Let me remind the reader at this point of the general sense of the words mind and character. The two words really cover the same content; when we speak of the individual mind or character, we mean the organised system of mental or psychical forces which expresses itself in the behaviour and the consciousness of the individual man. Any such organised system has two aspects or sides which, though intimately related, maybe considered abstractly as distinct—namely, the intellectual or cognitive aspect and the volitional, conative, or affective aspect. When we use the word ‘mind’ in speaking of any such system, we give prominence to its intellectual side; when we say ‘character’ we draw attention to its conative or affective side. The group mind of a nation is a mind in the sense that, like the mind of the individual, it is an organised system of mental or psychical forces; and, like the individual mind, it also has its intellectual and its affective sides or aspects. And this remains true whether or no there be any truth in that notion of the ‘collective consciousness’ as a synthesis of minor consciousnesses which we have provisionally rejected[46]; that is to say, we accept unreservedly the notion of the collective mind, while suspending judgment upon the notion of ‘collective consciousness,’ until we shall find that this hypothesis is, or is not, required for the interpretation of the facts. It will be observed that we are getting far away from the old-fashioned conception of psychology which limited its province to the introspective description of the contents of the individual’s consciousness. The wider conception of the science gives it new tasks and new branches, of which the study of the national mind is one. Like the main trunk of psychology and most of its branches, this branch has to become an empirical science which shall take the place of what has long been regarded as a branch of speculative philosophy and pursued by the deductive _a priori_ methods of philosophy. In this case the branch of philosophy in question has generally been called the Philosophy of History. It has been well said by Fouillée that the Philosophy of History of the past is related to the psychological social science, that is now beginning to take shape, as alchemy was related to chemistry, or astrology to astronomy. That is to say, it was a realm of obscure and fanciful ideas, of sweeping and ill-based assumptions and slipshod reasoning. It was an elaborate attempt “to lay the intellect to rest on a pillow of obscure ideas.” The task of scientific analysis and research was avoided by bringing in, as the main explanatory principles or causal agencies, vaguely conceived entities regarded as presiding over the development of peoples—such entities as Providence, or the Destiny of nations, the _Genius_ of a people, or the Instinct of a nation, the Unconscious Soul of a people, or the Spirit of the Age; and, when the problem was to account for some