LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Class
Hsmsz
EDUC.
PSYHH,
LIBi^ARY
ETHICAL SERIES
THE MIND OF MAN
No eye could he too sound
To observe a world so vast ;
No patience too profound
To sort what's here amassed. — Matthew Arnold.
Between the muscle-nerve preparation at the one limit, and our conscious willing
selves at the other, there is a continuous gradation without a break ; we cannot fix any
linear barrier in the brain or in the general nervous system, and say "beyond this there
is volition and intelligence, but up to this there is none." — Michael Foster.
THE MIND OF MAN
A TEXT-BOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY
BY
GUSTAV SPILLER
Xon&on
SWAN SONNENSCHIEN & CO., Lim.
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1902
5 6f
PS.CH.
LIBRARY
PREFACE
What more interesting study can there be than that of the Mind
of Man ? Tennyson wrote enthusiastically of " the fairy tales of
science," having in view only the results of physical research, and
yet, manifestly, the exploration of the realm of mind must yield
information which is no less fascinating. To observe the mind
at work — thinking, or imagining, or feeling, or dreaming — must
assuredly rival what is given by geology or by astronomy.
The scientific study of mind, however, is not only interesting ;
it has far-reaching consequences. The principles of education
and those of morals and aesthetics are closely bound up with it,
while even such sciences as political economy and sociology
are likely to be transformed through its influence.
Furthermore, a science of mind must revolutionise the whole
of philosophy. By determining the nature of mental process
and the nature of mind, it will set at rest once for all those
discussions which have raged around a unitary conception of the
universe. Physical science and mental science will then no more
form two independent and hostile camps, and speculative meta-
physics will cease to exist, handing over its many interesting
problems to science.
If psychology cannot as yet boast of any great truths, that is
because Introspection has been unjustifiably regarded as impossible
or impracticable. Yet, as we shall see, this mode of investiga-
tion offers no great difficulties and may be applied with marked
advantage.
The chapters which follow represent an attempt to apply the
scientific method in Psychology. The reader, therefore, will not
find here mathematical demonstrations in the style of Herbart, nor
will he meet with a neatly elaborated system seemingly flawless in
every detail like that of Herbert Spencer. Speculation, meta-
physical and non-metaphysical, and hypotheses, large and small,
have been severely boycotted, their place being taken by a ceaseless
vi. PREFACE
and minute experimental examination of the facts, with a view to
arriving at comprehensive statements or descriptions. The results,
consequently, lay no claim to infallibility, and they obviously, like
all work of a scientific character, especially as the ground covered
is so vast, require corroboration, checking and extension.
The volume consists of three parts : Method, General Analyses,
and Special Syntheses. Its most pervading feature is perhaps the
organic conception of the life of thought and action which the
inquiry has forced to the foreground. Hence the current notions
as regards motives, pleasure-pain, reason, attention, association,
habit, and the will, — which suggest no intricate and developed
organic processes, — have been either rejected or considerably
modified. Thus also the tripartite division into Intellect, Feeling
and Volition has been replaced by a close analysis of the nature
and satisfaction of Needs or functional tendencies. The key to
the whole work is contained in chapters 7, 2, and 3. The nature of
Needs dwelt upon more especially in chapter 7 forms the root out
of which the conclusions of any importance maybe developed ; the
process of attention, or the distribution of systems, examined in the
second chapter,* goes far towards explaining chapters 3, 5, 10, and
1 1 ; while the fact of habit, or economisation, studied in the third
chapter,! paves the way for chapter 4 and is implied throughout
the work. Only chapter 8 stands somewhat aloof from its com-
panions, as it attempts to show, in the spirit of Mach, that the
traditional views on matter and mind are not borne out by a pains-
taking inspection of the facts. Perusing the eleven chapters the
reader will perhaps recognise that each chapter^ and every portion of
each chapter is, in the first instance, the outcome of research, and that
the final form, like an equation, merely represents the total labour
expended and was in no particular case thought of before the
examination had drawn to a close.
The work is more especially designed for the use of students. For
this reason I have ventured on reviewing the extensive literature of
normal psychology, quoting the opinions which are most generally
held, and supplying almost a complete bibliography of the subjects
dealt with. On the same account " asides " are inserted in the text
to encourage observation and experiment on the part of the learner ;
the sectioning is continuous, so as to make reference easier ; each
chapter finishes with a bird's eye view ; and a general summary (ch.
* The substance of this chapter appeared in Mind, 1901.
t The substance of this chapter appeared in Mind, 1899,
PREFACE vii.
12) offers a comprehensive survey of the whole work. Finally, a
psychological terminology has been put forward which is intended
to assist ready comprehension.
Readers need not go far to understand this work. For the
purpose of avoiding perplexity, I have spoken of what every man
can verify within himself; that is to say, I have made only casual
references to physiology, evolution, anthropology, or to the study
of children, of abnormal persons and of animals (sec. 11). This
course alone prevented superficial treatment on the one hand and
bulkiness on the other. I have been compelled, however, to deal at
length with a few extraneous but interesting subjects as they were
intimately connected with the chief conclusions arrived at. These
are : the nature of genius, with special reference to Shakespeare
(ch. 9) ; the nature of dream-life, as also the alleged facts of
Spiritualism (ch. 10) ; and, lastly, the problems of aesthetics (ch.
II)-
The point of view from which this work is written will, it is
hoped, commend itself to the lovers of science. I have attempted
to walk the straight and narrow path, and I have consequently
declined to accommodate my conclusions to any party. To my
mind, the amazing backwardness of psychology is principally due
to its having been almost exclusively cultivated by philosophers
or those philosophically inclined, i.e., by those who have settled
doctrines to begin with, instead of by men of science who possess
only the desire for truth as such. This work will have fulfilled its
author's purpose if it accentuates the need of, and assists in
establishing, a psychology of a strictly scientific character.
CONTENTS
PART I
Method
chapter i
iNTKOnUCTION
1. The Foundations of Psychology - - - 3:
2. The Use of Hypotheses ....-..--. 10.
3. Approaches to the Study of Psychology ■ - 14
4. Introspection - - - - - ■ - ■ • - -15
5. Practical Psychologj- ----.-.---- 20
6. Detail and General Fact -..--....- 23
7. Systematic Observation ..-.-..... 25
8. Quantitative Psychology - - - - - - - - 31
9. Experimental Introspection 34
10. Definition - 37
11. Literature of the Subject ---------- 38
12. Psychological Terminology --------- 35.
13. A Bird's Eye View 42
PART II
General Analyses
chapter ii
Systems as Distributed
14. Attention and Inattention ---------- 45,
15. Sensations, Images and Feelings do not exist apart from Attention - 45
16. Attention is Dependent on Stimuli -------- 47
17. The Beginnings of Sensations --------- 47
18. The Area of Sensations and Images -------- 49
19. The Sense Problem ----------- ^o
20. Classification of Systems ---------- 57
21. Keen, Normal and Lax Attention 59
22. Attention, in the Normal Waking State, is Quantitatively alike with All Men
at All Times --.---..--. 60
23. Felt Strain, Desire to Attend, etc. ........ ^i
24. Deliberate Attention ----------- 65
25. The Measure of Attention is its Effectiveness ------ 66-
26. Attention has no Focus .-.......- Qy
zy. Abnormal Attention - - - 67
28. The Larger Waves of Attention --------- 69
29. The Smaller Waves of Attention -------- ^g.
30. Narrowing the Normal P'ield of Attention 7O'
31. Expanding the Normal Field of Attention ------- 71
32. Brain and Mind - - - - - - - - - - - - 71
33. The Field of Attention 72^
CONTENTS ix.
34. Attention Energy and Motion Energy are One 72
35. Attention and Heredity . . . 74.
36. Observation and Attention 75
37. The Growth of Knowledge Complexes 76
38. Attention to One Object at a Time 77
39. Do we Attend in Habit? 79
40. Can we Attend to Habits? 80
41. The Routine of Life - - - - - - - - - ■ - 81
42. Attention and Memory ...------- 81
43. Sub-conscious and Unconscious Thought ------- 82
44. Conditions Favouring Attention -------- 84
45. The Education of the Attention -..------ 87
46. Factors producing Changes in the Field of Attention - - - - -87
47. General Conclusions ----------- 88
48. A Bird's Eye View - - 88
CHAPTER HI
Systems as Organised
49. The History of a Habit 91
50. Memorising the Facts ---------- 92
51. The Process of Simplification --------- 93
52. Reduction of Eftbrt - - - 97
53. Appropriate Exercise ----------- 97
54. A Comparison ------------ 97
55. The Result of Liberating Attention Energy ------ 98
56. Does an Organised Trend ever become Automatic ? ■ - - - - 99
57. Organised Trends and Memory --------- loi
58. The Place of Exercise 102
59. The Place of Judgment .-.-.----- 103
60. Why is it Difficult to influence Habits ? 105
61. Early Education 107
62. Each Habit is based on Others of its Kind - - - . . . 108
63. Each Habit forms a Basis for Others of its Kind - - - - - - 1 10
64. What is a Habit ? - - - - 1 1 1
65. All Thought is Organised - - - - - - - - - - 114
65a. Habit and Thought 119
66. 'J he Psychological Method 120
67. A Bird's Eye View I20
CHAPTER IV
Systems as Need-Satisfying
68. What is implied in a Secondary Unit or Idea? - - - - - - 122
69. Richness and Poverty of Detail in a Secondary Unit or Idea • - -123
70. Each of the Five Senses supplies us with the Material for Secondary Units
or Ideas ------------- 124
71. Other Sources of Secondary Units or Ideas - ....-- 124
72. Secondary Units or Ideas which are generally Overlooked . - - - 125
73. Word-Ideas as such 126
74. Words Rich and Poor in Meaning -.-.-... 126
75. Why Secondary Units or Ideas tend to have Little Content - - - - 127
76. Secondary Units or Ideas reflect Individual Situations .... 127
76a. General Ideas --..---.--- 128
76b. Speech and Thought - - - - - - - - - - 1 30
X
X. CONTENTS
77. Re-produclion of Motion and Detail - 131
78. Observation is Teleologically Determined 133
79. Memory Contents Dwindle - - - - - - 134
80. Every Secondary Unit or Idea represents a Set of Activities, and cannot be
Stored - - - - - - - - - - - • - 134
Si. Sense Impressions are One with Images - - - - - - 136
82. Movement and Thought - - - - - 137
83. Units and Trains of Units - 137
84. The Nature of Language ■ - - - - - - - - 138
85. What is a Secondary Unit or an Idea? - - 139
86. Summary - - - - - - - • - - - - - 140
87. The Dynamics of our Subject .---..-.. 141
88. The Composition of Secondary Systems ------- 141
89. Secondary CompHcations - - - - - - - - . 143
90. Devehipment, Excitement and Secondary Complications - - - - 144
90a. Associationism - - - - - - - - - - - 146
91. Ideational Complications 151
92. Thought represents the Satisfaction of Needs - - - - - -151
93. Some Results of Economisation 152
94. The Language of the Adult - - - - - - - - 153
95. We are not restricted to One Unit or Idea at a Time ----- 154
96. General Methods in Thought - - - - - - - - - 155
97. Knowledge is mostly a Social Product -...-.. i^g
98. The Origin of Needs and their Classification -...-- 160
99. A Complex Ideational Process Examined - - - - - - - 161
99a. Comparison .---.-----. 161
99b. Semi-Connection or Doubt and Related States 163
99c. Generalisation or Topical Reaction 164
99d. Abstraction - - - - - - - - - - - 165
100. Attention and Combination 165
loi. Economisation and Combination - - - - - - - - 166
102. Memory and Combination ------... 167
103. Habit and Thought 167
104. Interdependence and Interaction in Combining ------ 169
105. History of the Subject - - 170
106. A Bird's Eye View 172
CHAPTER V
Systems as Re-Developed
107. Primary Systems imply Re- Development - - - - - - 173
108. The Persistence of Neural Modifications ------- 176
109. Neural Excitement • - - - - - - - - - - 17S
no. Sudden Re-Collection ---------- 175
lioa. The Nature of Recency --------- 181
111. Neural Excitement implies Neural Momentum 182
112. Memory Slowly Fades 184
113. Cramming 185
114. We forget Most Things 186
115. The Process of De-Developmeni 190
116. Re-Development is Attention to Surviving Traces ----- igj
117. No Detailed Image in the Memory ------ - 192
118. Images are soon Exhausted -..-...-- igj
119. Visuals, Audiles, Motiles, Emotiles, and Mentals 195
CONTENTS xi.
120. The Matter of Memory 197
1 20a. Motion as Imaged ---------- 203
1 20b. Thinking in Words .-..----- 204
121. The Growth of the Memory 205
122. The Elements of Memory 207
123. What constitutes a Perfect Memory ? 208
124. Primary and Secondary Series Distinguished ------ 209
125. After-images, etc., 210
126. Intuitions 213
127. Organised Re-Development .-.--..-- 215
128. Novelty and Familiarity 217
129. The Gaping Void 218
130. The Part stands for the Whole 219
131. Why the Memory leans Forward ...-.--- 219
132. Vividness is no Test of Objectivity -------- 220
133. The Present Ends where Obliviscence Begins 222
1 34. The Dynamics of Memory 224
135. The Physical Aspect of Memory 231
136. How to Re-Develop 234
137. A Bird's Eye View 239
CHAPTER VI
Systems as Disturbed
138. Pleasure and Pain are neither Sensations nor Feelings . - . . 240
139. The Nature of the Nervous System determines how far we are Drawn to-
wards, or Recoil from, an Object -------- 246
140. Definition of Pleasure-Pain 251
141. Irritants 259
142. Organised Reaction Largely Decides what shall be regarded as Pleasurable
or Painful 263
143. Inference as a Determining Factor in Pleasure-Pain ----- 264
144. Neural Disturbance is Absent from Normal Defensive Activity - - - 265
145. Normal Thought and Action are Neutral as regards Pleasure-Pain - - 266
146. The Relation of the Emotions to Neural Disturbances . - - - 267
147. Feeling Pained, and Imaged Pain .--..--- 271
148. Principles Ride Rough-Shod over Disturbances - * 273
149. Moods largely determine the Drift of Thought ------ 276
150. Conclusions -.....------ 279
151. A Bird's Eye View - - - 280
CHAPTER VII
Systems as Need-Determined
152. Experimental Willing ..--...--- 282
153. The Effect of Volitions 286
154. Will as Absolute 287
155- Uniqueness in Willing ...-.-.-.. 291
156. Voluntary, Non-Voluntary and Involuntary Activity ----- 293
157. Depreciating and Appreciating the Will-Value ------ 297
158. Deliberation 299
159. Desire 301
160. Neural Disturbances 302
161. Choice from Weaker Motive --------- 305
162. Action from Special Motives 307
xii. CONTENTS
163. I Will . . -^ 309
164. Will as Assertion - - - - - - 311
165. The Absolute Value of Felt Effort 313
166. The Sense of Effort - 315
167. The Tripartite Division in Psychology 318
168. A Bird's Eye View - - • - - - - - 321
CHAPTER VIII
Systems as Unified
169. Objective, Reflected and Imaged Sight ...... 322
170. Other Classes of Systems ... - 323
171. Mind and Body ........... 323
172. Mind and Matter .... - 324
173. Force 326
174. Motion 326
175. Appearance and Reality ... - - 327
176. The Self 328
176a. The Nature of Mind 330
177. Presentations ..---....... 332
178. Inner and Outer ........... 333
179. Experience ............ 333
180. Psychophysical Parallelism - - 333
181. Memory - - 335
182. Space 335
iS2a. The Space of Sight and Touch ... ... 347
183. Time .....---...-. 348
184. Order 348
185. Cause and Effect ........... 349
186. Freedom 351
187. Mental Activity 352
188. Reason, Understanding .--....... 3^3
189. The Senses - 353
190. Persistence 355
191. Evolution 356
192. Others 357
193. Subject and Object ..-.----..- 359
194. Life 361
195. Death 363
196. Immortality ............ 363
197. Science -.....-.--..- 364
198. Physical Science and Psychology ........ 366
199. Monism, Dualism, etc. .......... 367
200. A Bird's Eye View 370
PART III
Special Syntheses
chapter ix
Systems as Individualised
201. The Immediate Relation of the Individual to his Environment - - - 373
202. Shakespeare and the Sonnet ......... 373
203 Shakespeare and the Sonnet Form 375
CONTENTS xiii.
204. Peculiar Sonnets -,y5
205. Shakespeare's Language -------... ^^g
206. Shakespeare's Insight - - - - - - - . . . ^g^
207. The Object of Shakespeare's Sonnets 7^5
208. The Place of Shakespeare's Sonnets •---.... -^g^
209. Shakespeare as Dramatist -------... ogg
210. Obstacles to Genius - - - . -
211. Men of Genius
393
- 397
212. Individual Character- -■----.-.. ,q-,
213. Relation to Needs --■-----... 407
214. The Evolution of the Individual ----.... ^qq
215. The Acquisition of Language - - - - - - - . - 413
216. A Bird's Eye View - - 417
CHAPTER X
Systems as Classified
217. Highest Products -----...... ^jg
218. Deliberate Action, Speech and Thought - - - ■ - - 421
219. Average Thought ■■----.... ^22
220. Afferent Activity ........... ^jc
221. Efferent Activity 428
222. Central Activity . . . ----... 429
223. 'Twixt Waking and Sleeping ---.-.... ^^q
224. Dreams ----.-.--.... ^^5
225. Extra-Organic Stimuli in Dreams -----... 4^6
226. Intra-Organic and Efferent Stimuli in Dreams --.... ^-jg
227. The Place of Reason in the Dream-State ------- 441
228. Influencing the Dream-State 44^
229. The Origin of Dreams .......... 44g
230. The History of Dream-Life 4^2
231. Additional Considerations - 4^2
232. Provoked Dreams and Related Facts ----... a,^(Q
233. Animal Psychology 462
234. A Bird's Eye View . - - 455
CHAPTER XI
Systems as Attention-Determined
235. General 468
236. The Beautiful in Visual Forms . 468
237. Inference 479
238. Misleading Beliefs 481
239. Education -------.-... 482
240. Fashion 483
241. Secondary Factors 483
242. The Esthetic Standard 485
243. Prose and Poetry 487
244. Music, etc. ............ 4gj
245. The Comic ............ 4^2
246. The Imagination 4q6
247- Play 499
248. A Bird's Eye View - . . ^qi
xiv. CONTENTS
CHAPTER XII
Summary
249. The Totality of Existence regarded as Static ...... C03
250. The Totality of Existence regarded as Dynamic ..... ^04
251. Disturbances ---......... co6
252. The Business of Psychology - 507
Indexes
Index of Subjects 509
Index of Authors
522
Index of Publications ........... j-j2
ERRATA
Page 17,
., 79.
„ 80,
„ 80,
„ 96,
„ 125,
,, 129,
„ 131.
„ 148,
„ 186,
,. 191,
,, 207,
„ 217,
„ 230,
„ 239,
„ 256,
„ 258,
,, 346,
,, 349,
„ 395.
6 from below, for " physical " read " psychical "
20 ,, below, for "Habit." read "Habit?"
21 ,, above, for " Habits." read " Habits?"
15 ,, below, for "pocesses" read "processes"
9 ,, above, for "occasions" read "occasion"
6 ,, below, for "and" read "or"
14 ,, above, for "difference" read "differences"
s. 12 and 13 from below are to be transferred to the end of sec. 76a.
. 9 from above, for " remaing " read " remaining "
. II ,, above, for " re-membering" read "remembering"
. 5 ,, above, for " ultimalely " read "ultimately"
s. 21 and 22 from below, for "Allen" read " AUin "
. 9 from above, for "similiar" read "similar "
. 5 ,, below, for "praise" read "condemn"
. 9 ,, above, for " uutractable " read " untractable "
.6 ,, below, for "Practice" read "Practise"
I ,, below, for "normla" read "normal"
. 18 ,, below, for "Arber" read " Arrer "
. 16 ,, above, for "perfections" read " perfection,"
. 9 ,, above, for " geuius " read "genius'
PART I
METHOD
OF
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
If the method be but true,
Ours shall be the truths we woo.
I. — The Foundations of Psychology.*
Of late it has almost become the fashion to assume that the foundations of
psychology are firmly laid, and that all that remains is to work out pro-
blems of secondary importance. It is argued that we have now only to
apply the knowledge which has been gained, and to occupy ourselves
with an exhaustive examination of the psychology of the child, of races,
of animals, and so forth. If this be so, the reader should find in this book
a methodical restatement, a dogmatic exposition of the established body
of psychological conclusions. Should he expect that, he will be dis-
appointed. According to my interpretation of the data, the ship of
psychology is still in mid-ocean, still at the mercy of storms of doubt, still
without chart or compass, and still far from port. I maintain not only
that the elementary principles of psychology have still to be established ;
but I believe that, from the scientific point of view, no serious attempt
has yet been made in that direction.
So daring an assertion necessitates a prolonged defence. When a
literature is so voluminous as is that of psychology— when Americans,
Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans are vying with each other in the
production of learned treatises, it seems almost madness to suggest that
the scheme of operations is strategically suicidal, and that nothing but a
retreat to the base, and a new plan of campaign, can ensure success. How-
ever, such is my contention, a contention which, in the interests of
science, I feel bound to make and to substantiate. Grave as is my task,
its gravity is yet exceeded by its unpleasantness. One shrinks, and never
ceases to shrink, from the unwelcome duty of sounding a retreat. The
* "Not Descartes, nor Malebranche, nor Locke, nor Berkeley, nor Hume, nor Leibnitz,
seem to be acquainted with this word" (Boirac, article " Psycholcgie,"' in La Gtatde
Encyclopidie, 1900).
II
4 METHOD
heart almost fails when one has to announce to others that the news of
victory which we all greeted with joy, is void of truth. Yet, while destructive
criticism may give rise to bitter disappointment, we endure it because of
its ultimately beneficial effects.
In accordance with the only justifiable mode of procedure, I shall
attempt to make good my contention by an appeal to history. First, we
will dwell upon the history of the famous doctrine of the Association of
Ideas — a doctrine which, while generally correct in its contention that every
given idea is connected with the idea which preceded it, is, as I hope
to show hereafter (sees. 88-92), quite in error when it reasons backwards,
that the likeness between two ideas makes the one follow the other, since,
as I hold, relevancy to a topic determines which, if any, of the part-ideas
shall be developed.* In some form or another, Associationism was recog-
nised, there seems little doubt, from the days of Aristotle right through the
Middle Ages.f
It was Hobbes who in more modern times explained the flow of thought
by having recourse to an associative principle. He held that one parti-
cular thought or portion of thought followed another because antecedent
and consequent formed originally part of one continuous state, and for no
other reason. To him, however vaguely he stated it {Leviathan, 1651,
part I, ch. 3), the principle of the Association of Ideas offered a complete
explanation of consecutive thought. We are not, in this section, interested
in the truth, or otherwise, of this supposed key. It need only be observed
that there is no evidence that either Aristotle or his followers, or Hobbes,
iTiade an exhaustive study of the subject, for the purpose of either dis-
covering or verifying the explanation. We are nowhere led to believe
that these thinkers, for instance, endeavoured to take note of an entire
section of thought lasting for a minute or so, and then applied their theory.
Nor have we any reason to think that they examined a large number of
examples in such a manner as to exclude prejudice and to make their con-
clusions comprehensive. Nor can it be said that they verified their results
experimentally. Their method was the same as that of the geographers
and naturalists of the Middle Ages, and completely unlike that of the
school of which Galileo was one of the early champions. It is, indeed, an
abuse of terms to call by the name of method a procedure from which all
orderliness is missing. In the one case, the observer follows vague sug-
gestions which are not verified. In the other, he pursues a method which
has taken centuries in the shaping, and w'hich is almost wholly secure
* In this section I am perhaps unduly severe towards the Associationists. While it
is true that they offer no explanation of ihe Jlow of thought, it must yet be borne in
mind that their principle of contiguity forms a valuable basis for such an explanation.
The woodenness and hastiness of their statements, however, called for censure. (See
sees, 90-1).
t See Hamilton, Note D** in his edition of Reid's ^Vorks ; Croom Robertson, article
"Association," in Eric. Brit.; Volkmann, Lehrbuch der Psycholooie, 1894-5, PP- 452-6,
iKite 4 ; Mervoycr, V Association des IJt'es, 1S64 ; and Ferri, Psychologic de V Association,
INTRODUCTION ,5
against superficial reasoning. So long as science was left to Divine
Philosophy, progress remained an impossibility, because of the absence of
objective tests in the mode of inquiry. Science became fruitful when she
evolved a method. The grounds on which she based it, we shall discuss
later on. Suffice it to have shown that Hobbes and his precursors pos-
sessed no warrant for their conclusions. If they were right, theirs were
courageous guesses, and nothing more.
Locke, in his Human Underskxfiding, 1690, bk. 2, ch. 33, gave birth,
in an incidental way, to the phrase Association of Ideas. He employed it
in explaining certain obstinate and injurious associations which men, if they
were careless, were likely to form. The theory plays otherwise no part in
his system, and his short and casual reference makes it undoubted that he
arrived at his conclusions by no scientific route.
Hobbes and Locke having watered the plant, it began quietly to grow.
When Hume referred to it {A Treatise on Human Nature, 1739, bk.
I, part I, sec. 4), it was already attracting a good deal of attention. The
great and genial sceptic professed to expound a principle which was
to the realm of thought — to psychology, what gravitation was to the
material universe — to physics. Contiguity or proximity in place or time,
resemblance, and cause and effect, were the three masters of the ceremonies,
who allotted to each unit its position in a train of thought. Given these,
and we had an explanation of the procession of things or mental pheno-
mena, such as was established in regard to gravitation by Newton.
These principles, it was held, were elemental, and could not be reduced to
other principles ; and one must admit that they were eminently plausible,
especially when illuminated by means of a multiplicity of examples which
led the student in a predetermined direction, and kept him from searching
for instances of a conflicting character.
One single illustration must suffice. On a windy day I look at a field of
barley, and observe how the blades bend in the eastern portion, and how,
in succession, the contiguous blades, right to the western portion, also
bend. Does it follow of necessity that the bending of one blade caused
the next one to it to bend, and so on till the last of the series had bent ?
We know that this presents a false explanation ; and hence we may assume
it at least as possible that contiguous mental changes are not due to con-
tiguous association at all.* The chief point, however, is that Hume's
ably urged assertions were speculative and not scientific. He applied no
canons in which we have confidence.
Meanwhile Hartley was pondering over the same problem. In 1749,
ten years after Hume's treatise had appeared, he published his Observations
on Man's Frame, which is an elaborate physiological vindication of As-
sociationism, based on a theory of vibrations. He went further than
Hume and allowed only for contiguity, or proximity in space and time.
The student will observe, as he proceeds, how sadly ignorant we are at
* See Paulhan, V Activite Mentale, 1889, p. 422.
6 METHOD
this late date, of the more intimate processes of the central nervous system.
Hence Hartley's physiology was conjectural, and that is all one can say
of his psychology. There is everything to indicate that he did not follow
a scientific mode of procedure, as we understand it to-day, and that what-
ever his success, he only sought for proofs in the scholastic fashion.
The physical sciences were, at that period, progressing by leaps and
bounds, conquering realm after realm of nature. The pace was so swift
that men felt assured that the millenium was near. It was then that James
Mill published his work. An Analysts of the Human Mi?id, 1829. In this
work, the elder Mill seemingly applied the scientific method to psychology ;
and he is not the first, if Ophelia is to be believed, whose practice was not
consistent with his profession. According to him, the firmness of the
associative process depended on frequency of impressions in conjunc
tion with vividness (i, p. 83). He has been, and has remained, the As-
sociationist par excellence. Yet, correct as he was in breaking with
metaphysics, more correct than many later psychologists, he nevertheless
mistook philosophic naturalism for scientific method. One might almost
say that he discovered nothing ; that he verified nothing ; and that he only
elaborated in a speculative fashion a speculative system. Though I
agree that his work is profoundly stimulating, his conclusions were yet far
from being in advance of those of Brown's, published some five years
previously.
After Mill the elder, came a deluge of WTiters who laid more or less
stress on Association, their explanations differing in detail only. Thus
Hamilton (d. 1856) tells us {Lectures on Metaphysics^ 1877, ii, p. 238)
that " those thoughts suggest each other which had previously constituted
parts of the same entire or total act of cognition," and that this law is "an
ultimate fact" {ibid, p. 240). Shadworth Hodgson {Time and Space, 1865,
pp. 266-8) contends that in any state of consciousness, the uninteresting
part fades, and the interesting portion develops, thus forming a train of
thought. Bradley, again {Logic, 1883, p. 278), argues that "any part of a
single state of mind tends, if reproduced, to re-instate the remainder; or
any element tends to reproduce those elements with which it has formed
one state of mind."
John Stuart Mill boldly pressed the notion into philosophic service.
Nevertheless, with characteristic hesitancy, he admits (Footnote in his
father's Analysis, 1869, ii, p. 71) that "the highly interesting idea of
the end in view .... determines, within certain limits, which of the ideas
associated with each link of the chain shall be aroused and form the next
link," a passing admission, which, if consistently elaborated, would have re-
volutionised the Associationist position. He also, like Hamilton, quotes
to a similar effect, Cardaillac, Etudes Elenientaires de Philosophie.
Bain, in his Senses and Lntellect, 1894, following Hartley, Brown and
James Mill, again elaborated what had already been over-elaborated.
Without being, unfortunately, one whit less speculative than his pre-
decessors, he set himself more clearly to determine the supposed laws of
INTRODUCTION ; 7
Association. Leaving aside compound and constructive association, and
premising that he rejects, as derived, the law of contrast, the two remaining
laws read as follows : — Law of Contiguity : " Actions, sensations, and states
of feeling, occurring together or in close succession, tend to grow together
or cohere, in such a way that, when any one of them is afterwards pre-
sented to the mind, the others are apt to be brought up in idea" (p. 341).
Law of Similarity : " Present actions, sensations, thoughts or emotions
tend to revive their like among previous Impressions or States (p. 486)."
Yet even Bain casually allows, without recognising the radical nature of his
admission, that recency and interest may influence the course of association
between one antecedent and its consequent. He says, for instance : " If
historical events have been recently in my mind, the events referable to
this locality are suggested" (p. 595).
According to Spencer {Psychology, 1890, i, pp. 269-70) "the funda-
mental law of association of relations, like the fundamental law of
association of feelings, is that each, at the moment of presentation,
aggregates with its like in past experience." This, however, he explains
(i, p. 416) "is the law of intelligence in the abstract," and "the change which
actually takes place is the resultant of many tendencies acting together."
James {Psychology, 1890, i, p. 566) says similarly that "when two
elementary brain processes have been active together or in immediate
succession, one of them, on reoccurring, tends to propagate its excitement
into the other," a thesis which he further develops on p. 567. Baldwin
{^Senses afid Intellect, 1890) likewise gives his assent to the principle.
To return to England. Sully joins the chorus {Human Mind, 1892).
Lloyd Morgan {An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, 1894) adopts
the principle in a slightly modified form. He writes : " The recurrence of
a will be followed by the recurrence of / ufider similar marginal conditions "
(p. 72), and "only under similar marginal conditions will the impression a
suggest /" (p. 72). He defends his slight heresy by saying that the first
law of motion — viz., that a body, if left free, will move at a uniform rate
and in a straight line, — -is true, though bodies are never left free, for-
getting that the marginal conditions are, according to him, essential. Stout
{Analytic Psychology, 1896, and Alanual, 1898-9) accepts the principle in
a modified form. In one place {Ma?iual, 1898, p. 74) he states, how-
ever, that "each phase of the process before the end is reached is in-
complete, and tends by its own inherent constitution to pass beyond itself."
We have seen the manner in which Hobbes and Hume and their pre-
decessors attained their results. The later English writers, including the
latest, have pursued the same policy. Not one of them seems to have
thought of testing the doctrine, as men are accustomed to do in scientific
inquiries. From first to last, scarcely veiled speculation determined the
opinion of English and American psychologists in so important a matter.
A belief thus based can claim no respect on scientific grounds. It may be
true or it may not be true ; it certainly is not proven.
If we turn to Germany we find that Herbart {Lehrbuch, 1816, p. 69),
8 METHOD
the founder of an important school, as well as Beneke, adopted Associa-
tionism. According to the Herbartian school, presentations hinder or
facilitate others coming into the foreground of consciousness. The
Herbartians possess an elaborate mechanism, reminding one of pulleys,
levers, crowbars, cranes, and what not, for the transporting hither and
thither of presentations. Of science there is not a grain. Like Hans
Andersen's tailors, the presentations appear to be busily engaged, but pro-
duce nothing. Such huge treatises as those of Volkmann, a follower of
Herbart, and Lipps, a follower of Beneke, form the completest indictment
of present-day psychological methods. Lotze, again {Microcosfitus, 1885, i,
p, 215), says: "That a newly-produced impression revives the forgotten idea
of a previous and similar one, or recalls it to consciousness, is the simplest of
the universal laws that regulate the course of memory." In Germany, then,
we find, to a large extent, a similar state of affairs to that existing in England.
Paulhan {^LActivite Mentale, 1889), in France, with his Systematic
Association, has broken through the tradition. He rightly holds that
actions are determined by ends, and that each fraction of a train of thought
is not determined primarily by its predecessor, but by the end in view. In
a word, association is systematic or topical, and not atomic. To this view
Ladd {Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, 1S94) subscribes. Largely
as I agree with Paulhan, I still wish to insist that there is no sign that he
deduced his theory from scientific observation or has verified it in fact.
Taking Associationism as a whole, omitting for the present the experi-
mental school, one feels justified in maintaining that its procedure has been
unscientific, and its results, as will be shown, unsatisfactory. So far the
foundations of psychology remain to be laid. (See sec. 90a.)
The most striking exemplification of unscientific method is offered in
the case of Habit. Locke tells us {Human Understanding, 1690, bk. 2,
ch, 22, sec. 10) that the "power or ability in man, of doing anything,
when it has been acquired by frequently doing the same thing, is that idea
we name habit." And in another place he compares the acquirement of
habit to a path worn smooth, saying that repetition of action has the same
effect on the brain. [Ibid, bk. 2, ch. 2s?ii sec. 6.) This hazarded conjecture,
utterly unsubstantiated, has been the first and the last word of the psycho-
logists on the subject. As any well-known work on physiology will show, our
knowledge of brain processes is unspeakably inadequate to permit us to make
such an assertion. When Ave come to psychology, we find no other confirma-
tion than popular rumour might lend; there is not even the faintest suspicion
of scientific caution. Everybody acknowledges what has not even been
tentatively examined. So complete has been the acceptance of this theory
that the leading psychological journals, such as Mitid (omitting my own con-
tribution), The Psychological Review, The American Journal of Psychology,
Braifi, and Philosophische Studie?t, have not a single contribution on the
subject, whilst the Revue Philosophique had one article twenty-six years
ago. This is not owing to indifference. James and others insist upon its
importance at some length, and there are few psychologists who pass it by.
INTR ODUC TION 9
Yet the feeblest attempt at investigation would have shown the difference
between complacent popular acquiescence, which selects some superficial
aspect, and scientific comprehension, which points to the general facts. The
complex nature of habit the student will find exhaustively discussed in ch. 3.
As a third illustration in point, one may take Attention. The subject is
part of the time-honoured stock-in-trade of psychology. It is also one
which has been seriously studied ; and the failure in this case has, therefore,
not been so complete, though even here a certain degree of attention has
been generally mistaken for attention, as such. Had there been only a
consistent and thorough neglect of data other than those arrived at by direct
study — a neglect of metaphysics, of irrelevant theology, of slipshod theory,
of commonplaces, we might be near the end of its problems instead of
near the beginning. The trouble has been that theories have so darkened
the minds of students, that the light of the most powerful intellects scarcely
shed a glimmer along the path. By means of almost superhuman efforts a
trifle was gained here and there, and these trifles tended more to bewilder
than to encourage. The primitive tools worked wonders. Taking a
general survey, however, the subject is still buried in obscurity, though the
outlook is not so unpromising as in the two other cases. As I hope to
explain in ch. 2, attention is not an intermittent process requiring strain, but it
is activity itself from the point of view of the direction in which it is engaged.
The three illustrations I have given — Association, Habit and Attention
— are, I believe, typical of the present-day state of reflective psychology as
a whole. They justify the contention that the scientific foundations have
still to be laid.
When one turns to those who emphasise the physiological aspect, scholars
such as Maudsley {Physiolog}' of Alind, 1876), Lewes [Problems of Life and
Mind, 1874-9), and Bastian {T/ie Brain as an Organ of Mind, 18S0), one
is even more disappointed. I fully appreciate their insistence upon the
neural aspect of thought, with which their work began and ended ; but their
positive results were most meagre, since they tried to establish a fictitious
psychology by means of an admittedly fictitious neurology.
The work of the psycho-physical school will be examined in sec. 8.
What is the nature of the method which I have called unscientific and barren ? It
may be illustrated as follows. Owing to a new departure in psychological thinking some
fresh problem has arisen, say, the problem of effort. Men ask themselves accordingly
what is effort, and in asking recall what seem relevant illustrations. These illustrations,
being what is uppermost in thought, display some particular and striking characteristic,
and men then turn over the old clothes of memory for proof. At the same time they
more or less carefully note this or that particular case of living effort. Meanwhile
(sec. 160) the suggested solution attracts as much what is favourable to itself as it prevents
from developing what is unfavourable to the theory, while the situation is aggravated by
the fact that the actual things observed are illegitimately suggested by the hypothesis.
Thence follows some chance conclusion which, psychologically considered, appears firmly
based. As against this method, I would advise the exhaustive study of a large variety
of facts, with no anxiety — until we have proceeded far — to obtain conclusions. We vvould
apply impartially such rules as shall eliminate any bias (sec. 136), and we would lay no
lo METHOD
stress on anything recollected unless it be something due to careful examination, and
unless we have, by rule (sec. 136), exhausted all the relevant material to be found in the
memory, the stores of which are useful for conduct, but not for eliciting truths. Such a
method, I hold, is scientific, fruitful and well-based. Such a method, I claim, is the
quintessence of the scientific method as applied in the physical sciences. Instruments
and mathematical treatment may supplement it, but not displace it. These latter only
give polish and precision to the great truths otherwise obtained. \Let the student
observe that the mere neglect of metaphysics or theology will not assist him in the discovery
of truth. '\
2. — The Use of Hypotheses.
In his Comparative Psychology, Lloyd Morgan tells the world that
" Psychologists make, or should make, no claim to any monopoly of know-
ledge in the subject they study ; their province is mainly to systematise that
knowledge" (p. 44). Fortunately for us, this author's practice is not in
accord with his theory, for his conception of focal and marginal conscious-
ness forms a valuable contribution to psychology. Nevertheless there is
incalculable mischief in his assertion, however hedged round. What
would be thought of a physicist or an astronomer who mainly systematised
knowledge without seeing that it was gathered at first hand by competent
specialists or by himself, or who gave a locus standi to " the plain man of
shrewd insight " ? The idea is monstrous. A psychology which mainly
busied itself with systematising the conclusions of " those who are not pro-
fessed psychologists " might as well relieve Sisyphus of his task. The one
is as likely to be successful as the other.
Underlying the statement I am criticising, there is an unpleasant truth.
Unhappily, psychologists have been too anxious to systematise that which
they had not previously examined. They leaned fatally to the opinion
that truth could be sifted from popular notions as is sand by means of
a sieve. The student must recognise once for all that if he is to be on the
scientific plane he must make a claim on behalf of psychologists to a
"monopoly of knowledge," and that he must not attempt to systematise
what has not been procured through the application of scientific methods.
It has been the bane of psychologists that they have tacitly assumed that
facts of consciousness do not require to be collected with the disciplined
care which other sciences employ. I have advisedly said "tacitly"
assumed, because few men have spoken out boldly as Lloyd Morgan does.
The mischief has lain in unthinkingly proceeding along the wrong path, in
giving elaborate explanations of popular fictions, and in not deliberately
recognising that in psychology, as in physics, unbridled speculation is
criminal waste.
It is always dangerous to make unqualified statements. Instead of con-
demning speculation outright, it would be perhaps better to pronounce
sentence against it when its excursions are not rigorously limited. Few
can object wheti "speculation is but the play of the imagination along
the fringe which borders our knowledge" (Lloyd Morgan, Comparative
Psychology, 1894, p. 323). But then we must insist upon a reasonable
interpretation which shall not make the fringe equal to the robe to which it
INTROD UCTION 1 1
belongs. Speculation thus interpreted is not only innocent ; it is an impera-
tive necessity. If men formed hypotheses about the things on the borders
of knowledge, they would never go far astray, and often return laden with
trophies. Let me, however, define this term. "By an hypothesis we
understand an assertion which is employed as a principle of explanation,
though its correctness is yet unproven " (Volkmann, Lehrhiich, 1894, i,
p. T03). I should say, then, that accepting the above definition, hypotheses
are legitimate when they apply to the fringe which borders our knowledge.
In thus limiting their uses one seems not only to be cutting at the root of
ordinary psychological speculation, but to be contradicting weighty
authorities. According to Jevons, study without hypothesis is not scientific.
♦'The true course of inductive procedure is that which has yielded all the
more lofty results of science. It consists in Anticipating A^ature, in the
sense of forming hypotheses as to the laws which are probably in operation ;
and then observing whether the combinations of phenomena are such as
would follow from the laws supposed" {Principles of Science, 1877, p. 509),
The fallacy underlying the preceding statement must be exposed.
Where, the student should ask himself, do we find our hypotheses ? Do
they come to us as divine intuitions ? Can we obtain them, or any new
truth, by a course of abstract reasoning? Or is it not rather that we act
on the basis of one observation, and note " whether the phenomena are
such as would " be in accordance with that observation ? This must
obviously be the case, for no compounding of zeros can force the gates
of nothingness. If that be so, Jevons' statement implies that there are no
hidden facts which are not amenable to casual and superficial observation.
That, as we shall see, is an indefensible position. There is no guessing
which can take us farther than the fringe W'hich borders our knowledge.
We may set up the wildest theory, and yet it will be composed of what
is known, its extravagance arguing no fresh knowledge. Take, for instance,
a passage from Volkrnann, which well illustrates the length to which fanciful
speculation or adaptation may go: "The presentational mass, which is
helplessly sinking, meets with the freely-rising apperception mass, is
gripped and firmly held by that, and placed before the ego as an object to
ho. viewed" {Lehrbuch, 1895, ii) P- 206). This pretentious psychic
mechanism to which we are here introduced is but a copy of material
meclianisms, and the hypothesis underlying its use implies that analogy
holds the key to the whole realm of the unknown, while the truth is that
the master facts of a science are due to deliberate research. It is for this
reason that one can scarcely detect a single sound brick in the elaborate
Herbartian structure — unsophisticated observation of a scientific type has
been scouted, and hypotheses were powerless to discover the new facts.
If my interpretation be correct, the progress of science should bear me
out,* as indeed it does. The serious study of fact is continually going
hand in hand with tentative speculation " along the fringe which borders
* See, however, Rigg, The Place of Hypothesis in Experimental Science, 1887.
12 METHOD
our knowledge." Workers here and there wrest from nature trivial secrets.
These secrets accumulate, and men now and then tentatively combine a
few of them. As the store of knowledge assumes considerable proportions,
so larger and larger generalisations are ventured upon in every direction.
At last, when general statements of a far-reaching nature abound, men
rightly venture to speculate as to the broadest generalisations possible.
Already the chief notions are in the air ; already those engaged in the
search feel that they are approaching a solution. After many minor
attempts some one, a Newton or a Darwin, sometimes comes to the front
and completes the structure. As knowledge progresses, new speculations
and observations " along the fringe which borders our knowledge " are
readily suggested and easily verified. No stupid guess is possible to the tnan
icho has ascertained facts to go upon ; and when he goes astray, the clashing
of his theory ivith his existing store soon brings him back to the right path.
Progress, though slow, is hence certain and reliable when men shun the
use of large hypotheses. In the absence of well-ascertained facts, everything
is changed. A guess, under these conditions, has no inherent plausibility,
and what is as bad, any attempt at verification in an unexplored realm can
only end in failure either acknowledged, or, as is more usual, disguised.
Our intellectual sense of equilibration forsakes us when it has no general
facts to assist it. Thus large hypotheses in neurology are not only worth-
less, but vicious, because it is only by the accumulation of facts and
generalisations that solutions of neural difficulties can be reached,
at all. Sciences cannot be, and never have been, guessed at. Jevons'
mistake was a plausible one. In the physical sciences so huge a body of
organised observations has been accumulated that the guesses of men of
learning are at once permissible and easily verified. Where, on the other
hand, as in psychology, the stock of genuine observations is infiinitesimal,
these guesses will be unreasonable, and their verification will consist of an
immensely protracted process, equal to the building up of the science itself.
Indeed, Jevons supplies his own antidote. He says of the alchemists, of
whom Newton was one, that " Many of them were men of the greatest
acuteness, and their indefatigable labours were pursued through many
centuries. A few things were discovered by them, but a true insight into
nature now enables chemists to discover more useful facts in a year than
were yielded by the alchemists during many centuries " {ibid, p. 505).
The alchemists, like many present-day psychologists, indulged in large
hypotheses, and large hypotheses are useless, are itnpedimefita in more
senses than one.
I, therefore, side with Bacon (d. 1626) Who says: "The subtilty of
nature is far beyond that of sense or of the understanding : so that the
specious meditations, speculations, and theories of mankind are but a kind
of insanity, only there is no one to stand by and observe it" {Novum
Organum, ed. 1893, bk. i, x) ; and who draws this admirably prophetic
picture of some modern thinkers : " When any one prepares himself
for discovery, he first inquires and obtains a full account of all that has
INTRODUCTION 13
been said on the subject by others, then adds his own reflections, and stirs
up, and, as it were, invokes his own spirit, after much mental labour, to
disclose its oracles. All which is a method without foundation and merely
turns on opinion " {ibid^ bk. i, Ixxxii). Bacon has been roundly attacked
for his views, which are all too sound. Even Newton has not escaped
chastisement. His celebrated pronouncements against hypotheses are
discounted on the assumption that he himself gained his great successes
by their means. The censure on him is wholly inapplicable, for his great
generalisation was no more self-evolved than that of Darwin. No man of
his attainments could have been far wrong in his surmises, and the accumu-
lations of organised knowledge were so extensive that verification was
within easy reach. Newton focussed the learning of his time. When he
goes beyond that, as in his conjectures concerning general stellar problems,
he is only a wordy theologian. Hence, regarding the term hypothesis as
implying a supposition which is not preceded by exact study, we can
heartily agree with Newton's strong and unmistakable language. "What-
ever is not deduced from the phenomena, is to be called an hypothesis ;
and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult
qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In
this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena,
and afterwards rendered general by induction " {Mathematical Principles,
trans, by A. Motte, 1729, ii, p. 392). Compare this hesitancy with the
impatience of a modern writer : " Give us theories, theories, always
theories!" (Baldwin, Mental Development, 1895, p. 38); or compare it
with the speculative deductions of the learned Whewell : "... an Art of
Discovery is not possible. At each step of the progress of science, are
needed invention, sagacity, genius — elements which no Art can give.
We may hope in vain, as Bacon hoped, for an organ which shall enable
all men to construct scientific truths, as a pair of compasses enables all
men to construct exact circles" {Philosophy of -the Inductive Sciences, 1847,
p. viii. See also his Novum Organon Renovatum, 1858).
The essential thing for the student to remember is that the chief facts
of every science are only obtainable by the close observer after laborious
research.* Let me give one illustration. What are dreams ? Seeming to
resemble the waking imagination, we forthwith guess that they are the result
of vivid imaginings. Quantities of books had been written on the subject,
based on speculation and occasional observation. Yet proper light only
began to be thrown on the problems of dream-life when men methodically
and for a considerable period observed their own dream-states. Excepting
such contributions as those of Giessler and Schwartzkopff, most of the
books are almost superfluous. Let me now state the dream facts as they
appear to me (ch. 10). (i) The muscular and sensory tones are lowered, and
the position of the various parts of the body is unknown (sec. 19, ist and
2nd conclusion). (2) The characteristic pictures spring usually out of the
* Men are sometimes said to stumble upon important discoveries. In such c:ises it
is the preparedness of the discoverer which accounts for the discovery.
14 METHOD
dark or closed-eye field of vision, and are not imaginings at all. (3) Most
of the dreams are initiated and maintained from without, resembling
waking life and not waking imagination. (4) The amount of possible
effort is largely reduced, whence follows confused thinking, (5) impossi-
bility of strenuous thought, (6) inappropriate recollection, (7) a strong
tendency for appetites, expectations, doubts, hopes and fears to actualise
themselves, (8) the continual creation of a setting to each picture, giving
it an air of reality, and (9) the fact that the happenings are compounded out
of most recent events and those immediately passed. Thus points (2) and
(3) argue afferent or outer influences, and the other points follow from the
lack of strenuousness. Now, by what rational calculus could one have
jumped from imaginative seeing to the retinal pictures which are plainly
due, in part at least, to new circumstances. And, suppose we had not
previously ascertained the fact, how could we have discovered the arbitrary
creation of settings to the dream-pictures ? The two essential facts of
dream-life are afferent, or outward, influences and a drop in strenuousness.
Yet the waking imagination has nothing to do with either of those factors :
it tends away from outer impressions and implies considerable force of
thought. Where, we may ask accordingly, lies the difference between the
methods of ancient philosophy and those of current psychology ? And
who would ever confound scientific with philosophic procedure ? The
traditional philosophic method is as barren as the syllogism which it has
produced. It may, therefore, be laid down for the student's guidance that
scientific progress depends on gaining new classes of facts, that such can
only be acquired by painfully close and methodical observation in the first
instance, and that they are not obtainable by employing hypotheses which
go beyond well-ascertained facts and established generalisations. As
Tyndall puts it : " The thing to be encouraged here is a reverent freedom
— a freedom preceded by the hard discipline which checks licentiousness in
speculation" [Scie7itific Use of the Imagi?iatio)i, 1872, p. ^l)-
Adam, L Imagination dans la D^converte Scientifiquey 1890 ; Boirac, La Mi'thode
ExperimentaU, 1898 ; Naville, De la Place de P Hypothhe dans la Science, 1876 ; Naville,
Les Conditions des Hypotheses S^rieuses, 1877 ; Naville, Les Principes Directeurs des
Hypotheses, 1877 ; and Venn, The Use of Hypotheses, 1878.
3. — Approaches to the Study of Psychology.
To understand the human frame, we require to know its constitution to
the minutest part, together with its reactions when stimulated : a micro-
scope and a dissecting knife, with a battery, might be an adequate equipment
for this task. As matters stand, these tools are found to be inadequate,
and secondary means are, therefore, resorted to in addition. We study
the development of the embryo, animal characteristics, evolutionary traits,
and cases of disease or malformation. We also stain the tissues with pre-
parations which affect only certain parts; we cut nerve bundles, as we might
cut strings, and notice which of the nerves degenerate as a consequence ;
and we experimentally alter or remove structures or parts of structures.
INTRODUCTION 15
With no understanding, or next to none, of actual structure, the secondary
means would be of less than doubtful value. Vague and diffuse observations
would of necessity be followed by vague and diffuse conclusions.
So with psychology. In the absence of a power of self-observation,
advance would be barred, for secondary means can only be helpful when
the primary approach is not virtually closed. If a direct approach be im-
practicable, we shall be compelled to rest satisfied with vague hints. Yet,
taking a broad view, our aim is to ascertain the whole edifice of thought by
experimentally looking within, or, as it is called, by introspection. Not
until this approach is found to be demonstrably inaccessible like the centre
of the earth is now, may we think of applying other methods. Most thinkers
have, however, despaired of obtaining a satisfactory peep into the thought
jungle, and have consequently advocated secondary means of attaining
their object. One of these means which Herbart eloquently advocated,
the use of hypotheses, I have already examined and rejected. The others
areas follows: retrospection ; the comparative study of child7-en, races, animals^
criminals, the insane, hypnotised and diseased persons ; as well as the examina-
tioji of products such as facial expressions, monuments or hooks. As I
believe that introspection is eminently practicable, I consider the other
means to be of secondary importance, and shall refer to them only
incidentally, if at all.
4. — Introspection.
The difficulties of introspection were insisted on at an early date by Hume :
" It is remarkable concerning the operations of the mind, that, though
most intimately present to us, yet, whenever they become the object of
reflection, they seem involved in obscurity ; nor can the eye readily find,
those lines and boundaries, which discriminate and distinguish them. The
objects are too fine to remain long in the same aspect or situation ; and
must be apprehended in an instant, by a superior penetration, derived
from nature, and improved by habit and reflection" {Inquiry, 1747, sec. i.
See also Hume's Introduction to his Treatise on Hutnan Nature). If the
objects " must be apprehended in an instant," reasonable observation is out
of the question ; but we are convinced that absence of adequate introspective
training accounted for Hume's opinion.
To one hypothesis we owe almost the entire neglect of introspection.
Auguste Comte (d. 1857) maintained that "the affective functions, and yet
more the intellectual, exhibit .... this particular characteristic, that they
cannot be observed during their operation, but only in their results"
{Positive Philosophy, 1875, tr., i, p. 382). This belief, never thoroughly
tested, pervades most criticism. Herbart* {Psychologie, i, p. 206), says: *'Do
you intend to observe yourself passively, so as to clearly perceive what is
*For accounts of Herbart and Herbaitians, see Stout, The Hcrbartian Psychology, 1S88;
Stout, Herbart compared with the English Psychologists, 1889; Stout, Herbart'' s Disciples,
18S9 ; Ward, article " Herbart," in Enc. Brit., 1886 ; Ribot, La Psychologie di Plerbart,
1876. See also my account of Herbart in sec. 80.
i6 METHOD
proceeding within? Only the sooner will everything that was to be seen,
become dark, and very soon the spectator will only face himself and his
own attitude." Again, in his Lehrbuch, 1816, p. 56, he says : "That which
we are specially anxious to observe within ourselves, becomes confused
during the inspection." If Herbart be correct, then self-observation be-
comes useless ; but here, too, we see that the existence of an indivisible
ego is implied, for why otherwise should not one state be able to exist
alongside of another state. Herbart's disciple, Volkmann,* takes sides
with equal boldness. Introspection " pre-supposes a breaking-up of the
observer in a subjective portion which observes and an objective portion
which is observed. . . . Outside its range fall all those phenomena which,
like passion, arduous thinking, . . . and attention, pre-suppose the undivided
concentration and devotion of the whole process of presentation " (Volk-
niann, Lehrbiuh, 1894, i, p. 41). And again, "the effort of the observer
appreciably alters the object to be observed . . . The more seriously we
wish to observe ourselves, the less do we find to observe" {ibid, p. 42).
Thus Waitz {Fsychologie, 1849, P- ^13)^ another Herbartian : "The
keenest self-inspection reveals only what is past." So Nahlowsky {Das
Gefilhlskben, 1862, p. 6), still another Herbartian: "As long as one is
subject to a certain feeling, it is impossible to attend to it ; v/e become ac-
quainted with it only through memory." Thus Brentano, Fsychologie, 1874,
pp. 35-6 : "Objects which, as the saying is, are perceived without us are
amenable to observation. . . . To objects which are perceived within us
this procedure is totally inapplicable." In a similar vein Wundt (Grimdriss,
1896, p. 25) says that "the intention of observing, which must exist in all
exact observation, materially affects . . . psychic processes." Why, in the
nature of things, this should be, he leaves unexplained. Kant {Anthropo-
logic, 1800, p. x), who, like Herbart {Psychologic, i, p. 233, and other places),
confounds self-observation with morbid self-consciousness, writes : " The
man who desires to explore his inner life puts himself in a critical condition,
especially where the feelings are concerned, i.e., when his impulses are in
action, he cannot observe himself, and when he observes himself, his
impulses are at rest." Ebbinghaus {Psychologic, 1897, i, p. 57) tells us
that self-observation "cannot clearly and objectively apprehend the things
towards which it is directed ; it unavoidably displaces and falsifies them."
Tool {Lehrbuch, 1896, p. 10) says that his remarks do not imply "the im-
possibility of introspection, but only a difficulty, now more, now less,
prominent in certain cases." Thus Heinrich, Die moderne Psychologic, 1899,
p. 97: "In self-inspection we can only note that which, on the ground of a
hypothesis, we wish to observe ; for introspection is made possible only by
the reproduction of the phenomenon ; and in reproducing we are always
determined by a settled^opinion."
Maudsley, who cannot be suspected of possessing metaphysical bias,
also reasons against introspection. "To direct consciousness inwardly to
*Fcr an account of Vo'ikmann, see Whitlaker, Volkmann^s Psycliology, 1890.
INTRODUCTION ij
the observation of a particular state of mind is to isolate that activity for
the time, to cut it off from its relations, and, therefore, to render it unnatural.
In order to observe its own action, it is necessary that the mind pause from
activity ; and yet it is the train of activity that is to be observed. So long
as you cannot effect the pause necessary for self-contemplation, there cannot
be a sufficient observation of the current of activity ; if the pause is effected,
then there can be nothing to observe ; there would be no consciousness,
for consciousness is awakened by the transition from one physical or mental
state to another" {Physiology of Mind, 1876, p. 17). To which we reply
that the dilemma does not exist for the skilled observer. Hamilton is
unambiguous. " Before we can observe a modification, it is already
altered ; nay, the very intention of observing it, suffices for the change. It
hence results that the phenomenon can only be studied through its remini-
scence" {Metaphysics, 1877, i, p. 379).
Ward is equally unfriendly, as is Stout. The former speaks of " . . . .
the very obvious fact that our powers of attention are limited, so that we
cannot alter the distribution of attention at any moment without altering
the contents of consciousness at that moment," implying, as I understand
him, that each observation occupies the whole field of attention or that the
connection between what co-exists is organic {Psychology, 1886, p. 37).
The latter says : " It has been maintained that all so-called introspection is
in reality retrospective. On this view, the modifications of our conscious-
ness vanish on being noticed, so that we do not apprehend them until they
are past. We shall see later on that there is sufficient justification for this
doctrine " {Analytic Psychology, 1 896, i, p. 1 3).
The remaining EngHsh psychologists whom I shall quote, write in
a similar strain. Sully says : "The very directness of the inspection gives
rise to special difficulties. For all accurate and scientific observation
requires a certain aloofness of mind and absence of all but a purely
scientific interest in what is observed. When, however, we are called on
to observe our own mental states we cannot put ourselves into this cool
scrutinising attitude. The same person whose mind is agitated by a
passion is required to dispassionately inspect its characteristics. Thus in
the very process of observing we necessarily change the phenomena to be
observed" {Human Mind, 1892, i, p. 16. See also his Illusions of
Introspection, 1881, pp. 11 -8). John Stuart Mill, as usual, is non-committal,
saying that at all events retrospection is possible {Auguste Comte and
Positivism, 1865, p. 64). Lloyd Morgan is also a hostile witness:
" Directly we begin to examine and measure any part of the margin,
it thereby ceases to be marginal and becomes focal" {Comparative
Psychology, 1894, p. 19). "We cannot examine the physical wave as it
passes ; we can only endeavour to focus it, or its constituent parts, in the
mental vision, as it was when it was passing" (p. 20). Again, "Introspec-
tion always deals with past experience. . . . Introspection is thus always
retrospection" {Psychology' for Teachers, 1894, pp. 83-4).
Turning to America, opinion is also almost unanimous against intro-
2
i8 METHOD
spection. James, in his characteristic style, says with regard to thoughts
and feelings: "Whilst alive they are their own property; it is ox\\y post-
mortem that they become his [the psychologist's] prey" {Psychology, 1890,
i, p. 189). And Baldwin: "All our mental states are rendered more
intense by the attention : consequently as soon as the state observed
conies within the range of fruitful observation, it is changed, both in its
own integrity and in its relative importance in the mental life" {Serises and
Intellect, 1890, p. 10). So Titchener : "Direct introspection — observation
of a process which is still running its course — is, as a matter of fact, en-
tirely worthless ; it defeats its own object" {Ati Otitlifie of Psychology, 1896,
P- 33)-
Egger, in a dissertation on internal speech, pronounces against intro-
spection and for retrospection. " Instead of observing directly our present
condition," he says, "let us interrogate our memory" {La Parole
Interiein-e, 1881, p. 79). Paulhan {La Perception Interne et la Psychologic,
1888) sails round the subject, enlarging upon the possibilities of error.
Ribot {Psychology of the Emotions, 1897) speaks of introspection, "always
an uncertain guide which leads us but a little way " (p. vi).
The army of the faithful is very small. Lewes {The Study of Psycholo^,
1879) seems to support the possibility of introspection unconditionally.
Ladd and Miinsterberg are, generally speaking, favourable. The former
sensibly remarks that " the risks, limitations, possibilities, and proper uses
of introspection in psychology can only be made known in connection with
the development of the science itself" {Psychologv, 1894, p. 15), while
the latter rightly urges that talent, training and appropriate know-
ledge are requisite {Ueber Aufgaben, 1891). Yet, however, in another
place Miinsterberg writes: "To direct the attention, or the will, to our
volitions, would mean the possession of a doubled self-consciousness, and
is, therefore, a complete inner contradiction. Psychological analysis is, in
consequence, restricted to the memory pictures of inner processes " {Die
Willenshandhing, 1888, p. 57). Lipps {Grundtatsachen, 18S3, pp. lo-i)
rebuts the attacks on self-inspection in a general way. Beneke holds views
as strong as mine, though one cannot detect any attempt at realising those
views : "As for the objection that self-observation is impossible, it can be
made only by those who have never seriously set themselves the task"
{Neue Psychologie, 1845, p. 15. See also the preface to Beneke's Lehrhich,
1845). So Robertson {Elements of Psychology, 1896, p. 14) says : "Without
making light of the difficulties attending introspection, we may therefore
rest satisfied that there is no reason why it should not, when properly
conducted, lead to results of a purely scientific character." But this is a
mere theoretical plea. Similarly Bailey {Letters, 1855-63), especially in
his Third Series, pp. 1-13, argues in favour of introspection as against
Comte. No application, however, is made by Bailey of the introspective
method.
We have heard the witnesses for and against. Almost without exception,
the testimony, directly or by implication, against introspection is crushing.
I NT ROD UCTION
19
My reply is as follows : retrospection is, of necessity, introspection, and if,
therefore, introspection be impossible, our minds are absolute bianks* All
that can be said in favour of the former is that memories are; less vivid
(Miinsterberg, Ueber Attfgaben, 189 1, p. 171). On the other hand we must
note that memory is but a poor copy, most of the details disappearing, and
the very faintness being as often as not an obstacle to observation. Observe
yourself, for instance, when you are being surprised, and compare your
notes with those gained from a previous recollection of a state of surprise :
the difference is that between poverty and wealth, while, at the same time,
prejudice is more likely to alter what is faint than what is vivid. Psycho-
logists speak of obtaining furtive glances; but if we reflect that only sustained
and close observation is ever of use, we shall learn that these glances have
no scientific value.
Let us now meet the chief charge by an illustration. Listening to a light
conversation, I, at the same time, study the cover of an art journal and also
tap the table ; but, on another occasion, when I attend to a difficult argu-
ment, all my activity is absorbed in the one task of comprehending what is
put forward. Attention, then, need not be directed to one object alone.
Indeed, as we shall see in ch. 2, normal attention represents a stable
quantity, and in proportion as an object requires less than that quantity, so
■we attend in two or more directions. To the attention it is indifferent
whether we attend to five separate objects or to one. Hence, as we become
absorbed in one direction, all other things fade — we hear nothing, we see
nothing, we feel nothing, we think of nothing but what we are absorbed in.
Suppose now that I am looking at the reading lamp before me. As my
■ft-hole attention is not required to perform the feat, I can still hear the
fowls running to be fed. Now it does not matter to the attention, as such,
what I do as long as I do not leave it unoccupied. Further, the mere
shifting, as such, of one portion of the contents does not necessarily
interfere with the other portions. I can be attending to one object con-
tinuously while changing the other contents. The various loirelated objects
of thought, to all intents and purposes, are like so many logs of wood lying at a
distance from one another a?id removable separately. Only one condition
must any second object of thought fulfil, it must not make such a call on
our attention as shall interfere with the first object of thought. Let us
apply this. To attend to a trend of thought or action is possible in so far
as the second trend of thought does not, owing to its volume, affect the
first one. Since, then, attending to the object of our attention, with those
who are trained, requires the veriest trifle of exertion, it follows that the
artificial objections against introspection fall. There is scarcely a passion
so wild, or a dream so subtle, that a trained psychologist cannot collectedly
turn round and with freedom inspect the related process.
This is not the place to go into fine details. The student, who takes his
* " A mental state that is past is a mental state no longer, and to be unable to know it
as present until it is past is to be unable to know it until it is non-existent and is as such
beyond being known at all" (Hodder, T/ie Adve7-saries of the Sceptic, 1901, p. 41).
20 METHOD
study seriously, and who knows that without effort nothing worthy is
achieved, will persist, according to instructions, until he can walk about the
thought smithy as self-possessed as the physicist in his laboratory. Great
authorities who, like great mountains, echo each other, must not impose
upon him. He must test, and not slavishly obey.
In view of Wundt's criticism {Selbstbeohachtims; iindinnere Wahmehviung, i887)of Vol-
kelt, it will be well to fix the meaning of the term Observation. For instance, a speech
repeated by the phonograph in my hearing, while I was absorbed in thinking out some
problem, never existed for me, that is to say, if I had a perfect memory and deliVierately recol-
lected the period during which the instrument was at work, I should not be able to recollect
the speech. Again, the speech repeated by the phonograph in my hearing, while I was not
otherwise engaged, did exist for me. A perfect memory would prove that. However,
lacking an unexceptionable memory, I may have forgotten what I heard. In the latter
case the final effects of hearing and not hearing are equally negative, though there was
observation of the speech in one instance and not in the other. If we add, then, to the
ordinary observant state an implicit desire to remember what is observed, and set the
phonograph at work again, the effect will be that I not only heard a speech, but that I
also am pretty certain to remember it. The presence of the implicit desire, however,
gives rise to no important modification, i.e., if a perfect memory reproduced both sets of
observations, the differences would be insignificant. Accordingly, scientific observation
always looks beyond the moment, and carries with it, therefore, the implicit desire spoken
of. Now what is true of observation holds of introspection. I may observe comparatively
little ; I may observe much and forget it almost instantly ; or I may observe as well as
remember, because there is an implicit desire to do so. Hence both in outer and inner
observation the implicit desire to remember is essential for scientific purposes. To deny
that we discriminate is to assert that nothing exists. If, then, discrimination be a fact, it
becomes a question whether the implicit desire to remember introduces a fatal factor in
introspection. My contention is that it does not ; and that a perfect memory would
reveal nothing appreciably different from what is actually disclosed. There is only one
danger we must guard against. When we attend to a slightly discriminated state, say to
what lies in the margin of vision, we must not assume an attitude which would transform
it into a highly discriminated state, as by focussing an object. We must remain unbiassed
spectators, a thing not at all impossible. Indeed, the slightly discriminated state may be
produced experimentally just as much as the opposite state. Our conclusion, then, is
that while discrimination, inner and outer, varies, the implicit desire to remember what
has been discriminated, or to observe what is being discriminated, introduces no disturbing,
factor in the case of a skilled observer. *
5. — Practical Psychology.
In the physical sciences it is considered essential that a student should
be experimentally trained. One who only knows chemistry from books, or
even from observing demonstrations, is not regarded as seriously acquainted
with it ; and one who is ignorant of practice is generally not considered
as trained in that subject. What we have just said concerning the
physical sciences must in the future hold of psychology. A student
not trained in psychologising or in performing introspective experiments,
is a superficial amateur.
The method-in-chief which the psychologist has to employ is that of in-
trospection. The student must, therefore, practise that art until he has fairly
* See Volkelt, Psychologische Sireitfragen, 1886, pp. 8 ff. Volkelt's theory is that self-
observation consists in involuntarily consulting the_memory contents {ibid, p. 12).
INTRO D UCTION 2 1
mastered it. Ordinary scientific observation is unquestionably beyond the
uninitiated.* This is also true of self-observation. At first we must expect
the student to be helpless and inefficient. Only with time and practice will
his ability to grapple effectually with psychic facts assume any considerable
proportions. Like every discipline, psychology has its own difficulties which
the student must overcome. Failure at first should no more discourage or
dishearten him than the corresponding failure to ride a bicycle easily and
gracefully when mounting one for the first time. He must judiciously
practise until the so-called impossibilities, of which we heard so much in
the last section, become commonplace realities.
" Be normal " in your psychologising, is the supreme rule. To show
nervousness, to become excited, to be full of anxiety, to wonder, to doubt, to
desire, are states which the student must ignore. Ordinary attentioti is
liable to these very freaks, and passes beyond them by dint of intelligent practice.
Average individuals go about their affairs without becoming morbidly self-
conscious and agitated. In a similar manner, agitation in self-observation
argues the apprentice eye. We must become accustomed to turn inwards
with as little ado as when turning outwards.
Let us leave generalities. As I am writing at the present moment I do
not, as far as the writing is concerned, in the slightest measure feel excited
or confused. If I shut my eyes, as I have done just now, the writing ought
to proceed with no more transformation in the process than is implied in
the absence of sight. Any excitement or change in the attention is of the evil
one, and the most delicate instrument should scarcely record any modifica-
tion. Mechanically the eyes are closed, and mechanically we proceed.
After some practice it should be difficult to tell which out of a number of
short hnes were written with e3'es closed or eyes open.f On the intel-
lectual side, too, the severest scrutiny should reveal only serene peacefulness.
\Repeat this experi?fient a niwiber of titnes, and record results^ Thus with
walking. At any convenient moment I shut my eyes and walk along as if
they were open. My thoughts also keep unchanged, and there is altogether
no alteration except as regards the absence of sight and its results. Should
I be self-conscious and find normal thought difficult, or should I detect
that I am different, it would be a proof that my experiment has been a
failure and that I require further practice. \Test experimentally?^ Thus
with eyes open, after due exercise, I attend to what can be observed as
regards the process of walking : how I lift the legs, how I put them down,
and the sensations connected with these acts. If I am thoroughly trained,
there will be no normal feelings suppressed or added to, and there will only
be noted what a perfect memory of the normal process would redevelop.
* "Observation is not, like perception and sensation, sometliing that comes to man of
itself; witness the fact that there are countless numbers who never reach the point of
observing the phenomona of outer existence" (Beneke, Die neue Psychologic, 1845,
P- 15)-
t Bain {Senses and Intellect, 1894, p. 348) incautiously observes: "When we make
our signature without seeing it, the execution is very faulty." \_Test this.'\
22 METHOD
All accounts which disagree with this, stamp the narrator as a beginner, for
development or suppression of ideas should be entirely in our power.
Having several times observed myself walking, and having written down the
observations, I repeat the experiments with eyes shut. The closing of the
eyelids, experiment has taught us, makes no difference. Walking for about
ten yards in a perfectly normal frame of mind, I learn that my walk is not
in the straight line which marks open-eyed walking. Attending to the
reasons, with eyes closed, I find further confirmation of the same fact.
How often, indeed, do we not talk in the most natural manner to our
neighbour, while all the time observing the effect of our speech, or attending
in addition to something else. Irrelevant modifications condemn the
observer at once. \Observe yourself while ivalking tviih eyes closed ; try
and practise varied distances, directions, speeds, obstacles, etc.^
When we first attend to a habitual action there is a tendency to con-
fusion. Thus, when I first attempted to do so deliberately — being under
the influence of the current psychology — I felt convinced that it was im-
possible. Practice, however, soon disclosed the fact that nothing was
easier. The student should be able to observe any habit of his to the
minutest detail without interfering with the habitual action itself There
must be no change or confusion, and there need not be. With many
habits it is easy to test whether attention thereto perceptibly interferes
with the process. At all events, while at the beginning there is hopeless
chaos, at the end the practised intellect detects no change. Some games
illustrate this gemmation of the attention. Try to tap the table with one
hand while stroking it continuously witli the other, and do the first more
quickly than the second. Or perform the experiment so that the chest
shall take the place of the table. [J^epeat.] In these instances, a little
practice will demonstrate that what could at first not be done at all, can
be done later on with ease. Redistribution of the attention over a limited
area is alone necessary in self-observation, and can become as easy of
accomplishment in the one case as in the other.
A favourite illustration of the drawbacks of introspection is that
passion excludes calm self-observation ; that, in short, you are either in a
passion or you observe. Strange to say, the truth seems to lie in the
opposite direction, for a passion is never a momentary fact, and is, by its
nature, far-reaching in its bodily effects, while it hardly ever has complete
hold on us. Since self-observation requires but a modicum of attenticjn,
there is nothing easier than to observe oneself when excited. For example,
walking through the fields, it happens that I am startled by a covey of
partridges suddenly rising within a few feet of me. Forewarned, I in-
stantly pull out my ready note book and write down the various changes I
undergo from the very beginning till the subsidence of the upheaval.
Since I cannot write as quickly as I observe, it only requires repetitions of
the exciting occurrence to embrace its many aspects. Again, for functional
or other reasons, I feel in a boorish mood. There is nothing easier in this
case than to sit for hours together, if one wished, writing down the exact
INTRODUCTION 23
condition one is in. Thus, however annoyed I am, I find no difficulty in
analysing my condition. Wherever self-observation cannot reach, there
analogy at once fills in the outlines. It would be tedious to pile up ex-
amples where verification is readily accessible. \Exanmie, making use
of 7wte book, cases of surprise, mood and passion^
Introspection must never, unless deliberately required, change the
relevant state of thought. I say advisedly "relevant," because some re-
distribution must take place. Usually it will be sufficietit, if our attention^
say, to a mood, excludes the ordinary ftoises we should otherwise be aware of
There is not a spark of truth in the statement that there is such a thing as
" a state of mind " in the sense of an indivisible whole which constitutes the
field of thought at any one time. We might as legitimately speak of "a
state of Europe," meaning thereby that when some one in London has the
toothache, every one everywhere else in Europe is profoundly modified in
his whole being. The residual illicit effects of introspection, as of observa-
tion, may be ignored without any danger.
"Be normal," is one rule of self-inspection ; "Be minutely observant,"
is another. Not only should we insist that the observer shall not interfere
with the observed state ; but it is also necessary that he shall train himself
to observe the veriest trifles. He should give ever fuller and more accurate
accounts of what he sees in thought land.
Much of what is called introspection is merely conscientious observation. It is the
power of discovering all sides of a subject and unearthing what is hidden instead of heap-
ing up instances to support stray notions. Not the difficulties of introspection, but the
absence of method is responsible for psychological vagaries. Indeed, the distinction be-
tween introspection and observation is not scietitific, for the worlds of mind and ??iatter
are one in the final analysis. (Ch. 8.)
6. — Detail and General Fact.
In sec. 2 we condemned the free use of hypotheses, and we insisted
upon an exhaustive study of detail. Yet a very little reflection shows that
details may be collected ad i?ifi?iitum, without furthering a science. It is
easy to imagine a novelist making a life-study of Drink. He draws, per-
haps, most harrowing or most amusing pictures. He gives us many
situations and scores of divergent characters. One man is made generous
by drink, another mean ; one persists in giggling, another becomes morose ;
one is loquacious, another taciturn ; one is made sleepy, another lively.
The observable situations are also inexhaustible, and innumerable are the
note books which one observer could fill with his observations of the con-
crete consequences of drink. There is, perhaps, no crime under the sun
which is not chargeable to it, and himdreds of thousands of homes have
been turned by it into so many hells. Yet any conceivable array of books
treating of these concrete facts leave the scientific observer as such unin-
terested. He wants something else.
Particular facts, in science, are a means to an end. It is only be-
cause they help us to arrive at general facts, or simplified statements, as
24 METHOD
Mach would say, that they are of importance, science being the shorthand
of knowledge. Hence a collector is not necessarily a man of science,
though a man of science is, of necessity, a collector. A student, then, who
is a close observer and nothing else, is not on the scientific plane at all.
His observation must serve a purpose. He must collect with some end in
view, with the notion of attaining to, or helping others to attain to, general
facts — facts which widely hold.
Let us again examine our typical drink problem. I wish to under-
stand the nature of drunkenness. Preliminary to any generalisation what-
ever, I examine a number of instances, ignoring the general memory contents.
In each case I pass by what is plainly incidental, and note what repeats
itself under varying circumstances. I want as many facts as possible, so
that any generalisations I venture on are quickly verified or checked. I
also demand many diverging instances, so as to determine by an after-
appeal to memory what is special and general. One evening — it is a bank
holiday — I am returning to town by rail. \Observe some such case^
Opposite me sits a middle-aged man who is the worse for drink. As he
holds the glass, his hand shakes ; so his other hand trembles as he pours
out some of the liquor. He puts down the glass in a position which allows
it to tumble over at the first jolting of the train. He does not recollect
where he placed the bottle a minute previous, nor who has the glass.
I am aiming in this typical example at general facts, at general ante-
cedents. So, with exact details to help me, I begin. His hand shakes.
Is he unsteady on his legs ? Can he carry his body or his head properly ?
Is there any portion of his body which shows steadiness ? I now draw up
the tentative statement that every one of his movements lacks firmness.
" What is the reason of it ? " I ask, looking at the disgraceful scene. I
decide that his muscles are affected owing to an abnormal state of the
nerves. Reasoning must, in this wise, proceed from step to step in a
graduated fashion. Naturally I first referred to the body and its parts.
Having settled that portion of the whole man, I make another move.
"How does drink affect his reasoning, his judgment, his vision, his
sensibility, his memory, his powers of attention, his discrimination ? "
The progress from one part of the body to every one of its parts ;
from thence to one part of thought and then to every other, should be a
fixed custom. At every stage the student should have general rules for his
guidance. What, then, is the conclusion as to his brain ? It is that, as in
the body, there is a tendency towards fitfulness and prostration. And
have the peculiar physical and neural states a common factor which shall
account for their likeness ? Most probably ; the nervous system being
generally affected, brain as well as body suffer throughout and equally so.
The last query should, of course, also rise mechanically on all appropriate
occasions. But what seems true of this person now, would it be generally
true of him? And what holds good of him, does it hold good of every one
without exception ? And do only drunkards behave like that ? And what is
the precise point of drunkenness where such behaviour ensues ? And what
INTRO D UCTION 2 5
is the particular process by which intoxicants produce the result ? And
what practical conclusions can we draw ? Every one of these queries
should arise unerringly, and does so arise with the trained thinker. The
method of eliciting general facts must not be left to chance suggestions.
We see now that while duly appreciating an intimate acquaintance with
details, our aim nevertheless lies beyond them. Without abundant details
we should blunder repeatedly. Suppose I know a drunken person.
Every few steps he takes he makes a little jump ; aware of his condition he
wisely refrains from speaking ; and occasionally he bursts into a towering
passion. The little jumps, the taciturnity and the wildness, would never
suggest that the whole of the nervous system is in a quite abnormal state.
The longer I study such an instance by itself, the further I stray from the
truth. A large quantity of varied detail is, therefore, an essential as a
preliminary to reasonable generalisation. Again, the conclusions we de-
liberately arrive at are, in their nature, different from those of the market
place. As in the first inquiry we had comprehensiveness exclusively in
view; so here we aim directly at definite generalisation. Amusement,
interest, prejudice, are naturally absent. We do not hazard reckless may-
be's, which we do not take the trouble to verify ; but we think of what is
reasonable, and rigorously verify our conclusions. In this light the work
done by the current psychology, still leaving aside the experimental school,
resembles to some extent scientific procedure, as the crow with its few
peacock feathers attached resembled a peacock. So blinded are we by an
old tradition that we do not see the gulf which as yet separates psychology
from the established sciences.
The method above described precludes " licentiousness in speculation,"
though it allows of " a reverent freedom." Such problems as the psychology
of V/estern nations, the psychology of war, or the psychology of a certain
man's character whom we for the first time meet, we shall of necessity pass
by as being for the moment beyond us. Only that which requires limited
attention can repay study. When the majority of elementary notions have
been ascertained, we can, with boldness, as in physics, proceed to unravel
larger and larger issues. Arrived at the stage when physchological material
abounds, we may freely venture to put on the seven-league boots of specu-
lation. At every point then happy guessing will be possible, and verifica-
tion easy. Until that time sails into sight, we must pay almost superstitious
homage to minute details and cautious generalisation.
7. — Systematic Observation.
We have seen that hypotheses or general speculation are of little use in
a new science. We have learnt that introspection, normal and minutely
observant, is the avenue by which to approach our subject. Lastly, we
have tried to weigh the value of details. We shall now urge that useful
observation must be systematic, or pursued according to a defined plan.
Sir Michael Foster's Physiology is a splendid illustration of the rigorous
application of deliberate method. Take, for instance, the question of
26 METHOD
cutaneous sensations or feelings. An average individual, and also an
average psychologist, accepts the popular conclusions as to touch, pain,
and temperature feelings. He then aimlessly speculates concerning them.
If he, perchance, as an act of supererogation, makes half-a-dozen special
observations, and performs an experiment or two, he thinks he is worthy
of admiration. Let us compare such a method with that referred to in
Foster. By systematic observation every part of the bodily surface is
explored, and that most thoroughly. In this fashion differences of
sensibility of various parts to touch, say, are determined. The observa-
tions are repeated on the same individual and on others, and nothing is
set down as generally true to which there attaches the faintest suspicion.
Anxiously the slightest hint is watched which shall throw more light or
which shall qualify the observations made. The examination is then con-
ducted under new circumstances. Perhaps a part is diseased or insensible,
and we note the differences. We also systematically increase or decrease
the pressure. Then we experiment with a view to seeing whether
direct contact with the nerves which convey skin or cutaneous feelings to
the brain, yields the same results. As such contact gives rise to pain, and
not to feelings of touch, we ask to what factors the different effects are
due. Then we separate feelings of touch from feelings of pressure,
temperature and pain. We, therefore, start a fresh series of systematic
observations, more prolonged than the first series. In each instance every
point of the skin is carefully and repeatedly tested, and the results are
again put to the test as in the case of touch. We thus determine variations
of different classes of sensibility, in the same individual under different
circumstances, and in different individuals. We find that different parts of
the body are much less affected than others by irritation ; that touch alone
is felt in some parts ; that some " spots " are sensitive to cold alone,
and others only to heat ; that under certain conditions we may be sensitive
to cold and not to heat, and vice versa ; that, in short, feelings of touchy
pressure, heat and cold, and even sub-classes of these, may be observed
independently. (Foster, Fhysiolog}', part 3, 1897, ch. 2, sec. 9.)
In the above we have judgment entered in our favour, and directed
against current psychological methods. Here is systematic and close
observation, and cautious progress towards large generalisations. No
proud hypothesis is postulated ; but the careful investigation proceeds
from step to step. Most of the results thus achieved, revealing as they do
what is inaccessible to passing observation, are beyond the power of the
keenest speculative intellect.
The student must particularly note the method, and apply it himself
always, tvithout exceptiott. First, one portion of a problem should be
studied thoroughly. Then, we must remember that since what is true of one
thing is not Jtecessarily true of any other, observation must be extensive;
that the very opposite may be true; that the same thing may be true of
apparently unrelated things ; that the same thing may not always be true to
the same degree; that change of circianstances may ?nake a crucial differe?ue ;
INTRODUCTION 27
and, with these facts m view, we must find out in what direction a?iy dis-
coverable differences may lie. Our scientific mood must be so familiar
with these cross-questions, that no problem for solution should ever suggest
itself without our being prepared and able to apply the most rigorous
standards. One psychological issue after another should be attacked in
this manner. Mere reflection or recollection, unconnected with detailed
and systematic analysis, should not even be thought of. We must examine
the thing itself to the minutest fraction, repeatedly, and under every variety
of circumstance. We must p?-ovisionally hold that the suggested solution is
wholly or partly incorrect, that its opposite is true, and that it is true of other
things also. Only by strenuously applying such canons as tests and pre-
cautions, shall we be worthy servants of science.
I reproduced from Foster the interesting example of the nature of skin
or cutaneous feelings. His Physiology is full of records of examinations as
beautiful as that. It was thought at one time that the cortex, or rind, or
surface of the brain was the seat of intelligence and volition. Observers
had discovered, for instance, that on application of an electrode to a certain
portion on the surface, a particular movement was initiated. The theory
seemed proved until some one cut away the brain in slices, and found that
the surface could be removed without doing away with movements.*
Touching in an appropriate manner a certain area of the brain of the frog,
an area very ill-defined, we learn that motion of the shoulder results.
Touching other similarly ill-defined areas, we discover that every class of
motion can be produced automatically. Having abundantly verified this
fact in frogs under various circumstances, we proceed to examine pigeons,
then rabbits, then dogs, then monkeys, and then men. In systematic
order we examine animal life, and find that the irritation areas become
more defined as we rise higher in the scale, being most defined in man.
[Ibid, ch. 2, sec. 7.) It must be noted that the examination does not
proceed at haphazard, and that often the placing of undoubted facts in a
certain order tends of itself to elicit general truths.
Or consider again the example of brainless animals. A frog deprived
of its cerebrum will only move when it is stimulated from without. Under
such stimulation, if continuous, it will behave almost as intelligently as an
uninjured frog. So profound is its want of initiative, however, that, if close
round its body a circle be drawn with chalk, it will, we are assured, die on
that spot without any attempt at movement unless stimulated. This state-
ment must nevertheless be qualified, for the operation involved injury
besides that intended. Immediate results, Foster over and over again
urges, must be discounted. The "deficiency" phenomena are not Ukely
to be pure at first, and the longer the animal lives after the operation
the more important, therefore, become the observations. Hence we find
that initiative, in the absence of any growth of the cerebrum, is, to some
* This experiment should certainly have been made at the first, if such experiments
be allowable at all.
28 METHOD
extent, restored when the animal has, after some months, completely
recovered from " shock " and other irrelevant injuries. It is, therefore,
proved that initiative is not solely dependent on the cerebrum, and that
motion is also not exclusively connected with the cortex. Yet once more
we cautiously climb up the animal ladder, and find that while injuries, as
we ascend in the scale, become more and more immediately fatal, initiative
grows more independent of the cerebrum. {Ibid, ch. 2, sec. 4.)
Take again the case of ingoing and outgoing, or afferent and efferent,
nerves. Cutting through a bundle of spinal nerves, as we might cut through
a rope, we notice that some degenerate and others do not. Those which
degenerate downward, we are tempted to consider as fed from above, and,
therefore, carrying messages upward ; and those which degenerate upward,
we consider as giving rise to movements and other changes in lower centres.
However, if we carefully examine the matter by the methods which we have
insisted upon, we find that the problem is by no means so simple. It
seems as if there were relays of nerve fibres ; then fibres— internuncial or
commissary — which connect the various parts of the spinal cord horizon-
tally and longitudinally ; and, lastly, stimulation may proceed physiologically
along the grey matter. Instead of single nerve wires connecting skin with
cortex and cortex with skin, Foster continually insists that the true process
which ends in motion and sensation, is one of complex elaboration, utterly
unlike the single wire system which we have assumed. [Ibid, part 3, passim.)
Here, again, we learn the folly of paying heed to large hypotheses, and the
absolute necessity of proceeding by systematic examination. A child
could make as good a guess at the nature of the Himalayan flora as we at
the nature of cerebration or thought.
The preceding references to Foster's Physiology — which nmst also serve
as a very brief account of the more important facts of brai7i physiology — have
made clear what we mean by systematic observation. However, the student
of psychology must not only know, but be skilled. He must methodically
learn to apply what he knows. It would be well for him to practise on a
large scale, unless he has done so already. For instance, to start with extra-
psychological examples, he might, from minute observation, give the com-
pletest general account of which he is capable of the history of a dandelion
or any other flower he chooses, from the moment it is discovered above
ground to the time when the wind has scattered the seeds. He should
examine samples in all sorts of places, high and low, shady and sunny, cold
and warm, wet and dry, windy or sheltered, at different times of the day or
the season, and in various soils. Every kind of variation should be noted ;
and, if time permits, comparisons might be made with like and unlike
species. \Its large size and its interesting transforrtiations make the dandelion
peculiarly suited for st2idy?\^ Or the student might be inclined to write
an essay on stamens and pistils, on sepals, on coroUae, on leaves, and the
like. A limited task, efficiently carried out, is the ideal for practice in
general skill; an intricate problem is beyond the beginner. Or the student
may watch a thermometer, a barometer, or the movements of the sun,
INTRODUCTION
29
the moon, the wind, or the clouds. Or he may take account of the trans-
formations which one particular bush undergoes in a twelvemonth, and
possibly generalise tentatively at the same time as to our common flora.
As explained more especially in sec. 136, he will examine concrete facts;
he will choose a simple problem and give his whole attention to it ; he will
proceed methodically, and reason as boldly and as systematically as his
facts allow.
I have referred to brain physiology, botany and some facts in physics.
The application to psychology is no less in place. The study of a science
whose facts we merely store as we usually do the data of geography, does
not cultivate the judgment : physical science thus taught is not to be com-
pared in its effect with the benefit de?-ived from a classical education where
skill is constantly required in the interpretation 0/ a?i author. In psychology,
too, the appeal must be to the student's judgment rather than to his
memory.
Let us examine some psychological problems in the light of the principles
I have endeavoured to expound in this section. Everybody knows, we are
told, what is pleasure and what is pain : they are elemental facts which
admit of no explanation. Apply now the rules of investigation which have
been referred to. First, we go to the facts. We do not recall illustra-
tions, which might or might not be the result of bias ; we observe at first
hand. Observation, again, must not be without guidance. We observe
pain after pain in mechanical succession ; every pain as it occurs ; and not
only one here and there, where subjective selection may play some part.
We observe for as long periods together as possible. Our experiments are
as minute and as guarded as were the experiments about skin sensa-
tions already dealt with. We notice kinds and degrees of pain, and try to
define them accurately. We learn what are the most regular accompani-
ments or signs of pain. We compare our painful states with other states
where pain appears to be absent or pleasure present. We are on the look-
out to see what pain has in common with other states, such as sensations,
emotions, feelings of doubt or touch, inclinations or disinclinations, habits,
and effort. Of all our observations we keep full notes. As facts repeat
themselves, so we tentatively, but none the less boldly, suppose them to be
general facts.
At last no new classes of facts seem to come forward, and to go on, is to
be thrashing chaff. We proceed now to set down those features which were
repeated oftenest, and we arrange our material, with our tentative minor
conclusions, systematically. Is it then true, we ask ourselves, that in pain
we always tend to turn away from the object which causes it, and that in
accordance with the degree of pain ? And is it correct that in nothing else
do we tend to turn away from an object ? Is pain an elementary fact, not
to be defined, always recognised with certainty as soon as met with, and
never confounded with anything else? The answers to these questions
the student will find in ch. 6. Here I insist that even a tentatively
correct reply must be based on an examination such as I have fore-
30 METHOD
shadowed. Observation must be systematic and exhaustive if we are to
offer any solution at all. No new problem is so simple that method
can be dispensed with.
Let us take another case. James tells us that in certain critical instances
our conscious wills can, by means of a special effort, add to the sum of
physical energy existing. Just as a flash of lightning comes from cloud-
land, so occasionally a bottle of extra energy is poured into the stagnant
world pool.* What is effort? we ask ourselves, and proceed to observe
systematically every kind of effort. We examine methodically phases from
the clearest to the vaguest, from the most obvious to the least obvious.
On every possible occasion, and under every conceivable circumstance, we
attempt to trace its origin, its nature and its effect. We note how far its
own states resemble one another, and how far these resemble other states
which are not usually classed as efforts. We observe how far they univers-
ally prevail, and how far there are other forces. Having conscientiously
examined the material, we pronounce judgment either for or against James.
At the same time we have probably been able to find a more or less per-
manent niche for that phase of thought which we call effort. Examination
of facts is absolutely essential : the cleverest reasoning in its absence is
only a jugglery with words ; the most neatly written essay, with its firstly
to Xthly, is as unsatisfactory as an imaginary fortune. All the quoted
arguments against introspection have no more solidity than the reflection
of a fortress in a looking glass.
Every one of the questions treated of in this volume should be ex-
amined systematically. " I can, therefore I must," is even more impera-
tive in scientific inquiry than in moral conduct. When it is asserted that
attention is a casual process (ch. 2), or that action may be divided into
habitual and non-habitual (ch. 3), or that ideas are of such and such a
nature (ch. 4), or that conscious process should be divided from not con-
scious process (ch. 8), we must in each case fall back on our first principles
of investigation. When once a number of problems of crucial importance
has been disposed of, sufficient facts will have accumulated to allow of a
quicker procedure in psychology. Until then, oceans of ink imprinted on
balls of paper as big as the sun, will not advance psychology. The
scientific method varies in kind from current psychologising, and hence
the two are incommensurable.
In connection with every problem or assertion, the student must have
recourse to systematic observation. He should put a query against every
psychological statement, however emphatically put forward. He must let
no supposed truism pass, and no maxim or axiom should be left un-
challenged. Fiction has often been so cleverly attached to fiction that the
student is likely to be deluded into seeing an imposing edifice where there
are only bits of coloured glass. A true generalisation is soon verified.
So also Ward, Naturalism and A^^nosticisnt, \\
INTR OD UCTION 3 1
8. — Quantitative Psychology.
The senses of sight and sound have long been favourites with physicists.
In Germany, Hehnholtz, and in England, Tyndall, are best known as
having devoted some of their genius to the task of resolving problems of
this class. Physiologists, in the same manner, have not been remiss in
dealing with the instruments of sensations. I have already referred
(sec. i) to the speculative attempts of Maudsley and Lewes, among others,
to interpret thought in neural or brain terms. Further investigations
since their time have been satisfactory, but extremely slow. The perusal
of a work such as Foster's {Physiolog}', part 3, 1897), or Ferrier's {The
Functions of the Brain, 1886), leaves one with the impression that the
possibilities are great, but the results small. The neural facts known,
form, as yet, an insufficient basis for any wide conclusions. However, it is
in neurology, or brain science, coupled with introspection, that our hope
ultimately lies. Psychology, jealously separated from physiology, as we
shall abundantly see in the following chapters, cannot supply us with a
consistent account of the facts of mind.
