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upon them. These traces of the mind, indicating its own spontaneous convictions, that which is actually woven into the web of its thinking and feeling, must be included in every sound theory of philosophy, and furnish the suggestions for its construction.

Of the same nature exactly, though not as easily accessible or explicit, are the facts of daily life and of history. The shadow of the mind is cast upon them, and we may reason thence to the powers and capacities they indicate. A theory which utterly confounds, as do some metaphysical theories, all the convictions of daily life, and makes the facts of history and those of philosophy rest on utterly diverse conceptions, so much so that no region seems so remote or even preposterous as this metaphysical dream-land to the very beings who are said to inhabit it, by that fact reflects on itself extreme improbability. History must be felt to be, and found to be, the very shadow, the intimate reflection, of that inner life which is revealed to us by mental science.

Another aid to philosophical investigation is found in an inquiry into the instruments of the mind, the physical organs which it uses; and into the incipient and rudimentary development of intellectual action shown by animals. We are thus able to give more correct weight to the purely physical element, and to separate more intelligently the lower and instinctive forms of animal life from true, mental powers. While not underestimating the secondary and inferential aid thus to be rendered to philosophy, we think that extravagant and absurd expectations of the results of investigations primarily physical have been entertained. One might look at a brain with utmost inquiry, and, without the interpretation of the facts of consciousness obtained by introspection, his observations, as initiating a science of mind, would not be of the least avail. To suppose that the