the form of law, or (2) the individual in its historically determined shape; they look, on the one hand, to the ever identical form, and, on the other, to the unique self-determined content of the actual occurrence. The former are sciences of law, the latter sciences of events; the one teach what always is; the other what once was." If this distinction is a true one, the aim and interest of the two classes of science are quite different. The scientist is interested in a particular phenomenon only as an illustration of the universal—of law; the historian is interested in his individual phenomenon, as individual, for what it is in itself.

It is in exactly this sense, I suppose, that Münsterberg says: "The appreciation of a physical object as a whole is never natural science, and the interpretation and suggestion of a mental state as a whole is never psychology" (in the strictest scientific sense).1 Now, the universal—the law-is of great value for human knowledge, but only as it helps us,to quote another-"by reasoning, to know new truths about individual things." In itself it is no reality; "the things of worth are all concretes and singulars." "In the unique1 Op. cit., p. 149.

"James, Psychology Vol. I, p. 479.

ness, the incomparability of the object," says Windelband, "root all our feelings of worth.”

It is only the natural-scientific point of view, therefore, that sees in the individual members of the development series but transient stages-steps in the process; the true historical point of view abides by the concrete individual, and holds that the historical is itself of essential significance. It was in this sense, I suppose, that Harnack said, that although biography was the least scientific, it was at the same time the most valuable history. In the study of the single life, that is, it was least possible to trace exact causal connections; but in so far as the meaning and spirit of this individual life were reached, the study yielded the greatest value. So Höffding says: "Each individual trait, each individual property, might perhaps be explained by the power of heredity and the influence of experience; but the inner unity, to which all elements refer, and by virtue of which the individuality is a psychical individuality, remains for us an eternal riddle." "Psychical individuality is one of the practical limits of science."1

The tendency to recognize the whole con1 Op. cit., PP. 353, 354.

crete reality, therefore, leads of itself to an emphasis on the historical as such, and not merely as illustrating general principles. This is the point of Lotze's emphatic protest: "And therefore will we always combat these conceptions which acknowledge only one-half, and that the poorer half, of the world; only the unfolding of facts to new facts, of forms to new forms, and not the continual mental elaboration of all these outward events into that which alone in the universe has worth and truth-into the bliss and despair, the admiration and loathing, the love and the hate, the joyous certainty and the despairing longing, and all the nameless fear and favor in which that life passes which alone is worthy to be called life."1

The Protest in Education.-The protest in education in the interest of the whole man cannot be less earnest than the protest in literature or philosophy or history. All that psychology has to say as to the unity of man shows the absurdity of exclusive tendencies in any education that really looks to life. The protest is needed, and in part at least made, all along the line; but nowhere is it needed more than in public school and 1 Microcosmus, Vol. II, p. 167.

in college education. Whatever is true as to other parts of our educational system, here surely, the interests of the whole man demand attention, and in definite, concrete ways.' And much of the most sound and wholesome educational counsel of our time connects itself directly with this emphasis of modern psychology upon the concreteness of reality and so upon the whole man.

VI. THE EMPHASIS ON PERSONS AND PERSONAL RELATIONS-THE SOCIAL SELF

It is evident that the justification of the historical, of which we have spoken, rests on a belief in the absolute worth of the person. The emphasis on the historical, therefore, becomes an emphasis on the person and personal relations, on the social self-on the entire experience of the entire soul in its relations to others. The fundamental convictions of the social consciousness must be, thus, ultimately involved in the emphasis upon the concrete. The historical point of view agrees with the naturalscientific in its assertion of relatedness everywhere (and its consequent use of the

1 Cf. King, Personal and Ideal Elements in Education, pp. 13 ff.

idea of evolution), but adds an equally emphatic insistence on the concrete individual. At first sight this seems like denying all divisions, on the one hand, and asserting them on the other. Yet relatedness and personality are not opposed. "To be," Lotze says, "is to be in relations." But he makes it the fundamental proposition of his spiritualism that only spirits are capable of entering into relations. Certainly, the emphasis on the concreteness of all reality must be an emphasis not only upon the permanent significance of the historical as such, but also upon the surpassing significance of persons and personal relations. As Brierley says of literature, "The personal is the one thing that interests. Doctrine and dogma, whether theologic, social, or economic, left to its naked self, will moulder on the back shelves of libraries. To be powerful, it must be incarnated."

991

Even more than that we are made for action, is it true, that we are persons and are made for personal relations; and these personal relations are a part of our very being. The Human Body Looks to Personal Association. Even our bodies show that we are

1 Studies of the Soul, p. 25.