There was but one step from probing sense problems to exploring
quantitatively some of the simpler sensations and images. Following
Fechner, Wundt, about a generation ago, in a large work, PhysiologiscJie
Psychologies was the foremost in popularising such inquiries. His labora-
tory in Leipsic became a centre of interest and the type of many which
were to follow, till now both Germany and America boast a number of
psychological laboratories. Since Wundt's time, also, books on the sub-
ject have been on the increase, whilst a multitude of articles and essays
have seen the light. Such publications as Philosophische Studien, Zeit-
schrift filr Psychologic, The American Journal of Psychology, and The Psy-
chological Revieiv, are largely devoted to the interests of Quantitative
Psychology or Psycho-Physics.
The object of the quantitative school is to examine psychological facts
experimentally. For this purpose laboratories are fitted up, containing the
necessary appliances. All the customary scientific checks are employed.
The number of experiments is recorded, as well as the number of persons
experimented upon. The time taken by each experiment is determined
by electric clocks which generally mark thousandths of a second and
which are usually stopped by pressing a button on which the hand already
rests. In short, these experiments are distinguished by an ingenuity and
a care which is scarcely exceeded in physical inquiries.
We cannot determine the current of thought by withdrawing or adding
to it half-pints or spoonfuls, nor can we yet ascertain the length of a string
of ideas with a tape measure. Psycho-physicists, therefore, approach their
subject tentatively. Here is a simple experiment. It is arranged by a
mechanical device that a sound shall be heard or a sight seen by one pre-
pared for the task. The subject of the experiment or, shortly, the " re-
agent," as soon as he hears or sees the special signal, stops the electric
32
METHOD
current which his fingers control. By repeated experiments with many
persons we gain at last the knowledge of what average time elapses be-
tween a sound or a sight and its apprehension. Following scientific
method, we find accordingly the experiments varied, account being taken
of different ages and races, different times of the day, and different seasons.
So also the reaction time is determined when the " reagent " is smoking or
under the influence of intoxicants, or hashish or morphia. Each of
these sets of experiments is carefully recorded, and naturally presents
great difficulties. What is true of sight and hearing holds, of course, of
the other senses, including pain and the so-called muscular sense.
Mere recognition of what is expected is the simplest form. The sensations
are now tested as to their intensity (or obviousness), and especially as to
the smallest added degree of an impression which is immediately perceiv-
able ; or the effects of fatigue are studied in this connection ; or we learn
how far a preceding sound affects vision, and vice versa. Assuming that
.we have exhausted repetition, obviousness, quickness and circumstance,
we proceed to more complex experiments. The " reagent " is told that it
will be either a colour or a sound. Here the preparedness is divided
between two possibilities, and the results are noted. Then the changes
are rung on this set of experiments as on the preceding set.
We come next to more extensive discrimination experiments. The
"reagent" is informed that he is to tell the capital of any country that may
be named. Or he is asked to tell the country when its capital is given.
Or he is requested to give the name of a great man, a great poet, a great
painter, when he is asked. In each case the " discrimination period," the
time it takes to discriminate, is determined. Obviously, experiments in
this direction admit of endless complexity, and become progressively more
difficult.
Experiments are of various kinds. A number of writers have sought to
determine the sleep curve, i.e., how far during the night the depth of sleep
varies in an average individual. Ebbinghaus, again, made experiments
with nonsense syllables, so as to determine, in its purity, the nature of
memory (sec. 135). So Miss Calkins has carefully tabulated the facts of a
series of over three hundred dreams (sec. 228), while various experimenters
have made a variety of experiments to elucidate the process of attention
(ch. 2), the capacities of school children, and racial differences.
I welcome the quantitative method as such. If it can best elucidate the
problems of psychology, it must take the first place. One does not know
what it may accomplish in the future ; but up to the present, after a
generation of toil, its many solid achievements have scarcely touched the
borders of psychology proper. It has thrown no light whatever on any of
our chief problems. It deals with borderland affairs which apparently
yield no glimpse of the far interior. The facts of psychology seem so varied
that once psycho-physicists forsake the frontiers, endless discussion instead
of fruitful research ensues. It is perhaps the absence of continuity in the
investigations that is to blame. Experimenters take up subject after subject,
INTRODUCTION 2>Z
when perhaps some years spent by one person in studying one aspect, such
as memory, attention or dreams, might end in valuable contributions.
Another fault lies undoubtedly in the too ready acceptance of the chief
propositions of reflective psychology. Associationism is tested as if it only
required exemplification or correction, and attention theories are unsatis-
factorily dealt with in the same manner. The quantitative method itself
is overdone. Ebbinghaus' huge inquiry as to memory (sec. 135) settles
practically nothing. The simple factors he experiments with — nonsense
syllables — no more give a satisfactory solution than an examination of
pinches of powdered bones would yield the key with which to unlock the
secrets of the central nervous system. In my opinion a broad-based
inquiry into what we actually do remember and forget, and the circum-
stances which favour the one and the other, would have yielded more pro-
mising material. So also with the question of dreams. To tabulate
dreams according to the hours when they are supposed to have occurred,
to divide them into reasonable and unreasonable ones, to tell us what
relations and persons were seen, as Miss Calkins does, is to supply us with
meaningless figures. Giessler's detailed non-quantitative analysis towers
far above such mechanical figure-work. Finally, as to Thorndike's
very interesting experiments with animals (sec. 2^,';^, we may observe that
valuable as are some of the results, suggestive as are others, yet the re-
stricted method employed entailed as many fallacies as a non-quantitative
analysis in that direction. Nearly every point is vitiated by the absence
of an appropriate background of general fact. Much again rests on in-
defensible assumptions which the inquiry hides rather than exposes. A
few months' careful observation of a healthy ape, or, in default, of an
average dog and cat, should have resulted in wider and less disputable
conclusions. Lastly, when we come to directly observed trains of thought,
the quantitative method sheds no light whatever. A book, such as
Scripture's, makes us feel that psycho-physics will not have the last word
to say in matters psychological ; and Wundt's latest edition of his large
Psychology only confirms us in our conclusions.
On examining the psycho-physical literature two failings become
specially prominent. There is a superstitious belief in the magic of
figures, a belief not to be found in the physical sciences.* To an outsider
it seems that judicious observation and chance experiment could settle
with comparative ease many of the questions which demand mountainous
labour from the figure school. Or we may say that instruments would be
better used after other methods have prepared the way. At all events, the
second faiUng illustrates the first. Psycho-physicists are now insisting
that figures, uninterpreted by the state of mind of the " reagent," are not
to be relied on. We are thus completing a circle. First, men rushed to
figures because introspection seemed unreliable ; and now self-observation is
* " I highly esteem figures which prove something or which can be utilised theoreti-
cally ; but I am at a loss to understand the special dignity which figures and rows of
figures possess in the eyes of some men" (Lipps, Grundtatsachen, 1883, p. 421).
3
34 METHOD
demanded to give a meaning to the figures. Systematic introspection must,
therefore, ere long, be generally acknowledged as essential to psycholo-
gising.
We conclude, then, that there is still room for a method different from
that of the speculative or the quantitative school.
After reviewing what is practically the whole field of psycho-physics, my misgivings
as to its value have grown stronger than ever. The method seems fundamentally wrong.
A problem is posited, reduced to its simplest form, and then rigorously tested. It appears
to me that the simplicity is in every instance nonexistent. It is a hypothetical simplicity,
a simplicity suggested by surface knowledge. The primary facts of a science, I cannot
help thinking, must be obtained by tentative and resourceful trials, and are not obtainable
by stiff laboratory experiments.
The two chief works of the quantitative school are Wundt's Grundzuge, 1893, and
Munsterberg's Bcitrdge, 18S9-92. A simple exposition of psycho-physics will be found
in Scripture, The New Psychology., 1897. See also Bain, Introspection and Psycho-
fihvsical Experiment, 1893 ; Bettmann, Beeinflussting einfacher psychischer Voigdvge,
1895 ; Binet, La Mhure en Psychologie Individuelle, 1898 ; Cattell, The Psychological
Laboratory at Leipsic, 1888; Cattell, Mental Tests and Measurements, 1890; Cattell,
Menial Measurement, 1893; Fechner, Elemcnte der Psychophysik, i860; Heinrich,
rhysiologische Psychologie, 1899 ; Henri, Les Laboratoires de Psychologie Expiritnentale
en Allemagne, 1S93 ; Scripture, Psychological Measurement, 1893 ; Titchener, The
Leipsic School of Experimental Psychology, 1S92; Titchener, A Psychological Laboratory,
189S ; Titchener, The Equipment of a Psychological Laboratory, 1900 ; Titchener,
Experimental Psychology, 1901 ; and Wundt, Uebcr psychologische Methoden, 18S1.
9. — Experimental Introspection.
The experimental method is rightly esteemed to surpass the method of
simple observation, for there is something exhilarating in grasping the gate
of time, and swinging it to and fro at our pleasure. In observation we
have to wait months and years to observe a fact, when in experiment we
can often produce it as soon as thought of. In observation we are de-
pendents whose desires may never be satisfied ; in experiment, we are
masters whose word is decisive. Wherever, therefore, experiment can be
applied, it will be folly to continue with simple observation, the latter
being to the former, as "moonshine unto sunshine, and as water unto
Avine." An observational science is, for these reasons, generally viewed
with suspicion, while the use of experiment adds dignity and inspires
confidence.
What marks an experiment? Professor Titchener says: "An experi-
ment is a trial, test, or observation, carefully made under certain special
conditions : the object of the conditions being (i) to render it possible for
any one who will to repeat the test, in the exact manner in which it was
first performed, and (2) to help the observer to rule out disturbing in-
fluences during his observation, and so to get at the desired result in a
pure form . . . Experiment thus secures accuracy of observation, and
the connection of every result with its own conditions " {Outline of Psy-
chology, 1896, p. 35). This definition strikes one as unsatisfactory. It
savours too much of the psychological laboratory. It resembles danger-
ously those definitions of religion which, by implication, prove that our pet-
INTRO D UCTION
35
creed has no rival. It would be safer to say, *' An experiment is a trial,
test, or observation, carefully made .... so [as] to get the desired result
in Ti pure form." This again sounds vague. Stout's definition is no more
satisfactory. Experiment, he says, "is only observation under test
conditions, deliberately pre-arranged for the purpose of settling a definite
question" {Ma7iual, 189S, p. 26). It seems that one may vary con-
ditions at will without having deliberately pre-arranged anything and
without one's having in view the settling of a definite question. For
instance, in pulling hard at something firmly fixed I notice that I hold
back my breath. In accordance with customary method, I try to pull
hard while breathing normally. Here, instead of waiting for an opportunity,
I create it. In that — in the creation of an opportunity, or in varying and
controlling the conditions — lies probably the nature of experiment. Stout's
definition applies only to special experiments ; since even many of the
quantitative attempts start without hypothesis. Most probably, there is
no clear line of division between observation and experiment. As the
former becomes systematic and varied, so it approaches the nature of the
latter.
Experimental introspection is not a subject usually discussed in treatises
on psychology. When we are told that self-observation is an absurdity
(Comte and others), or that we must become skilled if we are to take a
momentary glance at what is happening (Hume and others), it follows that
experiment is out of the question. Herbart, indeed, takes high ground.
He tells us that " psychology must not experiment with man " {Lehrbuch,
1834, p. 9). Is then experimental introspection impossible or impracti-
cable? We have seen that attention to selected portions of the field of
attention is possible to a high degree. Does then the creation of an
opportunity, instead of waiting for it, introduce a fatal, disturbing factor?
Observation replies in the negative. It was as easy to allow breathing to
proceed normally in the "pulling" experiment, as to do anything else which
one is not accustomed to. Experimental introspection, in short, has certain
advantages, but no appreciable drawbacks. As Beneke puts it : " Nothing
is falser than the assertion that introspection cannot be assisted by
experiment. Not only is such assistance possible, but it offers here
perhaps greater scope than in any other department of nature, and that
because the necessary control is generally more in our power " [Die neue
Fsychologie, 1845, p. 21).
Everybody recognises the superiority of experiment over simple observa-
tion. The student must, therefore, be prepared to learn that i?i psychology
every inquiry must be experimental. Simple observation is only permis-
sible when, for peculiar reasons, experiment is undesirable or out of the
question. The normal procedure, the all but exceptional method, must
include experiment.
The reader will see that in sec. 7 I applied systematic observation
to the elucidation of the problems of pleasure, pain and volition. Accord-
ing to the last ruling, these inquiries should be experimental. Take the
36 METHOD
question of pleasure-pain. Instead of waiting, like wall-flowers in a ball-room,
we take the initiative. We deliberately heat a glass and gauge our feelings
with the changing heat. We deliberately and repeatedly touch the marble
or iron on which the sun is striking with its beams. We go to the fire
and expose ourselves to its heat, in order to test our powers of resistance,
and ascertain the changes in our sensations. We deliberately cool one
hand and warm the other to test the relative aggressiveness and diffusion of
the feelings of cold and warmth. We pinch our hands till they ache,,
etc., etc. Thus there is the fullest room for experiment since we need
not wait for chance opportunities. We compare experimentally various
sensations and feelings with one another, and examine their degrees,
their resemblances, their differences and their conditions. We de-
liberately ignore a so-called feeling of pain which we have de-
liberately inflicted, or attempt to reduce or increase the pain value
by inhibition or by removal of inhibition. In psychological experiment
we thus control the conditions, and test our conclusions at our own
discretion. Results can in this way be attained which otherwise might
scarcely be approachable.
As with pleasure-pain, so with volition experiments. In systematic
observation there is only a preparedness to perceive or record facts of
a certain order as they arise. In systematic experiment we act on our
preparedness : we summon the actors to the footlights.
Instead, therefore, of waiting for volitions to occur, we initiate them,
and we also purposely watch whole trains of our actions for any signs of
volitions. We deliberately will, and in doing so we make an effort to
trace the antecedents of our volitions. If a sensation of sight is perhaps
connected with the act, we endeavour to eliminate it, or even instal in its
place an irrelevant sight sensation. One after another, we push rudely
aside every factor which admits of being so treated. We measure the
relation between will, effort and action, finding perhaps in some in-
stances that they have nothing in common. We see whether there are
similar states to that of volition, and experimentally test the relationship.
In a like manner we examine our volitions during joyous or depressed
moods, when we are in robust health, or when we are ill or fatigued, and
under other special circumstances. After such an inquiry, and only after
such an inquiry, we may be able to agree with Professor James, or to
differ from him. To meet his gratuitous assertion, based on a tempera-
mental view, with one equally gratuitous and temperamental, is to forget
that experimental introspection should be the final arbiter. A tempera-
mental psychology is as irrational as a temperamental chemistry.
The rules which we have selected for guidance in systematic observation
apply here. An experiment, not protected by method, is a poor instrument
of research. Experimentation is an art with canons to be observed, and
not the equivalent of the method employed by a careless child. Merely
to shift things and to break them, is something different from experiment-
ing. The student must, therefore, see that his experiments are conducted
INTRODUCTION 37
-on a proper plan, and that they are accompanied by "normal" and
"minutely observant" observation (sec. 5).
As I have already indicated, the student should pursue his studies
experimentally. To assist him in this, I have inserted in the body of
the book italicised remarks in brackets. Every statement of any import-
ance should be at once challenged and tested, or if testing be sometimes
inconvenient, the statement should be marked as doubtful. There must
be no acquiescence. When experimental introspection has been pursued
by many, then, and not until then, can statements of any kind pass
unchallenged. \Note that all complicated and viokfit experiments defeat
themselves.']
I suggest the following experiments or observations, and must remark that repetition
under varying circumstances is necessary, and that notes should be taken at the time, of
what is observed. Write mentally in characters of various sizes ; so also employ mentally
printed and sounded characters. Use lips as in vigorous speech, without making any
sound, and also observe the various organs employed in speech. Picture to yourself
squares, triangles, etc., of various sizes. Observe eye movements in seeing, also move-
ments in walking, running, working, etc. Examine mentally form, detail, as many
colours as possible, shades of colour, relief, scenes, motion of eyes in watching moving
objects. Hold steadily pencil, pencils, etc., in hand, behind the ear, etc., and note
result. Recall various smells of things just smelt, lately smelt, and smelt long ago.
Describe bodily feelings in sitting (in various positions), standing, walking, etc., and
describe what you feel, passively and actively, of feet, legs, back, arm, head, teeth,
tongue, separate fingers, etc. Recall in succession relatives, intimate friends, acquaint-
ances, celebrities, movements, houses, cities, events, villages, flowing rivers, mountains.
Recall young people, old people, poor people, rich people, and other classes of persons.
Write letters, etc., in the imagination, and watch for eye movements ; connect thus
sormds with the ear, smells with the nose, tastes with the mouth, movement with the
muscles, etc. Write, speak, move, distinctly in the imagination, and note rate ot
progress. Think of two or more colours at once. Think of coloured things, of sounds,
tastes, smells, touches, pains. Mentally see things moving ; see two things moving in
different directions. Think of yourself moving along a room, passage, stairs, hall, street,
etc. ; also measure distance and time, by feet and seconds. Observe mentally and in
motion, train, cab, cart, bicycle. In mentally writing, do you see arms, hands, fingers,
pen, paper, characters ; do you feel pressure oh pen, and do you hear the scratching of
the pen? Imagine man, cow, horse, etc., as blue, green, violet, pink, scarlet, etc.
Look at some pebbles, etc. ; then see whether you can count them mentally. Hear
with one ear, both ears, far and near, much and little, different kinds of sounds.
Examine degrees of cold, warmth, touch, soft, hard, rough, smooth, pushing, pulling,
effort.
Each of the experiments suq\^ested above sJiould be made in the light of the rules laid
down in this Introduction. Barely to observe this or that is of no use at all.
10. — Definition.
Volkmann {Lehrbuch, 1894, i, p. i) says that the success of every
.scientific enterprise is essentially conditioned by the accurate definition of
its aim. On this hypothesis, which is in accord with the current respect
for hypotheses, the writer of this work should have had his definition cut
in adamant before starting his inquiry ; but, as it happens, research and
38 METHOD
not hypothesis, determines its contents. Only subsequent to the arrange-
ment of the data is there a possibiUty of venturing on a definition. The
latter embraces the most general facts, and only after wc know these
is a summing up possible. It is, therefore, not surprising that the
definition here put forward, began only to be framed after the ten chapters
which follow were completed.
My definition, tentative in its way, is as follows : Psychology treats of
the nature and tJu satisfaction of tJiose distinctive needs which are connected
with the central nervous system, and this it treats of in systematic conjunc-
tion ivith the systems of sights^ sounds, smells, etc., -which are developing con-
currently, i.e., psychology treats of the needs which arise out of the
relations of the various systems in the organism, and out of the relations
of that organism to its environment (sec. 156). The book itself is the
most concise explanation of the definition which can be ofiered. The
student will find therein why needs play the part we have allotted to them,
why the central nervous system is here coupled with sights, sounds, etc.,
and why the nature of needs and the method of their satisfaction is the
be-all and end-all, the base and the summit, of psychological inquiry.
II. — Literature of the Subject.
The text of the ten chapters which follow, leaving out of account most
of what appears in small type, was written away from, and, humanly
speaking, independent of, books. It was only afterwards that the useful-
ness of literary references occurred to me. Accordingly, I determined to
make a survey of the whole field of psychological literature. Let me begin
by stating what I shall not treat of in this volume: (i) Everything per-
taining to, or bordering on, philosophy, including free-will controversies ;
(2) most of what is related to physiology and the study of the special senses ;
(3) the mass of that which refers to experiments in reaction time, to the
psycho-physical law, and the theory of innervation ; (4) nearly everything
specialised, such as the psychology of music, or painters, or races ; and
(5) abnormal psychology, such as is implied in studying insane and
hypnotic subjects and cases of aphasia. Those are the studied omissions.
On the other hand, I have attempted to include (i) all the principal psy-
chologists; (2) all the writers of special treatises, such as on memory,
attention, etc., which I could obtain ; and (3) all the articles in reviews
which had a bearing on the subjects dealt with in the body of the book.
The reviews consulted, from the first issue to the end of 1 900, or to the
last issue, are as follows : — American : American Journal of Psychology ;
The Psychological Review ; The Philosophical Review ; and The Journal of
Speculative Philosophy. English: Brain, and Mind. French: La Revue
Philosophique, and La Revue Scientifique. And German : Philosophische
Studien ; Zeitschrift fiir Psychologic und Physiologic der Sinnesorgane ;
Psychologische Arbeiten ; Pfliiger's Archiv fiir die gesammte Physiologic
der Menschen und Thiere; and Vierteljahrsschrift fiir die wissenschaft-
INTRODUCTION 39
liche Philosophic. In this manner, students will find ahtiost a complete
bibliography of such subjects as Attention, Habit, Association, Memory,
Feelings, Dreams and Genius.
12. — Psychological Terminology.
In this Introduction I have employed the current psychological termin-
ology. In the sequel, however, it suggested itself as best to introduce,
without labouring the matter, a terminology which shall be simple, free
from misleading implications, consistent, impersonal, and which shall reflect
the systematic conclusions we reach. At the same time I have, by re-
defining, been enabled to retain many of the well-known psychological
expressions.
The terms chosen indicate degrees of systematic complexity, and nothing
besides. They are, therefore, descriptive of the facts, without carrying with
them extra-psychological implications. Furthermore, the words are well
known, easily adapted to psychology, readily admit of prefixes and as readily
form adjectives and verbs. The precise meaning given to the terms
requires nevertheless some explanation, (i) The word System indicates
that psychology, like physiology, deals with determinate complexes, and
only with such. (2) The word Integral expresses the lowest form dealt
with by psychology ; it indicates the simplest whole, a sensation or an
image. Integrals are for us the elementary units or integers of thought and
action. (3) The word Compound leads us a step further. We have here
two or more integrals in intimate union, as in perception. (4) The word
Complication marks another form of systems. Here two otherwise uncon-
nected primary or (and) secondary systems appear together, as when the
sight of a fire engine is always or generally accompanied by the re-collec-
tion of a certain conflagration. (5) The word Connection suggests that
with any given system is connected some other system, connection being
another general word for consciousness, awareness, knowledge, ignorance,
belief, doubt, certainty. (6) Lastly, the word Combinatioii hints at a com-
bination of systems as in a train of thought or action, and it may be
divided into sub-combination and super-combination, the former referring
to partial needs, and the latter to the principal need at any time.
Useful as the above terms may be, they are yet too vague from a scientific
point of view ; for the meaning underlying any one of the terms underlies
all others to some degree. Hence we may, as in sec. 107, describe
the rising complexity spoken of in terms of units of various degrees. How-
ever, there can be no disputing that the words do reflect increasing
complexity.
The prefixes employed are of some importance in showing diversity
within unity, and also in preventing too bulky a vocabulary. As to their
appropriateness, much may be said for and against. It is assuredly useful
that thought and action, memory and activity, should be readily dis-
tinguished or combined, and this the prefixes do. Since in thought there
40 METHOD
is no new material, we are justified in systematically applying the prefix
rCy indicating recurrence, to all its phases. And, by contrast, it is not a far
stretch to employ the prefix pre to point to those systems which are new,
e.g.^ as we say, arrange, pre-arrange, re-arrange, so we say, combine, pre-
combine, re-combine. To indicate imagination and work, we may, in
addition, employ the prefix trans, thus trans-combine (primary or secondary
action), trans-pre-combine (work), trans-re-combine (imagine).
The general problem of a psychological terminology is far from simple.
On reflection one finds that our whole vocabulary reflects the psychology of
the past, and that, therefore, nothing less than a total reconstruction of human
language can satisfy rational demands. Such a revolution, not an
unlikely one, must be, however, the work of centuries and not that of a
solitary individual. Suffice it, therefore, that an attempt has been made at
linguistic reform and interpretation.
Descartes is responsible for the notion that we must see that our ideas are clear and dis-
tinct. Perhaps on account of the turbidity and indistinctness implied in that rule, the cry
was re-echoed everywhere, Locke being the principal sinner in England. The question
of terminology is fully discussed by Tonnies, Philosophical Terminology, 1899. My
own opinion is that a close study of a subject, together with a desire to a mutual under-
standing among experts, are the chief pillars of a solid terminology. When all is confusion,
as in present-day psychology, one smiles as one hears complaints against the varied ways
in which words are used. Here are Descartes' four rules, which will repay careful study :
"The first rule was never to receive as true anything which I did not demonstrably
recognise as such; that is to say, to carefully avoid precipitation and prejudice; and
to include in my judgments nothing which did not present itself to my mind so clearly
and distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it. The second rule was to divide every
difficulty under examination into as many parts as possible, or into as many as might be
necessary for its solution. The third was to conduct my thoughts in an orderly manner,
by beginning with the simplest objects and those easiest known, slowly rising by degrees
to what is most complex, and postulating an order even among those objects which do not
at all naturally follow one another. And the last rule, to make such a complete induction,
and to take such a comprehensive view, that I might be sure of having omitted nought"
{Discours de la Mithode, 1637, second part). See Gibson, Regulae of Descartes, 1898.
System. — Anything given whatever. [To develop].
A. Primary system. — Any system referable to the Present. [To pre-
develop.]
B. Secondary system. — Any system referable to the Past. [To re-develop.]
[In the place oi pre and re, primary and secondary can be used.]
A and B are again divided into —
C. Integral [system], where a system is considered apart from any inter-
pretation placed upon it, as when a coloured surface is seen, without
being connected with (say) the name of an orange or a lamp. [An
integral, or a sensation or image; a pre-integral, or a sensation; a
re-integral, or an image. To integrate, or to sense or image; to
pre-integrate, or to sense; to re-integrate, or to image. Integrate
also equals to member, to collect.] [Thus also de-develop, dis-
integrate, etc., equal to forget.]
INTRODUCTION 41
D. Compound [system], where the opposite to C takes place, as where a
certain coloured surface has attached to it the name of a hat or a
desk. [A compound, or a percept or idea ; a pre-compound, or a
percept ; a re-compound, or an idea. To compound, or to perceive
or ideate ; to pre-compound, or perceive ; to re-compound, or ideate.]
[Combination unit or unit = the unit in a train of thought or action.]
C and D are again divided into —
E. Elementary [integral or compound] system, wherein is included every
system, except visual, auditory, olfactory and gustatory systems.
[A feeling ; elementary sensation, elementary image, etc. To feel ;
to develop an elementary sensation, etc.] [Summary feeling = the
impression an event makes on us. Combination feelings = feelings,
such as are implied in doubt, belief, etc.]
F. Semi-advanced [integral or compound] systems, wherein smell and
taste alone are included. [Semi-advanced sensation, image, etc.
To develop a semi-advanced sensation, image, etc.]
G. Advanced [integral or compound] system, wherein only sights and
sounds are included. [An advanced sensation, image, etc. To
develop an advanced sensation, image, etc.]
A to G have as a sub-form —
IT. Transformed systems, embracing illusion, delusion, imagination and
all productive activity. [Illusion ; delusion ; imagination ; produc-
tion; etc. To be illuded, to be deluded, to imagine, to produce,
etc. ; or to trans-integrate, to trans-compound, etc.]
I. Complication [of systems], as where two sensations or two images,
or a sensation and an image, or any two or more systems, are
connected together to form one whole, e.g., when treating of a
conflagration I am always reminded of a particular conflagration
which I had been a witness of. [A complication ; a pre-complica-
tion, a re-complication. To complicate; to pre-complicate, to re-
complicate.]
IC. Connection [of systems], as in consciousness, awareness, knowledge,
belief, doubt and certainty, where something is connected or linked
with something else. [A connection, linking, or chaining. To con-
nect, to link, to chain.] See sec. 99b.]
L. Combination [of systems], i.e., a train of thought or action. [A com-
bination, or thought or action ; a pre-combination, or action ; a
re-combination, or thought. To combine ; to pre-combine, or to
act; to re-combine, or to think.] [Combination unit or unit=the
unit in a train of thought or action.]
M. Exhausted system, i.e., an object or a notion as interpreted in the
light of fullest knowledge, e.g., a seen clock and all that that implies,
a felt love and all that that impHes.
JV. Unexhausted system, i.e., an object or a notion as immediately
given, and apart from all inference, e.g., a clock as just seen, a love
as just felt.
42 METHOD
O. iV^d'</= absence of functional stability. Satisfaction of a Need=ihQ
process of regaining functional stability.
P. Change in systems as need-determined. [Need-determined change, or
functional adjustment. Thinking ; acting.]
Q. „ „ self-determined. [Self-determined changes.
Aestheticising, imagining, playing.]
R. „ „ distributed. [Attention ; pre-attention ; re-
attention. Attend ; pre-attend ; re-attend.]
S. „ „ disturbed. [Disturbance, or pleasure-pain ;
opposed disturbance, or pain ; semi opposed
disturbance, or pleasure ; pre-disturbance, or
immediate pain, etc. To disturb ; to pre-dis-
turb ; to re-disturb.]
T. „ „ organised. [Habit, organised reaction, trend,
economisation. Organisation ; pre-organisation,
re-organisation. To organise ; to pre-organise ;
to re-organise.]
U. ,, „ excited. Acting under excitement. [Excite-
ment ; pre-excitement ; re-excitement. To ex-
cite ; to pre-excite ; to re-excite.]
V. „ „ impelled. Acting under momentum. Mood.
[Impulsion ; pre-impulsion ; re-impulsion. To
impel ; to pre-impel ; to re-impel.]
W. „ „ inclined. Acting under inclination. [Inclina-
tion ; pre-inclination ; re-inclination. To in-
cline ; to pre-incline ; to re-incline.]
See the Index for the words Explanation, Why, Cause, Effect, Power^
Energy, Faculty, Motion, Change, Space, Time, etc.
13. — A Bird's Eye View.
We passed in review the various psychological schools : the reflective,
the physiological and the quantitative. In each instance it was found that
the positive acquirements were scanty in an undue degree, and this was
attributed to the fact that psychologists had not put themselves in close
touch with the scientific method. Accordingly, it was laid down that
in psychology, as in physics, there must be systematic observation, generali-
sation and experiment, while hypotheses that trespass beyond the fringe
which borders our knowledge must be condemned as unscientific. For the
guidance of the student the author also added and illustrated what he
considers are the methods to be applied in psychological inquiries.
PART II
GENERAL ANALYSES
CHAPTER II
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED*
Men attend, whilst 'wake they be,
Ceaselessly and equably.
14. — Attention and Inattention.
It is winter time, and several of us are sitting around the blazing waiting-
room fire. [Observe such an occasion^ While the others are busily talking,
I am reading. The rumbling of trains penetrates from the depths beneath.
Doors are being noisily opened and shut. Some persons are speaking
loudly now and then in different parts of the spacious room while others
may be heard crossing it. The street below sends its quota of noises.
The place is haunted by sounds, if we but incline our ears. As with the
sense of hearing, so with the sense of sight and with general sensibility.
Yet, since the book I am interested in contains extremely hard passages, I
am entirely absorbed in what I read. Consequently, so it seems, I hear
nothing, I see nothing (except the page before me), I smell nothing, and I
feel nothing. Or did I really hear and see and smell and feel, and have
forgotten that I did so ?
15. — Sensations, Images and Feelings do not exist apart from
Attention,
To test the likelihood of this conjecture, let us inquire into what is implied
in following a conversation. In attending to speech we make good what is
not pronounced, what is half-pronounced, or what we do not hear.f We
put spaces between the words. We range them into sentences, and the
sentences into paragraphs. Inwardly, we track the trend of thought. For
* I have assumed, what I feel to be indisputable, that physiology offers as yet no scientific
data of an advanced nature for the student of psychology.
For convenience' sake I have retained the term Attention, in spite of its vagueness and
its misleading implications. My own opinions are summed up in sec. 33, and more
especially in the last paragraph of that section.
fThe conjectured trend of thought often helps us in interpreting what is only partly
heard. Thus, having a headache, and some one saying to me " Are you going at eight ? "
I took that person to say " Have you a headache ?"
46 GENERAL ANALYSES
the purpose of illuminating what is put forward, memories of all kinds are
awakened, involvinp; sometimes a considerable strain. On the other hand,
what is irrelevant to the conversation is kept jealously apart. The rumbling
of trains, the opening and shutting of doors, the movements of persons
about the room, the chatter of other groups, the street noises, must not be
intermingled with the conversation, or else all will be confusion. As with
irrelevant sounds, so with what is irrelevant in general. Plainly, to follow
a conversation argues a complex process. That process, in the case we are
considering, implies a double direction. We must make sense of what is
said, and we must banish what is irrelevant. If that be so, it becomes
probable that I could not have followed the conversation while I was
absorbed in reading. I was occupied with the book. Nothing else could
I even have recognised as something or as a mass, unless the direction of
the attention had changed. The sounds, sights, and other sensations —
supposing, what is a contradiction, that there were such for me — jostled
each other freely, and possessed precisely a like value. They were ranged
in time, and not in order. The ordering is a distinct act.
A puzzle picture will help to elucidate the part which the sense of order
plays. \The student should have a puzzle picture before him.^ If we do
not at once perceive the hidden figures, it is not because the outlines are
not there. They are there just as much, or as little, as are the outlines of
the figures first observed. It is only a certain form of education, leaving
aside heredity, which forces us to see one set of lines to the exclusion of
another set. Apart from educated activity of an advanced character there
are only lines on the card, and the business of the attention is the formation
of these lines into a distinct whole. When the attention is not directed
to that task, we have no whole whatever. Indeed, the background, the
lines, and the surrounding objects are one indifferent mass, or have passed
away altogether, when the attention is withdrawn from them. To discern
a single line, preventing fusion with the background and with the surround-
ings, to discern at all, implies attention.
Some geometrical patterns offer another convenient illustration. Ac-
cording as we direct our attention, so the lines form one whole or another,*
X, W, M, V, D, A, etc.
Lastly, any bold sketch in black and white brings out strikingly the
importance of regulative activity in forming an intelligible whole out of
scattered lines and hints.
One may now with confidence answer in the negative the question
which we asked at the end of sec. 14. Apart from acute attention, i.e.,
complex activity, there is no such thing as a conversation, and hence, as I
did not busy my.self with it, I could not have followed its windings. To
* The question of visual illusions is fully dealt with by Lipps, Ramnaesthetik, 1S97.
The reader may also consult Bolton, Illusions, 1898 ; James, Psychology, 1890 ; Jastrow,
Illusions, 1892; Judd, A Study of Geometrical Illusions, 1899; Sully, Illusions, 1895;
Thiery, Ueher gcornetrisch-optische Tduschzingen, 1895 ; Titchener, Experimental Psy-
chology, 1901 ; and Wundt, Die gcometrisch-optischen Tduschungen, 189S.
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 47
this must be added that the simplest sensation impUes a complicated pro-
cess. We are justified, therefore, in concluding that nothing intelligible —
no total, no detail, no form — exists for us in the absence of attention.
The whole outer world as given by the senses, as well as the whole inner
world, is essentially dependent upon it. In walking along the street every
object we meet with, however faintly perceived, is, qua perceived object,
due to an intricate process.
16. — Attention is Dependent on Stimuli.
Ex nihilo nihil fit remains nevertheless true in psychology. Attention,
at least physiologically considered, is powerless in the absence of extra-
organic or organic stimuli, and is conditioned by their differences. Bent
on attending, we may hear or we may see ; but we cannot indifferently hear
or see. Only certain light-waves or sound-waves, or what corresponds to
them, lead to sight and hearing, while in their absence there will be neither
visual nor auditory sensations. Yet it is still true that sensations and
images, as such, are essentially connected with the action of the central
nervous system. Open eyes and open ears, unless exploited, yield neither
sight nor hearing. They offer faint modifications, void of tangible signi-
ficance, which, if they are not instantly, or within a few seconds, utilised,
remain lost for ever. They cannot, by any effort, be afterwards elaborated
into a self-sufficing system of thought, e.g., the conversation which I missed
I cannot build up afterwards by any effort of the will. \Test this.^ It
happens, though, occasionally that we have been told something very
rapidly, and that we only decipher the word or the phrase after a moment
or two. \_ObseT-ve instances?^ Here, however, tliere is something definite to
work upon. There is before us a distinct Avhole which, by re-attention, is
transformed into another whole.*
We have advanced a step. Not only could I not have followed the
conversation because of absence of attention ; but to me, fully absorbed as
I was, there came only doubtful impressions, and no sound or other
sensation.
17. — The Beginnings of Sensations.
Where, then, lies the threshold of a sensation? This must be cleared
up before we proceed. Under normal circumstances the sounds of the
conversation would have seemed of a certain pitch and strength. Corres-
ponding to them we meet with air-waves of a certain size and frequency,
and these condition hearing. Given equal attention, and, within narrow
limits, the sounds we hear vary with the air-waves which reach us from
every direction whether we are pre-occupied or not. \Test this.^ Does
close attention to the book necessarily mean that these air-waves yield
nothing, because they yield no sound, and that they leave no trace in the
*As to this last point, see Daniels, The Afevioty After-image and Attention, 1895 >
also Lotze, Psychologic, 18S1, ch. 3, § 4.
4S GENERAL ANALYSES
brain? Inquiry negatives these suggestions. I know that if I had been
reading the book in a room where all was still, the course of thought would
have been in an appreciably different state from what it is when I am
reading in a noisy railway station. \Test //«>.] I somehow continue to
ignore the conversation. I hold the sounds back, as it were. I stave
them off. I prevent their intrusion. That is to say, I attend, among other
things, to something which, when more fully or differently attended to, is
sound. At this lowest point we are confronted with a vague detailless
feeling. As tlie air-waves are less impetuous, so is the feeling vaguer, until
at last we detect neither sound nor feeling. Probably there is a point
where minimal systems become differentiated, and that point must be for
us the threshold of a particular system. The lowest element is, therefore,
a very faint feeling, — a feeling so faint that it makes no perceptible stir,
and is apparently not reproducible, — a feeling which is perhaps so unstable
that it disappears immediately it is specially attended to.
States of this faint quality exist in abundance. A good example is the
effect produced by a noisy clock in an otherwise quiet room. Ordinarily,
when absorbed, we do not hear the ticking, except at intervals. \Is that
so ?] We seem oblivious of the acoustic waves. Yet when the clock
stops, we frequently notice the fact. \Experime7it i?i this direction^] If
the air-waves have left no mark, then their cessation should have made no
difference. We conclude, therefore, that the sounds from the clock leave
a faint trace on the organism ; and also that this trace is not a sound, not
the monotonous tick-tick, but some residue. The same holds true under
certain circumstances of the innumerable "possible" sensations which we
are ever ignoring, and of the silent working of the brain as a whole.
We often observe things indolently. In such cases, our attention no sooner turns away
than we forget that we have been attending in those directions. The subject is frequently
discussed among psycho-physicists. (Mdnsterberg, Intensifying Effect of Atte7ition, 1894.)
Faint feelings are of considerable frequency. Systems which were at
one time sharp in outline and could be easily developed and re-membered,
gradually lose these properties without being essentially changed in their
constitution. (Ch. 3.) In casual routine processes (or organised re-
action)* the feelings are still there generally ; but they are no longer
lively. The gentle stimulus, under the changed conditions, preserves the
motive force of the pronounced activity. The general organic life of the
body, the general individual life, as well as the routine of life, swarm with
these silent and impalpable presences. However, as organic adjustments
to demands become closer and induce far-reaching changes, so feelings are
more and more dispensed with, till, with total re-adjustment, they cease to
exist. In less extreme cases, the feelings remain, but become almost
wholly unobtrusive.
I have said that the dimmest of these feelings form the first degree in
*To emphasise the process involved in habit, I shall generally speak of habitual pro-
cess as organised process, organised trend, trend, and cconomisation.
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 49
the scale of sensations. At their faintest they probably cease to exert an
influence individually. It may be asked, " Is it not possible that in routine
of a pronounced kind the work is done apart from any feeling?" This is
extremely improbable. Reflection, strengthened by observation and ex-
periment, admits feeling wherever there has been feeling before, provided
that there has not been a profound change in the form of the activity.
Where feeling wholly or nearly ceases, with the attention not diverted, we
have discontinuance of the accompanying activity. If any action is ever
accompanied by feelings, it will be continued only so long as the feelings
continue. If these abate, the action also abates. Common sensibility
supplies us plentifully with partial proof. We often sit in a certain position
brooding over some problem and apparently oblivious of organic stimuli.
[Repeat this experimentally, recording the results?^ Gradually, quite gradu-
ally, the fact obtrudes itself that a limb is tired. There is no reason
to believe that in such an instance there has not been a feeling for some
time previous ; only the uneasiness was so faint that it made no appreciable
difference to the organism. Very slowly that difference developed until it
is recognised as a particular stimulus. Hence when we are strongly
absorbed, it is necessary to increase a stimulus considerably before action
or feeling ensues. One other instance. I go to my shelves to take
down a volume. \Observe such instances?\ I do not apparently think of
my errand. Suddenly, in the midst of some thought, I come to a stand-
still, and ask myself where I am going. However faint the residue or
whatever its form, we must yet assume that the notion of an errand
normally persists, and that when the notion vanishes, we naturally stop.
Considering such happenings as these, we are warranted in assuming
that no felt process ever becomes a feelingless process unless, indeed,
a change or growth supervenes which displaces such process. (Sec. 56.)
\_Exa?nine?[
18. — The Area of Sensations and Images.
More difficult still than fixing the beginnings of sensations and images
(or primary and secondary systems), is the determination of their sphere
of influence.
It may be generally posited that wherever there are nerve-endings, or
that wherever the influence of the cerebro-spinal system extends, there
exists at least a possibility of connected feeling. Under ordinary circum-
stances, it is reasonable to suppose, the majority of the feehngs are so void
of detail that they do not affect the general development of systems, at
least not individually. The same holds good of stimuli when we turn
towards them only minimally. Exploiting our general sensibility, i.e.,
those sensations not derived from the five senses, we gather that various
portions of the body yield sensory systems when attended to. [Carefully
repeat the following experimefit.'] I feel that I possess toes and feet,
though I cannot tell from my observations the number of toes, or the fact
that they are imprisoned in wool and leather. The feelings are extremely
4
50 GENERAL ANAL YSES
homogeneous, and it is very difficult to discover any details. Thus I
observe feelings of the same simple nature throughout the length of the
lower limbs, especially where they are crossed, as they sometimes are, in
sitting. So the other portions of the body, more particularly where they
touch an object or produce slight discomfort, give rise to feelings which
are little differentiated. Ordinarily the.se do not develop ; but now this
portion becomes stiff, now that becomes tired ; now this position is un-
suitable, now that part is over-heated or too cool. For this reason, atten-
tion to the body is intermittent.
19. — The Sense Problem.*
Five senses are generally allowed for, to wit, sight, hearing, touch, smell
and taste. Inquirers have not been slow to add to this list. Among the
additions proposed are the muscular sense, the temperature sense, the
organic sense, the sense of equilibration, as also the pleasure-pain sense,
and others. A strictly psychological investigation is not satisfied with these
classifications ; for they are based primarily on the circumstance that
certain easily definable happenings go with certain sensations, e.g.^ the feel-
ing of heat goes with frequently observed wax-melting weather, and that
of cold with weather which sets the teeth chattering. Reasoning along this
line, an event only needs to repeat itself often enough and it is assumed that
a new sense is created. Leaving aside, however, the sources of the sensa-
tions, we come to the conclusion that there appears no good reason why
all the sensory shocks we are liable to, with the provisional exception of
sight, hearing and smell, should not be regarded as one sense. Cold, heat,
pains, organic and muscular feelings, may well be thrown together for
scientific purposes. So with the sense of contact. Touching a light object
of similar temperature to my hand, it soon becomes doubtful whether I am
touching anything at all, and, similarly, I believe I can feel the pencil
behind my ear, though I have removed it some time previously. The
various sensory systems connected with touch, such as contact, pressure,
softness, hardness, smoothness, roughness, are, therefore, essentially organic
sensations, only to be differentiated for practical purposes or for pur-
poses of restricted classification. The sense of smell falls into the same
category of feelings as the other senses we have mentioned. It is so
evident that we connect the sense of smell with our breathing through the
nostrils [Experimen/^ and that the reference to an object of sight or touch
outside the body, e.g., to a seen flower, is an after-thought. The sense of
taste naturally forms no exception, for here also the thing tasted may
be ignored. Objective reference is, however, seemingly unavoidable in
thought when the sense of hearing is in question. I have not been able
hitherto to localise my hearing in the ear or in any other portion of the
body, except when the sounds were shown to proceed from parts of the
* The known facts as regards the sensations are well marshalled in the second chapter
of Kulpe's Psychologic, 1893.
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 51
body. To naive observation it is as easy to imagine that the auditory
nerves are placed on the finger-tips as in the ear, a fact which separates
hearing from the sensations previously referred to. This unlocalisability is
almost as strongly marked in the sense of sight. These two most highly
developed senses, employed as they are incessantly, constitute at present
in the adult — not in the child — a group which is clearly distinguishable
from the dependent senses which are referred to some portion of the body.
Another difference between the two groups remains to be noted : in the
dependent group the sensations show little detail, while the senses of sight
and hearing display much detail. However, I will assume here that the
two groups appear as one in the final analysis ; and I would suggest also
that the secondary or memory group may profitably be assimilated with the
first two groups.*
We may approach the sense problem from another direction. Finding
that a sensation, say between the shoulders or in the mouth, is imperfectly
localised, i.e., unaccompanied by another class of sensation, we learn, on
reflection, that localisation is itself a matter of growth. Thus the infant,
omitting hereditary tendencies, is readily thought of as having sensations
-which are not connected with other sensations, and which become so only
in process of time, e.g., the feeling of cold is only gradually connected with
the visual and other sensory and motor constituents of the bodily parts
which suffer. The adult's sensory field, in this respect, may be, therefore,
regarded as a highly developed complex.
Attempts at unifying the senses have been chiefly made in two quarters.
Spencer {Psychology, 1890, i, pp. 148-52) assumes a primitive shock as the
origin of all sense systems; while Horwicz {Analyse?:, 1872-8, passim)
traces every primary or secondary system back to the primitive sense of
pain.
Sensations are regarded as possessing several properties in common.
Each sensation is supposed to possess (j) intensity,! (2) quaUty, (3) feeling
tone or pleasure-pain tone, and (4) extensity or local sign, besides (5)
duration.
(i) The existence of intensity is not an easily demonstrable fact. We
speak readily of a sensation being intensely painful, as a toothache, for
instance. Yet if we compare different painful sensations, we find in the
sensations themselves no obvious marks which can serve as a basis of
division. One of two pains may be judged much more intense, yet an
analysis scarcely discloses a difterence as regards sensations. In other
cases, again, the so-called intensity must be connected with an increase in
* See for further discussion the end of this section and ch. S.
t " All our ideas of intensity, when traced to their origin, refer to the degrees of our
feelings. We speak of intense heat and cold, intense pressure, intense pleasure and pain,
intense passion, intense bitterness and sourness, intense irritation ; in all of which cases
we speak of feelings in respect to their degrees" (Spencer, Psychology, 1890, ii, p. 266).
See also Sully, Human Mind, i, pp. 86-90 ; Preyer, Ekmcnte der reiiicn Einpfindungs-
lehre, 1877 ; Preyer, Ueher die Grenzen des Empfindungsverni'ogens, 1868 ; Preyer, Die
'Grenzen der Tonwahmehmting, 1876.
53 GENERAL ANALYSES
the painful area afTected. Strictly speaking, it would be impossible to tell
from a pain sensation whether it is intense or not, e.g., a bad attack of
neuralgia did not reveal to me sensations of any intensity. We tell (ch. 6)
the diflcrence by the varied manner in which the central nervous system
reacts.
A\'hen we consider the question of heat and cold, the same facts meet
us. As we become hotter, a host of changes are engendered : the heat
spreads; comfort is felt; the heat becomes uncomfortable, and, at last,
intolerable and burning. Indeed, when we touch unawares something ice-
cold, we may think that we have touched something hot. In the evolution
of felt cold, non-cold sensations indicate what is called the intensity. The
stiffness and unmanageableness of the Hmbs, the smoothness of the palms,
and the reactions generally, are the principal indications of cold. A very
cold hand yields a wealth of sensations for the classification of which I
should not like to be responsible. Organic changes of an extensive order
destroy in this way the notion of simple intensity.
Experimenting with pressures, no more satisfactory result is obtained.
Lifting an ounce is accompanied by passing sensations in the finger tips ;
in lifting a heavy book, sensory changes supervene right up the arm ; and
in lifting a heavy piece of metal, the whole body — head, trunk, extremities —
seems to become alive with sensations. On the other hand, putting these
different weights in a balance, no such multitude of changes is traceable.
Hence "intensely heavy" has here again reference to complex organic
changes which are of secondary importance as far as the feeling of
pressure is concerned. We conclude, therefore, that increase or decrease
of weight or pressure, is marked by changes which defy mathematical
statement.
If we examine the other senses, the same state of things repeats itself.
An intense light is one that hurts our eyes or one that illuminates well. In
the first case we have a special non-light effect, for pain is not a fact of
light. In the second case we also ignore the light, and study its illumina-
tive effects. An intense light is also better seen, shows more details, and
is more easily attended to ; but these properties refer to the nature of the
attention process. A dull light has after all a different quality from a
bright light.
A similar analysis holds of the other senses. \Test?[
We may hence conclude generally that while certain definite and easily
calculable changes are observable in the non-organic world, these are,
roughly speaking, accompanied in the organic world by indefinite and only
indirectly calculable effects. It is one thing to register the fact that a
change is felt ; it is quite another to determine the nature of that change.
For this reason the word Intensity is scarcely used in the following pages,
the words aggressiveness, obviousness and warmth of feeling taking its place.
However, I have no intention of declaring that the question is settled.*
*See Heinrich, Die modcrnc physiologische FsycJwlogie, 1899, pp. 43-58.
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 53
Fechner (Revision, 1882, p. 146) thus defines Weber's celebrated law dealing with
intensities. "The sensory difference for two stimuli does not alter when the stimuli, on
a change in their absolute magnitude, retain the same relation to one another, that is to
say, when the relative difference between the stimuli remains unaffected."
(2) The quality of a sensation is more evident. * Blue is different from
red and red is different from green.
The difficulty arises when we wish to determine the limits of qualities,
and for this reason it would perhaps be safest to say that every appreciable
sense-change is a change in sense-quality. Thus two reds which impressed
us alike would be the same in quality; while absence of identity would
imply difference in quality.
It is not easy to discover sharp divisions in the qualities. If a certain
shade of bright scarlet and a certain shade of dark green were the only two
shades known to us, we should have two defined colour qualities ; but this
is far from being the case. The sea at which I was looking yesterday,
showed, if I mistake not, distinct traces of all shades of grey — from white
to nearly black, all shades of green, all shades of blue — from greenish blue
to purple, all shades of yellow, and traces of red in the purple. And these
variations melted one into the other. f What is true of the colour sense,
seems generally true of each of the higher senses, [2>^/.]
The graver question now arises as to whether one sense shades into the
other, whether, for instance, hearing shades into seeing. We have learnt
already in this section that the inferior senses apparently do so. If I now
gradually lower the eyelids till they are almost closed and look at an
inverted picture, I notice the following. [Experiment.^ Through loss in
■detail the sense of depth is entirely gone, and from the same cause, things
are located nowhere, or, as we should say, in the eye. The blur which
■excludes colours, forms and spatial relations, suggests something felt
rather than seen. At all events, this blur seems to me distinctly of the
nature of a confused feeling, almost void of all optical suggestion, certainly
free from shapes or lines. In this manner it is possible that we may bridge
the widest gulf between the senses. Again, a low hum, when it is a
question of the sense of hearing, is equally suggestive of feelings like
touches or temperatures.:}:
(3) The nature of feeling tone or sense-feeling, is amply discussed in
ch. 6.
(4) According to Prof. Ward and others the feeling of extensity is the
basis of extension. Thus he reasons that if we paste one postage stamp
on the back of the hand and then one next to it, we obtain a sense of
difference which lies at the basis of the sense of extension. [T^x/.] I
have tried the experiment, but with most disappointing effect, for the sensa-
tions themselves gave no notion of the space covered ; strictly speaking,
indeed, they did not tell that any space was covered. The sensation was
* As to the nature of quality, see Sully, Human Mind, 1892, i, pp. 90-4.
t Magnus, Die Entwickelung des FarbensinneSy 1 877.
iFor a fuller discussion, see sec. 189.
54 GENERAL ANALYSES
only connected, and that at first alone, presumably through fore-knowledge,
with a particular portion of the known hand. From this Prof. Ward and
others argue that every point of the body's surface yields sensations of its
own, and that from these differences, from these local signs, we develop the
notion of extension. Hence even in sight the points affected by stimuli are
supposed to yield us the material for spatial judgment. The fact that the
bodily surfaces are part of an organic structure, should make us diffident in
too readily adopting Prof Ward's view. Besides, the cases cited are far
from convincing. I may have a piece of something in a tooth, and yet not
know which tooth, whether upper or lower, whether to the right or to the
left. Thus perhaps, generally speaking, localisation is the result of
organisation of sensations into systems with the constitution of which
we have become familiar.
Prof. James has a long chapter on Space, in which he contends, unfortunately
without referring to the facts, that extensity is a primitive quality of sensations. As
Ward, equally with James, says little concerning the actual cutaneous systems, I shall here
insert a few words on the subject. (i) I pass the tip of a finger across a basket chair.
Here we have alternating feelings of pressure, warmth, smoothness, softness and strain,
besides the feelings connected with the other portions of the hand and arm affected ; and
in addition, there are feeling-less intervals, and the skin feelings are connected with sights,
movements, etc. (2) Instead of passing the finger tip over the object, I pass the object
over the finger tip, with similar results. (3) Instead now of using one finger tip, I experi-
ment with various portions of the body, with like results. (4) Much practice has made
us experts in interpreting touch systems, e.g., the bridge of the nose feels hard and
smooth ; the lips feel soft, warm and rounded ; the back of the hands feels hairy, irregular ;
and so forth. Since, then, movements and sensory systems are familiar to us, we interpret
what happens by means of a number of signs which remain almost the same with every
portion of the body usually employed in touching. This is the easier to understand when,
as we shall learn further on, we find that change or movement is essential to tactile
divination, and that absence of attention leads to tactile insensibility. Our first con-
clusion, therefore, is that as localised cutaneous feelings are largely due to touch, they are
interpreted in the same way; the relative softness, warmth, irregularity and strain
being our guide. The whole body would in this way come to be known, and the cutaneous
feelings would be connected with sights, touches, notions, etc., forming an easily inter-
preted system of knowledge. Further, the most intimate cutaneous feelings are only
exemplifications of the factors met with in touch. Hence a variety of factors and not
specialised feelings, will indicate the locality of a hurt or a single touch.
It would be dangerous to dogmatise as to whether there are any essential differences.
in the different feelings derivable from various parts of the cutaneous surface. What I
do hold is that there are no appreciable differences. There may be more diffused strains,
more pricks, more changes ; but these cannot be called sensory qualities. Consider the
complexity of the problem. A small piece of paper is allowed to touch the back of the
hand, and is then removed. Now touch fibres are not very closely placed, and therefore
only some points of the surface are touched ; the surface is very irregular, and hence
not every fibre has been touched ; the effect extends to other parts and to deeper
lying parts of the hand ; strains diffuse the effect of the contact ; and constant atten-
tional and organic re-adaptation produces other rapid changes. If we carefully attend
to the feelings, nothing but casual pricks or dim changeable feelings are noticeable,
while where a feeling is only vaguely localised, there the feelings connected with it and
already known hint at its position. Thus the data in any instance warrant no conclusion
as to size of any part affected or as to its position or shape. To put it differently, any
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 55
of the various cutaneous feelings, however extensive in fact, are easily imagined as being
connected with a spot of i mm. in circumference in any portion of the body*
Hence our general conclusion is that sensations have no primitive quality of extensity
or volume, and that such qualities are due to complex developments.!
A special study of the nature of touch suggests conclusions of wide bearing
and cardinal importance. Placing the fingers, hands, arms, limbs, head
and other portions of the body, in different positions, and resting them in
that position for some little time, it is found that the customary sensations
connected with such acts of contact disappear. Especially is this the case
when the eyes are diverted or closed, or better still when the position is not
uncomfortable and is not chosen. Hence the first conclusion, generalised,
runs: Total rest excludes all sensations.X \Test?\ This proposition explains
various points of interest. It obviates the strained assumption that there
is a hidden field of attention in which all that would be detected by the
live senses within and without the body, has a place and leaves an effect.
It implies rather that absence of normal attention argues a deadness or
slumber as regards feelings in those directions. It explains how that
which is monotonous makes men drowsy, tends to hypnotise them, and how
quiet sleep, and life immediately after birth, is sensationless. Hence, natu-
rally, when falling asleep or awaking, we cannot easily tell how the different
portions of the body are disposed.
Sensations, then, imply change or movement. If, accordingly, after care-
ful conjecture, with eyes closed, I calculate that a finger lies in such and
such a position, I have only to move if I wish to make certain of whether
I am right or wrong. Consequeiltly, we reach our second conclusion that
sensations only exist w/ierf there is change and where such chaJige is not mono-
tonous or repetitive. \^Test.^ This conclusion completes the first one, for
we find that any monotonous system of changes leaves as little of a sensory
residue as monotonous rest ; that, indeed, the two, if closely considered,
are one.
These two conclusions fail apparently to explain how we can, for in-
stance, apprehend a series of touches simultaneously ; and, in fact, by
themselves the two conclusions leave the problem just raised unsolved.
What we find, however, is that all normal sensing or integrating implies
after-sensations. For example, trying to read a newspaper poster at some
little distance in a very busy thoroughfare, I find that, owing to the many
iiitervening passers-by, I can only catch a few letters at a time. This
suggests that though after the reading, and as we read, we may see a con-
* Strieker {Das Bewusstsein, 1S79) reasons, incorrectly in my opinion, that we in-
stinctively know where a sensation is to be located. He says, for instance : " Persons
who have not the slightest notion of the position of their internal organs, can tell
immediately where the pain is felt when an internal organ becomes diseased and pains
them" (p. 33). _
tThe question of extensity is ably and almost exhaustively discussed by Lotze,
Medicinische Psychologic, 1852, bk. 2, ch. 4.
+ Preyer {Uie fiinf Sintie, 1S70, pp. 26-7) mentions that in sitting quite still, all sense
of position is lost, and he explains that active touch and sight are necessary to determine
position. See also Sternberg, Die Lage unserer Glicder, 1S85.
56 GENERAL ANALYSES
siderable portion at a glance, we really observe but a minimum at a time,
the other portion being the effect of the retarded death or slow vanishing
of minimal sensations. Hence we reach the third conclusion that without
after-sensations^ there are no sensations proper. \Test?\
A difficulty which was met with in the course of arriving at the first con-
clusion, brings us to our fourth conclusion. I had frequently noted that I
interpreted any particular sensation or position by the many others that
were combined with it, e.g.^ I connected the sensations in the fingers with
the sensations in hand, arm and trunk. Following the hint, I arrived, after
some experimenting, at the result that we very seldom observe a sensation
by itself; but that we generally deduce its place from its known position in a
considerable system of sensations. In any case of doubt, due to whatever
causes, as we have seen when speaking of extensity, we, therefore, to some
extent, arrive deductively at the nature and the place of any sensation.
For this reason, to the adult, and this is our fourth conclusion, sensations are
given in an orgafiised system. [^Test.^ An organised system implies a pre-
ceding chaos, and accordingly we learn that to the infant, sensations appear,
as it were, in the air. Unfamiliar and unconnected as the infant's sensa-
tions are, he neither places them nor heeds them much. Only with more
of life, do the tactile feelings become connected with each other and with
other classes of feelings and sensations. Hence touching, like seeing, is
meaningless to the infant, and only grows to have a meaning for him as the
course of events welds together similar sensations into different systems.
At least, the infant of four months whom I had under observation since
birth, fully illustrates what has been said above. Two problems are in-
volved, among others, in the conclusion reached in this paragraph. The
first one is that all uniformity as expressed in character, gefieral tJwught,
special thought, primary and secondary existence, action, movement, space,
time, order, and the like, are but an exemplification of organised complica-
tions, of precisely the same iveight fundamentally. My observations on
infants, and the experiments which form the basis of these conclusions,
also suggest that, in the human being at least, there is steady development
along all the lines, and not full-blown inheritance. The second problem
refers to dreams specially, and illustrates incidentally some of the problems
of the imagination and the memory. Mr. Bradley {On the Failure of
Movement in Dreams, 1894) has raised the question of how far we feel
whilst asleep, and here I may venture on an answer to his query. As
dream-life implies considerable disorganisation, so it implies disorganisation
among the sensations, aggravated by disorganised movement. Hence I
have more than once satisfied myself that in dream-life touch (and other)
sensations are freely ignored and freely placed into any kind of fanciful
system, the reason being that fundamentally the value of the parts has no
defined meaning apart from a larger whole.
In some experiments upon effort, with the attention diverted, I found to
my surprise that while the effort — say, of freely holding some heavy object
— continued, all *' sense " of effort, together with the many connected arm
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 57
and other sensations, were lacking. This confirms our second conclusion
that sensations only exist where there is change. I have since observed
in many instances that habitual action — and most action is habitual — is
only accompanied by sensations when a certain maximum share of atten-
tion is turned towards it. So in all kinds of aches, as neuralgia, ?nininial
.concern with the ache, excludes sensations. Hence we reach the fifth con-
clusion, that sensation a?id muscular activity are not necessarily con7iected.
This becomes obvious when studying the development of an infant : the
incessant movements (still fitful and clumsy) of every limb and every
portion of it, are evidently something quite apart from the accompanying
sensations. As we shall see in ch. 6, the bare feelings in aches sug-
gest no pleasure-pain value and no action ; and what holds good of the
adult, holds good, of course, with increased force of the infant. Strictly
speaking, the sensations are one thing, and the movements another. The
feelings — as distinct from movements — connected with fears, joys, pleasures
and pains, are something separate and develop to a large degree separately
-and differently, and to some extent remain always separate.
Finally, our special study of touch sensations suggests a sixth con-
clusion, namely, that all sensations and sensation complexes, all movements
and movement complexes, as they appear in the life of an adult, are close repeti-
tions of previous sensory and motor complexes. \Test?\ I found that, how-
ever I varied or found varied the postures in sitting or standing, or whatever
varied movements of a large or a small range I made, it was always
some movement which I had previously practised. The only excep-
tions were such as occurred in accidents or in learning a movement.
Infant life makes this conclusion intelligible. The child, as if it had in
^iew a deliberate purpose and one well-conceived, is constantly performing
fitful movements of endless variety ; and it keeps performing these till, to
all intents and purposes, it has run the gammot of possible movements
and their combinations. An adult, therefore, re-members, re-performs
the overwhelming majority of his actions. And what is true of movement,
is true of percepts and ideas, of primary and secondary compounds. By
the time the infant has been transformed into the adult, the thoughts and
the classes of thoughts combine according to habits that have become no
less unbending than the laws of the Medes and Persians. Petty shifts,
undiscriminating habits and piercing thoughts, are all equally the result of
growing organisation, determined by natural selection within the life-time of
the individual. As we shall see in chs. 3 and 4, our whole life, at every
.stage of development — including the simplest sensations and movements, —
reflects systems of organised complexes, and all change is produced by a
further differentiation in such systems under the pressure of needs.
20. — Classification of Systems.
The classification of systems, after what has been stated, becomes a com-
paratively unimportant matter. Perhaps neurology will, in time, draw for
us distinctions which we do not now admit. Still, such conclusions as we
58 GENERAL ANALYSES
have reached shall be exhibited here. Under the heading of feelings
should be ranged sensory systems which are indefinite and not easily defin-
able in their nature. (i) Those feelings which generally accom])any
pleasure-pain belong to the class we are considering. They cannot be
defined from each other or from other feelings. The connection between
them and pleasure-pain is accidental. (Ch. 6.) (2) The feeling of effort or
self-assertion must be ranged with the above. Were it not for the physical
effects which we note, we should never think of distinguishing between it
and other feelings. In itself it has no power, no more than a visual system.
It is a servant and not a master. It is in attendance and not in command.
(Ch. 7.) (3) To the same series belong the emotions. Their importance
is fictitious, and is only derived from their association with activities more
or less violent. They have no more power to move us than the other
feelings. (Ch. 7.) (4) The passions, desires and appetites belong to the
same category, their complexity being constituted by their many known
relations. (5) So also do the feelings of touch ; those connected with
temperature, pressure and the muscles; and intra-organic feelings generally.
(6) Those feelings which constitute the general impression which an object
makes on us, and which we shall call summary feelings, belong to the above
order. (7) Combination feelings must be similarly placed ; they embrace
those feelings of doubt, certainty, reminiscence, oblivion, etc., etc., which
can be traced in the course of thought. With a more detailed study of
sensibility these are destined to gather more and more meaning; but at
present they are unattached, like the infant's bodily sensations. With
psychological progress will come localisation in a system. The above
enumerated feefings should be looked upon as elementary systems or
feelings.
Nearest to the above feelings is the sense of taste and that of
smell. These, especially the latter, have a stronger individuality than
the feelings we have enumerated. Let us call these semi-advanced se?2sa-
tions, as representing a transitional form between feelings and advanced
sensations.
The sensations of the first order are seeing and hearing. In these
alone, if we omit physical exercise, is a synthesis possible. There is no-
counterpart to a melody or a picture in either feelings or semi-advanced
sensations. However, sight and hearing do not occupy the same position,
for sound has considerable affinity with feelings. The sensation of hearing,
except for its synthetic and objective character, is hard to distinguish from
feelings proper. A noise in the head, a jarring sound, reminds us of the
latter. In sight, on the other hand, the synthetic character is prominently
marked ; the features can be distinctly defined ; and passivity of effect is
almost absolute.
The life of action, inclusive of memory, falls under the headings of
primary and secondary feelings, feelings or elementary systems, semi-
advanced systems, and advanced systems. In the secondary series there
are no new elements discernible : we see and hear and feel as in normal
5 VSTEMS A S DISTRIB UTED S9'
outward life, only the springs are central rather than outward or afferent
(ch. 5) ; but that in itself constitutes no striking difference. If sight is best
re-produced, that is because it is the king of senses ; and if smells are hard
to re-integrate, that is probably because smell is so seldom resorted to.
With varying evolution any of the other senses or feelings might occupy
the place of sight (sec. 189.)
Systems are thus divided into (i) feelings or elementary systems, (2)
semi-advanced systems and (3) advanced systems. The three together
may be called Systems.
The mechanism of thought is as yet only traceable on the neural
side.
21. — Keen, Normal and Lax Attention.
We have seen that the endeavour to understand difficult paragraphs
was inconsistent with following a conversation. What is the fact which
explains this inconsistency ? Why should keen activity in some directions
exclude keen activity in other directions? Further investigation will, I
hope, supply the explanation. Meanwhile we may here profitably investi-
gate the degrees of attention.
The book which I read I found, at best, troublesome to follow. To
secure adequate comprehension, intricate passages, with their windings and
interconnections, had to be grasped simultaneously. In trying to assimilate
what I was reading, the attention had to be more and more restricted to
the elucidation of some detail, and had to be kept fixed on that.
\_Chanenge the preceding statement^ I had to be oblivious of everything
that passed about me. Such keenness, such prolonged preference, is, how-
ever, not common. It more frequently happens that we are interrupted
by a conversation going on near us, or by any striking sound, sight or
other sensation. \Observe normal occasions.^ Usually we should find
it difficult not to listen to at least parts of the conversation, and commonly
we should also notice various trifles. In this normal condition the field
of attention is not determined for any length of time by one thought, and
we are not so absorbed that we could not be easily aroused. We still
ignore the majority of objects around us ; but these are not of a nature to
appeal to us strongly. Advancing another step, in the opposite direction
to that of being absorbed, the attention becomes lax, and we find our-
selves rambling in thought, following everything in turn, but nothing long.
We are, in fact, in a state of reverie : more open to overtures, while the
field of activity is changing repeatedly. [Exaniitie suck cases.] Hence we
see that (i) in keen attention we are almost wholly oblivious of our sur-
roundings (inner and outer) ; (2) in normal attention we are to some extent
oblivious of our surroundings ; and (3) in lax attention we are guided
almost solely by casual impressions derived from our surroundings (inner
and outer).
To conclude. Looking about me carelessly I fwtice little in each of a large
number of objects. Looking closely L apprehend about as much in one of
-60 GENERAL ANALYSES
those objects* The amount observed has remained the same in both
■instances.! Whether attention is keen, normal or lax, entails no difference
as to the quantity dealt with. \Try to disprove this^
22. — Attention, in thk Normal Waking Statk, is Quantitatively
ALIKE WITH All Men at Am. Times.
It appears from the above that the total ([uantity of attention or neural
activity is always the same, or nearly so, increased activity in one direction
being at the expense of decreased activity in another. Attention, again,
being transformation or expenditure of energy — on the physiological side — •
we can understand how it is that, if our fund is limited, employing labour
in one direction, as in concentrating our forces on the niceties of one
problem, we are debarred from employing the same part of the fund in
another direction. If we, therefore, wish to attend to many details at once,
the activity must be judiciously distributed over a large area, i.e., we notice
little in each of several objects. Hence keenness of attention will vary
inversely with the quantity which we wish distinctly to observe or under-
stand. This we find is actually the case, e.g., we can sharply fix a whole
landscape ; but then its bare form alone can be apprehended. \^Exafni?ie the
limits of fixation.^ We are not surprised, therefore, that under ordinary
circumstances we meet with an amount of attention, or neural activity, of
almost equal degree in every human being.
Lipps rout^hly agrees with the tenor of this section. " When the vital conditions
remain uniform, and during short periods, psychic force may be considered as at least
approximately constant, and this constancy may be applied to explain conscious facts"
{Grundla/sachen des Seelenlebens, 1883, p. 174). Here the agreement ends. Ladd
makes primary attention to cover the whole field of consciousness. He says : " Primary
attention, essentially considered, is the variously related degrees of psychic energy
expended upon the different aspects, elements, and objects, in the one field of conscious-
ness" {Psychology, 1894, pp. 74-5). Here, if I am not mistaken, Ladd fails to
recognise that the "aspects, elements, and objects," are themselves complexes. Kohn
{Zttr Theorie der Aufnierksanikeit, 1895) holds opinions similar to those of Ladd.
Excepting these three writers I recall no others who do not very considerably limit the
* " The greater the number of objects to which our consciousness is simultaneously
■extended, the smaller is the intensity with which it is able to consider each." So writes
Hamilton {Metaphysics, ed. 1S77, i, p. 237). From the point of view of attention, the
<listribution, and not the intensity, is changed. We notice a dozen points in a grain of
sand, instead of a dozen points in the sea-shore where the grain lay. So also I see the
fanciful wall-paper as well as a picture on the wall. Instead, I may lessen the wall-
paper detail, and increase the picture detail, and further increase the details as to one
figure of the picture at the expense of all other details. Lastly, I may attend principally
to the fan in the picture or to a flower on that fan, which flower I had not at first noticed
at all. The quantity of detail in all these cases, as can be easily verified, remains the
same. Intensity has only regard to the feelings observable in keen attention.
t Stewart {Elements, 1808, ch. 2) holds that only the minimum visibile can be
-observed at a time. He thus reduces the field of attention to a point. So Preyer,
Naturwissenschaftliche Thatsachen, 1880, p. in : "Only one sensation can be felt at
•one moment, and that because the attention cannot be divided." See also Wundt,
Messung des Bewusstseinsumfanges, 1890, and Zur Frage des Bewusstseinsumfangesy
VI 891.
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED ' 6r'
range of attention. For instance, Ribot {Psychologic de F Attentioit, 1889, p. 175}
contends that if we take men in the mass, "spontaneous and especially voluntary
attention represent exceptional states." So Dr. Stout, Manual of Psychology, 1898, p. 65 :
"Attention is simply conation in so far as it finds satisfaction in the fuller presentation
of its object, without actual change in the object."
23. — Felt Strain, Desire to Attend, etc.
When we speak of effort, or strain, from the strictly psychological point
of view, we mean a feeling or set of feelings that indicate the presence of a
need which persists in seeking satisfaction in the face of solid obstacles.
The feeling of effort is almost imperceptible in lax attention, and, largely
so, in normal attention, because, in these cases, solid obstacles to needs
do not exist or are avoided. Also, when neural functioning is more
vigorous, as on account of a spell of extra good health or spirits, we think
with less difficulty, and there appears at such times a feeling as if a strain
had been removed. When health is precarious, the contrary effect is
commonly observed, our thinking being accompanied by a decided feeling
of effort. When attention is keen, as in pronounced deliberation, this
feeling is also noticeable. The act of intentionally ignoring the surround-
ings, of turning from the conversation to the book, is accompanied by a
distinct feeling of this nature. \Add to this //i-/.]
When we try hard to re-member something ; when we wish to rid our-
selves of a thought which resists disintegration ; when we follow a closely
reasoned argument; when we wrestle with a difficult problem; when we
think about a subject in the face of distractions ; or when we are dead to
the solicitations of sense ; or, in short, when a need persists in seeking
satisfaction in spite of discouragement, this feeling is present in a marked
form. We aver at such times that we are making an effort, that there is a
feeling of strain, that the mind is active, and the like. The feeling itself
belongs to the class of central or thought feelings, and derives whatever
significance it boasts of from the changes which it accompanies. This
feeling is by no means a measure of work done. When interest is deep,
or when excitement or a strong motive is swaying us, we quickly lose sight
of the world around us without noticing any considerable strain. On the
other hand, in the absence of interest, or when in bad health, there is little
work done, while strenuous endeavours of a need to satisfy itself under
those conditions are yet unprofitable and fatiguing.
Sometimes, again, we are unable to make a sensible effort, the need
being balked as when we wish to stay a torrent of irrelevant thoughts
which nevertheless hurries on undisturbed, as if in mockery. We will
decidedly, and there exists a determination, which is unchallenged and
persists, yet there is no perceptible feeUng of effort nor any effect as the
result of our volition. Effort and change are not related as invariable
antecedent and resultant. Change in tvhat is immediately given may pro-
ceed in spite of effort to the contrary — one need being easily victor over
another ; effort jjiay be unable to effect a change ; and there ?nay be decided
^3 GENERAL ANALYSES
willing jvithout any felt effort. Corresponding with this feeling, but not
prDportionately, wc have on the physical side work attempted or done.
After a good night's rest, we are fresh and full of energy. After a holiday,
we return to town reinvigorated. After a bad night's sleep, we feel tired,
and the attention has its point blunted. After prolonged exertion we are
exhausted. [Test the above statements.']
Some Opinions.— \VA\\cy, Letters, First Series, 1855, p. 85 : «' Attention, when not the
result of strong feeling, ... is only purposely directing our observation or thoughts to a
particular object." Bain, Emotions and the Will, 1875 : " What the will can do is to fix
the attention " (p. 370) ; " in mental attention we can fix one idea firmly in the view, while
others are coming and going unheeded " (p. 370). Baldwin, Senses and Intellect, 1S90 :
"Attention intensifies a mental state" (p. 72) ; "the most essential peculiarity of atten-
tion is a feeling of expenditure which its exercise occasions in mental life" (p. 69).
Beneke, Neue Psycholojpe, 1845, p. 142 : "What we commonly call the degree of atten-
tion bestowed on'a sensory content, is nothing else but the relation between the totality
of existing traces [or developed dispositions, p. 219], and the number of those which
actually enter into the present content." Bradley, Is there any special Activity of
Attention? 18S6: ".Attention (whatever it may be besides) at any rate means pre-
dominance in consciousness. . . . That which we attend to is said to engross us. . . .
We may compare it to the . . . area of distinct vision in the retinal field" (p. 306) ; "the
machinery [of attention] consists of an idea which is able to dominate and so fixes an
object connected with itself" (p. 312). Cappie, Some Points in the Physiology of
Attention, Belief and Will, 1S86, p. 201 : "Attention is the bringing of the conscious-
ness to the focus in some special direction." Dewey, Psychology, 1887, p. 133 : "The
essential characteristic of attention is activity directed towards some end." Fouillee, in
Brain, 1890, p. 351: "Attention rather makes [sensations] more distinct, qualitatively
more differentiated by isolating and protracting them in consciousness." Herbart,
Psychologie, 1825, § 128 : " In its essence attention is nothing but the power of producing
an intensification of perception." Hodgson, Metaphysic of Experietice, 1S98, iii,
pp. 124-5: "Attention is a reaction called forth or determined by new, prominent, or
comparatively vivid feelings, or changes in feeling, and is the note we take of them as
features in the current of consciousness as it occurs. It is more than the reaction by
which we simply perceive ; it is a heightened reaction which is forced upon us by certain
perceptions, which we then perceive either in contrast with, or to the exclusion of,
others." Heinrich, Die Aufmerksamkeit, 1896, p. 384: "Where the physiological
conditions favour the reception of the stimulus, there men say that the impression has
been attended to, or has become clear ; where the same conditions diminish the effect of
the stimulus, there men say that the impression has not been attended to, or has been
vaguely apprehended." Hoffding, Psychology, 1 891, p. 315 : "It is precisely the
gathering of energy round some one idea as the centre of association, that constitutes
attention." James, Psycholo^^y, 1890, i : " Every one knows what attention is. It is
the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem
several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalisation, concentration
of consciousness, are of its essence" (pp. 403-4). "We never make an effort to attend
to an object except for the sake of some remote interest which the effort will serve "
(p. 416). Kreibig, Die Aufmerksamkeit, 1897, p. 2 : " Attention is an act of will directed
towards making an outer impression or a reproduced idea, or parts of these, clear and
distinct." Kiilpe {Psychologie, 1893, p. 9) holds the regulation views. Ladd, Psychology,
1894, p. 81 : "The distribution of attention depends upon intensity of feeling." Lipps,
Grundtatsachen, 1883, p. 620 : "Attention is no special psychic force, but reproductive
activity itself, concentrating, and by means of concentration more able to overcome
obstacles." Maudsley, Physiology of Mind, 1876, p. 308: "Attention is the arrest of
. the transformation of energy for a moment — the maintenance of a particular tension."
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 63
James Mill, Analysis, ed. 1869, ii, p. 364: " Having a pleasurable or painful sensation,
and attending to it, seem not to be two things, but one and the same thing." Lloyd
Morgan, Comparative Psychology, 1S94, p. 1S9 : "We may describe attention as the bring-
ing of something to the focus of consciousness, and the holding it there." Shand {An
Analysis of Attention, 1894) holds, in opposition to some current views, that attention
implies not predominant or clear ideas, but predominant or clearer awareness-of-ideas.
Stout, Analytic Psychology, 1896, i, p. 181 : "What characterises attention proper as
opposed to inattention is the singling out of special contents so as to discriminate special
objects." Stumpf, Tonpsychologie, 1883, i: "Attention is identical with interest, and
interest is a feeling" (p. 68) ; " the essential function of the attention . . . lies in the pro-
longed maintenance of an idea in consciousness " (p. 72). Sully, Uumafi Mind, 1892, i :
Attention "secures increase of vividness and of definition or distinctness" (p. 77); "it
can be dispensed with in proportion as the psychical process grows habitual by repetition "
(p. 78); it is to be defined on its subjective side as "mental activity immediately re-
sulting in a raising in point of intensity, completeness, and definiteness of certain sensa-
tions or other psychical phenomena, and a corresponding lowering of any other
simultaneously presented sensations," etc. (p. 142); "it is a narrowing or concentrating
in consciousness" (p. 144); "attention is detention in consciousness" (p. 155). Titchener,
Psychology, 1896, p. 125 : " The idea to which we attend is made clearer, and lasts longer
than other ideas." Volkmann, Lehrlmch, 1895, ii, p. 204: "To attend to something
means : firmly to grasp an idea, a train of ideas, or a presentational mass, and defeat their
tendency to sink."
Note on the Above. — The universal opinion appears to be that attention is not co-extensive
with thought and action. For my part I find it impossible to agree with such a view,
and that for the following reasons. If we take the area of distinct vision by itself without
regard to what adjoins that area, we obtain a caricature of reality ; for what appears
about the focus, though comparatively vague, is still of crucial importance as far as sight
is concerned. Indeed, the vagueness is due to the structure of the eye, while, probably,
the attention is as much, or nearly as much, engaged with what is outside as with what
is inside the focus. For ordinary purposes the total field of vision counts, however vague
some parts may be. Again, the "distinct" area of vision is in itself but partly distinct,
'Only portions of it appearing in definite outline. This becomes evident when we focus a
part of some tvhole which we had focussed previously : here some details which had been
vague are now clear, while other details which had been clear have become vague. For
these reasons, I am tempted to hold that the focus of vision is equal to the total field of
vision, or, speaking more generally, that the focus of assimilation at any time is co-exten-
sive with the total field of assimilation. Once more, the meaning of the word attention
frequently covers the whole field of activity. We speak of persons attending to their
work, to their lessons, to their duties, to their business, and so forth. When, however, a
thing is not attended to, the implication is usually that the attention was occupied with
something undesirable. To be inattentive means thus in common speech, to attend to
any particular object sporadically and carelessly, and not, as I understand it, to attend to
nothing at all. Master Scatter-brains and Master Gather-brains are both equally
attending without pause, except that the first can overcome insignificant obstacles only,
the latter being a giant and the former a dwarf as regards efforts of attention. All
things considered, then, it seems strange that psychologists who should be free from the
popular bias of only observing what is prominent, should have identified attention with a
particular and undefined degree of attention. It is as if one should say that only very
heavy objects had weight, or that only very strong men had strength, for the so-called
special characteristics of attention are characteristics more or less appertaining to all
thought and action at every moment and in every part. The fact that human activity is
throughout determined by needs, tends to prove that focalisation, concentration, ex-
clusiveness, insistence or predominance, are general features, though this does not destroy
the notion that there are degrees of attention, and that the attention tone is not a
•constant.
64 GENERAL ANAL VSES
At least for practical purposes it is essential that we should appreciate
the bf)dily aspect of attention. Just as, broadly speaking, men's muscular
strength varies only within a moderate compass in the individual and from
individual to individual, and that because the organic transformations are
equable, so we naturally expect the same to hold good of the brain, and
conseciuenlly of its functions. This is really the case. The only thing
measurable which at all corresponds in the sense realm to work done by
the brain is, as we saw, the feeling of effort. But this passing feeling, besides
being itself, since it is a feeling, the result of attention, cannot be con-
sidered a constant factor in change. In the mind, as ordinarily conceived,
we have nothing corresponding to the stable and complex human organism.
Introspection yields nothing for us to measure but the elusive feeling of
effort, if we leave aside what is immediately given. Hence we refer to the
physical transformations, which we can gauge, to illumine for us the
nature of the process of attention. Strictly speaking, to express ourselves
physiologically, we ineaji by attention, neural functioning, or, less concisely,
the expenditure of that portion of the fund of bodily energy which is devoted
to neural functioning. The act of attention expresses such neural func-
tioning and constitutes primarily a process of organic re-adjustment, as
when the healthy stomach craves for food and obtains it through neural
mediation. When we say that we attend, we mean that neural changes
are proceeding in a certain direction. Similarly, when we speak of the
field of attention, we understand, for our purpose, the field of neural
functioning. More generally stated : in the ?iormal ivaking state something
is always immediately given and that something is a constant quantity which
constantly cha?iges at a constant rate. The word Attention is throughout
this work employed in the sense here defined. (See further sec. 48.)
I speak of neural functioning, so as to exclude activities not specially connected with
the central nervous system, e.g., the actions of the liver or the kidneys. At the same
time, however, the total fund of bodily energy can only be parcelled out in theory, while
motor activity, alluded to before, is not fundamentally connected with sensations (sec. 19,
5th conclusion). The physical processes which are covered by the words. Work,
Energ}', Attention, I leave undetermined, and nothing can be said here as to the
precise dimensions of the field of attention or of the rate at which it changes. In the
present unsatisfactory state of neurology, I naturally decline to commit myself to any
theory. For a discussion of the subject on the physiological side, see : Bain, in Brain,
1S90 ; Bastian, On the Neural Processes underlying Attentio7t and Volilion, 1892 ;.
Cappie, Some Points in the Physiology of Attention, Belief, and Will, 1S86 (reprinted
in Popular Science Monthly) ; Delabarre, V Influence de V Attention sur les Motive-
mcnts Kcspiratoires, 1S92 ; Dissard, Influetice de F Attention sur la Perceptio7i des
Sensations, 1895 ; Fere, Physiologie de P Attention, 1890; Ferrier, The Functions of
the Brain, 1885, who says that " intellectual attention is mainly ideal vision" (p. 464),
and that "the motor centres are not merely the basis of sensory-motor cohesions and
acquisitions, but also the basis of the powers of concentration and control of ideation"
(p. 468) ; Fouillee, in Braitt, 1890 ; Hamlin, Attention and Distraction, 1896, who
discusses the numerous physiological theories ; Hofler, Psychische Arbeit, 1894-5 ;
Hylan, Fluctuations of the Attention, 1S96 ; Landmann, Ueber die Beziehung der
Attnung zur psychischen Thdtigkeit, 1895 ; MacDougall, The Physical Effects of
Attention, 1896 ; Marillier, Le Mccanisme de r Attention, 1889 ; Obersteiner, Expert-
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 65
mental Researches on Attention y 1879 ; Pilzecker, Die Lekre von der sinnlichen
Auftnerksamkeit, 1889; Ribot, Psychologie de r Attention, 1889, who states that "atten-
tion acts always on muscles and by means of muscles" (p. 3); Sanctis, Studien iiber
die Auftnerksamkeit, 1898; Stout, Apperception and the Movement of Attention, 1891 ;
Sully, The Psycho-physical Process in Attention, 1890 ; Waller, The Sense of [Muscular]
Effort, 1891 ; and Washburn, Subjective Colours and the After-image : their SigniUcanca
for the Theory of Attention, 1899.
24. — Deliberate Attention.
Deliberate attention, together with attention under difficulties, or rapt
attention, have generally been confused with attention as such. Suppose
that I wish to follow a difficult argument in the book which I am reading.
Though I strive to attend, my thoughts, as a matter of fact, are wandering
nearly all the while. [Is this so with you ? Describe.'] I recur to the
argument again and again, and fly off at a tangent almost instantly. We
encounter here an ineffectual desire. My wish to attend is only a pious
wish, and is not converted into activity in the required direction. On
such occasions there may be no felt effort traceable ; we may return to our
subject with ease; and yet leave it, against our intention, in the same
manner. Deliberateness of process is in such cases at a discount. We
have to persist ceaselessly wishing to attend, because a single resolution
does not suffice. Effort is here useless. The wish, again, must not be
confounded with the deed. We are really active in other directions,
whatever our wish may be.
If the volitional state is said to occasion certain changes, this belief
is explicable on the basis of an insufficient induction; for volition, or
an unequivocal resolution, may exist in perfection without influencing the
trend of thought. [Observe such occasions.] This state is, at best, a
fairly reliable sign that a change will take place. Apart from this, its
prophetic function, it has only the significance of an item in a series.
We might as well argue that the danger signal itself brings the train to
a standstill, because the second event usually follows the first; or that
trains can only stop when a danger signal is exhibited.
Attention may be successful or telling without the presence of marked
strain. A trained musician follows with ease an involved piece of music,
which feat he could not have accomplished at an earlier stage of his
career, however great the effort. It is not that he is now more eager
to attend than he formerly was. On the contrary, he is less absorbed.
But though arduous attention has diminished, its desirable effect has
increased. Re-attention, by excluding waste of attention, has the virtue of
making attention less troublesome, and of enabling us to attend to much
with little effort.
Deliberate attention so-called is not essentially different from casual
attention. Neural functioning is in the former case more pre-adjusted ; it
is more exclusive, or keener ; it is less diffuse. [Test this.] Hence we
are more likely to reach a goal quickly. However, the process is still the
same in both instances. We are busy with some unfamiliar detail, till,
5
66 GENERA L ANAL YSES
through repeated endeavours, it becomes familiar. Then we are enabled
to busy ourselves with a second detail, then a third, until we have at last
completed our examination. Attention is strenuously deliberate when
it is accompanied by a somewhat more than usually decided notion of
an end to be attained. It is action, guided by a rather pressing need or
functional tendency, and argues more than normal absorption. In
substance, all attention is deliberate, since all thought and action is re-
lational. As I walk along the road my eyes are turned to at least sixty
objects a minute, and each object discerned implies deliberate activity.
[Test repeatedly, ami describe.] It is a non-organic view which gives
rise to psychological word-couples such as habitual-deliberate, voluntary-
involuntary, attentive-inattentive.
Opinions on Voluntary and Involuntary Attention,— BMvf'm, Senses and Intellect,
1890, p. 69 : Attention " is the act of holding a presentation before the mind. It is in
all cases a conscious act." Drobisch ^Psychologies 1S42, p. 80) distinguishes between
voluntary and involuntary attention, "the former is directed to objects, the latter is
attracted by them." Hamilton, Metaphysics, 1877, i, p. 237 : "Attention is a voluntary
act." Herbart, Lehrbnch, 1816 (Ilartmann's edition), p. 147: "Attention is partly
involuntary and passive, and partly voluntary and active." \\6M\nz{Psychology, 1891,
p. 315) distinguishes between the two classes. Maudsley, Physiology of Mind, 1876,
p. 312 : " It is an obvious distinction to make between involuntary and voluntary attention,
the interest of the object or subject forcibly soliciting it in the former case, while it is
said to be directed by an effort of will in the latter case." Ribot, Psychologie de I Attention,
1889, p. 3 : "There are two well-distinguished forms of attention, the one spontaneous,
natural ; the other voluntary, artificial." Stout, Analytic Psychology, 1896, i, p. 180 :
"Attention is the self-direction of the mind to an object." Sully (Human Mind,
1892, i, p. 164) says of voluntary attention that it "is marked off by a clear idea of
end or purpose." Wundl, Grundriss der Psychologie, 1S96, p. 245: "That condition
which is characterised by peculiar feelings, and which accompanies the clearer appre-
hension of any psychic content is called attention."
According to the views submitted in this chapter, the characteristics enumerated in the
above list are of no more scientific value than differences of stature in human beings.
The organic flux in thought and action, by excluding this and including that, necessarily
implies "predominance," " fuller presentation," "clearer apprehension," "heightened
reaction," "concentration," and the like. It would be interesting to have it defined
when "concentration" or "predominance" are absent.*
25. — The Measure of Attention is its Effectiveness.
We conclude, then, generally, that the sole measure of attention, as far
as a particular field is concerned, e.g., this page, is what is immediately
given of that field, and that felt strain, desire to attend, or attempts to
attend, are not a measure of attention. A desire to attend may or may
not be followed by the desired attention ; an attempt, however desperate,
may equally fail.
Let us add an illustration, so as to make the trend of this section plainer.
The novice, in his struggles to follow a demonstration, succeeds but
* To this, Kiilpe (Zur lehre von der Aufmerksamkeit, 1897, p. 31) replies : " I cannot
recall ever doubling whether in a special instance I was attending or not." I would
suggest that not casual recollection but conscientious experiment should form the basis of
a serious statement.
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 67
casually, the main portion of his energy being spent, as a matter of fact,
in other directions. When, at last, he has grasped the matter thoroughly,
he turns to it with ease, and attends to it more than previously, without
any waste or friction in the effort to attend.
26. — Attention has no Focus.
Normal, as distinguished from keen and lax, attention allows of elabora-
tion without our observing any appreciable strain or noting any restlessness.
Imagining this normal strain as a centrally placed point in a line of points
gradually thickening from left to right, X ... Y ... Z, we obtain towards
X a lessening of the strain, and, towards Z, an increase of the strain. \^Test
your capacity.'] The one end like the other is quickly reached. We soon
cease to perceive, and we rapidly become incapable of further scattering
our thoughts. By our very organisation the pendulum of attention ever
tends to rest at Y, and this tendency we cannot counteract except by violent
means, and then only fitfully. Under normal circumstances, we must dX\.end,
must burn up the normal allowance of fuel, must " move on." * What we
have stated implies that there is no precise point which we may call the
focus of attention. While writing now, there are some details which I but
just distinguish, others which require normal effort, others which demand
sensible strain, and still others which I do not observe at all. [Describe
mifiutety such an instance.] The totality of my present sensations and
images is the result or the equivalent of neural processes of a complex
character. Throughout life we always, at one and the same time, attend
more to some details and less to others. Even in studying the book referred
to, some of the energy went into the act of reading. If we try not to attend
at all, we are soon forced to attend ; and if we make a supreme effort to fix
the attention, we only succeed to a very hmited extent, and for a brief
period, and that effort narrows the field of attention proportionately. Details,
which we should have perceived normally, escape us, when the limited
field of attention is already occupied.
27. — Abnormal Attention.
Under ordinary circumstances, as we have seen, the total amount of
energy, as well as the rate of its expenditure, is nearly constant in the
human being. A consideration of abnormal instances will bring into relief
the normal state of attention, and yield further proof of the probable cor-
rectness of our interpretation.
We are usually awake for about sixteen hours, and asleep for about eight.
During sleep the senses are apparently inactive. The noises in the room
* As early as Locke this was recognised. He says : " Hinder the constant succession
of fresh [ideas a man,] I thinlc, . . . cannot, though he may commonly choose, whether
he will heedfully observe and consider them " (Human Understanding, bk. 2, ch. 14,
sec. 15). So Hamilton, Metaphysics, ed. 1877, i, p. 247 : " We may close our ears or shut
our eyes ; . . . but we cannot, with our organs unobstructed, wholly refuse our aUention
at will."
68 GENERAL ANALYSES
and in the street, as well as other stimuli, have ceased to appeal to us.
Taking the case of dreamless sleep, there is a considerable decrease in the
total energy to be expended, e.^., waking in the night we feel drowsy, and
thought as well as locomotion encounters opposition. There is in sleep no
need urging us to attend to what is going on about us, and hence it is
impossible that ordinary stimuli should affect us. As we have seen, it is
attention or neural activity which transforms the unintelligible into the
intelligible ; and as attention is absent there can be no intelligible appre-
hension. In the waking state, only a fraction of what takes place is
assimilated by us. In the sleeping state, even that fraction is ignored ; and
this is not because of our being absorbed, but because of a reduction
or a diversion of neural activity. As far as appreciable systems are
concerned, we meet with death in deep sleep. Central activity having
lapsed, sensations have ceased with it. The life of thought is there only
potentially, or in a rudimentary condition. Probably only the very faintest
feelings exist. We meet with a parallel to this in the waking state. Some-
times, through ill-health, we are in a perpetual doze. \Describe such an
instance?^ We hardly integrate anything, or think about anything. There
are no reactions worth speaking of. In deep sleep there is a further
lowering of this dozing state.
