Ebook Problems of Life and Mind

The credit of this conception is due to Auguste Comte. Others before him had Of course recognised the fact that social conditions greatly in?uenced mental evolution; the fact was transparent, but no one had seized its full significance. Nor do I think that even Comte saw more than its general range. His abstention from analysis and detailed investiga tion kept him from specifying the mode of operation of the social factor; and his cerebral theory, so unsatisfactory in its method, and so fantastic in its anatomy, could not supply what he left unspecified.