Nor is the relation less close with the tal sciences.* Social psychology comes into contact with anthropology and ethnology; with political history and sociology; with philology; with the history of art, religion, law,— the his tory of civilization at large. It is, indeed, hardly too much to claim for psychology the central position in the classification of the sci ences: a position that connects it equally with the sciences of nature, on the one hand, and the sciences of the productions of the human mind on the other.
The relation of psychology to philosophy is less easily defined. Until very recently, psy chology was not a science at all, but a branch of philosophy. Now that her independence is established, psychology naturally tends to em phasize the breach between herself and the phil osophical disciplines. Philosophy, on the other hand, unwilling to recognize the independence of a revolted subject, insists that psychology runs into danger as soon as ever she rejects metaphysical guidance. There is truth in both attitudes. One may be a good psychologist, at
the present day, without having opened a philo sophical book. Contrariwise, one cannot ap proach the fundamental questions that lie be fore and after psychology without plunging, at once, into problems of epistemology and of metaphysics. As with life and matter, so with mind; there is practical work to be done in physics and biology and psychology that may be done, and well done, without philosophical reference. But the practical work springs out of, and leads toward, theoretical issues of the widest kind.
It may 'be added that the central position of psychology is further warranted by its relation to the special departments of philosophy. Functional psychology is the necessary basis of logic; social psychology is the only straight path to a sound ethics; a psychological analysis of the sentiment of beauty is the prerequisite of msthetics; the psychology of the religious consciousness is the propwdeutic to a philos ophy of religion. See APPERCEPTION; BRAIN;