On the other hand there does seem to be a science from the possible progress of which something of a sensational kind might not unreasonably be expected. It is, moreover, the science most directly concerned with affairs of this sort. Psychology, the science of human mentality, is, by common consent, in a deplorably backward state. It has remained a ground for metaphysical excursions and a playground for the arbitrary pedantries of classificatory systematists. Its efforts to become scientific have only led it to ape assumptions and to borrow notions found to be appropriate in sciences with widely different problems and objects. The results, as the psychologists themselves confess, are meagre and disappointing; which, of course, only proves that the borrowed notions are inappropriate and incapable of making Psychology into an effective science. But if psychologists should take it into their heads to settle down to business, to recognize the primary obligation of every science to develop methods and conceptions capable of working upon its subject-matter, and so tried to authenticate their ‘truth’ after the ordinary fashion of the other sciences, namely by the pragmatic test of successful working, some surprising effects might be elicited even from the actual human mind. For there is reason to suppose that its present organization is very far from being the best of which it is capable. It has come about in a very haphazard manner, and we are not at present making anything like an adequate use of all our powers. Hence by changing the gearing and re-arranging the traditional coupling, so to speak, of our faculties, improvements might conceivably be wrought which would seem to us to border on the miraculous. Thus a pragmatically efficient Psychology might actually invert the miracle of Circe, and really transform the Yahoo into a man. X I have endeavoured in this very summary sketch to show that the doom of Tantalus is by no means unconditional, and that he can save himself if he chooses, and that by no superhuman effort, but merely by recognizing facts that are right before his nose and well within his comprehension, and by a little clear thinking upon their import. But I would not presume to predict that he _will_ save himself: history affords no unambiguous guide. It seems to show that something worse and something better than what actually happens is always conceivable, and that neither our hopes nor our fears are ever fully realized. If so, poor Tantalus, hoping against hope, fearing against reason, may muddle along for a good while yet, without repeating either his ancient error of imagining that he could sup with the gods, or his modern folly of using his reason, as Goethe’s Mephistopheles declared, only to become more bestial than any beast! FOOTNOTES: