CATHOLIC MANUALS OF PHILOSOPHY. PSYCHOLOGY. BY MICHAEL MAHER, S.J. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN & Co. 1890. 5-16-39 V.A. qt-wenley Lif 4-28-39 PREFACE. DURING a very large part of the present century the standard English text-books on Psychology were the writings of Mill and Dr. Bain. The cause of this was probably not so much any general acceptance of the teaching of the school to which these writers belonged by Universities or Examiners, as the fact that their works-and almost theirs alone-contained in an interesting and tolerably popular form a treatment of psychological subjects which could be apparently detached from the more abstruse metaphysical problems. Be the explanation what it may, all thoughtful men who adhere to any form of Christianity, or even of Theism, must consider such a result lamentable. It could not have been other than profoundly injurious to the intellectual and moral health of a nation, to have successive generations of young, vigorous, and inquiring minds bred up on the philosophical diet of a school, which -whatever euphemistic title we may choose to call it by-virtually denies the Spirituality and Immortality of the Soul, the Freedom of the Will, and the reality of Moral distinctions. Fortunately, in recent years |