their combination into a general biology or abstract zoology at the beginning of the nineteenth century is now taking place in the field of psychology at the beginning of the twentieth century. This belated synthesis in the form of a general psychology !must repeat Lamarck’s synthesis, i.e., it must be based on an analogous principle. Vaguer sees more than a simple analogy in this. For him psychology must traverse not a similai but the same path. Biopsychology is part of biology. It is an abstraction of the concrete schools or their synthesis, the achievements of all of these schools form its content. It cannot have, and neither has general biology, its own special method of investigation. Each time it makes use of the method of a science that is its composite part. It takes account of the achievements, verifying them from the point of view of evolutionwy theoty and indicating their corresponding places in the general system (Vaguer, 1923). This is the expression of a more or less general opinion.

Some details in Vaguer call forth doubt. In his understanding, general psychology (1) now forms a part of biology, is based upon the theory of evolution (its basis) etc. Consequently, it is in no need of its own Lamarck and Darwin, or their discoveries, and can realize its synthesis on the basis of already present principles; (2) now still must develop in the same way general biology developed, which is not included in biology as its part, but exists side by side with it. Only in this way can we understand the analogy, which is possible between two similar independent wholes, but not between the fate of a whole (biology) and its part (psychology).

Vagner’s (ibid., p. 53) statement that biopsychology provides “exactly what Marx requires from psychology” causes another embarrassment. In general it can be said that Vagner’s formal analysis is, evidently, as irreproachably correct as his attempt to solve the essence of the problem, and to outline the content of general psychology is methodologically untenable, even simply underdeveloped (part of biology, Marx). But the latter does not interest us now. Let us turn to the formal analysis. Is it correct that the psychology of our days is going through the same crisis as biology before Lamarck and is heading for the same fate?

To put it this way is to keep silent about the most important and decisive aspect of the crisis and to present the whole picture in a false light. Whether psychology is beading for agreement or rupture, whether a general psychology will develop from the combination or separation of the psychological disciplines, depends on what these disciplines bring with them—parts of the future whole, like systematics, morphology and anatomy, or mutually exclusive principles of knowledge. It also depends on what is the nature of the hostility between the disciplines—whether the contradictions which divide psychology are soluble, or whether they are irreconcilable. And it is precisely this analysis of the specific conditions under which psychology proceeds to the creation of a general science that we do not find in Vagner, Lange and the others. Meanwhile, European methodology has already reached a much higher degree of understanding of the crisis and has shown which and how many psychologies exist and what are the possible outcomes. But before we turn to this point we must first quit radically with the misunderstanding that psychology is following the path biology already took and in the end will simply be attached to it as its part. To think about it in this way is to fail to see that sociology edged its way between the biology of man and animals and tore psychology into two parts (which led Kant to divide it over two areas). We must develop the theory of the crisis in such a way as to be able to answer this question.