The first and the most important result, in a point of view purely philosophical, is, that the Spiritualists of our days have given to their researches and to their ideas a character really scientific: they have introduced into the study of man and of the intellectual world, the method practiced with so much success in the study of man and of the material world--that is to say, they have taken the observation of facts as the point of departure and the constant guide of their investigations. Are there in man and in the intellectual world, as there are in man and in the material world, facts capable of being observed, seized, described, classified, generalized? This is the question which the spiritualistic school proposed and discussed at the outset. I have no hesitation in saying, that it resolved it in the affirmative, and that, thanks to this school, psychology has assumed its rank among the positive sciences, just as physiology did. Like physiology, geology, or botany, psychology has its special object, its determined domain, in which it proceeds absolutely according to the same method observed by the physical sciences in their domain. {226} That this method, the observation of facts, of their value and their laws, is in psychology more difficult to be followed than in the physical sciences, is certain; but this certainly does not deprive psychology either of its domain or of its scientific character. It is a science by the same right and upon the same conditions as all the others are so. The labors of the spiritualistic school, and particularly those of M. Jouffroy, have given it a solid foundation: and this has been formally recognized by several even among the adversaries of this school, among others by M. Taine and M. Berthelot. [Footnote 36] [Footnote 36: I read in the Métaphysique et la Science of M. Vacherot: "_The Metaphysician:_ "In his denial of psychology, I stop at once the author of the 'positive philosophy,' and I demand of him by what right he thus banishes from the domain of the experimental sciences a science of observation. "_The man of learning:_ "It constitutes in effect 'hiatus' in this philosophy, and a hiatus which all the sound minds of the positive school are beginning to admit. M. Littré, for example, may make his reservations of opinion as to the manner in which our psychologists understand psychology, and as to the method which they apply to it; but he has too much sense not to admit that the intelligence--all that constitutes man's identity, the moral man--is the object of a peculiar study, of which many previous works have shown the possibility, and many practical results prove the high and vital interest."-- Vacherot, la Métaphysique et la Science, vol. iii, p. 181.] {227}