In dream-sleep attention is at work at a level which is usually below the
normal. Nevertheless, since to see or imagine involves central nervous
processes, the forms and figures of dream life are as truly creations as the
forms and figures of waking life. Still, in dream life there is almost invari-
ably little connection between the thoughts, the most superficial suggestions
appearing to be on an equality with the gravest considerations. [ Verify
M/V.] All that requires appreciable effort is missing in dreams (ch. lo).
In fainting we have a similar instance to that aftbrded by deep sleep.
The amount of attention or neural activity present is almost nil, the result
being that nothing is observed and that motion ceases.
The phenomena of hypnotism, considering the psychic aspect alone,
resemble those of sleep, only that dreams are suggested to the " subject."
The deafness and blindness of the latter are occasioned by attention being
absent as far as all but the suggester, or the things suggested, are concerned.
In proportion as the "subject" has visions, so far is he attending. The
very fact that he imagines anything which for him possesses colour, sound
or temperature, is conclusive proof, as we have seen, that his brain is busy,
that he is elaborating sense elements.
Thus sleep, dreams, delirium, insanity, and other abnormal states, find
their explanation in what has been said in elucidation of the normal process
of attention.*
* Prof. Ilibben has an interesting article on "Sensory Stimulation by Attention," in
the Psychological A'evie-v, 1S95, in which he analyses abnormal cases where the attention,
factor is prominent. Of one case he writes : "Whenever the subject is one especially
interesting to her, she hears without great difficulty ; but whenever there is no. interest in
conversation it is with greatest difficulty that she can be made to hear at all ; and it is
impossible to gain her attention by any sounds, however loud, if she is engrossed in any
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 69
28. — The Larger Waves of Attention.
The quantity of attention, in the waking state, is, as we have learnt,
normally always the same in all normal persons. It might appear from
this that we could at any time attend continuously along one line ; but this
is not so, for protracted thought in one direction tires, though we can
freely continue our thought in other directions. \_Noiice suck casesJ] In
accordance with this we find that in ordinary life the topics of thought
change considerably. We also generally tend to pursue a subject only for
a limited time if that subject requires much thought, and we incline to
recur to it repeatedly rather than follow it without pause. Neural function-
ing, in conformity with the spatial nature of the brain, or as the result of
other neural factors, tends to change its direction at intervals. Hence we
become tired of one subject, and yet find no difficulty in busying ourselves
with others. It is, therefore, profitable to allow for pauses in our think-
ing. Instead of imagining attention in time as a smooth sea, we have to
look upon it as a stormy one where the surface consists of huge waves.
These waves, which form the ocean of thought, represent the several
subjects which constitute the field of attention in time, and the largest
waves are constantly broken up, so as allow others to form. Or, we may
say, that as the blood is propagated, not in a steady stream, but in waves,
so in attention, or neural functioning, advance proceeds by pulsations.
29. — The Smaller Waves of Attention.
Yet even this account misses a portion of the truth. The following is, for
instance, observable when the attention is turned fixedly to a single aspect
of an object. Sometimes, try as we will, we keep on attending afresh
instead of attending uninterruptedly, as we desire. At other times we succeed
in attending continuously, and then our look [after how long .?] develops into
a stare, and what we are observing loses all intelligibility. (Sec. 19, first
conclusion.) In normal life we ceaselessly pass from detail to detail, for
persistent attention to one detail, as in hypnotism, produces vacancy or
non-attention. (Sees. 220 and 232.) While, therefore, normal attention
tends to wander from subject to subject, it also tends to be rapidly moving
within the subject from one detail to another. There are, in other words,
larger and smaller waves of attention. When we dwell on a subject, we
consider the several items of which it is composed. When we study a
detail beyond a few moments, a vacuum results. Attention is like a river;
it cannot rest ; it must report progress. If the larger waves represent the
subjects of thought, then the minute ripples which cover the whole surface
absorbing task or play" (p. 370). Stout {Analytic Psychology, 1896, i, pp. 188-9)
writes of himself: " I am somewhat deaf, and when conversation is going on among a
considerable number of persons I am usually unable to hear anything which is not directly
addressed to myself with a distinct utterance by my immediate neighbour ; all the rest of
what is being said around me is a confused murmur. I sometimes find, however, that if
any one even at some distance from me happens to refer to philosophy or any other subject
in which I have a keen interest, his words disengage themselves from the chaos of sounds
:and fix my attention."
70 GENERAL ANAL YSES
of the stormy sea represent the essentially dynamic property of attention.
Attention, lilce all work, is movement. At every instant we have to pass
onwards, and we halt only as long as there is something for us to do.*
30. — Narrowing thk Normal Field of Attention.
Let us begin with an illustration. It is some time since I visited a
certain friend. As I enter a street near that friend's house, I see his terrier
who used to accompany me on my rambles. I shout across the road " Cjesar."
The dog instantly turns. His head and neck, his limbs, his tail, his whole
body, in short, appear rigid and motionless. His eyes are vacant. His
breathing, I suspect, has almost ceased. After a few moments the eyes
suddenly brighten, the body becomes a volume of living springs, and the
dog bounds over to me. I am recognised by him. My voice apparently
has struck some familiar chord, for else he would have taken no notice of
my call. His whole being, we may say, has been sucked into the whirl-
pool of a known voice. The available attention, under these exceptional
circumstances, was centred on one detail. From his stiffness and his
blank gaze, it was clear that all central activity, except that of deciphering
my personality, was absent. His eyes, his ears, his nostrils, his imagina-
tion, struck work. Energy was sorely needed in one direction, and was,
therefore, withdrawn from other directions.
In this instance the field of immediately traceable activity was reduced
almost to zero. There was not merely an exchange of one field for
another ; but the second field had almost no dimensions. The attention
machinery, which would normally produce a certain quantity of immedi-
ately traceable detail, was working subterraneously. We meet here with
purposive vacancy. Compared with ordinary thought, we miss subject,
points of subject and sense elements. Otherwise there are but confused
feelings to make up for the extraordinary shrinkage of the view ; perhaps
even these are absent. It is a narrowing of the traceable field of attention
with a corresponding reduction of traceable activity. \Exami7je such cases
carefuUy?\
Such shrinkage is produced on various occasions, notably : fi) when we
are trying hard to re-collect something 5(2) when we put a difficult question,
to ourselves and insist on obtaining an answer; (3) when we attempt to
grasp an intricate problem, as in the case of understanding what we read ;
(4) when we wish to think of a subject under unfavourable circumstances
as in ignoring a conversation going on around us; (5) when we slip into
bed, close our eyes, and make ready for sleep ; (6) when we are subjected
to long-continued and monotonous stimulation, as when the hypnotic state
is induced; and, lastly, (7) when we are on the qui vive as regards some
* As to certain minute oscillations of the attention, as when listening to a just per-
ceptible sound, see especially Miinsterberg, Sch-vanktmgcn der Aufnierksamkeit, Beitrage,
1889, Heft 2; also Hylan, Fliicl2iations of the Attention, 1896 and 1898 ; Urbantschitsch,
Pfliigers Archiv, 18S1 and 18S2, and Ccntralblatt f. d. Med. Wisseuschaft, 1875 ;.
Cook, Fluctuation of the Attention to Musical Tones, 1899; and, in Wundt's PhiL
Studien, Lange {1887), Eckener and Pace (1892), Marbe and Lehmann (1893).
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 71
matter, as in endeavouring to hear whether a nightingale is singing in the
distance. \^Test the ivhole list and add to //.] In all these instances our
neural system is like a stretched elastic band which has a strong tendency
to return to its normal condition. If we persist in such an attitude for
long, we invite headache and dizziness. Usually, therefore, our attempts
are consecutive ; but even then frequent trials, at short intervals, to narrow
the field of attention defeat themselves.
31. — Expanding the Normal Field of Attention.
The normal field of attention may be narrowed. May it also be
expanded? That does not appear possible. {Challenge this statement.']
Suppose that we desire. to observe all that is passing around us. We act
accordingly, and we soon learn that no appreciable growth of the field of
attention has taken place. What happens is that we quickly fly from detail
to detail, the peculiar excitement favouring retention of what is observed.
It may be, however, that excitement induces a more than usually voluminous
and rapid flow of thought.
32. — Brain and Mind.
Assuming that the brain resembles the other portions of the human
organism, then what we have stated in the four preceding sections is in
accordance with what we should expect. Take for an illustration the arm.
The same human being, at his stage of development, puts forth about
the same exertion. Strenuous and monotonous exercise of the arm tires,
while different parts are readily employed in succession without consequent
fatigue to other parts ; or, what is the same thing, the arm, after being
tired with one kind of work, easily performs some other task, because
different muscles are called into play.* Thus the larger as well as the
smaller waves of attention find their explanation on the physiological side, in
the structure and arrangement of the nervous system. Also, when the
current of attention is stayed, we find the reason in the absorption of the
attention in certain nervous work, the correlate of which is the re-member-
ing some fact or answering some question. {Test the above illustrations.]
The differences between muscular and neural work are similarly ex-
plained. While the size of the muscles varies considerably from individual
to individual, and from infancy to manhood, the brain soon ceases to grow,
and varies only to a trifling extent between individual and individual.!
Hence we should expect the field of attention to vary little in the individual
and in different individuals, and this expectation is justified by the facts
which our inquiry has elicited. The brain is also an essentially active
organ, and hence we always tend to move forward. The psychology com-
pletely agrees with the neurology.
*So Foster, Physiology, part 3, 1897, §665.
t Weight of male brains : Children at birth, 330 grammes ; from 1 to 2 years, 94i
grammes ; from 30 to 40 years, 1364 grammes ; and from 70 to 80 years, 1288 grammes
(Quain's Anatotny, 1893, iii, part i, p. 178).
73 GENERAL ANALYSES
33. — The Field of Attention.
What is meant by the field of attention? \Test tJie contents of this
section.^ Let us assume that we wish to Hft an object. If it is but an
empty matchbox on a table near by, no sensible strain is noticeable.
There is no change in the field of attention as a whole, except that a
portion of the total state is mechanically excerpted and made to give way as
mechanically to the newcomer* The greater the weight we have to lift,
the greater the strain. Suppose we see before us on the ground a lump
of iron marked "112 pounds." We wish to lift it. We have lifted
weights before, and we know that much of our strength will be required
for the task. Observe how we prepare, t We take a deep breath. The
muscles of the body harden. The feet are firmly planted. We assume
the most convenient position. We are almost a blank as far as anything
but our intention is concerned. Our strength, except that absolutely
required otherwise, is spent in prospectively raising the weight, or what is
its equivalent. When we are about to make an unusual effort, or are
making it, we abandon general thought and observation. If the weight
does not demand the whole of our strength, we can lift another weight
alongside of it, or we may think about other things. When the object to
be moved is but a rose petal, a child may be humming a tune, skipping,
and wondering about the nature of a rose petal — all at the same time.
(See sec. 25.)
34. — Attention Energy and Motion Energy are One.
What is true of muscular strain, and the consequent narrowing of the
field of attention, is true of neural strain ; for the two are one. We have
noted how we prepare to raise a heavy weight. An exact counterpart of
this is to be found in connection with ordinary attention. Suppose I
think that I discern a voice in the wood. I "strain every nerve" to hear.
\Test such a case?\ Am I now attending? I am attending only in the
same sense that I am when preparing to lift a weight. The attention
is absorbed in the preparation. The brain is becoming supersensitive
at certain points. Without this I should fail in my task.j If other
thoughts do not vanish and if labour is not concentrated, we cannot move
a heavy weight, and thus when the field of attention is left unaffected,
we cannot attend vigorously in a new direction. \Is that so ?] The field
must change as the attention becomes keen. All bodily motion, like all
thought, results from organic transformations. Attention reflects but one
class of work which appears now as motion and again as sense.
We have remarked that it is not possible to distinguish between non-
physiological and physiological effort ; that they are one. It will be as
* This fact, if it be one, contradicts the current theories, which imply that our con-
dition at any moment is constituted of an indivisible organic whole,
t "There is no attention without previous attention" (Ladd, Psychology, 1894, p. 77).
J The influence of expectancy is a favourite subject with psycho-physicists.
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 73
well to enter into somewhat greater detail. The fact usually observed in
this connection is that great neural strain excludes great muscular strain
(as in the dog trying to re-member), and that great muscular strain excludes
great neural strain (as in lifting a heavy weight). When attention is rapt,
all outward motion is suspended ; and when we are engaged in severe
physical work, thinking must be discarded. One fund of labour is ex-
pended in one direction, be it of thought or of action, of brain or of
muscle. This might be disputed on the ground that a man may be
strong in muscle, while his neural powers are indifferent. Thus it is, for
instance, rightly contended that muscle training, as such, no more
strengthens the nervous system than neural training, as such, strengthens
the muscles. The distinction is, however, illusory, for what is true as
between neural and muscular activity, is equally true within these two
departments. As I attend with ease to an elaborate piece of music,
and am perhaps helpless when it is a question of grappling with a mathe-
matical demonstration, so I can be physically strong and effective in one
direction, and weak and ineffective in another. Assuming the normal
state, the slightest muscular effort interferes as truly with neural effort as
the greatest, and vice versa, just as any neural or muscular exertion in
one direction tells respectively on neural or muscular effort in every
other direction. [Is this not too sweeping f\
The analogies between these two kinds of effort are numerous and in-
structive. We have already observed that in both spheres we can be
strong or effective at one and the same time in a few directions only. We
add that great strength or effectiveness in one direction is normally
excluded in both departments unless we are healthy in every way. In
physical exertion, too, strenuous exercise plays the same part as in neural
exertion. In the former, as in the latter, the output of labour must be
measured by effectiveness, and not by felt strain. Thus, again, certain
parts of the body may be tired, while others are not. These various cor-
respondences suggest a common cause, for they are far from being super-
ficial or accidental.
Men often learn that, after practice, they frequently perform a muscular
act in spite of themselves. Thus wishing to raise my eyelids for the purpose
of removing a speck of dust from the eye, I meet at first with stubborn
resistance on their part. [Repeat this experiment.'] Again, as physio-
logical acts are attempted more and more frequently, so we often lose
control over them. In a similar way, control in matters intellectual
becomes frequently impossible, trains of thought continually passing across
the stage with apparently no volition preceding them. All that we are
entitled to conclude in such cases of uncontrolled activity is that changes
are readily initiated in those directions. Involuntariness of actions offers
no ground for a division between neural and muscular activity. Apparent
unconsciousness of activity, ease and readiness of activity, independence and
continuousness of activity, hold good as much in the muscular realm as in
the neural, as might be proved by a profusion of examples, and these
74 GENERAL ANALYSES
states can, therefore, not be considered as distinguishing neural from
muscular activity. Waking during the night, I am unable to dismiss an
absurd dream ; having seen a loathsome sight, I am unable to banish the
surviving image ; having felt strongly, I am unable to calm myself; laughing,
I am unable to regain serenity ; thinking intently of a subject for some time,
I am unable to dismiss it; being tempted I cannot resist; etc., etc. \Test
these assertions.^ The chief instances are perhaps supplied by our general
habits which are yet so little known even to the specialist observer (ch. 3).
35. — Attention and Heredity.
The general nature of human activity — the mould into which it is cast —
is determined by the orgariism we inherit. We readily attend. There is
no need for schools where we shall be taught to distinguish, to see, to
act. This power, on the whole, the organism takes over from the past.
We spring into life, as regards the building up of the inner and outer
world, as Minerva sprang from the head of Jove — armed from head to
foot, though the equipment differs with different species of animals.
The infant pigeon employs its wings to regain equilibrium ; the kid jumps
about and is frolicsome, unlike its adult parent ; the chicken flies up to
escape a rat ; the gosling placidly rests in the shallow basin full of water.*
Again, our customary movements are so complex that, apart from pre-
disposition, we could not have learnt them. Uninstructed attention in
this wise performs that which years of elaborate training could not ac-
complish, while education only enables us to avoid a little friction
here and there. Our acquired activity, compared with that inherent in the
organism from birth, is like that of the shopkeeper who polishes and
arranges his newly arrived goods, education being to heredity what the
individual is to the race. The same stimuli occasion the child or young
animal to spend energy in varying grooves of action. The discharge of
energy, in one instance as in the other, is along certain well-established
lines. No one who has closely watched the development of a human being
can escape being struck with the large proportion of wisdom which the
new-born child brings with it. \_The advanced student should keep a
record of the development of some childJ] An infant is not a piece of
clay, and what tuition does, is as nothing compared to what the child
knows and does without tuition. Apart from the child's latent powers, and
its magnificent nervous system ready to develop, it would be as little
amenable to education as a snow-man. The full-grown person, too, is
mostly himself and acquires from others little which is fundamental. The
very depths of his being he has brought with him, his special impressibility
being the result of his special organisation. What is easily admitted as
being true of muscular activities is equally true of neural activities. Here
also study shows that acquirements constitute an insignificant fraction of
* "The twilight that sends the hens to rcost sets the fox to prowl, and the lion's roar
which gathers the jackals scatters the sheep" (Ward, Psychology, 1886, p. 42, col. 2).
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 75
our outfit, as regards fundamentals, though education has enormous
practical bearings.
36. — Observation and Attention.
The limited quantity of bodily energy which can be devoted to neural
functioning, explains the varied quality of observation, both inner and
outer. A man lives in the country, and scarcely knows the shape of a
single kind of leaf. [ Verify ivhat follows^ Raising my eyes, the syca-
more tree under which I write is guessed at rather than seen, while the
other trees in the background appear still more indistinct, I meet with
considerable difficulty in discerning a single leaf in full, for in most direc-
tions I can only see shapeless green patches. In a few places alone,
though I am but a few feet off, can a leaf be clearly distinguished. To
observe a leaf unmistakably, means that we observe it in preference to
others, that we assimilate its structure, its size, its form, its colour, and the
relation of each of these to one another and to the whole. Besides, the
shapes vary somewhat, as with the ivy, for instance ; they also differ with
the season in colour and size ; and caterpillars, and sundry other factors,
give rise to additional changes. If we wish to know more of the leaf, we
must, in a critical manner, compare it with other leaves. Usually there is
no attempt to attend carefully to any object ; for, in the instance we have
cited, such attention would imply that we stood still, that we had procured
a convenient number of leaves, and that we had scrutinised them until we
had satisfied ourselves as to the nature of the normal leaf. Glancing at
trees in passing is inadequate for such purposes.
As I walk down a lane at the end of June I note a wealth of grasses and
flowers along the roadside ; but no glimpse can give one a reasonable
notion of even a single blade. As the average person observes superficially,
it follows that he has a scanty knowledge of botany and of things in general.
He usually glances at the shape or colour of some leaf, and forgets it as
quickly.
In seeing a small square n , we see something primarily given in space.
But with the majority of objects, time enters as a salient factor, e.g., a
daffodil is a continually changing object, and to know this flower well we
must observe in due order the changes through which it passes. [ Watch
the groivth of some floti'er.^ Fresh knowledge can only be acquired by
strenuous endeavours, and when we neglect being strenuous, what is
before us remains imperfectly known to us. If the outline of a tree strikes
me as familiar, I already know something of that tree. If I can tell the
name, size, shape, colour, structure, function and development of its leaves,
branches, trunk and roots, then I know just a little more, that is all.
There is only a question of degree in attention, or in the result of attention —
knowledge. From the standpoint of attention there are ever higher
syntheses ; and, similarly, lower and lower. The vaguest feeling varies only
in complexity from the most elaborate conception. We are constantly
passing up and down the ladder of knowledge. The wildest dream, in its
76 GENERAL ANALYSES
several portions, has consistency, and the most careful thought has simply
more of this consistency.
37. — The Growth of Knowledge Complexes.
At this juncture let us, from the standpoint of attention, trace the growth
of knowledge complexes.
A man, say, often travels to a metropolitan station. The ticket collector
there sees thousands of people pass by him whom he could not recognise
if they presented themselves a few minutes later. How is it that he knows
the man we are thinking of: his easy gait, his indifferent bearing, his
peculiar voice, his dress, and most of his features and ways? Perhaps the
man passed the ticket collector a score of times before he was noticed at all.
Then some trifle, in an idle moment, caught the oflScial's eye. Next time,
when he observes that trifle again, he dimly re-collects that he has seen it
previously. He connects it with the man, some vague personality. Then
he takes account of the walk, then the bearing, then one of his features,
then another and still another, then he hears the man utter a few words,
then he becomes acquainted with his temper, his rpanners, the newspaper
he reads, and the like. If we suppose a typical instance, the ticket
collector's knowledge complex slowly grows. His attitude, as we have re-
peatedly seen, is that of restlessness. He notes some detail, and has it
impressed upon him by repetition. Some waste of attention being thus
avoided, he comes to be familiar with a second point ; then with a third ;
and so with a fourth. His conception grows in this way for years. At the
same time, the growth is not dependent on any express desire to possess a
clear notion of the man. This case serves as a simple illustration of the
development of a knowledge complex, stimulated mainly by the necessity
of paying attention to unfamiliar details, and aided by the fact that when
the attention is directed to the unfamiliar it gradually becomes familiar.
A striking instance of a similar character exemplifies the same prin-
ciple. Some one is introduced to two brothers, who appear to him so very
much alike that he cannot distinguish the younger from the older. In time
he comes to know each intimately, and he can then scarcely conceive how
he could ever have confounded the two. Their every feature, their every
movement, their manner, their voice, seem peculiar to each. How did he
come to see them in such a different light ? He was in their company a
good deal. Meeting them frequently, their appearance grew familiar and
sharply defined. The constant play of attention selected detail after detail,
and memory treasured these up. The homogeneous conception of the two
brothers became more and more disparate. In this instance we encounter
again growth from the relatively simple to the relatively complex.
Leaves, again, are but leaves to the countryman who walks frequently
across a certain part of a wood. His attention employs itself tentatively
with the objects surrounding him. In time the leaves of the familiar
bushes come, in the fashion already delineated, to be more and more
clearly discriminated. The shades of green of the hazel, the blackberry,
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 77
and the hornbeam, sink into the memory. From bush to bush he feels the
differences. As with the shades of green, so with the normal size, outline
and structure of the several classes of leaves. He has no express desire to
know these intimately ; though there may be now and then an interest in
this or that aspect. Thus knowledge complexes are built up. He ends by
knowing much where he knew little.
So with other objects. Being familiar with the full-grown robin, one
finds that one is enabled to recognise, as a consequence, young robins.
Knowing these vaguely, the knowledge, through unpremeditated observa-
tion, grows more defined, and one can tell the different stages in the de-
velopment of young robins. In this way a great multitude of knowledge
complexes come to be acquired.
Take the book which I was reading. Certain notions were embodied in
it. These were not concentrated into a word or two. They had to be
abstracted from the perusal of the whole volume. Perhaps the aim of the
work is merely to impress one important truth or knowledge complex.
Aspects of that truth are, for this purpose, continually introduced and illus-
trated. As I study the book closely, the central conception slowly takes
shape. The same factors are still at work. Certain details, by being
repeatedly attended to, grow more and more familiar, and thus separate
facets of the truth are gradually detected. Then several of these are seen in
relation to each other. At last, as the result of progressive activity, the
truth, as such, flashes into existence. The process has been one of de-
velopment ; and attention, in its unobtrusive fashion, has been leading me
towards the end desired. By reading a volume several times, more and
more is re-membered. Attention is consequently set free, and we grapple
with new aspects.
Often the notions latent in a book, or in a person, or in any form of
knowledge complex, become apparent without being searched for. Let us
say that the author I am interested in is Robert Browning. I read poem
after poem, and many a one again and again. If the poet has a marked
style of his own ; if he shows certain mannerisms ; if his stories are worked
out in a fashion peculiar to himself ; if he has a Hmited number of ideas
which he seeks to inculcate, these idiosyncrasies gradually become trans-
parent. Repetition forces what is like to the foreground ; for it is his funda-
mental notes which he is ever repeating. Hence the memory retains these
rather than the incidental items which have not the advantage of being
rehearsed, provided that this process is not disturbed by theorising. In
time we may know Browning well, without ever having made a deliberate
attempt in that direction.*
38.— Attention to One Object at a Time.
We have seen that the normal amount of attention is constant. We have
learned how familiarity in one direction allows of additional functioning in
* While in one instance the notion of wishing to know Browning well is present, the
same result is yet obtainable by a series of less comprehensive notions.
78 GENERAL ANALYSES
other directions. We have also observed that attention does not deal so
much witli [)oints as with fields. Hence we answer the question, "Can we
attend to more than one thing at a time ? " with a decided " Yes."
Indeed, tliere cannot be a "one thing "to attend to. All functioning
implies breadth and plurality, and the field is not even limited to one
notion or one act. While I was endeavouring to understand what I was
reading, I was, of course, reading at the same time. The latter claimed
some of my attention, and I was thus active in two sets of directions. I
might have been reading the passages aloud, and walking while thus reading.
In addition, I might have been playing with a key in my pocket, and so
on. The field of attention is only restricted by the quantity of labour re-
quisite for an act. Various activities are pursued, separately or conjointly*
as easily as one, if those activities collectively absorb no more than the normal
amount of energy.
The attention is usually divided, as in the instance just referred to. It
seems possible to speak as fast as one can, while, at the same time, reading
an announcement on a street hoarding, and inwardly contemplating a land-
scape. \^Test this.~\ Again, in any simple performance, a multiplicity of
actions is carried out simultaneously. In lifting a heavy weight I do not
need to choose first a convenient position, then stand firm, then adjust my
hands and fingers, and then exert a strain. Many of the various movements
are normally performed at one and the same time. [Repeat this.'\ The
subdivisions of such an action can be again subdivided, if need be, for there
is scarcely an ordinary movement so simple as to lack parts. We, therefore,
find, as we might have anticipated, that, in learning, we generally proceed
only with portions of a process at a time. After a period several portions
are performed simultaneously. Sometimes, as in the case of lifting a
weight, the activities form one connected whole. At other times, they are
disconnected : the walking has nothing in common with my playing with
the key, and my playing with the key is not thought of in connection with
my reading aloud.
Let us re-member what we have already referred to, that the functioning
of the central nervous system is due to the pressure of organic needs, or to
functional readjustments. For this reason, if what we are occupied with re-
quires less than the normal energy available, series after series will establish
itself until the available energy is fully employed. Hence when we are
engaged in routine occupations of a low order, i.e., occupations which
absorb little attention, we always add to our immediate repertoire of thought
or action. As a difficulty in the work arises, so the objects attended to
decrease ; as the work becomes easier, so we are occupied increasingly with
what is not connected with the task, \Test this minutely^ In some
matters alone do we encounter the fact that we cannot do more than one
* Stout [Psycholo^^y, 1S96, i, p. 212) says that we can only attend simultaneously to the
ringing of a bell and the swinging of a pendulum when the two are connected in thought.
This is certainly not so with me. While I am continuously speaking, I see at the same
time the trees outside my window and hear the tram cars passing by, without connecting
these three processes.
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 79
thing at a time. I cannot, for example, sit here writing, and be, at the
same time, strolling through the neighbouring wood. Such instances,
however, prove little. Only a few days after I had written this, I over-
heard a remark illustrating the view which is here put forward. A builder
said somewhat sarcastically to one of his men, as I was passing by, " You
wouldn't do for a carman ; you would pull up the horse every time you
wanted to speak," plainly intimating that the man might do his work and
talk at the same time. Of course, an untrained psychologist would be
confused if he attempted to do deliberately what he constantly does without
pointed deliberation. But time will soon prove to him that introspection
is not bound to be a barrier to the direct observation of immediately trace-
able facts. As practice proceeds, he will be able to institute an
" introspective series."
The problem involved in this section has been much debated. Brentano [Psychologies
1874, pp. 204-32) holds that several things can be thought of at once, but they must
form one whole. Hamilton {Metaphysics, 1877, i, p. 254) contends that five or six
points can be discerned simultaneously. James [Psychology, 1890, i, pp. 405-9) seems
to me ambiguous. Lipps [Grundlaisachen, 18S3, p. 164) believes that " only one process
of thought can proceed at a time without interruption." Paulhan {La SimultanHte des
Actes Psychiques, 1887) recounts a number of most interesting experiments of his own
which tend to prove our contention. Stewart {Elements, 1808, ch. 2) considers, as we
have seen, that the minimtim visihile is the time-atom of thought. Stout {Analytic
Psychology, 1896, i) concurs with Brentano and Lipps, saying, in explanation, that "each
mode of mental process tends to arrest and suppress others" (p. 196), a conclusion with
which I cannot agree. The fact that eftectivc introspection is generally denied, implies
that thought is considered only one storey high.
39. — Do WE Attend in Habit.
This is not the place to face the question of routine ; that is dealt with
in ch. 3. We can here only consider the problem from the standpoint
of attention. As an illustration take the compositor who is setting up this
type. \Examifie in detail some process familiar lo you.] If he is not intro-
spective, and he is asked how he does his work, he will be unable to
re-collect more than a minute portion of the process. Why is that? It is
because he does not, now at least, think of the different parts of the
process as a whole and in relation to other things. He only regards the
steps in connection with those that immediately precede and follow.
Through continued improvement he has become an adept in doing the
right thing at the right time. Being uninterested in the nature of his work
and interested in other things, he has a tendency to crowd out of the total
process whatever can be spared. He busies himself only with that which
he is compelled to do, being employed otherwise in reflecting over
pleasanter, and to him, more fascinating themes than setting up type. The
gathering thoughts push aside all that they dare. As a result, attention to
the work is reduced to a minimum. He just re-members what is necessaiy
— no more and no less, roughly speaking — and what is not necessary falls
a prey to oblivion. Each movement is involved in the one which precedes
8o GENERAL ANAL YSES
it — it being immaterial here whether the stimulus is central or not — and is
entangled in the following movement. As these movements are of no
general interest, as attention to them is reduced to a minimum, and as
the main stream of thought rushes by them, they become lost to the
memory under ordinary circumstances. Assuming that the compositor
has duly learnt his art, his knowledge, through economising the attention,
is reduced to what is indispensable. That he attends to his work is
plain. From a number of letters in a box, he selects the one which lies in
a certain position. Previous to that selection his right arm moved towards
the proper box. If he shut his eyes, he would soon find out their use ; if
he then lost the sense of touch, he would be unable to proceed. Sensa-
tions, images and movements, are the result of attention, and since they
occur in the process, the compositor must be attending. Or, to test the
matter differently. If the compositor is so inclined, he can observe what
he is doing, and thus re-develop the various steps in order.* In noting his
own procedure, he will soon be convinced that he is busy attending during
the whole process. Again, let the compositor be interested in a conversa-
tion, let that become absorbing, and his arms gradually come to a standstill,
which proves that attention covers the whole field of organic functioning.
No process is so elementary that it escapes falling under this rule.
40. — Can we Attend to Habits.
A misconception has been created by the opinion that it is not possible
to attend to a habit without influencing it. Only casual observation bears
that out. It is true that with some activities the first attempts at following
the process modify it or give rise to perplexity. More critical study, how-
ever, shows that the embarrassment soon disappears, and that after prolonged
practice we can fully observe without in the least degree introducing any
change. At first, in following the process, we incline to divert the labour
requisite for the process itself, which produces disorder. We are also apt
to introduce crude notions, or deliberately fix our eyes instead of allowing
them free play ; and the like. But as we continue striving to attend to the
manner in which we perform a task, less labour is wasted or misdirected,
and the two pocesses of performing a task and of attending to the manner
of performance proceed together. In some instances, besides, it is
essential that we "attend " to our work. In others, we freely attend to our
dress, to our looks, to our walk or to our conversation, e.g., we not only con-
verse, but we take note of how we converse.! \Practise till you can readily
observe your habits^
* Stewart (Ekt/unts, 1808, ch. 2), believes that we attend in habit, only that our
thought is much quicker. Dr. Stout [Analytic Psychology, 1896, i), with the majority of
psychologists, excludes attention from the realm of habit. He holds that "independence
of attention" is one of "the chief features of permanently fixed habit" (p. 258); that
" cstabhshed habit is independent of and exclusive of attention" (p. 261) ; and he tells us
further that "a practised reader does not usually attend to the letters and words; his
thoughts are occupied with the meaning" (p. 206).
t Stout (Analytic Psychology, 1896, i) strongly maintains that in attending to habit,
"habit is disturbed ; there is loss of facility, rapidity, and uniformity" (p. 261).
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 8i
41, — The Routine of Life.
Besides the routine of work, there is the routine of life. In daily life
we pay but a semblance of attention to the objects around us, because they
suggest nothing of interest, and because, if severely attended to, they deprive
us of the normally necessary attention. Thus we do not linger over each
letter in a book. Similarly, in town we take little account of carts, horses,
houses, names over shops, or the people we pass, and we notice only in the
vaguest manner the stones on which we tread. In the rumbling of wheels
we distinguish neither wheels nor rumbling. If again, in strolling through a
maze of trees in June, I did not ignore the majority of the surrounding
objects, I could never think of anything else but objects connected with
the wood. The opportunities at our disposal being limited, we attend only
to an inconsiderable extent to our surroundings, and these hurried observa-
tions being useless, or nearly so, for the general stream of thought, they
are little dwelt upon, and hence not re-developed. For example, every
one has noted the moon in the sky, and also the fact that she is some-
times full and sometimes not ; but her exact path, the rate of her speed,
the reason for the changes, are not revealed by an occasional upward
glance. There must be consistent, connected and long-continued activity
to discover these facts, and this, in contradistinction to routine observation,
holds of the main facts of existence.
42. — Attention and Memory.
In the routine of work and of life we meet with attention. Turning to
memory, we are face to face with the same factor. To remember,
according to our interpretation, is to " re-member." The traces of the original
stimuli are preserved in some form, if they were attended to in the first
instance, and attention converts the modification into some image, etc.
Without somatic or bodily stimuli, attention as we have seen, can do no-
thing, and without sensory attention such stimuli create no sensory effect.
Hence we are bound to reason that in re-development we apply energy to
traces left by the original stimuli.
The moment the processes comprehended in attention come to a stand-
still, form, totality, sound and colour, cease to exist for us, while with the
birth of attention, objects are realised in the manner already explained.
Hence the sensory world, as we know it, does not exist apart from attention.
Accordingly, no image, no sound, no taste, no thought, nothing intelligible is
stored. (Sec. 15.) As long as attention is at work, so long do secondary
systems exist. We re-develop everything, in the sense that we have
developed it previously. The process of memory, like that of sensation
and feeling, is one of elaboration, only that in the former instance we are
dependent primarily on central stimuli. The objects of possible memory
are latent in the brain structure as a tree is said to be latent in a seed, and
possess no other existence. Attention makes real what is otherwise only
possible. We have no more reason to believe that images exist in the
6
82 GENERAL ANAL YSES
absence of attention than tliat a blind man can see, or that a puppet will
move if the strings are not pulled. Our needs (ch. 7), coupled with the
trend of attention (sec. 44), decide which out of innumerable possibilities
shall become actualised.
No strict line can be drawn between primary and secondary systems, or
fact and memory. Most objects integrated are not integrated at once, e.g.,
in viewing a landscape I view now one part, now another ; my eyes sweep
across it; and were it not for apposite memories the impression would be
far different. Thus even the simplest figure takes time in apprehending.
Again, listening to a conversation, an argument or a melody, is a meaning-
less process except in so far as we connect what happens from moment
to moment. Were it not for memory, feelings and sensations would be
impossible.* (Ch. 5.)
43. — Sub-conscious and Unconscious Thought.
As with memory, so with unconscious or sub-conscious happenings.
Thought being impossible without attention, there can be no attentionlcss
thought, and consequently no unconscious or sub-conscious thought, if
these presuppose absence of attention. The subtle facts which are said to
mark subterranean thinking must be explicable in the light of what we
have learnt. Here the relation can only be hinted at.
First, we must allow for misinterpretation. Images are often so faint,
and so little dwelt upon, that we forget or are unaware that they occupied
the theatre of thought. Feelings, again, are not seldom misconstrued and
often not actively discerned. These classes of facts might be conveniently
called sub-conscious, or loosely connected, if it be observed that we only
refer to facts which are much misinterpreted or little dwelt upon.f
* Smith, The Relation of Attention to Alemory, 1895.
t Morgan {Psychology, 1894, p. 14) would restrict the word "sub-conscious" to the
margin of consciousness as distinguished from its focus. Stout (Manual, 1898, p. 68)
defines sub-consciousness as one with sentience. Sully [Human Mind, i, p. 75) also in-
clines to use the term as we have done. Lipps has a curious theory as to unconscious
activity. He says : " All psychic activity is primarily unconscious. Out of the multitude
of what is unconscious rises the conscious when the conditions are favourable" (Grund-
tatsachen, 1883, p. 695).
The words " consciousness" and "awareness" express a simple fact which is rather
hidden than revealed by these two words. When I say that I was fully conscious of the
course of action I took, I mean that I connected the course of action with some other
fact. When I say, on the other hand, that I was not aware of what I was doing, I mean,
again, that I did not connect the course of action with anything else. Consciousness or
awareness thus means that a notion does not stand by itself, but is connected with some
other notion or notions. Whenever a notion is thus palpably connected with some other
notion, and only then, do we speak of consciousness or awareness. For this reason it
might be best to vary those two words with the more precise word Connection. Hence
we may say, "The course of action was closely connected with certain reasons for such
course of action," or briefly, " The course of action was closely connected." Likewise we
may say, " What I was doing was not connected " with any notion. Hence though it is a
sacrifice to dispense with two such well-known words as we are here criticising, it will be
found a useful innovation to say, " I connect this," " I do not connect that," in the place
of " I am cf)nscious of this," " I am not aware of that."
Having translated the term "conscious" into that of "connected," we are justified in
redefining another obscure word, "knowing," by the very same term of "connected."
Wherever we read " I know," we may read " I connect." Though it may seem curious
5 VS TEMS A S D I ST RIB UTED 83
Secondly, we are bound to allow for a possible activity of the brain in
the absence of any decided feeling element. In this connection we must
not forget that attention and stimuli produce a neural activity, the counter-
part of which we call thought.
Perhaps an illustration or two will elucidate this problem. I wish to re-
integrate the second line of a verse ; but after repeated efforts I fail, and
turn away from the subject. \Tfy deliberately to re-instate things or names
which y oil do not easily re-develop, and note result^ Suddenly, in the midst
of some train of thought, rises the sought-for line, like a ghost out of a gulf.
How are we to account for this ? Coincidence is out of the question, and
sub-conscious thought, in the sense in which we have defined it, we must
also reject. These may account for individual cases ; but they do not ex-
plain the facts as a whole. The line rises spontaneously, unbidden, un-
sought, perhaps unwelcome.
Here is another instance. I want to know how a certain argument is
to be answered. After several unsuccessful attempts I drop the matter.
Then some time afterwards the solution develops. What explains this
and similar facts ? The theory here propounded is as follows. (See ch. 5.)
In hard thinking, re-collecting or passion, certain central nervous tracts are
supernormally sensitive, agitated or active. When the main stream of
attention is turned into a new direction, the activity which has been set
going persists for a period, much as vibrations persist after the initial ante-
cedent is withdrawn. A solution, if arrived at as the result of the continued
activity, then emerges, as if we had kept on thinking in sense terms.
This theory will be shown, in the proper place (sec. no), to be more
than plausible. It not only gives a rational explanation which accords
with the illustrations ; but it is also in harmony with general facts. We
know how anger or passion clings to us ; how a thought which is dwelt
upon haunts us; and how moods thus created defy interference (sec. 109).
These sudden re-developments are also accompanied by a feeling peculiar
to them, which we cannot banish. Sometimes it is distinct ; at other times
it is only observable when sought for. Thus in the case of re-instating the
second line of a verse a somewhat faint feeling clearly accompanied the
sensitiveness, implying an expenditure of overground attention. This feeling
is strictly comparable to any persisting organic feeling ; it is liable to be mis-
interpreted like others of its kind, and persists like the craving of hunger.
Compared with other feelings it shows a difference of degree, but none of
kind. Important developments of this theory are possible; but would not
that "conscious" and "aware" should be identical with knowing, yet analysis supports
our statement. I know or I do not know this or that, means invariably I connect or I do
not connect this or that. If a name heard, or a thing seen, suggests something or nothing,
or is connected with something or nothing, we say ordinarily that we know or do not
know this. Psychologically, therefore, consciousness, awareness and knowing, are best
expressed by such verbs as to connect, to link, to chain.
We must go a step further. To believe, to doubt, to be certain, are degrees of
knowing, and hence interpretable in terms of connecting. We can, therefore, employ
"to part-connect," "to semi-connect" and "to connect perfectly," for to believe, to
doubt and to be certain.
84 GENERAL ANALYSES
be in place here. The bare statement must suffice that there are neural
processes which at some point end in a more or less complete thought,
suggesting a brain activity equivalent to, but unaccompanied by, overground
thinking. There is, however, no evidence that anything but shreds of
thought are developed subterraneously, and we may dismiss the notion of
an "unconscious mind" as unjustifiable. (Sec. 217.)
Hartmann {Philosophy of the Unconscious, 1S84) explains everything by reference to the
unconscious— a brilliant device to escape the trouble of tracinjj stubborn facts. The Ilerbar-
tians keep their cager-to-come-to-the-top ideas in the dark cellars of unconsciousness.
These unfortunate ideas harass their more fortunate brethren who for a moment breathe the
sweet air and see the light of day. The Herbartian hell and heaven are purely mythical.
Ward {Psychology, 1886, p. 47, col. 2) compares the threshold of consciousness " to
the surface of a lake and sub-consciousness to the depths beneath it," without indicating
where exactly the process of drowning begins and how it proceeds. Once conceive an
idea to be an organic complex (sec. 80), and both Herbartianism and Associationisni
seem superseded.
44. — Conditions Favouring Attention.
We discussed at length the meaning of attention. A few words will
suffice to determine the conditions which favour attention.
(i) First and foremost in stimulating attention, always taking for granted
the existence of needs, i.e.^ of functional tendencies, is the presence of an
irresistible inclination to attend. A certain quantity of attention perpetually
strives to spend itself Be the interest ever so low, if we are not otherwise
occupied, every trifle is likely to enter the avenues of sense or of the
imagination. What would otherwise not be attended to receives recogni-
tion, because we must be occupied somehow. When for any reason, as
on occasion happens, w^e have nothing special to busy our thoughts with —
nothing that stimulates to marked endeavour — then a long caravan of
thoughts travels across the pasture lands of fancy, each part of which, as
soon as it requires marked attention, is displaced by other thoughts of a
similarly ephemeral nature. [Examine such cases.^ Everything in turn
then captivates the inner and the outer senses. The completion of a
thought, in these circumstances, depends on the ease with which it may be
pursued ; and as difficulties are bound to arise in the process, each thought,
in the case we are considering, tends to be abruptly displaced. As birds
lay eggs, whether these are fertilised or not, so we continue thinking
whether there is a present necessity or not. Since some difficulty may have
to be solved at any moment, the attention does not slacken. When think-
ing is not compulsory, our thoughts lack the germ out of which other
thoughts evolve. These are the unfertilised eggs which the bird of fancy
cannot help laying.
(2) In the next place comes the precise quantity of available attention,
as distinguished from its perpetual presence. The latter determines that
we shall be active ; the former decides how far we shall be active. Thus
as routine generally lays claim to but little of the available attention, we
have rising tier after tier of thought until the demand equals the supply.
SVSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 85
As the dog pretends to be anxious to fetch a stick out of the water when
his desire is to bathe, so we often make believe that we are busy with many
details when we are hurried along by the imperative necessity to continue
acting.
(3) Just as before going to sleep we frequently doze, attention being on
the decline, so ill-health often tends to decrease the energy available for
functioning. This usually expresses itself in two ways. P'irst, we attend
less absolutely. Secondly, the value of an effort is largely reduced, so that
no suggestion is pursued to its legitimate issue. In robust health, on the
contrary, attention is at its maximum both as regards strenuousness and
effectiveness. Hence, other things being equal, attention is most effective
in good health.
(4) In our analysis we noted that unfamiliarity offers a barrier to
voluminous attention. While the flowers and grasses along a lane are
meaningless to one individual, to another, a botanist, they yield a rich
harvest of knowledge. This man recounts a score of floral species which
he has observed, with much other information, while the former cannot
distinctly recall anything. What is most easily attended to, is that which
has been attended to strenuously on former occasions. As a magician's
-wand was said to rear a castle in a moment, so attention, with bewildering
swiftness, utilises the bricks and mortar of memory. It sorts, sifts, distin-
guishes, classifies and re-cognises, a variety of details in a very brief space
of time. Attention is, therefore, most effectively employed on what it has
been previously engaged upon.
(5) For practical purposes it will not be enough merely to re-cognise, to
re-attend. Re-attention is most useful when it is combined with simple
attention, or, at least, with attention to something not well recognised.
When the comparatively new is involved in the comparatively old, the
consequences are most fruitful. In proportion as the new is isolated, so
will it be difficult to make it a permanent possession. Thus when new
truths stand by themselves, they are hard to assimilate and re-member,
while, if they are shown to be part of an old truth, they are often re-instated
or comprehended with the greatest ease. For the advancement of
knowledge — for effective attention — nothing is more valuable than to show
the old in the new.
(6) What is conveniently grasped, other things being equal, is also more
conveniently attended to. If an object exhibits a special design ; if the
parts are correlated ; if its scheme is not fantastic ; if it is not so small
or so large that much effort is required in its examination ; if it is of a class
known to us, then we readily busy ourselves with it. Thus a fine mansion
is easily conceived of as a whole ; a name encountered for the first time is
yet fluently read by one accustomed to reading ; a geometrical figure of
regular proportions is not as exhausting to take note of as one of irregular
proportions ; a picture representing a scene from human life is understood
the more readily the more evident the relations of the figures to each
other.
86 GENERAL ANALYSES
(7) The business of the attention^ i.e., the business of the central nervous
system, is to seri'e the ori^o/iisni, and in this sense attention is teleological.
Some demand of our nature, muscular or neural, nutritive or regulative,
sets the brain going and, if advisable, keeps it going until the demand is
satisfied. Then another want acts as a stimulus, and so forth. This is an
abstract way of regarding the matter. We have normally several wants
engaging the attention simultaneously ; and, as a rule, the want absorbs
the attention for a time only, and not until it is satisfied. If a man
is fond of strawberries and they are before him, his attention, or
part of it, will probably be devoted to the strawberries until he has
done with them ; but if they are difllicult to procure, a little specu-
lation is all which is ventured upon. Our wants are also frequently
complex ; a man goes for a walk, for instance, because he desires exercise,
fresh air, the music of the birds and the sight of flowers. The purpose
of neural activity is to satisfy our primary and other needs ; but when we
are specially eager about one matter, the whole available attention is con-
centrated on that alone.
(8) When interest is acute, attention is highly effective without any
strain being perceived, though the consequences often show that such
strain existed ; when interest is slight, attention is comparatively ineffective,
while the related effort of attention is distinctly felt. In interest there is
a rush of available energy towards a certain point.
(9) When interest, for any reason, is absent, ennui sets in. We then long
to do something. We are uneasy as the result of being unemployed.
Adults, under such circumstances, yawn and grow languid, while children
cry for something to do. In ennui the attention is largely absorbed in un-
easiness, as there is no sufficient incentive to make use of it through the
accustomed channels. The existence of ennui proves, in addition, that the
tendency to action is constant, and not solely determined by the presence
of this desire or that.
(10) An important aid to continuous attention is to dismiss decidedly and
completely the previous thought, and to turn whole-heartedly to the matter
to be attended to. If that matter be fairly interesting, the attention will
then easily be sustained, and quickly recur to the subject in the case of
momentary absent-mindedness. Much of children's inattention is due ta
the difficulty they find in ridding themselves effectively of thoughts which
precede, or arise out of, the lesson.
When I sharply dismiss a thought, I do it usually by shutting my eyelids forcibly ; by
looking emphatically at some object ; or by some other abnipt muscular act. The only
alternative is to refuse to think, when, after a little while, some casual percept or idea
emerges. In any case, dismissal seems due to change of activity alone. It is as if wc
could only dismiss visitors by inviting others to take their place.
(11) The more the attention is trained, and the more we can appeal to
some congenital or acquired predisposition, the more readily are we active
in any chosen direction. \Test {i) to {\\)^^
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED Sy
45. — The Education of the Attention.
What has been remarked concerning the conditions which favour attention
must be considered in education. There are at least three principles to
be taken into account.
(i) The attention should be deliberately exercised. No tasks requiring
either no sensible effort or a great effort should, as a rule, be imposed, for
in both instances the labour is almost wasted. Supposing now that the
exercises are rational, we shall discover that what at one time could not be
done at all, can later on be readily accomplished. After appropriate
practice we glide at will from subject to subject, or row deliberately among
the shallows and deeps of one thought. In the education of the attention
it is of prime importance to prevent aimless thought, and to develop the
power of firmly, freely and fully fixing the attention on any subject we choose.
It is not sufificient for us to be trained in certain directions, as mathematics
or languages. If no more is done, vast tracts will remain uncultivated.
Education must enable the individual to control his activities generally, or
rather should aim at perfecting, as a whole, the neural mechanism.
(2) The motive for attending must be detached from special interests,
and the supreme notion to plant in the child, as regards attending, is to
make it desirous of acting effectively. In other words, the child must be
brought to have a strong inclination (sec. 146) in favour of proper attention.
The need for reasonable effort should be the incentive. The employment
of the attention must be dissociated from the interest in the thing im-
mediately attended to. In all sound reflection there is readiness to attend
to what is not specially interesting except as a means to some remote
end. *
(3) The training of the attention must begin early in life. Later results
are most disappointing, f
46. — Factors Producing Changes in the Field of Attention.
Changes in the field of attention are mainly induced by one of the following
circumstances : (i) when attention has attained its end (Stout); (2) when
fatigue sets in (Stout) ; (3) when a strong sensation competes (Stout) ; (4)
when, through lax or overwrought attention, the topic tends to change ;
(5) when a new or old topic recently thought of, takes possession of the
attention ; (6) when a word, a tune, a sentence, etc., haunts us ; (7) when
we are full of anxiety ; (8) when attention was due to a mood which is
receding; (9) when we attend to various objects alternately ; (10) when we
dismiss a thought deliberately ; (n) when a thought shows signs of tiring,
and is not of pressing importance; (12) when we have given sufficient
attention for the time being ;:{: (13) when in a subject or in our
* The Associationist school lays the stress on feeling, interest or pleasure-pain ; the
Herbartians, on connecting what is new with what is old.
tOn the subject of the training of the attention, see Carpenter's Mental Physiology,
1876, ch. 3.
+ We usually devote only a short period at a time to any particular problem.
88 GENERAL ANALYSES
surroundings we observe something of special interest; (14) when some
routine duty is to be performed ; (15) when, by previous resolution, we
are to do something at a stated time, or on encountering something
or somebody; and (16) when a feeling of hunger, etc., becomes imperi-
ous. * \Test the /ist, and, 1/ possible, add to it.]
47, — General Conclusions.
We have endeavoured to discover a satisfactory answer to questions such
as the following : Why does attention not vary normally in any one
individual or from individual to individual ? Why do we normally attend
to, or tend towards, something or other without interruption ? Why can
we increase or decrease the range of attention but to a very limited extent?
Why do we reason in subjects, and move quickly from point to point?
Why can we not stop attending ? Why is attention normally easier when
the subject is familiar ? Why can we attend to more than one thing at a
time ? Why are observation and thought slow ? etc., etc. Secondary
systems or facts of non-bodily feeling have supplied us with no clue to the
solution of these questions, and assuming only these, any answer, as long as
it was not self-contradictory, could be tendered, each being equally empty.
But on turning to the bodily organism, we met with facts of great signifi-
cance. All activity, we learnt, is apt to leave traces behind. Certain
classes of activity are followed by growth of a more or less extensive nature.
The organism as a whole varies little in individuals. Development pro-
ceeds along well-marked lines. Different parts of the body are more or
less active, the heart and the lungs working ceaselessly and uniformly
without need of rest, while the voluntary muscles require more intermittent
and varied exercise. The brain in the waking state, we know, is an organ
which is steadily active like the heart and unlike the muscles. Assuming the
central nervous system to be the complement of the laboratory of thought,
we saw that all that was evident, and all that was obscure, in the process of
attention was readily explicable. Indeed, it became evident that the com-
pletest understanding of our nature, the general form of thought, could be
arrived at deductively from a contemplation of the body in general and
the brain in particular, there being no connected continuity in the secondary
realm while there is such continuity in the brain.
48. — A Bird's Eye View.
The term most intimately connected with attention is direction. In
attention, therefore, regarded physiologically, we consider the play of
neural changes from the point of view of the direction in which they take
place. It is not so much change, as the line-of-change, which we refer to
•"Attention in any given direction ceases only under one or more of the following
conditions: (l) when its end is attained . . . ; (2) when fatigue sets in; (3) when
some competing sensation . , . interrupt [s] it ; (4) when some sensation or image
occurs connected with a system of psychical dispositions which . . , happen to
possess ... a relatively high degree of excitability," i.e., casual associations
(Stout, Analytic Psychology, 1896, i, p. 197).
SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED 89^
in speaking of attention. In this sense the present chapter deals with a
certain aspect of cerebral change — with the reasons why neural change
tends now in this direction and now in that. Further, since normal
activity is subject to interference and has certain characteristics, we speak
of the degree and the volume of attention. Attention thus treats of the
direction, the degree and the volume of cerebral change. It embraces all
activity ; its field is the field of activity. Thus the word attention is as
useful as is the word direction. It helps us to express the fact that the
brain is busy in this direction and not in that ; that its forces are massed
here and not there ; and that in the normal waking condition it functions
incessantly, to the same extent and in varied directions.
From this position it is but one step to a looser use of the term where
it sometimes only spells activity or change. Thus when we say that we
attend in a certain direction, we mean that we are active in that direction.
In this way attention has come to be identical with change and change
with attention. In the strictest sense, then, our subject has been the
systematic aspect of neural functioning.
We have identified attention with cerebral change. The meaning of our
key-word is readily distinguishable from the only other term, besides
activity, with which it might be confounded. Willing is divided from
attention, and attention from willing in that attention ahvays is change and
nothing else, while volition never is change, but only points to it. The
relation between these two is that between being and becoming, between
sein and werden.
Viewing the subject of attention from a still higher position (which
embraces the physiological aspect), we say In the normal waking state
something is ahvays immediately given and that something is a constant
quantity which constantly changes at a constant rate. Here the terms
attention, activity, functioning and energy, become superfluous. In our
exposition, however, we have found it impossible to break with the old
terminology without endangering the sense and making comparison
difficult. Nevertheless one feels that it is most undesirable to assume
some mysterious power or capacity along with what is immediately given ;
for such a power or capacity describes nothing and explains nothing, and
has, therefore, no place in science.
Additional References. — Angell and Pierce, Experimental Research upon the
Phenomena of Attention, 1892 ; Angell, Habit and Attention, 1898 ; Angell and Moore,
Reaction-time : A Study in Attention and Habit, 1896; Binet, Attention et Adaption,
1899; Birch, A Study of Certain Methods of Distracting the Attention, 1897; Bradley,
On Active Attention, 1902; 'Qra^\insc\\'weigQX, Die Lehre von der Aufmerksamkeit, 1899;
Cattell, Aufmerksamkeit und Reaktion, 1892 ; Darlington and Talbot, Distraction by
Musical Sounds, 1898; Dohrn, Das Problem, der Aufmerksamkeit, 1876; Drew, Atten-
tion, Experimental and Critical, (with Bibliography), 1896 ; Dwelshauvers, Unter'
suchungen zur Mechanik der activeti Aufmerksamkeit, 1890 ; Griffing, On the Develop-
ment of Visual Perception and Attention, 1896 ; Lalande, Sur un Effet particulier dt
r Attention appliqtti aux Images, 1893 ; Martius, Ueber die musculdre Reaktion und die
Aufmerksamkeit, 1890; Moyer, A Study of Certain Methods of Distracting the Attention,
1897 ; Miinsterberg and Kozaki, The Intensifying Effect of Attention, 1894 ; Pillsbury,
90 GENERAL ANALYSES
A Study of Apperctpiton^ 1897 ; Stanley, Attention as Intensifying Sensation, 1895;
Swift, Disturbance of the Attention during Simple Mental Processes, 1892; Ueberhorst,
Das Wesen dtr Aufmerksamkeit, 1S97 ; and Uhl, Attention, a Historical Summary, 1890.
CHAPTER III
SYSTEMS AS ORGANISED *
Habit fashions every act,
Sees that thoughts are closely packed.
49. — The History of a Habit.
A child jis being taught to write, f Laboriously he learns by
heart the precise appearance of each letter. He does not distinguish
between ^s and d's, p's and ^'s. He dips the pen too far
into the ink-pot. He blots the paper, and his characters are now too
faint and now too pronounced. He forgets to shape the letters properly :
neither higher nor lower, neither broader nor narrower, neither thicker nor
thinner, than the example. The pen is not held so as to prevent un-
necessary work or awkwardness of movement. The paper is placed
wrongly and is not kept clean. The arm is not sustained in the particular
fashion required, and the general bodily bearing fails to conform to
prescribed rules. The necessary speed is not attained. The words are
not properly divided. The lines are not at right angles to the sides of the
paper. The spaces between these lines are not uniform.
Much that is objectionable, the child picks up by the way, and thus he
has afterwards to unlearn what he has injudiciously acquired. Many
things the child is told, and some of these he forgets or misunderstands.
Here, again, much ground needs to be recovered. When an explanation
is proffered, the child has difficulty in following it. He does not at first
re-member with ease. He often stops trying to re-collect something he has
forgotten. He suspects that he is wrong. He doubts. He argues with
himself. He asks questions. He corrects his writing. He watches the
movements he initiates. He observes what progress he is making, and
imagines what teachers, parents or fellow-pupils will say. He repeats to
himself: " I mustn't hold the pen so ; I must hold it in this way." "That
* Organised reaction, organised trend and organised activity are used in this chapter
as equivalents of routine process or habit.
t The example of the child learning to write has been chosen merely for the purpose
of illustrating the nature of habit generally.
92 GENERAL ANALYSES
letter falls below the other letters of the line." "This letter I wrote all
right." " Oh ! look at that blot ! " " I wonder whether this is right." "I
wish I had finished," \Acquirc some habits pitrposeIy\ and follow to the
viinutest detail the process of development^^
Many years after the child has finished his lessons, we meet a person
who writes easily and well. This adult is the whilom child who found
learning to write an arduous task. That accomplishment is no more a
problem to him. He proceeds now without apparent effort. How shall
we account for the surprising change? To this question I propose to
seek a satisfactory reply.*
50. — Memorising the Facts.
(i) In learning to write, various facts came to the child's notice, and
these he was asked to retain. Through instruction, through both
deliberate and chance observation, through interconnecting or reasoning,
the facts were collected item by item. Committal to memory gradually
made re-collection of the material to be utilised perfectly easy. After the
lapse of a certain period the child knew that which the man knows. As
soon as any detail was required, it instantly developed.! Having what
is relevant firmly established in the memory, there is never — or almost
never — a need to doubt, to argue, to cast about or to try and re-
member. \Observe this phase in your habit s?\^
(2) A variety of accidental difficulties embarrasses the learner. There is
a blot — how is he to behave towards it ? The new pen refuses to take up
the ink — what is he to do? The position of his body is ill-chosen for
writing — how is this to be remedied ? His shadow falls on the paper —
* I am not aware of a single piece of concrete analysis of a habit undertaken by any
psychologist. [Observe in action: your thumb, your fingers, your arm, your lips, your
tongue and your eyes, keeping a copious record ; also handle stick or umbrella, button
your coat, take off hat, stretch yourself, pull out watch, etc.]
The practical importance of proper habits has always been recognised. Aristotle,
in his Nichomachean Ethics, bk. 2, insisted upon their value ; and in recent years James
{^Psychology, 1890, i, pp. 120-7) has eloquently urged their claims upon students.
On the theoretical side, as regards habits, the speculative method has borne undisputed
sway, painting the grotesque fancies of the //(zm man in luxurious tints. The common
doctrine has been that repetition, exercise or practice, makes deeper and deeper furrows
or "a smooth path" (Locke, Human Understanding, bk. 2, ch. 33, sec. 6) in the
brain ; and that in consequence there is " lapse of psychical initiation, . . . precision of
response, . . . unfailingness of response, . . . difficulty of modifying it by special
volitional effort" (Sully, Human Mind, 1892, ii, pp. 228-9). So Destutt de Tracy,
Idiiologie, 1801, p. 231: "Our frequently repeated movements [and thoughts, p. 238]
become easy, rapid and little felt." So Maine de Biran {De ? Habitude, 1803, p. 169)
quotes as effects facility, rapidity and indifference. To these marks of habit Reid
{Essays on the Active Poivers of Man, ed. 1863, Essay I, part I, ch. 3) would add
"inclination or impulse" to act; and with this judgment Stout (PsycJiology, 1896, i,
p. 258) agrees. See also Foster, Physiology, part 3, 1897, pp. 11 16-8.
The law of habit has been raised to great dignity. Dumont (De P Habitude, 1875)
holds that habit is a general property of matter, quoting (p. 348) Gasscndi to similar
effect. This opinion is shared by many ; but see especially Ilering, Ueber das Geddchtniss,
1870.
t To make the memory work instantaneously and unerringly in a complicated task is
a matter which may require months and years of practice.
SYSTEMS AS ORGANISED
93
how shall it be prevented ? The pen scratches or spurts, the penholder or
pen is one he is not used to — how meet the difficulty ? Such are some of
the obstacles which detain the intelligent learner. These queries come to
him at first as problems demanding a solution, and some of them may
require severe thinking before they are disposed of. But as practice
proceeds new cases tend to be extremely rare; for, once a difficulty is
settled, the solution is soon well re-membered, and the problem ceases to
exist. Thus special instances which resemble problems do not present
themselves as such ; they are now mere re-membered facts. Just as
a normal constituent in a routine or organised process is re-developed, so
we re-member these isolated instances, for they have become part of the
normal order. Consider an example. The country road along which a
certain individual passes is too rough for comfortable progress. He shuns
the flints. If one of them is in one position, he steps beyond it;
in another position, he takes a shorter step; in a third, he steps to
the right; in a fourth, he steps to the left. By accident he may
tread on an ugly piece of flint sideways, or on his heels, or on the
arch or the ball of his foot, and in each instance he meets the difficulty
in an intelligent manner. So with the minor undulations of the ground,
or in walking up hill or down hill, or on board a vessel — an appropriate
solution is forthcoming for each instance. At first it might seem that on
every separate occasion he is compelled to decide on one of a dozen
courses. As a matter of fact, each special difficulty has occurred
previously, is re-membered and stands isolated. These cases cease to be
cases of special difficulty. The solutions are firmly fixed in the memory.
The obstacles, as they appear, are settled by reminiscence, and not by
reasoning, speculation or inquiry, \pbserve yourself in dressing and un-
dressing, a?id in walking?\
(3) The precise effort needed in the formation of any letter or part of a
letter is re-collected. Should more or less energy be required, the memory
will gauge it. But for memory the hand instead of going slowly, might
go quickly ; instead of in one direction, it might move in another. The
particular quantity and quality of muscular activity needed in an organised
trend or habit is not generally a matter of calculation. Suppose a man
discards an umbrella and procures a new one. After he has used the
latter for some time it strikes him that the umbrella flies open rather too
quickly. Then it occurs to him that the spring of the new one acts much
more readily than the spring of the old, and that he had neglected to
observe the difference. Unsuspectingly he was as active in opening this
umbrella as in opening his late one. That is to say, we do not take each
case on its merits ; we go by precedent. In writing, re-collection stands in
the same relation to the muscles as it does to sights or other sensations.
51. — The Process of Simplification.
(i) At first, as was hinted, there is a many-sided interest. We wonder
94 GENERAL ANALYSES
what is thought of our writing. We speculate whether we shall be praised
or blamed. We doubt whether all is right. This interest is bound to
depart in time, as is also the play of thought connected therewith. No
needs remain that induce us to concern ourselves with our caligraphy.
There is nothing left to wonder about — except, perhaps, our bad hand-
writing. The atmosphere of thought has changed.
(2) The time and energy spent in doubting, hesitating, brooding, trying
to re-member, etc., are now set free. As the interest in writing declined,
these agitations of the spirit decreased proportionately.
(3) At the commencement, especially when the child has little or no
guidance, he is sure to make many mistakes. How is it that he forgets
these ? * It is evident that writing would be most cumbersome if he first
re-membered the mistakes, and was bound afterwards to dismiss or correct
them. If such were the fact, organised trends would be buried in confusion.
Moreover, observation proves that his mistakes do not re-develop. The
apparent anomaly is accounted for as follows. When a right solution and
a wrong one develop, they do not equally persist. The wrong one has no
interest attached to it and speedily disappears. The right one is sensibly
retained and is deeply interesting. Other things being equal, of two com-
pounds that which appreciably occupies the attention is the one more easily
re-membered, and especially is this the case when a need for re-membering
is present. Hence the right solution will tend to be re-collected rather
than the wrong one. Suppose the action in which the right solution per-
sisted and the wrong one disappeared has to be performed for a second
time. That will happen which favours the former. An effort will be
made to re-develop that and not the wrong one. Other things being equal,
memory will favour the re-collection of that which required a sensible effort.
The wrong solution is thus less likely to recur. Again, the right solution
having been acted upon, the action is connected with the right solution
and not with the wrong one. Hence thinking of the action will, by
preference, suggest the one and not the other. Further, the one solution
having been acted upon, it has been for a longer period in existence, and
memory will therefore favour the re-collection of that one of two or more
lines of action which has been previously acted upon. And again, the
wrong solution is not only dismissed ; it is recognised quickly, and there-
fore set aside the more quickly. There is no waiting till it has fully
unfolded itself ; it is thrust back before it has seen the clear light of day.
Each time a solution is required, the right one is thus favoured, and the
wrong one discouraged. Hence, on the average, the one not favoured is
soon forgotten through not being re-called. Once more, other things
being equal, that is re-called which excites interest. Therefore the right
solution which excites interest will be reinstated while the wrong one, in
which the interest is negative, will tend to be forgotten through not being
re-called. And lastly, since the right solution is acted upon frequently
* See also Stout, Fsycholo^', 1896, i, p. 267.
SVSTEAfS AS ORGANISED 95
and at short intervals, it, rather than the wrong solution, will be fixed in
the memory.*
In the preceeding reflections we have probably an ample explanation of
the fact that error lapses. In learning to write, such error tends to dis-
appear, while the knowledge of what the process should be, prevents new
mistakes from arising.
The following propositions convey the argument of this sub-section :
(i) That on which attention is more exclusively centred is more easily re-
membered. (2) That which we do not, in the initial stage, make an
appreciable effort to re-member, is forgotten. (3) That thought which is
acted on is connected with the action, and is more easily re-formed than
that which is not connected with it. (4) That which is re-formed as well
as persists, is more easily re-membered. (5) If any part of what is
erroneous is re-membered it tends to be immediately disintegrated or
suppressed, thus hastening the oblivion of error. (6) That in which we
are not interested, or in which the interest is negative, is not re-called.
(7) Only that, other things being equal, on which attention has been
centred frequently at short intervals, is re-developed. f [Tes^ step by step."]
(4) Suppose the child is about to write the letter /. He admonishes
himself " Dot your i's." So with the letter /, he re-calls " Cross your Z's."
Similarly he says, " I must hold the pen thus." In this way many of
his actions are preceded by shorter or longer remarks. As he advances
in his studies such preliminaries become obviously superfluous. The
memory being perfected and the interest waning, these scaffoldings are
removed in the manner indicated in the preceding sub-section. What
happens with preliminaries happens with everything which is not essential
to the process. One portion after another lapses until nothing but what
is essential to the action (as he learnt it) survives. |
This elimination of what is non-essential is facilitated by another factor.
We can only elaborate simultaneously a limited quantity of systems. If
we are considerably interested in one thing, we cannot spare much
interest to other things at the same time. Thus there is a constant
tendency for thoughts, as with animals in congested areas, to drive each
other out of existence. We wish to write, and we want also to think of
the subject-matter of the writing. Hence a tendency to make no more
* The words interest, effort, attention, do not necessarily imply here more than the
rudiments of these. As we shall see (ch. 4), re-development is always the outcome of
effort teleologically determined, and hence known errors are not likely to be reproduced.
+ This special analysis makes no pretence to being faultlessly accurate. Ultimately,
no doubt, when the foundations of psychology have been laid, we shall obtain a
mathematical version of the process of economisation. At present, attempts at
mathematical statement, seeing the many problems involved, would be presumptuous
and futile. We may as yet only tirelessly re-analyse and re-study our data.
X Resolutions, and reflections generally, play the part of a scaffolding in the neural
economy. They argue that a system is still in the course of erection. As adaptation
grows complete, so the scaffolding is removed. Again, in another light, resolutions are
themselves organised. Their meaning is neither verbal, nor a simple transparent some-
thing ; but an established complex which is pointless unless we conceive it organically
and varying indefinitely in richness of content and expression. (Ch. 4.)
96 GENERAL ANALYSES
ado about a task than is absolutely necessary. The lessening of the interest
itself partly disarms opposition. When we are, therefore, concerned about
something, any disturbing or unessential phrase such as " Cross your Z's,"
is suppressed as soon as it rises or tends to rise. With these occasions
multiplying, and our interest in the writing departing — in the manner
explained in the preceding portion of this section — everything unessential
is forgotten. As the miller removes the husk, so, in the process of learn-
ing to write, our notions are gradually reduced and steadily divested of
what is non-essential, until the pure flour alone remains. The occasions
for this grinding down presents itself in practice through the need of, or
desire for, development of other systems, and, hence, of our apprentice
efforts, we retain only what cannot be rejected. The process of reduction
needs no deliberate determination. We require no special knowledge of
how to bring about the minimum of attention to our work.
Necessity grinds very small, smaller by far than we expect. We cannot
be too clear as to the character of these important changes. Let us then
see to what extent our notions shrink. We have seen interest fade, diffi-
culties vanish, problems disappear, preliminaries dispensed with. Next,
or along with them, the child forgets the formal aspect of the writing
process. When his studies commenced, he learnt that he must hold the
pen in a certain position if he wished to write with ease, that the arm
should not be placed as the reinless fancy prompted, and the like. He
knew, broadly speaking, why he did things and how he did them. This
knowledge of the how and the why of the process was doomed from the
beginning. Gradually losing his interest in writing, having no longer any
need to refer to that knowledge, and being eager to elaborate other
systems, he slowly forgets the how and the why. At first there was a
bond of time and order; but now all ties are gone. He cannot tell
relationship, time or succession. Each point is re-collected independently
of every other point. He cannot even indicate the ivhat, though he knows
what to do. The what has departed as a notion, and exists as a re-
membered act. As the child progressed there was no need to re-develop
the what, the Jww, the why, or any other system of relationships, and so
these are forgotten. We detect here no substituted, transformed or added
constituent, only certain once-existing factors have been removed. All
that could be dispensed with has been cast aside.
Necessity has dissolved the connections which once prevailed, and hence
the child cannot freely re-member the process of writing, or its relations,
or its successive steps. When a portion is conspicuous, as the holding of
the pen, he easily images the attitude. But when called upon to give a
description from memory of the whole process — static and dynamic — he,
like the mass of men, breaks down in the attempt. Even most of what is
supposed to be re-membered proves imaginary.
We usually re-collect things well, because they are interconnected in our
thought. So many other things resemble them, and they are related to so
much else, that they remain in continuous touch with the general current
SYSTEMS AS ORGANISED 97
of reflections. Most objects have points in common with other objects, so
that even when we, to all appearance, do not think of them, we yet ponder
over portions of them. As we move hither and thither in thought, we often
come across stray notions — just as we meet friends otherwise than by
appointment — and when we do not meet these, we yet encounter thoughts
that involve fractions of them. Thus ordinary notions have a fair oppor-
tunity of being re-collected. In the case of the atoms we are dealing with,
there is a difference. They lack universality and all relationship except
the one that connects them with their stimuli. These " writing atoms," on
account of their peculiar unfitness, never enter the normal stream of
thought, and hence nothing is able to develop them. They lack intelligi-
bility. They live entirely to themselves. \_Acquire some complex habit and
test the process of simplificatio7il\
52. — Reduction of Effort.
While advancing, the child discovers on frequent occasions that a less
effort will accomplish his object as completely as a greater effort. The
strain is accordingly reduced, and energy is thus prevented from running
to waste. [ You should test your habits i?i this respect^
53. — Appropriate Exercise.
It is known that, within limits, appropriate physica.1 exercise hardens
and increases the size of the muscles, and that, as a consequence, we are
able to carry out more with the same or a lesser effort. We are also aware
that only continued effort, and not effortless exercise, leaves marked traces.
As with strength, so with skill. Apart from what a perfected memory
accomplishes, there is an additional aid given by neural development of
some kind. We become, through appropriate exercise, more skilful than we
should be otherwise. Nerve messages are conveyed with greater rapidity
and certainty. \Are they}] For this reason, over and above what re-
membrance, oblivion and reduced effort do to simplify an activity, other
circumscribed neural changes lessen the necessary output of energy still
more.* [Test by exercise.]
54. — A Comparison.
Let us once more compare the process of writing in the days of the
child's early apprenticeship with the state of affairs when he has naturally
done learning. To begin with there was ceaseless bustle, now there is
none. Through considerations now well known to the student, the amount
of attention needed has been greatly reduced. The different parts of
normal habits are re-membered without strain ; the child knows how to
meet difficulties which are likely to occur; he is no longer interested in
*Only exercise and its effects arc corr.monly thought of by psychologists when discuss-
ing the nature of habit. Yet even here the quality rather than the quantity of the
exercise is the essential factor,
7
98 GENERAL ANALYSES
the process itself; known error is absent; there are no problems, or
almost none ; what is unessential has been forgotten ; less energy is ex-
pended ; and, lastly, the development of nerve and muscle has further
reduced the demand upon the attention. That is to say, effort has been
toned down in four ways: (i) The child re-members with ease; (2) he
has forgotten what is unnecessary ; (3) he has regulated the output accord-
ing to the actual demand ; and (4) his developed nerves and muscles work
more efficiently with less effort. \^Try and add to this /w/.]
There is, therefore, nothing mysterious in the seeming absence of com-
plexity in routine or habit. The energy required being largely reduced, the
process is simplified in proportion.
55. — The Result of Liberating Attention Energy.
Along with the changes which have been described has gone a
silent transformation which I now proceed to state. We know that there
is present at any time an equal amount of attention. If we require more
of it in one direction, we have less at our disposal in any other direction,
and vice versa. Hence, as the process of writing is being simplified, the
attention which is set free will be employed in other w^ays ; and as the
habit reaches its maximum simplicity, the greater part of the attention
must be redistributed.
After slight practice we can spare just enough attention to look around
us. Later on we may possess sufficient to hum a tune, and later still, to
pursue long trains of thought. As, at the commencement, there was no
attention available except for writing, so at the finish our writing makes
no appreciable difference to the general current of thought. We have
observed how in the struggle for life and comfort thoughts drive each other
off the field. The same procedure is encountered here in a modified
form. At first, when a little energy is set free — when a kind of attention
vacuum is created, and our eyes wander — there is embarrassment and the
balance is disturbed. We are confused in our work and confused in our
thought. As more and more energy is set free the effort to divide the
attention is repea,ted, and, by perseverance, the endeavour becomes more
and more successful. Finally, we closely attend to our writing while also
attending to other matters. Just as weights tend to fall, so atten-
tion ever strives to be fully employed. A simple experiment will provide
a further illustration of what we are attempting to elucidate. A man takes
two pebbles. He holds them in one hand. He throws them up into the
air successively. He tries to catch them in the same hand as they suc-
cessively return, and to throw them up again. At the start of the experi-
ment he is confused. He has too much to attend to. In trying to follow
the eccentricities of one pebble, he follows neither and catches neither.
It seems impossible to him to attend simultaneously to both. While he is
thinking of one, he neglects the other. His adjustments for intercepting
them fail. Instead of closing his hand for an instant when the pebble
SVSTEA/S AS ORGANISED
99
touches it, he watches the other pebble, and instead of watching the other
pebble, he closes his hand. But as he continues to experiment the
attention is thoroughly divided, and he acquires the coveted skill. After
additional trials he might be successful with three pebbles, or attend to the
two pebbles and be thinking of other matters. \^You might repeat this
experiment^
Thus it happens that while we are engaged in writing we are usually-
engaged in other directions also. When we are copying we may be
listening to a conversation, if, perchance, our superfluous attention is not
busy with something more serious. Gradually we have accommodated
ourselves to write while following other lines of thought. On the one
hand, interest urges us to disengage part of the attention ; on the other,
the presence of liberated energy seeks an outlet.*
56. — Does an Organised Trend ever become Automatic?
(i) Both the process of simplification and the acquired power of
pursuing several thoughts independently may have suggested that writing
comes to be in time a mechanical act where attention is superfluous. On
the other hand, we have seen that there is no fundamental change, only a
simplification. A further proof of this, if needed, is easily forthcoming. We
know, roughly speaking, that the distribution of systems is at all times equal,
assuming the normal waking state. If, consequently, we are absorbed in
thought, we should expect that writing would proceed with difficulty and
finally cease, and this actually takes place. We cannot be completely
absorbed in anything while writing, for divided attention is only possible
when the attention is divided.
(2) A purely mechanical act would be one in which no sensations were
present. This is not so with any habit, however confirmed. In learning,
we encountered sensations to begin with. These sensations grew gradually
fainter (sec. 51). Some of them are now so dim that they are hardly
perceptible. Yet their unobtrusiveness only indicates a reduction in the
energy employed ; in other words, it records that less energy is wasted.
These sensations represent physical activity, and only when that ceases do
these sensations disappear. They are the index of work done. It will be
found true, I believe, that sensations are never missed from an activity which
at any time was followed by them. It is also probable that wherever the in-
fluence of the unimpaired cerebro-spinal system reaches, there we have
sensations accompanying physiological activity. Perhaps they are not
essential, as is shown in the case of tickling the foot of a man whose spinal
cord is injured above the point whence the nerves of the lower extremities
emerge \ for this man withdraws his foot, though he feels nothing. But where
the activity is central, or connected by nerves with the higher nervous
* Hence Stout's explanation, already quoted, that "each mode of mental process tends
to arrest and suppress others" {.Psychology, 1896, i, p. 196) as well as Lipps' similar
reasoning {Grtindtatsacken, 1883, p. 164) fail to convince.
loo GENERAL ANALYSES
centres, there we shall find sensations alongside of physical activities.
However, these are matters for physiological research.
The nature of sensationlcss human activity would well repay careful study. Here we
can only touch upon the subject. From ch. 2 we know that reactions are systematic,
and that any severe drain upon the attention in one direction entails a breaking-up of
systems in other directions. Thus we may readily listen to this conversation or to that ;
but once we are interested in one, the other ceases to exist for us. For this reason the
vast mass of possible systems are never formed. Now the tendency of economisalion
naturally favours minimal development of what is unimportant, and this may be illustrated
by the case of reading. With the attention fully employed with it, not only is every-
thing noted and easily re-member'ed ; but the printed thoughts are read in connection
with one another, and with due regard to relevant memories. Lessen the attention and
things are little connected ; each sentence is understood only by itself; and is no sooner
understood than it is forgotten. Further reduce the attention and the words become
bare sounds which are perhaps not even heard. Once we recognise that every
sensation represents a system, we can see how we may speak without hearing our speech,
and how, generally, habitual motor action may persist when we are otherwise very fully
absorbed, although sensory systems are not developing. Given, however, normal attention,
and the sensations re-appear.
It is a commonplace that special attention to any portion of the body, develops, as we
shall see, unexpected sensations and also ordinary ones in greater fulness. When then
we contemplate the opposite process of being specially inattentive to the body, we learn
that cutaneous sensations and pains are often wholly absent. The extremities and the
body move ; effort and discrimination arc present ; and yet nothing is felt. This is in full
accordance with theory as well as with experiment, and can only surprise us if we have
paid too little heed to the nature of economisalion.
A further step is yet possible. The man who has hearing, not only hears a loud
report, but shrinks and is disconcerted. So also a child who has accidentally touched a
hot dinner plate, not only feels the heat but screams. Thus not only is a putrid smell or
a nauseous taste recognised by him who senses smells and tastes, but disgust and loathing
follow. Things are different with the sense-less man. The loud report, the hot plate,
the putrid smell and the nauseous taste, do not exist for him, nor does he shrink, scream,
or show diseust and loathing when what is objectionable to the normal man is present.
And such is the normal man's attitude when the attention is deflected : he neither
hears nor shrinks. Hence we may conclude that sensory inactivity, whether tem-
porary or permanent, implies the strangling of a process at its very inception. When
these facts are allowed for, we can understand how, under certain circumstances, a
temporary inactivity may become permanent. Suppose a lad wishes to walk in a
soldierly way. Holding himself upright, the act being a new one, is accompanied by
clearly appreciable organic feelings. As he practises, physiological adjustment becomes
closer. Finally, internal bodily changes create a new situation where the holding one-
self upright ceases to be accompanied by peculiar sensations. Certain systems, therefore,
tend to cease entirely or tend to be replaced by others.
Economisalion has then several effects as regards sensations. It may temporarily
suspend them ; it may reduce them ; it may abolish them ; or it may change them.
Circumstances will decide which line of development is to prevail.
A point of view such as is outlined above, goes some way towards explaining such a
phrase as acting with or without consciousness. When, for example, owing to a severe
cold, the sense of smell forsakes us, we say that we are "unconscious" as regards smell:
the perfume of the wall-flowers close by leaves us unaffected. Here "to be unconscious "
means that no smell system has developed. However, since we shall see in ch. 8 that
all knowledge is embodied in primary or secondary systems, the total cessation of these
systems will not leave us the world of objects minus "consciousness," but blank nothing-
ness. (See also sec. 19.)
SYSTEMS AS ORGANISED loi
(3) It might seem a plausible surmise that every step in a routine
process or habit is developed by the step which precedes it, and that on
the first step being developed the others follow automatically. The whole
process, unless interrupted, would according to this hypothesis, run down
like an alarm-clock ; or it would be as with a row of bricks appropriately
arranged : as the top portion of the first brick received a push in the
direction of the other bricks, it would fall on the second brick, which would
fall on the third, and so on until the last brick fell. Facts, however, do
not bear out this theory. It is not the outward stimulus that develops the
reaction ; for as the stimulus makes itself felt so, at the same time, the
reaction begins to develop. The stimulus touches a brain area where
both stimulus and reaction are implicated. It is not a case of one neural
aflfection following another ; there is but one neural aff"ection as a result of
which we both observe and act. And, likewise, along with the reaction
there is already developing a tendency to prepare for a further stimulus.
The disturbance, to state the thesis differently, is never strictly a local one.
Hence we must reject the suggestion that routine process is a mechanical
step-to-step process.*
(4) We are bound to go further. With any complex process such as
writing, we cannot stop at inconsiderable neural changes. We have to
reckon with a need which persists throughout. When this is interfered
with, we cease to write. Such stimulating needs, the needs of our nature,
are the source of organised trends of every description, as indeed of every
task. They represent a definite neural sensibility which enables the work
to proceed. The cessation of the needs involves the cessation of the
sensibility referred to. It is this sensibility which conditions the ready
reception of the stimuli and the ready reaction following. In the literal
sense, therefore, we have nothing atomic or purely mechanical in a routine
act like that of writing. We are still dealing Avith a living complex.
57. — Organised Trends and Memory.
The child is resolved to write the letter r more distinctly. Next time
he sits down to write he does not re-member his resolution. In some
instances he knows that he is coming to an r, and yet again and again
writes in the bad old fashion. The explanation of this, after what has
been said in the section preceding the last, is not difficult. The child
pursues his task independently of other labour. He has drilled himself
into not permitting different activities to interfere with each other. Hence
the writing tends to proceed along its own lines. A certain stimulus is
constantly connected with a certain reaction, and when the stimulus is
present, the reaction follows. Just as at first the slightest attention to
other matters disturbed the writing, so now on the contrary, it is extremely
hard to disorganise this activity. We are so used, while writing, to ignore
* Robertson {Psychology, 1896, p. 232) expresses the prevalent view when he says:
** Habits are . . . automatic to the extent to which they are fixed and go on by them-
selves." See also Murray, Psychology^ 1885, pp. 100-4.
I02 GENERAL ANAL YSES
the general stream of thought, /.<-., not to allow the least interference with
routine, that even thinking at the proper time of the desired change is
sometimes not adequate.
Usually we check ourselves when we think checking desirable, but
frequently our resolutions are not re-developed at the right moment.
There is an additional cause for this, besides the one we have mentioned.
The notion of the correction is not so firmly fixed, nor so ready to pass
into action, as the fault we wish to remove. A slight stimulus would,
therefore, develop the latter and not the former. Such is the normal
reason why the correction is often re-membered after the blunder has been
made, and why we as frequently fail to re-collect our resolutions.
"At first, and before the habit is acquired, every act is slow, and we are conscious of
the ctTort of deliberation, choice, and volition ; by degrees the mind proceeds with less
vacillation and uncertainty ; at length the acts become secure and precise : in proportion
as this takes place, the velocity of the procedure is increased, and as this acceleration
rises, the individual acts drop one by one from consciousness, as we lose the leaves in
retiring further and further from the tree ; and, at last, we are only aware of the general
state which results from these unconscious operations, as we can at last only perceive the
greenness which results from the unperceived leaves" (Hamilton, Metaphysics, 1877, i,
p. 370). There is, of course, no room for Hamilton's picturesque explanation which
implies the absence of simplification. " Actions we call rational are, by long-continued
repetition, rendered automatic or instinctive" (Spencer, Psychology, 1890, i, p. 456);
and " the requisite impressions being made on us, the appropriate movements follow ;
without memory, reason, or volition, coming into play " (p. 458). So far Mr. Herbert
Spencer. Stewart {Elements, 1808, p. 109) has another fascinating theory. "The
wonderful effect of practice in the formation of habits, has been often, and justly, takeii
notice of, as one of the most curious circumstances in the human constitution. A
mechanical operation, for example, which we at first performed with the utmost difficulty,
comes, in time, to be so familiar to us, that we are able to perform it without the
smallest danger of mistake ; even while the attention appears to be completely engaged
with other subjects. The truth seems to be, that in consequence of the association of
ideas, the different steps of the process present themselves successively to the thoughts,
without any recollection on our part, and with a degree of rapidity proportioned to the
length of our experience ; so as to save us entirely the trouble of hesitation and reflexion,
by giving us every moment a precise and steady notion of the effect to be produced."
And so Stout, Psychology, 1896, i, pp. 199-200: "When we turn to the nervous
system itself, we find the tendency towards a stationary condition evidenced by the facts
of habit. All automatic actions are the fixed and uniform response to the fixed and
uniform recurrence of similar modes of stimulation. Now, we have already seen that
automatic action, as such, is action which does not involve attention."
58. — The Place of Exercise.*
We will now determine the place of exercise, as apart from other
influences, in the organisation of the process of writing.
(i) I have for many years been writing. I shall persumably write for
some years longer, say twenty years. I shall, therefore, have an additional
twenty years of exercise. Will my handwriting then be better, and shall I
* For accounts of the place of exercise, see Berger, Ueher den Eiiijluss der Uebung
auf geistige Vorglinge, 1S88 ; Cornelius, Das Gesetz der Uebitng, 1896; Du Bois-
Reymond, V Exercise, 1S82 ; and Hofi'ding, Die BedeiUitng der Wiederholimg, 1883.
SYSTEMS AS ORGANISED 103
then be writing more rapidly, supposing mine be a normal case ? Hardly.
The probabilities are that twenty years of added exercise will make no
difference worth speaking of, nor would fifty years even, apart from the
influence of old age or the intervention of death. Exercise has no absolute
value. A statement to the effect that " improvement in the quality and the
speed of writing is in direct proportion to exercise " would be incorrect, as is
also the milder form that " exercise strengthens faculty."
Practice does not always lead to proportionate growth and perfection of faculty, for it
sometimes ends in writer's cramp and similar deplorable developments. This is the
opposite of what we encounter on observing that so-called "gentle" exercise counts
probably for nothing. So also chronic pains may grow worse with time ; they may
become better ; or their influence may be considerably diminished. The doctrine of
habit, as commonly formulated, is made up of popular generalisations of the loosest
possible texture.
(2) In the elimination of what is erroneous and non-essential time rather
than exercise is a favouring factor. While the former offers opportunities
for the detection of improvements and mistakes, hastening in this way the
evolution of organised trends, the latter remains neutral as regards these
changes.
(3) Memory is slightly strengthened, and development, to an inconsider-
able extent, assisted by means of effortless exercise.
(4) Only effort, persistent in its nature, brings about sensible improve-
ment in primary or in secondary activity. When effort is not strenuous,
or is too strenuous, advance in ability is practically out of the question.
Nor is constant progress, speaking generally, possible. A river incessantly
wears away its banks, and wind and rain never leave off denuding a
mountain. Not so with organised reaction. Exercise does not incessantly
produce changes in direct proportion to the amount of effort expended.*
[Test {i) to {^).]
59. — The Place of Judgment.
I have described the evolution of a habit. I have sketched the
origins of that evolution ; but I have not, I hope, suggested that the
method is such that all men end in writing alike. The hands of a watch
report progress automatically ; but the development of an organised trend
* Compare with the above view of the place of exercise that of Stout, Psychology,
1896, ii, p. 4 : " In learning to read . . . association has been so strengthened by repeti-
tion that it has become capable of fulfilling by itself the function of attention" ; and that
of James, Psychology, 1890, i: "That [habit] is at bottom a physical principle is ad-
mitted by all good recent writers on the subject" (p. 105). "Dr. Carpenter's phrase
that our nervous system grows to the modes in which it has been exercised expresses the
philosophy of habit in a nutshell " (p. 112). Habit " simplifies the movements required
to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue ; " it also
"diminishes .... attention" (p. 112-4). It is plain that James echoes a tradition,
without inquiring into its credentials.
One aspect of the results of exercise may be summed up as follows : " Every one knows
that in those places where the skin is frequently exposed to pressure, to friction, to hot
objects, or to corrosive liquids, there follows an abnormal development of the epidermis "
(Du Bois-Reymond, VExercise, 1882, p. 100).
I04 GENERAL ANALYSES
is not of such a nature. The use of judgment, of which I will now speak,
is a factor which cannot be too highly appreciated.
Suppose a man learns to write without a teacher. He will undoubtedly
make numerous blunders, while he will only learn with great difficulty
and very slowly. When the routine stage has at last been reached, he
will find that, in comparison with those well taught, he writes badly, makes
many serious errors, and spends more energy on the writing than is neces-
sary. He will also discover that a variety of problems are met by him
unintelligently, and that many movements are not so simple as they might
be. Organised reaction, as such, in no wise implies perfection. While
one writes a splendid hand, another may have a wretched scrawl. From
the point of view of perfection it would be suicidal to consider time,
exercise and effort, as the only essentials in intelligent development.
There are hosts of aged workers who are stupid, clumsy, slow, in spite of a
life spent in a special class of work, while there are others more favourably
situated, who do the same work better and with greater speed, although
they have had but a year or two of practice. Efficiency would be almost
universally absent if we acted upon the belief that with the lapse of time
bad workmanship disappears and good workmanship develops.
Let us assume that a young man whose education has been neglected,
is anxious to write well. He procures a tried teacher. Of beginners'
blunders many are common, and others are infrequent. His teacher,
through foreknowledge, prevents the majority of them from occurring, and
speedily reforms the others. Few mistakes are permitted, and none are
allowed to strike so deep that they are difficult to uproot. The pupil stands
no risk of injuring spine, lungs or eyes. He has not repeatedly to discover
that he is on a squirrel track.
Thus far the teacher's help is negative. On the positive side he com-
municates the shortest, the simplest and the most effective manner of
writing. He ensures that there is little to learn and less to unlearn. He
reduces labour and perplexity. He knows just what should be done, and
insists upon that alone. The consequence is that his pupil acquires the
art of writing perhaps with one-third the trouble and in one-third the time
expended by another who, though otherwise his equal, has had no teacher
or a bad one.
Exercise offers no guarantee that we shall perform a movement in the
best way.* In many an organised trend in which the parts are not obvious
(and in most they are not), movements are executed circuitously. A life-
time of exercise may make no difference in this respect, for the most direct
way is not revealed mechanically and is very often difficult to discern. A
careful analysis will thus frequently show that movements are superfluous
* One stormy day I watched the manner in which various persons carried their
umbrellas. Almost without exception the umbrellas were held with the stick at right
angles to the ground. Yet the wind was all the time beating strongly from one side !
Thus people do not adapt themselves in rainy weather to the precise circumstances,
though they have for years been accustomed to umbrellas. So also a person may have
reached old age without having learned to adjust his tie properly.
SYSTEMS AS ORGANISED 105
and that sometimes the prevailing method is cumbersome and wastes time,
trouble and effort. Hence sound training alone, not mere superficial train-
ing, can produce the effect we should aim at. As with circuitous activities,
so with the absolute amount of energy expended. Most men employ in
organised reaction more energy than is needful ; the initially superfluous
output becomes the normal output ; and thus part of a man's energy is
frittered away. Thoughtful analysis alone indicates the proper quantity of
energy demanded. Time should never be wasted. We need never cease
learning or improving. Alertness^ deliberate observation and the study of
others engaged in the same or a similar pursuit, all tend toivards progress.
\Note these three rules.]
Not exercise but judgment is the more desirable. Judgment is also
more important than time. Double the former and you quarter the latter.
In many an instance half an hour's conversation with the right individual
will do more than years of plodding. A wise man will, therefore, learn
nothing at haphazard, and will introduce judgment into every activity.
The child who learns to write, benefits in every way by the employment of
his own and others' judgment. He ought to be taught that exercise alone
will not briftg him to his goal.
Trends are sometimes established in anything but a deliberate manner. In sitting
down, for instance, I chance to lean back in a particular manner, and so feel more
comfortable. However, I have but the dimmest notion of the consequences, and I
should be surprised if anj' one were to tell me that I felt more comfortable. A little time
afterwards I lazily repeat the act. Grain after grain of intelligence is thus sown until
after a while, a full-blown trend develops. Even then I may hardly be aware that
such a trend exists. When little attention is used, a thing is thought of only in its
immediate relations, and in this way much is acquired with slight notice. Similarly,
pressure of time, accident, greed, and what not, gradually initiate changes in our activity
in a half-perceptible way. It is a crude conception which imagines that our trends-to-be
are first conceived in the flaming colours of elaborate resolutions.
60. — Why is it Difficult to influence Habits ?
