these causes, a cause still more efficient has been in operation there, in the rise of a school of psychology, that has brought old and fundamental theological doctrines and dogmas into the arena of scientific scrutiny, so that scientific men, in the performance of their duty as investigators, find themselves brought into collision with the "defenders of the faith."
But, while English science is much complicated with theology, it is but very little affected by politics. On the other hand, the political perturbations of German thought are deeply felt in its scientific assemblages. "While English science is laboring to free itself from undue theological influence, German science is struggling for freedom of thought from undue political influences. This was the burden of the opening addresses of the September meeting. The Association was formed upward of half a century ago, and the writer in Nature says that politics entered into the intentions of its founder—the celebrated Oken, Professor of Zoölogy at Jena—as well as of many of its original members." "When German unity was nothing but a treasonable aim of persecuted patriots, every meeting of Germans from different states served to spread and to give fresh vigor to this aim, and was in itself a protest against the division into small states of the common country, and against persecutions such as Oken himself has had to suffer. Ay, and even now, when the old wishes have been fulfilled, and no division separates government and nation, remains of the old political undercurrent can still be traced in some of these meetings."
The interest of German men of science in political subjects is, therefore, an incident of the disturbed condition of the people, rather than any tendency to the purely scientific study of political and social problems.
We have a great amount of declamation on the dignity of mind, but we shall have a rational appreciation of that dignity just in proportion as we understand the laws of mind: what we need, therefore, is a broader and clearer apprehension of mental science. The attention of students of this subject is called to the weighty and suggestive article which opens the present number of The Monthly, on "The Comparative Psychology of Man." It treats of a phase of the subject of great moment, but hitherto only slightly regarded. It will be evident to all readers that the view taken by the writer is one that must be permanently recognized in future if mental phenomena are to be interpreted on strict scientific principles. But the article, moreover, remarkably
