have not only thrown much light on the genesis of organic bodies, of
animals and of man, but they have afforded very important aid to
psychological research, on account of the close connection between
psychology and the general physical laws of the world. The mythical
faculty in man, and its results, have received much light from these
sciences, since the modifications induced in individuals and in peoples
by many natural causes, organic or climatological, are based upon their
physiological conditions. In the first chapters of Herbert Spencer's
book on Sociology, there is a masterly investigation into the changes
produced by climate, with its accidents and organic products, on the
peculiar temperament of different peoples and races, and we must refer
our readers to his admirable summary.

We avail ourselves of the aid afforded by all these branches of science
in order to comprehend the true nature of man, and the place which he
really occupies in the animal creation. Man should be estimated as all
other products and phenomena of nature are estimated, according to his
absolute value, divested, as in the case of all other physical and
organic sciences, of preconceived ideas or prejudices in favour of the
supernatural. He should be studied as in physics we study bodies and the
laws which govern them, or as the laws of their motions and combinations
are studied in chemistry, allowance always being made for their
reciprocal relations, and for their appearance as a whole. For if there
be in the universe a distinction of modes, there is no absolute
separation of laws and phenomena.

The various branches of science are only subjective necessities,
consequent on the successive and gradual order of our comprehension of
things; they are classifications of method, with no special reference to
the undivided personality of nature. All are parts of the whole, and so