The learner has ceased to be a learner. The organised trend is fully
formed. The apprentice has reached a stage at which he writes without
troubling himself about the how of writing. Suppose he arrives at the
conclusion that he soon feels tired when writing, while others do not.
Suppose he decides to make the necessary changes which shall enable him
to write without rapid exhaustion. The ideal procedure in such a case
would be, first, to re-member, and then to remove the constant antecedent
of the worrying sensation. As we have learnt in sec. 51, this homely
method is not open to him. There is nothing in the memory that will
suggest the antecedent j all temporal or logical bonds are forgotten; he
does not know what is followed by what ; he cannot re-member what he
learnt or how he learnt. Hence he is bound to investigate. Oblivion
makes it difficult to introduce changes in routine.
He proceeds, then, to inquire. Perhaps one movement needs changing,
perhaps two, perhaps three, perhaps twenty. Possibly the immediate
io6 GENERAL ANALYSES
source of discomfort is the result of the foolish position of some one part of
the body. What is it, and which is it? He will not find it easy to decide.
Perhaps one seemingly well-calculated change is introduced, and nothing
satisfactory follows. Perhaps some unexpected effect results. Perhaps
the change makes matters worse, and he writes more awkwardly than
before. He tries a fresh position or movement and still another, but
without success. Perhaps he remedies the evil, and introduces a greater in
its place. No horoscope can be cast as to what will or what will not
happen. He is dealing with what he cannot understand until he has
observed its effects. \Deliberately drop some habit and observe^
As a further illustration, let us take an example with larger outlines.
Strolling about in a poorer portion of London we may notice that the heels
of those we are watching are worn painfully low on one side. Suppose
one of these people wished to remedy the defect. Merely to make a
resolution that he would walk properly would be useless. If he tried to
think of his walk he would most likely find nothing that suggested a
solution. The same would probably happen if he proceeded to observe
himself or others. Being baffled, he decides on experiment. He walks
somewhat differently from his usual style, but there is no apparent result.
He alters his walk again : it seems to him that the change is an improvement.
He advances a further step : matters are worse than they were to commence
with. He may thus go on experimenting for years and not achieve his
purpose, or he may spoil his walk in other ways. It is not that he is
wholly unav/are of what baffles him, but he cannot effectively recall its
normal antecedents. In moving a step there are a multitude of motions
with their accompanying sensations. These sensations are noted. If he
is attentive enough he learns their presence ; but he cannot fix them
steadily or re-develop them at will, except after special practice. Even
then, as one motion determines the succeeding ones, only the development
of a series would be of assistance. Such a feat would be too much for a
trained psychologist ; it is still more so for an average man not practised
in introspective analysis. Hence men, as a rule, do not experiment much.
They discover how troublesome it is, and almost invariably decline the
invitation.
Ordinarily, then, when it occurs to any one that he might improve his
method of writing, he lightly passes over the suggestion. Perhaps he
pictures to himself the labour it will occasion before he achieves his
purpose. Perhaps, and this is more likely, he dismisses the thought
because he has dismissed similar thoughts before.
Suppose, again, that a man does know what tires his hand in wTiting,
or what attitude is the most desirable. He has not therefore surmounted
all difficulties. He must forget the old way, and learn the new. Now we
have seen how independent a habit normally is of other habits or of the
general current of thought. Hence he has no mean task before him.
Each time he wishes to write, and all the time he is wTiting, he must be
thinking of the alteration he intends making. If he neglects to do this, he
SYSTEMS AS ORGANISED 107
fails to work himself out of the old rut. Speaking generall)^, so firmly
established are the existing arrangements that often months or years pass
before they are forgotten and the new method is assimilated.
Other difficulties arise. He may be preoccupied and forget the experi-
ment on which he had embarked. When a favourable occasion again
offers, the experiment is not thought of and he unknowingly treads the old
windings. Perhaps months afterwards he re-collects that he has had a notion
of introducing some alteration. He repeatedly forgets his aim for hours,
days or weeks, as the case may be. Hence the hope of success recedes,
and this induces a lowering of interest, despair of final victory, and
disgust. But grant that he perseveres and succeeds. The gain is not
patent. If each fault he wished to grapple with took a long time to over-
come and entailed much trouble, he could at best correct very few slips
during a lifetime. Besides, he could not think of altering several faults at
a time. And one more difficulty. Suppose a man makes up his mind to
go to bed at II p.m. He carries out his resolution. In due time, as
explained, the resolution is forgotten. Then some opportunity presents
itself to stay up later, and slowly and unnoticed the time of retiring is
changed again. Such reversion to old habits is frequent, and must be
reckoned with.
Though sweeping changes in adults are almost out of the question, and
though innumerable organised trends can only be transformed at the cost
of much time and trouble, there are yet exceptions to this rule. Many an
action which we have persisted in for years, as we shall see, may
have its character altered at once, while various activities may give rise to
little trouble in the changing.* In some instances an intelligent method
rapidly produces far-reaching effects, and the introduction of a particular
trend may scatter a multitude of objectionable activities.
Changes in habits are, as a ride, hard to accomplish. The lesson to be
derived is elementary , indeed. We must at the outset ensure that tve do a thing
ivell. JFe must prevent the ripening of objectionable activities, and we must
foster the development of such habits as mature reflection ivotild approve. In
practice, taking life as a whole, the alternative to obviating the groivfh of bad
habits is to bear zvifh them stoically when they are formed. Attempts at
general reform have failed and must fail.
6 1 . — Early Education.
To avoid the necessity of having to recast a multiplicity of activities, we
must begin rational education with the infant ; for by the time the child
is of school age, the general outlines of his nature are fairly settled, and it
is then, for many reasons, hard to change his character or to remove serious
defects. Only the most thoughtful and the most thorough-going attempts
* " Let any one try for the first time to write or draw while looking at the image of his
hand and paper in the mirror, and he will be utterly bewildered. But a very short
training will teach him to undo in this respect the associations of his previous lifetime "
(James, Psychology, 1 890, ii, p. 182).
loS GENERAL ANALYSES
will successfully counteract the neglect of the previous six or seven years.
The reasons for laying special stress on the first three or four years of life
are as follows: (i) A child is physically, intellectually and economically
dependent, and we possess, therefore, undisputed freedom to place him under
conditions favourable to the development of desirable activities. (2) A
child's memory is weak. Even when he is compelled to do a thing, he
soon comes to do it spontaneously, having forgotten the grievance of
compulsion. (3) A child forgives as easily as he forgets. He nurses no
resentment. (4) The child is not sufficiently ingenious to plot against its
educators. (5) For the same reason he can seldom understand or foretell
the educator's intention. (6) A child has no deep-seated objectionable
activities. (7) A child easily acquires desirable activities, and as easily
shakes off objectionable ones and vice versa. (8) When an activity has
been formed early in life it displays the maximum capacity of developing
into strength and efficiency, and such activity is very difficult to unsettle
in later life. The opportunities for early training being so numerous, the
earliest period should be made the most fruitful for educational
purposes. It does not follow from the above that a human being's
plasticity draws to a close at the age of six or seven. The plasticity
passes slowly, and can hardly be said to cease when we reach maturity.
The skill, which is acquired with slight effort at fifteen, is unattainable by
the man of thirty-five, — compare for instance the respective capacities of
these two ages for shorthand. Again, what the child of six can learn with
little trouble, the boy of fifteen may be debarred from acquiring, — efficiency
in violin playing is of such a nature. In the evolution of routine the stage
of general development must be allowed for. As we grow older, deeper
changes or fundamental acquisitions become less and less possible. Not
by any means an insignificant factor in this staidness of age is the type of
individuality which the mature man develops and the conditions under
which he lives. Where the circumstances and the type are similar to that
of the young child, there we expect and find similar results.*
62. — Each Habit is based on Others of its Kind.
In analysing the development of the child's power of writing we assumed
that we were starting with a non-organised process and ending in an organ-
ised one. At the commencement, we were face to face with complexity;
at the end, with simplicity. There seemed to be a definite initial stage
and a definite winding up. These various assumptions are far from being
defensible. Strictly speaking, as we shall see at once, there was no
beginning.
(i) In writing we make certain movements which, as we have previously
noted (sec. 50), are guided by re-collection. If we neglect the general
muscular memories, there remain only random movements; but we do
* As to the importance of acquiring Rood habits early in life, see Carpenter's Mental
Physiology, 1876.
SYSTEMS AS ORGANISED 109
not start with such in learning to write. We are consequently making
use of existing systems in the formation of a new one. Organised trends,
in other words, are only new to a certain extent.
Let us realise this more completely. A person is not used to lifting
weights. One moment he exerts more energy than is needed, the next
less. He sees a weight, but being ignorant of the precise eflfort required
for lifting it, he mistakes the probable result of his efforts. Yet, after
amassing knowledge he almost always puts forth the proper strength, A
glance re-develops the appropriate effort, and the merest attempt at lifting
suggests the weight. Picking up a piece of aluminium, the specific gravity
of which we are not acquainted with, we find we have exerted ourselves
too much. Moving a papier-mache table we note, owing to our mistaken
notion of its weight, a peculiar feeling due to its unexpected lightness.
The weight of an object we measure off by memory (sec. 50). The out-
put of energy is graduated according to past outputs. Very early in life
the child learns to know the resistance implied in tactile systems, i.e., how
much labour it requires to move them or to raise them. When the child
then begins learning to write, the majority of muscular efforts which will
be required are already part of many organised trends. This knowledge
he incorporates solidly into the action of writing. He has not to experi-
ment anew, for experiments have been long done with. If the knowledge
of every movement had to be freshly acquired, the process of learning to
write would assume monstrous proportions. Still, as in the instance when
we lift a piece of aluminium for the first time, we have in learning to write
a few special reactions. These are the new constituents in the trend ;
though they themselves are based on previous acquirements.
(2) As with effort, so with ingenuity. Previous to learning to write,
the child had years of training in skilfulness. The intelligence required
in that branch of knowledge is only specialised intelligence — the old skill,,
plus a fragment of new skill. Various tasks which demand little art and
resemble previous exploits, are performed accordingly by a simple reference
to memory, while other activities, necessitating much specialised ability,
are only partially assisted by older acquirements. In any case, a set of
general principles which results from growing knowledge helps in the
solution of each difficulty. Thus, for one person, a problem will be hard
to unravel, while for another the solution is given immediately by memory.
(3) A like criticism applies to the part played by suppression. The
child, urged by needs, has from a tender age suppressed uninteresting
thoughts and dwelt upon interesting ones, and this power of shaping a
habit is, therefore, not a new power, being itself organised and capable of
improvement. If it be well developed, thoughts are more easily dwelt
upon or dismissed. It is constantly being affected by what happens.
Hence it has nothing new to perform when we are learning to write. It
is an established activity, more or less polished by use, memory and
judgment. In a somewhat fresh application, the old mechanism is micro-
scopically improved in a certain direction.
jio GENERAL ANALYSES
The argument may perhaps be forcibly brought home by considering
the following instance. One man is in splendid condition as regards
strength, skill and judgment. Another man is not in good condition at
all. Both are set to learn a business in which the three qualities mentioned
are required. The former will learn it with ease, the latter with difficulty.
The former already possesses much of what is required in the business,
the latter does not. The former recognises much that is not new to
him, the latter very little. Countless difficulties have been overcome
by the former in other connections, and thus many perplexities do not
e.xist for him.
It is only in an arbitrary sense that the developed mode of writing can
be said to have had a beginning. The mass of what is organised was so
before the child learnt writing, and remains organised alongside of the
special capacity we are considering. We cannot, therefore, consistently
speak of beginning to learn to write, or, rather, when we so express our-
selves, we must understand clearly that we are utilising the components
of other organic trends, and that we are contemplating a compound of
new and old tasks. In the new activity we have a specialisation of old
activities.
An average adult so readily forms primary and secondary combinations and is so
swift to adapt himself to an immense variety of circumstances that nothing but miracle
seems to explain his activity. A saner view, however, results when we pry into the
liistory of these combinations. We find then that steady growth in adaptation accounts
for the fertility of resource. The infant learns with irritating slowness to use his senses, and
in the course of instinctively determined movements he gradually acquires the physical
skill which the adult so readily applies. Only by protracted stages do the senses come to
act too'ether, and only in this manner does the child come to use his hands for the pur-
pose of grasping. As with primary combinations, so with secondary ones. Under the
pressure of needs more and more complications of a primary and a secondary character
develop until we have the magic rapidity of adult life. Here the muscular and the
neural systems have reached their greatest efficiency. Since we, then, can observe the
factor of growth, we have no option but to regard the secondary, like the primary, world
as a highly organised system of combinations. In other words, the thoughts and actions
of adult existence are intelligent and varied because they are the product of a long process
of natural selection. Habitual process, therefore, if it is regarded as organised process, is
a fact that embraces all primary and secondary combinations without exception. For the
same reason, spiritistic theories, placing as they do an unanalysed man behind the man,
must be unprofitable to the student who wishes to understand the facts of adult life. The
study of evolution alone yields an intelligent account of the human machine.
63. — Each Haiut forms a basis for Others of its Kind.
In learning to write we start with organised reactions. Naturally,
when we have learnt to WTite, this new trend (the strength, skill and
knowledge acquired) forms a partial basis for other trends. Thus a sign
painter or lithographer profits from knowing how to write ; the position
we place ourselves into when writing may be advantageous for many
purposes ; the way we hold the pen may assist us in drawing ; and writing
itself might possibly be considered a department of drawing. We conclude,
S YSTEMS AS ORGA NISED 1 1 1
then, that the mechanism of writing is not self-contained, since it pre-
supposes organised reaction and serves as a basis, or forms a department
of other such processes,
64. — What is a Habit?
We have analysed at full length a particular example. In the last two
sections we saw that an organised trend is not self-contained (if we allow
that writing is a fair type of it). How then is a habit to be described ?
What are its distinguishing marks ? Is it a bundle of such habits ? Or
is there no such thing ? Or is the notion of a trend a mere generalisation
of convenience ?
A man wishes to know the time, and he pulls out his watch and looks.
The hand points to two o'clock, while the hour must be about eight.
Then he re-collects that his watch has stopped for some days. The com-
pass of this trend is very limited, and its development must have been
correspondingly simple. As there is but one complicated movement, and
that one common to other movements, he has had next to nothing to
learn. Even the fact that he takes hold of the watch by the ring, is
matched by similar reactions. What is new is that he accustoms himself,
in the manner explained in sec. 55, to look at his watch without allow-
ing the action to interfere with the general current of thought. Even this
is overstating the case. The element alluded to can hardly be called a
new one. The whole process is primitive. We are constantly engaged
in doing with but the slightest interference what might be called fresh
things, so that all we have new in this action is the somewhat greater ease
with which the attention is divided. The obviousness of feeling accom-
panying the suggestion of the act is reduced to an inconsiderable extent.
We may speak of climbing over a stile as an acquired habit, yet that
action embraces perhaps not one new feature. A man climbs over a stile
as he has been accustomed to surmount similar obstacles. Thus fifty
different activities might be considered as fifty distinct sets of organised
reactions when there is in reality but one. In the instance of the stile
we are considering, not at all a simple one, there is, roughly speaking, no
learning, no mistake, no oblivion, no effort of attention, A person scales
the hundredth stile with perhaps no greater ease than the first.
Consider a man's general bearing. May he speak of it as organised?
Perhaps he has seen some one bow in a certain fashion. He admired the
elegance of the gesture, and when he had to bow, he re-called his model.
Or as he grew up he bowed as his sister or brother did, without delibera-
tion. Or he adopted the various portions of the bow from various persons,
not connecting in thought the different movements he has imitated.
Thus with the smile present on his lips; the manner he holds his head;
the way his eyes meet others' eyes ; the normal expression on his face.
In short, he may speak of his total bearing as a definite settled whole ; as
acquired deliberately and in a logical order of which he is precisely aware.
As a matter of fact, a mass of independent units are probably included in
112 GENERAL ANALYSES
our bearing, A small portion of it, such as the way in which we bow,
may have been, as shown, acquired at different times and independently.
But further than this, the bow is perhaps not a stable quantity. Parts of
it may vary, or the whole of it change, as the outcome of a multiplicity of
factors. So with the whole of a man's bearing. From the point of view
of a careful analysis he cannot speak of his bearing as one trend, acquired
and fixed in a deliberate order. He has before him rather an indefinite
complex. A habit is not bound by any dimensions ; it is not independent
of other habits ; it may consist of a single elementary reaction or of a
multiplicity of reactions.
The exact turning at which an activity becomes organised cannot be
decided, mainly for the reason that no such turning is imaginable.
Its hold even varies. Looking at a hat, we recognise it instantly as
being a hat.* How far a set of reactions can be simplified and
apparently detached from general thought and control is a moot point.
A trend, especially when the organism is predisposed to it, might require
very little effort in the acquiring. The apparently mechanical opening
and closing of the eyelids, for instance, resembles an activity such as
writing. In simple routine the stimulus may be so faint that though it
be recognised sufficiently to be acted upon, yet it is too faint for clear
recognition. Moving the eyelids with or without deliberation yields
apparently indistinguishable results. This we should expect, for the pro-
cess is so elementary that deliberation or absence of deliberation makes
no appreciable difference. Opening and shutting my eyelids deliberately
as I am writing, I cannot discover anything in the action that would
differentiate it from a normal trend. No distinct feeling of effort is trace-
able. There is only the feeling which accompanies the movement. [T^j-/".]
There is present probably under average circumstances, a feeling of
fatigue which is relieved by shutting the eyes. This feeling is very faint ;
but ordinary organised reactions have often no more distinct feelings
accompanying them. In the case of moving the eyelids, there is every
reason to believe that the act is initiated at birth, currents of energy being
easily discharged in that direction. How far respiration and other similar
processes may be classed as routine, the reader must decide for himself.
*The learning of every word in a language, of every fact, argues organised reaction,
and every word or fact so acquired implies an established trend. Yxom week to week,
perhaps from hour to hour, we are building up and breaking down temporary habits.
Let me transcribe from my note book : " A certain noise made by boots. I recognise the
noise and the purpose ; but there is nothing present except a sense of familiarity and such
feelings as might go with verbal and other images. Then, as expected — here again there
is but a feeling — I feel a tap on my arm. Then a voice says, ' Are you ready ?' I knew
what was going to be asked of me, and so I at once quietly nod my head." Observe the
total absence of verbal and other imagery. Essentially I react as I had reacted before.
The creaking boots were familiar, so was the implication, so was the tapping, so was the
short speech, and so was my nod. The noise of the boots was expected about that time.
The moment I heard the voice, I did not so much know what was coming as felt its pur-
port. In this way we act according to innumerable habits more or less transitory, atten-
tion being reduced whenever a thing is thought, or said or done a second time. Thus the
way I turn over the pages of a book is a distinct trend, the manner in which I open and
shut the door, the fashion in which I read, and the like.
SYSTEMS AS ORGANISED
"3
Probably no distinct boundary exists. The mere absence of traceable effort,
even the absence of an observable evolution in the action, applies to many
processes which would not be looked upon as inherited. Every trend, by
the very fact of its existence, must be considered as implying at least a
modicum of predisposition. Hence the difficulty of drawing a line of
demarcation.
If habitual actions tend, in one direction, to merge into bodily functions,
they tend to merge into deliberateness in another. What, indeed, is to
divide these classes? As we reflect we become convinced that a vast
number of actions are repeated, that the majority of our activities resemble
each other, that the various new tasks we pe7form are netv but to an insignifi-
cant degree, and that certain principles elaborated in the school of life lie at
the foundation of activity as a whole. It would be safe to state that the
overwhelming mass of what is new is more or less routine in character.
Again, not all routine processes require little effort. So great are the varia-
tions in this respect that while some activities scarcely make a call on our
intelligence or our energy, others exclude nearly all unrelated effort and
are most fatiguing.
Repetition of a process is no trustworthy guide as to the extent of the
stability of an established line of action. The following illustrates one
extreme. A man is required to do something which he has not attempted
before, a similar cycle of actions having to be attended to about every
three minutes. An instrument which he needs he puts in an awkward
place. During the first quarter of an hour the mistake is pointed out to
him. He agrees that he is wrong. He appears anxious not to repeat the
blunder. Though only three minutes intervene between the time he is
corrected and the time he is to correct himself, he yet persistently errs.
Often he declares he will put the instrument in the right place, and perhaps
a second or two afterwards he becomes completely unaware of his declared
intent. Though his eyes sweep across the object lying in the wrong place,
he does not notice it. Many like instances might be cited proving the
fact that mere repetition, or extent of time, are not essentials in the growth
of particular habits. The argument becomes self-evident when we reflect
that present activities are based on preceding activities, and that all action
is more or less organised.
While the slightest exercise, as we have just noted, may firmly establish
an activity, sometimes years of constant exercise will not accomplish that
object. I performed for years, and day after day, a certain action in a cer-
tain manner. Then I observed some one proceeding more intelligently.
I resolved to imitate and found no difficulty in breaking with a settled
custom. The next day a new era was inaugurated. No effort was
requisite. No relapse ensued.
The relative ease with which an organised trend can be removed is
not in proportion to the number of times the action has been repeated.
For scientific purposes this must be understood. For practical purposes
it is nevertheless well not to forget that habits require normally a certain
8
114 GENERAL ANALYSES
time to grow, and that a vast aggregate of activities, once they become
fixed, are simplified, require Httle effort, and are hard to remove. Though
no rigorous and comprehensive statement can be drawn up, it is advisable
to note the general drift of the conclusions here arrived at.
A \s iilcly-prcvalcnl mistake must he touched upon here. Ward {Psychology, 1886, p.
40, col. i) incidentally remarks: " Use we know blunts feeling and favours intellection,
as we sec in chemists, who sort the most filthy mixtures by smell and taste without dis-
comfort." See also Bain, Emotions and the Will, 1S75, PP- S°"2 ; Bouillier, Dii Plaisii;
1865, pp. 21-2 ; Destult de Tracy, Ideologic, ch. 14 ; Dumont, Di la Sensibiliti.', 1875,
pp. 77-8 ; Dumont, De P Habitude, 1875, p. 344; Gratacap, De la Mcmoire, 1866, who
says that "the principal law of habit reads in effect that, in repeating itself, that which par-
takes of the nature of passion becomes enfeebled and effaced, and that which partakes of
the nature of action becomes strengthened and tends to reproduce itself" (p. 205) ; Hoff-
ding, IViedcrholung, 1883, p. 323 ; Horwicz, Analysen, 1872, i, p. 360 ; Jodl, Lehrbuch,
1896, p. 388 ; Ravaisson, De P Habitude, 1838, p. 27 ; Riimelin, Rcden, 1881, i, pp.
162-3 ; Sully, Human Mind, 1892, ii, p. 33 ; Titchener, Psychology, 1896, p. 97. These
authors, and many others, hold that use blunts feeling. Needless to say that the opposite
is just as true — as when filthy mixtures become more and more objectionable — and that
both cases are to be explained teleologically. We come to love our country, our parents,
our habitual resorts, our avocations, in the same manner as we come to grow neglectful
of objects. Indeed the whole tendency of this chapter is to prove that use blunts intellect
and decomposes it when needs are in opposition or lend no support. In this manner
familiar objects whose details are of no importance grow more and more indistinct because
we attend to them less and less. Thus the chapters of this book become meaningless to
me through incessant re-reading.
65. — All Thought is Organised.*
We have analysed a particular routine case. We have attempted, in a
general survey, to arrive at a conclusion as to its essential nature. Now
it must be evident that organised reactions cover an enormous area in the
province of muscular action ; but what position, if any, do they occupy in
the more exclusively neural realm ? 1 have reserved the answer to this
question. The examples chosen, were, generally speaking, such as implied
motion, and purposely so, in order to avoid prejudging the problem which
we are about to consider.
Let a man imagine himself walking along a lane, playing with a ring
on his finger, scanning the scenery around him, and secondarily rehearsing
a poem. When he first endeavoured to repeat the poem could he have
repeated it as easily as now? Not if he was a normal individual.
Some practice was necessary, equivalent to that detailed in the analysis
of writing, before the verses could be repeated with so little effort that there
was not even a suspicion of rehearsing them. We have here a routine
act, similar to that of writing, but there is an important new element. The
immediate stimulus and the reaction are both present in the secondary
realm. The verses proceed within. One secondary system suggests or
is followed by another such system. When we first thought of rehearsing
a poem inaudibly we could not help re-membering irrelevant, unessential
* This problem forms the subject of ch. 4.
SYSTEMS AS ORGANISED 115
and erroneous topics. By a process previously explained these have been
ehminated. We encounter here also development, and the poem, as we
might expect, runs smoothly, without interruption, and without much
demand upon the attention. YLearn to recite sof?ie poem.^
Organised quality is still more clearly evinced in arithmetical practice.
When I am asked " What are five times five.?" I answer from immediate
memory and without delay " twenty-five." So in adding up columns of
figures, not only is there no hesitation, but I add three or four figures at once
with a like ease. When I was a child things did not proceed so smoothly.
I employed my fingers, my buttons, etc., to assist me in doing a simple
sum, and even then I was more often wrong than right. Immense effort
yielded little satisfaction then ; but to-day little effort harvests immense
results because every possible instance of a certain type has been memorised.
When I want to know what i and i are, I do not cast about for a reply, I
answer forthwith, 2. Similarly with rules referring to mathematics gener-
ally : solutions of often-met difficulties become matters of organised
memory. \^Do some menfai arithmetic, and observe?^
We have seen that in a bodily trend we do not always obtain so ele-
mentary a solution as we desire. The same thing happens, and is of
special import to us, in matters of thought. Suppose a man is asked
" What are 18 times 19 ? " (We will assume that he does the sum silently.)
He starts 10 times 18, 180; 9 times 10, 90; are 270; 9 times 8, 72; are
342; or 20 times 18, 360; — 18, are 342. Though the answer is reached
circuitously, the successive steps are yet rigidly connected. Every move
in the total act is developed like the moves in any common bodily habit.
There is no halt between point and point, whether we have two steps or
ten. They follow each other uninterruptedly. Their number does not
affect the nature of the process.
There are many occasions in secondary as in primary routine when we
take a fixed but relatively round-about course. Some one asks how many
days September has. His question is scarcely finished when I begin (un-
heard) "Thirty days hath September," (aloud) "Thirty days." I do not
ponder, nor do I answer directly. There is neither doubt nor certainty
present — only what has been described.
We shall revert to these links, but meanwhile we wish to take a more
general view. Do organised reactions enter into thought proper? Is
there a growth of lines of thought .> Does the process of judgment evolve
like the process of writing?* Are observation and imagination sub-
ject to training ? Does the training, if such there be, pursue the same lines
as the training involved in trends such as writing ? However bold it may
appear, we must answer the questions in the affirmative. Let us consider
the reasons which induce us to take this course.
* " Soundness of judgment is gradually and progressively developed, all newly acquired
knowledge being by degrees added to the stock of discernment, by means of whose
advancing ramifications the task, which was at first difficult, and often fruitless, comes at
last to be performed with the ease of a seemingly innate facultv " (Lotze, Microcosmus,
tr., 1885, i, p. 176).
ii6 GENERAL ANALYSES
Suppose a man thinks that it would be best to dismiss certain impracti-
cable thoughts, immediately they occur, by turning his attention into other
channels. An oi)portunity arrives, he re-members his resolution, and
carries it out. After a period of practice the resolution is forgotten or not
referred to ; but whenever an)-thing impracticable suggests itself he dis-
misses it immediately. The resolution now forms no link between the
objectionable thought and the act of dismissal. As that thought appears,
so it is thrust back. There may be, after a time, entire ignorance that
certain thoughts are dismissed. The man may, for instance, either deny
that such is the fact, or he may give some plausible but inaccurate ex-
planation. As with primary activities, so with secondary ones, a resolu-
tion need not be verbally conceived, nor need it be,|'at first, of wide appli-
cation, nor need the sum of the consequences be apprehended. Much of
a man's thought is as dim as the twilight, and hence there is often hardly
anything definite to re-develop. An organised trend, such as the one just
described, is an essential in thinking, and yet there is no appreciable differ-
ence between it and a physical activity of an organised nature.
Consider another example. Some one notices that when authors say,
''There are three (or four, or more) ways of accounting for this fact," they
are frequently wrong. So he makes it a rule to question every numerical
statement. After a time his resolution forms no part of the thought pro-
cess. Whenever he chances to meet such an expression, he ignores it, or
quietly turns to investigate its correctness.
Let us suppose that a man thinks it important to observe filings directly,
carefully, minutely, repeatedly, for a prolonged period, and under differing
conditions ; and to co??ipare the observed things, in the same 7na?mer, with
different things of an apparently like natui'e. He may also have decided to
extend cautiously any simple proposition which he draws up or any general
fact. He may have determined to consider in discussion o)ie item judiciouslv
rather than skip from subject to subject (sec. 136). He may have made
other wise or stupid resolutions for the conduct of his understanding ; or
he may have been taught these at home or at school; or perhaps he
has gathered one detail here and one detail there; or perhaps he has
imitated what appeared to him to be the method of his tutor's thought.
In any case, the act which will follow the adoption of these resolutions
will be of the same nature as that described when we traced the growth of
writing. The road of development will be strewn with many difficulties
and will pursue a devious course. In the end much of this man's
reasoning will be performed in a quasi-automatic manner. The pro-
position or fact will be exploited in the fashion referred to. He will
attend keenly, feeling perhaps a great strain without knowing it, and
disputing the fact of his procedure a minute afterwards. Re-collection-
of theories stands in the way of rapid thought as of rapid action. Much
of our limited energy would be wasted by developing them.
The preceding examples show that stimulation and training influence
both primary and secondary activity. From infancy onwards a multitude-
SVSTEAfS AS ORGANISED 117
of habits develop and these make up our character as practical men or as
theorists. Apart from such activities it would be as impossible to think
of intellectual labour as of bodily labour. Efficiency in thought depends
on properly developed trends. Given reflection of a primitive kind in the
child, and the course of events inevitably transforms that activity into an
organised complex. Our modes of thought are thus necessarily organised.
It will be said : Granted the existence and the importance of secondary
ti'ends, we still know that they are the result of non-routine activity. The
business of thought lies in forming these. They them.selves are but the
lifeless tools of the " ego."
Analysis is not satisfied with that answer (sec. 1 03). We have seen how in
physiological matters one routine act really grows out of others of its kind,
and how physical activity as a whole is organised. We must, therefore, urge
that every secondary trend is the offspring of other tretids, which simplify as
we retreat to infancy.^ Let us make sure of the meaning of this state-
ment. In a secondary series where we blunder along, vexed with doubts
and difficulties, do we encounter nothing but organised reaction ? When
we learn our algebra or our geometry, is there in the process of
acquisition as much routine as when we know them well? However
paradoxical it may appear, we answer Yes. \Experimentany observe such
cases?^
We have already observed that the number of links in an act leaves the
question of their possessing an organised basis unaffected. Rationality is
no fixed attribute of such an act. This we have seen holds true of
physiological activities. Now all that we have to face in a difficult
secondary combination is a large number of steps. A man is asked,
"Flow many days has September?" He answers promptly, "Thirty."
Or he says perhaps, " Let me see. September, did you say ? I don't
think I remember. I'll try, though. I believe there is a doggerel verse
that might help. Confound it; I can't recall the verse. Yes, I can.
* Thirty days hath September.' I thought I could recall that verse.
September has thirty days, my friend." It would be of the greatest
interest to analyse exhaustively, if that were possible, such a string of
thought. (See, however, the next chapter.) Here we can only state that
every turn enumerated is of a kind and class that we have employed in
our reflective excursions times without number.
To wonder, to be surprised, to doubt, to feel convinced, are all phases
which have their place in general routine. The wonder follows im-
mediately on something it has followed before, link on link, as we should
expect. The multiplicity of links raises no problem, nor does the failure
of the act to attain its end affect the matter. The fact that we have been
* Tliis disposes of Carpenter's argument that "the responsibility of the ego is shifted
backwards to the share he has had in the formation of his character and in the determina-
tion of those hmits" {Mental Physiology, 1876, p. liii). Psychologically speaking, we
are, at every moment, what the previous moments have made us. No one who has
closely watched the growth of children from birth onwards can put his finger on a period
and say " Here began the formation of the child's character." (Sec. 214.)
Il8 GENERAL ANALYSES
thinking for years makes it evident that thought as a whole is a tangle of
organised complexes. We doubt, as we have been accustomed to doubt.
We show implicit faith, as we have done on previous occasions. We meet
the various facts of life from settled, often from contradictory, points of
view. Occasions being similar, we tend to react similarly. The cast of a
person's character is partly traceable to this fact.
It will be said that active "consciousness" is not organised when we
are aware of observing something.* Why not? Are there not degrees
of consciousness ? Is it not the past which decides whether we shall be
aware or not ? May we not be clearly conscious, and be quite unconscious
that we are clearly conscious? Do we not frequently attend closely,
and yet, because of routine, forget the fact almost instantly ? What does
consciousness imply at most ? That what we do is thought of in relation
to other things ; a conspicuous feeling and increased concentration which
makes re-collection of what is observed easier; a notion of self; one
combination co-existent with and referring to another ; a directing a part
of the attention to something we are or have been attending to. Active
consciousness is consequently liable to become part of an organised whole,
and since every thought and action is an organised whole, active con-
sciousness enters into everything more or less. For the same reason,
man's self-consciousness varies with training and with environment, as is
evident when we consider the distance between the infant and the man.
It may be thought that the possibility of being freely re-membered is
not predicable of organised processes. This is a mistake. There are few
settled tendencies of which a part cannot be re-membered independently
of repeating the process, and many there are, such as the case of known
melodies, where the whole is necessarily membered secondarily. Some
physiological routine processes are often of a nature demanding re-
collection, while, on the other hand, we find that the thought machinery
as a whole is only open to scientific research.
Surely, it will be urged, an obvious difference remains to be accounted
for. To this I agree. While holding that all activity, secondary or
primary, is organised, we may yet distinguish. There are, broadly
speaking, certain trends whose business it is to elaborate others — tools to
create articles, or tools to create tools with. When we desire to arrive
at a conclusion, the machinery starts with the very need. Sometimes the
mechanism succeeds, sometimes it fails. As the machinery is brought to
perfection, so the product is turned out with ease and certainty. Just as
the process of writing is perfectible and gains by the judgment expended
upon it, and this by virtue of its organised character, so the secondary
processes are perfectible, gain by the judgment (which itself is routine)
expended on them, and this by virtue of their organised character. From
the point of view of special problems one kind of process may be called
routine and the other not, for it depends whether we are viewing a product as
* On the meaning of the words consciousness, awareness, knowledge, belief, doubt
and certainty, see sees. 43 and 99b.
SVSTEAfS AS ORGANISED 119
machinery or as the result of machinery. Thus, for convenience sake,
some combinations may be called specifically organised, and such are
activities connected with trades, professions, amusements and individual
pursuits generally. These trends, because they are not acquired by all,
have first attracted the attention of observers. Trends which are less
open to scrutiny may be dubbed non-specific trends.*
65a.— Habit and Thought.
A study of any habit will give an insight into the nature of thought in general. For
instance, I have had much to do with slips of paper, on which, in various handwritings,
appear, together with some other detail, the names of different persons. If I cannot
decipher a name, I look to see whether the name occurs on that slip a second time, and,
if unsuccessful, I seek for similar letters on that slip or on others I can conveniently lay
my hands on. When I observe one certain mark, I look for a corresponding one some-
where else. As a rule, I also carefully scan the whole slip, and that more than once.
I almost always verify several times what I have presumably read. When a doubt
arises, I think of similar cases to the one before me. I question everything unhesitatingly.
The slightest hitch or suggestion sets me thinking at once. When mistaken, I instantly
halt ; when more vigour is required, it is at once put forth. Most difficulties, having
occurred before, are solved as soon as they develop. Even in the more persistently
recurring combinations, the circumstances are scarcely ever alike, and hence readjustment
is normal to the routine work spoken of.
As we analyse the foregoing analysis, it becomes progressively more evident that in
every habit we have an example of thought in general ; that thought in general is an
example of habits ; and that all habits or thoughts are more or less organised secondary
complexes. A particular habit merely indicates a specially organised process. Naturally
enough we re-member readily what we are frequently re-membering, and obviously
enough the fact that difficulties recur insures a methodical solution. For the same
fundamental reason, our individuality, both as to character and intellect, differs generally
from habit to habit, e.^,, while flawless in our mathematical reasoning, we are probably
careless in reasoning out ordinary affairs, or while a child is obedient to its teacher, it
may be disobedient to its guardian (sec. 45).
Such actions as eating, walking, dressing, as well as sports like cricket, or trades and
professions, are exemplifications of habit, or congeries of organised complexes. If we
now ask ourselves seriously what thought is, in all its shapes, we seem bound to admit
that we are here also face to face with a tissue of organised complexes. Extraordinary
questions are thus organically connected with a sceptical attitude ; a boastful statement is
met with depreciation ; an interesting event is eagerly retailed and conned over ;
if something is not understood, fuller inquiries are made ; and the like. Each
situation has its organised reaction, and most situations are of common occurrence :
thus courtesy and boorishness, thoughtlessness and thoughtfulness, diligence and
laziness, are, in all their forms and developments, examples of habits. For this
reason alone do we feel at home in the world, and for this reason alone do we pour forth
torrents of words with the greatest ease. Where the difficulties to be overcome are great,
there the habits are more tortuous and unsatisfactory. Hence given that situations
repeat themselves — and this cannot very well be doubted, — and it follows that the whole
form of thought is adequately explained by the existence of primary and secondary
complications, and that any ether explanation is inconsistent with what we are most
intimately acquainted with. (Sec. 215.)
* Egger {La Parole Intirieure, 1881, p. 2S7) distinguishes between special and general
habits. To-play-one-piece-on-the-piano-well, he says, is a special habit, to-play-the-
piano-well, a general habit. This division is open to the objection that playing the piano
well is a lower form of doing things generally well, a form not to be ignored.
I20 GENERAL ANALYSES
As against what precedes, men have argued that the " ego" thinks, wills and acts ;
and that the " ego" is the thinker. This doctrine is not easily sustained. First, the facts
require no " ego " to explain them ; for, as we have seen, they explain themselves. The
"'^k''^)" a^s conceived by some, is a relic of the Middle Ages, and ranks with the essences
and suljstances so fitly ridiculed by Moli^rc and by Locke. One might as well speak of
a stony substance underlying stones as of a tliinking substance in thoughts : the one as
little as the other promotes a better understanding of the facts of existence. On scientific
grounds we can see why thought flows in certain particular channels ; but if we restrict
curseh-es to the "ego" theory, it becomes in any given instance a hopeless riddle why
one combination emerges rather than any other.
It might perhaps be thought that the instance analysed is an exceptional one. To
obviate such an objection I wish to say that I have for periods together carefully watched
my habits and my actions generally, and that the above analysis contains but the barest
outline of what is the result of very many observations. The advanced student can do
no boiler than follow in this case the example set, and occasionally watch his activity from
morn till night, observing himself walking, talking, dressing, hearing, seeing, masticating,
using his tongue, teeth, jaws, hands and fingers, and reacting to the innumerable
situations in which he is thrown day by day. If he then wishes to understand how he
came to react so readily, let him watch the development of an infant.
66. — The Psychological Method.
If our analysis of organised reaction be correct, then we are obliged to
draw important conclusions as to the proper psychological method of
investigation. An organised trend means a simplified trend — one where
almost everything unessential is rejected and forgotten, where effort is
reduced nearly to a minimum, where the present is treated in the light of
the past, where the bonds of tiine and order are absent, and where reaction
accompanies its customary stimulus. When, therefore, we speak of
reasoning and thinking, or imagining and willing, or feeling and pleasure-
pain, and allow that they are routine activities or developments, it at once
follows that, by themselves, these processes — though they adequately
serve their respective purposes — lack intelligibility from a psychological
standpoint, just as the fully developed process of writing does. They can
only be explained organically and with regard to the past. Whatever
they were in their earlier stages, they are now entirely transformed. To
expect to find in them connected and self-consistent wholes, such as our
ill-guided imagination might create, is out of the question. Hence careful
observation alone can offer a clue to the various modes of reflective
activity. To deduce these modes from principles not based on the
previous study of the special facts is as disastrous as thus to deduce the
functions of the brain. TJie explanations which have been proffered 7nust,
accordingly, be interpreted so as to include tJie acquirements of children,
savages and animals, as well as the highest flights of genius and all normal
thought and action.
67. — A Bird's Eve View.
The struggle for existence and comfort solves the riddle of the evolution
of animal life.* Had each species possessed in plenty what it required,
*The notion that evolution follows from the struggle for comfort rather than from the
struggle for existence, is elaborated by Rolph, Biologische Froblemc, 1882.
SYSTEMS AS ORGANISED 121
the raison d'eire of transmutation would have been absent. So is it
with the evolution of organised thought. If attention energy were
indefinite in quantity, all combinations might develop peaceably side by
side, except those which are in their nature opposed to each other. There
would be no organised reaction. We should take an interest in every-
thing and forget nothing. But attention energy is limited, while our
desires tend to be boundless. Hence a struggle for the field of attention
ensues, as the result of which thought is simplified.* On the widest view,
therefore, the existence of organised forms of activity is explained by
the struggle of varying interests for the narrow field of attention.
Additional References. — Angell, Habit and Attention, 1898; Beaunis, De V Habitude,
1856; Radestock, Habit, 1S86; Rlimelin, Ueber das IVesen der Gewohnheif, in his
Reden und Aufsdtze, 1S81 ; and Vogt, Ablenkbarkeit und Geziwhnungsfdhigkeit, 1899.
* Science has been termed an economy of thought, a shorthand of knowledge, a
simphfied view of things, a compressed formulation of facts, a brief statement of what is
observable, and the like. If this very plausible standpoint be correct, we have in it a
striking illustration of the principle of economisation. According to our reading of the
facts the following happens in the evolution of truths. Surrounded by innumerable
interesting things of most varying aspects, we try hard to comprehend them. Since little
time is at our disposal, we make desperate attempts to reach the simplest possible
formulation of the world of facts, and in these attempts lies defined the object, motive
and method of science. Apart from the process of economisation, therefore, science,
with all its implications, has no meaning ; and, for the same reason, every truth, every
statement, and every generalisation, owes its existence solely to the process described in
this chapter. (On the nature of science, see Pearson, The Grammar of Science, 1891 ;
Mach, Beitrdge zur Analyse der Empfimlungen, 1886; and especially Avenarius,
Fhilosophie als Denken der Welt ^emiiss dent Princip des kleinsten Kraftmasses,
1876.
CHAPTER IV
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING
Round our nee(Is — our weal or woe,
Trains of thought hixuriant grow.
68. — What is implied in a Secondary Unit or Idea?*
I say to myself "Have I seen that face before?" Forthwith there
shoots up a picture, f and I answer my query with an emphatic " Yes."
\I)o images occupy setisible time in developing 2 Experiment?^ What pre-
cisely, it may be asked, is the crucial factor which makes me answer in the
affirmative? The question, as we notice, was followed by a particular
image the features of which I could trace almost to the daintiest detail,
having observed and scanned them a few minutes previously. Apart from
what has been described, relevant matter was absent. No sound, no
touch, no action, no connected systems, no pleasure-pain, no estimate of
the man's intellect, beauty or goodness, was re-produced with the visual
image. Nor was any feeling present which might be called the feeling of
* I have called a percept or an idea a compound, because in a compound a system of
sensations or images is involved. Such compounds, again, are the normal units of
thought rather than the integers of which the compounds are composed. If, however, we
consider a unit of thought to be a compound, then we reach the somewhat unsatisfactory
conclusion that compounds are often integers, since the unit of thought is sometimes an
integer. We must, therefore, either re-define our terms or employ fresh ones. For prac-
tical purposes, we shall hence ignore the occasional contradiction involved ; but for theo-
retical reasons we may speak of a unit of thought or action as a primary or secondary
unit, or a combination unit.
fThe phrase "Forthwith there shoots up a picture," raises the problem of how far
sensible time is occupied in the development of any image. I have experimented to a
considerable extent, and the conclusion suggested is that, in my case at least, no develop-
ment is noticeable. A face may immediately present itself, or when time does elapse, that
time is contentless as far as the face to be re-collected is concerned. If a landscape is to
be re-developed, or the features of an absent face are to be separately observed, the time
elapsing is accounted for, as in ordinary sight, by the continuous sweep of the atten-
tion in its endeavour to re-cast the face or the scene. If written words are re-developed,
there is equally time spent in reading the words. If words are written in the imagination,
the characters develop, as far as sight is concerned, precisely as in writing with a pen.
Even when in thought a name can only with great difficulty be pieced together, there is
still no sign of growth in the image. Under these circumstances we have to allow that to
all intents and purposes images, like sensations, shoot itp and do not develop, as far as
observation is concerned.
SVSTEiWS AS NEED-SATISFYING 123
relevant re-collection. The image pure and simple stood by itself. S^Test
in your own ltfe.~\
The re-developed face constitutes at the time being the whole idea of
the man, for nothing beyond that face is implied immediately. Further-
more, when an image is produced as we put a question such as we started
with, affirmation ordinarily follows. It can be shown that no vital bond
exists between the image which results and the true answer. For instance,
it happens not infrequently that instead of re-membering X, we mistakenly
and unsuspectingly re-member Y : thus we may be convinced that we have
met a person, when we have only seen his portrait or have not seen him
at all. [Olfserve such occasions.] In this manner, especially where there is
profound organic disturbance, as in insanity, replies to questions are often
beside the point. Again, when we know that we are liable to mistakes
along certain memory lines, as happens occasionally, we proceed, as a pre-
cautionary measure, to re-collect additional details, e.g., the man's voice or
the place where we last met him. [Tesf experimentally?^ If, after taking
such a precaution, we find that the items form a system, we consider our
conjecture confirmed ; but if no other connected aspect be re -producible, we
remain in doubt. Hence we conclude generally that the image did con-
stitute a secondary unit, and that its prompt appearance argued its rele-
vance. The notion of the man, however, was not involved in logical
completeness in the image, since the full notion consists of the total that
can be re-produced in connection with him, consists, that is to say, of the
universe of memories. In so far as we thus re-member relevant details, so
far do we exhaust and exhibit the notion of the man. On any particular
occasion, on account of the nature of the brain, there is re-membered, as
we shall see, that which is relevant, and it is that which constitutes the
relevant unit or idea. From a psychological point of view, therefore, we
must insist that a secondary unit is no more complex than it appears to
the careful psychologist, i.e., that the secondary unit or idea means no more
than it says. It is not necessary that everything remotely or closely per-
tinent should be developed in its true or in a changed form. The reason
for this we shall learn in the sequel.*
69. — Richness and Povertv of Detail in a Secondary Unit or Idea.
We assumed the re-instatement of a face which was to all intents and
* Many authors have been struck by the apparent emptiness of ideas, and have tried to
explain the anomaly. Dr. Stout has attempted to overcome the difficulty by maintaining
as a general theory that there exists the idea as well as its meaning or significance. Thus
he says: " A hearer who knows the multiplication table knows what follows as a whole
without detailed repetition. The beginning of the series is equivalent to the whole, and
it is just because it means the whole that it is unnecessary to repeat the whole in detail"
(Alanual, 1898, p. 85). Now when anyone hears for the first time the phrase ctii bono?
he is not satisfied with the assurance that the words have a meaning, for he wants to
know what that meaning is. Dr. Stout, if I understand him aright, never goes beyond
the first step of assurance, raising his suggestion apparently into a metaphysical construc-
tion (ibid, p. 616). We shall now see that the meaning lies not behind an image or a word ;
but in the possibilities of revival, and in the simplified trends connected with such
revival.
124 GENERAL ANALYSES
purposes indistinguisliable from reality. Such completeness, as observa-
tion teaches, is the exception rather than the rule.* Thus, to take an ex-
treme instance illustrating poverty of detail. About seven years ago I saw
a certain acquaintance for the first time. Since that jieriod I have met
him on countless occasions, and when I think of hini it is usually that first
image which re-appears. The detail was at first, without much doubt,
present in profusion ; to-day the most careful scrutiny reveals but a patch
of shady black which defies analysis. \Recall a quantity of old and recent
events and note the detai/P[ It is as if wind, frost and rain had for years
wrought their spite on a picture, and had effaced colour, form and meaning.
This patch of shady black, without regarding its slow devolution, is Vi^.
truly a unit as was the thoroughly re-produced image of the acquaintance
two minutes after he was met for the first time. Though the two images
differed considerably in the amount of detail which they possessed, yet one
as much as the other was merely a relevant unit or idea. Given the two
extremes, and it will be readily understood that all possible intermediate
degrees of resemblance to reality must be judged by the same standard.
James Mill admirably and fearlessly expresses the common opinion that words or ideas
have adequate contents. He writes : " If I say, I have the idea of a horse, I can explain
distinctly what I mean. I have the ideas of the sensations of sight, of touch, of hearing,
of smelling, with which the body and actions of a horse have impressed me ; these ideas,
all combined, and so closely, that their existence appears simultaneous, and one. This is
my idea of a horse" [Analysis, 1S69, i, p. 234).
70. — Each of the Five Senses supplies us with the Material for
Secondary Units or Ideas.
A unit may consist, as we have learnt, of a single visual image of indefi-
nitely varying content ; but yet units of a different order are nearly as com-
mon. Just as the affirmative reply followed the presence of the imaged face,
so a similar answer would have been forthcoming, if a laugh, a lingual utter-
ance or the creak of boots had been re-instated, vividly or otherwise. An
auditory image has precisely a like value with a visual one, for both
serve the same purpose, and they can each play their parts unsupported.
And what is true of these two senses, is true of the other three, allowing
for the efficiency of the sense apparatus and for the ease of re-production.
Similarly, the idea may be built up of portions derived from more than
one sense. \_Test ivJu'ther you can re-collect in terms of all the senses?\
71. — Other Sources of Secondary Units or Ideas.
The five senses supply a fraction only of what generally may go to the
formation of a unit. I admired the man, perhaps, for his appearance, and
* I notice that in re-membering postcards or letters from friends, printed pages generally,
and wide prospects, I obtain a faithful general view with the intelligible detail missing.
Thus, though I recognise the writing in the letters, yet not a single word is readable.
Where things are well known, the view changes according to relevancy. That is to say,
I may have a vague image of a friend in a room where I superficially see much, or perhaps
I just image his face, his eyes, his lips or his nose. In imaging as in sensing, therefore, the
picture changes according to the part focussed or attended to.
S ] '5 TEA/S A S NEEDS A TISF YING 1 2 5
the notion of him is represented by a secondary gaze or by a feeling of
admiration. His behaviour, it may be, made my lips curl with contempt,
and that curl alone is reproduced. He inspired me possibly with disgust,
and that feeling may be the part re-developed. He may have set
me thinking, and that attitude is likely to re-enact itself. He may have
angered me or pleased me, and these feelings are perhaps repeated more
or less completely. Indeed, emotions and feelings are the usual stimuli to
the memory. With me, at least, what is usually re-collected is that which
is peculiar to the person or which marks his relation to me. \Experi-
mentally test in your own memorks.^
As against systems derived from sense elonents, some psychologists enumerate
certain ''^ ifmer" characteristics as desires, emotions, volitions and thoughts.
It is as if all simple brick structures up to a cottage were called bricks, and
tvere strictly divided off fro?n other brick structures which were called houses,
mansions and palaces. If we analyse a desire, hunger for instance, ive meet
a certain humble or siniple feeling ivhich is secondarily connected ivith the
notion that the stomach requires something, with a muscular and nervous
uneasiness, atid so on. This rooted desire is hence a bare feeling ricii in
connections and in possible meaning ; and, tlwreforc, but slightly more compli-
cated than a passing visual act. We may thus regard a certain object as a
curiously shaped closed vessel made of metal and filed with hot zvater, or,
looking beyond its appearafice, to its knoivn use, ive may call it a foot-warmer.
In this manner desires, volitions, emotions, thoughts, and their like, cannot be
classed apart ; for they ai-e only someivhat 7?iore highly developed compounds
than common sensations, or, what is the same thing, they are systems rich in
possible con?iections, systefns which derive their names, their distinctions and
their importance solely from the p?'ocesses with which they are connected.
[Analyse hunger, thirst, fatigue, etc.]
Hoftcling and others deny independent position to a feeling. " In the province of the
feelings nothing is found corresponding to the laws of association of ideas" (Hoifding,
Psychology, 1891, p. 275). Godfernaux and others, on the contrary, lay stress on the
driving force of feehngs. " If ideas associate, it is because feelings bring them together.
In themselves, ideas have no special affinity for each other " (Godfernaux, Le Sentiment
et la Penst'e, 1S94, p. 202). And on p. 203 this author concludes generally: "The
phenomena of consciousness act and react on each other, and associate among each other
like the motor phenomena to which they correspond." Stout {Psychology, 1S96, p. 271)
says : " Pleasures as such and pains as such are not immediately associated with each other,
and it does not appear that they are, properly speaking, associated with presentations or
active tendencies." See also Dumas, H Association des IdSes dans les Passions, 1891 ; and
Ribot, La Mt! moire Affective, 1894.
72. — Secondary Units and Ideas which are generally Overlooked.
Let us now deal with a peculiar class of units. Very faint images will
be almost certainly overlooked by an ordinary individual who seeks for them,
since only with persistent training comes the capacity to detect blurred traces.
Yet there is another group of facts which should not be passed over. Alono-
with the same class of grouped systems the same tolerably definite but unao--
136 GENERAL ANALYSES
gressive images are often re-developed. In many of these cases the images
never give rise to reflection, and cannot be re-developed apart from the com-
binations to which they are attached. They come and go like the shadows
of the clouds on the sea, without leaving any lasting impression. They
generally, among other things, underlie our intuitions with regard to the
appearance or character of those we meet, and our philosophic notions.
There is here relevant re-collection which is only traceable by close in-
spection (sec. 126). \Deliberately watch the stream of tJwught for t/iese un-
aggressive fnemories.'\
73. — Word-Ideas as slxh.
Circumstantial re-instatement is always out of the question, and it would
be unwise, therefore, to think that every time I hear, for instance, the voice
of my mother I re-collect everything I know of her. But partial re-instate-
ment of a context, in the common acceptation of that term, is equally absent
as a rule. I thus peruse a paragraph of twenty-one lines without chancing
on a single picture. Such words even as clergy ma7i, garde?if>arty, botany,
curate, Herrick, High Churchman, Worcestershire are apparently unaccom-
panied. With terms like lofty, mean, pleased, disgusted, sloiv, quick, sharp,
sou?; thick, thin, thunder, lightning, love, hate, anger, tears, etc., I observe
usually a distinct and special way of pronunciation. There is residual
action or feeling in each of the words, a fact which makes men think that
such a fair-sounding word as thunder has thunder in it, when it is the
manner of utterance which alone supplies the grimness and the force. How-
ever, when we read quickly, the variety of emphasis is almost lost. \Is
it?] In words of common occurrence no distinctive accompaniment is
observable. Take for instance the words b}' themselves in " it is the manner
of utterance which alone supplies the grimness and the force.'' In this
sentence the majority of the terms have but a familiar sound and no more.
They are word-units, the expression " utterance," no more and no less
than the expression " which." [Experimentally test step by step.]
Taine {O/i Intelligence, 1871, p. 4) holds a different view : " However briefly we retain
the word, the image to which it corresponds commences to form ; the image accompanies
the word in a nascent state, and, though not actuall)' formed, acts on us as if it were."
Stout's view will be found in his Psychology, ii, pp. 78-96.
74. — Words Rich and Poor in Meaning.
The apparently meaningless words just referred to are empty and mean-
ingless as such. They display a special content only when we pursue our
inquiry, as when we ask "What do you mean by 'manner'?" Then,
according to circumstances, a multiplicity of details is disclosed. But this
question merits closer consideration. \Ask yourself the cjuestion as regards
all tlie words in this paragraph.]
When we first meet with such a term as " philosophy," the term means
almost nothing to us : it is a word we read, but know nothing about. We
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 127
may never strive to understand its meaning, and then the word to the end
of our life has merely a familiar ring. It is otherwise with the philosopher
who has read and studied the term in innumerable contexts. The word is
highly expressive for him ; that is to say, while usually lacking distinctive
accompaniment, it is possible for him, if he so desires, to gather round it
a varied mass of relevant matter. It is to this we refer when we say that
a word is rich in meaning. On the contrary, when we speak of a word
being poor in meaning, we are not thinking principally of the immediate
absence of detail, but of the impossibility of making of it, without further
study, a centre from which radiate many stately avenues of thought. A
Avord rich in meaning can be attached to many systems ; a word poor in
meaning has scarcely any relevant connections. To put it briefly, by
neglecting the process of frequently hunting up the various relations of a
word which is rich in meaning to us, its significance, through forgetfulness,
is gradually, perhaps unsuspectingly, reduced until the word resembles an
empty picture frame. \Test experimentally?^
75. — Why Secondary Units or Ideas tend to have Little Content.
The stream of attention in those who are awake, proceeds equably in
strength and swiftness, and is amenable but to slight alterations. (Ch. 2.)
At the same time our needs frequently outrun our immediate power of
satisfying them in full. (Ch. 7.) Hence a tendency develops to economise
the attention, and, as a result, we attend, generally speaking, to things no
more than we are compelled to. This process explains the relative
•emptiness of words and imagery. Instead of re-membering all I could
about the man, I only re-produced his face. Instead of re-producing his
face distinctly, I re-produced a faint patch. Instead of re-developing
a faint patch, I only gave individuality to the name. And lastly, the
mere name alone, given a context, must suffice. Thus, through anxiety
to report progress, units are steadily divested of detail, that is to say, we
suppress the irrelevant images or take no measures to re-call them. By a
similarly effective process the immediate meaning of words is gradually
reduced till, as we have seen, it often reaches the zero point. According
as we imagine our nervous system changed, so these results would be
different, for needs, theoretically regarded, are not of necessity infinite in
their exactions, while attention may be indefinite, or distributed unequally
in time, so as at once to satisfy any need. As Stout {Manual, 1899, p.
407) says: "Only so much need be revived as may be required by the
■dominant interest of the moment." \_Test experimentally^
76. — Secondary Units or Ideas reflect Individual Situations.
I have re-developed in steady succession nearly all my friends and
acquaintances. \Do the same-l In a similar way I have thought of
various objects v/ith which I am familiar. [£>o the same.] In the first of
those cases every image reflected an individual situation. [Is this so with
128 GENERAL ANALYSES
you ?] In no instance was there traceable any superimposing of images,
a truth which can be experimentally tested. I do not see a face which is
looking in no particular direction ; I see one looking in the same direction
as on a particular occasion. With repeated observation new items are
added to the old until almost every detail of the face can be re-developed.
Hence the completeness is the result of varied activity and not of superim-
position through humdrum repetition. When, on the other hand, familiarity
and varied situations induce neglect of detail, then it is some blurred form
of an individual image with which we are dealing. As with persons, so
with things. Neither experiment nor observation yields generic images.
Indeed, as we have seen in the last section, ideas which are frequently
employed, will, as a rule, lack accompanying imagery. Fancy a generic
image for "Universe," "general idea" or "everything"! Their mean-
ing lies rather, as w-e shall see, in the connection which the words can enter
into with others and in the selected points which differentiate the meaning
of terms. \CarefuUy test the whole paragraph?^
76a. — General Ideas.
"When we use the word battle, the mind runs over the train of countless acts, from
the beginning of that operation to the end ; and it does this so rapidly, that the ideas are
all clustered into one, which it calls a battle. In like manner, it clusters a series of battles,
and all the intermediate operations, into one idea, and calls it a campaign ; also several
campaigns into one idea, and calls it a war" (James Mill, Analysis, 1869, i, pp. 329-30).
The despatch, if Mill be correct, must be rapid beyond all imagination ; for while the
lightning is not so swift but that we seemingly collect a faint impression of motion, yet
with these complex ideas, the most painstaking and prolonged inspection reveals
not as much as would a rushlight in the heart of a thick fog. There are several
objections to this theory which follows along the line of Dugald Stewart's doctrine,
(l) We cannot review past scenes more quickly than can the senses which keep us in
touch with the outer world. An attempt to see things with much greater speed than
usual, ends in vagueness, confusion and fatigue, and the same applies to secondary
vision. (See, however, Egger, La Parole Iitt^rieure, 18S1.) I re-instate related happen-
ings with almost machine-like regularity and speed, about two-thirds of a second passing
between picture and picture, or idea and idea, when they form no sequence. En-
deavours to increase the rate of motion are fruitless [test this], a tendency to haste pro-
ducing a fall in the quantity of what is imagined, or introducing confusion and fatigue.
Hence, the known flow of imagery being measurable, we are totally opposed to admit-
ting a rate of ideation which is vastly beyond anything that is verifiable. (2) The elder
Mill's theory implies a perfect memory, and yet the overwhelming mass of what is at
first re-membered, is very soon forgotten. This is made evident in the observation that
if I had asked Mill for an explicit statement of his idea of a battle, I should have obtained
a few grains of value instead of mountains of information. Similarly, as time passes, the
words Thirty Years' War may have lost their entire contents. To this it would be idle to
answer that all the details gallop by as a body and are re-collected as such, while they are
otherwise unavailable for use. (3) Compression can only proceed when there is some-
thing to be compressed. "Smith's hat," "the top of Mont Blanc" or "yesterday's
buttonhole," appear in secondary as in primary systems, and these would hence be the
idea or unit of thought. So also is it with two or three objects ; for these are readily
re-produced, though no gradual increase in compression is traceable. On every ground,
then, the compression theory must be dismissed. [Experiment as to compression.]
The subject of general ideas has formed an important centre of discussion. Locke
quaintly sums up the matter as regards the general notion of a triangle : " The general
SVSTEAfS AS NEED-SATISFYING 129
idea of a triangle must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral,
equicrural, nor scalenon ; but all and none of these at once" [Hu»ian Understanding,
1689, bk. 4, ch. 7, sec. 9). Berkeley, in his Introduction to his Treatise, 1710, makes
merry over Locke, contending on his part that "an idea which, considered in itself, is
particular, becomes general by being made to represent or stand for all other particular
ideas of the same sort " {ibid, sec. 12). Hume, agreeing with Berkeley, resolved the riddle
as follows : "All general ideas are notliing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term,
which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall upon occasion other
individuals, which are similar to them" {Treatise, 1739, part I, sec. 7). A favourite modem
theory is the one propagated by Galton, to the effect that a generic image resembles a com-
posite i:)hotograph. We persuade, for instance, thirty mathematicians to oblige us ; and we
photograph them each, one after the other, on one plate, when the developed photograph
will show a typical mathematician. Similarly we proceed with thirty costermongers, and
the difference between the characteristics of the two professions are in that manner supposed
to be revealed. In accordance with this Galton tells us that " our general impressions are
founded upon blended memories" {Inquiries into Human Faculty, 1883, p. 349). Here
is a full description of Galton's theory as understood by Huxley, Hume, 1879, pp. 94-6 ;
" Now, when several complex impressions which are more or less different from one
another — let us say that out of ten impressions in each, six are the same in all, and four
are different from all the rest — are successively presented to the mind, it is easy to see
what must be the nature of the result. The repetition of the six similar impressions will
strengthen the six corresponding elements of the complex idea, which will therefore
acquire greater vividness ; while the four differing impressions of each will not only
acquire no greater strength than they had at first, but, in accordance with the law oi
association, they will all tend to appear at once, and will thus neutralise one another
Thus our ideas of single complex impressions are intomplfte in one way, and
those of numerous, more or less similar, complex impressions are incomplete in another
way ; that is to say, they are generic, not specific. And hence it follows, that our ideas
of the impressions in question are not, in the strict sense of the word, copies of those im-
pressions ; while, at the same time, they may exist in the mind independently of language.
The generic ideas which are formed from several similar, but not identical, complex
experiences are what are commonly called abstract or general ideas." [IVkat will be the
generic image of a person whom you have seen four tiiries, facing four directions ?'\ In
criticism it is but necessary to refer to the remarks made above on James Mill, and to
appeal to deliberate experiment which is here open. Whether, in some sense, there is
truth in the contention, is another matter. By imphcation, we have dissented in the text
from Taine {On Intelligence, 1871, p. 397); from Prof. Ward {Psychology, 1886, p. 62,
col. i), who supports Galton, as also from Dr. Stout {Manual, 1899, pp. 406-7), who
agrees with Prof. Ward. Sully {Human Mind, 1892, i, pp. 415-6), while agreeing with
Galton, yet holds that a general idea is a generic image plus the clear consciousness that
it represents a class of things.
We saw in sec. 69 how, with time, images lose much of their detail. What is true
of the example given in the section referred to, holds very generally. For instance, when
some one chances to mention horses to me, I think of some particular one I have known.
In time the image becomes not only more and more patchy and scrappy, but the history
of the image also fades till it disappears. When, at this stage, the patch of shady black —
an apology for a horse — is recalled on thinking of a horse, we imagine, or are tempted to
imagine, that this shadowy individual is the result of superimposition of all the horses we
have seen, as in composite photography. In my view, these images cease to be connected
with a particular situation, and are degraded individual images.* \_Experiment.'\
* ' ' The images of our past experiences, of whatever nature they may be, visual or verbal,
blurred and dim, vivid and distinct, abstract or concrete, need not be memory images, in the
strictest sense of that word. That is, they need not rise before the mind in a marginal fringe
or context of concomitant circumstances, which mean for us their date. They may be mere
conceptions, floating pictures of an object, or of its type or class " (James, Talks to Teachers,
1899, p. 144).
9
I30 GENERAL ANALYSES
76b. — Speech and Thought.
Language being the chief medium by means of which we absorb the wisdom of oui
fellows, it plays necessarily an important part in the secondary life. Vet that must not
blind us to the fact that thought is not always dressed in words, but repeatedly roves
about garbless. Thus walking through the meadows, I turn to examine their appearance.
My eyes fasten on a large variety of objects known and unknown. Though clearly ob-
serving what I am otherwise acquainted with, yet owing partly to the swiftness of
memhering, thought remains wordless. I admire this flower ; I linger over that patch of
tall grass ; I follow the outlines of the trees ; I observe the course of the brook, and
note its silvering with the sinking light of the sun ; I note the cows grazing, or resting,
or driving the flies off, or turning their great eyes on me. My interest in the scene is
vivid and continuous, and my brain is busily engaged. [Record such instances.'] We
already saw in ch. 2 that primary and secondary systems imply attention and are
one with thought. liosv much more true is this where wonder, admiration, reflec-
tion, absorption, close observation, fond lingering, are added. Thought is involved in
/he faintest daivn of sensibility as much as in the for/nation of the most abstract proposition.
It is one with what is great and small, humble and proud.
To test the possibility of wordless thought I enact a pantomime in the imagination.
^Experiment in this direction.'\ I imagine an elastic cord to which is attached a dummy
baby. I swing the latter about an imaginary room, and observe how it strikes against
tlie floor, walls, ceiling and furniture. I approach an imaginary window (it is on the
third floor) and dance the doll about. Now it touches the road below ; now it bounds up
to the sky. I vary the direction and the rate of the motion constantly. Now the elastic
band describes a tremendous circle ; now it swings to and fro ; now up and down. This
fooling is unaccompanied by words. I think of all kinds of things to do ; I vary the
conditions incessantly ; I imagine new possibilities ; yet all without verbal assistance.
Here I am not, as in the meadows, guided by what is outside me ; nor am I merely
enacting sonne scene which I re-develop. I project a series of events on the screen of the
imagination. I construct combinations. Here is the higher kind of thought applied
frivolously, the creative faculty in action.
Sustained speechless thought is not frequent. YTest this.\ Nevertheless, whenever
we watch a process, as in chemistry or in mechanics ; whenever we observe some person
or issue ; whenever we tentatively experiment in thought or in fact, we are apt for a con-
siderable period to dispense with words. [ Verify this.'\ Such speechlessness is not by any
means rare. An ordinary conversation, for instance, is not sufficient to exhaust the
normal demands on the attention : our eyes, as a consequence, wander, alighting now on
this object, now on that. Hence the restlessness so commonly observable. Perhaps,
while talking, we study the construction of the piano, its shape, colour, size ; or our eyes
rest consecutively on the pictures in the room. [ Verify.'\
Note, for instance, a number of individuals at ease {observe at first hand], or better
still, observe closely, without being observed, the eye movements of a person not specially
engaged. So quickly do the eyeballs turn to right and left, upwards and downwards,
ihat it becomes painful and confusing to keep pace with them. Just as a bell in the
hands of a quicksilver-tempered master speaks to the servant of good humour, of laziness,
of indifference, of fatigue, of irritability, of anger, of fury, and so on, so the eye move-
ments form a reflex of passing thought. Now there is a slow excursion to the right, then
a quick come-and-go movement to the left, indicating hesitation ; now the gaze is firmly
fixed, pointing to interest ; now the eyes seem drawn to an object, arguing curiosity ;
now they are rapidly surveying an object, and now they indolently move about as if in
search of something. That these swift turnings to and fro are not mechanical, we can
easily decide by self-observation ; that they are what they appear to be, i.e., intellectual
rrocesses, we can determine in the same manner. However carefully I analyse my states
i.nder such circumstances, I can see no reason to doubt that there is nothing to differen-
tiate speechless eye movement thought from the severest intellectual exercises. The
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING
I3>
elements in both are precisely alike. Experiment in this matter, is, of course, not difficult,
for any friend or fellow student should be willing to have his eyes watched while we pass
and repass a hand or some object before him. These facts have an important genetic or
developmental bearing. An infant about fifteen months old certainly behaves somewhat
like an adult at ease. His leg movements, his hand movements, his eye movements and
his play generally, indicate that topical reaction is common with him. Doubt, belief,
desire, will, want, hesitation, judgment and similar states, can apparently be traced.
yCan tJiey?'] This means that a child who is not yet initiated into the mysteries of
language, thinks briskly nevertheless. By observing these outward expressions of an
inner spiritual being in man and child, we ought to approach a reasonably safe interpre-
tation of child thought. It is superfluous perhaps to mention that the highest types of
apes show similar eye movements (sec. 233), and that animal intelligence generally is
capable of being investigated as we have proposed to investigate the child's individuality.
In this section our chief interest in these swift eye movements lies in the fact that
language is excluded by reason of that very swiftness. Hence thought without words
and with occasional words is normal.*
Max Muller {Three Lectures on the Science of Thought, 1888) apparently opposes our
view. He says : "We think in names and in names only" (p. 50). "We may see a
dog, but if we ask ourselves what it is, if we want to know what we see, we can answer
by the name 'dog' only" (p. 56). " May I make tiie modest request that some philo-
sopher by profession should give us a definition what language is without reason, or reason
without language?" (p. vi). " W'e can as little think without words as we can breathe
without lungs" (p. 47). But the learned philologist is scarcely consistent, as we shall
now see. " If there is no such thing as a mere name, neither is there such a thing as
a mere thought or a mere concept. The two are one and inseparable " (p. 50). " If we
mean by thinking, perceiving, enjoying, remembering, fearing, loving, and all the rest,
ve have no grounds for denying animals, particularly the higher animals, the possession
of these qualities" (p. 93). " They [animals] may think in their own way. Their way
of thinking may be, for all we know, more perfect than our own. ... I cannot allow
that they think, if we define thinking by speaking " (p. 94). " By long usage speech has
become so abbreviated that, as with mathematical formulas, one sign or letter may com-
prehend long trains of reasoning"' (p. 49). " Holding up three fingers is as good a sign
for the addition of one, one, one, as the sound of three. Shaking the fist in the face is
as expressive as saying 'Don't'" (p. 93). And to crown all : "Thinking is nothing but
speaking minus words " (p. 27 of the attached correspondence). Cf. Mtiller's larger
work. The Science of Thoztght, 1888.
Galton's letters in the correspondence bear out our contention. It must not be for-
gotten that WORDS ARE ONLY VISUAL, AUDILE OR MOTILE IMAGES.
See also Ribot, Enquite siir les Idees Ghierales, 1 89 1, and L' Evolution des Idecs
Generates, 1897 ; and Marchesini, Sur les Idees Generates, 1893.
77. — Re-production of Motion and Detail.
The footprints of economisation are observable in every direction. In
theory and speculation one may assume in any instance a large quantity
of compressed, of suppressed or of half-noticed detail ; but in practice and
experiment we discover nothing of the kind. For example, I know a
certain large office intimately. If I so wish, I can traverse in thouglit
many of its passages, rooms and staircases. In ordinary thinking, how-
ever, the notion of the journey between brick walls, is expressed by a
fleeting picture, — a fraction of the whole space traversed. \^How is this
* It would be interesting to study a case of loss of language with non-suspension of
■thought
,32 GENERAL ANALYSES
with \ou ?] Thus when I think of a certain person wliom I saw cross
the road, I have in view but a certain insignificant stage of the total act.
So a running match which I witnessed, is represented only by a few snap-
shots. Or to take a special instance, I am in a train, engaged in watching
the passing-by of objects, for the purpose of re-producing the objects as
moving. I cannot re-call afterwards all I had observed. I seem to re-
produce faintly the movement attended to in watching the appearance
and disappearance of the telegraph poles which border the line; but even
in this I am assisted by the extreme simplicity of the poles and wires as
compared with the houses and trees, which I find myself unable to re-
produce in the same way. We do not, then, mechanically follow in
thought the development of a series of objects in motion. A few momen-
tary impressions form the limit of what men generally obtain, our vision
being kinetoscopic, but our imagery barely photographic.
As with movement, so with quantity generally. If we think of a walk
down a certain road, we do not pass in review all that we have observed
there. A single inward glance may suffice, or perhaps this or that shop
is portrayed. Similarly when we picture a day's stay in a certain town,
a view here and there presents itself, with nearly the whole of the detail
omitted. So when we think of our journey round the world, or of the
Hundred Years' War of which we have read, casual strips are alone re-
developed. As a single picture, therefore, is reduced to a doubtful shadow ;
so quantities of pictures, stationary or in motion, are in ordinary thought
equally deprived of almost their total contents. Possibility of the revived
of detail, when necessary, takes the place of mechanical and wholesale
re-production ; and when such revival is not encouraged, a solitary and
isolated shred of an image or a feeling constitutes sometimes our only
secondary possession. The quantity re-collected at any time is hence
not in direct proportion to the contents of the past events. \How
good is your memory ?~\
Since the process of economisation is teleological and not mechanical,
v/e must only seek for consistency in principle. Thus when thinking of
mammals, there often occurs to me, as an accompaniment, the cast of a
young hippopotamus. This image is, of course, partly irrelevant and
wholly unnecessary. Often, again, we think of a special image, because
the re-collection of that, e.g., a certain kangaroo in a certain place, assures
us that any feature which we are in search of may be re-developed. For
such reasons images are frequently unnecessary and often indirectly
relevant. [Bird, fish, dog, mat, tree, door, walk, fiy, box, picture, sand, lamp
— what images ivere observed by you as you j^ead the preceding words ? Go
now through the list deliberately.^
To return from our digression as to redundant imagery. In walking i;p
a hill, my attention is occupied v/ith a certain oak tree which I am slowly
approaching. [7>5A] If the movement of my limbs is continuous, I
have collected apparently a huge number of pictures of that tree, ranging
from initial faintness and meagre detail to growing vividness and rich
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 133
detail. This mechanical view is incorrect, for observation is casual and
not continuous, since the focussing process is more or less irregular.
[^l^est ; carefully look about you.] Assuming continuity, however, we note
that the vastly overwhelming proportion of what has been certainly
observed, cannot be re-developed. Only this or that view recurs, owing
probably to the fact that retention requires a degree of attention which is
not continuously at our disposal. [JVote how far you re-member fleetim:^
ob';ervatiofts.'\ For days we may thus absorb the many sights we see and
the sounds we hear, with much the same result. That is to say, while
continuous observation is normal, continuous re-collection of what is so
observed is not normal to the human structure. (Sec. 117.)
78. — Observation is Teleologically Determined.
If we wish to measure quantitatively what we re-member, we must first
determine the quantity which v/e observe. Suppose I look for a few
moments at a good photograph — a foot square — of a portion of the Thames
Embankment in London. \Repeat 7viih some such picture.] After a few
seconds I look again, and I then detect details which escaped my first
inspection. In this way repeated analysis has ever fresh surprises in store.
This visual process is obviously at total variance with the process of
photography, where every exposure yields the same outlines, and where
repetition of exposure, or substitution of camera, leaves the situation un-
altered. Let us exchange the photograph for a piece of nature. Sitting
before a clump of trees, constant attentional readjustment, like a stream,
untiringly changes the matter of observation. [Fefeat.] What is seen at
the first glance, is, therefore, trifling when compared to the total to be
observed, while the imperfection of the attention at any one moment can
best be tested by turning to an apparently featureless small object, such
as a leaf, with the intention of exhausting the details to be assimilated.
[Test:]
Further, the process of economisation evidently applies to observation
as well as to re-collection. Catching sight of a blue helmet, I say to
myself without further troubling : This is a policeman. Seeing a hand,
I forthwith recognise, without further analysis, that it belongs to an
acquaintance of mine. Hence, to speak quite generally, we see and
observe no more than we need. We assume an airy attitude towards all
tJiat is indifferent. [How far do you agree f]
Looking at matters in this light, we are driven to an additional con-
clusion : we mainly see and observe what we have seen and observed
before, and infinitely little beyond (sec. 118). We are not walki)ig
cameras which impartially photograph everything within view ; we rather
observe the little we have observed in the past, ignoring the vast
mass which has not been pointed out to us or to which we have not
specially attended. Attention is an antiquarian and strongly con-
servative.
134 GENERAL ANALYSES
79. — Memory Contents Dwindle.
Observation procures little, and of that little, most is forgotten (sec. 114).
When we come to what is re-developed, we encounter but a sorry
remnant, an ocean shrivelled into a pond. The number of incidents has
shrunk alarmingly, and the particulars of these incidents have almost
gone. Seven hundred re-developed details of a seven months' journey
form a poor sample indeed of our power of retention, and a hundred
details, embracing the first nine years of our life, present even a more
meagre e.xhibition. Yet thinking of yesterday's events, I can nearly
double in details the journey referred to ; and taking an actual day with
its events photographed, the figure may be multiplied a hundred-fold
(sec. 114). As we are not now discussing the problem of memory, wc
need only note that we cannot expect images to be photographic copies
of objects and events (sec. 117).
80. — Every Secondary Unit or Idea represents a Set of
Activities, and cannot be Stored.
I wondered whether I had previously seen a particular face, and a face
occurred to the memory. That face, as we have learnt, did not bear of
necessity an exact resemblance to reality. Is that re-developed view, we
may now ask, an element, a simple something? The complexity of our
organ of sight is well known to the student; but it is only latter-day
physiology which has conclusively shown that the complexity continues
right up to the brain centres. The nervous system is hence not compar-
able with a telegraphic net work ; it must rather be thought of as a vast
factory. The simple ether waves beat against the eyes, and that event is
followed by a series of complex transformations. Though in the primary
process, the last step depends on the first, yet when the change is once
initiated by the latter, the former may be produced independently by a
central stimulus. Hence visual re-collection, or what corresponds to it
physiologically, is independent of the sense apparatus ; for, in strictness^
its material is not sense-produced. On the physiological plane, therefore,
the re-collected face is the embodiment of a complicated set of activities.
Accepting this point of view we are able to deal with one or two
matters of importance. The absence of detail in the re-collected face, for
instance, is not an accident which may be repaired by closer attention.
The face we see is a poor one ; and any other face would be a different
one. We are not concerned with something which remains ever the same
whether we look or not, or whether we are far removed from it or near.
There exists no face apart from the one we see at any time. Hence any
change in features is a change in face ; or, physiologically speaking, the
acts expressing the two sights are separate and different acts.
We cannot, therefore, speak of images as presentations, as things posing
before us like a model before an artist. An image is like the painter's
Madonna or the sculptor's Diana : it is the result of delicate workmanship.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 135
The fading Madonna is not the same as was the newly painted one ; and
the faded Madonna shows httle resemblance to the original. For the same
reason every image, though it be easily executed, is, strictly speaking, an
art-product, and every stateable change is a real change. Hence images
are not presented to us, except by licence of speech, and consequently the
doctrine that images are presentations appears unfounded. (Sec. 177.)
Such being the case, we cannot agree that images may retire and
persist in a faint form, for such images, continue as they may, would be
new images as would be the Madonna if colours and outlines were
blurred. Similarly we cannot give our adhesion to the opinion that
everything once observed persists, screened as it were by the few images
present at any time. A screened image is a different thing from an
unscreened one and appeals differently to us, and hence the continuous
existence of one would in no way explain the continuous existence or re-
development of the other. Furthermore, the process of economisation,
together with the corrosive effects of oblivion, produce incessant changes
and transformations which tell wholly against a secondary shelf whereon
all images are ranged and preserved in a faultless condition. \_Note the effect
ofeco?iomisation and oblivio?i.^ Thus W\xnd.t[Psychologie, 1893, ii, p. 460)
rightly reasons against Herbart that every idea is composed of manifold
elements, and represents on each occasion a new process. Similarly
Hodgson {Metaphysic of Experience, 1898, i, p. 128) expresses himself
emphatically : " Consciousness is not given to us in isolated atoms. Its
simplest portion is a complex state, its smallest portion is a process."
The doctrine of presentations which is here criticised is in England held specially by
Ward and Stout. Ward, in addition, favours " the perfectly conceivable hypothesis of
infinitesimal presentations so faint as to elude discrimination" (Psychology, 1886, p. 48,
col. 2). The objections urged against James Mill's swift thinking apply here. As we
can follow the brightness of the noon-day fading into night, so should we be able to trace
the sinking, simplification or diffusion of presentations. The distance from measurable
to infinitesimal ought to be describable by more than a blank. In experimenting I can
detect no such process in calling up or dismissing ideas.
Brentano, who is followed by Stout, distinguishes sharply between the act of presenta-
tion and the content of presentation, e.g. , between hearing and what is heard. To me
this distinction appears untenable, as would be the suggestion that one could distinguish
between the act of a stone falling and the stone which is falling. The act of falling only
means that we see a stone and other objects, the stone occupying different positions from
moment to moment. And so the act of hearing can only mean that we think of the
thing heard in relation to what is connected with it, t/iere being in both cases nothing but
concrete events or contents of presentation. An act of presentation, in short, is something
presented. It is a misfortune for psychology that men with anti-scientific interests like
Brentano, profess to be psychologists, and champion opinions on the subject that have
no real psychological value. Another distinction which Brentano makes is that between
contetit of presentation and object of presentation, and here also Stout unhappily follows.
It is true that ordinarily we only have incomplete or unexhausted ideas ; but these un-
exhausted ideas are still the objects, or, if they are not, then we are landed in the position
that we know nothing whatever of objects, the word having the meaning of an undeter-
mined X. Either the world as seen at any time is the world or part of it, or the world is
absolutely unknown to us. An object of presentation, like an act of presentation, must
136 GENERAL ANALYSES
lie a presentation, an event, a system of elements, — for an inferred exhausted compound
is no more — or else it is nothing at all. (Sec. 19S.)
One cannot help feeling that the only motive for these theories is the desire to find
room for a soul that stands and acts apart from the world, and to which the world is
presented. How different is the whole-hearted piety of men like Hartley, Brown and
Abercrombie, who keep second thoughts out of their psychology ! A clear exposition of
Brentano's doctrine is to be found in Twardowsky, Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstel-
lungcn, 1894.
We may here refer again to Herbart. Being of a philosophic turn of mind, conversant
with the theory of music and fascinated by the simplicity of the first principles of physics,
he determined upon a mind scheme closely corresponding to the m<»tter scheme he was
acquainted with {Psychologic, 1824, i, p. 325). In physics we have only matter and
motion, hence Herbart allows only for ideas and their movements. "Instead of gravi-
tation ... we have the natural and constant striving upward of all ideas" {ibid, p. 326),
" Psychology," he also says, " has some resemblance to physiology : as the latter con-
structs the body out of fibres, so the former constructs the mind out of series of presenta-
tions" {ibid, i, p. 192). Herbart was well acquainted with the association \^<toiy {ibid ,
i, p. 193), and only complained that Associationists did not mechanically explain the
process of association. Every idea, according to him, strains to enter and to remain in
consciousness ; but succeeds only passingly on account of its brother ideas which are
similarly placed. Hence " as far as the movement of ideas is concerned, we distinguish
tliose which are sinking, those which are freely rising, those which are freely standing,
and those which are reproduced" {Encydopizdie, 1830, p. 308). For this reason ideas
are never forgotten, never out of consciousness {Lehrbuch, p. 18) and never resting ; but,
at worst, blurred, repressed and eager to come forward {Psychologie, i, p. 340). Nor
does an idea disdain to lend or receive help, for it " always tends to bring with it that
which is related to it by any kind of assimilations or complications " {ibid, i, p. 433).
In this way single ideas are supported by and fit into presentational masses, such as are
understood by words like "government" or "church" {ibid, ii, p. 192). In short,
the struggle between the ideas forms the mathematically measurable play of thought. Here
is a simple theory, meant to be all-embracing ; but without any positive value. All is
fiction, from beginning to end. The floating superstitions of the street, except as regards
faculties or powers, are baptised with awe-inspiring names. What are masses of ideas from
a scientific point of view ? How are we to weigh these masses ? And if these masses are
indeterminable, or not yet determined, what becomes of psychology ? Hence, as we
expected, Herbart throws no perceptible light on any of the problems raised in this book.
Had he come at the mature stage instead of at the birth of psychology, his comprehensive
mind might have worked wonders. As it is, his failure is another warning to those who
ignore the study of facts.
81. — Sense Impressions are One with Images.
If our conception of the complex origin of an image be correct, an im-
portant conclusion follows. We have thus far spoken of images as if they
were strictly distinguishable from so-called sense impressions ; but this
difiFerence seems gratuitously assumed. The so-called image and the so-
called sense-impression, on the physiological plane, are both primarily'
traceable to certain central changes, the stimulation of which centres must
be indifferent to us in this place. It follows that what is observed and
what is imagined are of one kind and are one thing. Hence the word
image or sensation, apart from convenience, is applicable to every fact with-
out exception, and, therefore, to the material of observation, and hence, too,
all we have said as holding of secondary units holds also of primary ones.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 137
An additional consideration may strengthen the above deduction. We
have insisted that, roughly speaking, we only see what we have seen before.
If that be so, memory plays a crucial part in observation. We observe
what we observe, because of memory, previous thought formations leading
us as if we were blind. Memory and observation are, therefore, inextri-
cably blended. In reading, for instance, we partly see and partly re-
develop the words, while the very seeing of the letters depends on
familiarity. (Sec, 107.)
What is observed and what is re-membered are, for the above reason,
distinguished by secondary characteristics alone. That which we speak
of as re-membered, usually displays fewer details, possesses no rich setting,
offers no continuous environment for analysis as does what is observed,
and may be generally dismissed at will. For instance, I re-member a
poster on a hoarding. The imaged poster appears tolerably real, though
close scrutiny shows how soon we have exhausted the imaged details ; but
against this must be set the fact that the imm.ediate environment of the
poster, i.e., other posters, is very faint, while the remoter environment, i.e.,
houses, etc., is untraceable (sec. 124). Certain difficulties, which do not
appertain to our immediate inquiry, compel us, however, to seek for a
more fundamental distinction, and that we find in the schematic relation
of primary and secondary systems. In this way we define the nature of
reality, memory, imagination and dream-life, by establishing their positions
in the plan of things (sec, 124),
82. — Movement and Thought.
If our needs and the machinery for satisfying them, are (what is called)
physiologically determined, and if images can best be understood when
physiologically considered, then the realm of images must be further ex-
tended. Our movements are the result of complex processes, as are our
images, and the facts of economisation, memory and attention apply equally
to thought and movement. The process, in both cases, is also complex as
well as adapted towards an end. We may, therefore, legitimately speak
of movements constituting intelligent acts and being units, since units are
but the particles of intelligent processes. For similar reasons, the lower
activities of the stomach, heart, liver, etc., must, in the last resort, be
regarded as of the same nature as those activities which we have hitherto
taken into consideration. The apparent breach between matter and mind,
which makes such a conclusion irrational, must be thought of as apparent
only, (Ch, 8.)
83. — Units and Trains of Units.
Our reasoning has thus far proceeded on the principle of one word, one
idea. We must, however, here ask ourselves whether such a principle will
survive the hardships of an examination, or whether the word "idea" is
not merely a term of convenience. Men have talked of trains of units or
138 GENERAL ANALYSES
ideas as if they were dealing with trains consisting of securely-coupled
railway carriages ; and in this light a train of thought would be constituted
by so many separate units or ideas. We have spoken of a re-collected
face as representing one unit, and we have also referred to incidents as
represented by single units. Accordingly, terms such as London, England or
Europe may be considered as single units, each of which, as we know, is
not, at any time, a mass of details, but suggests some relevant aspect. No
more is thought of generally than the situation necessitates. \Re-collcct
objects as a w/iok, then portions of them ^
Stout contends " (i) that any reproduction which can be called an idea, must have suffi-
cient independence to be capable of forming a distinct link in a train of thought ; (2) that
it must he the thought of an object, such as a thing, quality, relation, or event, and not a
mere crude sensation, however faint ; (3) that just because an idea differs from an actual
perception, ideal reproduction is always of a partial and modified character" {Manual,
189S, p. 94).
84. — The Nature of Language.
The nature of reasoned language introduces us to a fresh problem of
the same character. It might be thought that since each word represents
a unit or idea, a sentence of ten words, e.g., " The pen with which I write
is an obedient servant," is a symbol for ten units strung together like so
many beads. The falsity of such a view is obvious, and as language is
the chief instrument of communicated thought, I will here analyse those
lingual aspects which belong to our subject.
In language are embodied the distinctions which have been discovered
by the human race. While objects, i.e., systems regarded as exhausted,
are individual and concrete, language represents, in a less complicated
form, a system of signs to designate those objects and their relations. Thus
a certain peculiarity strikes us, and we speak of a big face, a big man or
a big country. In a similar strain we indicate relations of time, number,
quality, connection, comparison, interests, etc. Now it is evident that
instead of using two words, such as big man, we can employ the one word
giant, and yet the latter term implies but one unit. If we turn to the data,
our surmise receives confirmation. Economisation has made us drop the
separate emphasis, and yielded a single unit in two words, a unit which
can be well expressed by one word. Hence terms like tent, hut, cottage,
house, mansion, palace, castle, might each be expressed by more than one
word. We conclude, then, that while adjectives are sometimes employed
to point to a certain property, they, together with the noun they qualify,
form frequently a solitary imit or idea. What, again, is true of adjectives,
equally holds of adverbs, and of speech generally.
In compound words the above contention is easily verified. In " black-
bird " or " black-board," we do not think of a bird or a board which is
black ; but we have a solitary object in view. So, when we think of Pater-
noster Row, or of the Prince of Orange, or of Trinity Church, we are evi-
dently not reminded of a paternoster, an orange or a trinity. [ IFhat do such
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 139
names suggest to you ?] By the force of economisation these compounds
have become names for single objects, the more primitive meaning of the
separate words being neglected. Thus we figuratively speak of a queen
having ascended the throne at a certain date, when we neither think of the
act of ascending, nor of a throne. Similarly we refer to some one as being
the " lion " of the London season, when no image of a lion develops.
So even with separate words. "Get away," "get money," "get on,"
are phrases in which the meaning of "get" differs fundamentally; for we
could not paraphrase them, "obtain away," "obtain money," "obtain
on." And, finally, the complexity of the object gives its corresponding
sign a complex character.
The significance of words is not determined by a rigid standard, and
hence the interpretation of language must follow the varied meaning which
underlies words. A sentence can thus be thought of as a unit or idea
\\ here the totality of words counts for one word, or else as a set of words,
the meaning of each of which is counted separately. Especially with the
help of the process of economisation do we now understand that word-
sentences are something different from haphazard sets of words. It has
been said that a melody is more than the separate sounds of which it is
composed. This is far truer of words, for in the word-sentence the mean-
ing of each separate word may be wholly lost. It is as if the separate
sounds were frequently immaterial to the melody. Leaving aside the
dynamic aspect, we understand now the inner depths of language as
employed by the adult. Whole sentences and paragraphs express but
single units. When I, therefore, say " The pen with which I write is an
obedient servant," there is no fastening together of ten separate units into
a train. We have rather before us an organic complex which defies
mechanical interpretation. In some language one word might do the
v/ork of the ten. (Sec. 215.)
85. — What is a Secondary Unit or an Idea?
Take the observational attitude. My eyes sweep carelessly along the
facade of some imaged mansion. Is this total act, lasting some time, to be
thought of as one unit or as a train of units ? And if thought of as a train,
must not, for the same reason, a single imaged face be equally regarded as
a train of units or ideas ? And if so, where is the line to be drawn ? Now
let us first be clear as to the nature of this total act. It consisted of no
more than appeared on the surface. I did not necessarily think implicitly or
explicitly, of the whole history of architecture, of all buildings I had seen,
and all that was related to mansions. I did not think of all that the house
might reveal to the five senses, and of the reactions which such revelations
might bring about. There were colour, shape, depth, obvious relations of
parts and a few other reactions. This normal simplicity, so different from
what an exhaustive analysis of possible relations would yield, must ever be
kept in view. Yet even this residue must be considered as a complex.
The house, as a system of lines, is only seen, to begin with, because we
\.<,o GENERAL ANALYSES
have seen other houses. The various spatial and other relations, however
readily discerned, imply special processes. Thus when we push the inquiry
further, the very fact of sight argues a certain complexity (sec. 182).
Moreover, if we extend our inquiry to the other senses, an additional
problem arises. In the final analysis, it may be surmised, we have only to
deal with a nervous shock or a simplified touch system, out of which, by
differentiation, the mass of disparate systems is evolved (sec. 189). Every
individual act, then, is composed of the same minimal acts, of atoms, we
might say. If the colour green, for instance, is seen in three consecutively
re-membered pictures, we probably have not three greens, but the same
kind of act three times repeated. In this sense, the notion of storing
images becomes unintelligible. There is increased readiness to perform
certain processes which represent certain pictures, and that is the Alpha
and Omega of psychology on the question of memory, so far as it concerns
us at present. (Sec. 80.)
Strictly speaking, then, ive should speak of a process of combination, and
not of units and trains of units, nor of perceptio?is and trains of perceptions.
