INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERISTICS 57

every topic, however seemingly remote from philo-
sophy, I found occasion for falling back on some
ultimate principle in the natural order."

The first volume of the Psychology is synthetic, the
second volume is analytic, f< taking to pieces our
intellectual fabric and the products of its actions,
until the ultimate components arc retched " j and we
find the same two methods pursued in his other books,

" While, on the one hand, they betray a great liking for
drawing deductions and building them up into a coherent
whole} on the other hand, they betray a great liking for
examining the premiics on which a act of deductions is
railed, for the purpose of seeing what asKumptiom are in-
volved in them, and what are the deeper truths into which
auch assumptions are resolvable, There is shown an evident
dissatisfaction with proximate principles, and a restlessness
until ultimate principles have been reached | at the same time
there is shown » desire to see how the most complex pheno-
mena ire to be interpreted as workings of these ultimate
principles. It is, I think, to the balance of these two
tendenciei that the character of the work done ii mainly

But while Spencer had beyond doubt analytic
powers of a very high order, it ii to be feared that
there is some justice in the criticism that he some-
times confused abstraction with analysis, and reached
an apparently simple result by abstracting away some
essential components,

4, ** One further cardinal trait, which is in a sense
a result of the preceding traits, has to be named—
the ability to discern inconspicuous analogies," It
was in part this ability that gave Spencer his power
of handling so many different orders of facts, ** The
habit of ignoring the variable outer components and
relations, and looking for the invariable inner com-