OBSERVATIONS ON THE SCIENTIFIC

STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE.

A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE LONDON COLLEGE OF PRECEPTORS.

BY

EDWARD L. YOUMANS, M.D.

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"No system or rule of practice in education can safely be admittea which does not associate itself with this part of science (physiology)."

SIR HENRY HOLLAND.

"If it be possible to perfect mankind, the means of doing so will be ་ found in the medical sciences." DESCARTES.

"Of old it was the fashion to try to explain nature from a very incomplete knowledge of man; but it is the certain tendency of advancing science to explain man on the basis of a perfecting knowledge of nature.'

DR. HENRY MAUDSLEY.

ON THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF

HUMAN NATURE.

PERHAPS the most correct conception of science that has yet been formed is that which regards it as the highest stage of growing knowledge. Ideas about men, like those about other subjects, undergo development. There is a rude acquaintance with human nature among barbarians: they observe that the young can be trained, and that men are influenced by motives and passions; for without some such knowledge, their limited social relations would be impossible. These primitive notions have been gradually unfolded by time into the completer and more accurate ideas which mark the civilized state. Yet the prevailing knowledge of human nature is still imperfect and empirical-that is, it has not expanded into rational principles and general laws. That it will become still more perfect accords with all analogy; and if this process continues, as it undoubtedly must, there seems reasonable hope of the formation of something like a definite Science of Human Nature.

That the scientific method of inquiry is inadequate and inapplicable to the higher study of man, is a widely prevalent notion, and one which seems, to a great extent, to be shared alike by the ignorant and the educated. Holding the crude idea, that science pertains only to

the material world, they denounce all attempts to make human nature a subject of strict scientific inquiry, as an intrusion into an illegitimate sphere. Maintaining that man's position is supreme and exceptional, they insist that he is only to be comprehended, if at all, in some partial, peculiar, and transcendental way. In entire consistence with this hypothesis, is the prevailing practice; for those who by their function as teachers, preachers, and lawgivers, profess to have that knowledge of man which best qualifies for directing him in all relations, are, as a class, confessedly ignorant of science. There are, some, however, and happily their number is increasing, who hold that this idea is profoundly erroneous, that the very term "human nature," indicates man's place in that universal order which it is the proper office of science to explore; and they accordingly maintain that it is only as "the servant and interpreter of nature" that he can rise to anything like a true understanding of himself.

The past progress of knowledge, as is well known, has not been a steady and continuous growth: it has advanced by epochs. An interval of apparent rest, perhaps long protracted, is brought to a close by the introduction of some new conception, which revolutionizes a department of thought, and opens new fields of investigation, that lead to uncalculated consequences Those who have watched the later tendencies of scientific thought can hardly fail to perceive, that we of the present age are entering upon one of those great epochs in our knowledge of man. Standing at the head of the vast system of being of which he forms a part, it is inevitable that the views entertained concerning him at any age will be but a reflex of the knowledge of