So-called units are all more or less fluid complexes, and hence not easily
distinguishable. So-called simple units or ideas resemble, on close in-
spection, so-called trains of thought, and it is as reasonable to think of
storing the latter as the former. The developing of a unit is like the paint-
ing of a picture, and a second picture is developed by utilising the material
of the first, as the same cards are employed over and over again in build-
ing card-houses. Since also the present and the past, the near and the
far, are so bewilderingly interwoven, we must think of the forming of units
as an organised process, dependent on inherited structure and adapta-
bility.
" The localising and the objectifying of sensation, make up together what we commonly
understand by perception" (Sully, Human Mind, 1892, i, p. 207). Sully's whole
account in this respect is inorganic. As a rule we no more objectify or localise what is
sensed, than we class it among what strikes us as useful, good, beautiful, pleasant,
pertinent or what not. In each instance the relevant minimum suffices. As we shall see,
when, on smelling violets, I say " I smell violets," I am only dealing with an additional
datum which has no thinghood in the ordinary sense about it. So when I assert " Here
is an orange," there is no need for scent, taste, hardness, pleasantness, or other associa-
tions, to hide themselves behind the skirts of that word. (Sec. 107.)
86. — Summary.
The conclusions we have thus far reached are as follows. There is a
process of combination which constitutes intelligent or organised acts and
systems. That process is retarded by the incompleteness of both obser-
vation and retentiveness, and is vastly simplified by the method of
economisation. Observation, memory and organised action, simple and
compounded systems, separate words and word-sentences, all imply ficti-
tious antitheses. We can hence understand how long strings of relevant
sentences are quickly uttered without the words having any apparent
sensory or other accompaniment.
S VS TEMS A S NEED- SA TISF YING 1 4 1
87. — The Dynamics of our Subject:.
Though we have concluded that movement, or process, is impHed in all
sensations and images, or integrals, yet for practical purposes it will be as
well to assume here that there are separate units or separated processes.
Such a division permits us to glance at the order in which units follow one
another, and this undertaking will be the easier because the reader possesses
now for his guidance definite notions as to the nature of units or ideas,
notions which should enable him to concentrate his attention on the
current of thought rather than on \h& particles of which it is composed. It
is only natural that after having indicated the statics of thought — thought
at rest, we should proceed to investigate its dynamics — thought in motion.
88. — The Composition of Secondary Systems.
" Have I seen that face before ? " was the question I put to myself, and
forthwith, as we saw, the face referred to re-developed. Premising that
we are only concerned in this place with what succeeds, rather than with
the how of that succession, it will be readily granted that a face identical
with the one present was re-produced. We may now vary our question,
so as to learn the changing aspects of the problem of succession. I say
to myself that I wish to see a somewhat similar face, a similar one, and
one extremely like it. So, still experimenting, I try to re-produce some
other face, then a dissimilar one ; one recently and one not recently thouglit
•of; one that is good, beautiful or clever; one that I have seen or thouglit
of in conjunction with it ; one gained by recasting the re-produced features,
by deliberate decomposition of details or by wear of the features; and
lastly, I try to think of something much unlike a face. \Find, if possible,
other classes?^ I succeed in each of the tasks referred to. But let us illus-
strate some of the above. I look at a person before me, and the image
of some one I have not met for some years takes shape. I look once more,
and I think of some one whom I occasionally see. I desire to re-produce
something recent, and my desire is fulfilled at once, though only a desire
existed. So also I attempt to think of something that happened long ago,
and an incident covered with the mould of time, is the consequence.
Thus, again, I endeavour to call up something unlike the image I am fixing,
and after a short struggle I am rewarded. In the same way what is im-
portant, what is interesting, what is good, what is beautiful, and the like,
are re-produced at pleasure. In truth, only what is utterly unlike entails
difficulties. \Test experimentally every step in this paragraph?\^
Let me now give a hint, for I cannot do more, of the curious arches
which span the chasm between units. If we intend to act at ha].-
hazard or arbitrarily, we shall observe that at some point of th.e
seen body a skin sensation develops, and in the customary fashion we
move, say, that arm or finger where the sensation is felt. If we intend to
continue arbitrary movemients, then the process above described repeats
itself, unusual movements being rare. There is here, therefore, an intel'i-
142 GENERAL ANALYSES
j^ible sequence : we are ready to act ; we are waiting for a sign ; accident,
always to be relied on in this connection, })roduces what we want, and we
repeat some action familiar to that part, activity being readily initiated in
the chosen direction. \^Test experimentally^^ In arbitrary utterance a
chance tendency is likewise exploited \ words come to us with the same
initial letter, or with the initial letter next in order; and the syllables
exhibit a certain calculable length and character. (Sec. 152.) \Test experi-
ment ally ?\
Relations, similar to those between words or between primary systems,
may be observed among images. I look at a person, and my eye happens
to rest on the mourning band round his hat. This indicates the point of
departure. As I centre the attention on the band, and otherwise ignore
ihe person, the band develops around it another familiar environment in
the form of an old friend whom I had not seen for some years, and who
wore such a mourning band. Or, again, my attention is arrested by his
moustache, and an acquaintance from the country who has such a mous-
tache develops. If we assume that an image represents a process, then it
is not difficult to admit that any section of the process, whe7i stimulated,
may develop in different familiar directions. \Test the preceding.'\ Re-
production of what is identical or similar is here apparently explained : a
given feature is emphasised, abstracted and permitted to evolve around
itself a new environment.
Contiguity, or proximity in space and time, forms no exception to the
above. While thinking of a face, we may, for instance, explore the
secondary visual field of which that face forms a part. [Repeat rcpeatedly.^^
In this manner the secondary process is developed in certain directions,
ending in the re-development of what is contiguous, or rather continuous.*
Similarly, by re-distributing attention, by sensitising a certain brain area,
relations other than spatial are developed, and these prove a stepping-
stone to further familiar developments along the lines of time and contents.
Just as an assumed angry expression suggests anger, so active secondary
vision and audition play their parts in restimulating in a new order or in
an old, what is visual or audile. In fact, in contiguity as in similarity, the
emerging contiguous image implies that something else is being ignored, as
in secondarily or otherwise exploring a room. Thus change in the line of
activity, assimilation in a new direction, or movement of the attention,
marks both contiguity and similarity. In both instances only the line
between the new and the old represents both the new and the old.
The problem of re-producing what is recent is on a somewhat different
plane, for here there is no connected process, in the ordinary sense. The
stretched string of a violin, when sharply twanged, recoils and visibly
vibrates for some time, and so a brain area, when excited, remains for
a period in a highly unstable condition. Under these circumstances,
* Mervoyer (Suf f Association des IJixs, 1864) sj eaks of " the law of contigaity or
continuity," p. 52.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 143
memory, as we know from the ease with which we re -develop recent events,
is almost as trustworthy and complete as observation, while the momentum
is such that unless there is a strong bent in another direction, the recent
will again and again appear before the bar of attention, the nascent becom-
ing real, the possible process becoming an actual one. Hence it is com-
mon for the recent to come forward uninvited, and to connect itself readily
with much that is passing. It is also this high instability that supports
and carries along any and every continuous process of thought. Passivity
of a kind is all that is required in re-membering the recent. (Sec. iioa.)
\Re-ine77iber what is recent?^
89. — Secondary Complications.
Experiments along the line just spoken of incidentally unmask a known
fact of the utmost importance psychologically. A few hours ago I looked
at a striking pictorial post-card. Desiring to re-produce something which
recently took place, that post-card occurs to me. Later on, I repeat the
process of wishing to re-develop something recent, and the post-card, for a
new reason, has once more returned. The fact is that recency plus post-card
becomes one complex, and that the re-collection of the former most easily
developed into the latter. We obtain from this the principle of secondary
complications, if we agree to give the name of prif?iary complications to t/iose
images and sensations which are connected in observation, re-membering that
there is no proper division between primary and secondary facts. As
will be seen at once, this principle is of commanding influence. Since
percepts and ideas are ceaselessly thought of in new relations, secondary
complications are being continually shaped and strengthened. So sweep-
ing is this factor that it is the principal means of forming scattered sensa-
tions and images into an organic network. Without this constant inter-
weaving, the free play of thought would be impossible.
Another instance well illustrates the principle we have been contending
for. While viewing a face, I try to think of something unlike it, and a
basket occurs to me.* When this has once occurred, thinking of what is
unlike becomes closely related to the notion of a basket, and the one being
re-produced the other develops forthwith. For this reason, I have, in ex-
perimenting, to dismiss dozens of these spurious unlikenesses, and on every
occasion we must allow for stereotyped complications which have grown
out of the experiments themselves. \^Try and re-collect what is unlike?^
Association by contrast, as far as traceable, is explained by the process
referred to above. Contrasts, being interesting, are sometimes noted —
though in the aggregate not often — and hence secondary complications are
originated with the result that thinking of the one extreme, or any extreme,
* It is superfluous to say that mediate association was strongly guarded against as well
as association through words or through after-images (James, Psychology, 1890, ii, p. 84).
Ultimately, perhaps, we shall find the explanation in either recency, or in some modifica-
tion of the described process which leads to the re-production of what is identical, similar
or contiguous. Difficult as the task may be, the unlike can seemingly be thought of.
144 GENERAL ANALYSES
readily develops, because it involves, the other. Hence the multitude of
hackneyed contrasts — giant-dwarf, high-low, good-bad, bitter-sweet, etc. —
must not be regarded as developing one another in virtue of the contrast;
but rather as closely connected secondary complications, such as sailor-
soldier, life-strife, lover-sweetheart, father-child. \Test experimentally?\
Can I think of what is old, of what is sweet, of what is good, of what is
indifferent, of what is limp, of what is important, oj what I hate? \Can
vou .?] I can, and that in virtue of the fact that the words or the stimulat-
ing units have formerly appeared in connection with what will follow our
(]uestion. Unless we assume some such solution, it becomes difficult to
describe what is, on the face of it, so unrelated. Why should the word
"old" be followed by the vision of an aged beggar? or the word "sweet"
by the sight of a piece of preserved ginger ? For no other reason ordinarily,
I contend, but because the units of "old" and "beggar" have occurred
in some form or relation previously, and because they constitute, therefore,
a secondary complication. Thus the easy flow of the stream of thought is
due to the myriads of secondary connections which have been constructed.
[Experimentally repeat the preceding.']
Primary and secondary complications are often no sooner formed than tiiey are dis-
solved. To be firmly fixed, they must be repeatedly re-collected. Again, as express
purposes do not generally connect complications, and as a certain looseness and inde-
pendence is valuable for effective thinking, we find that one image is by no means always
followed by one and the same connected image. So also the nature of secondary com-
plications makes it clear that the relative age of an image does not, where normal thought
is concerned, enter into the question. What happened twenty years ago — provided it has
been re-developed frequently since — is as likely to emerge as what happened ten
minutes ago.
90. — Development, Excitement and Secondary Complications.
We have thus far dealt with the time relations of two particles of thought,
and we have found it essential to assume that the bulk of units or ideas
are but expressions of a few processes, and that the units or ideas do not
exist apart from these processes. Since, for instance, the mourning band
of the one man is, psychologically, the same mourning band which is worn
by another, the process of development, or the movement of the attention,,
may lead to the re-development of either of the two men. Thus the mourn-
ing band, as such, is but a link and not the reason of the re-production of the
other man. Leaving aside the question of recency and, possibly, of un-
likeness, and there remains but one fundamental method, i.e., that of
development of a process along certain lines of space, time and content — or
content simply — by which any two or more units may be connected.* The
oply subsidiary principle of a far-reaching nature which we have discovered —
the fusion of ideas and percepts with ideas or with percepts — is the existence
of secondary complications, making a living whole out of individual uncon-
*Wundt {Psyckohgie, 1893, "> PP* 466-75) similarly redr.ces association to sameness,
.and contiguity of process.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 145
nected parts. It must be confessed, however, that not until the neural pro-
cesses, which best express thought, are laid bare by the physiologist, shall
we have a truly rounded and scientific explanation of the nature of thought.
The objection which will be raised on account of the incommensurability of
what is mental and material, may be answered in two ways. First, we
have a right to press for a solution of a problem in whatever direction we
think it necessary. Secondly, the antithesis between matter and mind, as we
have already stated, and as we shall see in ch. 8, may prove to be super-
ficial and transitory.
We have seen that any thought following another in a thought complex
is always continuous with some portion of that thought complex, except in
the case of neural excitement. Having ascertained the fact of invariable
continuity, we may analyse its various aspects and class them, say, as that
which is contiguous and that which is similar. Such a classification, is,
however, a descriptive process which yields no insight into what is funda-
mental. Let us consider the character of contiguity. With eyes shut, I
take a detailed continuous view of the four walls of a certain well known,
room. While in this example there is continual fading at one end of the
picture, as in ordinary vision, there is continual development at the other
end, as in a dioramic scene. Here we have a certain sense complex
which is connected with a developing sense complex at one point alone,
precisely as in ordinary vision. That is to say, what is at the fading end
of the picture is in no way contiguous with anything but what immediately
adjoins it, and what emerges does so, as in ordinary vision, solely owing
to the inward sweep of the eye. When development assumes the form
just referred to, we speak of association by contiguity. Consider now a
case of similarity. I look at a person and my attention accidentally alights
upon the black band around his hat. Everything now fades except the
band, and around that a new human figure develops. When this happens,
men say that we have a case of association by similarity, one man sug-
gesting the other because of the likeness between them. As a matter of
fact, the two examples exhibit precisely the same features, i.e., while one
portion fades another develops. In strictness, then, it is wisest to abandon
the older artificial classification into what is contiguous and what is similar,
and simply recognise the fact of continuity. This course is the more
reasonable, since, on the old lines, we are bound to admit a third class of
association — association by identity. For instance, I may repeat some new
sound. Here the second sound is not connected by contiguity with the first,
since it has not been repeated before, nor is it connected by similarity, for the
two sounds are of an identical character. We may, indeed, say that the
desire to repeat is here the ground for the repetition ; but, then, we may
also say that the desire to obtain what is similar or contiguous is the ground
for such similarity and contiguity appearing. However, we can proceed
further : when the demand, say, is made, " Recall X. and some one like
him," we have similarity ; but what happens when we say " Recall X., Y.,
Z.," or " Recall the members of a Committee." In the second case Y. is not
10
1 46 GENERAL A NAL YSES
necessarily connected with X. by either contiguity, similarity or identity, X.
being unproductive of associations, and V. being directly connected with
the desire to recall a member of its class.
If the above analysis be correct, we can readily see that no association
or suggestion of any kind explains the flow of thought. B in following A,
must be, we grant, in some portion continuous with the latter; but from
this it by no means follows that B succeeds A of necessity. A brick, w hen
thrown at an object ten yards away from where it lay must pass through
a continuous space of ten yards ; but who would, therefore, assert that the
continuity of movement explains the fact of movement and its direction?
So with the flow of thought, which is only fully explained by the gradually
developed process of the satisf^iction of needs or functional readjustment.
Omit the existence of needs, and no thouglit would ever be followed by
another ; what is more, every thought is but the expression of a need or of
functional readjustment.
Reasoning along Brown's lines, one might plausibly contend that what
we have called desires may be regarded as a sufficient explanation of the
flow of thought. Thus the feeling of hunger may be said to explain the
whole process which ends in stilling the hunger. Great as is the tempta-
tion to adopt this method of explanation, we find that the data are un-
favourable to such an attempt. Owing to the nature of organised reac-
tions, the desires have no qualitative and quantitative characteristics which
can be employed as safe guides. They also give us no hint as to why
they should be followed by certain particular ideational processes. On the
other hand, in the bodily organism as evolved by natural selection, we
have a complex system where, in theory as yet, it is true, we may follow
the rise, development and satisfaction of needs to the minutest detail.
We can understand, for instance, how a certain state of the stomach pro-
duces a series of changes which end in another state of that stomach.
Most generally stated, we may, therefore, say that what is to follow in
thought ?nust be continuous at some point with some parts of that which pre-
cedes it, while THE FACT OF ITS FOLLOWING IS SOLELY THE RESULT OF THE
EXISTENCE OF A NEED WHICH PRESSES FOR SATISFACTION.*
90a. — ASSOCIATIONISM.
It is advisable to give here a summary of the associationist doctrine, supplementary to
the remarks made in the Introduction. We have seen that Hume had already spoken of
the laws of association as ultimate facts, and we have learnt that Hamilton held the same
view. If then we pass to the other associationists, such as Brown, the two Mills, Bain,
Spencer and Sully, we fmd the same belief in the finality of the process of association.
In fact, this finality, within limits, is accepted by almost all psychologists of every school.
Nevertheless, one drawback to complete intellectual satisfaction has been universally
* Stout draws fundamental distinctions to which, as our text shows, we cannot agree.
In his Psychology, 1896, i, p. 123, he says that a man " never regards the suggestion of
one idea by another as his own act. So far as the sequence of presentations is determined
by association, it is determined for him and not by him." Robertson, again, says :
" There is one kind of experience that is governed by association entirely, and that is the
trains of bare representation termed Reverie" (Psychology, 1896, p. 164).
SVSTEAfS AS NEED-SATISFYING 147
admitted. Why, it is asked, are there three laws of association ? Why can they not be
reduced to one ? Accordingly an attempt at simplification has been made. Brown
{LectH?-es, 1824, ii, p. 205) holds that "all suggestion . . . may ... be found to
depend on prior co-existence, or at least on such immediate proximity as is itself, very
probably, a modification of co-existence." Beneke (Lehrbuck, 1845, p. 88) says :
" Similarity is analysable into sameness and difference, the difference being given simul-
taneously with the sameness." Similarly Hamilton, Hodgson and Bradley, in the passages
referred to in the Introduction. So Lipps {Gntndtatsachen, 1883, ch. 6), following his
master Beneke, reduces contrast to similarity, similarity to contiguity and inseparable
connection, and contiguity to simultaneity. A similar view is expressed by James
(Psychology, 1890, i, p. 578). And lastly, according to Sully (Human Mind, 1892, i,
p. 335), we assimilate in revival by similarity that portion which is common to both
objects, the remaining part being re-produced by contiguity. In this manner the three
laws of association may be said to have been reduced to one law, to immediate co-exist-
ence or, as some think, to immediate succession. Yet one step more remained to be
taken. As Brown argued, and after him Bradley, if the association depends on the
recognition of similarity or contiguity, then the object is already recalled when it is not
yet associated. Hence Brown preferred the word suggestion, and reasoned that all one
could say was that such a thing suggested such another thing. Rightly enough, therefore.
Sully (Human Mind, i, p. 330) speaks of the association or suggestion of similars rather
than of association or suggestion by similarity. This last stroke makes the hypothesis we
are discussing wholly unexceptionable as regards statement.
In strict theory we know now what to expect. If I see a face, it will suggest what has
been associated with it along the lines of contiguity, resemblance and contrast. Thus the
face suggested will suggest in its turn the totality of connected systems forwards and back-
wards, while, by implication, the face will suggest other faces, its colour other colours, its
beauty the whole question of aesthetics, its expression the whole department of ethics, and
so on. This is usually admitted, as the laws formulated by Bain show (sec. i). Nor
does Bain stand by himself. Already Brown (Lectures, 1824, ii, p. 357) had quoted,
after Lord Kames, a long speech of the Hostess in Henry IV. to make clear that un-
cultured minds tend to re-produce things in tedious fulness, as illustrating the law of
■contiguity. For similar purposes James (Psychology, 1890, i, p. 571) quotes a similar
type of speech from one of Miss Austen's works to illustrate what he calls the law of
impartial redintegration. Thus Spencer (Psychology, 1890, i, p. 461) seems to associate
himself with those who believe in the tendency for contiguous reinstatement. Sully,
again, puts the matter unambiguously : " The sight of a familiar room, or the sound of a
familiar name, tends to call up a number of images " (Human Mind, 1892, i, p. 339).
So Stout, Manual, 1899: "If ^ has been perceived or thought of together with A or
immediately after A, then, on a future occasion, the perception or idea of ^ will tend to
call up the idea of ^" (p. 420). And, "in proportion as the control of a dominant
interest is weak and intermittent, the tendency is exactly to repeat the original order
without omissions and inclusive of interruptions" (ibid, p. 423). Or, again, "In any
^iven stage of a train of thought the next step is partly determined by the controlling
influence of the central idea of the topic with which the whole series is concerned, and
partly by the special idea which has last emerged. In so far as it is determined by the " latter,
"the principle of association is operative ; in so far as it is determined by the central
idea . . . noetic synthesis is operative ... It is mere association, for instance, which
would lead a man in a conversation on peace and war to begin to talk about Peace the murderer "
(Psychology, 1896, ii, p. 3). So Lotze, Microcostnus, 1885, i, p. 216: "All reproduction
rests on the impossibility of the resuscitated impression appearing alone, without trying to
bring with it the whole of which it previously formed a part, and of that whole specially
the other single part to which it was most closely attached." Similarly, Taine, On
Intelligence, 1871, p. 88: "When the image of the form we have perceived tends to
revive, it draws with it the images of its several accompaniments." And so Strieker, Das
Jiewusstsein, 1S79, P- 4^ '• " As I am thinking of the word 'horse,' so the many pictures
148 GENERAL ANALYSES
of the horses wliich I have seen, tend lo .ippeiir." Thus the presumpiion of full re-
inslateiiient is not only admitted, but explicitly exemplified. As regards the illustrations
given by the authors (juoted, they are, for many reasons, of little value. In the first
place, very few uncultured persons tend to obey the law of impartial redintegration ;
secondly, in all the examples given there is over-elaboration, but otherwise strict con-
sistency or "noetic synthesis"; and, thirdly, the kind of impartiality demanded by the
theory, is utterly absent even from the mind of the maddest of madmen. What usually
happens is that the overwhelming majority of the details are forgotten ; that the over-
whelming majority of the remaing details are neglected ; and that the overwhelming
majority of similarities remain unnoticed. Sully, indeed, tells us that since the numerous
suggested images " cannot be all revived together, there results a conflict of suggestive
tendencies " {Human Mind, 1892, i, p. 339) ; but research oflfers us no such spectacle.
Thus the letter a instead of suggesting to us the totality of our knowledge, may fail to
surest anything. ^Experiment.'] It is rather with cultured and with uncultured, with
child and with man, as Stout (/!/«;/««/, 1898, p. 42) puts it: " In recalling a train of
events we usually pass from one salient occurrence to another, leaving out the relatively
unimportant details which actually intervened between them." Or to quote an
ideal case, most true to average life: "The ploughman's active day, is partly summed
up in the furrowed field that is pictured in his mind in his evening retrospect " (Bain,
Senses and Intellect, 1894, p. 476). This last example, by its utter unlikeness
to what the theory demands, finally disposes of the simple solution of succession
with which the laws of association were supposed to equip us. What is more, as the
suspected tendency never, under any circumstances, is observable in fact, we have good
reason to question its existence. It is true that what comes up in idea is, in some way,
usually related by contiguity or similarity to what had preceded it ; but the fact that such
similars are not mere similars, but relevant ones, still leaves Paulhan's interpretation open
that "it is not resemblance, it is convenience which is the directing cause, the why of
the association" {L' Activity Mentale, 1889, p. 408).
The glaring discrepancy between data and theory did not, of course, escape detection,
and a number of secondary laws of suggestion were formulated by Brown (Lectures, 1824,
ii, pp. 253-65), who urged that some units or ideas were at a greater disadvantage thar\
others. These are his secondary principles : Continuance, or the length of time that an
idea has been present at a stretch ; liveliness, or the forcible impression which an idea
has made upon us ; frequency ; recency, or the shortness of time which has elapsed since
the idea was last to the fore ; purity, or the clearness due to an idea having co-existed
less with other feelings ; constitution, or original constitution ; temporary emotion, or
the mood we are in ; bodily state ; and prior habits. Similarly Hodgson {Metaphysic,
1898, iii, p. 113) says: "Strength of original impression, number of connections
with other impressions, and the increase by habit either of a particular impression or of
any of its connections with others, seem thus to be the chief circumstances favourable to the
redintegration of any given idea or imagery, under the two main laws of similarity and
continuity of brain processes." So, to illustrate the influence of e.iiotions which are
common to many events. Brown says : " When, for example, the whiteness of untrodden
snow brings to our mind the innocence of an unpolluted heart, — or a fine morning of
spring the cheerful freshness of youth, — they may do this only by the influence of a
common emotion excited by them" (Lectures, 1824, ii, p. 317). That Brown's
secondary laws are all deduced from life, and play an important part there, no one will
dispute ; for a dull and uninteresting impression soon fades. We have still left the
principle that what is re-membered is contiguous to that which preceded it ; but we have
eliminated certain unfavoured similars. The chief thing we have gained is the recogni-
tion of emotion as a middleman between images, a recognition strangely underrated by
modern associationists, who casually refer to emotion as if they meant to ostracise it.
Vet grant all the aids to association, and have we, then, established the associating;
principle ? I think not. If these aids were what they purport to be, thought would still
be as wasteful as the roar of the sea, and dash aimlessly hither and thither like the oce:m
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 149
waves. Thought would be in the condition of a goodly boat having fair sails but no
propelling winds. If thought had to obey these secondary laws, instead of judiciously
making use of them, we should die in the midst of plenty ; for not what is striking, but
what is pertinent, interests us, though what is striking may be easier to recall. In other
words, of the ideas which have previously co-exisred in some form, only those are
ordinarily re-produced which are to the purpose, and those which are not, are as if they had
never been in spite of liveliness, frequency, etc. Hence if the usefulness of things is in
question, things useful are alone re-membered — liveliness, etc., helping here, though
other aspects remain in the background. Every image re-incarnated in this manner
suggests nothing and tends to suggest nothing, but gives place to another image of the
same quality, decided by the continuing interest. As Paulhan (V Activity Mentals, 18S9,
p. 17) expresses it : "A psychic fact tends to associate and to revive those elements
which are able to unite with it for a common purpose," and " the tendency to systematic
and inhibitive association is a property of the psychic elements." Or as James {Psycho-
logy, 1890, i, p. 259) says : " In all our voluntary thinking there is some topic or
subject about which all the members of the thought revolve." (See also the same work
(i, p. 568) where James allows for the influence of emotiona interest.) Or as Stout
enlarges upon it in his " noetic synthesis."
Since the text has shown that all association is development of a process in those
directions which lead to the satisfaction of a need, we are ready to agree that the need
can only walk those highways and byways, selecting its directions, which it has walked
before : unsuitable developments will be stopped, while suitable developments will be
followed up. Our point of view, therefore, approaches very closely to the associationist
standpoint if emotional interest be allowed its full due, and if that interest be interpreted
as a need seeking to satisfy itself. Previous co-existence in some form, ignoring here
recency, would still be a condition of re-instatement, yet only a negative one : 7io co-
exisience = 7!0 re-insialeinent ; co-existence = rc-instateinetit, if desirable. One thing would
not suggest another like thing ; it would develop out of the former, because a need was
passing that way. Hence association or suggestion would be a secondary principle, fully
explained by the pressure of needs. Interpreted in this manner, by saying that association
is topical, we have at once determined more clearly the process of the satisfaction of needs
and the so-called final laws of association ; and indeed, by speaking of topical association
or need-determined association we express in a simple fashion this double truth. The
law of association might then read thus : actions, sensations, and states of feeling, occur-
ring together or in close succession, in part or as a whole, are related in such a way that,
when any one of them, or part of them, is afterwards developed in the mind, only those
others, in part, or as a whole, can develop, such development being need-determined.
Slated in some such language the association theory still retains its essential feature, i.e., the
fact of close relationship between ideational antecedent and consequent. It is possible
that even observation falls under this revised form of Bain"s statement.
Above all things it is necessary not only to admit changes in theory, but to give them
their proper position. Bain, for instance, while admitting the peculiar effects of recency
and emotional interest, effects which are most vital to all thought, allots them a few pages,
and fills hundreds of pages with an unnecessary exposition of the nature of contiguity
and similarity. In the same spirit he says that "in all difficult operations for purposes
or ends, the rule of 'trial and error' is the grand and final resort" {Senses and Intellect,
1S94, p. 609), and "the number of words that pass across the mind in forming a single
couplet may be a hundred times those actually made use of" {ibid, p. 610), suggesting,
•what is the opposite of the facts, that a host of details is passed in review with the object
of finding one that is not indifferent. James Mill supplies us with another striking example
•of the woodenness of associationist interpretations. He says " Our suggests father, fat he)-
suggests which, ivhich suggests art ; and so on to the end" {Analysis, 1869, i, p. 80).
In the same way, while he admits that " in the man who composes the coherent discourse,
the main idea, that of the end in view, predominates, and controls the association, in
every part of the process" {ibid, ii, p. 371), he yet explains that the main idea only
T 50 GENERAL ANAL YSES
vetoes irrelevant devclopmenls, as if the main idea were not an idea capable of self-
development like other ideas. In aj^reement with Mill, Sully argues that "the action
of attention does not effect a reinstatement of an image independently of the forces of
suggestion," but that it can "aid in the realisation of certain of these tendencies rather
than of others" {Utivian Mind, 1892, i, p. 346), as if attention were anything outside
the ideas or needs. Brown alone freely allows for the play of interest, and it seems
difficult to understand why he has had no determined followers. At all events, the half-
heartedness with which new facts have been welcomed by associationists, has largely
assisted in depreciating their theory altogether.
If the process of association expressed a great truth chained to a great untruth, so much
cannot be said for the way associationists conceived the individual ideas. As this subject
is treated elsewhere (sec. 107), we need not enter into detail. Only this much may be
said, that association ideas have a logical completeness which is essentially absent in the
product as we know it. The five-sense features were supposed to be ever present, while
the many other sense elements, feelings and relations were neglected when they were
not ignored. The feelings, loo, were given a place which was far from expressing their
natural position in the series of systems.
Certain cases of quasi-associations are best disposed of here. In re-instating a certain
remark, there appears along with it the open book in which I read it, as well as the
picture of the locality where I was at the time. Examining this accidental instance, I
come to the conclusion that the remark, plus book, plus locality, were in the first instance,
for no matter what reason, welded into one fact : remark-book-locality. In some occur-
rences, therefore, what seems the re-production of one idea by another is really a single
image. So Sully, Human Mind, 1892, i, pp. 330-4 ; Paulhan, V Adivite Metitale,
1889, pp. 429 43 ; Ward, Psychology, 1886, p. 57, col. 2 ; Wundt, Psychologie, 1893,
ii, pp. 437-53 ; and Stout, Manual, 189S, p. 94. A different explanation applies in a
set of related groups of systems. We are, for instance, interested in the locality spoken
of, and we cannot resist the temptation of going off at a tangent for a moment as we re-
collect the remark. Here re-collection is topical and indirectly developed, though the
seeming co-existence of two points suggests associative re-integration. Disallow the
interest, and the locality will not obtrude itself In proportion as we lack strenuous
purpose, so distraction — thinking in bits — becomes an important factor. Again, one
particular object has so often been re-collected after another that when the necessity for
sequent re-production has gone, we yet bring back the second through forgetfulness of
the particular chief need of the moment. To put it paradoxically, we will that which we
do not will ; or, to be more precise, the lesser needs, as Paulhan urges, are acting in-
dependently. Again, two things have been continually thought of together, and if they are
sufficiently close to one another, they are gradually embraced in a single act of attention,
fusing and thus becoming one. In such an instance we have a twin object before us, and
not one object re-producing another. The same would hold when we re-collect an object
as moving. Lastly, since every object is psychologically a complex, and since, for
instance, the re-collection of a man's eyes require usually the re-cnllection of his face, it
follows that all objects observed or imagined, contain many features more or less insepar-
ably united. This process is named by Sully, among others, assimilation (Hmuan Mind,
1892, i, pp. 178-84), and intuitions form a good illustration of it. Binet, having the
same facts in mind, speaks of the law of fusion (Le Raisonnemcnt, 1886, pp. 96 ff. ).
These elements are like the flour and the water which the baker kneads together in a
dough : their bare presence does nothing towards their entering into a union ; a need
accomplishes that. Our brains resemble a civilised country with high-roads, by-roads,
field-paths, rivers, canals and railways, as well as arable land and pasture land, mountains
and hollows, towns and villages, and authorities. In this orderly land, the needs form the
population. Abolish, however, all useful institutions in a country, and you cripple the
individual ; and so the absence of pioneering profoundly affects the manner in which needs
are satisfied.
Additional References on Association, — Aschaffenburg, Expcrimentelle Studien iiber
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 151
Associatiotien, 1895 and 1897 ; Bain, On Association Controversies, 1887 ; Bergstrom,
The Interference of Associations, 1S93 ; Bergstrom, The Relation of the Interference to
the Tractice Effect of an Association, 1894 ; Bourdon, Les Rcsultats des Theories Con-
teniporaines sur V Association des Idees, 1891 ; Bourdon, la Succession des Phinomejtes
Psychologiqnes, 1893 ; Bradley, Association and Thotii^ht, 1887 ; Bradley, On Prof,
lames' Doctrine of Simple Resemblance, 1893 ! Brochard, De la loi de Similarite dans
les Associations cf Idees, 18S0 ; Calkins, A Sus^gested Classification of Cases of Association,
1S92 ; Calkins, Association, 1896 ; Calkins, Short Studies in Memory and itt Associatio?i,
1898 ; Cattell, Psychometrische Untersuchttn<;en, 1887 ; Cattell, Experiments on the
Association of Ideas, 1887 ; Cattell and Bryant, Mental Association Investigated by Ex-
periment, 1889; Cordes, Untersuchungen t'tber Associationen, 1901 ; Cornelius, Das
Gesetz der Uebiing, 1896 ; Deft'ner, Die Aehnlichkeitsassociation, 1898 ; Goblot, Sur la
Theorie Physiologiqne de r Association, 1898; Hoffding, Die Bedeutung der Wiederhohing,
1883; HofMing, Ueher IViedcrerkennen, Association, etc., 1889-90; Hcift'ding, Ziir
Theorie des Wiedcrerkcnncns, 1892 ; Howe, Mediate Association, 1894 ; James, Mr.
Bradley on Immediate Resemblance, 1893 ; Jastrow, Community and Association of Ideas,
1894 ; Jerusalem, Ein Beispiel von Association durch unbetvusste Vorstellungen, 1894 ;
Jost, Die Associationsfestigkeit , 1897 ; Mlinsterberg, Die Association successiver Vorstel-
lungen, 1890; Scripture, Ueber den associativen Verlauf der Vorstellungen, 1891 ; Smith,
Mediate Association, 1894; Trautscholdt, Die Association der Vorstellungen, 1882 ; Ward,
Assimilation and Associatio'n, 1893; Witasek, Ueher willkilrliche Vorstellungsverbindung,
1896 ; Wundt, Sinddic J\Jittelglieder einer mittelbaren Association beivusst oder unbewusst /*
1894.
91. — Ideational Complications.
We are now possessed of the static and dynamic elements of thought ;
but that is still far from saying that our analysis is complete. If thoughts
were like dust grains which the wilful winds whip hither and thither, now
into this nook and again into that open plain, little else need be added.
As the matter stands, however, thought reflects the complex organism and
shapes itself into a unity, its cells developing into a variety of connected
tissues. On this account we must continue our dissection of ideational
compounds, though we have concluded our examination of ideational
elements.
92. — Thought represents the Satisfaction of Needs.
The simplest case we can select for study, is a bare amplification of
what we have analysed above. Suppose we say that the Sophists stimu-
lated the thought of Socrates ; Socrates stimulated the thought of Plato ;
Plato stimulated the thought of Aristotle ; and Aristotle stimulated the
thought of the succeeding centuries. In this instance, leaving aside
niceties, the development of thought is consecutive or telescopic, i.e., A
develops into B, B into C, C into D, and D into E. In rambling
thought, speaking generally, this A-B, B-C method is common; and poor
disputants scarcely launch a subject, before they leave it for another one
suggested by a portion of the argument. Yet where thought is to focus a
series of events chronologically, this mode of procedure is in place. How-
ever, thought is more often a centre where each unit is connected, not
v/ith its predecessor, but with the centre alone. For instance, we may say
1 5 2 GENERA L A NA L 1 'SES
that " X. wasted his time, his opportunities, his fortune and his health
before marriage. When he was married he neglected his wife, his children
and himself. Mis influence on his family, like his influence generally on
those who came into contact with him, was pernicious. No one was ever
heard to say a good word for him." Here is a centre around which a
regiment of systems is quartered. We wisli to express what evil we know
of a man, and in centrally determined sequence we re-collect what is pertinent.
Tin: points do not suggest miything or each other, nor are they related one to the
other ; but they radiate directly from one idea. When we ask : What defence
can you offer of your conduct, of your enterprise or of your philosophy, then
the terms "conduct," "enterprise "and "philosophy," are the magnets
around which groups of systems arrange themselves. Nor is this class of
thought occasional or unimportant. If we reflect that broad-based needs ever
seek to be satisfied, and that nothing otherwise interests us, we must conclude
that thought is pre-eminently centralised, and it is thus that a need arises
and initiates such processes as lead to its satisfaction. Moreover, even
where the order is chronological, the need for such order alone secures the
stream of thought, and, therefore, a central unit is always in command.
Hence units are not followed in endless succession by other units ; but
every train is arrested or developed, as the controlling need may de-
termine.
If thought, as such, is need-determined, we shall have to beware of
adopting the ordinary mechanical notions as regards ideation. A man may
imagine that once an image is developed, the host of others linked with it,
tend also to develop. So, too, it may plausibly be urged that the more
striking and oft-repeated ideas will specially press, or tend to press, towards
the front. On the other hand, on theoretical grounds, we have to discount
these suggestions. As thought is need-determined, i.e., determined by
functional readjustment, and as the nature of economisation excludes
what is superfluous, we should expect that, normally speaking, no more is
developed than is to the point. Thus the most significant aspects will not
as a rule be even suspected when the least significant ones are being
sought. [7>j-/.] Accordingly, only what is relevant will normally tend
to appear, since any other method of procedure would be stupidly wasteful,
and, therefore, checked by natural selection. Needless to say, introspec-
tive experiment seems to bear out this contention.
See the chapter on Relative Suggestion in Stout's Analytic Psychology, 1896 ; see also
Wundt, Psycliologie, 1893, ii, p. 476, where he defines apperception as a " function
causally determined by the whole development of a consciousness," a definition which
scarcely describes the elastic processes enlarged upon in this work.
93. — Some Results of Economisation.
The results of economisation must now be faced once more, and
with them the nature of secondary complications. In the crude history
which we have supplied of the bad man X. several points require elucida-
S YSTEMS A S NEEDS A TISF YING 1 53
tion. In a more primitive condition than that of the average adult, per-
haps only the one notion of X. being bad could be entertained, while the
moment another idea developed the first one would be swept away. This
is not so with the average human being. Having settled that X. is a bad
man, we may investigate his state without for a moment forgetting what
we think of him. If we turn inward, it would be preposterous to say that,
like the famous writing on the wall, the words " X. is a bad man" persist.
Economisation has reduced this awareness to a trace, an area being kept
sensitised, in contact and ready to react. When, therefore, I go into the next
room to fetch a book, my thoughts, in walking, are far from it. Yet there
is still a residue ready to react, and when that is gone, the errand is for-
gotten. [Experiment ^^ What is true of the central thought, is true of the
whole process as expressed in the words which I employed. Every sub-
sidiary unit remains semi-nascent, in agreement with the fact of recency,
thus securing a coherent and progressive process. The units are simplified
to the utmost. They do not dwell in some sub-consciousness, and they
find no substitutes; only that little is re-membered which is essential.
94. — The Language of the Adult.
It is when we come to the word-sentence, that the nature of secondary and
simplified complications is most striking. Indeed, so large a part do they
play therein that it becomes difficult not to exaggerate. Generally stated
one may affirm that the sentences which an adult uses are secondary
complications, slightly modified according to familiar methods. We
have, so to speak, said everything we have to say previously, since the
situations we meet with vary but microscopically. Given an act and
it is generally a repetition of some act; and given the need for
utterance, and the sentence employed on a previous occasion will be
employed once more. We have not, at any time, the whole vocabulary
in view, from which we select a dozen words; these dozen words are
practically given as a sentence by memory. When a state is more pro-
nounced, we put in some term like " very " ; and when " Brown " is meant
and not " White," the names are changed. The sentences are constructed
on exceedingly well known models ; and what adaptations are needed, are
quickly found because we are well acquainted with them. Whenever
familiarity is absent, we struggle painfully before we can properly express
ourselves. Thus only he who has studied resolutions or documents, can
draw them up with ease or draw them up at all ; and thus the educated
man talks well, because he is a dealer in secondary complications. Only
an infinitesimal portion of a man's phrases shows to any extent the bloom
of freshness. Illustrations of the more intimate speech processes are near
at hand. In learning a new alphabet, some time elapses before we can
readily write any letter we wish. Yet, if at this latter stage we try to
write a word in this alphabet, we find that the letters cannot be re-developed
in a flash, as is required. Only prolonged exercise allows us to write.
r 54 GENERAL ANAL YSES
read or speak with expedition. Should a difficulty occur, as it occurs in
nearly every sentence which is at all modified, the time spent, as can be
observed, is masked by the easy steps making up for the more difficult ones,
i.e., thought is active prospectively while the words are being uttered.
\Experi»ient?\ By this means groups of systems are ever readjusting them-
selves with but slight confusion. Ordinarily, then, we deal in word-sentences
which have but a spark of immediate or direct meaning, an unusual context
alone acting as a challenge. We see, therefore, that an atomic conception of
the ideational process — as where self-satisfied ideas are said to siiggest
contiguous or similar ideas, — leaves us completely in the dark as to its
drift, while, at the same time, we come to lose faith in the reasoning
faculty as ordinarily interpreted. (Sec. 215.)
The thought currency has no standard value. Our depth of insight, our justness of
perception, our delicacy of definition, vary incalculably. There is little we read of even
light literature which does not grow in intelligibility by careful re-reading, and we
constantly discover in this way that we have overlooked a great deal and misinterpreted
much. Hence the almost endless differences in intellect. The poet who describes the
impression made upon him by the strain of some wild bird, is hardly ever satisfied with
his word-painting. When the lines reach his readers, the colouring is interpreted most
variously : some who are lovers and students of nature follow pretty closely ; others
understand fairly well ; most have a shadowy suggestion of delight ; and not a few
miss the meaning entirely. The thought currency is not turned out by machines — carefully
weighed, and each coin bearing an intimate resemblance to every other. Its counters,
on the whole, do their duty ; but that is all. They are subject to rapid wear and tear,
appreciation and depreciation. A farthing now becomes a sovereign ; and again the
touch of some one else makes it counterfeit. Because two men read a passage with equal
fluency, and apparently with equal intelligence, it by no means follows that the
understanding of each is a copy of that of the other. Approximation, it is true,
is ordinarily attained ; but the finer grades, on which the value of a contribution
depends, are perhaps overlooked by one or by both. Only a diligent and long-
continued education provides men with a comparatively precise understanding of what
they meet with. We have, therefore, to fight our way to the forefront of know-
ledge, and there is not a road over which we march but we have to be alert.
Once assimilation, through organised reaction, has proceeded far, we are able to compre-
hend all that is below us. Ideas must be known, as a whole, to be easily grasped. Hence
the need for a preliminary process of study, while sustained repetition is required to over-
come the gnawing propensities of oblivion.
95. — We are not restricted to One Unit or Idea at a Time.
A pregnant proposition of a new order has struggled to the fore in the
last section ; it is that we are not limited to one unit at a time (sec. 38).
Hence, in carefully testing a proposition or a statement, we find that
there are perhaps dozens of brain centres sensitive, a condition which the
fact of recency makes readily intelligible. Yet we know that a complex
argument, like many a German sentence, may be too much for us ; though
there is no problem, however complex, which is not conceivably easy to
some possible intelligence, while it will be granted that the lower animals
would find almost the plainest human problem intolerably hard.
Educated thought requires that we should have in view a multiplicity of
6- YSTEMS AS NEEDS A TISFYING 1 5 5
details, and that we should be on the alert for many possible contingencies.
What is more, we can deal with more than one subject at a time. At
first the growing school boy may have to stop in his walk if he wishes to
practise what is to him the new art of whistling; but he soon learns to do
both things at the same time. So also in learning to play the piano, we
can only conquer by dividing the task. It is, therefore, purely a practical
question how many centres of thought or activity may be busy at a time.
We can do thus much and no more ; and within such limits, a number of
subjects are possible. Engaged with both eyes and one hand, I trifle
with the other hand, while re-producing some complex occurrence utterly
foreign to the work and to the trifling. According as the work or the re-
produced occurrence draws more heavily on the fund of attention, so one
or the other receives less attention. The quantity of subjects we can enter-
tain is, therefore, not limited, except that with human beings any con-
siderable difficulty absorbs nearly all the available attention. A race with
a brain of a higher type could perhaps follow twenty or more serious sub-
jects at once. [Test this section?^
96. — General Methods in Thought.
I asked myself whether I had ever before seen a certain face, and in a
moment that face was re-produced. We wish at this stage to know if the
connection between question and answer was direct or indirect. On closer
inquiry the latter proves to be the fact. Times out of number I had put
similar questions, and the demand hence became connected with the
active tendency to recall along lines of similarity, identity, recency, etc.
We are, therefore, dealing with a secondary complication. The question
relates to an attempt to re-develop what is relevant, and thus the second-
ary process, instead of rushing to a conclusion or acting on its own
initiative, reaches it in predetermined zigzag fashion. There is, of course,
no need to imagine the active tendency to be elaborate, or connected with
a sentence of so many words, since economisation is certain to curtail
these luxuries. All that probably happens is that a brain area is readily
sensitised, because it has been sensitised formerly. The very swiftness
and matter- of- factness of the process is only what we should expect. We
have an image, a connected active tendency and a resulting process.
What is true of the above problem, is true generally. I may, for instance,.
be puzzled because there lies on the table a certain book which I do not re-
member to have taken from the shelves. [Experiment?)^ Suddenly I re-
collect that I have fetched the wrong volume. It is only apparently that the
relevant answer stands in direct relation with the attitude of distraction.
The fact is that the attitude of being puzzled is secondarily connected with
the attitude of trying to re develop what is pertinent to the issue, i.e., what
will explain the unexpected occurrence. We have here to do with a class
of thought indirectly and not directly related.
Secondary complications are naturally formed in conjunction with every
line of activity which is at all comm.on, and such lines constitute the
156 GENERAL ANALYSES
streets and lanes of thought. Accordingly, whatn^eris imporfanf, strikiiig,
interesting^ out of place, strange, obscure, useful, doubtful, subtle, pleasant,
beautiful, 7vitty, etc., etc.— all these representing needs or stimulating them
— builds secondary complications of its 07vn by which the trend of thought is
in later life developed along well worn but unnoticed gjvoves. Let us con-
sider an example, the only complete one which my note book offers. Some
one says to me, jestingly, that my income amounts to £x 15s. per day, a
figure which is considerably higher than the correct one. By a method of
further exaggeration, secondary in character, I rejoin that the true sum is
jQ-x. 19s. ii|d., the figures developing while I am uttering them. I was
saying j£\ 19s., and, seeking all the time organically for further exaggera-
tion, I added iid. Striving to exaggerate still further, I affixed another
^d. While each step was taken for secondary reasons, the content of every
step was similarly decided, the sum iifd., for instance, being a figure fre-
quently quoted. Should something not quite relevant appear, it is silently
suppressed, and our search is continued along known routes. Thus the
general tendency as well as its expression is habitual. [Experiment.']
Stout, in opposition to the above, argues that "of course each single pun requires
attention ; but the general trend of attention in this direction, rather than in other
directions is a matter of habit" {Manual, 1898, p. loi). I have endeavoured to show
that the distinction is not easily sustained.
Again, consider the process by which I solve an intellectual problem.
The problem presents itself. With its presentation is connected the re-
collection of what most favours my theory ; with that an attempt to find
material which tends to contradict that; with that, that which nega-
tives it; with that, what proves it to be but partially true; with that,
what shows that the argument proves too much ; and so on. The
progress of thought is, of course, not so easy of prediction as here
suggested, since every class of thought is connected generally with several
others rather than with one. But usually different individuals display
different well marked secondary complications which oscillate only within
trifling degrees. The inconsequence, the stupidity or the geniality of an
intelligence is ever determined by the class of secondary complications
which have developed.
Take another illustration. I hastily read over a shop the words
" Moral Decorations." " What," I mutter, " Moral Decorations?" it must
be " Floral Decorations." Now I might have recognised my mistake by a
chance glance in the direction of the word, and there it might have ended ;
or I might have warned myself against mis-reading this particular word
over this shop, in which case the warning would have formed a com-
plication with that particular word in that particular place, and hence
on re-reading, the warning would automatically develop, since we always
try for connected thoughts when we are not absorbed.''' The warning might,
* In dream life we, therefore, take for granted what would cause grave doubts in waking
life. Hence, in our dreams, those who are dead or at a distance may greet us unchallenged,
and hence nonsense of every sort easily passes.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 157
again, have been attached to the re-reading of those words generally, or to
reading -matter as a whole or to life generally. Perhaps with the notion of
the mistake has been combined the notion of preventing the recurrence of
such blunders. In that case, the recognition of my mistake in this parti-
cular instance would develop into the warning not to permit the occurrence
of similar mistakes. Such general rules, embodied in secondary com-
plications, are common ; they constitute a man's intellectual character.
The quality of the secondary complications is of supreme importance in
practice. Shallow persons employ shallow rules, while wise men are guided
by maxims of deep import. Accordingly, for the seeker after truths, such
rules as "observe closely," "test the statement repeatedly," "show
that the contention is partly true, that the contrary holds, that it proves too
much or too little," are bracing ; and so with the rule always to generalise dar-
ingly yet guardedly, in an order which gradually extends in every direction
from what is most related to what is least related. It is methods such as
these that make intellectual progress possible, rather than the syllogism which
is cumbersom.e and presupposes them, or Mill's Canons of Induction which
are dangerous without them. (Sees. 65a and 136.)
No one who is not both cynical and perverse, would demand a moral justification of
mathematics, since innumerable and sweeping truths have been deduced by their means.
Their simple axioms have been indisputably useful. Not so with Logic. While boasting'
of certainty and infallibility, it has no fruits to show, only leaves bound up in ponderous
tomes. In mathematics the simple law of identity is elaborated into a vast but graded
system. In Logic we begin and end with certain so-called ultimate truths. While,
again, mathematics have been actively applied in science, logic has remained in the hands
of " philosophers," its rules being ignored by practical men. At the same time, the attacks
on the syllogism have not abated since Locke gave the signal. To me it appears that a
false psychology must mean a false logic, and that the barrenness of the methods of locric
are the direct result of its disputable basis. Who would ever think in syllogisms ?
Those who, like Archbishop Whately {Logic, 1844, Appendix III.) apply them to obtain
new truths, fail deplorably, and naturally the man who helps in doing the world's work
smiles when any one proves to him what no one calls into question. The shortcomino-s
of the syllogistic method are evident. To begin with, the truths obtainable in ordinary
life are derived from the judgment and not from demonstration. We are sure of very
little, and we make sure of less because of the difficulties in the way. This indeterminate-
ness alone would prove fatal to the use of the syllogism. However, its defects lie deeper.
Let us choose a syllogism for illustration.
All towns with a high -rate of mortality have a bad system of drainage ;
Blank town has a high rate of mortality ;
Therefore, Blank town has a bad system of drainage.
Now many a person will agree with the reasoning of this syllogism, and yet, in a
strict sense, our syllogism, by its straight form, has probably strengthened error. To begin
with, the plausible major premise is incorrect, for the cause of a town's mortahty rate is not
to be settled in so off-hand a manner ; and when we come to the minor premise it is quite
likely that the mortality figures are hear-say or unreliable, and that the mortality is the re-
verse of that suggested. Hence we obtain a faultless conclusion of no value. Indeed, if
we had ascertained that the facts were as we had stated them to be, a formal syllogism
would be a pure luxury. What we need is a scientific catechism which shall allow for
probability and which shall suggest methods of finding truths. We ought to be ready to
ask as to the major premise : on what is the statement based;? Does it contain official
expert reports stretching over many countries and years, and are there no exceptions ?
1 58 GENERAL ANAL YSES
What are the verified reasons for this strict relationship ? If, after that, the answer comes
that it is reasonable to connect the two, we must say that the conclusion may be re-
j;[arded as fair, but not as proven, and that the facts may even bear evidence to the contrary.
So also must we proceed with the minor premise, and judiciously examine the statement
by a number of queries as to its precise basis, and whether there is not a flaw somewhere.
A catechism of such a nature might put even the splendid results of mathematics to
shame, stimulating and guiding inquiry in the humblest as in the highest departments of
life.
Ordinary reasoners well illustrate the absence as well as the need of method. They
readily assume that, say, the relation of the figures prove Board Schools to have reduced the
number of criminals ; they forget to question the correctness of the figures ; and they do
not ask whether legal or social influences have produced any changes. To this must be
added the general presence of strong bias which accentuates the error. Hence only a
deliberately elaborated system of education which takes account of these weaknesses and
makes them impossible, will prove of service against the tendencies generally prevailing,
especially where matters of " opinion" are concerned. (For criticisms on the syllogism,
see Mill, Logic, 1875, bk. 2, chs. 2 and 3 ; Locke, Human Understand'uig, bk. 4, ch.
17, sees. 4-8; Sigwart, Logic, 1895, trs., pp. 359-62 ; Spencer, Psychology, 1890, ii, pp.
6- 1 16; Lachelier, Theorie du Syllogisme, 1875; and Jevons, Principles of Science, 1877,
who holds a modified theory which almost equally deserves the reproach of being me-
chanical and unsatisfactory for the advancement of learning.)
Mill's canons of induction (Logic, 1875, bk. 3, ch. 8) help us somewhat along the
road ; but they are still critical rather than constructive. Suppose I wish to shorten a
string, how am I to do it by Mill's method ? If the canons are of no assistance to me in
that, they fail in what is the normal business of thought, i.e., to meet contingencies. The
moment my inquiry suggests a solution, the canons become of some value ; but even
here, how am I to apply the principles of agreement, difference, concomitant variation
or residue? How am I to judge instances where the truths to be obtained are imperfect
ones? Without, therefore, ignoring the canons, we must persist in our contention that
their object, like that of the syllogism, is final criticism rather than the active discovery
of truth.
I wish to solve the problem of the relation between crime and Board Schools, and
consult Mill's canons. Now if, apart from Mill, I do not know how to proceed, I shall
never make a beginning. Suppose I do proceed, how am I to sift the figures ? I ask my
informant, "Are you quite sure about your facts?" What if he answers "Yes; lam
quite sure " ? In that case, the solution of the problem, if it depended on the canons,
would remain in a mournful condition. I may think that I have arranged every detail,
when I have but dreamily skimmed the surface, or I fancy that I am triumphantly applying
the rules, when, in fact, I am wasting my time. A stray hint thus appears a complete
induction. Mill's chapters on the moral sciences are, in this manner, built up in a some-
what fanciful fashion, statements which are not even half-truths being paraded as thorough-
bred inductions. His canons, therefore, we conclude, presuppose that we are carefully
trained observers ; that we have garnered a large stock of useful information ; that we
are disciplined in recognising hidden resemblances and differences ; that we are inventive,
methodical, and the like. In other words, his laws, valuable in their way, form but a
trifling portion of a true scientific canon.
The nature of a general unit or idea must now be fairly clear. We read
the words " Moral Decorations." That being a not previously known com-
plex, it necessarily appears strange. With the fact of strangeness has been
systematically combined the process of doubt and re-examination, and
hence in every case of strangeness the thorough student doubts and re-
examines. [Exaffiine cases of straftgeness.'] Similarly we may resolve that,
subject to tests, whatever seems useful, should be applied not only once,
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING
159
but always ; not only in the given direction, but also in related ones.
When, accordingly, I chance to recognise that deliberateness of speech
has been useful on a certain occasion, that recognition develops into the
tentative recognition that deliberateness of speech, action and thought is
always desirable for every one. We must not, however, strain the
significance of language. The recognised slowness in deliberation, in
connection with its effectiveness, may of itself impress us, so that we dwell
on both aim and slowness with the result that the re-collection of an aim
suggests the slowness. Hence when a new notion occurs to me, that fact
alone sets me generalising without the interference of language and with-
out reference to the fact. Generally speaking, economisation will eliminate
complex imagery and language. [^Observe such ifistances?^^
It seems somewhat strained to assume that the process of orderly development whicli
I have sketched, quite accounts for the somewhat erratic course of thought. One
wonders whether old ideas or those which are interesting have not some secret manner
of entrance. The suspicion is legitimate ; but a satisfactory answer is forthcoming. The
organised notion of exploring out-of-the-way ideas and combinations of ideas is per-
sistent, and results in keeping us in touch with much that would otherwise be wholly
forgotten. So also such phrases as " old times, boyhood," etc., are organically attended
to with fruitful consequences. Thus again the very pause in thought when it occurs, the
very lack of action, is often organically connected with particular interests and lines of
memories, and these latter are hence easily developed. In this manner I re-member
connecting without deliberation the word " psychology " with any pause, thus ensuring
persistent recurrence to the topic. It is in this fashion, by a multitude of organised
arrangements, that breadth of thought and continuity of interest are maintained. We
see here again that the flow of thought, as we know it in any case, is not determined by
the particles forming the stream ; and that for aught we can conjecture in any instance
the flow may stop at any moment. Continuity of thought is due to the presence of
highly developed needs, and if these needs are to be explained in terms of the secondary
series, then it will be states of feeling and not states of imagery, as is popularly held,
which will form the connecting link or force.
97. — Knowledge is mostly a Social Product.
Human beings are part and parcel of a natural and social order to which
on pain of punishment they are bound to conform. Hence their reactions
will be of a type which is both need-determined and secondarily social,
and hence a huge accumulation of somewhat loosely connected secondary
complications will be evolved which characterise man and men. If the
individual possessed great natural sagacity he would quickly manufacture
rational secondary complications. As it is, the contrary is true. The indi-
vidual laboriously makes his own what mankind has already laboriously
elaborated. Where he is much left to his own devices, the complications
are of the crudest and most unsatisfactory type, the interconnecting or
reasoning being reckless, sporadic and devoid of far-reaching relations.
This doctrine of the slow growth and the social nature of secondary
complications will solve many questions in animal psychology. For
example, a human being is shut in a room, which he leaves, when he
wishes, by opening the door. A cat, on the contrary, can only open the
i6o GENERAL ANALYSES
door, we are told, by a chance hit in her frantic endeavour to escape.
When again shut in, she does not at once re-member the way ; she is only
a little (Quicker in escaping. {Observe, if possible, such cases^^ Hence the
power of interconnecting or reasoning is by many denied to the cat.
However, if our contentions are justifiable, it will be seen that the adult
human being has an education and a practice which the neglected cat
entirely lacks, and ihat the educated cat would be far superior to the un-
trained man. The educated man is not a man full of invention ; he is one
who has the capacity for learning, and has stored up methods of answering
all sorts of questions. Fundamentally, the chance hit and the inferred
method of opening the door are on the same level. Both are equally
automatic, or rather organic. (Sec. 233.)
98. — The Origin of Needs and their Classification.
The human organism may be regarded as developed by natural selec-
tion to produce ova, and to protect them while they are in need of pro-
tection (Foster, Physiology, part 4, 1891, p. 1555). With the latter task
fulfilled, man's mission is at an end, and he turns into food for worms.
This mechanism which we are, has a quantity of explosive properties.
" The eye craves to see, the ear to hear, the hands to touch, grasp and
handle " (Riimelin, Ueber das Wesen der Gewohnheit, 1881, p. 155), the
stomach to digest, and the brain to settle differences between the other
systems which constitute the organism, and also between the last and its
environment. That which produces the unstable condition at any time —
chemical, mechanical, electrical, or what not — we may speak of as a need.
Needs, then, are the forces which set us and keep us going, and they
may be classified as follows: (i) Permanent Needs, which embrace such
activities as breathing and eating ; (2) Periodic Needs, which comprehend
the tendencies that distinguish the seven ages of man, such as infancy,
play, school, courtship, adventure, staidness, second childhood ; (3) Per-
sonal Needs, such as are implied in the original constitution of individual
men ; (4) Peculiar Needs, which are connected with the special surround-
ings of the individual ; (5) Political Needs, which are traceable to our physi-
cal, historical and general social environment, and (6) Passing Needs, which
come and go and are, therefore, of little importance. \Add, if possible, ta
these needs. 'I
In an ideal organism a pressing need would no sooner develop than it
would be satisfied, complexity of process being absent. In the case of
man, on the contrary, elaboration proceeds slowly and is cumbersome.
Simple problems are solved easily enough ; but the more difficult ones,^
which abound, occupy the brains of many generations. On this account
thought is usually busied with some subject which it attacks from many
directions. In other words, the majority of our individual notions group
themselves round a few centres. We want, for instance, to find a suitable
holiday resort. Stimulated by this need, we wander along countless idea-
tional paths, always guided and guarded by the centra thought. At one
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING i6f
point we re-produce several places ; and at another, we re-produce what
we know of these places. Perhaps we re-member what kind of a resort
would suit us, or what resort has been recommended by friends. In this
way half-an-hour is easily employed in meeting difficulties. \Test such
cases.] Multitudes of thoughts, relating to the issue and differing in char-
acter, are requisitioned to solve one problem. Since needs, then, defermme
the order of thoughts, we may speak of thought as need-determined. Ideation
will, therefore, possess only one rule, that of relevancy to a topic. Mere
similarity or proximity will possess no value.
99. — A Complex Ideational Process Examined.
Let us examine a complex event — the best sample which, from a psy-
chological point of view, my note book offers. I wish to go into the
country, and to stay there over night. This develops, in walking, into the
notion that I must at once move in the matter. But what shall I
write? I begin, "I shall, except if compelled to lecture." I weigh the
words. "I shall, except if compelled to lecture;" "except if" sounds
strange \ replace it by " unless." " I shall, unless compelled to lecture, be
with you to-morrow afternoon and stay over night." I must add " if con-
venient;" and, on further reflection, "if there is room for me." I am
becoming confused, and I try to retain the central thought by repeating
several times, half aloud and vigorously, " I shall." I am successful. " I
shall, except if . . . unless . . . (make it shorter) I am lecturing, be with
you . . . stay with you . . . to-morrow afternoon, and remain over night
if you have . . . if there is room . . . room for me." This is an abbrevi-
ated statement of a certain subject of thought pursued under very trying
circumstances. The not unusual determination to spend a day in the
country was secondarily connected with the need for writing. That again
was similarly combined with the needs for writing fully, clearly and suc-
cintly. These again were attached secondarily to the need for testing and
recurring to every step. Again, the central need persisted throughout ; and
the sensitising of the area which was involved, probably meant the simul-
taneous sensitising of half-a-dozen secondarily connected areas. At the
same time, effectiveness was produced by secondarily dwelling on each
issuing thought. Thus in pursuing a subject, thoughts do not follow each
other in prim single file procession ; they tumble over each other like the
waves returning from the sea shore.
99a. — Comparison.
In the portion of our problem which we are considering in the present section,
I have had recourse more than once to comparison. In this aspect of intellection we have
to study a new class of facts. When making a comparison, we observe at least two objects,
and deliver a judgment implying that double observation. There are two objects simul-
taneously present. What we learnt in the second chapter disposes cf any possible contra-
diction involved in realising at once more than one object. Attention, we saw, dealt with
fields, not with points. We found no reason to assume that there was any necessary restric-
tion as to the number of things attended to. Whatever the boundaries, they are incidental
II
1 62 GENERAL ANALYSES
to the particular species or individual. We learnt that we can attend, and persistently do
attend, to more than one object at a time (sec. 3S). As comparison implies attending to
two things in a related manner, it raises thus far no new issue. The problem is somewhat
more complicated than those we have analysed, but otherwise olTers no fresh diBiculties.
The peculiar ability is, of course, normally guided by fixed dispositions. The machinery
of organised reaction moulds this portion of our intellect as it docs every other. It is for
this reason that we must enter more minutely into the problem before us.
We have considered the simplest class of comparison, where all three aspects co-exist.
In steadily keeping in view the flame of a street lamp and its reflection on the pane of glass
which bounds it on the side opposite to us {analyse such a case'\, we encounter an ideally
simple instance ; for the comparison of the relative brightness of the light and of its reflec-
tion is made while viewing both simultaneously. In the final analysis this means that two
simultaneously proceeding processes end in a third which is their resultant. Of course
the two images do not give birth to a third. They are only an inconsiderable fraction of
the relevant total state.
In comparing two notes struck in order of time by a tuning-fork, we meet an apparent
absence of simultaneity, in which particular this observation differs from the previous one.
{Test i/iis.] The point is to ascertain how the comparison results now that the objects
are divided in time. Observation leads us to accept the following solution. Whatever
affects an individual, especially when he is interested, leaves behind it a marked summary
feeling which lasts for some little time (sec. 109). Though the auditory image has dis-
appeared, the feeling which accompanied it lingers on. This hovering spirit indicates
that the sensitised brain area is still sensitive. Were the affected locality to recover its
equilibrium at once, there would be no lingering feeling. When, then, the tuning-fork
strikes the second note, there is still in existence a trace of the first. Hence the notes,
while objectively separated, neurally co-exist. We broach, therefore, no new problem in
the comparison of objects which succeed each other closely. It is true that they are not
before us ; but as the accompanying feelings are, something still co-exists even in the second-
ary realm. If one state be fainter than another, or vary in certain aspects from its neigh-
bour, then we interpret this divergence in uniformity with custom. If one relevant total
state were obliterated before a second total one succeeded, comparison would be inconceiv-
able ; but if we assume co-existence, through continued neural sensitiveness, the obstacles
vanish. There is a clashing of forces with a consequent resultant force, the latter con-
stituting the comparison.
Again. Instead of comparing two successive notes immediately after hearing the
second, we can successively re-instate for comparison the two notes after a more or less
prolonged interval. [Tesf l/iis.] We are face to face here with no new issue. Having
re-integrated the two notes in succession, the process above described is repeated. The
feelings are not now so vivid, but relatively the differences have remained intact. Obser-
vation teaches us to discount the gradual waning of images and feelings. If one or oiher
were not re-developed properly we should find, when occasion offered, that our compari-
son was objectively faulty.
In the example of comparing two successive notes, both were not simultaneously present.
In general memory, also, re-collection of sight images is most incomplete, and normally
comparison proceeds in their absence. Our analysis of organised reaction suggests that of
itself: the minimum is nearly always the maximum for the attention. Whatever can be
eliminated with advantage is generally dispensed with. Comparison is, therefore, never de-
pendent on a careful scrutiny of a present or a re-constituted object. Intellection is no
more vivid than needs prescribe. In satisfying itself a need is not bound to consider
complete objects : it deals with the residues which, for its purposes, are just as good.
Hence in thinking we are normally unaware of a swift succession of images. Not only
so, but close scrutiny reduces rather than increases the number of images which we imagine
to be hovering about. This harmonises with our expectations. A large amount of atten-
tion and time would be wasted if it were not so. Topical reaction or reasoning, to judge
from time measurements, would be inordinately slow if complete imagery were an es-
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 163
sential, while our memory does not even enable us to re-develop past events minutely
(sec. 114).
It follows that, through the agency of economisation, thought is reduced to a procedure
resembling algebra ; only that the signs here are natural ones. The principle which serves
as our guide in neural elaboration is that a portion of the whole shall act for the whole.
Thus when a certain thought feeling evolves, we do not wait till it has developed, for
instance, into poetry, but we interpret it to mean that we re-member the poem (sec.
127). Only when the note which memory sounds is dubious, do we repeat the lines.
Such feelings, as previously stated, do not differ indefinitely in quality and warmth one
from the other. With varying occasions like feelings yield diverse results, time and what
it brings with it being their interpreter. Intellection is, therefore, not a short -hand, but a
shortened hand. We employ legions of abbreviations and we make use of a quantity of
arbitrary signs. It is only occasionally, therefore, that we write a word in full, and it is
Tinusual to put down a sentence in its barbaric completeness. A psychology which con-
siders the normal current of thought to be a stream of connected words and sight images
or a succession of self-centred atoms, entirely misapprehends ideational activities.
We assume too much when we appear to regard sign-thought as the lowest stage.
Much of our thinking delves deeper. In ordinary reasoning or interconnecting even well-
marked feelings are comparatively rare, and yet while the feelings are often vague, the
resulting comparison or notion is perhaps a model of clearness. In these by no means
infrequent cases feeling may be supposed to accompany, without indicating, brain activity
the completion of which is signalled by the emergence of a conclusion.*
99b.— Semi-Connection or Doubt and Related States.
When we have once mastered the conclusions arrived at in the preceding paragraphs,
a problem such as doubt or semi-connection is easily disposed of. Thought is, of course,
topical — a nerve area rather than a single nerve track being affected. When, therefore,
I am in doubt, and I ask myself whether I had kept a particular promise, first Yes and
then No issues as the answer, which latter reply, in see-saw fashion, is again followed by
a Yes, and so forth. \^Exaniine instances of doubt. 'X This movement to and fro is labelled
a state of doubt or suspension. If no crucial fact is re-integrated which settles the matter
one way or the other, we suspend our judgment till some such fact comes within our pur-
view. It depends on the importance of the argument how long we shall debate within
ourselves, while the completeness of the doubt is derived generally from the same source.
In doubt we have a luminous illustration of topical reaction. The attention is bent on
putting an end to the painful uncertainty ; we seem to be looking for help. We throw
the flood-gates wide open, so that the expected stranger may enter in readily ; but at the
same time naught else can pass, except when the attention flags. The nervous process
is purposive. We do not cast our net indiscriminately, hoping that among our haul we
shall stumble across the pearl of great price. We fish for the object, and for it alone ;
and frequently success rewards us. The need present is the stimulus which compels us
to go straight for the mark, and it is also that which preserves us from wandering, if,
indeed, we could wander in the absence of needs. It is this which decides that the pro-
,cess shall develop along a certain line.
In doubt there is something besides images connected with the topic, and that some-
thing is of importance, if only for the neural activity implicated : it is a thought feeling or
combination feeling co-existing with the images, which tells us of what is going on in the
workshop of the brain. When this is detected, we say that we are undecided. As the
doubt grows stronger or weaker, so the feeling changes in force. This feeling is to us the
doubt, and when the state of indecision is on the point of being removed, it changes,
and we assert that the doubt is resolved. We must once more refer to our previous
remarks. First, the feeling possesses no peculiar sign by which we recognise it, under all
.circumstances, as the feeling of doubt. The occasion determines our interpretation, and
* See Sully, Comparison, 1885.
i64 GENERAL ANALYSES
a similar feeling on another occasion would bear a different label. Secondly, time fixes
its meaning. Observing that a certaia feeling is connected with a wavering between
decisions, it comes to be stamped with the same term as the wavering which it precedes,
accompanies and follows.
When we hurry onwards in thought, or when a subject interests us little, the debate is
short. As the feeling appears more or less decided, so we say " I doubt it" without a
moment's hesitation. The same state, the same word-sentence. As in comparison, so
here, we do not wait till the see-saw imagery emerges ; we are satisfied with the premoni-
tory feelings. In such instances, they form the basis of judgment, while the end of the
process, the outcome of which they are, is foretold by their presence.
In quick thought, or when we view a microscopic section of it, this feeling is wanting ;
or, at all events, it is not easily recognisal:>le or nameable. The doubt is raised and
settled in the physical regions. In the secondary world we only observe the result of
decisive neural activity.
In "comparing" and in "doubling" we assumed, for convenience, two olyects and a
resulting judgment. The number was chosen arbitrarily. Three, four, ten, twenty
objects might have been involved. Largeness of contents does not change the venue,
as the principle remains the same.
What is asserted of doabt generally, is true of all shades of doubt. A similar analysis
to the foregoing yields like conclusions if we study such graduated states as affirmation,
denial or counter-connection, hesitation, belief or part-connection, conviction or perfect
connection. {^Study experivieiitally examples of each.'] In each of them investigation
corroborates what is shown above as to doubt or semi-connection. Other conditions,
too numerous to recite and many of which yet await naming, will probably yield results-
in consonance with the above analysis.
99c. — Generalisation, or Topical Reaction.
In grappling with any problem whatever, in doing anything at all, we act ott general
principles, i.e., we generalise. Let us examine a particular instance. {^Test this.] We
stay at a farm house, and we observe a labourer feeding the animals. In one stye there
are two pigs, one lean and the other well-nourished, both of them taking their meal out
of one trough. The labourer watches stick in hand. Frequently the sleek one glances
round ; it would like to drive its lean companion away, but is cowed, since it knows-
the stick too well. Here we encounter the principle of generalisation. The animal acts
as he acted before. A stimulus which once had an unmistakable effect, has the same
potency now. What is true of one occasion holds good repeatedly, and of similar occa-
sions. Had the pig not re-acted, generalisation would have been absent, and this power
is proportional to the rapidity, delicacy, carefulness and sweep of the re-action. As.
living creatures vary in this respect, so does their ability to generalise vary.
The neural system is the result of adaptation, and consequently its manner of reaction)
accords with the surrounding conditions. The general order is matched by a particular
one, and the latter is developed out of the former. This is true of the bodily functions
generally. If food-stuffs changed their nature capriciously, and kept rapidly changing,
the alimentary organs, being unequal to the strain put upon them, would succumb. The
bodily functions are fitted only to an environment such as they are at present placed in or
form part of. So with the brain which reacts in a manner conformable to the conditions
under which it has developed. Transferred to an environment where re-action was
uniformly irrelevant, it would fail. Within certain broad limits, then, the quality we are
examining is useful to the individual and to the race. To act as we have acted before, is
normal to all life, and indeed to things generally. Similar actions are everywhere followed
by similar re-actions. The greater capacity must be based primarily on the greater neural
sensitiveness.
The generalisations of ordinary life are not formal ; they are not expressed in words,
feelings or images ; and when they are so, they remain none the less organised. A certain
object is membered or observed, and wbjen the same or any other closely resembling it
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 165
is met with, it is looked upon as an acquaintance. Careless thought points to the absence
of schooHng ; reckless generalisation is its embodiment. Animal, child, savage, man of
culture, all respond similarly to a repeated stimulus. There is nothing mechanical about
this ; for we do not necessarily re-act, and we are all more or less circumscribed in this
respect. Consider an example. A. advises B., who is not highly intellectual, on some
trifling matter. The advice is followed, and the episode has terminated. Suppose B.
had suggested the same thing to A. who is keen in detecting resemblances and acting on
them. He, too, accepts the hint, and though not dreaming of any verbal generalisation,
he nevertheless acts as if he had generalised in words. lie possibly perceives likeness
on an enormous scale in most widely divergent directions. No re-collection perhaps sur-
vives of the incident which let loose the dogs of generalisation. From a formal stand-
point he knows nothing of the various notions, i.e., he does not connect them into one
system of thought. If in early childhood his nervous system had been well trained and
he had continued to move among persons of his own type, the widest truths would
come to him without the intervention of any verbal process. The brain in him re-acts
delicately, faint feelings alone being discernible. [Deliberately observe yourself whilst
generalising. ]
Suppose, moreover, that he instantly formulated the proposition : " Let everything be
appropriately said, done and thought." Our problem remains unchanged. At worst, the
words mean nothing. At best, they are a summation of previous incidents or a fore-
shadowing of what will happen. The verbal generalisation is a formal generalisation,
and so far an action which is repeated. As we give body to the words, with the assist-
ance of the imagination or of research, so the verbal skeleton is clothed with an armour of
fleshy fact. Their value is instrumental. With the aid of words, since they are readily re-
instated, we attain to new truths, and their merit lies in that the neural process corres-
ponding to them is one, i.e., covers or superimposes itself. Hence a generalisation may
appear irresistible to us, and yet be false, because the covering or the correspondence is
artificial. \i A\s A,\i is only because one stimulus is generally followed by one reaction.
If the reaction were different, A would conceivably not be A. The fundamental properties
of things give rise to the law of identity (sec. 185).
Generalisation is re-action, and neural sensitiveness, acquired or inherited, is here the
essential. Wise and deliberate training, and a judicious study of others, enhance its
\vorth while thought and language express its method, but are not the capacity itself.
99d. — Abstraction.
When a certain aspect of an object is singled out for inspection, we are said to
abstract. Thus we may be thinking of the hands of a man, and neglect the man
of whom they are a part. Like every human capacity, that of abstraction is, of
course, susceptible of nice cultivation ; and that is all one can say. Taking a large view,
the reader will see that in all integration or observatioti ive abstract what is integrated or
observed. A particular human being whom we are observing at a particular time, is him-
self only perceived in part, while we also abstract the environment. The fact of abstrac-
tion, as usually understood, is of no psychological importance. As long as we cannot
grasp the whole universe in a flash of thought, so long all primary and secondary systems
are abstractions.
100. — Attention and Combination.
The machinery which is to satisfy our needs might be considered as not
complex, each need pressing it into service to the extent required. It might
be said that when one need is satisfied, some other need will take the
initiative, or, in default of a need arising for a time, the mechanism will
rest. Some aspects, however, of the nature of the neural structure pro-
foundly quality and modify these expectations.
1 66 GENERAL ANALYSES
First of all, the facts teach us that the brain's working habits permit no
rest in the waking state. Hence needs come to be connected with the
mechanism itself. When there is thus no ostensible necessity to think, we
are yet compelled to find some occupation. Casual happenings are then
passed in review, and casual objects detain us for a few moments. Much
of our time is thus idly spent in building castles on desert islands.
Again, the quantity of work put forth by the waking brain shows no
sensible variation from minute to minute or from hour to hour, its capacity
for labour remaining almost the same. We are compelled to attend to just
so many details. If we are listless, we catch indifferent noises and are
worried by otherwise indifferent bodily sensations ; and if we are interested
in a subject these noises and sensations are absent, their place being taken
by other details, the same in quantity. Hence also the fact that if a task
absorbs little of our attention, our thoughts are occupied with a second,
third or fourth task, there being as many topics of thought as will make
up the necessary round of details.
Once more, brain areas become prostrate when continuously engaged.
Owing to this the neural work has to be distributed, the current of
thought periodically shifting its direction ; that is to say, under normal cir-
cumstances we do not satisfy a need at once, if its satisfaction is to occupy
much time. We change the subject ; we defer it ; we measure out a little
time to each of many needs. [Experwientally test.^
Moreover, whenever in thinking we meet with obstacles, we, as a rule,
overcome them only when a strong need to persist is present. The capacity
for tiring or exhausting work, or effort, is at first very small, slight insistence
creating distraction and prostration. With practice, however, this ability,
like other organic abilities, grows so considerably that in the professional
thinker the more rational needs come to exercise a valuable control over
the stream of thought. So habituated does he become to deliberate ad-
vance that he tires himself continually without having any suspicion of the
fact or even against his wish. Between the keenest and the most lax atten-
tion, or betwixt the sleepiest doze and the most lucid effort, there is never-
theless only a difference of degree. There is no more a loading of dice, or
a tampering with scales, in a great than in a small effort, or else the loading
and tampering go on in every act without exception. No connection is
traceable between great effort and indisputable awareness ; for normally the
effort which is made follows directly, no interconnecting or reasoning pre-
cedes, nor is there any near or remote consequence, aim, self-direction or
self-consciousness present. Economisation is responsible for this result.*
loi. — Economisation and Combination.
While it requires a chapter (ch. 3) to explain the theory of economisation
in all its bearings, we must yet refer to one point. At the first blush it
* For a defence of the opposite view, see James, Psychology, 1890, especially i, pp.
453-4, and ii, pp. 573-6.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-SATISFYING 167
might be thought that only where several needs hotly compete for the field
of attention will economisation enter as moderator. This is not so.
Being an important function both in the primary and in the secondary
order, it conies to be applied universally. Hence we economise every-
where, even where economy is superfluous, as when a need only partially
drains the neural reserves. The process of economisation, like the process
of attention, knows no distinctions, and jealously removes whatever may
possibly exceed full measure. In this manner, the process being uncon-
ditional, waste is reduced to a minimum.
102. — Memory and Combination.
The matter of thought is drawn from the past. Hence zve may speak of
thought as the cross-classification of systems or the re-production of what is
relevant. Nay more, as all thought is re-developed, so all re-developmefit is
thought. Whether I see a book or open a door, as I have done on so
many occasions, or whether I bring all my skill to bear on a problem, the
issue is not affected.
Regarded in the above light, the process of reasoning assumes somewhat the following
forms. (l) If a difficulty, muscular or neural, is given, we apply organically more energy
to its solution, or generally speaking, we increase or decrease the degree or the quantity
of anything which is under consideration. Thus the door yields to greater pressure, and
an idea emerges owing to greater concentration. (2) We organically re-collect whether
the same problem has occurred previously, and if it has, memory perhaps provides its
solution. (3) We try to re-develop a situation alike in some few respects, with the same
end in view as in (2). (4) We review the problem in the hope that the study of the diffi-
culty may supply its solution. (5) We reconstruct our problem or a similar one, instead
of merely re-developing it, and watch the results. (6) We systematically go over the
problem, testing its every part by appropriate re-collection or examination. Individuals
differ, of course, in the application of such methods. A highly-developed system of
education would, however, not rest till the best means of attaining the best results were
discovered and duly taught to all and applied by all. At present bare chance decides
what methods are resorted to by any one person.
103. — Habit and Thought.
An individual, X., reaches a certain sentence in a book, skips it, and
goes on with his reading. If we unceremoniously peep into his brain we
only discover that when a certain set of printed symbols was in sight, his
attention rushed past them. If we ask X. the reason for his peculiar pro-
cedure, he is surprised at our inquiry, for he had not noticed the particular
act referred to. If we press him to exert his powers of introspection, he is
brought to acknowledge that we observed correctly, stating at the same
time that he is at a loss to account for his behaviour. As we are interested,
we continue our investigation, and learn that he always skips illustrations
in an argument. We mention this to an acquaintance of his, who offers
the following explanation. Some years ago this acquaintance had a long
conversation with him, in which he convinced him that illustrations are
1 68 GENERA L ANAL YSES
misleading. After this X. struggled hard to ignore them, until finally he
reached the stage at which we found him. {Observe yourself as to above."]
He had fully formed, as men say, a habit. Now this habit may be con
sidered automatic since it seemingly lacks all relations ; while the process
involved in its formation may be regarded as typical of secondary activity,
habits being, as it were, secretions of thought. Assuming, what we have
seen is contrary to fact, that the secondary complication referred to is dead
and has nothing to do with the psychologist, we must inquire into the
nature of the process which led to the production of the habit. The reply
we obtain amounts to this. A certain need is present. In the course of
its being satisfied, many vistas are explored. Finally, a resolution is arrived
at ; the man persists in its application ; and the formative process and the
resolution are after a time forgotten. However, every line of thought
which was pursued, the resolution arrived at, and the persistence in its ap-
plication, were themselves due to secondary complications. The need itself
was hkewise the result of previous activity. All that we learn, therefore, is
that when a new need is evolved, a familiar process is set going which ends
in the construction of a secondary compHcation. Hence when we are said
to deliberate, we act from habit as much as when we are said to act without
deliberation. Had it not been for the multitude of fixed acquisitions of
which the process consists, the process would be unintelligible ; and as
these acquisitions decrease in number, so the problems to be solved have
to be simplified proportionately. We are, then, driven back to the struc-
tural aptitudes with which the infant is equipped, and we must also inquire
into the origin of our needs. We cannot arrest our backward steps until
we reach the time when life's drawbridge was lowered, since inquiry shows
that the process of economisation begins with birth, and that the com-
plexity of thought evolves with growth and with the complexity of the
neural structure.
The human organism, seen in this light, may be regarded as a bundle of
habits. Hence arises the question as to how these habits arose. Taking
the history of a man to be one with the history of life, we might argue that
the habits inherent in the human structure take their origin precisely as
did the habit of ignoring illustrations, which habits, again, are inherited by
the next generation. Plausible and suggestive as such an explanation may
be, it proves of little value on examination. We saw that the formative
process becomes simpler as we retreat to infancy. Hence as we straggle
backwards to the amoeba, we are still left face to face with the initial problem.
Each habit has been, it is true, acquired ; but habits were responsible for
the acquisition. Thus we may descend in the pit of life till the phrase
" formation of habit " loses all meaning.
We have assumed the transmission of acquired tendencies ; but this is a doubtful doctrine,
since variations in the germ, sifted by natural selection, are the chief present-day explana-
tion of the animal structure and of instincts. As far as the matter is open to scrutiny,
there seems little reason to doubt that acquired habits or characteristics are but seldom
transmitted.
S YSTEMS AS NEEDS A TISF YING 169
What is true of the habit-forming process, holds good of the needs
which are the stimuli to action. These, too, have their roots in favourable
variations which have been preserved by natural selection. From the
veriest dawn of life, want and satisfaction of want have been intimately
related, and the neural system has developed along lines which best con-
nect and satisfy these.
Moreover, no other explanation of the development of thought appears
for the present feasible. If what happens is not in general accord with
this suggestion, what is the alternative theory ? There seems no reason
why we should go behind the principle of growing complications in the
individual and the preservation of favourable variations by natural selection.
The elaboration of complications would thus result as a consequence of
the evolved variations.
Prof. Ward (^Psychology, 1886) is responsible for the very ingenious theory criticised
in this section. The same view, alike in detail, is expressed by Wundt, Psychologic, 1S93,
ii, pp. 507-17, also in Wundt's 1880 ed., pp. 45S-8, six years before the publication of
Ward's Article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
104. — Interdependence and Interaction in Combining.
The problem of combinational sequence would be easy of solution if
•one bare image followed spontaneously another bare image, and that
another, and so on. In such circumstances we could readily describe the
evolution of a process of thought. The actual situation, however, is far
more complex. Now one image develops out of its predecessor ; now
another puts us on our guard ; and again the sensitising of one area has
for its accompaniment the sensitising of half-a-dozen others to a more or
less intimate degree. The entanglements to be considered are sometimes
Jhighly complicated. So also with the needs. While one leading need
may more or less control the current of thought, it is yet at frequent inter-
vals crossed by subsidiary or secondary needs. Every bend in the stream
of progress gives rise to a little eddy capable of considerable develop-
ment. The central need is like a farm bailiff who has a crowd of intelligent
men to help him in the management and working of an estate. While
each subordinate performs a particular task in his own way at any time, he
is yet capable of performing others, even to the extent of playing a leading
part, as, e.g., in the bosom of his family. We may, without straining,
carry the analogy much farther. (At bottom it is more than an analogy.)
On the one hand, the bailiff is a complex product himself, almost entirely
dependent on his environment. On the other, he would be paralysed if
left to his own devices. His very existence presupposes the existence of
others of his kind, and but for them his office would be an impossible one.
To drop metaphor, a need can only be reasonably satisfied when the means
to its satisfaction lie to hand. Secondary complications must be in readi-
ness to twist the rope which shall haul the want towards its object. With-
out these subsidiary needs and complications, the need will fail to be
I70 GENERAL ANALYSES
satisfied, and this nearly always happens where there is a sensible departure
between the present and any former need.
Let us analyse a simple instance. I say to myself " Have I seen that
face before ? " Here is a face, the ready apprehension of which is con-
nected with a marginal feeling of familiarity. This first stage is the fruit
of a curiosity which is ever dtyoXo^^mg when ctrcumsiances are favourable ;
and thus when we are not absorbed, the reading of a face will carry with
it an attempt to connect it with something. Hence B, the marginal feel-
ing, develops out of A, the seen face, the two forming one secondary
complication. When, however, we are somewhat absorbed, the process is
restricted and the marginal feeling does not develop. What we are specially
bound to notice is that the seeing of a face results in a marginal feeling
only under special circumstances ; that this marginal feeling is secondarily
connected ; and that given the existence of A, B will find its explanation
in that existence. As with A and B, so with C. The marginal feeling,
under the conditions develops into the sentence we have quoted, and what
is implied in it; and that, again, develops into a secondary attempt to re-
produce what is pertinent. Thus, allowing for further complexities, we can
see that the total process explains itself.
A more complex instance, like that of sending written information, is
resolved in a similar manner. When the sensitising of one area produces
the fainter sensitising of several others ; when a word or a sentence is again
and again examined and corrected ; when notions of succinctness, clear-
ness and completeness, assert themselves ; when difficulties are reduced
forcibly or by stratagem ; when the wandering from the subject is resisted ;
in each case the connection is final and determined by the past. Each of
the subsidiary needs and complications develop in the way common to
them, and only to the extent necessary. Modifications there are many ;
but these are decided by the principles which we have insisted upon.
Allowing, therefore, for a realm of needs where individual distinctions are as
various as in a monarchy, the neural processes form their own explanation.
It might perhaps be advisable to describe exhaustively some train of
thought from this point of view ; but the difficulties to be encountered
would scarcely repay the sacrifices made. Best of all would it be if
neurology were sufficiently advanced to enable us to lay bare a process of
thought from beginning to end. Not until this has been accomplished,
can we speak authoritatively of general facts of psychology.
105. — History of the Subject.
From the beginning of speculation, thinkers have been impressed by
the fact that some intimate relation exists between the more striking
systems as they emerge one by one. Explanations like those of Aristotle
and those of Hobbes naturally did not pass beyond the recognition that
thought represented a cosmos and not a chaos. With the rise of the
physical sciences, especially under the influence of Bacon and Descartes,,
the matter was inquired into more exhaustively. Locke's casual judgment
6- YSTEMS AS NEEDS A TISFYING lyt
concerning the Association of Ideas rose in general estimation, and was
elaborated by Hartley into a vibratory theory, while Hume had already
claimed that the Association theory was to psychology what the law of
gravitation was to physics. Still, as the physical mode of inquiry took
advantage of instruments and mathematical treatment, and as these did
not seem applicable to the realm of thought, reflective scrutiny retained the
field, though disguised by an outward sternness not its own. So com-
prehensive and simple did the laws of association appear, that thorough
research was unfortunately discouraged, the completer formulation of the
laws being the main concern of psychologists. This task was carried out
to a high degree of perfection, but with little new light as regards the
factors determining the flow of thought, by Brown, the two Mills, Bain
and Spencer.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the mathematical develop-
ment of the physical sciences made a profound impression on many minds.
As one legacy from that age we possess Herbart's system of psychology,
which is a bold attempt to transfer the method of mathematical mechanics
bodily to the secondary realm. His failure, however, was unavoidable ;
for, misled by speculation, he concluded that sense systems were not
properly amenable to observation, and that the kingdom of knowledge
could be forced by ingenious hypotheses. Herbart apparently did not see
that the simplicity of physics was the result of centuries of arduous
research (sec. 2).
Meanwhile the biological sciences were growing in importance. Hence
we find a larger measure of acceptance accorded to Paulhan's theory of
systematic association, a theory which argues that thought radiates from a
centre and is controlled from there. Curiously enough Paulhan, like his
predecessors, neglected to obtain the bulk of his material by a direct study
of data, and he offers us, therefore, as regards the flow of thought, little of
importance beyond his great leading conception.
The only rival to the Associationist school has been the metaphysico-
psychological school, the best English representative of which is, perhaps,
Dr. Ward. He recognises that the old metaphysics are unpalatable to the
common mortal, and he strikes, therefore, a compromise. He starts with
an unanalysable individual or subject to whom presentations are presented
in an unanalysable way. These presentations give rise in an unanalysable
manner to unanalysable feelings and these cause an unanalysable reaction
in an unanalysable fashion. We have thus superfluous theorising of the
usual type ruled out of court, the non-essentials of the structure, important
in their way, being solemnly handed over for scientific treatment. We
must nevertheless allow for two advantages gained, an exclusion of meta-
physical discussion and an organic or teleological standpoint.
From our predecessors we adopt here the opinion that the process of
thought presents a cosmos ; that association is systematic ; and that
primary and secondary processes are teleologically determined. As regards
method, we start from the position that the criticisms on the introspective
172 GENERAL ANALYSES
method are markedly at fault (sec. 4). This granted, we are enabled to
approach our facts in a critical mood. We endeavour, accordingly, to
observe at first hand, most minutely, most widely and most repeatedly,
varying the conditions until further variations prove barren of new facts.
Attempts must then be continually made to discredit any supposed con-
clusion postulated ; to show that it proves too much, or too little or
nothing at all. In a similar spirit any proposition arrived at must be
systematically extended, to the uttermost limits of the universe if practi-
cable. I claim for the method thus deliberately adopted the name of
experimental, and I hold that it is a method which should be pursued
in every class of research (sec. 9).
Our view, then, is throughout organic in conception and of an experi-
mental character. The complex secondary world is to us a reflex of the
complex primary world, and the origin and growth of the former a reflex
of the origin and growth of the latter, though in the final analysis, as we
shall see in sec. 176a, the body is but one complex object of existence.
We also feel bound to reject the speculative theory of psycho physical
parallelism, owing to such facts as those of needs, attention and economi-
sation (sec. 180). We prefer to believe that research will show matter and
mind, the primary and secondary world, to be strictly one, parallelism
being out of the question (sec. 180).
106. — A Bird's Eve View,
Owing to the nature of the human structure, as determined by natural
selection, needs tend to arise and to satisfy themselves, the method of their
satisfaction being outlined in the inherited and adapted organism. Ideally
speaking, given the need, full satisfaction should follow at once, in which
case there would be but one step in every process. Since, however, the
structure is imperfectly adjusted, the process of satisfaction or readjustment
is frequently long, tortuous and unsuccessful, and that more or less pro-
longed attempt at satisfaction or readjustment, efubracing observation, memory^
action and thought in every form, we call the process of need-satisfying
REACTION.
CHAPTER V
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED
As vibrations cease to be,
So our memories fade and flee.
107. — Primary Systems imply Re-Development.
Walking along the streets at night my gaze fastens on the flame of a
street-lamp. I see the transparent circular space immediately round the
jet ; I note the burning gas encircling this clear round space ; I observe
the silver colour of the light; and I gather that the flame, at its outer
fringe, is in constant motion. I know, besides, that the gas presses out of
the pipe, that chemical processes take place, that heat is evolved, and the
like. At present, however, we are only interested in what is directly ap-
prehended, and not in what is indirectly connected in thought with what
we observe (sec. 15).
In ch. 2 we learnt that every reaction is the outcome of need-stimulated
attention, and that apart from the exercise of attention, colour, light, shape
and objectivity are non-existent. We cannot, therefore, allow that we are
ever passive when integrating anything. The system, be it a sight, a
memory or a feeHng, does not " present " itself to us ; it is evolved with
the assistance of bodily and environmental, or intra-organic and extra-
organic, stimuli ; it is membered (sec. 80). Considering the fact that we
just stated, it is natural that a treatise on psychology should not open with
a chapter on the senses,* for instead of primary systems, or sensations and
perceptions being primitive, they depend on a variety of circumstances
which, accordingly, must take precedence of them in a psychological
discussion.
