pedantry and exaggeration; but, as her influence widens, woman is gaining in self-control and her intelligence directs in greater degree blind feeling. The picture of the average woman here presented is intended as a dispassionate view of her relation to error, -which relation, after all, differs from that of man in degree only. Her reverence for the past makes for truth and integrity. The side of her nature which constitutes the charm of man's life and its inspiration cannot here properly have consideration. We have now examined some of the essential factors of error which arise through the intercourse of men; but these factors are underlain by the peculiar mental constitution of man as an individual, and we shall obtain therefore a better comprehension of our subject through a more intimate study of its relation to the individual mind. To this study, let us now pass. CHAPTER II THE INDIVIDUAL MIND Modern Study of Mind.-For the philosopher and psychologist of the old school the study of mind was a relatively simple matter: he needed but to look within and from his own consciousness to educe all mental facts, with some general assurances perhaps as to his origin and destiny. As pursued to-day, the study of mind has become a vast and complicated enterprise. It involves the coöperation of countless investigators, who search innumerable fields for facts bearing upon this most difficult of all studies. The "normal" mind is still studied by introspection. By indirect methods we study the mind of infancy, childhood, maturity, and old age, through all the phases of normal, degenerative, and insane conditions. By experimentation and the use of ingenious instruments of precision, we acquire a more accurate knowledge, in point of quality and quantity, of many of the mind's processes. We study the mind of the inferior races as revealed in their language and customs, and of extinct peoples, through their literature, history, and archæological remains. Finally, we observe the manifestations of mind in the lower animals; and our conception has so broadened with the widening of research that many observers, familiar with the habits of the lowest forms of life, find here too, in protozoa and pro tophyta, indications of mind, and even in the protoplasm or living matter of the individual cells which make up the bodies of animals and plants. Indeed, there are those who incline to trace mind in its ultimate simplicity as a function even of the molecules and very atoms of inorganic matter. No longer then, as with hook and line, do we fish for mental facts in the streams of the individual consciousness but, as with dragnets, we sweep and dredge everywhere the great sea of mind. We no longer interpret humanity by the individual man but the man through humanity, and humanity through the totality of nature. In our study of mind, as everywhere, deeper penetration reveals greater complexity, and with our increasing comprehension of its processes our conceptions of mind become not simpler but more intricate. For the purpose of the present book, no exhaustive description of the mind is required; but to some of its phases we shall need to give minute attention. What the Mind Is.-What is the human mind? A little reflection reveals the fact that all things known to us, even that which we call the ego or self, are known only as states of consciousness. We call this consciousness "mind," and it is in terms of mind, therefore, that all things must find for us their ultimate description. Of late years, we have learned to recognize within ourselves, and to include as mind, another stratum of being, only indirectly known to us-unconscious, yet very active. It happens often that effects appear which seem precisely as they would be had they been the product of conscious processes, being effects which imply intelligence, feeling, and will, yet of such processes we may have no consciousness whatever. In other words, the same transformations of the man, as indicated by results, may be attended at one time by, and at another time lack, consciousness. It seems reasonable to apply the term "mind” to both sets of phenomena, those having and those not having consciousness as a concomitant, and to regard consciousness accordingly as an "epiphenomenon" or unessential feature of the mental processes. It appears probable, indeed, that by far the greater part of the mind's activity lies within the realm of the unconscious. We know the mind only as a series of changing states, conscious and unconscious, which, respectively, we observe and infer; and in accordance with this view the mind, as known, is not an entity but a series of processes. We may ask how a series of changing conscious states can recognize itself; and the question seems unanswerable so long as we regard the conscious series as a chain of points which are in contact yet not interlapping with one another; but if we view it as a flowing stream of coexisting elements the aggregate of which, at any moment, contains elements of the aggregate which has just preceded it and of that which is to follow, there being a permeation of the past into the present and of the present into the future, then we have an answer which, though superficial, is intelligible. The answer becomes still more satisfactory when we perceive that there are always elements present which, for relatively long periods, have undergone little change, -especially those elements which, seeming to persist through the otherwise changing conscious chain, constitute the consciousness of the body, which is the main factor, no doubt, in the consciousness of a self or personality. We must conceive consciousness as a proc ess of comparison, and suppose that the older or more persisting elements review or compare with themselves the new. If we ask ourselves as to the deeper nature of these conscious and unconscious states, we must recognize here an ignorance which is absolute. The habit of our minds is such that for everything we must suppose some other thing as antecedent and conditioning, and so there are few of us who do not conceive some entity — the real man—as underlying the forms of consciousness which we term the "self" and an entity or entities as an external and independent substratum of those conscious states which we term "external nature"; but these are mere dim apprehensions or "notions," the validity of which we cannot determine. The Physical and the Psychic Types of Consciousness. -Our consciousness presents two distinct varieties of phenomena, those of the physical and those of the psychic type. The physical consciousness is a group of phenomena apparently coexisting, usually of great distinctness, of relatively great fixity, and accompanied by a certain sense of externality, a conviction that the generating influence is exerted from without. The group forms for us definitely circumscribed aggregates, units, or individualities, which in their totality constitute, at each moment, our conscious knowledge of the "external world." The consciousness which we term psychic or purely mental, on the other hand, seems a swiftly flowing stream of ever-changing states, apparently interlinked, relatively ill-defined, and with a sense of internality or self-origin. This group, also, possesses a sense of individuality, seeming to cohere as that unit to which |