This entire change of philosophical principles, which we find in Wundt, as we found it in Kant, Virchow, Du Bois-Reymond, Karl Ernst Baer, and others, is very interesting. In their youth these able and talented scientists embrace the whole field of biological research in a broad survey, and make strenuous efforts to find a unifying, natural basis for their knowledge; in their later years they have found that this is not completely attainable, and so they entirely abandon the idea. In extenuation of these psychological metamorphoses they can, naturally, plead that in their youth they overlooked the difficulties of the great task, and misconceived the true goal; with the maturer judgment of age and the accumulation of experience they were convinced of their errors, and discovered the true path to the source of truth. On the other hand, it is possible to think that great scientists approach their task with less prejudice and more energy in their earlier years--that their vision is clearer and their judgment purer; the experiences of later years sometimes have the effect, not of enriching, but of disturbing, the mind, and with old age there comes a gradual decay of the brain, just as happens in all other organs. In any case, this change of views is in itself an instructive psychological fact; because, like many other forms of change of opinion, it shows that the highest psychic functions are subject to profound individual changes in the course of life, like all the other vital processes.
For the profitable construction of comparative psychology it is extremely important not to confine the critical comparison to man and the brute in general, but to put side by side the innumerable gradations of their mental activity. Only thus can we attain a clear knowledge of the long scale of psychic development which runs unbroken from the lowest, unicellular forms of life up to the mammals, and to man at their head. But even within the limits of our own race such gradations are very noticeable, and the ramifications of the "psychic ancestral tree" are very numerous. The psychic difference between the crudest savage of the lowest grade and the most perfect specimen of the highest civilization is colossal--much greater than is commonly supposed. By the due appreciation of this fact, especially in the latter half of the century, the "Anthropology of the uncivilized races" (Waitz) has received a strong support, and comparative ethnography has come to be considered extremely important for psychological purposes. Unfortunately, the enormous quantity of raw material of this science has not yet been treated in a satisfactory critical manner. What confused and mystic ideas still prevail in this department may be seen, for instance, in the _Völkergedanke_ of the famous traveller, Adolf Bastian, who, though a prolific writer, merely turns out a hopeless mass of uncritical compilation and confused speculation.