If my apprehension of a flame was impossible without attention of an
advanced kind, then, by implication, another important factor participated.
In ch. 3 it was shown that neural processes, like muscular activities, were
affected by appropriate exercise. Hence my seeing a flame was not an
event which related to the present only, for it depended to some extent on
* So James, Psychology, 1S90, ch. 17.
174 GENERAL ANALYSES
residual effects. To speak precisely, I re-attended, I re-cognised the
object. In other words, re-development entered as one of the factors in
the membering. \Experime7it?[ Had I never before seen a flame or any
other object, nor ever met with anything, I sliould not have noticed the
light. I should, metaphorically speaking, have passed it by. Indeed, were
we fully absorbed or were the attention massed as in a desperate attempt
at re-collection, no flame, no colour, no light, no shape, no motion would
be apparent (sec. 14).
Memory appears even in the simplest primary system in the form
alluded to above. It also finds entrance by a different channel ; for every
happening implies duration — a lapse of many moments of time. [71'^/.]
No system, consequently, exists exclusively in the now, each primary
system being a time complex. If every element of a developed system
instantly vanished out of the sky of existence like a flash, we should never
meet a system as such. Besides, we should not obtain a lasting impression,
for what is given would be disintegrated moment by moment. Indeed, as
we have seen (sec. 19, third conclusion), every sensation or image is an
after-effect.
Hume's psychology was delightfully simple, advanced though it was for his age. For him
{hiquiry, 1 748, sec. 2, and Treatise, 173S, bk. i, part i, sec. l) there were, on the one
hand, only impressions or forcible perceptions, such as are implied in hearing and seeing,
and, on the other, ideas or feeble perceptions, such as are implied in re-membering a sight
or sound. Thought meant for Hume the association of the feeble perceptions or ideas
through their inherent relationships of contiguity, resemblance, and cause and effect. He
recognised no organism adapted by natural selection for ready action in certain directions,
and he also did not allow for the highly organised brain of the developed human adult.
He did not notice that the visual or audile images were elaborate products surrounded by
a variety of feelings equally complex, while he seemed unaware that these images were
only insignificant portions of an extensive whole. Once we have learnt the complicated
nature of the image, and the far more complicated environment with which it forms the
idea or unit of thought, Hume's psychology, in this respect, becomes as mythical as are
to us the gods of the Greek pantheon.
James Mill, and, to a great extent, Bain and Spencer remained true to Hume's naive
classification. Most writers, however, have more or less left behind them the older
view. Sully {Human Mind, 1892) sharply divides sensations, perceptions and images.
He thus defines the first: "A sensation may in a manner be defined as a simple
psychical phenomenon resulting from the stimulation of the peripheral extremity of the
afferent nerve when this is propagated to the brain. . . . Thus the stimulation of a
point of the skin by pressure, or of the retina of the eye by light, gives rise to a sensation "
(i, p. 81). Simple sense reactions, however, he rightly argues, do not exist in the adult,
nor, as I hold, in children. The normal minimum is a perception which he defines as
follows: "The localising and the objectifying of sensation, make up together what we
commonly understand by perception" (i, p. 207). That is to say, the immediately given
sight or view of an orange is considered the sensation, while position, and the involved
smell, weight and juiciness, together with the observed figure, are said to represent the
percept. As we have seen in ch. 4, this mechanical method of explaining occurrences
by arbitrarily stringing together a few selected systems is unwarranted, for in a percept
or idea, or in a unit, we meet with a process which defies the application of notions de-
rived from elementary mechanics. A large part of our total past, a sublimation of in-
numerable facts connected with oranges, our attitude towards fruit in particular and
pleasure in general, all go to form the logical idea of an orange, while the actual idea is
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 175
-generally empty apart from a context. The smell, weight, position, etc., are on'y
•microscopic portions of what the developed idea presents us with. Again, "By an
image," Sully says, "is meant the ideal copy or representation of the percept" (ibid, i,
p. 199). Here again I dissent. The image, surely, is a repetition of the sensation—
of the empty idea, of the bare sensation — one of Hume's feeble impressions which tells
us nothing without a setting or context (sec. 124). When, for instance, I think of a
cherry in terms of sight, that image is no more a representation of the percept, — of what is
connected with the sensation, with the bare sight, — than the sensed cherry of which this is
a copy. We may define an image as the comple7>ient of a sensation, and the word idea as
expressing the total state when a mc>?iber of connected images are present, image or re-
integral being thus complementary to sensation or pre-integral, and idea or re-compound
being cojnplementary to percept or pre-componnd. Or to put it otherwise. A bsre picture
of a house with no interpretation put upon what is seen, is a sensation, or a pre-integral ;
that picture interpreted as useful, large or habitable, is a percept, or a pre-compound ;
the bare picture re-developed, is an image, or a re-integral ; and there-developed picture
interpreted as useful, large or habitable, is an idea, or a re-compound. The stuff of which
a particular sensation is built up may be termed an element, and a sensation may be re-
garded as a primitive percept. Or we may draw up the following scale, based on units
of various degrees : element = unit of the first degree (u^), sensation = unit of the second
degree (u-), percept = unit of the third degree (u^*), sub-combination = unit of the fourth
degree (u'*), and action or combination = unit of the fifth degree (u').
James (Psychology, 1890, ch. 9 and other places) insists on the complexity of the re-
active state. " Like a bird's life, ' thought ' seems to be made of an alternation of flights
and perchings. . . . The resting-places [are] the 'substantive parts,' and the places of
flight the ' transitive parts' of the stream of thought " (ibid, i, p. 243). He also says that
"sensation . . . differs from perception only in the extreme simplicity of its objector
content" (ibid, ii, pp. 1-2). In fact, the difference between the highest and the lowest
product is one of degree, the simplest sensation equally with the most comprehensive
combination being an organic outcome, while psychic functioning must not be interpreted
in the light of a mechanical or chemical method, for its conditions are its own, those of
the simplified complication. No process such as fusion (Hoffding and Binet), assimila-
tion (Wundt, Sully and others), complication (Ward, Stout and others), mental chemistry
(J. S. Mill), yields more than a hint of what is a simple and peculiar result of economisa-
tion. Neural feelings such as are involved in doubt or belief are no more likely to make
neural changes intelligible than muscular feelings make muscular changes intelligible.
Prof. Ward (Psychology, 1886, p. 57, col. 2) distinguishes sharply between sensation and
representation, saying " whereas there can be a mere sensation red ... we can only
have an image or representation of a red thing or a red form," to which the reply is
that every system, however simple, is equally need-created, and, therefore, has equally
thinghood or formhood, and that corresponding to the " mere sensation red" there is a
" mere image red."
See for definition of terms, Lewes, What is Sensatiott? 1876 ; Turner, The Senses in
a Course of Psychology, 1889; and Davidson, Definition of Sensation, 1881. Herbart
speaks of sensations as " those simple presentations which are called sensations
[Empfindungen] when we wish to point to the moment of their first appearance"
(Psychologic ii, 1S31, p. 52), and a presentation is to him the rebound of the soul when
disturbed (ibid, ii, p. 470). As to sensations, see also ii, 162, of the quoted work, and
Souriau, Les Sensations" et les Perceptions, 1883 ; Bonatelli, Les Sensatio7is et les Per-
ceptions, 1884 ; Meinong, Ueber Begriff imd Eigenschaften der Empfindung, 1888-9,
Payot, Comme7it la Sensation Devient Idee, 1S91 ; and Scripture, Zur Definition einer
Vorstclhmg, 1S91.
It will be evident from our analysis that we cannot examine an object
bare of details for more than a microscopic period without the attention
wandering. [T'^i'/.] Usually, therefore, because it occupies time, or for
176 GENERAL ANALYSES
more serious reasons, we take account of a variety of fresh details. Yet we
never do, or can, attend to an object to the extent of exhausting its meaning.
Brentano, and with him Stout and others, are at pains to distinguish between the
object as thought-of and the object itself. Psychologically the distinction is illusory.
The world, to the psychologist, I take it, is one, the object and the object-as-thought-of
being indistinguishable theoretically. To identify a smell as pointing to an object, say,
an orange, is to infer a complex of which the smell is one expression. This I shall at-
tempt to substantiate in ch. 8. The object-as-thought-of is thus a partially exhausted
system and the object-itself a system regarded as wholly exhausted.
In the instance cited, i.e, of the fiame, we have, of course, consecutive
development, and of this we may now speak.
loS. — The Persistence of Neural Modifications.
While staying in Paris I visit the Louvre, and among the art treasures
there I notice the Venus of Milo. Just to glance at the statue would be
insufficient, for much would escape me. I, therefore, approach the figure.
My eyes swing repeatedly in various curves to drink in the pose, the pro-
portions, the outlines, the detail and the conception. In accordance with
the interest aroused by any feature, so do I examine it or recur to it. Some
considerable time is occupied by my scrutiny of the masterpiece. If, on.
moving away from it, I were asked for a full description of what I had ob-
served, I should be able to re-produce pretty nearly all that I had membered.
Probably little would have been forgotten. \Tcst the fulness of memory for
sJiort periods of seconds and 7ninufes.'\
Let us be more precise. After one minute's experimental tliought
several dozen details are re-developed which were taken account of during
that short time (sec. 219). An argument occupying no longer a period, is
in this way re-developed almost completely, and only the organic feelings,
the setting of our images and the exact language employed, are omitted.
Again, one day, about 4.30 p.m., I begin to be engaged in a conversation
lasting about twenty minutes. \_Take notes, after the event, of such a co?i-
versatwti.'\ As we converse, I put down single words, forty-three in all, to
represent the headings of the talk. At 9 p.m., I start writing, — not having
thought of the conversation in the meantime, — and finish about 11 p.m.
Almost the whole body of matter is re-membered — on 240 details, though
perhaps every single detail of that conversation would have been forgotten
in the ordinary course during a twelvemonth. Again, during the day I have
been reading with constant interruptions Henry VIII. I started reading
about 10 a.m., and finished about 6 p.m. At S p.m. it occurs to me to
test how much of the play I am able to recognise as familiar. I look at
many hundred lines here and there, and notice that nearly every line has
a homely ring. Yet probably I had read that very play years previously,
and cannot re-develop a single line, leaving aside often-quoted passages.
\Imitate this experiment?^
Memories continue faithful and complete for some time. Were that not
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 177
so, inteiligence would cease. This persistence alone enables us to observe
objects, such as landscapes, palaces and streets, or to study closely what
is minute. If the view of an instant ago disappeared immediately, we
could not lucidly apprehend anything. As it is, for a certain short period
after an event is past, we can re member what happens to us with almost
absolute fidelity.
A melody exists in time and is not inordinately long : one which lasted
a whole day could not be understood. So also the notes of a melody are
not far removed from one another ; for if these occurred at intervals of ten
minutes, it would be hard to detect a system in music or to appreciate it.
As the matter stands, the musical notes follow each other closely, yet not
too closely, and the theme is not unduly prolonged. Hence, since the
parts are well re-developed, the melody is easily grasped. If each note
ceased to exist as soon as it was heard, the meaning of a melody would be
unknown to us. If the reverberation subsided quickly, only melodies of
the shortest range could be apprehended.
We must here guard against a possible misunderstanding. Bound as we are to employ
the language of common life, it might be thought that the various notes — the sound
systems — persisted until the last one reached our ears. Such is not the meaning
intended in the preceding paragraph. We rather mean that something reverberates
which represents the notes. When we are listening to music and examine ourselves
from moment to moment [yo7t should do this] we find no notes there except those we are
actually hearing. What we discover, are feelings which had accompanied them and
which persist. Note after note seems to affect the feelings, and each succeeding feeling
modifies its predecessor. In this way a melody is understood as a whole, [This should
also be determined physiologically.'] The music does not lie wrapt up in the notes, but in
the successive feelings which these awaken. The former owe their importance solely to
the feelings by which they are accompanied. At the same time, either a repetition of
the note in some form, or a partially identical feeling is normally essential to the re-
awakening of the accompanying feelings. Seeing a certain person in the street, a certain
feeling of this nature develops, as a result of which I organically try to think of some one
who had aroused in me a like feeling ; or, as sometimes happens, the feeling^the summary
feeling — stands by itself and is not followed by any image. [Examine such iitstances.]
As we have learnt in the previous chapters, this feeling varies indefinitely as to quality,
and thus one secondary sight system seems to be developed directly by another. Hence
in the creation of metaphor the partial identity in the summary feelings is much closer
than the connected sight systems or images which are frequently most disparate. In
moods and in neural excitement it is equally observable that a feeling can be indififerently
followed by a related feeling or by a secondary audile, visual or other system. [Test
this.] It is, therefore, to be noted that feelings are not retained by images, as lawyers
might be by their clients. Of course, in the last resort the relation between successive
primary or secondary systems of every type is best determined neurally.
What is asserted of music holds generally. Series of sights and sounds are not as
easily re-developed in completeness, as are the summary feelings which follow them.
Similarly, structural elaboration does not take place among the products of the five
senses, since these products do not admit of ready synthetic treatment. For the present
this brief reference as to the place of feelings must suffice.
A feeling, such as that of hunger or thirst, as Paulhan says, may occur repeatedly with-
out being aroused by a similar past feeling. So also the peculiar impression which
similar persons often make upon us is a primary fact and not necessarily connected with
similar facts in the past. Once the feeling exists, we organically re-integrate perhaps a
12
178 GENERAL ANALYSES
face which had at some former time aroused a similar feeling. In cases where the feeling
is frequently developed, it may lead to the development of similar feelings or images.
It is a common opinion that feelings are re-producihle by images, but that they cannot
re-produce images or other feelings (sec. 71). Thus, for instance, Iloffding tells us that
•' feelings are remembered by means of the ideas * with which they were originally linked "
{Psvcfiolo^Q', 1S91, p. 241). Nay, he goes further, for he argues that " it is easier to re-
call images than the feelings which accompanied them" {ibid, p. 241).
The intelligent grip of any conversation, argument or speech, depends
on the relative persistence of neural modifications, and in the absence of
such persistence a speech would have to consist of a solitary syllable or
letter. It is on this trustworthiness of the memory that we rely in conversa-
tion. The reasoner would be confounded if he were uncertain of the
drift of an argument, and the debater would be at a loss to read his notes
or to answer his opponent.
Normal development takes place in time. We are, consequently, de-
pendent on our memory. If immediately after asserting that "normal
development takes place in time," I forgot what I had uttered, or grew
doubtful, coherent thought would become impossible. As I am at the
present instant writing, I re-develop from moment to moment sentences
without any iiotable effort and without ceasing to write or to think. If it
were otherwise, no one could even set down on paper a closely reasoned
argument, for the attention would be skipping like a stone hurrying down
a sharp incline, or it would be moving hither and thither like a helpless
shuttlecock at the mercy of eager players.
Every kind of development presupposes a memory which for short
periods is almost mechanically correct. What would happen if re-develop-
ment were either flawless throughout or never trustworthy, may be left
to the imagination of the reader.
109. — Neural Excitement.
There are few persons who have never lost their equanimity and the
surface of whose soul has never been ruffled. In speaking, then, of anger
we refer to no uncommon fact. It is nevertheless not every aspect of this
fact which we wish to analyse, but only one. When on a sudden we are
violently agitated, as is a river on the launching of a vessel, it is no easy
task to allay the agitation. Last Sunday you were seriously annoyed. A
friend did not keep an appointment, and you were walking up and down
in the rain waiting for him for an eternity, as it seemed. Notwithstanding
your annoyance, you did not give vent to your feelings. You considered
that it was idle to fret. Being in an experimental mood, you endeavoured
* Here the idea is considered as a visual or auditory image in Hume's sense. I hold,
on the contrary, that a visual image, like a visual sensation, has meaning only in propor-
tion to the greatness of the universe of thought with which it is connected. I may, for
instance, member a visual system, without knowing whether it is observed, imagined
or re-produced, or whether it represents a painting once seen or a past event (sec. 124).
Yet even here the idea forms part of a larger system. See also Titchener, Affective
Memory, 1895, and Affective Attention, 1894; Ribot, La Mhnoire Ajffective, 1894;
and Paulhan, Les Phinomenes Affectifs, 1885.
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 179
not to be irate. All in vain ! One set of moody thoughts was scarcely dis-
missed before another set developed. The cheerful prospect which you
fixed on was dominated by a sullen gloom. Perhaps it took several hours,
or a day or two, to re-establish your reputation for serenity. For this
reason, just as the effect of dropping a stone into a well leaves the surface
blurred for a measurable time after the object is buried in the soft bottom,
so excitement survives the factors which produced it. Thus anger, once
aroused, is not readily calmed. For hours it sometimes haunts us, and
will not yield either to persuasion or to a command. We assure ourselves
repeatedly that there is no occasion for being angry, but yet we are ridden
by a fiend.
The feeling of anger is not the only wave which thus tends to propagate
itself, for our notions correspond with the mood we are in. The thoughts
in a mean mood are accordingly disagreeable, carping and critical. If we
are weak-minded, these sickly imaginings persist in swaying us until the
last echo of our wrath is overtaken by silence. Perhaps the condition is
prolonged even beyond that stage till, suddenly, as with a young child, a
warm sunshine thought dissolves the mists. We observe also that as
bright thoughts momentarily prevail, so the tempest is in abeyance.
Anger is a mood, and what we affirmed of it, holds of moods in
general. Have we not sometimes felt so buoyant that we could not re-
sist the temptation of jesting at death ? Or so morbid that trifies have
made us despondent ? Or so sane that we could defiantly re-integrate and
frigidly scrutinise what normally would make us tremble ?
Anger is a mood, and what is that ? How far must we be stirred before
we dare suspect its presence? I venture to reply that there is no line
of demarcation. Every state that we are in shows symptoms of it. Every-
thing, however trivial, affects us, and gives rise to a mood. Every percept
or idea has its halo of persistent feelings (sec. 149), feelings which are
the equivalent of neural excitement or a mood.
Four statements at least are deducible from the proposition that com-
binations, in one of their aspects, are universes of moods. First, every
line of thought or action is swathed in a mood, as referred to in sec. 149.
Secondly, every mood persists for a longer or shorter period. Thirdly,
each mood is accompanied by topics or details congenial to it; and
fourthly, every mood, for a time, resists dismemberment, tends to recur
when dismissed, and re-develops when the attention otherwise flags.*
no. — Sudden Re-Collection.
Armed with these generalisations, we will attempt the solution of a
special group of memory problems. Let us, for this purpose, re-analyse
an occurrence of this order (sec. 43). I try to re-develop the second verse
of a poem with which I am acquainted. After repeated and vain en-
'^ ''^ Mood, that is a sum of relatively permanent organic modifications colouring the
tone of mind" (Sully, Human Mind, 1892, ii, p. 58).
i8o GENERAL ANALYSES
deavours, coming back again and again to the subject, I turn my attention
to something else. Suddenly, in the midst of some evolving notion, the
lines rise mechanically, like a cork released under water. What explains
this sudden re-appearance? A\'as there anything which dragged these to
the surface, or were they, with malice intent, re-devclopcd ? Both these
explanations must be dismissed in view of tlie [)rinciplcs which have just
been enunciated. We are forced to believe that the neural excitement con-
tinues, though the feeling stage exhibits no appreciable proof of such
continuance ; that the process of searching for the lines persists neurally ;
and that the sensitive area does not com])letely regain its equipoise.
\Siiidy experiinentally^
(Consider another instance. I have an engagement for a certain hour,
and 1 am anxious to keep it. Repeatedly during the day the fact is re-
developed. Occasionally it happens, of course, that one thing or another
suggests the engagement ; but, generally, re-collection by development or
association, not directly traceable to the surviving excitement, is excep-
tional. As far as the current of thought is concerned the notion of the
engagement is re-integrated spontaneously. The neural sensitiveness has
not departed. \Observe wJien viaking engagements^ and test spontaneity. ~\
Often a tune haunts us. It matters not whether we have any objection
to it or not. If we have none, our whole day's thought is interlaced with
that tune, and were we to observe the texture of systems under these
conditions, we should find that the tune inserts its threads arbitrarily. We
should discover that no idea or combination maintained its unity long.
We are not, however, in a better condition, if we do object ; for, in spite
of our defiant attitude, we remain helpless. The tune comes and goes,
and the precious minutes run to waste. If we are wise, we become
reconciled to our fate. [ JVatch such events minuiely^^
Take another example. For an hour or so I have carried on an
animated discussion with a few friends. I leave them because I have to
prepare a lecture. Yet, though I am bent on nothing but my task, I am
persistently interrupted by irrevelant thoughts traceable to the discussion.
More than an hour passes before I can settle down to my work. Mean-
while, argument after argument is re-incarnated or suggests itself, point
after point is weighed, while I am ostensibly attending in a direction un-
related to the discussion. Many a subtle aspect which was overlooked,
many a fallacious inference, many a striking reply, startles me, as if an
irresponsible phonograph were at my side, and casually broke in upon me.
It should be noted that the mo7?ientum given to the topic is slow i?i exhaust-
ing itself ; and also that the whole of the thought process is not equally
reflected on the mirror of the immediate present. \Test such a case.]
Again, I am learning shorthand. Wherever I go — though I have dis-
missed the subject more than once with a gruff Amen and without a bless-
ing — every sign over a shop, every out-of-the-way term which rises in the
course of thought deflects the stream of attention, and I begin to test the
words phonetically. Apart from a sensitised brain area this fact is mean-
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED i8i
ingless. Why should a sign-board suggest shorthand questions when there
are oceans between my passing thought and that subject ? Why should
combinations be repeatedly bisected by irrelevant propositions? \Note
such cases and also induce the?n experimi'?ital/y.'\
We have reviewed a batch of occurrences which, though not uncommon,
cannot be said to abound. Another category of instances is often met with.
I am to ask Z. a certain question when I see him ; I am to call at such and
such a bank ; I am to verify a certain passage ; or I am to rise half-an-hour
earlier. In many of these cases complication or association is a seeming
force, for seeing one object I re-member another ; but why, for instance,
should the entrance to a certain bank suggest to me that I am to call there ?
The reply must be that the mood persisted, and that the physical area was
still highly sensitive. We should quickly notice the difference if that were
otherwise. [Analyse such casesP[
iioa. — The Nature of Recency.
The fact of recency and sustained attention finds its explanation in neural excitement.
Bain casually refers to the nature of recency : " It is a primary law of all impressions
whatsoever, that, for some time after they are first made, they come back readily to the
consciousness, even without an express associating link. . . . All this is perpetually
exemplified in the recollections involved in our everyday Ua.x\%2iC\.ior\?," (Senses attd Iii-
tellect, 1894, p. 589). An extreme illustration is to be found in the fact that owing to the
slow fading of sensations, we have apparently no sense of darkness when shutting our eye-
lids in the ordinary course, not even when we deliberately experiment. What is more,
the eyelids may be shut for a considerable fraction of time, and still no darkness be per-
ceived, the image persisting vividly while the eye is closed and thus spanning the interval
of no-vision. (See also Child, Statistics of Unconscious Cerebration, 1892.) Brown
{^Lectures, 1824, ii, p. 376) ingeniously suggests the following explanation: "When we
sit down to compose, the thought of our subject is soon associated with every object around
us, — with all that we see, — with every permanent sound, — with the touch of the pen
or the pencil which we hold, — with our very tactual or muscular feelings as we sit." Ex-
periment corroborates Brown to a very slight extent ; but his contention proves far too
much.
The precise nature of the recency factor is not easily determined. I shall, however,
attempt here an analysis of the factors which enter into the problem before us. (i) All
that is barely attended to — and in this we must also include the various feelings which most
persistently accompany the processes of seeing, hearing, touching, thinking, acting, etc.,
as well as the outer margin of any sensations, etc. — is forgotten almost at once, is difficult
to re-develop, and hard to recognise. That which does not fall near the focus of interest
has an equally ephemeral existence. (2) An event may powerfully impress us. We may, for
instance, have been so frightened that the heart is almost still and the whole body is violently
affected. Here the effect will naturally last beyond the moment of fright, and the equi-
librium will be slow in returning. (3) As we shall see (sec. 134) what is exciting may be
inhibited by abruptly turning the attention away or by a new and strong interest diverting
the trend of thought. In these instances, what would otherwise powerfully appeal to us
for some continuous period, is soon dis-integrated. (4) What has been stated in the two
preceding sentences suggests ^■aX facilitation, which is the opposite of inhibition, may be
a factor in recency. That is to say, instead of a topic being sharply dis-integrated, we
may linger over it and only half-heartedly leave it as new objects appeal to us. In an
obvious case of this kind, we only confusedly attend to what is more recent, for some
of the attention is still absorbed in what has previously passed. This suggests that (5)
the persistence of what is recent may be to all intents and purposes an acquired habit
1 82 GENERAL ANALYSES
or a complication. According to this interpretation we, perhaps, generally dwell
on what is recent, while we only partially allow the attention to stray into new fields.
From this it would follow that much at least of what has recently occurred, recurs with
seeming spontaneity because it has never properly been outside the field of attention.
When we thus wish to be able to re-develop a certain fact for a short time, we only
imperfectly readjust the attention, facilitating in this way an easy response when occasion
oflfers. A large portion of recency, as for instance recurrence to a topic after an inter-
ruption, may therefore be said to exemplify the particular acquired habit of only partially
dis-integrating what has very recently occurred, and this habit is encouraged by the
nature of the organism. (6) What is recent, apart from the fact that immediate obliviscence
is not uncommon, has by no means always the advantage over what has passed long ago.
Already in sec. 60 we have seen how easily an established trend triumphs over a recent
resolution. The fact is that what we have known well for a long time offers a positive
obstacle to the learning of what is recent. Old notions, old incidents, old habits, old
sympathies, can, therefore, with difficulty be supplanted by new ones, and are more
readily re-developed than the new ones. To illustrate, I spent two days sight-seeing in
a certain town, and for ten years used to recur to the sights I had seen there. After this
period I visited the town again — for eight days this time — and yet the recent views failed
to leave a lasting impression. Indeed, the life of thought has regard to established interests
and knows naztght of harriers of time. [Test this paragraph.^
The nature of recency is thus more complex than might at first be assumed.
III. — Neural Excitement implies Neural Momentum.
The subject of excitement which we are investigating is by no means com-
posed only of exceptions. These are mere outposts, conspicuous because
they are removed from the main body. They point to the army of common
facts. A horse is running in a race ; by degrees the pace increases, until,
trying all the way, he reaches his utmost speed. Though there is no eco-
nomic reason why he should not stop suddenly at the winning post, he yet
is not pulled up till he is some distance past it. We readily see that once
the Judge's box is passed, the momentum has no positive value ; yet in its
absence the race could not have been run. The momentum persisted
throughout, though we only became aware of its existence when the horse
whirled beyond the post. Thus tJie momoitum is an essential component in
the argument, the seeking for the verse, and the thifiking about shorthand.
In serious labour this is conspicuous ; while in other tasks it has its part to
play. We only learn of its presence, as far as the race is concerned, when
the horse does not come to a standstill at once ; and so, this fact, in con-
nection with systems of thought, is only made patent when we act in
opposition. /// this impulsive 7nanfier we become and remain, absorbed in a
subject or alive to an issue. One pale copy of a system does not dras; after it
ajiother chained to itself ; we meet rather with a little universe iti labour.
The memberings are the result of considerable eftbrts, varied and manifold.
The force of the momentum, by the way, is well studied in such an instance
as that referred to in sec. 109, where the contents of a whole book are re-
cognised as familiar : in such cases memory is most complete. [ Verify in
your own life.'\
We have seen that what has just happened can be minutely re-produced
for a short time. For this reason even inconsiderable interests readily
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 183
attract us for some hours. In an average person's life few days pass with-
out some excitement which tends to be spontaneously re-instated during
the hour or day. A battle has been fought, a speech has been delivered,
a storm has caused disasters, a friend is ill, an interesting letter has been
received, a peculiar notion has struck us, and so on ; or else business, the
family or amusements, form the staple of thought. After several months
most of these incidents are re-developed with great difficulty ; after several
years a ragged remnant only survives. Yet not only does almost every-
thing suggest the interesting call we made an hour ago ; but parts of the
incident are re-instated spontaneously when we are not otherwise engaged
or when, for instance, we meet a friend. [T^i'/.]
The bulk of our thought, then, apart from the business of life and our
more or less permanent interests, revolves naturally around the casual
events of the hour. [Does tf?] This time-table of thought is not without
its advantages, for to examine an object in all its bearings is only possible
when we have it before us in something like its entirety. Hence it is best
studied when re-development is practically complete. To put off our in-
vestigation to some future time is dangerous, since we shall find our
memory to have shrunk surprisingly. We can, therefore, best whet our in-
tellectual tusks by an analysis of the present. Subject after subject, as it
springs up, is in this way examined and disposed of, and what is precious
is abstracted from its veins. If, in addition, we consider that permanent
interests and dispositions are by the nature of their constancy fresh and
active, we gather that the mass of thought groups itself round the im-
mediate present, and that the past and the future only enter as occasional
visitors. In this wise our needs, in fulfilling themselves, follow the lines
of least resistance. The omnipresence of neural excitement and momentum
seems, therefore, proved.
If we experiment, we receive confirmation of the above views. Allowing
the memory to take care of itself, detail after detail appertaining to the im-
mediate past is re-integrated, while that which is far off in time can only
be re-produced, as a rule, by means of casual suggestions (sec. 152). If I
watch my normal thought, I observe that while what has passed very
recently is readily suggested by every topic and is frequently recurred to
spontaneously, particular events in the far past, which have not been recently
re-collected, lack both these characteristics almost absolutely. Everybody
can test the truth of these statements for himself. To prevent prejudice
he may also experiment with the purpose of showing that recent occurrences
and recent memories do not possess the powers here assigned to them and
that far-off ones do.
To sum up, one aspect of every combination is a mood or a neural
excitement, and as such it persists for some time after its inciting stimuli
are removed and is accompanied by appropriate thoughts and actions.
l84 GENERAL ANALYSES
112. — Mkmory Slowly Fades.*
Utterin,:^ «« Let me see," with the purpose of repeating the three words
directly afterwards, I re-develop the brief phrase unfailingly, and I am con-
vinced that I have re-collected rightly. It is not so when a day, a week or
a month have elapsed. The curve of re-development inevitably dips,
though its descent is gradual.
Prof. Lloyd Morgan (Comparative Psychology, 1894, P- 73) pertinently remarks :
"We may to day establish the sequence tier itineris, or seven-times-eight fifty-six, in a
small boy's mind, so that at the end of the lesson iter at once suggests itineris, and the
multiplication-table runs smoothly. But next week iter unfortunately does not suggest
itineris, and the multiplication-table is decidedly lumpy." In learning a sentence by
heart experimentally, I notice that if at first I let a few seconds intervene, the words are
forgotten. Later on, if I persist, I can re-develop the sentence haltingly — hy making a
sensible effort, word by word, and without feeling certain that I am correct. Gradually
less effort is required, the sentence develops quicker, and I have more confidence in my
correctness. At last, after much reiteration, I am constantly saying it, although averse
from doing so : every topic of thought is impregnated with it. Then, the occasions for
developing the sentence becoming scarce, the opposite process sets in until I do not recognise
the sentence even when pointed out to me. When, again, intervals of, say, three months
divide activities, I find that semi-forgetfulness is constant. [Learn the following by heart :
" The use of this rack for heavy and bulky packages involves risk of injury to passengers
and is prohibited," and record the process of acquisition and forgetting ; also learn the
•words in the passage backwards, and note the process. '\
We shall see how much is re-iiistatable of one minute's thought immedi-
ately after the event (sec. 2 1 9), and we have learnt the quantity that can be
re-membered within a few hours (sec. 108). Selecting a somewhat event-
ful day \the student should repeat this\ and noting down the following day
at 8 p.m. what I re-collect of it — it being understood that the day had been
selected after it had passed — I find that 750 items are re-integrated with
ease. After a year I should normally be unable to press into service more
than a few of these details. \^This experiment should be varied.'\
Reading a book on metallurgy, I notice that many unknown words are
beginning to sound faiiiiliar. I can readily re-member several scores.
Some of the definitions which are frequently alluded to in the book, I no
sooner desire to re-develop than they spring with a bound into existence
as if they had been expressly waiting for such recall. So unfailingly does
re-development take place that, try as I may, I find it impossible to believe
that I shall ever forget the special nomenclature and definitions, and this
in spite of the fact that I have on other occasions had the same feeling and
yet lost every particle of what I considered a possession forged about
my soul.
The book is read and done with, and it is put on one side. A day or
two passes, and still I re-member apparently everything. A week runs its
course, and there is some diminution in my accumulated stock. Five or
six weeks elapse, and I am only able to re-develop the general outlines of
* " The records of memory, like trees and fungi, are subject to growth and decay"
(Verdon, Forgetfulness, 1S77, p. 441).
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 185
the subject together with the more prominent landmarks. The notion of
the permanent fulness of a large reservoir of knowledge, unaffected by the
heat of other interests or the wind of oblivion has proved erroneous.
For a short period of a few weeks much may be re-developed. The
specific gravity of a variety of substances, the specific heat of various bodies,
the reaction times of psycho-physics, the mortality rates of towns, and a
considerable assortment of other statistics, are taken to constitute a lasting
fund of information when it is in reality only a temporary one. For weeks
the figures are repeated daily, and yet, after ceasing to refer to them for a
few months, our caged bird of knowledge has probably taken wings.
[Deliberately learn sefs of figures and letters, afid ivatch the process of for-
getting.]
For the average man to make sure that a topic will not slip away from
him, he must remain on close terms with it for some months, perhaps some
years. He must court occasions when he may revert to it. If he does
not do so, he loses what he has laboriously acquired. Re development
does not depend only on re-instating a fact a stated number of times. The
repetitions, for reasons which we shall learn below (sec. 134), must spread
over a considerable period.
Of late I had occasion to learn a phonetic alphabet. In asking myself what is the
equivalent character for d, the reply would come smartly, the reason being that while the
question was evolving, the answer was already shaping itself. It was otherwise when I
wished to write a whole word, such as "standard." Each letter took an appreciable
time before it presented itself, and the result was dreary slowness. Practice must, there-
fore, proceed for a prolonged period, before the swiftness of re-development satisfies
-common wants. What is true of writing is truer still of reading, as when a practised
reader reads over 250 words in one minute.* Nevertheless the membering of a word,
even with the expert, occupies sensible time. For example, travelling in a train, I in
vain attempt to decipher the names of the stations as we rush through them ; while in a
railway journey by night the sparks from the engine appear as glowing wires.
113. — Cramming.
We can now understand the danger of cramming. Some weeks before an
examination a pupil learns by heart a multitude of facts, words, statements
and definitions. Such morsels of learning as are difficult to digest, he is made
to assimilate temporarily by a liberal diet of stimulating examples. The
day of judgment arrives, and he acquits himself honourably. His know-
ledge as well as his comprehension appear unexceptionable ; his relatives
and friends congratulate him ; and yet, after a few slow months, one would
hardly believe that Master X. had passed the ordeal. Learning never
made a home for itself in his neurons. Cramming is hence indefensible.
Were it not that examiners are fully alive to its pernicious effects and
model their papers on a plan which tends to defeat cramming, we should
meet with little scholarship outside the examination room. The inspection
of the learner's ordinary work is a well known safeguard against illusive
progress.
* In 6| hours I read a quantity of matter, equal to a rate of 1S9 words per minute.
1 86 GENERAL ANALYSES
There is another side to the subject. " Wherever the matter acquired is merely of
temporary interest the power of casting ofT is a clear advantage"' (Sully, Human Mind,
1892, i, p. 350). Jevons {Cram, 1^77) examines the question in a somewhat heated
manner, distinguishing good cram from had (ram, a legitimate distinction. Verdon says :
" Our memories are like gardens, and the richer they are the more they require wee ing"
{On Forgetftilness, 1877, p. 451). However, granting a well acting memory, and there
is no reason why any acquisition should require weeding out.
114. — We forget Most Things.
Prof. Lloyd Morgan (^Comparative Psychology, 1894, p. 73) concisely
sums up individual differences in memory when he says : " Macaulay could
not help re-membering ; most of us cannot help forgetting." * To retain to
some extent an intellectual possession, months and years are necessary as
a rule ; but when we are once grounded in a subject it is easily re-developed
and runs little risk of being consumed by the rust of time. Here are some
extreme examples. Tasting a dish we were accustomed to twelve years
ago and have not apparently touched since, we appear to be thrown back
in time. Or we have been away from the country of our birth for ten
years, and have not spoken many hundred words in our native tongue for
most of that period. We seem unable to form a genuine sentence ; but
we return home, we hear the familiar tones, and, after a day or two's
practice, we speak almost fluently. Or many years have passed since a
man has been engaged in a certain occupation. He is compelled to return
to it, and after a few weeks the fallow years seem but as days. The broad
river of time is cleared in such cases at one bound. \The 7?iatter of this
paragraph should be tested by the sti/defit, where possible^]
So much to the credit side of the memory account. The debit side is
in a seriously unsatisfactory condition. If we ask a number of persons
[you should do this\ as to their earliest re-collections, f we are surprised to
find how very little they are able to re-produce. Collecting my own re-
membered store between the ages of o and 9 years, and allowing liberally
for omissions, my treasure reaches the low figure of one hundred re-collec-
tions. 1 Judging from inquiries, this estimate appears to fit the general
run of human beings. The figure 100 will cover also in my case [jvill it in
yours .?] the age from 9 to 12 ; but I expect that my retentive powers are in
this instance considerably below the average. Still, there is no reason to
imagine that the figure should be more than quadrupled. From 12 to 20,
omitting two journeys, I gather 2000 re-collections \how many do you
gather 1^ this being again a generous estimate. I suggest that average
persons of thirty-four years of age do not re-member much more of the
above periods. A pedestrian tour, undertaken about the age of 19, which
extended to Austria, Germany, France and Denmark, and lasted about
* For remarkable memories, see Biervliet, La Mhnoire, 1902, pp. 52-6 ; Hamilton,
Metaphysics, 1877, ii, pp. 224-6; and Henkle, Remarkable Cases of Memory, 1871.
tV. and C. Henri, Premiers Souvenirs, 1896; Bourdon, Influence de I' Age sur la
Memoire Immediate, 1894 ; and Colegrove, Itidividual Memories, 1899.
tl omit in my conception of " re-collections " such knowledge as is implied in the
words and phrases I learnt, and in the muscular and neural dexterity I acquired.
^ VSTEAfS A S RE-DE VEL OPED 1 87
seven months, yields 700 details. A second tour, a year later, extending
to Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France, and lasting three months, yields
tlie same figure, 700.
Thus the first 20 years of my life bring about 3600 sheaves into the
garner of my memory; 20 to 25, which were years rich in varied oppor-
tunities, yield 2000 more; and another 9 years, less suggestive in their
history, probably 4000 more, omitting the last twelve months up to the
time of writing. This swells the number of floating re-collections between
o and 34 to about 10,000, allowing for omissions. A somewhat Bohemian
life is thus numerically summed up in what may be lived through in half-
a-day. In other words, I am able to re-develop about one 1 0,000th
of what happened to me, though it must be admitted that a quantitative
statement is not wholly satisfactory. Moreover, the re-developed systems
of the first nine years do not cover more than the space of a minute's
activity, and could be re-developed during that short interval ; and if we
apportion ten hours of waking existence to a day, I do not produce one
250,000th part of what happened to me during the above-mentioned period.
The facts on which the calculations are based, I may mention, were
carefully collected, sifted and tested. The records for the first 25 years do^
not depend on averages of any kind, but on lists drawn up systematically
and supplemented by the occasional additions of at first unrecorded facts.
Let me give an illustration as to my meaning of point or detail. \Vlien at Torquay I
went (i) to Tottness (2) by rail ; (3) I have a glimpse of my arrival (4) and another of
part of my walk ; {5) I see the pier ; (6) we are going down the Dart by boat ; (7) now
the river seems to become narrow ; (8) now I see the hills ; (9) the river is frequently
narrow ; (10) I have pointed out to me (11) a barn (12) where some voters were forcibly
retained, (13) through which the borough lost its voting rights ; (14) we see Raleigh's
house, etc., etc. From this example it is plain that the number of details — since even the
simplest sensation is a complex — depends on not quite a satisfactory definition of what a
detail means, and that each inquirer must supply illustrations of his method. The mode of
numerical entry which I adopted was as follows. To represent I to 9 I used slight horizontal
strokes, and slight strokes slanting from right to left and left to right, three positions for
each stroke. In the tens I omitted the zeros. Each item was usually represented by one
word only ; and, when practicable, as when re-collecting the shops in one road, I em-
ployed only the strokes without the word. In collecting my material I placed myself at
some chronological point, and followed closely every line of suggestion to the end, thus
covering a period as with a network. At the same time I kept notes of details which I
re-membered after completing the list. Ordinarily I also left a margin, from one ta
twenty and more, according to the importance of the events in question. The student,
rvith these suggestio7is to assist him, should epitomise his own life, tracing the factors in
m-emory. He might also determine the fropo7-tioii and nature of visual, audile and other
images, incbiding feelings.
The relative quantity which an average individual re-members is paltry,
and only in very few instances — so few that they need scarcely be con-
sidered — is the far past capable of being re-instated without the assistance
of repeated memorising. This can be tested by every-day occurrences.
For example, I lose the manuscript of a chapter of this book. I am greatly
interested in its recovery ; but for several months the mode of its disappear-
i88 GENERAL ANALYSES
ance remains a mystery to me. Time and again I make efforts to re-
member where it was lost, and at last some one finds the manuscript. Do
I even now re-collect the occasion ? Not in the slightest. Again, I am
about to re-read a certain play of Shakespeare's which, by the notes in the
margins, I indirectly know 1 have read, and which I saw acted about six
years ago. I carefully write down what I am able to re-develop of its
contents : about a dozen details cover the ground. I now read the play,
and observe that not a single additional detail is recovered. \Repeat the
experiment?^ It would be tedious to marshal further illustrations, and my
•observation of others agrees completely with what these two instances
reveal. The mass of what is forgotten is irretrievably lost — no agonising
•want and no abnormal condition brings it back. There is also evidence to
show that old men do not re-develop fresh details about their youth \ask
<iged persons what they re-member of their youth\ and that in dreams, in
delirium and in drowning it is unlikely that we re-produce what has not
been re-developed for years — incautiously repeated tales notwithstanding.
\^Ask children about their eaj'liest re-coIlectio}is?\
It may be objected that, on my own showing, several thousand items are
re-developed which date back many years. In these cases the memories are
not as hoary with age as they appear to be. It is true that they refer to
twenty or thirty years ago ; but they have been re-integrated since at various
times. Only in so far as systems pass through the fnill of time repeatedly, do
■they survive long periods. For instance, a disastrous fire at a public resort
calls up with me invariably a burnt-down theatre which I had seen, and
thus alone is that sight preserved. Similarly with the totality of what is re-
developed : as certain details are sensed, or thought about, so certain less
recent ones are re-developed. Of course, some things are re-produced
much more frequently than others, perhaps every two months, while others
are re-developed not oftener than once in two years. A longer interval
tends, I beheve, to wipe out the traces altogether. Once, for instance,
that a melody which interests us is heard, we repeat it frequently for a few
"weeks or months ; then the intervals of re-collection gradually widen till re-
instatement becomes difficult and at last impossible. If, on the other
hand, a series of melodies interests us in succession, we dwell little on
each, and melody after melody is rapidly forgotten. So with all our
memories. They are first formed, then frequently rehearsed, then the
intervals of rehearsal grow wider, then the images become indistinct, and
at last they sink into oblivion.
Faces of old times, and distant events generally, are frequently, but unostentatiously,
re-developed in connection with like faces and like events. For an example of these re-
collections see Gallon, Liquiries, 1883, p. 193. For smell imagery, see Ribot, La
Me/noire Affective, 1894, pp. 379-81.
As we grow older, the earlier years lose more and more of their meaning,
illustrative complications of old times being replaced by recent ones. Old
notions and interests become obsolete and are forgotten, and new notions
SVSTEA/S AS RE-DEVELOPED 189.
and interests take the vacant places. Thus the bulk of memories con-
stantly shifts its centre of gravity, keeping close to the heels of the present.
Because of this device the memory contents present many anomalies, and
for this reason much which we re-develop is of less importance than much
which we forget. For instance, I hear a witty saying. If 1 am pre-
occupied, I forget it almost at once ; while if interests are pressing, it tends
to be ignored. If, on the other hand, I have occasion to repeat it and re-
repeat it soon, then this witticism is retained and prevents the ready
assimilation of fresh ones. In this way accidental circumstances decide to
some considerable extent that unimportant matters shall be re-developed,
that others shall not be acquired, and that important ones shall be de-
developed or forgotten. For the same reason persons who live much in
the past and love detail will re-produce much, while those who live in the
present and abhor detail will re-produce little. So also in a monotonous
life little will be re-developed, since the later events displace the earlier,
while in an adventurous career details will be unlike and will, therefore,
not cover each other. Lastly, men interested in textual or historical studies
will remember much.
It is difficult to determine the quantity of details re-developed from day
to day. [ You might Iielp in ascertaining the precise facts.\ In the
twenty minutes' conversation recorded (sec. 108), I re-member fifty-eight
items which refer to the far past, the most distant being about eight years
old. Thus in a casual and typical chat I retail an incident, about seven
years old, containing forty details out of a possible ninety. Again, in
another talk I refer to twenty-seven out of a possible forty- five details, at
least eight years old. Under similar circumstances I re-develop seventeen
details out of a possible twenty, at least four years old. Fearing that some-
thing would fall, I re-develop a similar incident six years old, and then
another sixteen years old. Of course, on none of these occasions had I
any thought of experimenting. Watching other people, they appear to me
to re-develop systems at the same rate and in the same manner. Every
day about twenty details referring to the more distant past are perhaps re-
instated. \Is this so f\ Few days pass without some old systems re-de-
veloping, while on favourable occasions several hundreds of these are
re-manufactured. To take an extreme instance, one day I recorded in my
note book one thousand items which I deliberately re-developed. .
It is plain, therefore, that the total of details which may be re-developed
is not the same as the total of details which we have lived through, and I
surmise that, with trifling exceptions, re-collections do not go back directly
more than about two years.* \This is a guess^ It is also obvious (sec. 96)
that methods of work and thought, as well as ?nuch of our general knowledge, are
over afid over again applied within the year, thousands of them being repeated
day by day.
There is no princely path by which we can return the way we have
* " The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours ; and if not sometimes
refreshed, vanish and disappear " (Locke, Human Understandittg, bk. 2, ch. 10, sec. 5).
190 GENERAL ANALYSES
come. Where there were stately cities and the hum of busy life we en-
counter ruins and a scarcely broken silence,* for only what perennially enters
into our daily task and our homely thought is guarded against the wasting
influences of lime. Facts and fancies come to us thick as snowflakes.
Most of these fall on uncongenial soil, and are no more ; some of them lie
on the ground for hours or days ; nearly all are gone with the season ; and
a few only remain on the mountain tops. As a knight's shining armour,
to put the matter differently, requires constant furbishing, so we are com-
pelled continually to relearn as well as to re-develop. The majestic
mountain masses and passes of Switzerland, the images of which lovingly
lingered for years, are paling gradually but surely. The memories of the
Capitol, St. Peter's, the Pitti Gallery, where they are not replaced by the
images of photographs and pictures of those places, are lost in the hazy
distance. The corridors of the Louvre, the Rue de Rivoli, the Avenue de
I'Opera, are fancies rather than facts now. Influences which promised
never to abandon us, are growing dim and distant. Hence we have to re-
read our books every lustrum if we have not outgrown them, and our beliefs
must be re-examined if our faith in them is to have a reasonable foundation.
A large portion of our life is thus given to fixing and refixing the shadows
of things.!
T15. — The Process of De-Development.
There are a number of factors which conduce to obliviscencc or dis-
memberment. The first in order is superficial primary attention (sec. iioa),
and here it could easily be proved that we membered in the first instance,
though we are unable to re-develop what w^e had membered. [J^rove.]
Next comes attention at the margin (sec. iioa), as in marginal sight, and
here again a thing is no sooner observed than it is forgotten. [Tesf.] A
similar factor induces forgetfulness in secondary attention. This happens
when we are only interested in the most general features of an image.
Under these circumstances, and they are most common, less and less of the
image is re-developed until the barest outline remains. [Examine experi-
nientalh'.^ Over and above these attention aspects, comes the/act of simple
forgetting or dc-dcvelopment. For instance, I look at the underside of the
seat of some particular chair, carefully and at leisure, and enter in my note
book what I have observed. After twenty-two days it occurs to me to test
my memory as regards the chair. For half-an-hour I try to re-produce the
appropriate image as completely as possible, and I find that insistence does
assist. I then enter into my note book the result of my reflections. When,
for purposes of comparison, I look at the notes containing the first set of
observations, I am unable to re-member anything more, though I strain
hard for some minutes. Lastly, I view the upturned chair carefully once
* " Time mutilates our memories. Like names written on the bark of a tree, they
hare become distorted by change of years" (Verdon, Forgetfulness, 1877, p. 447).
fGalton {Inquiries, 1883, pp. 185-203) has a short discussion which bears on the sub-
ject of this section.
SVSTEAfS AS RE-DEVELOPED 191
more. To my surprise I discover that my image is very incomplete as well
as misleading, and it further transpires that what I observe is wholly un-
familiar. \Experiment collectively ivith physiological and other diagrams.^
In such an experiment, then, it is made clear that lapse of time of itself
mutilates and ultimalely kills memory.* Hence if we grant that memory
is ever fading, we can understand the importance, of recurring to a subject,
or, as with the very young child, the significance of ceaseless repetition of
every kind of activity.
From the last chapter we know that, roughly speaking, images develop
out of other images or sensations, and that spontaneous images, apart from
neural excitement, are practically unknown (sees. 90-2). At the same
time development has its Hmitations. For example, the letter a being con-
nected with the other letters of the alphabet, and these in turn with primary
and secondary systems of every class, we might imagine that the letter a
would tend to develop the whole of what we know. This is so far from
being the fact that the letter a will generally suggest 7iothing. To be able
to re-develop a fact which we are observing there must be close intimacy
between it and some known fact, for when an observed fact is not related
to anything established, there will be no obvious means of recalling it, and
it will, therefore, tend to be forgotten. On this account it is well so to
connect all that is worth re-developing that it may be developed pretty
frequently, and since systems are seldom carefully connected with this end
in view, most things are naturally forgotten. Furthermore, disintegration
being a constant factor, it follows that what is little attended to becomes
indistinct, and for that very reason it is neglected, dismissed and forgotten.
Lastly, change of interest, largely due to periodic needs and the rivalry of
primary systems, further weakens and destroys the traces of the past until
there remains only a small residue of typical and firmly connected units of
thought and action.
116. — Re-Development is Attention to Surviving Traces.
In section 108, and again in section 109, I referred to the immediate
constituents of primary and secondary systems. This, of course, includes
what is re-developed. Let us pursue the theme a Httle further. Some one
is an excellent mimic. I have reason to believe that he is a good visual
and audile — one who well images sights and sounds. I ask him, " Do
you re-member the hearth in Y.'s study ? " " Perfectly," he replies, " I see
it before me as if I stood in front of it." His eyes appear meantime
rivetted on some uncanny object. " Can you tell me," I then continue,
" the number of circles round the marble rosettes ? " He is non-plussed,
and that because there are limits to second sight. \^Test yourself and
others in this respect^ It is astonishing how much some people observe
and re-figure ; but though a man can re-member much, he soon breaks
*An experimental study of this subject is found in Philippe, Sur ks TraKsformations
de nos Images Mentales, 1897.
193 GENERAL ANAL YSES
down under a close examination. If we consider that to observe is to
attend, we shall see how absurd it is to expect llawlcss observation by
means of re-collection. If an object as -iwcXx \s(txQ presented \.o z. conscious-
ness^ this would be probable because the object would be in consciousness.
Not so on the theory of attention. When we look at an object, there is a
constant flow of fresh images, for new systems are persistently being
developed. Memory is re-development, and a full complementary image
of an object would imply that we have exhausted the possibilities of ob-
servation.
There is another aspect of tlie above problem. I show to a friend — a
good visualiser — a striking cartoon. He just glances at the sketch before
I remove it, and I then put to him a number of questions as to the details
he has observed. It is surprising how often he is right, and it is instructive
to notice how often he is wrong. He sees three buttons where there is
one. He describes the coachman's boots, whereas in the cartoon they
are covered with a rug. Positive error thus enters into his image, [^.v-
periment^
The last statement provokes a question. If I changed the picture to
suit his description and showed it to him, what would he say ? For my
own part I have little doubt as to how the query would be met. Judging
from '^'eneral observation I conclude that he would reply : This picture is
different from the one you first showed me. He would find that the
secondary combinations led to absurd images, and that when they were
brou</ht together they excluded each other. He would also on seeing the
first sketch, re-member its details much better. {Test this^ They would
have an intimacy, comparable with that referred to in the example of
looking over a little volume we have just finished reading (sec. io8). We
can often identify to a nicety an object 7vhen face to face with it, while free re-
production is yet denied to us. In other words, recognition is superior to
free re-development.
117. — No Detailed Image in the Memory.
The description of the image, in the case of the cartoon, is rejected in
favour of the actual delineation. Was there then no fixed image or
counterpart of the object? The next section answers our question in the
nef^ative. Observation is essentially organised. It is as far removed as
possible from resembling the ordinary process of photography. Not only
do we in practice chiefly see what we have seen before ; but the whole
attitude of observation is utilitarian. We are arrested for a moment by
one or two attractive features. We do not fix an object with our eye
camera ; we walk around it. We do not take the whole of a scene in at
once ; but in a rambling fashion we observe a few details often and many
details not at all, slurring over some, and dwelling upon others. The eye-
product, leaving aside after-images (sec. 125), is, therefore, substantially
different from a photograph. Except with systems which we have de-
veloped repeatedly, and with such as we have just developed, images rich
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 193
in detail do not exist normally. \Have you detailed images T\ There is
usually present a summary feeling conveying the total impression, and a
number of more or less hazy and scrappy images.
Lotze (d. 18S1) {Microcosmtis, trs., 1SS5, i, pp. 326, ff.) holds that memory implies too
complex a process to be accounted for neurally. He says that an object differs so much
with the closeness and the position of the spectator that the corresponding image would,
but for spiritual activity, be a mass of confusion. Wundt's explanation of Lotze's diffi-
culty is of the composite photograph type. He writes : " If we think of an acquaintance,
we never image him precisely as we saw him at a certain moment ; our idea, on the
contrary, is composed of many observations the constituents of which partly complete and
partly dislodge each other" {Bcmerktcngen zur Associationslehre, 1891, p. 339).
The subject is one eminently fitted for experimental observation, and I have, accord-
ingly, gone somewhat carefully into the matter. Testing the memory contents by the
rule of objectivity (sec. 136), I find that the images of acquaintances are with me individual
and not superimposed (sec. 76a). A particular re-developed system, or several particular
ones, stand for the man or the woman. I cannot find any image which resembles a com-
posite photograph or which is not individualised. Experiment confirms this. / have
specially observed a multiplicity of objects both stationary and in motion ; some once, sof/ie
repeatedly; some for a long tifue together, others for fractions of a second. The images
never fjised, thous;h I ofteti desired them to do so. Most of them could be re-developed
for a second or two ; but they were soon forgotten. Changing objects, such as trees which
I approached, offered several particular images, according to the transformations which I
noted ; exceptionally I could image the object as changing. There was neither a com-
posite image nor a supra-mundane one. One minute's continuous observation could not
be re-instated, owing to rapid oblivion. Some favoured snapshots survived, and those
were the ones which went to swell the entries in my memory. However many deliberate
experiments I made, the result remained the same. I claim, therefore, that Lotze and
Wundt, and those who agree with them, are wrong as far as my memory is concerned.
The only fact to be explained is why the second snapshot is more easily taken and pre-
served than the first. S^Diligently study your stored i??iages, the creation of images, and
the growth of typical images, as far as all the senses are concerned. '\
If we turn to a related class of facts, those of summary feelings and combination feel-
ings, we come to a different conclusion. For instance, in reading a book, my opinion of
it seemingly ^wwj or changes as I read. So with the impression left on us by a visit in
the country. Objects have thus a constant influence on us, leaving traces which in a re-
mote way resemble composite photographs. However, this holds only of feelings.
118. — Images are soon Exhausted.
An image scarcely arrives but it is gone, developing and disappearing
within less than a second. [Tl'i-/.] This might be explained, and, to a certain
extent jightly, by saying that we dwell organically on images for a very short
time. We have speedily dismissed, pre-developed and re-developed pictures
millions of times \is this so .?], it is argued, and, therefore, we are now
unable to keep them before us. A different explanation appears more
satisfactory. In studying, for instance, one of Raphael's Madonnas, there
evolves a comprehensive summary feehng Hke the moods we have spoken
of in sec. 109. I did not study the picture down to its minutest details;
I was interested only in a general way. The attention given to sundry
aspects differed, and I know the picture consequently as a whole rather
than in its parts. When I stand before it, my attention is employed in
194 GENERAL ANALYSES
rapidly and tentatively sweeping over various portions, and these are not
fixed in my conception. In re-devclopment, then, what happens is this:
the outlines are vaguely re-instated, and along with these, or preceding
or succeeding them, is the persisting feeling which evolved on the occasion
when we took our many observations. This mood tells us, or can be made
to tell us, how we were affected in the first instance. Fitfully one minor
feeling relieves another, and these suggest the contents, or often they only
hint at them. The crude and incomplete sets of outlines, indicative of the
reality, hover about. Pieyond details here and there I observed little, as
my eyes, like search-lights, swept rapidly hither and thither. Hence
attention, — at least in those who have not made a special study of that
Madonna, — when directed towards this image, finds almost nothing to do,
and seeks for pastures new. \Test experinie7itally?\
The incompleteness and waywardness of the attention chiefiy account
for the im[)erfection of the re-produced system. Let us apply this explana-
tion to facts which are easily verified. Looking at a tree in winter we
observe manifold branches and twigs. The whole appearance is like that
of a gigantic coral. Could any one, I ask, reintegrate such a tree so com-
pletely that he could forthwith start counting the leafless boughs one by
one, as he might in a perfect after-image ? Most assuredly not. He has
only scrutinised the tree superficially ; he has guessed rather than observed ;
he has only scanned some of its outlines and its general appearance ; and
he has gazed more or less inattentively and intermittently now at this
detail and now at that. There was not one view ; but there were various
views, each incomplete.
\Valking along a country lane, I notice the grasses which line both sides.
What man could count the green blades and measure their length by
developing the image of the country lane ? This last case throws light on
the question of what a casual observer re-collects of the Madonna. Suppose
the whole figure covered with type such as that in which this book is printed.
Could the observer at a glance read the whole type off the picture ? Now
the letters only give concreteness to the multiplicity of details of which the
picture is made up, for just as the type yields a blur in the image, so the
average view will, except for general outlines and special details, be a blur.
Correct observation is the art of the specialist, and as a class of objects is
more and more exhaustively attended to by us ; as discrimination deals
with more and more details ; as innumerable details become well connected,
so observation yields increasingly higher results. For this reason a breeder
of horses recognises or connects a quantity of details where the non-
specialist hardly sees any. Similarly, the lady of fashion, after a single set
of observations lasting a second or two, can give a surprisingly detailed
account of her rival's dress. So also the captain on a stormy sea quickly
takes in the situation. In these cases recognition, being easy, proceeds
generally apace. Speaking broadly, we only see a thing so far as it is
known ; so far as it is not known it is not seen, but represents a blur and
is speedily forgotten. \Observe a large tiumber of objects with tJie purpose
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 195
of testing the above.\ This confirms what we learnt in sec. 44 as to the
superiority of systematic re-attention.
Experiment strengthens our conclusions. My eyes, in passing, catch one
imperfect glimpse of some gold chains in a shop window, and as I continue
my walk I say to myself, ''That is a jeweller's shop." The general im-
pression being one well assimilated, I do not trouble about a multitude of
details. My attention fastens on a few trivialities, and everything else is
left to be inferred. So also in the many individuals, vehicles and houses
which challenge my interest. I member this or that semi-familiar detail,
and ignore or conjecture the rest. In this way I recognise a whole street
at a glance, observing very litde as regards detail. In half-an-hour's walk
my eyes alight on several thousand objects, just noticing them or selecting
some peculiar feature. I hear a familiar person's tread, or catch a side
glance of his coat tail, and that satisfies me as well, as regards his identity,
as if I turned round and eyed him minutely. Again, my eyes pass by the
object on the table which they are in search of. [Test the above account.']
Observation, then, is not mechanical, but need-determined (sec. 78), and two-
thirds of a second is the average time spent in the contemplation of an
object. This can be thoroughly tested by examining a fine photographic
view. On repeatedly inspecting it, we unmistakably note that all is not
revealed to us at once,* and that it is only occasionally in ordinary life
that we are detained for several seconds by any scene or object. [Examine
a good photograph.] In frequent observations the same features, unfortu-
nately, attract us. [Test this.] When, therefore, an average image is
developed, it continues to exist only for a moment. It is otherwise when
we have made a special study of an object. The man whom I have ob-
served repeatedly, with a view to gathering a large number of details, can
be re-developed for a considerable period. [Test this.] Minute observation,
however, is rare, and the majority of images, therefore, no sooner develop
than they de-develop.
119. — Visuals, Audiles, Motiles, Emotiles and Mentals.
This brings us to the consideration of a subject which has been much
discussed. In some individuals visual images are developed with ease ; in
others auditory ones ; and so on. In the language we have adopted we
assert that in re-development attention is expended in proportion to the
possible completeness of the re-production. We also infer that the strong
visual is one who in the first instance attends efficiently, and that the
observer who stocks no details, can never be an expert visual.
* " Suppose that in the course of a few minutes we take half a dozen glances at a strange
and curious flower. We have not as many complex presentations which we might sym-
bolise, as F^, F-, F*. But rather at first only the general outline is noted, next the disposi-
tion of petals, stamens, etc., then the attachment of the anthers, form of the ovary, and
so on " (Ward, Psychology, 1886, p. 47, col. i). It must be added, however, that when
interest and training are absent, repeated observation frequently refers only to what has
been already observed. The ordinary man, in this respect, views the world as from a
round-about or a rocking horse. He is unlike travellers who eagerly penetrate jungles,
climb mountain-peaks, and cross deserts and seas.
196 GENERAL ANALYSES
Owing to this divergence in individuals, certain facts become obscured.
Suppose I re-devclop an incident. If I am a visual, I sec the scene; if an
audile, I hear what happened ; and if a motile, I rc-e?iact the event. {A}-e
you a visual, a/i audile or a motile f\ There are many persons, of course,
who possess the characteristics of all these types. To take an illustration,
I narrate to a child of four the story of " The Boy and the Wolf." When
I have finished, he begs me to tell him the tale again. I do so. He asks
me to repeat it once more, but I decline. He then starts telling me the
story. By his strange gaze, the curious sound of his words, and his gesti-
culations, he betrays that everything is enacting itself within him. He
seems to see the boy, the wolf and the sheep ; to hear their voices ; and to
move with them. He tells the story so well, so vividly, that I feel ashamed
of the baldness of my own narrative. Memory is, therefore, sometimes
strongly realistic in several departments of thought, though the degree of
realism varies with circumstance, with the individual and with age.
Some image nearly everything in terms of sight alone ; others re-produce
the living reality — the sight, sound and motion combined. There is
another method of re-collection within these. Some persons are able,
as it suits them, to image an object now in terms of sight and now in terms
of some other sense, and such persons have been styled Indifferents. For
example, in re-integrating a melody I have heard sung, I sing it to myself,
or I merely listen. In the first instance, the larynx will be affected ; but
not so in the second instance. For this reason I can hum one tune while
listening to another, or I am speaking while at the same time I am reading
by the application of pure sight. I trill r's rapidly while thinking in words ;
I combine sounds of every type while reading or listening imaginatively,
and I see one object before me while imaging another. Hence in re-
developing a duel which I witnessed, or in which I was one of the com-
batants, there need be no movements re-enacted and no sounds heard.
I picture the sight alone. For the rest, nothing can be concluded as to
the presence of a factor in average cases from what is done by persons
under excitement, by infants or by old men. \Test this paragraph step by
step?^
Bain {Senses and Intellect, 1894, p. 417) expresses a prevalent view, the truth of which
has yet to be proved, when he affirms that an idea is "a past experience, revived on the
same nervous tracks," and that "the renewed feehng occupies the very same parts, and
in the same manner, as the original feeling, and no other parts, nor in any other assign-
able manner" {ibid, p. 356). So Spencer, Psychology, 1890, i: "To remember a
motion iust made with the arm, is to have a feeble repetition of those internal states
which accompanied the motion — is to have an incipient excitement of those nerves which
were strongly excited during the motion" (p. 448) ; and what "we call ideas, are nothing
else than weak repetitions of the psychical states caused by actual impressions and
motions" (p. 456). This view in itself does not settle the question whether we re-instate
the visual or the motile aspect of an event, unless we assume that all memories, except as
to degree, are faithful and complete copies of jDrimary occurrences. A graver problem is
involved when we sense one thing and image another at the same time. In such cases
we have evidently two visual fields, while on Bain's theory, the sensory field should
apparently exclude the imaged one and vice versa. I have made repeated experiments to
assure myself that I am actually employed in seeing while a scene is re-developed, and
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 197
the results liave seemingly confirmed the simultaneous double view. [Exferiirtent in
these directions.'] As regards this matter Bain reasons, somewhat injudiciously, that
since most people when excited tend to act out their thoughts, therefore they do so when
they are not excited. He makes no attempt to settle the question by experiment or by
direct and extensive observation. Of the experiments mentioned in the text, there is one
which is extremely difficult. It is only rarely that I can hum one tune while listening to
another tune emanating, say, from a musical box. The greatest feat for me would be to
re-develop two tunes at once, or to listen simultaneously to two conversations. It will be
understood, of course, that it is easy to hear sounds while humming ; but that it is
difficult to weave them into a melody. See also Binet, V Image Consecutive et le
Souvenir Visuel, 1885 ; and Fere (Sensation et Mouvcment, 1887, p. 16), who asserts
that " the idea of a movement is the movement already begun."'
I have referred to visuals, audiles and motiles ; but no limit should be
drawn at these types of minds. We can, for instance, construct an emotile
class. In this category would be placed those in whom by preference the
emotional accompaniments of any event were re-developed. They would
re-collect in terms of emotion. All that was felt, the emotiles would con-
scientiously re-construct ; but what was not emotional they would apprehend,
like one who is short-sighted, indistinctly. One can, with advantage, sug-
gest a fifth and last class \discover other classes\ and name them mentals.
These only re-develop the irreducible minimum : words, faint summary
feeUngs and combination feelings. Through the restriction of attention,
they tend to eliminate the visual, audile, motile and emotile aspect. They
are aware only of feelings which indicate re-development of happenings,
and which have been already referred to as summary feelings and combina-
tion feelings.
Galton [Statistics of Mental Imagery, 1880) was the first to draw attention to the
question of visualising. See also Angell, Tho7ig/it and Imagery, 1897 ; Aubert, Die
innerliche Sprache, 1890 ; Baldwin, Internal Speech and Song, 1893 5 Bentley, The
Memoty Image and its Qualitati7)e Fidelity, 1899 ; Biervliet, Images Sensitives et Images
Matrices, 1897; Binet, D Image Consecutive et le Souvenir Visuel, 1885; Binet, Dii
Raisonnetnent, 1886, pp. 15-53 ; Binet, VIntensite des Images Mentales, 1887 ; Binet,
La Concurrence des Etats Psychologiques, 1 890 ; Binet, Psychologic des Grands Calcula-
tettrs etJotieu7-s d'Echecs, 1894; Binet and Charcot, Type Visuel, 1893; Bourdon, Les
Phcnomenes Intellectticls, 1895 ; Dearborn, A Study of Imaginations, 1898 ; Dugas,
Les Differents Types if Images, 1895 ; Erdmann and Dodge, Ueber das Lesen, 1898 ;
Granville, Secret of a Good Memory, 1880 ; Heller, Zur B linden- Psycho logic, 1895 ;
Hitschmann, Ueber Begriindung einer Blindenpsychologie von einem Blinden, 1892 ;
Lay, Mental Imagery, 1898; Paulhan, Images et Mouvej?ients, 1883; Paulhan, Le
Langage Interieur, 1886 ; Paulhan, IJ Attention et les Images, 1893 ; Philippe,
Images Mentales, 1897 ; Philippe, Les Trans for /nations de nos Images Mentales, 1897 ;
Raehlmann, Die Entwickelung der Gesichtswahrnehmungen bei Kindern, etc., 1897;
Scripture, Arithmetical Prodigies, 1891 ; Secor, Visual Reading: a Study in Mental
hnagcry, 1900 ; Strieker, Sprachvorstellungen, iSSo ; Strieker, Bewegutigsvorstcllungen,
1882; Sinc\iGt, Stir les Images Matrices, 1884; Sirickex, De la Parole, 1886; and Talbot,
An Attempt to Train the Visual Memory, 1897.
120. — The Matter of Memory.
I have lightly spoken of visuals, audiles and motiles, as if all primary
systems were equally re-producible. The slightest attempt at introspection
iqs general analyses
will, however, discourage such a conclusion. Let any one endeavour to re-
develop smells or tastes, and he will most probably find himself baffled.
[ExJ>cn')ncnt.^ This being the case, we must ascertain with some exactness
what, and to what extent, primary systems are normally re-developed.
In the first place we note that children are generally strong visuals —
whatever else they may be, while with adults, visual imagery also takes the
most prominent place. \^Ex/^er^^fle/lt.^^ Owing both to education, to
practice and to congenital disposition there are undoubtedly considerable
differences in visualising capacity ; but these do not affect the main facts.
Next in order to sight, comes hearing. As we shall learn from sec. 120b,
there is little agreement concerning the audile memory. For my part I
cannot help feeling that I can re-member the voices of friends, though I
find it difficult to hear them say much. I also appear to distinguish in
memory all the degrees from a whisper to a loud sound. Moreover, my
sound memory extends to all kinds of sounds, including many which I
cannot in any way imitate. As with sight, so with sound. Sounds of any
kind that have been but just heard, can be re-developed with comparative
ease, fulness and accuracy.* \_ExJ^e}-iment.^
When we come to smell systems, we find that many persons at least
cannot re-develop them. In my case, what little smell memory I appear to
have, consists probably of an impression of the effect of various smells upon
me, together with slight nasal activity. Neither in dream-life nor in ima-
gination have I smelt unless a substance having smell was present. At
the same time, the recency of the actual smelling, excluding particles still
lodged in the nostrils, does not assist smell images.! \Experimcnt as to
both recog)iitio)i and re-collection of scents. '\
What is true of smell, holds of taste.; Within my observation I have
never caught myself tasting anything in the imagination. Taste, then, is
also most likely excluded, or nearly so, from the secondary realm. §
To complete the crude orthodox classification, we have to add a word
as to re-developed touch systems. As regards these latter, it seems pro-
bable that touches are as little re-developed as smells and tastes. Other
sensations, such as those of temperature, of the muscles, of general sensi-
bility, are equally difficult to re-member, and it accords with this that the
re-membrance of pleasure-pain is usually out of the question.
However, while so few of the classes of sensations appear in a secondary
form, summary feelings and combination feelings share with sight and
sound the honour of occupying the secondary plane. Mere sight images,
apart from an aura of feeling, have scarcely a place in the memory. We
may note also that summary feelings, in comparison with other sensations,
* Zwaardemaker, Der Umfa^ig des Gehdrs in den versc/iiedenen Lehcnsjafu-eii, 1894.
t Zwaardemaker, Die Physiologie des Geruchs, 1 895 ; and Passy, Revue Genera/e sur les
Sensations O //actives, 1S95.
JKiesow, Bcitriige ztir physiologischen Psychologic des Geschriiackssinnes, 1 894-6.
§ Fechner (Elemenie, i860, ii) says that he can only re-member colours connected with
striking impressions, and then only doubtfully and hazily (p. 470). His wife could easily
re-member tastes and smells (p. 482).
SYSTEAfS AS RE-DEVELOPED 199
persist for a very long period. [ Thmk of various colours^ sounds, tastes,
smells, etc.]
Naturally the question uppermost at this point must be why only certain
senses reach the secondary plane, and why sight is the most favoured
sense. Comparing sight with sound, certain sight-favouring factors are
educible. Sound, unlike sight, offers to observation no continuous plane,
gives the three dimensions in one, and is only casually traceable as regards
any object or combination. The eyes, too, can fix a view more freely and
for a more prolonged period. So also sight offers more in respect of
details, quality and quantity. The consequence of this is, according to
ch. 2, that attention being far more occupied with sights than with other
sensations, memory is most complete in matters of sight. For similar
reasons, the sense of touch is inferior from the memory point of view.
The touch-field * is very limited. I.e., restricted largely to the hands ;
it is complicated with muscular and other sensations over an extensive
area ; the detail is ill-defined and not easily met with a second time ; the
impression made evaporates almost at once, leaving no scope for the
recency factor ; as compared with sight, little detail is given at a time ; and
continuous attention very quickly causes the cessation of the touch sensa-
tions. [7^^/.] Factors such as these also account for the inferiority of
the other sensations in respect of memory.
Great mobility has also to be taken into account. The two eyes can
rapidly move upward and downward, to right and left, without involving
the movement of any other structure. The ear is in this respect less
favourably situated. It cannot be shut like the eye; and in normal
individuals pricking the ears is the utmost that the ear can do in the way
of movement. Hence the ear is more dependent on other functionings,
though it is largely independent of angles and walls.
Mobility is at a very low stage as regards the sense of smell. We can
only to a slight degree widen or contract the nostrils, while regulation of
the breathing through the nose is almost the only independent mobile
factor. At the same time we cannot easily shut out smells ; and when
smells pervade a place in which we are, the olfactory sense refuses to act.
It is, therefore, easy to understand how inferior smell is to vision.
The sense of touch has also serious drawbacks. First, only certain
far-off portions of the organism, such as the finger-tips, are highly sensitive.
These are also mobile ; but not in the same sense as are the eyes, since
the handling of anything by the fingers generally requires movements of
parts or of the whole of the body. The movements, too, if anything is to
be observed, must be somewhat slow and deliberate. The eye, on the
contrary, rapidly takes in a whole landscape.
As the superiority of the sense of sight is so evident as regards obtain-
ing information effectively, that sense is naturally the most active and
fruitful. Hence we can understand that, other things being equal, the
* Henri, Recherches sur la Localisation des Sensations Tactiles, 1895 ; and Weber, Der
Tastsinn, 1849.
200 GENERAL ANALYSES
sense of sight sliould play the leading part on the memory stage. Again,
the mobility we have spoken of touches secondary as well as primary
systems. Not only does movement exist in pre-membering ; but it shows
itself in re-nicmbering, though to a slighter extent. The exact data on this
point are still lacking. ^Vhat seems to happen is that only the initial steps
in every movement are repeated. Thus instead of the eyes, in secondary
vision, boldly moving to right or to left, there is, on this hypothesis, only
the strain or impulse which goes with the inception of the movement.
Hence the secondary sweep of the eye resembles the primary sweep in
every detail, except completeness. The movements being essentially alike
in both sweeps, we have essentially the same results.* It is in this fact
of independent mobility that we shall probably find the explanation of our
being chiefiy visuals as regards the secondary realm ; and it is this also
which explains the perfection of language-memory, since here there is
available, besides the organ of sight, the highly mobile lingual apparatus.
Since in smell, in taste, in temperature and in touch, independent mobility
is so small, sense action would only be repeated in those directions to a
minimal degree, if at all, and hence there would be but minimal memory
as regards these senses. With reference to pleasure-pain the same fact is
fairly clear. Pleasure-pain being of the nature of a general disturbance or
shock, it will only be appreciably re-developed when there is a repeated
general disturbance, i.e., under the influence of excitement. Reviewing
this intricate aspect of the question, the conclusion seems warranted that
the difficulty of re-exciting a function, together with the high state of
development of that function from the point of view of attention, are the
factors which determine the fulness of memory. \^Hoiv is tlie case of
Fechnef^s wife to be explained f\
When we come to the feelings of delight and sadness, hope and despair,
emphasis and doubt, — feelings which lend thought its warmth and its life,
— we are tempted to deny that these feelings have secondary character-
istics at all. We may be induced to call them mere repetitions of feelings
which were formerly felt. We might argue that a man's eyes and feiitures
speak eloquently of his feelings when he is absorbed in memories, and
that, therefore, we have present in such a case pre-developed feelings and
not re-developed ones. We might further insist that these feelings, as re-
vealed by introspection, have a purely primary character, and suggest
nothing secondary.
In a sense the view just put forward is correct. The truth appears to
be that the fiiatter of pi-imary and that of secondaiy systems is strictly o?ie.
The feelings, accordingly, as well as the sensations, always remain the
same whether it be a question of pre-developing or re-developing. Thus
visual and aural systems of a secondary order differ in no sub-
stantial respect from visual and aural systems of a primary order. In
* Ferrier [Functions of the Brain, 1886, p. 463) says : " When we think of a large or
distant object the eyes are divergent or parallel ; when wc think of a small or near object
the optic axes converge." \frcst with mirror. "\
^- YSTEMS AS RE-DE VEL OPED 20 1
memory we have merely repetition. Where influences beyond the body are
■concerned, as in sight or hearing, certain parts of the action fail to be re-
peated ; whilst in the case of feelings or organic sensations the repetition
may be complete. Hence primary and secondary systems offer the same
matter to inspection, and only the setting or the environment is changed ;
and this conclusion again confirms our belief that the motor activity implied
in primary systems recurs in secondary systems.
The question thus arises whether there is any essential difference between
thought and action. Taking a normal instance, this seems to favour the
existence of such a difference ; but we may choose examples which intro-
duce considerable doubt. For instance, resting in the tall grass by the
roadside, I hear some one approach. Though he is alone, he is speaking
aloud and gesticulating freely, as if he were engaged in an exciting conversa-
tion. Assuming novv for the moment that this individual cannot image
sights, and we have a man the matter of whose thought in no way differs
from primary activity of a normal character. Thought, in this case, is
"acting," in the actor's sense ; though the "actor "is here an extempore
playwright also. Such thought is indistinguishable from the actions of an
engineer who, with his hands, is thinking out some piece of work. Other
instances illustrate the same point. We may sing aloud a song that we
know, or recite aloud a favourite poem, or quote to some one a remark
we had made on a previous occasion. In these cases what is re-membered
is pre-membered, and, as far as the "matter" of thought and action is
concerned, no difference is discernible. As I am writing now, I audibly
whisper the words to be written. Here the voice is merely lowered in
the process of thinking. However, this lowering may continue, until I
alone can hear myself; and, further, the movements of throat, tongue,
teeth and lips which are so frequently observed and so difficult to avoid,
may apparently disappear in thought speech. All that we note, then, in
nori7ial thought processes, is a very loiv degree and restricted range of activity.
A microphone might, for this reason, betray our innermost word thoughts,
and our whole "inner" world will perhaps one day be open to others.
Those who do not accept such conclusions must point out the essential
difference between loud and silent soliloquising.
If we once admit that the matter of thought and action is at best only
distinguishable in degree, we may further determine the precise meaning
of the degree. Seeing that speech may be loud or soft, and accompanied
or unaccompanied by gesticulation, we learn that thought may be simplified
along two lines. The sensation or pre-integral may be reduced to its
simplest form, e.g., a grey outline may take the place of the coloured com-
plex ; and, secondly, thought, as was remarked in the last section, may
only repeat the visual, the audile or some other sitigle aspect. That
simplification will normally take place, is evident from two considerations.
It is inconvenient to one self and to others to utter one's thoughts aloud
or to gesticulate ; and it is also against the nature of the need-determined
attention process which we have dwelt upon in ch. 2, to elaborate anything
202 GENERAL ANAL YSES
more than is necessary. Hence thought will naturally tend to be simplified
and simple. In tJiought, then, we have a siiuplified and lessened discharge.
We, therefore, reach again the conclusion that, in the memory, motor
activity is present in a simplified form.
The re-development of all that is directly dependent on the body and
independent of the body's environment, as summary feelings and combina-
tion feelings or, again, our bodily actions, raises no difficulties, since the
body is ever-present. Embarrassment, however, arises when visual and
audile images are in question. Here the matter is generally in part of extra-
bodily origin, and the problem needs special elucidation. There appear to
be only two probable explanations. The light-dust and the sound-dust, as
happens in dreams, may be elaborated into certain definite images ; or else
the primary effect leaves traces which allow of re-elaboration. The latter
of these courses seems the more probable in the case of normal thought.
We are not justified in asserting that we hear in the ear, any more than
in saying that the mouth is the stomach ; that is to say, the sensory organs
are not the senses, and sensations are hence the outcome of manifold
transformations. When, therefore, a particular modification of the brain
is centrally stimulated, we obtain the same result as in afferent stimulation,
minus the full effect on the sensory termini.
There is one great difficulty in the theory of simplified and lessened dis-
charges. As regards feelings of every kind, it is generally admitted that
one class of feeling, such as sadness, excludes its opposite, joy. In this
spirit we are told by Ferrier that "we cannot feign grief with a smiling
countenance" {The Functions of the Brain, 1886, p. 461). As regards sight
and hearing, however, it is a plausible surmise that sight sensations do not
exclude s!r;ht images. Observation speaks with no uncertain tones on this
subject. We may be engaged in continuous reading, and yet our thoughts
may be roaming in distant visual regions. We may be visually regarding
one object while deliberately awaking sight images. We may, for ex-
perimental purposes, pre-member and re-member sights at the same time,
or at least we may feel convinced that we are doing so. I have on in-
numerable occasions tested the possibility of seeing one thing and imaging
something else, and the evidence always favoured the double process
theory. Against this latter notion one can only contend that the evidence
is unsatisfactory. Visual sensations, as we know, persist for some little
time after the stimulus has been withdrawn, and visual images only require
a maximum of about three quarters of a second to be elaborated. Under
these circumstances, probability demonstrates nothing. We may be look-
ing on and off when we think that we are looking continuously. The only
satisfactory course is rapidly to explore with the eyes one picture full of
detail, while at the same time re-developing, say, a long walk in equal
detail and continuously. Even then we should have to be careful that
pre-membering and re-membering do not occupy between them the one
simultaneous total field of sight. However, experiment alone should settle
this matter.
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 203
An additional argument in favour of our position is that the primary and
secondary field of observation are alike in extent, and that granting slight
variations, we cannot in imagination see or hear more than in reality.
\Test t/us.'\ The range of sight or hearing is the same in sensing and in
imaging ; in fact, the latter is as a repetition of the former. In secondary
speech I note the same pauses and changes in tone as in ordinary speech,
though sounds are more frequently slurred. \^Exa7nine.'\ In secondary
sight I observe the same method as in ordinary sight of turning at a certain
time rate from picture to picture, and from one part of a picture to another
part, while the images are developed in the positions in which they were
originally observed. Often, indeed, the memory time rate is slower than
the observation time rate.
To summarise this long section. The matter of memory and reality is
one, "primary" and "secondary" being terms which refer to modes and
arrangement of combinations and not to the material of those combinations.
Nevertheless the two realms are not strictly co-extensive, for sight, sound and
feeling alone appear in re-development, and then generally in a vaguer and
simplified form. The reason for the exceptions just referred to we have
traced to the differences in the apparatus of sense, the more frequent
employment of these apparatus and their greater independence and more
conspicuous usefulness. We have also seen it to be probable that sensa-
tions and images which occupy the same position as to space always exclude
each other, since the primary and secondary field are one. \Question tJiis^
A few remarks as to the third dimension imaged will be found in sec. 169, while some
reference to motion as sensed is made in sec. 174. Here I shall treat of two matters, the
first one being the nature of imaged motion.
i2oa. — Motion as Imaged.
I have made frequent allusions to the universally admitted fact that we ordinarily
image motion by re-developing momentary impressions as does a photograph. I never
doubted that one could readily image objects in motion if one so desired. liowever, on
attempting to do so, I found myself face to face with a new set of problems. The
final results of the investigation are contained in what follows. I can, for instance, with-
out difficulty obtain a continuous imaged view of the objects in any room I well know, a
view nearly equal in character to the one procured by ordinary movements of the eyes,
head and body. By looking at the pavement for some yards ahead of me, I can, on shutting
my eyes, image the visual changes for that distance while I am walking. Looking at
well known shops under similar circumstances, I can apparently pass by them and observe
the changes which ordinarily result from such movements, and this I can do almost to
perfection when on the top of a moving tram-car along a well known route. Given, there-
fore, what is continuous and well known, and I can image it as passing along ; but if
what is continuous is not well known, then I can obtain merely a series of pictures. I
cannot image a carriage or a person as moving along ; for if I try to do so, I see a carriage
or a person in a certain fixed attitude. Nor can I ordinarily image anybody or anything
moving or acting in an environment that does not move with them. The reason for this
inability seems to be that in imaging that which moves continuously, as the view of shops,
we image no environment in addition ; while in imaging a carriage moving along a road,
we can only do so, if we image the carriage and the houses which the carriage passes by.
Hence unless we do, or can, re-develop in progressive order the enormous quantity of
204 GENERAL ANALYSES
<iualitatively distinguished sights wliich we observe on such occasions, we shall see i.
stationary carriage. In actual observation this happens when the lights of a train are
seen from a distance at night time, for then we have no decisive means of telling whether
the train is stationary or not. No^v as only the essential portion of what we see is normally
re-developed, i.e., that which falls within the focus of interest and oljservation, and not
the vast mass of what surrounds it, it follows that images must ordinarily appear as fi.xed.
In my case this is so, and though I have experimented at some length in the matter, I can
see no escape from the above conclusions. For this reason, I am quite unable even im-
mediately after close observation, to image a thing as acting or moving ; nor can I image
my own leg or foot movements while walking. [ Walk in imaipnation, counting steps, and
compare ; thus fol/o7i< second-hand of ivatch.'l Fallingwithin my own observation, I only know
of two classes of exceptions to the above rule. In dreams, as we shall see, we make up
our setting, and hence the required conditions for imaged movements exist. In the
waking state, on the other hand, I image, or seem to image, movement when under
considerable excitement. Thus when I vividly imagine'a physical struggle or a sensational
scene, the event seems to take place before my image eyes. In all such instances, how-
ever, not only is the emotional aspect realistically developed ; but the movements are
plainly acted by me, while the setting is probably constructed as in dreams. \^lliink of
bicycle, t7-am, train and cart in motion ; vieasure and count in imagination objects you know,
and then verify. '\ We may, therefore, sum up by saying that imaged visual motion,
depends on completeness of re-development, and that in proportion to the absence of such
completeness, we are less and less able to image motion. Only this should be added that
there is good reason to think that most persons have too imperfect a memory to image
things moving in a stationary environment. This is, however, a matter for careful
scrutiny, as I find that with shut eyes I can follow extremely well known movements such
as the slow doubling of the arm. \^Test the whole pa7-agraph step by step.'\
Further examination of the problem of imaged motion suggests another obstacle to the
images rivalling the sensations. If we see a greyhound running a course, some sixty
seconds may pass before the course comes to an end. If we are close by, we notice con-
tinuously the chief features in every one of his movements. In correct memory, then, it
should take sixty seconds for the imaged dog to finish his course, while his movements
should be observable step by step. For my part I find that in me the sense of time is
entirely wanting as regards visual imagery, and that, therefore, I cannot image motion
generally, since without the time sense all correct imaged motion is impossible. This
difficulty appears to be a fundamental one, and seems to hold of all persons. The matter,
however, must be probed by many before an emphatic pronouncement can be made.
\_Experiment.']
Strieker {Beivcgungsvorstelliittgen, 1882) mentions in the preface to his excellent little
book that he finds it difficult to image motion. He holds that motor ideas are due to
feelings in the muscles, and not to either sight or touch (p. 3) ; that in thinking of oneself
as moving, muscle feelings are essential (pp. 12-3) ; and that the same holds of re-develop-
ment as a whole (p. 18). From this he concludes generally that since all action, primary
or secondary, is connected with muscle feelings, therefore men have, by invariable
association, an irresistible tendency to explain motion of every kind by reference to a force
which is supposed to propel things.
i2ob. — Thinking in Words.
Having dealt with the nature of imaged motion, we may enter upon our second inquiry,
the nature of word images or thinking in words. Strieker (Sprachvorstellungen, 1S80)
reasons along some such line as the following. With the re-development of letters
or words are connected certain feelings in the muscles of articulation. These feelings have
their source in impulses coming from the neural speech centre, and pass through the
motor nerves to the muscles, while these impulses again enter consciousness, and we localise
them in the muscles (p. loo). Strieker argues in detail that all persons have those muscle
feelings when thinking in words, and he also reasons that only exceptional persons hear
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 205
their voice in tliinking. We think, so to speak, in muscle feelings. Accordingly he
reasons that we re-develop letters, and not words (p. 85) ; that neither two like letters, nor
two like words, can be developed at one and the same time (p. 86) ; and that when
we read one thing and recite another, it really is as if two persons used one typewriter
simultaneously (p. 90). Ballet {Le Langage Inlen'ettr, 1886) almost dismisses Strieker's
point of view with the barren and unsupported statement that the Austrian professor is a
motile. It will, however, require a great deal of scholarship to affect Strieker's main
positions. Dodge {Wortvorstclhtugcn, 1896) usefully suggests that Strieker's innervations
are more probably touch feelings (p. 27) ; he also points out that, as in eating, the lips are
frequently moved without our thinking of letters (p. 34) ; and he inclines to the view that
what distinguishes speech from other motor elements is " a kind of unlocalised, paled,
acoustic image " (p. 35). I feel diffident in taking sides. The one thing that seems
clear to me is that my word thought is aural in the ordinary sense of that word. I hear
what I think, and these sounds have the qualities of the sounds which they reflect. I
often observe the muscle feelings referred to by Strieker ; but by no means always. When
I am thinking while I am reading, or when I am absorbed, I consider it almost certain
that no muscle feelings exist and that the thought is entirely aural. So, too, I still believe
that two sets of words, repetitions of each other, may be recited simultaneously, one set
being heard and the other spoken. However, the whole problem of speech images awaits
yet fuller study by men of Strieker's scholarly character.
121. — The Growth of the Memory.
All development is need-determined, and primary and secondary activity,
as we learnt in the last section, are indistinguishable from one another in
all but circumstance. In the growth of the memory, therefore, we merely
trace the stages of development as far as repetition (or continuous activity)
enters into the problem.
In the abstract it might be imagined that repetition m:ikes no difference
or a great difference to any function. For example, fabulous quantities of
water may flow through an iron pipe without much affecting it, while, on the
contrary, a breath will cause an elaborate house of cards to tumble to pieces.
Going to our data, as supplied by our knowledge of the human organism,
we find that repetition is need-determined and has only appreciable
advantages when it spells vigorous activity. In the latter case, a system is
developed with greater ease a second time, and from this it follows that
much vigorous repetition along many lines alone makes complex processes
such as are involved in thought and action, possible. Consequently in the
adult, combinations (acts or thoughts) will readily develop.
The manifold functions of the body at birth are already part of the great
fact we are dealing with ; and in so far as exercise assisted in their forma-
tion, we might call these inwciiow^ pre-natal memories. However, as far as
extensive re-collection is concerned, the new-born infant is very far below
the adult. We, therefore, begin our examination with the child after birth.
The lowest kind of memory which is at first prominent, may be called
exercise memory. For the first few months of its post-natal life, the child's
muscular system is busily exercised. Fingers, hands, wrists, arms ; toes,
feet, legs ; the head and the trunk ; the voice ; are exercised, so as to
develop to the utmost the muscular system. The consequence of this is
that the adult can scarcely effect a movement which is new to him, and
:2o6 GENERAL ANALYSES
hence his marvellous quickness and readiness to move portions of his
organism or to work out problems (sec. 19).
The next form we may call detention incmory or 7-ecognitwn. In the
exercise memory this recognition is also implied in the sustaining of a
particular class of movement. Still, detention occurs more especially or
more strikingly in the first stages of seeing, hearing, etc. Any relatively
familiar sight, for instance, detains the eyes in proportion to the quantity
of repetitions. Thus the child grows to recognise its hands, its mother, its
most faithful companions, and its special surroundings so far as they
interest it. And, again, response to sounds becomes more and more
effective with repetition. Exercise memory has large scope in the adult,
and is evidently the most primitive kind of memory. When we come
to detention memory a higher stage is reached : it is the stage of primi-
tive wonder, and wonder, we know, is the beginning of wisdom. As
is well known, it is easier to recognise a thing than it is to re-develop
it in its absence.
Advancing, we come to action jnemorv. By a series of need-determined
feats, the infant begins to indulge in combined movements, such as using
both hands together or looking at its own busy hands, or interpreting a
sound as issuing from the person looked at. It is owing to this absence
of combined activity that the infant readily responds to touch, and that it
attempts only later to co-ordinate sense impressions. In these primitive
instances we have combined exercise and combined recognition rather than
action. It is only when the child conveys things to its mouth or rubs its
eyes when sleepy, or when, again, the eyes begin actively exploring, that
we have action. Out of such small beginnings more and more comphcated
actions develop until we marvel at the wonderful dexterity of the adult.
Given simple actions such as those enumerated, and it is easy to see how
the most complicated actions follow. Exercise of parts ends in combined
functional exercise until it is difficult to think of any adult's action which
does not largely consist of memories.
Increasing in complexity, we meet with recency memory. Here some little
time elapses between one act and its repetition, several acts of a different
kind being perhaps interposed. For instance, an infant not quite five
months old, touches a dinner plate which is somewhat removed from it, and
after a while repeats the action several times. Or else it readily looks in a
direction in which it has been recently looking. From such germs develop
the complex states which we have discussed under the heading of Recency
(sec. I loa). What we do, allowing for needs, not only tends to be repeated
at once, but also after a short interval. Here we have made another
advance. In the three previous kinds of memories repetition was immedi-
ate ; in this kind of memory it is mediate. It proves that a brain area re-
mains sensitive for a certain period. Accordingly, as the infant grows, it
not only tends to repeat a movement or a word incessantly ; but it tends
to recur to them repeatedly soon after the repetition, and in this way the
memory is stocked. Hence a combination tends to be retained or resist
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 207
dis-memberment, and combinations, therefore, take firm root and are
readily re-developed.
