V. Psychology.

296. Place and Order of Questions. -- According to the scholastic classification, psychology forms a chapter of physics, but the most important one: because man is the microcosm and the central pivot of all nature. The full development of psychology coincides with the culmination of the philosophic spirit in the thirteenth century. Instead of the fragmentary and incoherent essays of the earlier period we have here comprehensive and unified studies. To convince ourselves of this we need only take a glance at the matters treated in questions 75 to 90 of the Pars Prima of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas. These hundred pages, more or less, could be easily detached from the work of the master and edited under the form of a special treatise on psychology. In conformity with the plan of studies generally followed in the thirteenth century, we may divide the problems of scholastic psychology into two groups, the one relative to the nature of man, the other to his activities.