\nfree memory or ordinary memory, we have only the above mentioned
factors combined and developed. On being presented with something, the
child has learnt to say unintelligently "tah." Later on it will volunteer in-
telligently " Thank you." Granted such recurrence, and the most complex
speech, made up as it is of re-developed words and familiar turns, is readily
explained. As we saw in ch. 4, excitement and development, under the
pressure of needs, explain the thoughts and actions of an adult, and such
excitement and development already exist in the infant. With the re-
development of A, B is made possible, with that C, and so on. Given,
then, the existence of a need seeking satisfaction, and the re-development
of A will be followed by B, and that by C. The chief change which takes
place in the period between infant life and adult life is the storing of the
memory and the simplification of acts when they do not need to be bold
and explicit, e.g., in thought. The adult's memory is, then, the child's
repeated activity expanded and yet simplified. Instead of thinking aloud
and gesticulating, the adult thinks largely in summary feelings and combina-
tion feelings.
Several authors distinguish between re-developing and knowing. Thus v/e say that we
re-member seeing an intimate friend yesterday ; but that we know, believe or doubt, that we
have seen him previously. To know something is to "connect " it with something else.
Herbert Spencer says : " To ask a man whether he remembers that the sun shines, that
fire burns, that iron is hard, would be a misuse of language" (Psychology, 1890, i, p.
450). Again : " A remembrance implies a consciousness, and a consciousness implies a per-
ceptible duration" (?/5/(/, p. 447). See also : Allen, The Pecognitiott Theory of Perception,
1896; A.\\qx\, Pecognition, 1896; Bergson, Memoire et Peconnaissance, 1S96; Bourdon,
La Peconnaissance, 1S95 ; Dearborn, Pecogtiidon under Objective Peversal, 1899 ; Hoff-
ding, Zur Tkeorie des Wiedererkennens , 1892; Lehmann, Ueber Wiedererkennen,
1888 ; Lehmann, Studien iiber das IVidererkennen, 1891 ; Malapert, La Perception de
la Pessemblance, 1898 ; Ward, Psychology, 1886, p. 63 ; and Washburn, The Process of
Recognition, 1897.
12 2. — The EleiMents of Memory.
A few sections back it was pointed out that as the individual matures,
so his newly acquired knowledge is new only in a relative sense, and that
it is because of this that he observes and memorises quickly. An im-
portant truth follows as a consequence. In chs. 2 and 4 we asserted that
perceptions and ideas are not stored. We have seen since how absurd it
would be to stow away these complex systems, of which but a microscopic
portion is ever re-developed, and it was also suggested in those chapters
that sense systems do not differ in kind. That is, just as one who uses a
type-writer employs the same steel letters over and over again in copying a
book, so we imagine that combinations are produced neurally by some
simple process. The number of elements is perhaps comparatively small,
and the elaboration of these into particular wholes gives sight, hearing,
memory, etc. In fresh reactions, therefore, only the new, or the relatively
new, would create obstacles to assimilation, while every sensation or image
2o8 GENERAL ANAL YSES
is, on this hypothesis, a l)rand-new synthetised set of elements. Hence in
the Hfe of adults totally new occurrences are rare, and re-development is
rapid on account of this. We, therefore, easily re-develop what is old,
though much attention must be devoted to learning what is new, and this
explains the tendency of traces to be wiped out. It also makes it clear
that we are not bound to assume the re-development of countless events,
and that there is no justification for the assertion that a system has not
been re-developed for a long time. The same components, more or less
compounded, forui part of hosts of reactions. What remains to be explained
is the method of the composition of the parts ; but this must be left to the
physiologist.
123. — AV'hat constitutes a Pf.rfect Memory?
Secondary, like primary, systems have a part to play in the satisfaction
of needs, and hence the limitations of secondary systems are of importance.
The results arrived at in the last section but one, assist us here ; for the
best memory is the highest memory spoken of there. A good memory tvill
readily retain much for a long time, and the image will faithfully and com-
pletely represent the sensation, being neither distorted, 7ior simplified, nor in
any 7vay changed. These desirable characteristics are by no means univer-
sally observable. Some persons find it difficult to learn anything by heart :
they can retain but little, and that for a short time only. The image, too,
in many cases neither faithfully nor completely represents the sensation,
being distorted, simplified and changed in various ways. Retention repre-
sents, however, but one aspect of memory. It is not enough to retain ; one
must be able to re-develop at will what has been retained. That is to say,
assuming adequate retentiveness, there remains the need of adequate re-
development. In a perfect memory any fact needed develops at once and with-
out effort. In ordinary re-collection, on the contrary, several factors have
to be considered. We may be compelled to employ measurable effort ; we
may require to go through a good deal of haphazard re-development before
the needed system develops ; we may have to fly to some closely related
fact before being successful ; and we may be unable to re-instate a system,
though we recognise the relevant detail we are in search of when we
stumble upon it. A perfect memory, then, retains well and re-develops
readily what is relevant. My own memory well illustrates the defects of
memory. One Spring time I had examined large numbers of the wood
anemone, seeing multitudes of specimens day by day. The following
Spring I went into the country and saw by a brook what seemed an un-
known flower. This stranger proved to be the wood anemone. The
memory had completely faded, retention having been at its minimum.
With respect to the absence of a serviceable memory I may refer to the
following incident. I thought that a want of retentiveness might be over-
come by repeated committal to memory. I consequently read three times
consecutively a certain work in which I was specially interested. The
result was that while, as I read, very much was regarded as familiar and
S Y STEMS A S RE- DE VEL OPED 209
known, yet hardly anything could be freely re-developed. In a perfect
memory, on the contrary, a single reading would have sufficed to ensure
both adequate retention and relevant re-development. \Test collectively as
regards goodfiess of memory. '\
124. — Primary and Secondary Series Distinguished.
Certain cases suggest a solution of the problem of finally distinguishing
between memory and reality or secondary and primary combinations. For
instance, I have several times thought of a face without being able to deter-
mine whether I had seen that face in a picture or in life, or whether it was
the work of the imagination. In such cases I have for days most minutely
examined my state until the face was localised in some series. [Repeat thisi\
Localisation, and that alone, seemed to settle the order of facts to which
the face belonged. If I connect my vision with a certain house I frequent,
I speak of the face as being re-developed and real ; if I re-integrate a
picture to which it belongs, I recognise that it is a copy of a copy ; and so
on. We are, therefore, right in speaking of a world order in which all
happenings find their allotted position. Memory, imagination, dream life
and reality would thus be determined by the place which any fact occupies,
and by that alone. If found at one point of the world web, we should speak
of co-existence ; if at another point, of succession. Everything would
depend on the company in which the data were met. For this reason,
as we have seen above, an unlocalised fact cannot be said to belong to one
group rather than to another. For instance, suppose I member a beautiful
palace. I find no room for it in the connected series of visual impressions
which are streaming into my open eyes, and I exclude it, therefore, from
that order. I cannot, at the same time, re-integrate a picture, a fancy or an
event into which it logically fits. I can, however, tra.ce the palace to
a set of happenings between yesterday and to-day, and I fix its position
accordingly, and speak of it as a dream image. It is in this manner that
we generally proceed. We declare a thing to be real or objective, omitting
indirect thought, because it forytis the fringe of the total world order. For the
same reason we speak of something as long past, because of its position in
the series. Time and space, then, are words which indicate the relation in
which facts stand to one another. (Sees. 182-3.) ^^'^ the widest sense,
therefore, we are entitled to regard reality, memory, imagination, dream
life, time and space, as constituents in a world order, the relative position
determining in each case the sub-order to which a particular combination
belongs. In other words, we classify a fact according to its setting.*
* This is Ward's view, Psychology, 18S6, p. 63 ; also Ribot's, Mcmoire, 18S1, pp. 32-46 ;
and Vaschide's, Localisation, 1896. In a qualified manner Wundt {Psychologic, 1893, "»
p. 461 ) agrees that localisation in a series is one of the two signs of the past, the other and
more important factor being, according to him, the diminished intensity of the image.
14
2IO GENERAL ANALYSES
125. — After-Images,* ktc.
The student who has ^^fl(?</ eyesight,! and only he, should verify for him-
self some of the undermentioned facts and determine them in greater detail.
He should vary the conditions as to colour, time, distance, size, shape and
celerity. Quick, exact and exhaustive examination, together with an apti-
tude to change the method of attack, are to be practised by the learner as
well as by the teacher. Traditional science is no science at all.
(i) Positive and Negative After-images. — I look for a moment at the
incandescent electric light before me. Then shutting my eyes, I can,
without any effort, distinctly see the outlines of the glowing wires in a
slightly fainter colouring. Keeping my eyes closed, the imaged wires, after
some seconds, fade and disappear without changing colour ; but opening
my eyes onto a white sheet of paper I see the image again, but greyish in
colour like damp white paper. As I try to fix it, the image moves upward,
apparently because my eyes do so. If, however, I open and close the eye-
lids rapidly, with the gaze on the white sheet, I can see the fully coloured
after-image on the paper. On blue paper I achieve the same result. As
I move my eyes, so the image moves. Looking at the light and then
directly at the sheet, I first see nothing ; but slowly the image develops.
Quick movements of the eyelids maintain and bring back the image for
some little while. |
Soon after rising in the morning — the eyes are then well-rested — I
glance inadvertently at the dark-green Venetian blinds, and discover a
moment afterwards the positive after-image of those blinds on the wall to
which my attention is casually directed. Repeating the observation deli-
berately, I note the following. I take a hurried glance at the blinds, shut
my eyes and study the image. So faithful is it that I can count the number
of laths in the bUnd, observe peculiarities connected with them, and read
off points from the trees outside the window — a series of feats which I can
perform with no ordinary image. If I open and shut my eyes rapidly and
repeatedly, it becomes well-nigh impossible to distinguish between the
object and the after-image. Still, the brightness with me \is it so with you ?]
is not so pronounced in the image as in the sensation, and the detail also
is limited. \^Is it so with you ?]
* The word After-image is far from being a happy one. After-sensation would be more
correct, except that this suggests a close correspondence between the sensation and the
image which does not exist. Perhaps after-event would be least objectionable as a name
for something which, in its pronounced forms, has no apparent purpose to serve in the
world's economy.
tllelmholtz (Haudbtick, 1886-96) says that experiments, if prolonged, are dangerous
to eyesight, and I can testify to this. Observations should be spread over a considerable
period, and should cease at the first sign of ill-effects (ibid, p. 502).
X " Positive after-images are those in which the bright portions of the object are bright,
and the dark portions dark ; whereas negative after-images are those in which the bright
portions of the object appear darker, and the darker portions brighter " (Helmholtz, Tlaud-
bicch, 1S86-96, p. 503). An exposure of a third of a second is sufficient to obtain the
former, and one of several seconds to produce the latter. To experiment successfully the
eyes should have been kept shut before starting and protected from the light for a few
minutes [ibid, pp. 503-6).
6- YSTEMS AS RE-DE VELOPED 2 1 1
One fine day, about 3 p.m., I was engaged writing. As the paper showed faint patches
which I usually connect with after-images, I began to open and shut my eyes repeatedly
with my glance fixed on the patches. Then, almost without warning, I saw on the paper
the field outside the window, the trees close by, and the sky : everything in such complete
detail as to form and colour that the sight unnerved me for the moment. This was un-
fortunate, as my observations were thus cut short. Such cases certainly suggest that
observation and re-collection are theoretically pJiotographic.
(2) The Co7nplementary Image* — Gazing at a piece of blue paper, placed
on a sheet of white, and then looking at another portion of the sheet, I see
the image of the blue piece in yellow. Again, sitting with a red table-cloth
in front of me and a lamp with a gree?i shade on it, my eyes, on accidentally
travelling to the ceiling, are confronted with the image of a green table-cloth
and a red lamp shade. I notice here as in (i) that details are observable
in the image which were not in the first instance definitely developed, i.e.,
which fell outside the focus of normal observation. The student will, of
course, experiment with various colours, and record the results with the
object of ascertaining the general facts. Hypotheses should not be in-
dulged in, nor should the memory be trusted. Experimental examination,
always supported by careful and exhaustive notes made at the time, should
yield the compressed statements or general facts which are the goal of
science.
(3) Monocular and Binocular Vision. — Looking with one eye at a
picture where the relief is well imitated, we are surprised to find the
picture unmistakably displaying the third dimension of space, depth.
\Test this statement?^ This is especially remarkable when we observe
monocularly a coloured lime light picture : here the sense of reality is
irresistible. As we shall see in sec. 182, vision, whether monocular or
binocular, gains its principal item of depth from the lines and surfaces
seen by the eye. This general truth may be illustrated as follows. I look
along the edge of a sheet of note paper. [Repeat this?\ With the right eye
open, I see more of the right side of the paper than if, the head remaining
passive, I looked at that side with the left eye ; and so with the left side, and
the alternate use of the eyes. Hence either of the eyes necessarily sees less
in this case than both eyes together used alternately ; and it will, therefore,
repeatedly happen in monocular vision that, owing to certaiia lines being
invisible, depth will disappear. In many instances, however, the exposed
surface does not alter with binocular or alternate monocular vision, and
then, as the case may be, depth will be equally seen or not seen, as in look-
ing at the furniture of a room. Fundamentally, then, the principles of
binocular and monocular vision are alike, the exposed surface guiding
the interpretation. It is in this way that the realism is introduced into
the lime light scene, i.e., the single eye accentuates the lines which mark
relief.
Binocular vision, still using the sheet of paper for illustration, does not
* " For the purpose of observing them, place coloured papers on a grey base, fix with
your eyes a definite point of the coloured paper, and then suddenly draw it away," not
moving your eyes {ibid, p. 516)
a 1 2 GENERA L ANAL YSES
yield th-c two images given by the alternate use of the two eyes. Striking
a compromise, it gives a dimmed view of eilher sidi\ slij^kt/y />/urrtng what the
7ieighbour eye cannot apprehend^ and toning down the picture co?nmon to
doth eyes, thus yielding in a single picture, more than either eye and less
than both employed alternately. Neglecting for the moment the disadvan-
tage, the advantage of binocular vision is obvious. With both eyes open,
since the eyes are some distance apart, both side surfaces of the paper are
partially seen, thus giving depth to both sides, whereas in monocular vision,
one side only being seen, depth is abolished on one side. Consequently,
while there are complications when the closing of an eye is necessary for
the observation of depth, yet, generally speaking, monocular vision will be
far inferior to binocular vision. In practice, indeed, there are innumerable
occasions when an object is unknowingly within view of one eye alone as
when, in writing, the right eye sees the right arm and the left eye the left
arm. So also in looking out of the corner of a window where pa?-t of what
is observable is seen only by one eye, there seems no appreciable difference
traceable when I see the people pass from the binocular field into the
monocular one — not even when I deliberately experiment.
The stereoscope, invented by Wheatstone shortly before photography
became a fact, admirably illustrates our problem (Wheatstone, Physiology
of Vision, 1838 and 1852). Our two eyes are, strictly speaking, two cameras
placed at a certain distance from one another, and each camera, therefore,
yields a partly different picture. If photographs, then, are to represent
binocular vision with its two slightly different fields, they must be taken
from two points of view ; that is to say, there must be two photographic
cameras employed at a distance similar to that between the eyes (or one
camera taking an object from those two positions). In this case we shall
have one photograph equal to the right eye view and one equal to the left
eye view. The stereoscope, by making it easy to see the two pictures as
one, thus supplies us with a single scene equal to one traced by two simul-
taneously acting eyes ; and its results are superior as regards depth in pro-
portion to the greater distance betiveen the ca}?ieras or positiofis. Since, then,
normal sight deals with a double picture, 7io painting or drawing, however
faithful, can exactly equal reality as seen 2vith both eyes. For example, if I
hold a pencil perpendicularly a few inches in front of my eyes and look first
with one eye, and then with the other, at a picture in front of me, the
pencil occupies different positions in relation to the picture ; or if I look
through ordinary iron railings at a moving light out at sea with both eyes,
the light never disappears, while looking with one eye only the light, owing
to the intervening railings, constantly disappears and re-appears. [T^^jt/.]
If we gaze for a little while at the centre of a small circle drawn on a piece of paper,
it will be noticed that the one circle gives birth to another. If we look at two or three
circles, four and six circles respectively can be seen. Using, however, one eye only, the
number of given circles is never augmented. What develops under an intent gaze is, there-
fore, always twice the quantity of what is before us binocularly. The fact underlying the
above peculiarity of vision is that the ordinary circle seen by both eyes together, is made
SYSTEMS AS /^E- DEVELOPED 213
up of two circles seen and blended by the two separate eyes. It is curious to observe how
very far the process of blending, which lies at the basis of binocular vision, proceeds. P"or
example, looking through a stereoscope at two real watches, one with and the other without
"second" face, I find that now the figure VI is seen, and again the "second" face.
Thus very irregularly drawn simple squares, etc., appear as regular, the irregularities
being driven out of the field of sight. Again, two photographs of an object, taken
sixteen inches apart, are, I find, still seen as one stereoscopically. Hence it will be seen
that the two slightly different pictures given by the two eyes readily blend into one.
{^A'cpeat the above with variations. '\
Binet {Dti Raisonnement, 18S6) holds that observing a colour, say, with the right
eye (which is afterwards closed), the after-image is seen by the left eye (which is then
opened). In this he confirms other observers, though it has been shown since tliat
Binet was probably misled. {Test.^ Titchener (C/eder iinoae/are IVirkungen monocularer
Reizc, 1892) fully deals with the problem. The question of the monocular field of vision
is discussed in Helmholtz's Haiidbiich, on pp. 669-741, and the nature of the binocular
field, on pp. 841-915.
Ilelmholtz enters exhaustively into the issues raised in this section. The following
may also be consulted. Le Conte, Sight, i88r ; Berry, in Brain, 1884; Franklin,
The Bearing of the After-image, 1894 ; and Franz, The After-image Threshold, 1895,
and After-Images, 1899. For a class test, see Spencer, Psychology, 1890, i, p. 112. See
also Ebbinghaus, Nachbilder, 1890; Rollett, Subjective Farben, 1891 ; Hess, Nachbilder,
1S91 ; Washburn, The White Light After-image, 1900; and Gillette, Notes on After-
images, 1899.
126. — Intuitions.
What we remarked of the visual field in sec. 118, holds of re-develop-
ment in general, for ail re-membered, as all pre-membered, events fall short
of possible completeness. This leads us to consider a series of curious
instances.
One day, looking at a robin, it suddenly occurred to me that his
appearance suggested a hunchback. This feeling, if it was a feeling, had
been long with me without being recognised or connected. There was
something unclassed — not even imaged as unclassed, — some sort of un-
easiness besetting me, before the doubtful twilight — scarcely distinguish-
able from the darkness of the night — gave way to a flood of light. I am
not sure whether there was present on each occasion anything which could
be classed as visual, audile, motile, emotile or mental. Probably a visual
as well as a motor factor existed. But, as I write, the visual element is so
faint that I am not convinced of its actuality. I also trace a slight tendency
to lift the shoulders,* if it be not rather a summary feeHng connected with
observing hunchbacks. It appears that extremely dim images, or apologies
for images, are often with us without being distinctly recognised as such.
\Find similar traces in yourself ?\^ They are comparable to the effects of a
breath of wind on the waters where the ripples are so minute that we are
not sure of observing them.
Again, I am on a visit in the country. I meet some one there who
challenges my attention, and whom I often see and think about. I
consider him interesting ; I like his face. Returning to town I accidentally
encounter an acquaintance. Instantly I detect a resemblance between the
* Galton {Inquiries, 1883) refers to these dramatising exhibitions.
2 r 4 GENERAL ANAL YSES
two. The mystery is solved, i.e., familiar chords were secretly touched.
Mine was an erroneous interpretation. The likeness attracted me, and I
made unfounded surmises. Familiarity was translated into attention,
interest and admiration. In this case more than in that of the robin, I am
convinced that a tolerably clear image haunted me.
Two important lessons may be learnt in this connection. First, familiarity
is often misinterpreted as being some other fact, whence arise serious likes
and dislikes which sometimes bear momentously on life and character.
We are liable, through this source of error, to blunder on many occasions.
The ogre becomes a saint ; the saint an ogre. He who is uninteresting
becomes admirable ; he who is admirable, indifferent. A lofty notion is
laughed to scorn ; a mean one is lauded to the skies. Once the origin of
the delusion is pointed out, there is a probability that we shall, to some
extent at least, protect ourselves against its unsettling influence by the closer
scrutiny of primary and secondary combinations.
Secondly, men often say that they " intuitively " judge of things, notions
and characters. They glance, for instance, at somebody, and they fancy
they can read his thoughts. The subtler class of memory we are discussing
explains these pretensions. We see the face of a particular individual
whom, for certain definite reasons, we dislike ; we meet another of similar
appearance, and we dislike him, too. Connected or conscious re-develop-
ment being absent, we attribute to an occult power what is explicable on a
rational assumption. If the judgment, in this connection, is acute, the
consequences will, of course, be far-reaching ; for we quietly judge from
class to class, a similar feeling is aroused — usually without its correspond-
ing image or with a dim image — and we pronounce accordingly. It does
not require stating that the vast field of so-called vituitive or immediate
judgments falls under this portion of our explanation.* \Observe such cases^
Only yesterday a dish struck me as very palatable, and I consumed it
with considerable pleasure. It never occurred to me till afterwards that
unnoticed familiarity lay at the base of the particular delight. In this
fashion, snatches of a melody haunt us, and yet elude us. There is
something present ; but we cannot tell what. It is perhaps the swing of a
tune, or a peculiar feeling connected with it or the image of the instrument
on which it was played. Perhaps that something has no relation to the
melody at all. \Carefully a?ialyse this class of instafices.'\
* "Truths, which we well know to be results of complicated and highl}' mediated
trains of thought, present themselves immediately and without efibrt to the mind of any
man who is familiar with the subject. The mathematician, like every one who has
mastered a particular science, meets any problem with ready-made solutions which pre-
suppose most complicated analyses ; and every educated man has a number of general
views and maxims which he can muster without trouble, but which can only have sprung
from frequent reflection and long experience. The facility we attain in any sort of
knowledge, art, or technical expertness, consists in having the particular knowledge or
kind of action present to our mind in any case that occurs, even we may say, immediately
in our very Hmbs, in an outgoing activity. In all these instances, immediacy of
knowledge is so far from excluding mediation, that the two things are linked together, —
immediate knowledge being actually the product and result of mediated knowledge"
(Hegel, Logic, trs., 1892, pp. 129-30).
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 215
The whole question of obscure secondary units requires to be carefully
elaborated.
The presence of imperfectly identified systems often explains what would otherwise
appear anomalous. Speaking of American generals, one of a company referred to an
American general of high standing whose name he had forgotten, but who, he
re-membered, was of German extraction. Later on in the conversation the name
transpired, Sherman. The origin of the notion that Sherman was of German extraction
becomes clear when we place two words alongside of each other: Sherwan — German.
Thus what is obscurely suggested by one's own unrecognised failings frequently gives rise
to strange opinions, e.^., a conceited man marvels over the conceitedness of others, one
who stutters considers persons who stutter objectionable, one who is always repeating a
story takes exception to others who act in this manner, one who is hysterical is critical as
regards hysterical persons, and so on. For this reason, if an individual's words or appear-
ance dimly suggest some line of thought, we follow that without suspecting what
determined our course of action. To take a somewhat extreme instance. Some one
speaks German so fluently and correctly that few detect his non-German origin. There
exists, however, a just perceptible difference in his manner and speech. Vaguely influenced,
Germans tend to speak to him about international matters, and that sometimes in a tone
anything but flattering to non-Germans. Hence we may generally conclude that what
we are and what others appear to be, determines our conduct and reasoning to an
appreciable extent, although we may not be quite clear at any time as to what is the
determining factor.
127. — Organised Re-Development.*
We wish to know how we may distinguish generally between pre-
development and re-development. Let us analyse a series of examples.
I was out for a walk yesterday. Passing by a villa, I said to myself,
" Here lives M." How did I arrive at this conclusion ? I looked at the
entrance in an idle way, when, the eye easily gliding along, there suddenly
evolved a certain feeling. I then rnuttered : " Here lives M." What made
me draw the distinction between this gate and other gates ? There are
several counts in our answer. [A/ia/vse such an instance.'\ (1) The
attention was easily satisfied, and organically there evolved (2) a certain
feeling, and that again evolved into (3) a rapid and intelligent survey of
the object. These states were followed, on the ground of organised
reaction, by the announcement or feeling of recognition. Looking at the
next gate, after passing M.'s house, none of the above states are repeated.
I am asked whether I can re-develop a certain verse, and I reply, " I
will see." I then unhesitatingly repeat the lines, and say that I can re-
develop the verse. Why do I assert this ? Could I not have spontaneously
created the Hnes, or did they not perhaps arise like a gust of wind ? I
answer that whenever anything is developed like that portion of a poem,
the assertion of recognition organically succeeds. A statement to the
contrary effect is resisted and dismissed, or else we feel bewildered.
* Gratacap (De la Memoire, 1866, p. 252) writes : " To remember is nothing else but
to conceive and recognise that which we have on former occasions perceived ; now the
faculty of conceiving and recognising that which we have already perceived is derived
solely from the power which we possess to associate diverse ideas among themselves ; and
in turn, the association of ideas depends exclusively on the power of contracting habits,
which is the property of the principle of thinking. Memory is only a habit."
2 16 GENERAL ANAL \ 'SES
Normally we can also test ourselves and others, so as to settle the fact at
least for practical purposes. If we do so, we find that we cannot fabricate
verses, tunes, etc., at tlie dictate of the fancy. All those systems which
were membered would appear as connected with some event in the past.
Repetition on a large scale is exceptional. Usually I should say
Yes or No to the question as to whether I could re-develop a certain verse.
On what would such an assertion be based ? Let us take the Yes and the
No answers separately, since the problems involved are not the same.
(i) Suppose I assent. Four reasons, perhaps more, account for that
reply.
(a) Perhaps I have often been asked this question ; in which case I
should organically say Yes, the question and the answer forming one
complication. Such an answer would, of course, follow immediately.
(^) Perhaps a certain feeling develops, to which, under the circumstances,
there is organically attached the notion of the possibility of re-development.
(c) Perhaps, to assure myself of the possibility of re-development, or for
other reasons, I re-develop a line or just a word.
{d) Perhaps I think of some circumstance which warrants my assenting,
e.^., I clearly re-develop the fact that I recited the verse last night.*
Such re-development, though indirect, would be coupled with a prompt
affirmation. In these four instances much uncertainty prevails, for though
we do not usually re-develop anything completely, yet our judgments are
generally based on such partial re-production. We have ordinarily no time
to test our memories, the tests themselves being organised ; we hurry on.
Mistakes are, therefore, not infrequent. The organisation of thought into
trends simplifies re-development to the utmost, even at the risk of occasional
mistakes, and accounts for the rapidity of thought and action.
(2) Suppose I dissent. Plere is an expression to the effect that nothing
can be re-developed. The grades of such negations are many.
(a) I dissent because I have often dissented, question and answer form-
ing one complication.
(i>) Some one asks: "Have you visited the cathedral at Sienna?"
I rejoin instantly, "No," the answer assuming shape while the question is
*" There is a state of mind familiar to all men, in which we are said to trv to
remember. In this state, it is certain that we have not in the mmd the idea which we
are trying to have in it. How then is it, that we proceed in the course of our endeavour to
procure its introduction into the mind ? If we have not the idea itself, we have certain
ideas connected with it. We run over those ideas, one after another, in hopes that some
one of them will suggest the idea we are in quest of; and if any of them does, it is
always one so connected with it, as to call it up in the way of association. I meet an old
ac(|uaintance, whose name I do not remember, and wish to recollect. I run over a
number of names, in hopes that some of them may be associated with the idea of the
individual. I think of all the circumstances in which I have seen him engaged ; the
time when I knew him, the things he did, or the things he suffered ; and, if I chance
upon any idea with which the name is associated, then imuiediately I have the recollec-
tion ; if not, my pursuit of it is in vain" (James Mill, Analysis, 1S67, i, pp. 322-3). A
strange thing is not uncommon with me. I know a certain name well ; but I am unable
to re-develop it readily. I call up the man's correspondence ; but his signature eludes
me. I think of him as being spoken to ; and all to no purpose. Here we have a
temporary gap, an unmistakable vacuum, a partial blindness of the soul.
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 217
being uttered. Had he put " Milan " in the place of Sienna I should as
readily have said Yes. The reasons which induce us to affirm we have
discussed. In the case of Sienna, no affirmation, no feeling expressing
familiarity, no vague state, no defined images are produced ; and so, in
accordance with established trends, I promptly say No.
{c) In my endeavour to answer I may have tried to re-produce, but
failed. In such instances, the field of attention is practically annihilated
(sec. 30). \^Test this your self ?\^ I cease breathing for the moment ; there is
a felt strain in the head, similiar to a strain in the muscles of the arm,
which lasts for a few moments. Then, nothing of the desired nature
having developed, I organically reply No ; for to the state of unsuccessful
effort is attached a negative answer.
id) I think of some circumstance which warrants my dissent.
[e) I am perhaps not sure whether I re-develop what I am asked. In
such an instance, we have undefined feelings. Whenever such thought
feelings, i.e., feelings of doubt, belief, incredulity, etc., haunt us, the inter-
pretation suggested by general observation is that nothing reliable can be
affirmed, and hence, in agreement with organised reaction, we speak ac-
cordingly. What is true of doubt or semi-connection, is, of course, true of
certainty or perfect connection, belief or partial connection, and the inter-
mediate stages between full assurance and disbelief. To take the question
of belief, we do not say we believe that we are able to re-develop a system
when the conditions point to semi-connection or uncertainty, or disbelief or
counter-connection, or when there is every sign of recognition, or when
every such indication is lacking. Doubt is a state of indecision, and is,
therefore, not confounded with belief which indicates partial justification
(sec. 99b). \Expei-iineTitany induce states of doubt, belief, disbelief and
certainty?^
128.- — Novelty and Familiarity.
I have referred to re-membrance and its denial. To obtain a completer
analysis, we shall consider the meaning of novelty. I pass by a house in
London on the door of which is a brass plate which I glance at, and read
" Bezirks." My reading is slow, unintelligent and deliberate, evidently
requiring more time for development than would a known term. Suddenly
it dawns on me that the syllables are German. The word proper shoots
now into the light. \Analyse such instances.^
While I attached no meaning to what I read, (i) I proceeded slowly
and planlessly ; (2) a peculiar feeling of groping was present ; and (3) no-
thing related to the word on the brass plate was re-integrated. When a
meaning suggested itself, (i) the word was re-formed at once and intelligently;
(2) there was a feeling of ease ; and (3) there were dim memories connected
with the word. To the former state we organically attach the notion of
novelty ; to the latter that of familiarity. In novelty there has to be,
broadly speaking, assiduous attention ; while in what is familiar, there is
light re-attention ; hence the lesser quantitative effectiveness in novelty. We
2 1 8 GENERA L ANAL YSES
enter St. Peter's, we will suppose, for the first time. The loftiness, the
spaciousness, the many-coloured marble pillars, tombs and altars, the huge
masses of sculpture hav'e a bewildering effect. The attention is captivated
wherever it turns, and nothing awakens memories except of other places.
This is contrary to what would happen if our business called us there every
day. Another example is readily forthcoming. We regard the stately
columns of the British Museum with wonder and with awe. It is the first
time we have seen them. The entrance hall with its treasures also charms
us. Time passes, and we frequent, as students, for months together
the historic Reading Room. Neither we, nor the body of readers, seem
aware of an)lhing striking or beautiful in passing in or out. Everything
touches the threshold of indifference. We have become familiar with the
place. The attention has been satisfied — allowing for a mean ideal — and
seeks for new materials. Novelty, then, has its defined conditions.
Experimentally looking about me, I learn that, to a large extent, everything is familiar,
and nothing wholly novel. What has, therefore, been said above, implies intimate or
interested familiarity on the one side, and tantalising semi-novelty on the other.
129. — The Gaping Void.*
"What is the French for 'slipshod'?" some one asks. I answer that I
have the word on my tongue, and that I. am sure I know it. [Examine
such insta7ices^ Again and again I feel it nearing, as one feels the approach
of the sunshine ; and again it vanishes, as if the sun were sulking behind a
cloud. I seem to be chasing the word as a bird chases a butterfly. What
is this haunted thicket, this whirlpool which will not let us rest ; this mixture
of certainty and ignorance? After the expositions of the last chapter, and
after what we learnt in the preceding sections of this, little requires to be
added. These harassing combination feelings hold the word wholly or
partly in solution, the problem being the method of precipitation. The
various changes in these obscure feelings are significant, and as for the
interpretation, organised reaction sees to that. Such feelings are normally
accompanied by re-development, and that is why we presume to know.
Along with B, a system re-developed, there has nearly always gone A, a
certain combination feeling. Re-developing A and then B, there gradually
develops a feeling of confidence that where A appears, B will follow. The
circumstances alone define the meaning of the feeling. Its quality does
not differ from that of other feelings which are differently interpreted with
different circumstances.
Re-development is frequently partial. We are unable to re-instate a
person's name, but we feel assured that the first letter of that name is G.
\Keep notes of such instances^ Thus wishing to think of " scone," I am
certain that it resembles the word "stone"; so also the nearest approach
to "tincture" is "cincture;" similarly the name " Lockroy " is the nearest
approach I can make to " Cowderoy." A study of imperfect re-develop-
* See James, Psychology' , 1S90, i, pp. 251 ff.
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 219.
ment ought to form a stepping-stone to the discovery of some of the chief
problems in memory. It certainly is remarkable, that desiring to re-develop
one word, we should re-develop another with a similar sound, and feel that
the word we are angling for bears some resemblance to this. Where the
hitch lies it is difficult to determine. \Experimentally teaze your memory
for proper names, and note results. '[
Finding it difficult to recall the name of Plutarch, I determined to insist upon re-
developing that name for the purpose of watching its emergence. I felt sure that the
name began with P, or probably, Pa. I then deliberately remembered names beginning
with P; but in vain. I thought of his writings and his life for the purpose of seeing
whether these would suggest the name ; but without success. For three quarters of an
hour the problem incessantly recurred, and in such a way as to prove beyond a doubt
that the recurrence was due not to association but to recency alone. I then sat down to
enter in my note book the history of the attempt. The first words shaped themselves
as follows : "Have watched a case of . . . Plutarch." When I came to "of," I found
it hard to describe the kind of case, and the suspense lasted only two or three seconds
before the name sought for developed — out of nothing as far as associations are concerned.
^Experimentally va)y the above. '[
130. — The Part stands for the Whole.
Events in normal thought are not re-instated in their entirety. A certain
individual has a peculiar gait ; he shuffles about ; he walks rather hurriedly ;
or he mumbles while abroad ; and that detail is all we generally re-develop
of him. Ordinarily, therefore, we picture an object only in part, while the
summary feelings which accompany the image do the rest. Imaged events
must generally be interpreted in this manner. In thinking, for instance,
of a procession, the banner bearer, with the re-developed feelings, forms
the substance of what is re-developed ; or we obtain a glimpse such as
haphazard photography yields, though without its completeness and clear-
ness ; or the corner of a banner, or some accidental circumstance, is pre-
developed. The tendency, in harmony with ch. 3, is to re-instate the
minimum and to suppress what is superfluous. Generally speaking, as far
as events are concerned, it is correct to contend that we re-develop only
fractions of them, and that these are determined in the first instance by any
trifle which chances to challenge our senses.
131. — Why the Memory leans Forward.
When we have once learnt to read from left to right, we find it hard
suddenly to reverse the process. Omitting secondary considerations, the
explanation is simple. While we look at the first letter, we already organic-
ally adjust ourselves to read the second. \Observei\ The process of spell-
ing letter by letter is, therefore, not a pure step-to-step process ; and when
we accordingly attempt, without practice, to read backwards — there being
no organised tendency to move to the left, and a strong one to move to
the right — we necessarily meet with difficulties. Of course, as we might
expect, practice soon does away with the difference between forward and
backward reading, so that after a little trouble, figures can be read in either
220 GENERAL ANALYSES
direction with equal facility. \_Test this.'] What has been asserted of reading
holds true generally. The order of re-collection is psychologically indiffer-
ent, and dependent on usage. The reason that we normally re-develop in
one order is equally obvious. Our brains are no playthings, and the
central nervous system, having seriously to deal with an environing order
which is tolerably stable, is, therefore, itself uniform in its reactions. Where,
for whatever reason, a divergence is sought from an established order, there
the diversity is obtained.* \_C/iange the order of re-coUcction?\
Of late, as previously mentioned, I have been learning a phonetic longhand. While I
can almost instantaneously picture words and letters in our ordinary writing, I was unable
at first to do more than slowly re-integrate letter after letter of the new alphabet. Gradu-
ally the power grew, and by the time I had written one letter I re-collected its successor.
I strained in a forward direction, the attention being expectant. In reading, too, I had
at first to attend to each letter for an appreciable period, and when I had deciphered one
letter, I strained for the next. As I grew expert, the forward tendency became marked.
I rushed along the letters, like a flame along a string of gas-burners which automatically
light each other. Later still, there were attempts to guess at a word from its general
appearance, and this last stage seems to prove that we do not ordinarily decipher in suc-
cession every letter in a word ; but that we first guess at a letter, and at last at words and
familiar sentences. It will be good practice for the student to learn about ten consonants
and three vowels of a shorthand system, and determine the appearance and disappearance
of various images. As an experiment in organised reaction the meaning of the characters
might be changed after they are thoroughly learnt.
132. — Vividness is no Test of Objectivity. t
I look at a book which lies before me \exa7nine a similar instance\ and
also analyse the image of the waves dashing against the concave sea-wall at
Scarborough. Which is the reality ? Or are both memories ? Or are
both primary systems? I decide that the book is real, and that the curling
waves are only re-developed. But on what ground ? I do not do so
because of greater vividness alone. Again and again my imagination is
as vivid as the reality \is yours ?\ often even more so. An image of a
moon-lit night or a landscape at noon looks far more brilliant than a
momentary vision of a room by candle light or a road in foggy weather.
If I re-develop things which I know well, they appear as they do when I
am face to face with them. Rooms that I am thoroughly acquainted with
* See Ebbinghaus, Ueber das Gedachtnis, 1885; also Bradley, Why do we Remember
Forwards and not Backwards? 1SS7 ; and specially Ward, Psycholoi;}', 1886, p. 61,
footnote.
+ The following two points must be borne in mind in reading this section. There is
first the question of the "simplest case " (sec. 136). I travel by night, and, looking out
of the open window of the railway carriage, I see a single light. Except for my awareness
that I am in a lighted compartment, and the fact that I cannot dismiss the light at will,
there is no setting. So, sitting in a wood, I hear the occasional bark of a dog in the
distance. Here there is virtually no aural setting. In such simple cases as those here
mentioned, we have the nearest approach to primary sense affections which are indistin-
guishable from secondary ones. The incontrollability of the former and the lack of
the power of dismissing the sound, remain almost our only guide. If we are at all absent-
minded, the two classes of instances become interchangeable. The second point is also
an imporiaiit one. When I am actually at the sea-side, I not only see the waves, but I
hear them ; I smell the charged air ; I feel the wind. In re-collection, however, almost
everything except the visual factor is ordinarily eliminated (sec, 120).
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 221
look to me \do they to you ?] as real in secondary as in primary observation.
There is no veil, no semi-transparent film, drawn over the image. So also
when I glance at a passer-by I immediately afterwards re-develop his image
with the full vividness and detail of the primary life. One difference
between primary and secondary systems lies in this, that I can freely fix
the book for many seconds ; I can observe innumerable fresh details ; I can
apprehend the action of many forces on the book ; and 1 can read page
upon page of new matter. Again, whatever I notice round the volume is
equally distinct. It is not so, however, with the sea-piece. Scarcely do I
attend to it, when it vanishes. I cannot discern minute details, walk
along the shore picking up pebbles, measure the road, or scan people's
faces. Detail is practically absent, and the secondary or memory environ-
ment arouses feelings and images such as I connect with re-development.
The collateral pictures come intermittently and possess no freshness.
Though I know the waves to be quivering, I yet see little or none of this.
The feelings of active observation are wanting. Glancing at an object for
a moment I only discern certain features, and these alone can naturally
be detected in re-development. Continued exploration of the image does
not yield fresh items, while continued scrutiny of the visual field gives rise
of necessity to new points. In dream fife (sec. 229), this effect is achieved by
imagining fresh details. If we could freeze what we see at a particular
moment, our eyes would be, as in secondary vision, incapable of dwelling
on the object for more than a short time, and there would be, in conse-
quence, no continuous flow of information. I can, however, fix an image
when I think about it, or when the attention is otherwise engaged.
In re-development the re-instated object generally appears without ap-
preciable environment. Looking at a street poster on a hoarding [try this]
and then shutting my eyes, I re-develop the image of the poster and scarcely
anything else. Yet when I observed the original, a quantity of other objects,
progressively less defined, fell within my view and freely changed as I altered
my visual position. When the place as well as the re-developed object is
familiar, the surroundings are re-developed and the object appears set in a
proper frame ; but even then our spiritual sight cannot readily range as in
normal observation. Ordinarily the attention expended on viewing the setting
is probably not sufficient for the purposes of re-development, while at the
same time, the frame-work being of no interest, we tend to ignore its
existence. So when we see a friend, in many settings, the tendency,
in primary as in secondary development, will be to suppress, to ignore,
and, therefore, to forget the settings. (Sec. 69.) Either the absence of
a frame, or the mechanical presence of one particular one, tends to con-
firm us in our implicit judgment that we are dealing with a secondary and
not with a primary system. The more we experiment in this direction the
greater appears the divergence in this respect between normal memory and
normal observation — the former being without and the latter with a setting.
Also, when we re-develop a scene with our eyes open, as they normally are,
the image is checked by the systems we are deriving from our surround-
22^! GENERAL ANAL YSES
ings, systems whose richness strikingly contrasts with the poverty of the
image.*
I conclude, therefore, that the book is external, but not the waves.
Organised reaction settles the matter in practice. I could write down
what the image of the sea yielded, go to Scarborough, and compare my
notes with the reality. How feeble the former would appear when brought
face to face with the latter. We do not, however, wish to make the journey.
I, therefore, shut my eyes, with the book still in front of me. I then open
them and commit to paper the information gathered by the thought of
the volume. Then I study the book itself, copy some pages of it, compare
the notes and find how ine.xhaustible the primary world is when con-
trasted with the secondary world. f (See also sec. 124.)
I notice that what is re-developed immediately after pre-development, is most vivid
and detailed, besides being accompanied hy a kind of memory feeling, while as the span
of time widens vividness and detail diminish very considerably. In the latter case we
tend to confound imaginings and others' adventures with our memories. Suppose, for
instance, that I re-produce a short sentence from a book. In reading for the first time
the cluster of words, I see, however dimly, its immediate surroundings. When the re-
development is recent, I actually feel these surroundings. I also see the white, shiny,
smooth paper with the sentence visible on it. Gradually the detail disappears : feeling,
whiteness, shinyness, smoothness, printed letters, ease of re-development and, lastly, every
vestige of the sentence. Stout (Manual, 1S99, p. 402) supports a different solution ;
he says : " The percept has an aggressiveness which does not belong to the image."
So also Ziehen, Leitfaden, 1891, pp. 96-7. Some weight must be allowed to this dis-
tinction ; yet the very difticulties of the memory problem show that sensory aggressive-
ness is an unsafe guide.
The range of sight or hearing is the same outwardly and imaginatively ;
in fact, the latter is a copy of the former. In secondary speech I note the
same pauses and changes of tone as in ordinary speech, though sounds are
frequently slurred. S^Exami}ie?^ In secondary sight I observe the same
method as in ordinary sight, of turning at a certain time rate from picture
to picture and from one part of a picture to another part, while the images
are re-developed in the positions in which they were originally studied.
Often, indeed, the secondary time rate is slower than the primary time rate.
\The subject of this section should be carefully determined?^
Egger {La Parole Interietire, 1881, p. 69) considers inner speech to be quicker than
ordinary speech. That may be so under special circumstances ; but is not otherwise
borne out by my observations. As to the the spatial position in which images are re-pro-
duced, experiment, as well as see Giessler, Aus den Tiefeii des Tratimlcbens, 1S90.
133. — The Present Ends where Obliviscence Begins.
We have assumed a present and a past. What happened in the present,
we called reality ; what we referred to the past, we named memory. What
* A similar effect of reality is produced by the dark field of vision when my eyes are shut,
and just before waking my imagery is day-like in vividness,
t See Morgan, Contparative Psychology, 1894, pp. 103-5.
SYSTEAfS AS RE-DEVELOPED
223
do we mean by the present? What constitutes the past? The answer to
these questions is not self-evident. When my eye travels across a landscape
for one second, is not the observation of the first moment passed before that
of the second moment arrives ? If so, as we have already stated in sec. 107,
does not all observation, with the exception perhaps of a most insignificant
portion, imply memory ? Is there such a thing as a discrete moment of
time? And, if so, can anything be observed within such a span? I do
not discern anything when an object is quickly passed before my eyes. Is
then all discernment a question of memory ?
The more we consider this point the more evident it becomes that the
psychological Now must not be taken ideally. Let us examine this Present
of ours. It is not a bare moment, for such an one is inconceivable. It is
not the shortest strip of time imaginable, for in such a space we can ob-
serve nothing. The psychological reply must be founded on what was
stated of the first degree of obliviscence. For some seconds or 7ninutes
{sometimes for some hours or days luhen particular aspects are concerned) our
memory is thoroughly trusttvorthy and complete, and this period limits the
present. We live in the Now while we ca?i re-instate details with extreme
freshness and ease. Hence with a perfect memory, if we ignore the posi-
tion of the systems in the total thought series, the Past is swallowed up in
the Present. No other definition is possible. The question you put, the
hollow echo of which the empty hall still caresses, is it a dream, was it
delivered now or twenty years ago, or was it uttered at all ? Normally we
are not perplexed. We answer the question as if it had been asked this
moment. (See, however, sec. 124.)
The Present, then, is the arena in which we fight out the problems of
objectivity and memory. Here we experiment — now pre-membering, now
re-membering. On the above description we normally stake our belief in
the distinction between what is observed and what is re-produced. When
what we scrutinise has one set of signs accompanying it, we call it ob-
servation ; when another, memory. This is the sole meaning we can attach
to the difference. We possess no other solution of the riddle.
1 am asleep and dreaming that I am on one of the Boulevards in Paris.
I reason with myself that this is impossible, that I must be dreamino-. I
only went to bed just an hour ago, and how then can I be in the
French capital ? No conveyance exists which could transport me so
swiftly. I fnust be dreaming. I try to settle the question by an appeal to
the senses. I observe the breadth of the pavement; I see the restless
double stream of people ; I look in at the shop windows ; I touch the
chairs of a Cafe ; and I listen to animated conversations ; but still I doubt.
After some further display of scepticism, I at last agree that I am in Paris.
In the morning I wake and discover my mistake. Was I dreaming? A
Chinese philosopher is said to have dreamt that he was a butterfly. Which
was the dream form, he mused, the human figure or the dainty creature all
wings? We wisely decide, for our sanity is dear to us, that he dreamt oi
himself as a butterfly. We could possibly convince him that the dream
224 GENERAL ANALYSES
imagery only imposes on a weakened judgment, and that the resemblance
to reality is feigned.
I have concluded the discussion as to what points to the Present and
what to the Past. It is true we have encountered no absolute boundary
line except that attained by the method of localisation in a series ; but we
have discovered what makes us ordinarily distinguish between the various
degrees of memory and reality. Familiarity, supported by organised
trends, has supplied us wiih the explanation. Memory is not simple ; it is
distinguished under ordinary circumstances by a definite but large variety of
landmarks which serve as guides. If these play us false, then what security
is there for anything ? We do not envy the sceptic who holds that all dis-
tinctions are untrustworthy, as they certainly are sometimes.*
134. — The Dynamics of Memory.
(i) We do not Re-develop EverytJiing — Memory approaches perfec-
tion for a second or two alone, and only among fabled creatures, therefore,
should we think of finding any one who freely re-developed everything and
in perfection. Who can, on being challenged, recite a volume of eight
hundred pages after a first reading? Who can count in memory the
number of pebbles he has seen on the sea shore?
The statement with which the last paragraph was opened demands
rectification. It only holds when we are anxious to re-develop, or are not
pre-occupied. While humming a song we perhaps fall into reflections and
become oblivious of what we are doing. We perhaps leave off without
knowing it, quite forgetful of our singing. For example, I re-collect that I
have read but a moment ago the word "Tailor" on a sign board, and
yet I have not the remotest notion where I read it — whether to my right
or to my left, far ahead or near by. {Collect and analyse such cases?^ In
simple organised activity such forgetfulness is usually the case, and thus we
do not even for a second re-develop what we have been engaged in. As soon
as a step is completed, an object seen, or a sound heard, they cease to
exist for us, and especially is this true of systems which fall within the mar-
gin. In the routine of life we meet the same thing. Walking along the street
most objects or noises are no sooner membered than they are lost to us
for ever. Who can re-develop what he has read when his thoughts have
drifted from the book? (Sec. no.) \Test the statements, more especially
tlie last ofze.]
(2) Memory and Effort.-^ — We have implied that only that is re-
producible which has been attended to with a certain assiduity or interest, t
It is equally true that all orderly, remote and effective re-collec-
tion REQUIRES appreciable EFFORT. {Carefully verify this.'] The memory
* The question of objectivity will be further discussed in ch. 8.
t Ducras, La Manoire Brute et la Mhnoire Organisie, 1S94.
t Locke {Human Understandi>i<:^, bk. 2, ch. lO, sec. 4) speaks of cases where "ideas'in
the mind quickly fade, and often vanish quite out of the understanding, leaving no more
footsteps or remaining characters of themselves than shadows do flpng over fields of
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 225
does not as readily empty its contents into the basin of thought as a river
discharges its water into the sea. To re-develop what is appropriate, con-
stitutes a task, especially when we are circumspect in our procedure. Our
wandering private thoughts (sec. 219), owing to the absence of necessary
strain, tend, therefore, to be inconsequent and absurd. Thus, in a restaur-
ant, having chosen a certain dish, I begin to think about a certain author.
When the waiter arrives, I just escape asking him for " Mr. Smith " (sec.
229). \_Obse}^'e such casesJ] In unspoken thought confused re-develop-
ment is common, and is entirely the result of the absence of strenuous effort.
In dreams, accordingly, where the neural tone is reduced, re-development
is chaotic, and from this source and that of hallucinated reactions spring
the universally prevailing originality and inanity of dreams (ch. 10).
Normal re-development, then, consumes a notable amount of energy. In
a similar way, the production of every simile and turn of thought requires
sensible exertion. [ Verify this last statetnent?^
W'e have reached now the dynamics of memory. Attention, in the first
instance, must attain to a certain high degree if the subject is to be re-pro-
ducible. In monotonous activity, or in the field which is furthest removed
from the t'ocus of attention, this degree is not attained, with the result that
re-production is there lacking. It is almost superfluous to repeat that the
absence of sufficient attention is accounted for teleologically. Attention
being limited, we are apt to attend least to what yields least organic satis-
faction, and even-paced routine, and all that falls without the focus, is of
this unsatisfactory nature.
We distinguish, broadly speaking, two means by which to obtain the re-
quisite measure of assiduitj^ First, we possess normally a definite amount
of energy of which we must rid ourselves, while we also have certain or-
ganised wants. These wants, in connection with the pressure of energy, en-
sure attention of an adequate type for re-development. Secondly, we perhaps
expressly wish to re-develop. I do not mean by this that we necessarily
formulate our desire in so many words, or in any words, or that we har-
bour the explicit notion of wishing. Usually, as explained in the last
chapter, an organised feeling precedes re-development. In proportion
as this feeling is obvious, or to put it differently, in proportion as we con-
nect the notion of re-development with the process of re-development, so
pari passu, we re-member the fact. Also, the more transparent our aim,
the more successful will be the result of attention, since lucidity implies
that no labour is wasted in delay and idle search. \Test this statement^
Granville {Secret of a Good Alemory, 18S0) aptly emphasises in his Utile book the fact
that where we wish to re-develop, there we should read with the notion of re-developing
before us. Experimenting along this line, I find that when I emphatically turn away
from a subject as if I had done with it, it frequently ceases to recur. I have in this way,
to my astonishment, dismissed news for a time which otherwise would have recurred
moment by moment for hours. Usually we do not dismiss a thought like this ; the excite-
ment sensibly continues in consequence ; and spontaneous or ready re-development
follows. I can, therefore, appreciate Mr. VercJon's remarks on forgetfulness, where he
refers to the fact that we sometimes quickly forget [On Forgetfiitiiess, 1877, p. 449. See
15
226 GENERAL ANALYSES
also Stout, Manual, 189S, p. 96). Indeed, the difference between a good memory and
a bad one will in this manner ufien he decided by the presence or absence of this factor.
[Experimentally test. ]
If special effort or tone, as is contended in this section, is a material factor in re-
development, it seems to suggest that where, for any reason such as absence of practice,
strain is absent, there a general memory will scarcely exist. From this it is but a step to
tlie assumption that a general memory hardly exists outside a developed society, and that,
therefore, animals, like dreamers, re-develop almost nothing of a complicated character.
Arguing in this direction, we can see that the secondary world, as far as it is the reflex of
the primary world, is probably a late product of evolution. At first we have simple con-
tractility ; then contact with the environment produces changes such as the hardening of
the skin in those who are engaged in heavy work ; then actions are re-developed in part ;
and, lastly, in this very crude plan, all happenings are re-producible in a desirable way,
so as to form a mimic world, — a simplified model of the outer world, — by means of whicli
we may forestall the future (sec. 137). (See Smith, The Relation of Attention to Met/iory,
1895.)
(3) Repetiiio7i and Memory. — Another interesting fact now becomes
patent. Repetition as such is no guarantee that an incident shall be
engraved on the brain. In ordinary organised activities we repeat in-
definitely, and yet altogether fail to re-develop the steps at will. Let us,
however, leave such occupations on one side. Every one knows that when
we are not interested in a subject, or when we do not rnake efforts at re-
development, we may mutter formulae for decades without being able to
re-produce them freely. I have, for instance, frequently gone to certain
numbered library shelves, and yet forgot their numbers until I made a
special and decided effort not to forget them. So also in a building which
I must have scrutinised hundreds of times, I only re-develop one small
gate-way where there are two. It is also generally admitted that we succeed
best in fixing what is to be re-developed, other thiijgs being equal, in pro-
portion to the predominance of some interest or of some determined effort.
In other words, the application of strenuous attention is a crucial factor in
the dynamics of re-development. If we could apply all at once the energy
which usually lasts us for several hours, we might re-develop a difficult
proposition without any repetition ; but this road is barred (ch. 2). In
the Bank of Attention no thousand pound notes are issued. The maximum
and minimum^is a humble five pound note.
(4) Attention Energy cannot be applied all at once. — Repetition is
normally necessary if we are to be able to re-develop an incident after
a time ; but repetition can claim no virtue of its own. It is required
because we cannot make a great enor h effort at one attempt. By re-
peating our attempts, we perform what .ve should accomplish at once if
we had sufficient energy to dispose of at any given moment. It is exactly
as when a man is told off to remove a cartload of bricks : he transfers a
few at a time until none are left on the cart. As all bodily energy is one
(sec. 34), so the explanation involved in dealing with the bricks holds good
without any reservation for neural work. In memory, therefore, we require
reiterated effort.
(5) Effort\must be Intermittent, — When the bricks are in great numbers,
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 227
we cannot, owing to human limitations, keep on removing them with-
out intervals of rest. In collecting material for the memory we, there-
fore, encounter a third factor — time, the first factor being a certain
strenuousness of effort, and the second the necessity for repetition. We
have already learnt (sec. 28) that persistent effort is exhausting, i.e.^ that it
paralyses that portion of a brain area which is affected. To repeat a
theorem vacantly a thousand times a day will not assist us much. To
reiterate it vigorously a hundred times a day would saddle us with an un-
profitable headache. We must, therefore, vigorously repeat our attempts
at not too close intervals. There is an additional reason for judicious
pauses in that we are not able to attend for many moments together to any
detail (sec. 29). If we think, then, of our subject in connection with other
matters, we are distinctly employing added labour without tiring ourselves.
We persist in repeatedly attending in the easy manner which we have
found to be conformable to the nature of the attention (ch. 2). There is
no safer method of memorising a matter than by thus thinking about it for
hours, assimilating it with various systems. This is different from an
isolated attempt to fix the subject, for thinking about a matter is in accord-
ance with the nature of attention, while the latter method is not.
For what period, allowing for pauses, must we repeat ? It will be found
(sec. 112) that we must continue being familiar with a subject for many
months — nearer a year than not — before we can be sure that the subject
is at all well assimilated. The later reiterations must be at considerable
intervals of days, or even weeks, rather than closely following each other,
that is to say, a certain period must elapse independently of the number
of vigorous repetitions. Now what relation does this new fact bear to the
others immediately preceding ? That the lapse of time by itself can do
nothing only requires to be stated ; but why must the moon pass so many
times through its phases before we re-develop efificiently ? The following
explanation, which agrees with the ones which have been already offered,
meets the case. First, a brain area can support litde strain or drain ; it is
exhausted by slight effort. The prostration endures for some time, per-
haps for hours ; if very trying, for days and longer. In a previous section
(sec. 109) we saw how a strong neural excitement persists for many hours
and remains in a weakened state some time after that. It appears, there-
fore, that we must allow a liberal margin between the repetitions. To
avoid thinking of the subject is occasionally useful, for attention is most
effectively employed after a period of quiescence. Work of any kind,
when we are tired, benefits litde. vSecondly, pondering over a subject
connects the parts and binds it to other themes. In such thought much
attention is spent with increased economy. We also know (sec. 28) that
we weary of subjects as we tire of details, and that consequently we do not
recur to them with ease. Lastly, when the brain is rested ; when we are
not burdened with the fancies of the preceding hour ; when no irrelevant
neural momentum is at work, pertinent systems are likely to evolve. On
fresh thoughts we readily dwell ; on those of the last hour attention has
22S GENERAL AN A J- YSES
no [lower, for it has left them paralysed, with their connections cut. In
cramming we have an echo rather than a memory of the facts.
(6) The Old in the AVrc— Still another aspect dealt with in chs. 3
and 4, may be here enlarged upon. Subjects are closely related to each
other. If we are sufficiently acute, we can recognise much of the new
perhaps most of it — in the old, and in that case we need learn little or
nothing by heart. In so far as such recognition takes place, our task is
made bodily lighter, for we have so much less to con over ; and if we think
at all of the present in relation to the past the boundaries of knowledge are
sure to be extended. It is a well attested fact that a detail is difficult to
re-develop when isolated, though readily re-developed when connected
(ch. 4). In such instances attachment to common notions is of signal
service, since these notions are frequently and easily re-developed.
(7) The Superiority of Observation. — Our explanations emphasise a fact
which might be considered exceptional, and to which we will, therefore,
refer. We read in a paper of a great fire and very soon afterwards
the news has disappeared from our thought. Had we been spectators,,
however, we should re-develop the occasion for a long time. The shout-
ing of the firemen on the approaching engines, the mad gallop of the
horses, the smoke and sparks issuing from the furnaces, the prevailing
confusion, the house on fire, the spreading of the flames, powerfully appeal
to us. Instead of attending for two minutes to one of several shadowy
newspaper paragraphs, we live through a series of graphic events for per-
haps two hours. When we leave the scene, the incidents, as noted in sec.
no, haunt us. The disturbed brain area repeatedly excites us to reflec-
tions on the subject. As a consequence a large quantity of attention is
spent in a certain direction in a short time, and the event is readily re-
developed. Were it our duty to attend fires, we should expend little labour
in impressing on ourselves the incidents of a particular conflagration, and
no event of that class would be re-membered for long. On th other hand
had the house been our own, attention would have been prolonged, re-
development frequent, and the images probably persistent throughout life.
This example makes it obvious why observation is superior to hearing ac-
counts or reading records of an event. More attention is absorbed in
observation than in hearing accounts.
We read in a newspaper the story of some terrible earthquake. We
hear of towns destroyed, of the deaths of thousands, of the horror and terror
and privations of tens of thousands of our fellows. The whole of the news
is contained in a telegram of a score of lines, yet we never perhaps forget
the tragedy. The explanation is obvious. We do not read the account
and then turn to another paragraph, not re-producing the calamity till two
years later. On the contrary, we are deeply moved, and for weeks the
thought, like a resisted temptation, comes and goes. Eifective attention is
here natural and simple, though it is impossible that in normal life every-
thing should strongly impress us. In the latter case the nervous system
would soon be prostrate. It verges on the absurd to grow excited over a.
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 229
Latin irregular verb or over the date on which some petty monarch died.
Nevertheless the absorption of the attention explains both sets of cases.
We have explained the re-development of remarkable events. A similar
solution applies to a type of less obtrusive facts. On a walking tour in
Switzerland we see and re-develop much. Glimpses of numerous scenes
satisfy our love of wonder for years. A glance at a lake is capable of being
re- produced ten years later. Here there is no apparent perturbation ; but
still that which is observed sinks far down. On the whole, this is but
another special application of the use of attention. That which I noted
touched me deeply ; I recurred to it on many occasions ; and only as the
interest waned, did re-development cease to be possible.
One obscure set of cases our theory apparently fails to explain. Some-
times we re-develop an event very frequently, though it has no special
interest for us. We are reading a book as we cross a meadow, and we
casually notice the hawthorn hedge which fences it round. It has no
traceable claim on our attention, yet now and then it is recalled. In this
way, if we are observant, we often know that a trifling episode has come
to stay with us. \_Ca?i you trace such episodes f\ Many of our youthful and
lasting memories are of this apparently meteoric and unteleological nature.
We must assume that the neural mechanism is at such moments abnor-
m:dly sensitive, or that the situation is in some other way unusual. \Care-
fully examine such cases.^
Another order of memories — a seeming exception — is readily reduced
to rule. I read a book on Logic and easily re-instate its contents, and yet
there has been little effort in the reading. How is it that I re-develop so
much with so little strain ? I answer that I had previously read a good
many volumes on the subject. With most of the notions, terms and trains
of thought in this book, I was acquainted from previous works. Only the
new matter had to be attended to and that was scanty. Nearly my whole
attention spread itself over a few scattered remarks instead of being occu-
pied by every sentence. The better, then, we are acquainted with a subject,
the more readily is it pursued (sec. 44). The reading of the book required
little memorising. Even what seemed new was largely made up of what
was old.
(8) Child and Adult. —It is easy to attend to what is new when it is
shown to be implicated in what is old (sec. 44). Instead of re-developing
a new fact, we only require to re-develop an old one in a slightly different
dress. Hence we expend less energy in appropriating the fact, and we
commit it more easily to memory. As we grow older, there is compara-
tively little to be acquired which is quite new, since one or more aspects
are sure to be familiar. To the adult new truths are partially new. Thus
we are apparently learning half-a-dozen times as quickly as a young scholar,
when in truth we are proceeding at the same pace, or perhaps more slowly.
In this way the groundwork of assimilated knowledge enables the pupil to
progress at an ever-increasing rate of speed, and this makes it almost
criminal to withdraw children from school while yet young. Accordingly,
230 GENERA L A NA L ] '.S-^.S^
though the matter which the child makes his own grows in complexity, the
relative strain of attention as regards a subject, positively decreases, allow-
ing for growing strength and interest. Any one who re-develops much,
will with ease re-develop much more, while he who rc-dcvelops little, will
laboriously add but a trifle to his store.
(«)) What has only Extension is Difficult to Re-develop. — Some classes
of statements are somewhat difficult to re-develop — at least for some
persons \is it so with you f\, and these appear to be such as have no
evident relations. We re-collect without hesitation that the Wars of the
Reuses implied two roses, one white, the other red, and also the House of
York and the House of Lancaster. Which rose, however, represented
which House ? White has no special affinity to Houses, or War, or any-
thing else. Colour has no intensive meaning. When we describe one
individual as good and another as bad, the adjectives suggest many details
and cannot, therefore, be confused. If, on the other hand, I said : This
man lives in a white house and the other in a yellow one, the case would
rest on a different footing. White is but white, and yellow nothing but
yellow. A man's goodness, on the contrary', points to a variety of con-
crete facts.
Take another instance. The differences between an acid and an alkali
are manifold, and they could not be mistaken one for another. A litmus
paper displays also a quantity of special characteristics. Yet a blue
litmus paper, to the ordinary apprehension, is distinguished from a red
one only in colour. Will dipping a blue litmus paper into an alkali turn
it red? Or should it be brought into contact with an acid for that
purpose ? If the terms red and blue were restricted to the process we are
interested in, no difficulty in re-developing would be felt. This, however,
is not so. We constantly employ these as well as cognate terms for
naming certain collective aspects of objects.
What is true of colours, is true also of figures. The latter have no
contents, beyond the quantity they indicate. Thirteen men, thirteen
circles, thirteen ideas, mean just thirteen, nothing more nor less. Suppose
we aver that Socrates was good, Buddha was good, Jesus was good. Is
the meaning we convey on the same plane as that of the number
thirteen ? No. The goodness in each instance includes a medley of
disparate individual acts and expressions. The word " good " sums up
their separate idiosyncrasies. In thirteen good boys, thirteen good men,
the two "thirteens" are of precisely equal value. Not so with the two
" goods," for the boys were perhaps thought of as punctual, the men as
brave. Accordingly, if all we knew of Marcus Aurelius and Nero
amounted to this, that one of them was good and the other bad, we should
be as likely to condemn Marcus Aurelius as to praise Nero. Hence the
trouble in re-developing dates and figures.
The same reasoning applies to concrete compound relationships. For
instance, do afferent nerves enter at the posterior portion of the spinal
column, and do efferent nerves issue from the anterior portion, or vice
SVSTEJfS AS RE-DEVELOPED
231
versa ? Is the grey or the white nervous matter medullated ? The
mnemonic "A pea" (afferent, /osterior, afferent, anterior), might set
the first question at rest by making the relationship intimate, " Earl Grey
is Kon-smied," the second. Without such artificial assistance many
persons would never re-develop disconnected couples. In a mnemonic we
impose intension on that which otherwise possesses little or none. The
adjective "grey" off"ers no attachment; nor the words "afferent" and
"posterior," nor 1215, the date when the Magna Charta was signed. In
the last instance we can, by method, create natural mnemonics. We
argue that the sum is one the difference between the two couples of which
(12-15) will equally divide the separate couples. While we are con-
structing our legend we are busying ourselves about how to re-develop,
and this is time well spent, for we keep the stream of attention playing
about our problem. In this way, especially for short periods, figures are
readily retained.
Proper names are likewise hard to re-develop, though they do not
present as many obstacles as the other classes which have been
mentioned. They have no content, it is true, for three very different
persons may boast of the same name ; they are, however, more varied
and restricted. Perhaps they offer an additional stumbling block — or is
it an advantage ? — in that they are not so frequently employed as some
other classes of words. \_lVhaf is your position as regards the problem of
this section f\
Lastly, it is generally recognised that words, when ranged in sentences,
are difficult to re-develop. Here also the words are employed in so many
different sentences, that it is not easy to connect them with any particular
one. Accordingly, of the innumerable sentences used in conversation,
few, if any, are literally re-developed, and hence results the difficulty of
learning verbal definitions, and the welcome we extend to verse. \Test
this section experimentally.^
Note, however, that what has been stated above is modified by the action of permanent
interests. Thus a cricketer easily re- develops figures relating to runs and wickets ; and
thus the actor readily learns his part. In these cases the figures and sentences receive a
special meaning from the special circumstances, and, therefore, cease to be abstract and
contextless.
135. — The Physical Aspect of Memory.*
Except for frequent reference to the part which attention energy plays
as regards the memory, no allusion has been made to any physical cor-
relative of secoiidary development. The reader must nevertheless feel
that what we find outside physiology offers no systematic view of the facts
under investigation. As well might we argue that the smoke issuing from
the funnel of a locomotive drives the train, or that the outer view is a
correct copy of the inner structure of the engine ; as well might we ignore
the silent ocean of air at the bottom of which we live and take note only
* See specially sec. 176a.
22,2 GENERAL ANALYSES
of puffs and gusts of wind, as to compare what is immediately given with
what is revealed by physiology. No ; not only are sensations and images,
i.e., unexhausted systems, relatively sparse, disconnected and semi-intel-
ligible ; but we have seen reason to believe that many of them are
ditTcrentiated by circumstance alone. [7I'.t/.] The more closely we eye
our material the more impossible it becomes to assume two exactly
parallel series — a non-neural and a neural one. If the one is a precise
rellex of the other, then chaos rules in both realms, and we are compelled
to postulate, as in the reported lives of some saints, a miracle at every step.
After a minute survey of the facts, we conclude that what is immediately
given at any time constitutes only a partial and imperfect complement of
the physical data of memory. We decide that only an intelligent apprecia-
tion of the nervous process yields useful scientific notions on the subject;
but as neurology is yet little advanced, we cannot turn round and examine
the subject in its physiological aspects. We must be content on the one
hand with acknowledging the impossibility of bringing a consistent order
into non-bodily, unexhausted systems, and, on the other, with weighing
the results by analogy. This is no outrage on the scientific method ; for
we have solid grounds for believing that the brain, as a part of the human
structure, acts in accordance with the uniformities governing the general
bodily mechanism.
Let us examine these indirect evidences so far as they relate to memory.
We vigorously exercise the muscles of the arms, legs, chest or other con-
tractile tissues of the body, and after a time we observe that they have
visibly grown and hardened, and are more supple and quicker in response.
Whatever we may question, it cannot be doubted that a change in the
muscles is evident to sight and pressure. To this should be added the
fact that what at first could not be compassed by physical force, is readily
accomplished after training. These every-day happenings are beyond
the pale of uncertainty. Now appropriate exercise, translated into our
phraseology, means the effective employment of the attention. When then
a certain amount of force is expended for a stated period, broken by
intervals, we obtain as a result larger, harder, stronger and more efficient
muscles. In other words, appropriate physical exercise produces desirable
and definite physiological changes. In ch; 3 we enlarged on the mean-
ing of appropriate exercise. What we have asserted in this chapter and
in this connection of attention energy, rigorously holds of bodily energy
in general. Consequently, to obtain the desideratum of strong muscles,
we must not put forth kss than a certain quantity of energy ; nor must we
employ more, since the system breaks down under great strain ; we must
indulge in appropriate exercise frequently, because our energy cannot be
spent all at once ; and the exercise, to be fully effective, must be spread
over a considerable length of time. Much repetition without effort is
waste; coupled with great effort it tires, and defeats its own object.
Strength and agility once acquired, especially in youth, are apt to persist
through many years, even if they be not much evoked. Occasional em-
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 233
ployment of the various muscles is imperative if they are not to deteriorate.
The weaker the appropriate stimulation, the sooner do the effects dis-
appear.*
Again, we are aware of the feelings which accompany muscular
activity. They are few, obscure, simple, and vary within a very narrow
range. We also know fairly well what happens when the muscles are in
action : a multitude of them contract and expand, and chemical pro-
cesses are set going. A nerve-plexus affects the muscles directly in the
first instance, and the former in its turn is influenced by several centres.
The multitudinous movements are connected with the movements of
bones, cartilages and tendons, while the vascular systems sympathise.
In this way the physiological changes which proceed when I place a
weight on the palm of my outstretched hand, are far-reaching compared
with what is immediately apprehended as sight and feeling.
Is it a far cry to apply to the brain that which holds good of the
muscles, and, by analogy, applies to the heart, the lungs, the stomach,
the intestines, the kidneys, the liver and other parts ? Energy spent in a
definite way has ascertainable results in every part of the body, from the
eyes downwards. Shall we insist that the brain is to be isolated like a
leper, that with it alone no permanent and predicable modifications follow
from activity, though in both instances the effects are precisely similar
and are produced in exactly the same manner ? Shall we, again, assert that
though the feelings accompanying muscular action do not represent even
a small percentage of the physical changes involved, it is otherwise with
the relation of memory to the brain } Is there no similar source in both
cases for the comparatively sparse, disconnected and unintelligible feel-
ings ? We miay conclude unhesitatingly that appropriate neural exercise
creates more or less permanent changes in the way we have just described,
and that these modifications again tend to lapse. Accompanying them
are indefinite feehngs which only hint at the extensive revolution which is
proceeding behind the vizor of immediate life. What happens when the
modified centres are re-stimulated is scarcely suspected, the process being
represented very partially by certain vague combination feelings or
thought feelings, as when we believe, or doubt or rejoice. These feelings
no more typify or explain what is going on than the muscular feelings are
a copy or an explanation of the muscular process.
The leading: work on the subject of Memory by the quantitative school, which is now
fast becoming the qualitative school, is still Ebbinghaus, Ueber das Geddchtnis, 1885.
He experimented with nonsense sylialiles of three letters (consonant 4- vowel +
consonant), employing abriut 3600 combinations, with a view to ascertaining the number
of repetitions required for re-collection under various conditions. In a similar manner he
attempted to determine the facilitation which accompanies the attempt to re-learn any-
thing, and the relative reduction of time in memorising a set of known syllables in various
orders. Though an extremely painstaking book, Ueber das Geddchtnis comes short of
establishing any general facts. Several writers have followed in Ebbinghaus' steps.
* The statements in this paragraph may be perhaps best explained by assuming that
muscular activity has its place as a part of brain functioning.
234 GENERAL ANALYSES
\io\[c {Ueher das Ton^^edjc/itm'ss, iSS6) aims at further simplification by restricting the
experiments to sounds jiure and simple. The following contributions have appeared in the
Psychological Review. Munsterberg and Higham {.Memory, 1894) test the relative value
of visual, audile and mixed series. Their conclusions are as follows: "When the two
senses act together in recollection, they hinder each other " (p. 36) ; *' when isolated, the
visual memory surpasses by far the aural " (p. 37) ; " the memory is impeded by a closer
combination of dirt'erent contents" (p. 37) ; and, in a continuation of the above study by
Bigham alone, " the memory which acts quickly acts better " (p. 45S) ; '* the quicker the
memory is discharged the better is the result, even when the subjective feeling of certainty
is the opposite" (p. 460). In An Expcritnental Study of Memory, 1894, Kirkpatrick
concludes that a thing is re-collected al>out seven times belter when the object is pre-
sented than when it is only referred to verijally. Baldwin and Shaw write on The
Memory for Square- Size, 1S95, ^"d Warren and Shaw have Further Experimaits on
Memory for Square- Size 1895, in continuation of the preceding. Smith {The Place of
Repetition in Memory, 1896) claims that " the results .... confirm in general the
accepted fact of the efficacy of continued repetition in impressing any kind of subject-
matter on the memory " (p. 27). Whitehead {A Study of Visual and Aural Memory
Processes, 1S96) urges, among other things, that "matter memorised aurally appears to
be retained slightly better than that memorised visually" (p. 268). Bolton {The Accuracy
of Recollection and Observation, 1896) examines a large number of class room replies to
questions relating to the nature of the weather a week ago, the date of Dickens' death,
and the like, together with the degree of certainty attached to the answers given. A
similar study to the last is that of Franz and Houston, The Accuracy of Observation and
Recollection /« School Children, 1896. Stetson {Some Memory Tests of Whites and
Blacks, 1897) deals with white and black school children. To this list may be added
Hawkins {Experiments on Memory Types, 1897); and Herrick {7he Propagation of
Memories, 1897) who deals with the cerebral aspects of memory. See also the follow-
ing articles in the American Journal of Psychology. Bolton, The Groivth of Memory in
School Childrcji, 1892 ; Bergstrom Experiments upon Physiological Memory by Means
of the Interference of Associations, 1893 ; Tall)Ot, An Attempt to Train the Visual
Memory, 1897 ; Smith, On Muscular Memory, 1896 ; and Burnham, Memory, His-
torically and Experimentally Considered, 1888-9, which contains a bibliography of the
subject. Finally, Ross, O71 Memory, 1891.*
136. — How TO Re-Develop.
(i) T/ie Problems of jVIemory. — -What problem as regards memory
would a pure spirit be compelled to face ? f We dare not guess. For
aught we know he might always be able to re-develop faithfully and
accurately whatsoever he had at any time observed, or he might not in
any degree possess the capacity of re-developing a system, or he
might re-produce only some things, or only certain objects under certain
conditions ; or only dimly and inaccurately. We have no data to warrant
* Herbart preserves his ideas : " All those ideas which, as we are accustomed to say,
are preserved by the memory, . . . are incessantly striving upward" {Lehrbiich, 1816, p.
20). So Bouillier, Nouvelles Etudes, 1S87, pp. 191 ft'., and Cc que Dcvienncnt les Idees,
18S7 ; and Hamilton, Metaphysics, 1877, lecture 30. See also Vaschide, Localisation
dcs Souvenirs, 1896 ; and Richet, Les Origines et les Modalites de la iMhnoire, 1886.
i" Locke, referring to the memory, speaks of "superior created intellectual beings,
which in this faculty may so far excel man, that they may have constantly in view the
whole scene of all their former actions, wherein no one of the thoughts they had ever had
may slip out of their sight. The Omniscience of God, who knows all things, past,
present, and to come, and to whom the thoughts of men's hearts always lie open, may
satisfy us of the possibility of this " {Human Understanding, hk. 2, ch. 10, sec. 9).
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 235
one conclusion rather than another. Once we leave below us " the solid
ground of nature," any and every assertion is as if shouted into a vacuum.
Psychology has fortunately nothing to do with pure spirits, as commonly
understood. Our business in this place is to understand the neural
mechanism, and that offers here several aspects of interest. In ch. 2 we
saw that attention is defined and limited, and that, therefore, the greatness
as well as the smallness of our efforts is determined. Then we learnt in
ch. 3 two truths relevant to the present inquiry : first, the brain reacts ac-
cording to the line along which it has developed ; secondly, during the
early years of life the nervous system and the body generally have the
greatest plasticity and those years decide how we shall react throughout
maturity. Then, in the present chapter, we noted that the facts of the
secondary order agree with the conclusions arrived at in chs. 2 and 3.
In improving the memory we must, therefore, take into consideration at
least three facts : the Hmitations of the attention, the uselessness of random
exercise, and the supreme importance of starting the education of the
memory in earliest childhood. Ignoring any of these will assuredly bring
disappointment in its train.
(2) Direct Observation. — The first condition of an effective memory
is thoroughgoing, detailed, repeated and varied observation. In observing
v,-e must not allow the fancy to be our guide, or else we are likely to
imagine our facts. We must deliberately and in a determined succession
scrutinise the various features of a system as well as study our data ex-
haustively if we are to re-develop much ; we must, wherever possible,
observe the objects themselves, — and not heed descriptions. — if they are to
appeal to us ; and we must keep a careful record of our observations.
Only when these conditions are fulfilled, shall we possess a tolerable
foundation for an intelligent memory. \^T/ie above conditions, and those
which follow, should be fulfilled by the student of psychology in all his re-
searches.^
(3) Standpoint. — In all serious thought we ought to be clearly aware
of what thing or aspect we wish to re-develop. We must acquire the habit
of carefully defining our demand, and must not shift our ground arbitrarily.
Certain rules which hold good of the art of observation may for this pur-
pose be employed by the memoriser. In re-developing matters economical,
anthropological, historical, ethical, psychological, educational, etc., a day-
to-day rule is of great advantage. If, accordingly, we wish to know or
to re-develop the life lived by some savage tribe, we follow the perambula-
tions of an average person of that tribe from the moment he rises one
morning to the moment he rises on the following day. We are thus
enabled accurately to record and then to re-produce his normal habits,
while otherwise we are likely to connect and re-member only a few
striking or accidental details. (Corrections for seasons, special occasions,
ages and social strata, will, of course, not be neglected.) Such a rule,
applied to the memory, prevents random re-development, which is almost
invariably tedious, imperfect, misleading and prejudiced. A second rule
236 GENERAL ANALYSES
refers to vegetation in general. A plant may be studied or thought of, — to
begin with and apart from estabHshed science, — from roots upward, and
from the time it is a seed to the time it decays. A third rule embraces
animal life, though here permanent standpoints are to be chosen for classes
rather than for the whole animal kingdom. Perhaps, for non-specialists,
" from head-to-foot and birth to death " would satisfy every-day curiosity as
regards the higher animals, and many of the lower. A fourth rule deals
with systems which have a commencement and are not embraced in the
previous groups. Thus a book is studied from beginning to end ; a road,
a concert, the history of a reign, era, country or person, should be treated
similarly. The fifth and last rule includes those classes of systems which
cannot be brought under any of the above headings. In such cases
arbitrary standpoints are chosen. Instead of observing a ball or a circle at
random, I fix upon some arbitrary point as the place from which to pro-
ceed and to which to return.
These five rules of observation will be found of unmistakable value to
those who are yet untrained. Occasions to apply them are so frequent that
once we practise the rules, they soon form a fixed household article in our
mental flats. They make re-development easy and certain ; they prevent
and expose prejudiced re-development ; and they allow the full bearing of
any issue to be judiciously weighed. It is because of the absence of
methodical guidance that so many untenable theories block the path of
progress.
(4) Simplest Case. — Given that we are objective in method and duly
possess a standpoint from which to set out, we must yet see that we begin
by observing or re-developing the simplest possible case. We must, ac-
cording to this rule, avoid plunging i?i niedias res. If I wish, for
instance, as a young beginner, to re-develop the method by which vulga
fractions are added, I need not speculate long, nor write down, as it occurs
to me, an arbitrary sum, such as I + I^ + tt- I choose instead the simplest
possible example: \-\-\. This is a primitive illustration; but the more
important or complex the problem, the more imperative is it for us to start
with the simplest possible case. In this way a solution will often be
reached. In unmethodical re-development, the number of possible cases
is incalculable. In intelligent re-development, however, the simplest
possible case readily suggests itself to the practised intellect; and one
single instance of this kind covers a whole class of facts.
Let us combine these three methods. A boy at school is asked to
enumerate the articles of clothing which are worn. Ordinarily he spurts
out in fits and starts the name of some article or another. Of many
articles he does not think ; several he mentions more than once ; now he
refers to his uncle's hat, and again to his own stockings. If the child,
however, be drilled in the above rules, then instead of casting about he
would (2) directly or in imagination observe (4) one particular individual, per-
liaps his teacher ; and (3) examine him from head to foot. Memory would
thus be easy and accurate. If he desired to be more liberal in his judgment,
SYSTEMS AS RE-DEVELOPED 237
he could successively think of the various children in the room, then of
the teachers, then of the parents, and then of the persons in the street..
In practice it will be found that methodical observation is often preferable
to re-development. The body of the chapter has shown us that to the
eye, in proportion as it is intelligent, the new is contained in the old, the
complex in the simple, and for this reason there is no necessity for storing
up an infinity of detail when the rationale of these details is accessible. A
training which supplies the student ivith general methods and general facts, is,
therefore, the best aid to memory.
(5) Generalisation. — The simplest case, in connection with systematic
and graduated generalisation will nermally prevent superfluous memorising.
Suppose that a man has little to do with vulgar fractions, and that he is
apt to forget how to deal with them. He has an easy remedy. A little
common sense, in combination with the notion of simplicity, will help him
to learn, re-learn or re-develop readily. He knows beforehand that two
halves make a whole, that a half taken from three quarters leaves a quarter,
that half of a half is a quarter, and that one quarter divided by one half
produces a half. Inspection will thus yield or return the secret of manipu-
lation. To make certain of his guesses he only requires to employ a few
samples. One well understood complex problem in algebra may thus
assist us in keeping bright our elementary mathematics, and a few pages of
a book, our French. In this manner a long line of facts which are likely
to be forgotten are readily learnt and re-learnt. Let but the simplest case
be re-collected or found, and organised reaction soon throws a flood of
light on a problem ; but the reaction must be o?'ganised.
A ready understanding consequently dispenses with much learning, its
place being taken by cautiously directed observation, generalisation and
pertinent re-development. A school boy, for instance, is told how to
multiply a sum of two figures by eleven in some special manner. Instantly
he will try, if he follows our suggestion, whether he cannot in this way
handle more than two figures, and whether multiples of eleven do not obey
the same principle. From this point, if he is enterprising, he proceeds to
find rules for numbers other than eleven, and thence to related subjects.
His graduated method of generalisation deals with varieties, species and
higher orders of facts, and he generally dispenses with deduction. Under
these conditions the memory is little harassed, while it is yet effective.
Once the notion of generalising becomes a trend, it will be applied
everywhere. Every useful suggestion, hint or successful move, will be ex-
tended to the very utmost limits, so that no chance is lost of fully exploit-
ing a situation. In this way most difficulties may be resolved and most
truths follow as easy deductions. It is to be understood that the general-
ising must be systematic and graduated.
(6) Further Rules. — In the pursuit of discovery some further rules
.should be applied. When, for instance, a proposition is before us, there
should be not only an attempt to prove it ; but also an endeavour to show
that the opposite contention is justifiable {opposite case) ; that the proposi-
238 GENERAL ANALYSES
tion docs not hold good at all {/ie}^alive case) ; that it is true to a certain
extent only {rule of degree) ; and lastly, that it is applicable to other classes
as well (rule of variety). (Sec. 7.)
(7) General Forgeffulness. — Many persons have a very indifferent
memory for isolated facts ; they forget what they have to do. In the case
of complicated relationships there are probably but two methods to be pur-
.sued. One is to make the relationship adequately concrete. For example,
when we know how the two ducal houses (sec. 134) came to their respective
■colours ; by what virtue an acid turns a blue litmus paper red ; what are
the exact processes which distinguish the exit and entrance of nerve bundles
in the spinal cord, and what are the attributes which divide white from
grey nerve material, etc., etc., — the difficulties of the memory vanish. The
other method is an artificial one, and depends on the attachment of what
is abstract to what is concrete. Mnemonic systems, however, promise
much and perform little. As far as I know them, and I have examined
large numbers, they savour, as a rule, strongly of quackery. With an air
of great learning mnemonic system builders mask only the crudest
generalisations.
General forgetfulness can be checkmated by method. Have a convenient
and permanently assigned place for every fact or thing ; whatever you have
to do, carry it out on the very first opportunity ; engagements, etc., should
be entered in a diary ; objects which are to be removed must have a pro-
minent and permanent place allotted to them ; etc., etc. [Jti tJiis connec-
tion i/ie rule as regards the will (sec. 157) should be studied ?\
The Cultivation of t lie Memory. — Good memories are as rare as they are valuable.
What is, therefore, surprising, is not that a great many ])ooks have been written on this
subject ; but that so little has been accomplished. Those who are well informed (Bain,
Educatioti as a Science, 1879, p. 121, and James, Psychology, 1890, i, p. 663-7) deny
that the memory is capable oi direct improvement, while others evidently proceed on the
opposite assumption. The former position can only be upheld in the sense that the
judgment, the imagination, the feelings, are incapable of direct improvement. The
memory books have little to offer to the man who will not learn a system. Granville's
book already referred to is by far the best of its kind. He proposes that we should read
or observe with a view to re-membering, insisting that a man's memory will not benefit
much when he reads with the notion of understanding alone. For the latter reason, he is
not inclined to hold that a well understood passage will be easily re-developed. lie holds
that men should find out which is for them the easiest method of (i) absorbing, and (2)
re-collecting ideas, — by the ear or by the eye, — and follow that. The audile will thus in-
tently listen, and assume that position in re-development. Owing to individual differences,
each man will also build up or select his own mnemonics. Given memory-attention, we
are next advised to freshen up continually our knowledge of the immediate and far-off
past, and duly co-ordinate recent acquirements. This little Ijook, I repeat, stands by it-
self in useful hints. Franck, in his L\4rt de . . . se Souvenir, 1888, works out in detail a
scheme of memorising, based on daily repetition of digested knowledge the key-words of
which are entered in a special key-word book. Many works on the subject refer in a
bombastic manner to the laws of association ; but, generally speaking, without drawing
any valuable conclusions from those principles. Most memory books contain systems
which are intended to enable us to learn lists of kings, dates, etc. As the average man
has no ambition in this direction, and as strings of facts should not be taught at school,
SVSTEAfS AS RE-DEVELOPED 239
the value of these ingenious attempts, except for special purposes, becomes doubtful.
They consist, for instance, in giving letter values to figures, and combining these into
words or sentences. Pick, in this spirit {Memory and its Doctors, 1888) arranges Latin
and French grammatical exceptions in an order which allows of a ready transition by
sense. Such series are remarkably easy to learn ; but I do not know whether they are
not as easily forgotten. There is still a great need for a few wise rules. Jingles are
frequently of use, and there is no reason why we should not manufacture these as occasion
arises. To a limited degree we may indulge in haphazard methods by which to re-develop
iiutractable details. For instance, I was anxious to read a book by Garner on the speech of
monkeys. Apart from a mnemonic I should have been in danger of confusing the name
with Barnett, Garnett, Warner, and so on. By constructing a sentence, this was avoided.
"We garner corn; but we do not garner the speech of monkeys.^'' All these devices,
however, have little to do with the cultivation of the memory as a whole.*
137. — A Bird's Eye View,
In those beings which are most lowly organised, the main trend of activity
consists, as we may say, in shrinking from danger and in absorbing nutri-
ment. As we rise in the evolutionary scale, however, we meet with compli-
cated reflex action and with definite sensations ; also perhaps with changes
such as are implied in the phrase '■'•horny handed son of toil." A higher
stage of evolution, again, will express itself when, in a mechanical manner,
the advantageous course is persisted in and followed mechanically, as occa-
sion arises ; here, where artificial selection supplements natural selection,
there is wide scope. Lastly, through complications in the circumstances
under which a species lives, a model or mimic world may become a neces-
sity, and, accordingly, spurred by needs, there develop iveakened and shnpli-
fied discharges of a more and more complex kind. These form the memory
proper, as we usually understand it. In the truest sense, therefore, the
world of memory is a stage where we play the drama of life in advance, and
for our own purposes. This sketch, however, does not presume to supply the
precise how and when of the evolution of memory. It does not even com-
mit us to the widely accepted theory that the weaker discharge is merely
different in degree from the normal one ; for that would contradict the fact
that with visuals, say, 07ily the visual aspect is generally integrated. From
the highest point of view, therefore, there is no abyss between the " outer "
world and the "inner"; and the same point of view teaches us that the
present and the past are only distinguished by position in a series.
Additional I\eferences. — Arreat, Me/noire et Imagination, 1S95 '■< Binet and Henri, La
Memoire des Mots, 1894, and La Alemoire des Phrases, 1 894 ; Bohm, Zur Theorie des
Ged&chtnisses, 1877 ; Bradley, So7ne Peviarks on Memory and Inference, 1899 ; Jost, Die
Associationsfestigkeit, 1897; Kennedy, On the Experi?)iental Investigation of Metiiory,
1898; Lasson, Das Geddcht7iis, 1894; Lewy, Experimentelle Untersuchungen ilber das
Geddchtniss, 1895 '■> Miiller and Schumann, Zur Unterszichung des GedCichtnisses, 1893 5
Miiller and Pilzecker, Zur Lehre voin Geddchtniss, 1900; Netschajeff, Ueber die Gedacht-
nissentunchehing bei Schulkindern, 1900; Schubert-Soldern, Reproduction, Gefiihl und
Wille, 1887 ; Smith, On Muscular Memory, 1896 ; Twardowski, Inhalt und Gegeti-
stand der Vorstellungen, 1894 ; Uphues, Wahrnehmung und E/npfindung, 18SS ; and
Uphues, Ueber die Erittnerting, 1889.
*0n the systems generally, see Middleton, Memory Systems, iSSl.
CHArTER VI
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED*
Quakes the neural citadel,
Rush \vc towards our heaven or hell.
138. — Pleasure and Paix are neither Sensations nor Feelings.
The temperature uf the room in which I write is very low. In course of
time, consequently, my feet begin to grow cold, though the body generally
remains warm. Slowl}', like the tide on the sea-shore, the cold, as felt, rises :
it licks the ankles ; it has crept up to the knees. Nevertheless I continue to
write ; my thoughts follow their way undisturbed ; and I turn my attention
freely in what primary or secondary direction I choose. The cold does
not destroy or break through my line of thought. It leaves me unaffected.
I do not shiver and I feel no inconvenience. \Closely exaijiim sitni/a?- cases,
employing experiment by preferetice. Extend the examination to temperatures
genera.
lly.-\
Here we have a high degree of cold, as felt, conjoined with an absence of
pain. The truth of this statement is indisputable. I am convinced that
the feeling is the one rightly dominated " icy cold," and, at the same time, I
am equally certain that the feeling leaves me wholly unconcerned. As I
am unmoved by the inkstaiid and paper before me ; as the membering of
these gives rise to no uneasiness ; and as they indifferently occupy the field
of vision when the eye lights on them occasionally : so the icy extremities
appeal to me only in a casual way. I might as truthfully assert that I suffer
excruciating agony, as that the cold pains me. What is more, I have no
justification for calling the feeling painful rather than pleasant.
* The physiological point of view is so suitable to the treatment of the subject of pleasure
and pain, that I have not hesitated to adopt it in this chapter. The immediate results of
feelings are too indecisive and obscure to repay systematic treatment. If, however, the
student is sufficiently imaginative, he may think of the feelings as commensurate with the
body, that is to say, given a body as touched and that same body as seen, he may picture
to himself that body as fe/t — a body consisting of feelings, and corresponding closely to
the seen and touched body, or, at all events, corresponding to the nervous system. In
that case the disturbances — the pleasure and pain — may be imaginatively traced in the
realm of feeling. Nevertheless, even then it would be convenient to investigate the pro-
blem of pleasure-pain as it is clearly given to sight and touch rather than as it is obscurely
given to the feelings.
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 241
Is it, then, immaterial, from the standpoint of pleasure-pain, whether we
are icy cold or not ? We are bound to answer in the affirmative ; for that
state of cold is consistent with a condition of indifference "^as regards
pleasure-pain. We cannot reasonably urge that a feeling as such is con-
nected with likes and dislikes, while we occasionally observe it in the
absence of any appreciable incHnation or disinclination. .,^; We must pro-
nounce the feeling to belong to no sect or party; we must seek the explana-
tion of our attitude, when we are pleased or displeased, in something which
accompanies the feelings rather than in the feelings themselves ; and we
are bound to consider the common belief that certain sensations are pain-
ful in themselves as based on a confused analysis. We are not entitled to
hold that because normally the feeling of cold is noticed in conjunction with
other systems and is very prominent, it is, therefore, of such and such a
nature or determines this course of action or that. Our examination shows
that the inner meaning of what happens has probably been mistaken.
The feeling of cold on a particular occasion, as we have seen, was not
connected with pain. We were bound to conclude provisionally from this
that felt cold generally is not synonymous with suffering. If that, however,
be so, we must go farther. Heat, by the same tentative reasoning, cannot
be regarded as pleasurable or painful in itself, nor can developments of any
kind be considered as possessing pleasure-pain value, *by themselves.
Must we, then, assert that pleasure and pain, whatever else they may be,
are neither sensations nor feelings? There seems no alternative. Shall
we confess that the prick of a pin or a well-aimed blow do'not induce feel-
ings which are necessarily painful, i.e., that the feelings induced are not
the pain ? There is no escape from such a position. The'^ sequel will
offer what I deem ample corroboration of the above contention.
Let us approach the problem from another standpoint. /' A certain sweet-
meat is placed on the table. I, yet a child, enjoy it immensely, and so
do my young companions. We say that the dish is delicious. We are
frequently regaled vdth it. Time passes ; but the sweetmeat is still con-
stantly placed before us, until we are all heartily tired of it. We loathe the
sight of it and hate the thought of it. The sweet morsel has not suffered
a change ; it is we that have. The flavour which we thought delectable is
still there as it always was. \_Is it .?] What once we loved, we hate now.
Here we arrive at our former conclusion by a second road. Not only
may a feeling which is regarded as pleasurable or painful become indif-
ferent ; it may even change into its opposite. We cannot, therefore, legiti-
mately state that systems are painful or pain-causing, if by pain is meant a
feehng. It is possible that in the imperfect state of our modes of expres-
sion we cannot help, on varying occasions, calling one and the same system
pleasurable, painful and indifferent ; but this inability only hides without
affecting the underlying unity.
It may be urged : "We grant that the dish retains its chief characteristics.
[Does it?] Yet it is not the same thing, e.g., the pastry sticks to the roof
of the mouth. In short, a series of new systems are the source of our dis-
16
242 GENERAL ANALYSES
like, and it is these whicli are distasteful." No doubt some physiological
change has taken place, and new sensations have supervened in part ; but
these very systems are to be explained by the same principles. They, too,
as we shall learn, can be thought of as pleasant, painful or indifferent.
For this reason, however we shuffle the series of immediately given systems,
we find that they do not e.xpress pleasure-pain. \_Experimeftt with tastes,
smells, sounds, sights, pressures, etc. Drink or eat what is harmless but not
to your taste, say, cod liver oil or olives, and see ivhether and how you come to
like it or to dislike //.]
I take now a normal occasion when I feel cold. That condition is clearly
objectionable. What are the features, then, which mark this case, as dis-
tinguished from the one we first analysed ? They are generally as follows.
I cannot keep closely to my writing. The thoughts degenerate and grow
thinner. I recur repeatedly to the feelings of cold. I am uneasy. Perhaps
I shiver, breathe hard, and am restless, if the low temperature affects me
very much ; perhaps catarrh is induced ; perhaps the muscles tend to become
stiff and the skin insensible. The telling factor in this case is a central
nervous disturbance. When that is present, pleasure or pain is noticed.
But for that disturbance, there would be no uneasiness, and in the absence
of such uneasiness the other symptoms we have enumerated would be indif-
ferent. It is, then, because the cold was, in my first illustration, only local
and left the centres unaffected that I was free from trouble. Had, on the
contrary, the centres been chilled, its effect would normally have been a
neural disturbance, accompanied by a temporary disorganisation of thought
and motion. In proportion as such a dynamic result is achieved, we are
pained or pleased, and we interpret accordingly the feelings whatever their
quality. The cold, as felt, and the disturbance are separate effects of the
objective cold on our organism. We shall verify this later on. \Experi-
mefit carefully alo7ig the line here followed. A whole class room may go
through appropriate exercises, each student writifig an exhaustive account of
what he undergoes. Test, co7ifirm or refute, if possible, the reasoning in the
text.]
Psychologists frequently distinguish between a sensation and its feeling tone. Accord-
ing to this view, every sensation is accompatiied by a feeling of pleasure or pain ; but such
an opinion, as we shall see, is untenable. The distinction is also sometimes made between
localised pain sensations and comfort or discomfort. Thus it would be said that a sensa-
tion of cold can give rise to discomfort ; but that it is not a pain sensation. The discomfort
here produced is the disagreeable feeling tone which is said to accompany every sensation.
Roughly speaking, this distinction between directly and indirectly produced pain is a use-
ful one. Sharply running a needle into the flesh \do this also very slowly a?id observe
result\ we feel pained directly ; being very cold, we feel pained indirectly. On examination,
nevertheless, we shall be compelled to admit that pain sensations cannot be readily classed
together or differentiated from other sensations, and that all pain is more or less indirect.
I have spoken as if the difference between a feeling and a sensation were merely one
of degree. (Sec. 20.) This, however, is not generally admitted. According to Ward,
Sully, and many other psychologists, a sensation is something which the individual attends
to, something which is cognitive in character. A feehng, again, only exists in being yir///
it represents a state of the subject ; it is only known through its effects ; and is of neces-
sity unanalysable because subjective in character. Fortunately, the manner in which the
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 243
contention is urged, makes its refutation easy, since feeling is considered as strictly one
with pleasure-pain. Pleasure-pain being, as I shall show, readily analysable into certain
sequences, the threatening sand bank on which the non-subjective theory is to founder,
proves but a mirage. Yet even setting our solution aside, it is difficult to find a justifica-
tion for the subjective theory. Apart from indirect interpretations and particular ways
of looking at things, psychology only reveals to us systems in various combinations.
When we say " JVe are aware," " We feel," " IVe act," we mean by the phrases certain
complexes, and not some mysterious being. Psychologically considered, all thinghood,
all objectification, is a formulation of facts from the point of view of practical necessities,
and terms such as desire, house, family, ego, nation, book, agree in this that they express,
theoretically speaking, complexes whose meaning changes as do the wave forms in an
agitated sea. Indeed, as Mach {Beitrdge zur Analyse der Empfindungen, 1886, p. 18)
well says : " If we ask who feels, we refer an analysed complex of elements to a yet un-
analysed one " ; that is to say, to explain the ego, we assume another ego, and to explain
that still another. For these reasons I intend to ignore the existence ot egos when funda-
mental questions are concerned, and hence the facts implied in awareness, action or feeling,
must be explained on a non-subjective basis. To do otherwise, is to make psychology
a matter of terms and not a matter of sense, is to clothe the psychology of rumour and
prejudice in professorial garb.*
Sully, in the second volume oi his Hutnan Mind, insists at full length on the distinction
between feeling and presentation. Whether I view this distinction positively or
negatively, I obtain the same result. To begin with, men speak of the feeling of
•doubt, the feeling of admiration, that of interest, of delight, of grief, of a burn and that
■of touch. If the definition of feeling which is here proposed, and which agrees with the
popular usage of the word, is accepted, we have uniformly in each of the above instances
sensations of the simplest character to which we attach the name of feehngs, and the
absence of these elementary sensations argues the absence of feelings. In our case the
word feeling is a useful word, and one that is appropriate. Let Prof. Sully's definition of
feeling, however, be rigorously adhered to, and what is the consequence ? "Feelings,"
as he defines them are, " the subjective side of our experience." That subjective side ex-
cludes what we style primary and secondary systems and any changes within these, and
refers to some undefinable essence. Hence that side, strictly speaking, must be empty
and meaningless to us, incapable of being defined ; and, therefore, any statement as to
the "intensity, duration, and probable extensity or volume" of feeling, as well as any
distinction between pleasure and pain, must be gratuitous on Prof. Sully's theory. The
only objection to this criticism is the supposed irresistible fact of the feelings themselves ;
but here the answer is that the above interpretation of the data does no violence to the
facts, though it may work havoc among theories which are bound up with the "essences"
and " substances " bequeathed to us from the Middle Ages. For these reasons Sully's
distinction between feeling and presentation seems to me invalid.
I will here collect the opinions of psychologists on the chief problem discussed in this
chapter. Allen, Physiological Esthetics, 1877 : " Every act, so long as it is pleasurable,
is in so far a healthy and useful one ; and conversely, so long as it is painful, a
morbid and destructive one " (p. 26). Again, " Pain is the subjective concomitant of
destructive action or insufficient nutrition in any sentient tissue. Pleasure is the sub-
jective concomitant of the normal amount of function in any such tissue" (p. 29). Bain,
The Emotio7is and the Will, 1875 : " Feeling comprises all our pleasures and pains,
together with states that are indifferent as regards pleasure and pain and are characterised
simply as excitement " t (p. i). "The most palpable distinction among our feelings
is the contrast of pleasure and pain " (p. 10). " In every volition, rightly so named, the
stimulus, or antecedent, is some feeling " (p. 14). Beaunis, Les Sensations Internes,
1889 : "If pain exists to make us feel pleasure by contrast, it would have been better if
*The question touched upon here is amply discussed in ch. 8.
tSee also "Ca Feeling as Indifference," 1S87-9, by Bain, Johnson, Mason and Sully.
244 GENERAL ANALYSES
we had remained ignorant of both ; it would have been better to possess serene indifference
than these tluctuations between pleasure and pain and pain and pleasure, where pain
always reserves to itself the larger and better part of life " (pp. 221-2). " Pleasure and
pain are .... the fundamental and primordial elements, and the germs of sensation"
(p. 251). See also on the expression of pleasure and pain, pp. 193-201 ; on the powers
of resistance to pain, pp. 190-3 ; on intense pains, 169-74 ; on special pain centres,
pp. 202-17; on Ihe non-utility of pain, pp. 221-2; on subjective pain, pp. 225-36.
Bouillier, Du Plaisir et de la Douleiir, 1S65 : Pleasure and pain "only differ in
intensity and duration" (p. 124). "Pleasure and pain are necessarily attached to the
exercise of activity, [hence] the soul does not for an instant cease to experience
pleixsure or pain" (p. 82). "The one [pain or pleasure] being given, we must accept
the other of necessity" (p. 152). See also on bodily and mental pleasures and pains, pp.
134-6; and on the continuous presence of pleasure or pain, pp. 82-92. Dumont,
Thcorie Scicntifique de la Sensibility, 1875: "There is pleasure every time that the
totality of forces which constitute the self are augmented, provided that that augmentation
is not so considerable that it produces a dissociative movement of those very forces ;
there is pain, on the contrary, when that totality is diminished" (p. 67). See also on a
state of indifference, pp. 96-101. Y^xk, Sensation et I\IoHvement, 18S7, p. 64: "The
sensation of pleasure resolves itself into a sensation of power ; the sensation of pain into
a sensation of powerlessness." Foster, Physiology, part 4, 1899: "When excessive
pressure is exerted on the skin, or when the change of temperature passes certain limits,
the sensation which is excited ceases to be recognised as one either of touch or of
temperature and takes on characters of its own ; we then call it a sensation of pain "
(§882). "We may conclude then that the skin in common with other tissues possesses
common sensibility, and that when this is excited in excess, so as to distinctly affect con-
sciousness, we call it pain" (§883). Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics, 1877: "The
class which comprehends the phenomena of pleasure and pain, or, in a single word, the
phenomena of feeling" (ii, p. 414). "Pleasure is a reflex of the spontaneous and un-
impeded exertion of a power, of whose energies we are conscious. Pain, a reflex of the
overstrained or repressed exertion of such a power" (ii, p. 440). "All pleasure arises
from the free play of our faculties and capacities ; all pain from their compulsory repres-
sion or compulsory activity" (ii, p. 477). Ploffding, Outlines of Psychology, 1891, p.
222 : " The first mark, by which to indicate the nature of a feeling, is its pleasurableness
or painfulness." Horwicz, Psychologische Analysen, 1872-8: "Feeling is the direct
expression of the soul's impulse for self-preservation ; that which harmonises with
conditions of welfare being agreeable, and that which contradicts them being disagreeable "
(1872, i, p. 169). "No sensation without impulse; no sensation without feeling; sen-
sation is feeling" (1872, i, p. 358). "According to our view feeling is the mind's most
primitive and most elementary form ; it is the primary and sole content of consciousness
and the impelling force to all mental development" (1875, ii, p. 178). Horwicz also
maintains that all sensations are "objective or knowledge giving, as well as subjective or
pleasure-pain giving " (i, p. 343), and that through habit or repetition pleasure-pain is
transformed into sensation and thought (i, pp. 367-8). See also his third volume. Jodl,
Lehrhuch, 1896, p. 375: "Pleasure and pain are the most general marks or funda-
mental qualities of feeling." Ladd, Psychology, 1894: " Pleasures and pains arealike
in this that they are forms of feeling" (p. 164). "Ideal pains and pleasures are not
comparable in mere intensity with sensuous pains and pleasures" (p. 199). Speaking of
pleasure-pain : "Psychology cannot find that the facts testify to this side of life as being
by any means all-powerful " (p. 197). See also on feelings distinguished qualitatively,
ch. 9. Lipps, Grundtatsachen, 1883: "All unsatisfied striving is .... pain ....
So also all satisfied striving is pleasure" (p. 439), and " Pleasure is always the result of
psychical furtherance, pain a reflex of psychical opposition" (p. 696). Mantegazza,
Physiologie du Plaisir, trs., 1886. Speaking of defining the word pleasure, he remarks
that "the definition of an object known to all, the specific reality of which is un-
challenged, is a simple scholastic luxury" (p. i). "Pleasure is a sensation" (p. i).
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 245
" Pleasure is the mode of a sensation, never the sensation itself" (p. 370). Compare
these last two statements. Physiologie de la Doulcur, 1888 : " Pain is a change in
sensibility which repels him who experiences it " (p. 5). In dwelling on the possible use-
lessness of pain, he says: "My servant calls me to dinner every day at six o'clock
without her finding it necessary to give me a box on the ear or a thrust with a dagger "
(pp. 12-3). See also on expression in pain, pp. 207-317. Marshall, Fain, Pleasure,
and ALstketics, 1894 : " The subject-matter of our discussion is fortunately perfectly clear.
All know what we mean when we speak of pleasure and of pain" (p. 6). This last kind
of assumption almost pa)-alyscs psychological progress. " Pleasure- pain modes are quales
of all mental states : qualities, one of which must, and any of which may, belong to any
element of consciousness " (p. 45). "Pleasure-pain ... is not sensation, and yet is
closely bound up with sensation ; it is not emotion, but is closely bound up with emotion
also" (p. 35). " Pleasure is experienced whenever the physical activity coincident with
the psychic state to which the pleasure is attached involves the use of surplus stored
force. Pain is experienced whenever the physical action which determines the content
is so related to the supply of nutriment to its organ, that the energy involved in its re-
action to the stimulus is less in amount than the energy which the stimulus habitually
calls forth" (p. 171). Marshall holds that probably direct nerve stimulation is only
followed by pain, because of the crude methods which have to be employd (p. 17) ; and
that the frequent fact of pain following sensations is an illusion (p. 18). Mezes,
Pleasure- Pain Defined, 1895, P- 42 : " The prominent idea, the idea attended to, in a
whole of mutally congruent elements, is called pleasant .... Attention plus inhibition
is the mark of pain, attention without inhibition that of pleasure. " James Mill, Analysis,
1869, ii, p. 184 : "I have one sensation, and then another, and then another. The first
is of such a kind that I care not whether it is long or short ; the second is of such a kind,
that I would put an end to it instantly if I could ; the third is of such a kind, that I like
it prolonged I call the first indifferent ; the second painful ; the third
pleasurable." Morgan, Comparative Psychology, 1894, pp. 13S-9: " It seem.s proved
that the nerve-endings which are stimulated to pain are different from, and probably lie
deeper than, those which are concerned in sensations of touch or of temperature ; the
nerves with which they are connected pursue a somewhat different course in the spinal
cord, and end in different centres in the brain." The position which Morgan accepts
has been severely criticised by Marshall and others, and must be received with due
caution. 'Na.hlowsky, P>as Ge/iihlslel>en, 1862: " According to our opinion there exists
phj'sical as well as mental pain. The former is a sensation (Empfindung), and only the
latter represents feeling (Gefiihl) " (p. 19). " Feeling and volition do not exist outside
of or along with ideas ; but result from these latter " (p. 42). If we hold, as we do,
that a sensation is based in the past and is a complex reaction, then Nahlowsky's distinc-
tion between " sensory tone," implying a bodily disturbance, and " feeling tone,"
implying a psychic disturbance (p. 17), is far from evident. Nahlowsky's definition of an
idea — he is a Herbartian — is equally untenable in my view. With others he also holds
that, normally, mental process is only inappreciably disturbed (p. 47). Ribot (The
Psychology of the Emotions, 1897) expresses himself thus : " The affective life is appetite
or its contrary — that is to say, movement or arrest of movement ; at its root is an impulse,
a tendency, an act in the nascent or complete state, independent of intelligence, which
has nothing to do with it and may not even be present" (p. 438). "Let us define
* pleasure ' as an internal state which every one knows by experience, and of which con-
sciousness reveals innumerable modes, but which by its generality and its multiplicity of
aspect escapes definition" (p. 28). Robertson, Psychology, 1896, p. 191: "Take a
needle and bring it gently into contact with the skin. Of what are we conscious? We
are intellective ; we say it is something sharp ; we perceive it for what it is. But suppose
the needle is run in. Our consciousness assumes the aspect of feeling ; we are pained."
Spencer, Psychology, 1S90: "Pains are the correlatives of actions injurious to the
organism, while pleasures are the correlatives of actions conducive to its welfare" (i, p.
2?9)- Again, " Physiologically considered, a disagreeable course of action is one in
246 GENERAL ANALYSES
which compound feelings have to issue in compound actions, through complex nervous
structures which offer considerable resistance" (p. 579). "While pleasures and pains
are partly constituted of those local and conspicuous elements of feeling directly aroused
hy special stimulation, they are largely, if not mainly, composed of secondary elements of
feeling aroused indirectly by diffused stimulation of the nervous system " (i, p. 288). Stanley,
Feeling- and Emotion, 1886, p. 69: "Feeling then, we conclude, is the purely
subjective factor in consciousness ; and per se, both as developed and undeveloped, is
merely pleasure and pain." Stout, Analytic Psychology, 1S96, ii : "The antithesis
between pleasure and pain is coincident with the antithesis between free and impeded
progress towards an end " (p. 270). "With ultimate attainment, the mental tendency
ceases to operate, and the pleasure ceases also" (p. 271). "The gaining of an end is
pleasant" (p. 273). " We simply deny that, in the waking state, our mental attitude is
ever wholly without pleasant or painful tones" (p. 288). "Pain-sensations form a class
by themselves as truly as do sensations of pressure or of smell " (p. 301). A criticism of
Marshall will be found in the same volume on pp. 291-9. The arguments advanced by
Dr. Stout do not carry easy conviction. Perhaps the statements which follow are as
true. Free progress need not be accompanied by pleasure nor impeded by pain ; pleasure
does not cease with attainment ; the gaining of an end need not be pleasant ; and
experiment is frequently unable to discover pleasant or painful tones. Strieker, Das
Bewusstsein, 1879, p. 72 : " That which appears to me neither indifferent nor un-
pleasant, can only be pleasant." Sully, Human Mind, 1892, ii : " Feeling consists of all
varieties of pleasurable and painful consciousness" (p. 3), "A pleasure is any degree
of agreeable consciousness which as such contents us, and is voluntarily held to ; a pain
any degree of disagreeable consciousness which as such discontents us, and is voluntarily
repelled " ( p. 3). " We appear justified then in saying that feeling proper is nothing
but the various shades of the agreeable and the disagreeable, apart and in their com-
minglings" (pp. 4-5). " Feeling is the subjective side of our experience" (p. 12).
139. — The Nature of the Nervous System determines how far we
ARE Drawn towards, or Recoil from, an Object.
For experimental purposes I have turned acrobat. I support myself on
my toes, and, to assist my balance, I stretch out my two arms. For a few
seconds I stand as firm as a rock ; but as the moments pass, I have to
make increasing efforts to preserve or regain my position. At last, in
spite of vigilance, resolve and effort, my centre of gravity is displaced.
Furthermore, after a while the motor series claims only part of my attention,
since with it there has developed a sensory series. No unusual feelings
were at first traceable ; but, as I persist, distinct feelings are evolved one
by one. They attack in succession the feet, the ankles and the knees.
In the same way a stream of sensibility beats against the arms, and spreads
over the shoulders and the chest. All this not only makes itself felt where
nothing special has been previously observed ; but as time goes on the
feelings increase in complexity.
Was it a feeling of pleasure or pain which upset my balance? Did I
will to fall? No. At least, disregarding the second question as not ap-
pertaining to our present problem, what happened revealed not a streak of
either pleasure or pain. My aim was to learn how long I could support
myself in the unsteady posture mentioned, while there was no motive in-
ducing me to desist from my task.
(i) The reason for the failure lay in the structure of the organism; for
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 247
the nervous system can only maintain its stability under conditions differing
from those under which my experiment was conducted. It is able to resist
a certain amount of strain without flinching ; but disorganisation gradually
supervenes until the nervous system breaks down at last. Our desires have
nothing to do with this course. Were the nervous system differently con-
structed, my experiment would have ended otherwise. If I chose to stand
on the very tip of my toes, vigilance, resolve, effort, all alike, would lack
scope for action. Collapse would be unavoidable and almost instan-
taneous.
We here face a force which has to be reckoned with. We meet with
modifying agencies besides those of desire, and we are compelled to
assume that the relative tone of the bodily constitution enters into the
problem. When we are tired, it is not because we like being tired, but
because of our nervous structure ; when we continue working in spite of
being tired, it is again by virtue of the functional tendencies or needs of
the organism. Sometimes our resolve has no effect whatever ; sometimes
but a momentary one ; and sometimes we persist with great difficulty.
Were our organism structurally different, and structure differs with different
animals, our resolves might be either arbitrary dictators, or slaves who can
call nothing their own. We might conceivably be so wise that we should
marvel at the limited range of Aristotle's outlook, or so dull that an oyster
would object to our unintellectual company. What we desire, both as to
magnitude or quality^ is decided by our functional tendencies and capacities.
Organised reaction takes care of that. It is a sure sign of insanity when
a man attempts to act with a cool disregard of his constitution.
The following are some of the facts which explain why no allowance has,
as a rule, been made for the limitations which are here insisted upon.
(a) Capacity varies with individuals, and from this men have concluded
that the ability itself is created by desire.
(U) By means of special efforts we can generally re-distribute the avail-
able energy more or less. People, therefore, reason that if we only will
strongly enough, no enterprise will be too arduous. In the physical world
the narrow limits of exceptional effort are fairly evident, and for this
reason it verges on the absurd to imagine an average youth, by dint of
sheer determination, uprooting oak trees. Not so, however, in the realm
of thought: here all is confusion; nothing is too extravagant for belief;
and desire is supposed to be omnipotent. If we were only pleased with
the right, some men argue, no mean thought would ever suggest itself,
no thread of reasoning would ever be broken, no opportunity would ever
be neglected. The palpable falsehood of the doctrine is evident to the
unprejudiced observer. Human history gives it the lie direct. Yet owing
to the absence of a searching inquiry, the naked doctrine, riddled by facts,
still maintains itself. Our studies, however, have taught us that extra
effort is equally limited in the two realms — the primary and the secondary,
and that such extra effort is determined by the nature of the human struc-
ture. If the energy of the organism spent itself entirely in disjointed
2^8 GENERAL ANALYSES
efforts, and if every action were as incapable of being prolonged as is the
action of standing on tiptoe, then we should never demand, speak of or
think of extra exertion. The capacity for such, as for ail, effort is a
capacity of the organism,
(r) The third and' last reason why mistaken notions prevail concerning
the command of desires over the body, is one familiar to us from the third
chapter. Appropriate exercise strengthens. Hence we are able to gain
greater power if we strenuously persist, which is but repeating the maxim
we have just laid down, i.e., that appropriate exercise strengthens. This
capacity can be developed to some extent (J^y learning what assists ; by
forgetting tvJiat does tiot assist; by finer judgme7it ; and by viuscular and
nervous develop?nent), and is in itself a given fact. It is this truth which
is here referred to. The practical aspect of this tendency to grow has
been fully discussed in^^ch. 3,
(2) We have seen that a series of special feelings spread and developed
as the equilibrium became more difficult to maintain. There were other
sensations present, such as those of sight and equilibration, but these will
be left unnoticed in this place. The specially evolved feelings had an
unmistakable source. They arose in connection with more or less ab-
normal changes in certain portions of the body, and in their turn they
determined nothing. They neither shortened nor lengthened the period
of doubt. Had they been entirely absent, I should, other things being
equal, have given way neither sooner nor later than I did.
What, then, was their significance? In the particular experimental
instance they had none ; but otherwise the significance lay in what they
were signs of. Let us elucidate this by assuming that they and their
physical counterpart did not exist. If, under such conditions, I worked
too hard at some problem, I should become more and more exhausted,
slowly approaching perhaps the fatal borders of insanity. All the while there
would be no warning, and my reason would perhaps give way. Again,
imagine that I am on the threshold of solving the problem. Not perceiv-
ing this, I probably miss the point. Thus, such feelings inform us usually
as to how matters stand, and with this information we can do much, with-
out it little. Must we then assume that a non-bodily fact, pure and simple,
has a radical effect on our physical actions ? To this one may answer :
other things being equal. Yes ; but this equality does not prevail. The
existence of the non-bodily systems indicates the presence of their neural
counterpart. It is the latter which completes the physiological equation.
Were the feelings absent, as they often are, it would argue that the physical
effect of our activity had not appropriately stimulated the brain. That
is where the mischief would lie. Let the non-bodily series alone be annihi-
lated, as is often the case when some action continues while we are chiefly
engaged in some other direction, and the actual process, we have every
reason to believe, unfolds just as if the special non-bodily systems were
present (sec. 19). Once more, then, we discover that indirect factors are
responsible for the significance of the sensory series. They indicate that
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 249
the system is working harmoniously, and that important changes yield
their secret to the central regulative portions. \Attempt to distinguish
Iietweeii various feelings, as heat aud cold {before a fire on a winter's day\
pain and pleasure, ete.^
These special feelings or sensations have no particular feature which
distinguishes them from those of any other class.* The sense of sight,
that of equilibration, that of contact, that of hearing, are in the last resort
explicable in the same way as the sense systems referred to. In each
instance the significance of what happens rests in what it is a sign of, and
not in itself. " All is right with the world " as far as there is no disturbance.
The organism abounds with intelligent or complex activities of supreme
importance wherein our awareness plays no known part or almost none.
The complicated processes of blood-aerating, of digesting, secreting, reject-
ing and assimilating various substances, or of propelling the blood, pass
normally without sensory indications, and were it not for anatomy and
physiology, i.e., for indirect research, we should be almost at a loss to
know what happens within the body. Many portions of the organism,
too, have unstriped miuscles, and frequently no nerves. Activity, in a
large percentage of the instances mentioned, is unsuspected by us ; and
many sense systems become only intelligible after anatomists and physio-
logists have connected them with parts of the body and pointed out their
meaning. The brain, being a part of the body, does not volunteer in-
formation as to its processes. This we might know deductively ; but
experiments recorded in previous chapters, especially in ch. 4, confirm
the fact. We have learnt that much of our intellectual life is hidden
from us, or revealed by vague feelings only. We find once more that the
brain acts as does the body as a whole, disclosing fevt^ of its secrets, except
to the anatomist and physiologist.
We have carried our examination far enough in two directions : we have
dealt with the question of extra effort, and with that of feelings connected
with such extra effort. Let us now follow a different line.
(3) At first the vigilance and the effort required in balancing myself were
almost nil, or, to express the same fact differently, to begin with, the experi-
ment absorbed so little attention that I could attend to it and to other
things as well. As I proceeded my bodily energy became absorbed to the
point of exhaustion. Considering, however, that I was interested in the
attempt, that did not matter : a labourer uses his full strength in this way
hundreds of times during a day. We must allow nevertheless for the fact
that our lines of activity are marked out, first, by fundamental needs, and
secondly, by organised reaction, and that owing to functional tendencies,!
we occupy ourselves with normal bodily and intellectual wants, which do
*Physical pains as well as mental pains are localisable more or less accurately. Ab-
stract from them the localisable aspect, that is to say, the sensations, and there remains a
primary or a secondary disturbance.
+ " Our several ortjans constitute not merely so many capacities for particular functional
activity, but so many tendencies or dispositions towards such activity " (Sully, Humati
Mind, 1892, ii, p. 17).
250 GENERAL ANALYSES
not include exhausting feats. By routine, for this reason, we ordinarily
shrink from effort, and require, therefore, a strong incentive to persist in
difficult courses. The slightest effort of an unaccustomed kind, as has been
repeatedly explained, tends to be dismissed organically ; thought after
thought enters the lists, and gives battle to the notion of effort. When,
on account of training, our reactions are obedient to a purpose, then a
difficult undertaking becomes easy, or perhaps loses the character of a
task, and in this case the action has become organised. Normally a
violent course of action, being unusual, tends to be displaced by others ;
and since our fundamental instinct is that of self-equilibration, our life
could not be moulded on purely experimental considerations. After a
time, as we shall learn in the next chapter, the deeper wants compel us to
obedience. We conclude, then, that the balancing requires increasing
exertion ; that such effort will only be forthcoming in the presence of a
strong need, or when we are thoroughly trained ; that the task gradually
monopolises the field of attention, and that the other thoughts which are
crowding in, tend to remove the notion of it from the foreground.
WTiat is meant by motive and interest ? \_Give descriptions of what happens when you
are interested.'\ They imply that a considerable current of attention is pressing in a certain
direction. The stream of attention flows easily because previous activity has removed
obstacles ; or it does so because the trend of thought has the power to produce such an
effect through appeal to some deep instinct or to some acquired passion or inclination.
When a notion leaves us unconcerned, it is conclusive that the general distribution of
attention has not been affected. Here, other thoughts co-exist with, and eventually crowd
out, the notion. In interest there is a quick gathering of the current ; for example, what
one man cannot accomplish without sensible exertion, another does without being aware
of any seeming strain. Special effort, voluntary or routine, represents another aspect of
this fact. Here also there is a focusing of energy, only normally more slowly evolved.
An urgent need, again, is something which induces an effort where custom and established
interest are alisent. The warmth of interest, the feelings accompanying effort, indicate-
this rush in one direction. It is as if at one moment various groups of persons stood
around sundry platforms at an open-air demonstration. Suddenly something startling
happens at one of the platforms, and everybody hastens to the spot. The number of
people present is still the same ; only they have ceased to be distributed — they are massed.
So in special effort, motived or organised, the attention is collected. If this were im-
possible, close attention would be out of the question. The capacity for massing and
keeping massed is the capacity for keen attention, and were we able to attend freely, the
fascination of interest and the influence of a need would be unknown.*
It is difficult to trace the precise antecedent of a disturbance. We might say that in
both pleasure and pain something violent happens which compels hasty central readjust-
ment. In pain there exists a violent change with a destructive tendency — a poisoning or
starving of the blood or what not, — against which a struggle is initiated in the regulative
brain centres. In pleasure we have also a violent change, but with a healthful tendency
— a purifying or nourishing of the blood or what not, — and here the central reactions serve
only the purpose of hemming in the force, and consequently there is no tendency to total
inhibition. From this it follows that in normal action pleasure and pain may be out of
the question, and that their place is there taken by inherited or acquired needs. Seeming
* ^\Vi'm.'^{ (^Tonpsychohgie, 1883, i, p. 68) identifies interest with attention ; and Stout
{^Analytic Psychology, 1896, i, p. 225) holds a similar view, stating that "interest, as
actually felt at any moment, is nothing but attention itself, considered in its hedonic
aspect." Fundamentally, the words Need and Interest are convertible terms.
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 251
exceptions, such as tickling, will be found to present special features. Thus in tickling
there is a kind of convulsive reaction v;ith few destructive effects, and when this is produced
playfully, there is a tendency to maintain the condition. {Make a careful study oftickliiig.^
Again, sometimes the fog makes one's eyes smart, and then we observe that there is no
apparent tendency to shrink ; indeed, movement of the eyelids makes matters worse, for
in such a case the smarting interferes persistently with continuous thought or action, and
thus induces indirect shrinking, the pain being an indirect result.
It will be found that what is said in this section is specially worth the attention of the
teacher of youth. One child will readily take to^iusic, cheerfully spending several hours
a day in practice, while another will, under similar circumstances, scarcely make an at-
tempt. The difference between the two children will generally be one of aptitude. The first
child craves for music and is fascinated by it, because he is so constituted ; the second is
indifferent to music and is unaffected by it, for a similar reason. In neither case has
pleasure-pain or ethics much to do with the course chosen. Similarly, a boy's progress
will seem hopeless because he appears attracted by everything except his work, while his
neighbour is remarkably attentive. Here, too, the difference is often entirely a question
of capacity. Thus a child will be sometimes indifferent, or the contrary, to education, tO'
good manners, or to moral or other influences, and in none of the instances need pleasure-
pain be a decisive factor. What is true of children is, of course, true generally. Wherever
natural or acquired aptitudes exist, — and every man and woman bristles with them,^there
action is readily initiated and continued, not because it is pleasurable, but because there
is a tendency in that direction. Consider the case of a child who does not care for school.
With him the notion of schooling awakens no response ; the word appeals to no need.
When, consequently, he has a book before him, his thoughts wander because he is incap-
able of grasping what is before him. He is thus organically uninterested in all that
appertains to disciplined knowledge. If we take the case of a child eager for schooling,
we frequently find essentially the opposite ; he is readily and organically absorbed in
making intellectual progress. Thus ability and inability, congenital or developed, often
determine what we shall do or leave undone. The accompanying pleasure-pain is in such
instances without effect on the course of action pursued.
140. — Definition of Pleasure-Pain.
The following is our defifiition of pleasure and pain : Where there exists
a Pleural disturbance (ending in an attempt to check or detain a group of
systems*), there we meet with pain — opposed disturbances, and pleasure — semi-
opposed disturbances.
To illustrate. A speck of dust has found a resting place on the
surface of my eye. Being in an experimental mood, I determine to act as
a bystander, and I do nothing to remove the intruder. I let nature run
her course. The eyelids open and shut faster and faster ; tears rush abund-
antly down my cheeks, and my sight becomes dimmed. The motion of
the lids is accompanied by special feelings similar to those described in sec.
138. My walk has a tendency to become unsteady, and as I reach home
I feel more than once that I am likely to fall at full length forwards or
backwards, owing no doubt to the sense of equilibrium being affected. To
escape a catastrophe, as I am now thoroughly weakened, I lie down on a
couch. My head is attacked and is becoming worse and worse. Observa-
tion of what is going on is difficult. It has ceased. I am now engaged in
* I have added these words in parentheses, so as to exclude pathological cases and
others where there is simple giving way or adaptation without any uneasiness.
253 GENERAL ANALYSES
drying my tears, and in an endeavour to rid myself of the speck. The
arrest of observation eases the strain.
So long as I was engaged in noting what happened, I could not be said
to have been subject to pain or pleasure. As well might the visual system
implied in seeing a brick be regarded as appreciably pleasurable or i)ainful.
For scientific purposes I would as readily look at, or look away from, a
thousand bricks as one, and in like manner I am always ready to observe
a variety of miscellaneous objects, — pins, paper, books, etc. It may be
granted, for argument's sake, that in cool observation there is present a
microscopic quantity of pleasure or pain ; but all I wish to urge here is that
what I observed did not disturb me. The various sensations did not in
the slightest degree ruffle my temper, nor can I honestly assert that they
could be classed as either pleasurable or painful. I neither wished them
to remain nor wished them to go. I was only watching their development,
as an astronomer might follow the evolution of an eclipse.
The whole train of events, until observation became discontinuous, was
unrelated to pleasure-pain considerations, and the chain of sensations and
feelings indicated only how the speck of dust had irritated various portions
of the nervous system. V/ithout washing or choosing to do anything, I
broke down, to the point of having my thoughts scattered. The general
loss of muscular and nervous tone and the headache had the same source,
and I had to relinquish observation in spite of my wish to see it pro-
longed.
We gather from this account, in agreement with sec. 139, that feelings
exist which, according to circumstances, are described as pleasurable,
painful or indifferent. They are perhaps marked in character, and yet
have no pleasure-pain aspect. A series of events can thus take place in
the absence of any pain or fear of pain, or pleasure or desire for pleasure.
The motive or the reason for the particular acts as they one by one arose
or followed each other, was not a yearning for happiness or a shrinking from
evil to come ; it lay rather in the acquired or inherited needs of the
organism. The events co-existed with, or succeeded each other, without
any desire or dread prevailing.
It is certain that acts where the highest centres remain undisturbed form
a part of reality. From that alone one may deduce the probable inaccuracy
of the view which asserts that whatever we do is the outcome of either a
yearning or a shrinking. This carries us a step farther and entitles us to
say that if I had acted as usual, and my desires and dreads had mingled
with these events, then some portion at least of what happened would not
have been the result of likes or dislikes. It cannot be contended that
what occurred in the abnormal experiment does not justify the conclusion
that similar things take place in the normal state, for that is contradicted
by common observation. A part, then, of our activity is not connected
with pleasure-pain, but due to organic needs ; what about the remaining
portion ? One must reply that that portion also is governed by organic
needs whose aim is to restore the disturbed equilibrium.
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED
253
Observation was easy at first, and for a considerable period beyond.
When it broke down, a fresh series of events was noticeable. Evidently
the nervous system was becoming unstable over a larger and larger area.
The last fort to be attacked was the neural citadel, and it was then that
observation finally ceased. This conclusion is one of great importance.
Pleasure and pain certainly appear to be connected with the instability
of the inmost nervous centre. When that centre is intact, there is no dis-
turbance, and feelings then determine neither smiles nor frowns. When
the centre, however, is disturbed, we are swayed to and fro. Hence atten-
tion flows along smoothly and continuously when the nervous centres are
stable ; while when the stream is violently and capriciously interfered with,
we speak of pleasure-pain. In the latter case we are not masters of our-
selves, for the nervous centre is in some way disarranged. Pleasure-pain
is, therefore, present in proportion as such disturbance exists, and the
absence of the disturbance accounts for the absence of the pleasure-pain in
the first stage of the occurrence we are examining. As soon as inhibition of
a threatening disturbance beco77ies a task, however small, so soon pleasure-
pain begins.
The disturbance followed without being desired ; then I occupied myself
with alleviating measures ; and at last I obtained relief. This is instruc-
tive, and an important conclusion may be drawn from it. When such an
accident happens, the offending speck engenders one class of need-deter-
mined effects, while another class of need-determined effects usually
succeeds as a reaction, the object of the second class of effects being to
nullify the first. Instead of the irritation being stored and finally leading
to headache and prostration, a counter-movement is initiated and the
irritation is allayed. As only certain centres are specially affected, move-
ment has to be of an apposite kind, since not every effort will bring relief,
and hence also the attention is employed in removing the cause of
neural discord. These counter-movements claim the attention, and energy
can, therefore, only discharge itself readily into that channel. Ordinarily,
by these two methods, peace is restored to the nervous system. They are
nature's means of securing sanity. Our anxiety, our fears, our screams, are
accompaniments or expressions of a normal nervous process the form of
which is socially and hereditarily determined. The presence of an offence gives
rise to excitement, and that leads to certain 7?iove?nents which allay or remove
the excitement J^ The feelings and the thoughts, if we provisionally separate
movement from feeling (sec. 1 74), acquire their significance from the physical
violence they symbolise. We do not shrink from this course of action or
from that because of certain feelings. The normal shrinking is accounted
for by the peculiar structure of the nervous tissue, and the feelings by them-
selves, therefore, lack rationality. We might as well contend that the rising
* Most of the writers referred to at the end of sec. 13S deal with the expression of the
emotions and, by implicalion, with the expression of pleasure and pain. See specially
Darwin, Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animalsy 1872, who treats of the
larger outlines involved in the subject.
254 GENERAL ANALYSES
^nd the fiiUing of the barometer compels the surrounding atmosphere to
contract and expand. Once more we see an apparendy anomalous process
explained by reference to obvious organic facts. Why otherwise should we
shrink from, or gravitate towards, anything whatsoever ? On the organic
theory wliat happens explains itself, and no other conception seems to satisfy
the known facts. \^Tf'y and ignore nciifal disturbances.^
The range within which pleasure-pain acts must be further narrowed.
Suppose I have^ reached the condition where unstrained observation be-
comes very nearly impossible. I then decide deliberately to restore the state
of indifference. With the utmost calm I employ means after means until
the results of the speck in my eye are nullified. My attitude is the same
as when I am turningfover the leaves of a book or when I brush my hat.
I am entirely unmoved, and I remain so during the whole of the process.
Under the circumstances, the disturbance being inhibited throughout and
allayed deliberately, no pain develops. Only in so far as there is an un-
res^ulnted striving, can me speak of pleasure and pain. Only so far as the
disturbance is left to itself ajid is not interfered with, is there pleasure-pain.
The way in which we regard what is taking place is also important.
T What is vour point of view ?] During the first portion of the accident I
quietly observed ; ' during the second portion I calmly took measures to
maintain my neural equilibrium. It was open to me to regard with terror
what had occurred, trembling each time I thought of the accident, taking
every possible precaution to prevent its repetition, and dwelling on the
matter a"-ain and again. If I had been much excited during the loss and
recovery of my balance, sensible revulsion would, at least for a time, have
been unavoidable ; but'^that did not follow my cool attitude. I, therefore,
dismiss the thought of what has passed, and remain indifferent to a second
attack. My memory is not impressed by what has happened, and the
incident is quickly.forgotten. The view, therefore, which we take of what
befalls us has 'important consequences. We may, through appropriate
practice, become hysterically timid, shrinking into nothing at the thought
even of a trifling accident, and wasting life's golden opportunities in pas-
sionately combating imaginary evils. Or, if we are wise, we perhaps come
to ignore pleasures or pains unless they further ideal ends.* Between
these two points of view there are many intermediate gradations ; but all
that we are concerned^to know is that pleasure and pain imply muscular
and thought disturbances, and that these can be either accentuated or
inhibited. It must also be understood that with civilised beings pleasure-
pain, like all happenings,'' is interpreted in the light of a comprehensive
scheme, and that the primary reason for the neural break-down lies, of
course, in the delicate 'structure of the nervous system.
If ready inhibition and one's point of view can and do change the
pleasure-pain value within large limits, then the problems of optimism and
* Hence men trouble little about pains not connected with normal needs, e.g., dream
pains and such pains as are related to delirium, insanity or convulsions.
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED
J55
pessimism must be re-examined. If we have been right so far, it becomes
absurd to maintain that the very fact of our preferring existence proves
that the sum of hfe's pleasures has been greater than that of hfe's disap-
pointments ; for this would imply that we have somehow kept count of all
our pleasure-pains and have now and then struck a balance, whereas we
have seen (ch. 5) that the majority of developed systems are dis-integrated,
and that the remainder are interpreted in a loose and capricious manner
by one's point of view at a particular moment. Indeed, we have learnt
that neural disturbances are rare, and that we are influenced generally by
our various needs, natural and acquired. A criticism of life, from the
pleasure-pain point, irrespective of neural capacities and primary needs, is,
therefore, irrelevant. Similarly the question of whether life can be worth
living is connected with the fact that one's point of view makes a crucial
difference. To one with shaken nerves everything is hateful — the sunshine
and the rain, the heat and the cold, familiarity and novelty ; but he who
is strong-nerved and yet sensitive, finds it difficult not to sympathise with
every one of nature's moods. The former attitude is the unnatural one.
It results almost entirely from paying attention to the painted face of
pleasure. When we have once learnt to be guided by the simple organic
needs of our being, the ink bubble of philosophical pessimism bursts.
Pleasure and pain must be probed below the coloured surface before we
can attribute to them a great life-value. [Exaftime atteuipts at relief
through movements in cold, heat, pain, pleasure, etc.^
In Sully's Pessimism, 1S91, will be found a bibliography of the subject of pessimism,
and an account of the principal pessimist systems. In view of our conclusion that colour-
less needs and not pains are the motor forces, Schopenhauer's criticism of life loses its
value. Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unco7tsciotis has even feebler psychological founda-
tions. The principal works of these two principal pessimists of modern times are
Schopenhauer (d. i860), The World as Will and Idea, trs. 1883-6, and Ilartmann,
The Philosophy of the Unconscioiis , trs., 1884. As to extreme forms of pain, see Beaunis,
Les Sensations Internes, 18S9, pp. 170-4; and as to a qualified optimism, see Bouillier,
Du Plaisir et de la Douleur, 1865, pp. 104-19. The latter would reckon on the credit
side of life's balance the pleasures of health, of living, of breathing, of moving and of
thinking (ibid, p. 1 15).
Beaming eyes, smiles, laughter, tears and buoyancy express and constitute
pleasure; and where they are lacking, pleasure is also lacking.* Here
the attention tends to dwell on or to recur to the act. Eating a luscious
pear I retain the sensations as long as I can : I eat it slowly, so that the
taste may last the longer. I think of it while I am eating and when I have
finished with it. Yet if I had wished I could have observed myself consum-
ing the pear while unaffected by pleasure. Here, too, the attention would
* There is little outward expression in the radiant contemplative joy of the accepted
lover or the successful discoverer. In such cases, I apprehend, the rush of thoughts, the
dreamy abandonment, the unusual serenity, the complete absorption, indicate the success-
ful attempt to recover one's equilibrium. On the other hand, marked outward expression
may be to a large extent forced or suppressed, suggesting a greater or a lesser disturbance
than there is actually present.
256 GENERAL ANALYSES
have been occupied about the sensations rather than with them, while the
disturbance would have been ended, [T'lJi/.]
Pleasure-pain is a process which is only explicable in terms of motion or
change. Let us again define it. Pleasure-pain exists when a neutral dis-
turbance is present; pleasure, in so far as the tendency to return to t/ie fwrmal
or undisturbed state is checked; paiti, in so far as such a tendency prevails
unchecked. Let us further explain our terms. The type of undisturbed
activity is to be found in organised reactions of a simple kind. My pen,
for instance, hurrying along the surface of the paper without giving rise to
emotions, reflections or convulsions, is an illustration of undisturbed action.
So, liveliness, smiles, laughter, shouting, a sparkling eye, eagerness, whether
they last for a minute or for hours, are signs of neural disturbance, since
their presence has the object of relieving such disturbance.
A neural disturbance is distinguished by an abandonment on the one
side, and an attempt, when possible, to counteract the disturbance. This
is expressed by direct and indirect endeavours. If we introduce a thorn
into the hand, we may proceed to remove it, and when this is done the
disturbance is practically checked. If that, however, be impossible, then,
under normal circumstances, we fret and become low-spirited. In the
former case the object is attained directly, the disturbance being removed ;
in the latter indirectly, the disturbance being allayed through the fretting.
When anything goes wrong, there is an organised aptitude for recovery.
Now normal happenings are not disturbing ; they are not accompanied by
crying or laughing, or by any of the modes which express the presence of
an irritant. So also, what was once abnormal may, through constant inhibi-
tion, become normal, and lose its pleasure-pain value. A neural disturbance
is normally accompanied by special feelings, resembling those which are
present when we make a prolonged effort or when a speck of dust irritates
the surface of the eye. These, by complication, signify to us the disturb-
ance, and the absence of the disturbance implies the absence of special
feelings connected directly with the irritation. In grief, again, the feelings
indicate an unsuccessful counter-movement. As long as the occasion for
grief remains, we mourn ; but let that be removed, and we gradually re-
turn to the normal state. In good spirits the tendency to return also
exists ; only it is for a time resisted. The smile, the buoyancy, the laughter,
are all counter-movements ; but the rebellion is fed, and does not readily
collapse. Nevertheless, pleasure, like pain, tends to give way before the
state of indifference.
I trust I have made clear what I mean by a neural disturbance, by
pleasure and by pain. We must now consider the meaning of inhibition.
\_Practice and observe iti yourself cases of itihibition : hold a hot egg in your
hand.^ Walking in a wood on a rainy morning, I slip on the clay soil,
and fall with great force on the hands and arms outstretched to save me.
The feelings which develop are massive and acute. A flame of pain is
enveloping me when I suddenly, for experimental purposes, induce general
hardening of the muscles. The pain is now gone, though the feeling
SVSTEAfS AS DISTURBED
257
which accompany it remain behind. The tremors, the muscular depres-
sion, the anxiety, the despondency, have been banished by the position I
have assumed. Except for the special feelings and the comparative rigidity
of the muscles I am in a normal condition. The hurt produced a neural
disturbance and counter-disturbance, and the feelings were but one expression
of what took place. The physical position I assumed did away with the
disturbance, and, therefore, with the pain and the connected feelings.
Inhibition, therefore, so far as it is not a task, is the intervention of an
organic condition which excludes neural disturbances and, by implication,
pleasure-pain. Inhibition varies, of course, indefinitely with the occasion,
with interest, motive and training, and hence a great effort will sometimes
have little or no effect, while an imperceptible effort may be almost omni-
potent. Men practise inhibition in so far as they are strong-minded and
strong-nerved, and as it is a special case of effort, its application is largely
organised.
Binet, V Inhibition, 1 890; Binet, Un Cas d InJiibitio7t, 1891 ; Breese, On Inhibition,
1899 ; Ileymans, Ueber psychische Hemmung, 1899 and 1902 ; Sully, Humatt Mind,
1892, ii, pp. 246-8.
Pleasure-pain does not dwell in an irritant, nor in the feelings produced
by that irritant, nor in a subjective state ; it is constituted by the violent
reactions of the neural mechanism. As that reacts, so what happens,
regardless of the nature of the feelings at the time, is either pleasurable,
painful or indifferent. Hence one man's pleasure is another man's pain,
though the feelings be alike quantitatively and qualitatively, and conse-
quently, when the reaction is not according to the definition, a course of
action is neither pleasant nor painful. The larger proportion of what
happens to us, only serves a purpose. Thus sighing brings relief when I
am disturbed by the cold, without affecting the feeling of cold ; and, on
the other hand, sighing makes no difference when there is no disturbance
connected with the chilled extremities. \_Verify.'] A martyr is stretched
on the rack, and yet glories. He feels the torture ; but his central nervous
system, equal to the task, does not give way, and he plays the part of
observer instead of sufferer. We can thus readily imagine an individual
whom no torture can move, one namely whose system is able to bear the
strain. If the martyr were a weakling, he would yield at once, for a man of in-
different nerves cannot resist an attack. Thus we might think of ourselves
as competent to stand the greatest strain, or as incompetent to bear any
strain at all. It is this fact also that explains faith cures and stigmata,
since these depend on the condition of the nervous structure. On the
same grounds we conclude that training is desirable because the nervous
system is trainable. For the man of science, therefore, heroism, apart
from the nervous structure, is a word signifying nothing. Where there is
no neural disturbance, there is no pain. As a consequence, pleasure, and
the world's power, pomp and praise, may be despised by the strong man.
We shall meet with other deductions which follow from our definition.
These few must suffice in this section.
17
2 58 GENERAL ANALYSES
I must add a further word in explanation of the connection between needs and pleasure-
pain. Ordinarily, when dinner-time comes round, I am ready for my meal, though I can
scarcely say that I feel hungry. In such a case my action is determined by a need, though
there is no pleasure-pain. Take, however, another instance. Some one treads on a very
tender corn of mine. It is with the greatest difficulty that I refrain from crying out, and
a shudder passes through my whole body. That the particular reactions of crying out
and shuddering ease the pain and are advantageous to the organism, is obvious ; and
hence it follows that natural selection has wisely favoured organisms which promptly and
effectively meet certain violent attacks which disturb the body's equilibrium. In other
words, among the fundamental needs given with the organism is that of protecting it from
S7vift disaster ; while, at the same time, the methods of protection in such cases are also
mostly due to heredity. The very uniformity in reaction under pleasure-pain suggests
that urgent needs require prompt solutions, and that, therefore, almost everything is left
to inherited methods of response. For this very reason, ordinary activity, implying as it
does adaptation to varying conditions, is chiefly based on what is acquired, and is free
from disturbances. Pleasure-pain, then, argues an exceptional state which has to be met
in an exceptional way. As for pleasure, it is evident that exceptionally favourable cir-
cumstances should be provided for by exceptional reactions determined congenitally.
Both in pleasure and in pain needs determine the course pursued, while the disturbance
merely indicates that the organism has received a severe shock.
Naturally enough there are minimal degrees of pleasure-pain. We often feel very
slightly pleased or displeased ; and not seldom the disturbance is so small that we scarcely
know whether to call it pleasurable or painful. In most of these cases the pleasure-pain
merely expresses the trend of our needs, while the needs themselves are to all intents and
purposes unaffected. That is to say, if a few grains of pleasure-pain were present,
the ordinary needs, by producing a certain amount of inhibition, would pursue their
course unaltered. What is more, even serious disturbances have frequently little influence.
An ignorant or stupid parent is not seldom surprised to find that severe punishment is in-
effective, though the child's reprehensible conduct yields him no pleasure worth mention-
ing. We speak, in such cases, of obstinacy, forgetting that pleasure-pain is throughout
an unreliable factor in determining action. The wise parent and the legislator accordingly
abandon the primitive methods of punishment, and use all their energies to discover
other means of grappling with or forestalling difficulties. Hence the modern theory of
punishment as regards children, criminals and lunatics fully bears out my contention that
•whip and sugar stick are not the normal forces which regulate human life.
To touch on another point. Our attitude tends generally to realise itself, at least to
5ome extent, \\lien for some special reason we think that something distasteful is really
not so, we swallow it without feeling any ill effects. On the other hand, if we eat some-
thing wholesome, and are then told that it was tainted, we are very likely to have an
attack of nausea. Thus we may cough and feel extremely uncomfortable, because of a
supposed fish-bone in the throat, which has been in reality removed. So, again, the
thought of food makes us feel hungry. These and similar instances illustrate the fact of
nervous inhibition and nervous concentration ; and are but unusual exemplifications of
normal activities. It happens not infrequently that I am a little indisposed. As long as
I am unaware of this, my behaviour is almost normal ; but let some one remark " How
pale you look ! " and a sudden collapse follows. The process of acting out our beliefs is
well illustrated in childhood. If we only succeed in diverting the young child's attention,
it often ceases crying and begins to smile, while with adults, interests usurp the place of
their aches and pains. Every case of self-control or of terror has the same origin.
Physicians have to some degree exploited the effect of implicit faith. They prescribe
drugs, courses of diet, changes in environment, which are indifferent in themselves, in the
hope that the suggestion of a cure will produce the cure. Indeed, the faith which the
physician and the quack inspires is an important factor in medical treatment. It is, how-
ever, in hypnotism that a desired point of view is suggested most easily and with the
greatest effect, owing to the readiness of the subject to absorb suggestions. In the normla
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 259
state, attention to any portion of the organism creates therein nothing more than slight
changes ; but in the abnormal hypnotic state imaginary poultices act almost like real
ones, and fancied wounds show signs of becoming actual. " Mental Science" and faith
healing, like Spiritualism, exploit the fact just explained (sec. 232). The "Scientist"
who insists that diseases and death do not exist, and who sits, or " communicates," with
his subject, only makes the best use of a recognised fact, and for this reason alone does
he occasionally bring about cures. Experimetit is readily applied to supplement observa-
Hon. [ Think of various parts of the body attd of various things pleasant and unpleasant :
think of a nice disk, etc.] However, the only fact elicited is that our attitude, for good
or ill, tends to actualise itself to a minimal degree. How this happens is a matter which
belongs to the department of physiology. Faith is consequently for the psychologist a
prosaic process, like all other processes ; when properly applied, faith may move moun-
tains ; but when brought forward as a universal panacea, it is clearly not to be relied on.
Good sanitation, plain living, a sociable temperament, a reasonable quantity of reasonable
labour, rest and change — such are the great preventatives of illness. The application of
" X " rays to surgical cases throws into the shade the virtues of faith healing and " Mental
Science." *
On one occasion, as an experiment, I said to^a friend that I could tell him in which
hand he held a coin. The challenge was accepted, and the two closed hands were placed
before me for inspection. I glanced at the two hands, guessed, and was right. This
was repeated a number of times with three persons, till they looked at me as if I were
in league with spirits. A long time passed, and one day I re-membered the incident.
I tried once more with one boy of ten and one of fifteen, and was uniformly successfiil.
They asked me how I did it, and I told them that the hand which held the coin was
firmly pressed together, that there were tokens of restlessness in that hand, and that
other signs were observable. We then tried again, and I failed almost uniformly be-
cause the children ceased to attend to the hand which held the coin.
In experimental psychology it is said that the reaction follows more quickly when we
attend to the movement to be made than when we attend to the sign which is to induce
the movement. On the above theory this is obvious. When we are ready for a move-
ment, all the parts to be moved are arranged for ready action, i.e., part of the act is
already carried out. For instance, a child is approaching me and I prepare to take him
by the hand. In this case all that remains to do is to grip the hand. So, almost univer-
sally, we do not wait till the last mofnent to perform an action ; but we carry out as muck
of it as possible before the cotnpelling moment arrives. For this reason, also, since the
process is organised, we find it difficult not to attempt to act, when we intently think of
acting. Thus far the ideo-motor theory is justified.
141. — Irritants.
I put my hand gently into a clump of stinging nettles, and I forthwith
note the peculiar feelings resulting therefrom. \Imitate this experiment,
and initiate similar ones : ticklifig, gentle irritation of hair, skin, joints, etc.^
There is no pain. I observe the extent, the variety and the changes in the
feelings. The attention is divided : on the one hand there are the ob-
served feelings, and, on the other, my reflections on the situation ; but as
these do not absorb all my energy, the remaining power is employed in taking
notes. Further, if we do not scrutinise the feeling, the energy must be
spent otherwise, for semi-activity is out of the question. Suppose, there-
fore, that the feelings persist and that they obtrude themselves upon me.
I am then forced to think about them. Assuming that they offer no scope
* See Goddard, TAe Effects of Mind on Body as evidenced by Faith Cures, 1S99.
26o GENERAL ANAL YSES
icsthctically or ctl^ically, wc occupy ourselves in delighting in them, in
grumbling about them or in attempting to remove them.
On the ground of custom we again exclude the notion that we are
delighting in them. We are, however, permitted to grumble, and usually
men are not remiss in this respect, especially as in grumbling surplus energy
is absorbed. In the natural order of things we tend to think of a variety
of subjects in quick succession ; but, when it is a serious case, the train
of thought is brought back every few moments to the tingling flesh. This
helplessness produces annoyance, and this we call grumbling. The point
at which we become exasperated is to a large degree decided by idiosyn-
crasy and training ; but we all have our limitations. It may be said ;
" Why not disregard the peculiar sensations ? " The answer to this is that
the two processes of subjection to an irritating feeling and continuous
thought on a subject alien to it, are not compatible. When feelings and
sensations are of a commonly occurring type, they may be ignored, as
when there is a house before us and we imagine ourselves far away, or
when we read aloud while our thoughts are wandering.
Grumbling, however, is an unsatisfactory remedy, for we may have to
grumble for an indefinite period. We employ, therefore, our attention in
trying to allay the disturbance. In the instance before us we proceed
calmly without any sign of pain. We dismiss the feeling with little ado.
Or else we proceed organically. Here is a certain obstacle to thought, or,
better still, here is some work to do. I wish to remove the obstacle, or I
desire to perform the work. No agitation, no tinge of feeling need
accompany such an act. With many persons, however, grumbling will be
indulged in until the irritant is removed.
We have seen that it is not possible to think or to act freely while a
feeling implying a strong irritation is present. Measures must, therefore, be
taken to rid ourselves of the disturber. Amongst these let us first consider
temporary ones. In the case we are treating of the common remedy is to
rub the affected part. This has, at first, the effect of suppressing the feel-
ing. Thus for a time the tingling disappears, and with this comes un-
doubted relief. We feel as if a salve had been applied to a sore place.
The rubbing counteracts the effect of the sting, and is indulged in because
it effects a temporary annihilation of the feelings, or rather because it sup-
presses the irritating nervousness which the feelings accompany. It is
evident that if the itching no more unhinged the nervous centre than does
the sight of the lane before me, I should not be concerned. The ex-
ceptional neural effect alone is responsible for the course I take.
What is remarkable is that the centre can thus have its equilibrium
temporarily re-established, and that with this comes a temporary cessation
of the trouble. Accordingly, a variety of means is employed by animals
as well as by men to bring about that consummation. The gosling, es-
caping from among the stinging nettles, shakes and scratches himself, and
complains most bitterly to the sky and all the world of its misfortune, as
it wends its way homewards. The relief we are considering may be also
SYSTEHTS AS DISTURBED 261
obtained by crying, screaming, shouting, stamping the ground, wreaking
vengeance on surrounding objects, tearing one's hair, beating one's breast,
biting, or any violent exercise ; or, again, in cases of an opposite character,
by smihng, dancing for joy, shedding tears, etc. These various outbreaks,
mild or passionate, have the same object in view. During the time that
they obscure or blot out the offence, the nervous centres are eased, and
were they not eased, our behaviour would be meaningless. Whether the
object is one called pleasurable or painful is immaterial, for in both in-
stances the centres are relieved by the acts of violence. When the only
specific stimulant is what is called trouble, then crying of itself often
restores peace to the nerves. For this reason most emotions give at least
momentary relief, and the meaning of the emotion lies in its effects. As
these peculiar outbreaks are not limited by education, epochs, races or
species of animals, we trace them to the structure of the nervous system.
Training and judgment undoubtedly produce appreciable differences; but
these results, in their turn, are made possible by the very nature of the
neural structure.
Certain effects can — though not always (sec. 140) — be nullified by at-
tending to or developing a sensation, or by outbursts in connection with
the irritant ; but there is a more excellent way. Instead of glaring at the
feeling or grumbling at it, or trying to obscure it by passionate outbursts,
we may merely start thinking about some unrelated subject. In the
temperate case under discussion this can be freely done, for as soon as
the attention turns from the stung hand, the feeling ceases. It has so little
power that the current of thought runs readily in its accustomed channel,
and only when some of the attention is unemployed does it reassert its
sway, to be dismissed, however, at discretion until the irritation has en-
tirely passed. In the same manner, ordinary feelings are constantly
suppressed, and, with great interest present, even a severe attack of
toothache may be overcome.
This method of dealing with disturbances deserves, from a practical
standpoint, detailed treatment, for which space is wanting. It does
happen, in this way, that violent disturbances are sometimes temporarily,
sometimes permanently, suppressed.* In many instances a wrong will
right itself best when it is not attended to or interfered with. What is
wanted is rest, everything else only increases the evil. If our nerves were
both strong and trained, a great deal of misery could be averted in this
manner, and we should learn that much of the dreariness of life is re-
mediable, which, however, is no excuse for unjust social conditions. The
instance we are analysing illustrates the mischief sometimes due to inter-
ference. I find that soothing the irritated part only prolongs the existence
and the vigour of the feeling. In continued rubbing without interval the
result is somewhat unexpected : the irritant is noticeable while I rub, and
at last cramp supervenes and forces me to desist. [Repeat this experiment.']
* See, among others, the cases given by Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 1876, pp. 138-9,
and Beaunis, Les Sensations hiterncs, 1889, pp. 190-3.
262 GENERAL ANAL YSES
In many cases nothing is gained by being nervous, the true principle
being to discover the best method of ignoring an irritant, and to act
accordingly. Some persons are so hyper-sensitive that their whole life
is a nest of misery : they shrink from everything ; they are afraid of every-
thing. Given right ideals of what we wish to be, we would aim at building
up particular classes of organised reaction whose object would be to pro-
mote our highest needs. Through interpreting pleasure and pain in terms
of sensations, men have hitherto shrunk from much that ought to have
been welcomed, welcomed much that ought to have been shrunk from, and
been indifferent to what should have engaged their serious attention. It
is certain that in the future the position a man takes up will be guided by
objective aims rather than by subjective impressions. It will be found that
tastes can be accounted for and moulded.
Why did the gosling repeatedly scratch itself with its feet when it had
issued from among the nettles ? The reason is that dust particles and
small bodies generally are often dislodged by that method. Now the
sensory effect of the stinging nettle is a similar one, and, therefore, as ex-
plained in sec. 99c, we act similarly. The greater the irritation the
stronger is the reaction, and the more it resembles another irritation the
more like is our reaction. That is to say, our acts are normally determined
organically, and if they have their foundations laid in ignorance and
superstition, they fail to be appropriate. In this way a person reasons
himself into the belief that a cold morning bath and a long walk are good
for him ; he actually thinks that he is enjoying these, and yet onlookers
recognise that his judgment is at fault. So some person believes that he
has reached the summit of blessedness when he is really to be pronounced
unhappy, while another thinks that the world weighs heavily upon him when
he is normally as happy as a bird in Spring. As the customary
influences vary, so does our reaction. In organised processes of the
obscurer type, when stimulated by needs, we only act; we do not
act because a certain object yields pleasure or prevents pain ; we
proceed thus, because we have proceeded this way before. Indeed,
in instances where the origin of the process is not easily traced,
we frequently mistake the (supposed) original motive.* We say that
we do this or that because we like it or because we dislike something
else, when the contrary is often the true explanation. Stimulated in this
wise by a belief that every action of ours is performed because of the felt
pleasure it involves, we boldy assign felt pleasures to every act, without
sufficient evidence to justify such a course. Urged by our philosophy, we
imagine the feelings or manufacture them during the analysis.
We learn here how pernicious is the largely prevailing custom of assuming that
pleasure-pain states are obvious. It is most difficult to obtain from any person informa-
tion with regard to his feelings, for he usually replies in accordance with some shallow
theory. Casual self-interpretation is no less fallacious.
* " It has been cynically observed that people go into society less in order to be happy
than to seem so, and one may add that in this semblance of enjoyment they may ....
deceive themselves as well as others" (Sully, Illusions of Introspection, 18S1, p. 14).
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 263
142. — Organised Reaction largely decides what shall be
REGARDED AS PLEASURABLE OR PaINFUL.
I am at the sea-side, and, intending to bathe, I step into the water. I
begin to shiver with the cold, and rush out.
The reasons for such conduct may be manifold. The mood of expectancy
we are in, influences us to a considerable extent. We may walk into the
water unconcernedly, in which case we obtain somewhat of an indifferent
reaction. Probably we shrink a little, but scarcely observe the shrinking.
Or we plunge into the water fully determined not to be driven back by its
possibly low temperature. In this instance, though the water be cold, we
receive and bear the shock with equanimity, if we are strong-nerved. We
shall, if we are so inclined, meet pleasure and not pain. Those stimuli
which are connected with pleasure are not inhibited from propagating their
impulse; while those others whose free sway would mean pain, are
restrained. These latter become indifferent ; they do not excite to action
in any direction ; and they have their poison fangs made harmless by
central inhibition. In the special case we are considering, expectation has
perhaps meant that I was unnerved to start with, and that instead of
fortifying myself I threw away my shield. Whatever shock, under such
circumstances, the cold waves might communicate would have more than
the ordinary effect. We shrink before we actually touch the water, and
we are excited when there is nothing to be anxious about. At the
commencement our nerves are in a state of extreme excitability and
readiness to yield, and consequently a swift collapse follows. Expectation
varies within wide limits ; and except when we are taken by surprise, it
always plays a considerable part. Inhibition or control are thus usually
strengthened or weakened in the face of a contingency. Were we to
apply an appropriate instrument, the nervous adjustments would show a
constant relationship.
For the above reason it is often possible not only to react differently ;
but to react oppositely. Instead of shrinking from, we might revel in, the
cold water. The limits to such variations are of two kinds. First, the
application of inhibition soon reaches the maximum extent. Accordingly,
when the centre of inhibition is powerful, our conduct may change
capriciously ; but when it is weak, we have little chance of adapting our
reactions. The resisting power of the centre thus ultimately decides
within what range our reactions are to vary. Were the capacity absolute,
pleasure-pain would never affect us, except at our discretion ; were we
helpless, life would be intolerable and impossible. Secondly, our attitude
towards objects is not a question which is solved at the moment when
some course of action becomes desirable or imperative. The general
manner of reaction is determined organically (ch. 3). We grow into that
manner, and for this reason even our behaviour when we are surprised is
not outside the organised circle. Some men will, therefore, come to remain
perfectly cool under harassing conditions, while others will lose their
264 GENERAL ANALYSES
presence of mind when the least occasion for surprise arises. Not one
circumstance, but a hundred, will be arbiters of how we are to react. For
this reason the method of reaction of the average man is far from uniform,
trifles sometimes suggesting differences in his point of view. We need not,
therefore, think that environmental factors alone make us react or act as
we do ; for since our attitude is subject to custom, it is also liable to
deliberate training.
Man's relation to pleasure and pain, as we see, is not a fixed one, for
the warmth and quality of a feeling are not always connected with one
class of conduct. Strictly speaking, they have nothing to do with pleasure-
pain. Only when other things are equal, when all the conditions are
repeated, do they acquire that meaning. As it is, great warmth (or inten-
sity) co-exists frequently with indifference ; or slight warmth (or intensity)
with great dislike or love. \Test this carefully and repeatedly?^ The
reaction of the nervous centres settles this fact. It is thus that when an
acute irritant is present, — as when my throvt has been inflamed for some
time, — a hardly perceptible sensation is connected with very great pain.
Consequently, what one man hates, another is indifferent to, and a third is
fond of. We conclude, then, that the feelings are at best only one factor
in a pleasure-pain problem.
143. — Inference as a Determining Factor in Pleasure-Pain.
My feet and my feet only are icy cold. I complain ; I go to the fire
to warm them ; and I do not rest until the cold has disappeared.
My action results from wrong inference. Usually when I feel chilled
anywhere, I also feel chilled centrally. Under those circumstances it is
natural to take measures for increasing the temperature of the body.
When, however, the lower extremities alone are cold, there is (sec. 138) a re-
semblance as to feelings, but not as to the urgency of attending to them.
These two factors, as is commonly the case, are confused ; and we act as
if something were pleasurable when there is an unfavourable neural
disturbance, and painful when there is neural serenity.
We have seen the part that quantitative and qualitative reactions play.
According to the degree of our education we argue that what is true of
one thing is true of another ; that what is true of the whole is true of its
parts ; and that what is true of the parts is true of the whole. In the
suppressed reasoning of normal thought we are, therefore, often mistaken,
and often draw wrong inferences. What is true generally will, of course,
hold good of disturbances. On the strength of one case we assume a
certain attitude towards other cases. Often we are justified by results \
sometimes not. In this way men constantly suffer pain when they might
register pleasure or be indifferent. In practical life, an intelligent point of
view in this matter is not sought after, and yet such a point of view is so
important that considerations such as are referred to in this chapter,
should revolutionise men's likes and dislikes.
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 265
144. — Neural Disturbance is Absent from Normal Defensive
Activity.
My coat has been splashed this morning by a passing omnibus. When
later on I notice the dried mud spots, I forthwith proceed to brush them
off.
Aly view, as has been explained, is determined by organised needs.
Though I instantly remove the marks, it is not true that their presence
gives me pain, or their absence pleasure. I\[y action is normally decided
by the fact that I have previously acted in this manner in accordance with
a need. If I had analysed the feelings on that occasion I should have
observed nothing which differentiated this action from any other action
such as is confessedly indifferent. Again, walking along a thoroughfare
I perhaps have to avoid a heap of stones ; but that brings me no pain.
Having encountered stones and other obstacles before, I avoid them with
perfect indifference. It is not a question of the unpleasantness of the mud
spots or the surmounting of an obstacle ; but a matter of organised
reaction. As well might we say that pleasure brought us to act as we did,
for the feelings were without perceptible tone. Here is another illustra-
tion. Something is irritating my warm palm. I have to choose between
continuously attending to the uninteresting feelings or removing them and
continuing my trend of thought. Here, unlike to the instance of the coat,
the solution is urgent. Is it, then, dislike of pain which normally makes me
soothe the affected portion ? No ; only, or at all events partly, custom.
As soon as I feel the irritant I instantly, in agreement with organised
reaction, proceed to deal with it summarily. Once on a sultry morning,
walking across the fields, I allowed the flies freely to congregate on my
face. Swarms of them explored its mounds and pits. Both the quality
and the aggressiveness of the feelings differed surprisingly according to the
parts affected, and in some instances it taxed me severely to remain un-
moved. Such cases as those last referred to, would, therefore, create some
pain normally; that is, produce a neural disturbance. In accordance with
this, persons habitually exposed to discomfort come, through habituation,
to bear much without feeling any corresponding strain. They become,
for instance, so used to the cold that they think very little about it.
Trouble is with them too frequent to be closely inspected, though they
are often much more pained or disturbed than their judgment allows.
The lesser pains appear like pleasures to them, routine bringing them to
undervalue their sufferings. Hardships of many kinds are thus slurred
over by those accustomed to them. However, repeated inhibition
obliterates to a large extent the neural disturbance, owing to the nervous
.system becoming accommodated thereto, though pains or pleasures
often exist in some degree without being singled out for contemplation.
Our hostile or friendly attitude towards an object is, therefore, no proof
• of the presence of a disturbance, since in the majority of such instances
we are, properly speaking, indifferent. We act in these cases organically,
266 GENERAL ANALYSES
and not as the result of a neural disturbance. The explanation of the
popular belief to the contrary has been given in the last section. Because
on important occassions a hostile attitude is connected with pain, or a
favouring one with pleasure, it is argued that this holds good in every case,
and that only the degree of pleasure-pain changes. The reasoning is ill-
founded. There is no neural disturbance, and, therefore, neither pleasure
nor pain. The reaction is organised. There need be no motive, no>
choice, no act of will, no thought, no deliberation, no awareness, interven-
ing between the perception and the action. [Examine cases of this nature
which should plentiftilly occur to you ; watch especially tlie feeling factor.']
In all the above cases there might have been complete awareness ; yet
this would not have changed the issue. If some feeling, some sensation
or some thought develops which docs not appeal to us and which interferes
with some thought or action of ours, then the particular feeling, sensation
or thought is simply removed. In such processes, however deliberate, no
disturbance is traceable. A disturbance would develop if our thought or
action were permanently checked by something uninteresting.
145. — Normal Thought and Action are Neutral as regards
Pleasure-Pain.
The fingers of my left hand hold the note book in which I am writing.
\Exa7nine experimentally P\
The feelings here appeal to me indifferently. I feel no tendency to
take away my fingers or to keep them there ; only the purpose which,
guides me determines whether they shall maintain their position or not.
All normal thought or action is thus neutral. We tend neither to shun it
nor to seek it.
Pleasure-pain is distinguished by a partial or a total suspense of in-
hibition and by the presence of a disturbance. Where there is no such
suspense, there is, accordingly, no pleasure-pain. Hence our normal
reactions are indifferent, except as regards the ends which they subserve.
This may be made more evident by a reference to the previous sections.
We there learnt how deliberate inhibition changes the pleasure-pain value
of feelings and sensations ; how organised reaction makes easy what was.
once difficult ; how there is consequently a general tendency for actions
to reach the level of indifference as regards pleasure-pain. The organism,
besides, is not disturbed by everything. Such processes as the opening
and the shutting of the eyelids, breathing, swinging the arms in walking,
are initially immaterial, except so far as our needs are concerned. The
normal flow of thought from point to point is likewise indifferent. The
neural system remains unaffected by these movements, and our environ-
ment to a large extent reconciles us to multifarious activities. In walkings
in talking, in the exercise of our senses, the point of indifference, except as
to needs, is the normal point, and training only accentuates this condition.
A navvy, a woodcutter, or a shunter, apart from a seasoned nervousjsystem^
stands shocks unconcernedly which would stagger many a man more
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 267
gently nurtured. The nervous system has here, as in similar instances,
become adjusted to its environment, and as a result, there is no pleasure-
pain.
Thus there seems no foundation for the prevalent opinion which holds
that pleasure-pain is a constant or an abiding determinant in the human
organisation. That belief is based on wrong inference. From evident
facts conclusions have been drawn as to less evident occurrences, and
these conclusions are here shown to be erroneous. The changes produced
by neural adaptation, and the data which are too minute or obscure to be
readily analysed, were misconstrued.
Few writers allow for neutral activity. See Bain, Emotions and the Will, 1S75, p.
13 ; Ribot, Psychology of the Emotions, 1897, pp. 73-9.
146. — The Relation of the Emotions to Neural Disturbances.
The relations of the emotions to pleasure and pain are various and can
be arranged in several groups ; but if they are to be closely connected
with the subject of this chapter, they must be presumed to accompany
neural disturbances. If we encounter anywhere such states as cannot be
traced to a disturbance, we must conclude that pleasure-pain is absent, or,
if the facts are inconsistent with this, that the theory here advocated is
not correct.
Let us start in connection with the last section but one. We there saw
that a hostile or a favourable attitude is reconcilable with the absence of a
disturbance. If we continue our inquiries along this line we discover that
such attitudes are often pronounced without having any pleasure-pain
contents. I may, in spite of ail effort, be unable to bring myself to do a
certain action. I cannot sustain the thought of it for more than a moment
at a time. Repeatedly I find the stream of thought deflecting till I am
convinced of the hopelessness of the endeavour and I bow to the inevitable.
The task itself, the running counter to a petty habit, for instance, is trifling.
I am sure that no evil consequences are attached. On the contrary, from
the point of view of prudence, of self-respect and morality, I am urged to
proceed. The problem here, as pointed out in sec. 139, is not one as to
pain ; it is one of inability. Owing to our half-hearted attempts and
double-faced inclinations the nervous system has gradually been so adapted
as not to react in the way we desire. At last, incapacity sets in, and this
can only be overcome by an opposite course of training. When, therefore,
a child, on a cold morning, shivers and whines rather than look round for
his coat, this is not because the cold is less disagreeable than the searching
for the coat ; but because activity is hampered.* Organised reaction, as
* It has been suggested that in so far as our volitions are powerless, we have to deal
with what falls outside a man's personality. This may be plausibly maintained in
cases of insanity ; but otherwise the view is indefensible. At every point our volitions are
determined by results which we have a reason to expect, and not by those we might desire,
and to insist upon the above contention, is to deny that any man possesses any personality
at all. No doubt, as Paulhan would argue, the most perfect individual is he whose
totality of actions strictly agrees with one fundamental need ; but that, he would allow,
is an idealistic criterion, not a psychological one.
268 GENERAL ANALYSES
we saw in ch. 3, affects our life in everything : here it eases 'cvhat is difficult ;
t/iere it ma/ces easy things difficult. Violent aversion is thus often painless
and emotionless, and so it is with violent attachment. A man is a slave
to drink ; he has been driven well-nigh mad by intoxicants ; he hates his
inclination with all his heart ; and he knows that it has wrested from him
all that he holds dear — his good name, his wealth, his self-respect and his
health. Yet so unable is he to withstand the temptation that he gladly
signs away his liberty for a period, in the hope to escape his evil genius.
It would be foolish to think that there is passionate love for intoxicants
here. Superficial analogy and a blindness to the effects of organised re-
action mislead the judgment. The strong attachment is primarily grounded
in an inability to resist. Under the influence of certain stimuli the nervous
system tends more and more to yield as drinking is indulged in, until it is
paralysed, inhibition having become impossible, or nearly so. Such a
change entails no increase in emotional development. On the contrary,
the latter is possibly decreasing till it reaches the zero point. The action
may be almost automatic. It depends on our education and on our
perennial activities, assuming just social conditions, how far we shall be
masters of ourselves.
What is true of these two instances is true of all similar ones. The
man to whom duty, religion, art, science, politics, business or pleasure
\fiote and check the method of generalising\ is all in all, is physiologically in
the condition above depicted. He, too, has strengthened his inclinations.
It is this which makes him lord over himself. Should he wish to act
against his organised inclinations, he would meet with analogous difficulties
to those which have been described. For the same reason, on account,
that is, of the nature of his developed nervous structure, another man is
the victim of ceaseless vacillation, and lives in a land of if's and buf's.
A hostile or a favourable emotional attitude towards objects is now
more easily explained. First, we meet a neural inclination or disinclination
which is capable of growth. This positive or negative tendency accom-
panies the emotion, and the feeling which is present argues some impor-
tant difference in which lies the factor we are seeking. When we have
grown to act or to shrink from acting in a certain manner, we are face to
face with a normal process. The violence is observed by the spectator ;
but it is only an example of developed strength. When, again, emotion
is present, we have an additional element, for in this case the nerves are
thrown into a state of agitation. If we love a thing we are drawn towards
it ; if we hate a thing we are driven away from it. Emotion argues nervous
excitement or warmth, not neural disturbance. For this reason it may be
that the repentant drunkard only thinks of his weakness in the presence of
intoxicants, and thus the child does not really feel angry with the coat.
In love or hate, however, in accordance with sec. 109, the topic has a hold
on our thoughts in proportion to the warmth of the emotion. The topic
cannot, therefore, be dismissed, except with difficulty, and the presence of
an emotion consequently indicates that to the factor of inclination, which
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 269
is possibly normal, has been added that of active excitement. Thus the
thoughts of a bad man, as of a good man, flow generally in one direction,
and each finds it difficult to think with the man of opposite notions. In
instances like this, the trend of thought is not determined by a neural
disturbance or by an emotion, and hence disturbances will often indicate
the presence of active neural excitement in addition to neural inclination.
When emotion or excitement accompanies a favourable attitude connected
with a disturbance, we are said to be joyful; when a hostile one, depressed.
The emotion by itself, as far as the feeling factor is concerned, is neither
pleasurable nor painful, and the difference between a neural inclination
and a neural disturbance is fundamental, like that between equilibrium
and absence of equilibrium. The emotions or feehngs are classed as
pleasurable or painful because of the neural disturbances which they
accompany, and otherwise they bear no marks which would induce us to
regard them as being pleasurable rather than painful. In their nature
they are neither the one nor the other, but indifferent. Even the warmth
of the emotion is frequently illusory, since it is confounded with the greater
inclination.
Jeremy Bentham, in his Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1S23, thought otherwise.
" Pleasures .... and the avoidance of pains, are the ends which the legislator [and
the moralist] has in view " (i, p. 49). And the value of each pleasure-pain is measured,
according to him, by "(i) Its intensity. (2) Its duration. (3) Its certainty or uncer-
tainty. (4) Its propinquity or remoteness. (5) Its fecundity. (6) Its purity. And
one other ; to wit : (7) Its extent ; that is the number of persons to whom it extends"
(p. 51). Psychologically Bentham's view is untenable ; but it is shining gold itself beside
the rival theories which have their roots usually in religious prejudice and class privilege.
See also in this connection John Stewart Mill's Utilitarianism, 1864, and Sidgwick, The
Methods of Ethics, 1893, bk. 2, ch. 6.
The hedonic or pleasure-pain calculus is here face to face with a subtle
difficulty. It has to apportion what is respectively due to capacity, inclina-
tion, excitement and disturbance. The average judgment errs seriously
under the circumstances, as it confuses inclination with passion. Because
strong passion often goes along with inclination, men at once argue that
inclination is a measure of passion, and passion of neural disturbance.
There is no such direct relation. The man who has, metaphorically,
worked his way into a dark jungle or to the sunht top of a precipitous hill
from which it is difficult for him to return, is supposed to be a prey to
an overwhelming passion and to be leading a life either of torture or delight.
Passion, in such instances, is almost incomparably smaller tlian the neural
inclination, and pleasure-pain and emotion are present only to an insigni-
ficant degree. This holds good generally of such aptitudes as are far-
reaching and capable of guiding life as a whole. It is inability and not
dislike which prevents men leaving the narrow path of particular organised
trends ; it is neural incUnations and not emotional likings which hold them
there. Actions and activities are, accordingly, proclaimed pleasurable or
painful, a scale of desirability is drawn up and men adjust their lives accord-
ingly, and yet the reasoning is largely a fabric of the fancy. The traps
-70 GENERAL ANALYSES
•disclosed by psychological analysis are of such a nature that an uninstructed
desire for happiness is utterly unable to detect them.
The emotions are not always connected with disturbances. In anger,
fury, rage, the element of pain is scarcely present. It is certain that I can-
not truthfully account for being angry, by saying that I dislike or like to
be angry. Many a time I have interrogated myself; but neither reply
is conclusive. I am angry in consequence of being pained, perhaps. But
is anger itself painful ? A careful inquiry here classes anger and its cognate
•emotions under neither heading — not that of semi-opposed disturbance nor
that of opposed disturbance. It is a hereditarily determined complex
motion of nervous relief, such as is afforded by laughter and crying, by
screaming and dancing. Its end is to recover neural tranquillity.*
Another group of emotions requires a different explanation. In wonder,
surprise, awe, admiration, horror, there seems primarily a state of neural
ecstasy. We are struck dumb ; the field of attention is narrowed and its
current is forced into one direction, while customary activities are inhibited.
When, therefore, the subject which takes us by surprise leaves us unmoved,
the state should be considered as indifferent ; when the object is interesting,
the condition may be delightful ; and when the object is terrible, we call it
a state of horror. These emotions receive their colouring of pleasure-pain
from the other emotions raised by an object. [Distinguish inclinatioti with
or wit/wui emotio/is, ivith or witJiout pleasure-pain. Exa??iifie yourself when
angry or joyous. Observe t/ie fnotor aspect in connection with the
emotions ?\
The question of the emotions has been hotly debated in recent years. On the physio-
logical side, James, Psychology., 1890, ii, ch. 25, and Lange, Ueber Gemiithsbewcgnngen,
1887, have investigated the subject ; but the introspective side has been almost entirely
neglected. One party insists with Ribot {The Psychology of the Emotions, 1897) that "it
is not reason which uses passion, it is passion which uses reason to reach its ends " (p. 440).
Another party regards emotion as a fourth psychological dimension, and urges that
"emotion is introspeclively distinct from cognition, pleasure-pain, and conation" (Irons,
The Nature of Emotion, 1897, p. 256). Then come the Herbartians, who explain away
the emotions. Thus Herbart, Encyclopcedia, 1831, p. 308 : "As the movements of ideas
facilitate or obstruct each other, so arise the manifold emotional states, feelings and
appetites. " ' ' They are not obj ects of presentation ; but they indicate how the act of percep-
tion takes place" [Psychologie, 1824, ii, p. 76). He speaks of some emotions (Affecte) as
epiphenomena (p. loi). He says that the power of a passion "lies evidently in the
power of the dominating idea" (p. 104). Similarly, in his Lehrbuch, 1816, p. 29, he
says : " Feeling and desiring are modes of ideas." Godfernaux {Le Sentimeiit et la Pensee,
1894) with other writers, holds a mediate view. " We understand by sentiment a pheno-
menon of consciousness which is vague and diffuse, and which corresponds to a vague and
diffuse movement ; and, by thought, a phenomenon of consciousness circumscribed and
clear, corresponding to a localised and systematised movement. The borders between
these two classes of facts are very uncertain, and it is impossible exactly to determine
where feeling ends and thought begins" (p. 196). Miinsterberg, again, contends that
" sensations are perhaps the most essential factors in emotion, and are not chance accom-
paniments" {Die Willenshandlung, 1888, p. 70).
* Sully finds in anger an "intense element of pleasure" {Human Mini, ii, p. 94), and
he traces this pleasure to the general heightening of bodily activities. I can discover no
pleasure in anger. [Caw you ?]
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 271
Considering the wide range and great complexity of the emotions, it is only natural
that psychologists should have substituted classification for close analysis. We shall,
therefore, quote only a few opinions besides those mentioned in sec. 138. Bain, Emotions
and the Will, 1875 : " Feelings are divided into sensations (including muscular feelings)
and emotions. Sensations, as such, are primary and simple ; emotions as such are
secondary and compound. The pleasure of a fragrant odour .... is believed to be a
direct and immediate consequence of the physical stimulation ; the pleasure of a fine
statue is a derived and compound effect ; in its formation, there intervened a process of
education or acquirement " (p. 69). " The sweetness of a sound is a sensation ; the
pleasures of a musical composition are accounted emotions " (p. 69). Hoffding, Psychology,
1891, pp. 282-3 : " By emotion is understood a sudden boiling up of feelings. Passion,
^ . . on the other hand, is the movement of feeling become second nature." James,
Psychology, 1890: "The bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting
fact, and . . . our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion " (ii, p. 449),
" We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and
... we [do not] cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the
•case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be
purely cognitive in form, pale, colourless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might
then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike,
but we should not actually feel afraid or angry" (ii, p. 450). My own observation
strongly confirms this. Lange's book {Ueber Gemiithsbeivegti7igen, 1887) is primarily des-
criptive. The following passage bears out what I have stated. " Indeed, one may
without exaggeration maintain that, from a scientific standpoint, we are completely with-
out understanding of the nature of emotion, and that we do not possess a shadow of insight
as to the general characteristics of a passion [such as fright or joy], or into that which
constitutes the various emotions " (p. 9). " It is to the vaso-motor system that we must
attribute the emotional aspect of our life, our joys and sorrows, our happy and unhappy
hours" (p. 76). Marshall, Pain, Pleasure, aftd Esthetics, \'i()\: "Emotions ....
may not improbably be found to be complex co-ordinated instinct-feelings " (p. 64), and
instinct-feelings " indicate the mental states that correspond to instinctive activities " (pp.
•63-4). " Emotions" are "(relatively) fixed psychoses corresponding to fixed co-ordina-
tions of instinctive activities which arise upon the appearance of definite objects " (p. 65).
Mosso, Fear, 1896, contains a close psychological study of Fear. Spencer, Psychology,
1890, i, p. 599 : "When a particular plexus is excited, it immediately excites the mass
of kindred plexuses with which it is organised — the result being that the feelings proper
to this mass of excited plexuses are aroused, and in their multitudinous but vague
aggregate, constitute the accompanying emotion." Sully, Human Mind, 1892, ii, p. 57 :
" Emotion is in general describable as a mass or aggregate of sensuous and representative
material, having a strongly marked and predominant concomitant of feeling or affective
tone." See also Sergi, Les Emotions, 1901.
147. — Feeling Pained, and Imaged Pain.
Some one, we will say, unjustly accuses a friend of yours of a question-
able financial transaction. You are greatly pained and grieved, and worry
yourself about the matter. You do not like to be pained ; and you do not
like grieving as such.
Crying is, as we saw, an attempt at relief. What is feeling pained?
You would rather that the accusation had not been made. The withdrawal
of the charge would bring you joy. The thought of the libel disturbs your
neural equilibrium and excites you. What is to be done ? What will your
friend think ? How he will be pained ! You are depressed at such a sug-
gestion having been entertained. Your affection for him is outraged by
such an act. You are full of anxiety.
272 GENERAL ANALYSES
Now grief is the consequence of such a state. The momentum produced
by the excitement compels us to harp on the topic, while making us im-
patient of every other thought. To think calmly of other issues after a
great event, is impossible to the average mortal under average circum-
stances. Only a trained power of inhibition coupled with a healthy nervous
system, will enable us to counteract to any considerable degree a neural
disturbance. Suppression being out of the question, or else we must
assume that the grief ceases, there appears to be no alternative but to keep
on thinking about the misfortune, especially since our helplessness and the
thought itself are added fuel. This tendency is, however, normally resisted.
Our resources become exhausted ; we recognise the futility of brooding
over the affair, and at last we naturally tire of the subject (sec. 28). Our
way out of the unpleasant alternatives is simple. We relax our normal
efforts and become listless. Our thought is, accordingly, feeble ; it excludes
strenuous thinking and, by implication, reference to our friend, as also all
renewal of excitement. We live in a lower key for a time, as a sick animal
will do. When the grief, especially with the calm which comes of rest,
has lost much of its hold, we gradually return to normal activity. Mean-
while our general outlook and much of our thought are slightly tinged both
by the initial occasion of our trouble and by the physical state induced
thereby. I say advisedly " slightly tinged," because the physical contrast
suggests a contrast of feelings which does not exist. We are not unhappy ;
but we vegetate. We dreamily live without troubling ourselves about
happiness or misery. Our being is in abeyance, as when we feel the neces-
sity for perfect rest. For the time being we give up our right to meddle
with the world's affairs. In all this there is little planning. We naturally
fall into the quiet mood, and naturally we persist in it. Whatever we have
to learn we learn incidentally. Passive grief, then, is not, properly speaking,
a simple painful state ; it is rather a lowering of our level of activity for the
purpose of recovering neural tranquillity. To the strong soul, however,,
there is open the more excellent way of manly resignation.*
The essential points to be observed are that a disturbed condition is a
deflection from the normal ; and that neural states, when disturbed, tend
to regain their customary equanimity. Under these circumstances we say that
we are pained.
Why do we dislike this state ? We have seen that it is normal to man's
physical constitution that he should concern himself with a misfortune until
it is relieved. Now the thought of a mishap, a serious fright, for instance,
sometimes recalls the event so far as it is painful and we then re-act it in
part. Hence the thought of something distasteful will sometimes coincide
with what is distasteful, and for this reason we shrink from it, while, at the
same time, through organised reaction, we have become gradually accus-
tomed to spurn and dismiss such a thought. There will, therefore, be a
* My temperament is so stoical that grief seldom comes near me. I, therefore, lay-
little stress on the above analysis of grief. Perhaps some impulsive psychologist will
make an experimental study of the subject. \_Study the nature of g^'ief.'\
SYSTEA/S AS DISTURBED 273
tendency quickly to drop that which leads to, or is connected with, anything
painful. The more unpleasant the re-collection, the more summary will, of
course, be the dismissal. Since also our organism, when not morbid, is
uninterested in disturbing occurrences as such, we do not dwell on them.
Other wants, normal in their nature, crowd in and expel the unwelcome
guest. \Sec071da7y pleasure-pain should be expeiimentally studied?^
Of course, our judgment often misleads us. We act sometimes as if we
were much pained, when we are not. In such an instance pain is non-
existent, for the shrinking is acted and not real. We erroneously consider
a notion unbearable ; but the unbearableness is only in the judgment.
Hence, except when we discipline ourselves to undejgo what at first we
only imagined, the supposed disturbance is a fiction. The intensity or
aggressiveness of pleasure-pain, too, is always an open question. To-
morrow we shall recognise the simulation of to-day's pain, and in the light
of better judgment we shall observe what obstinate error alone could fail to
remark. \Examine yourself very carefully ivhen much tired or ill or in loiv
spirits, and in the opposite moods. Also when you think of pleasant or un-
pleasant events.'\
148. — Principles ride Rough-Shod over Disturbances.
A man is watching some boys who are boating. Their loud laughter,
their flushed faces, their restless eyes and their general animation bear
witness to their whole-hearted enjoyment. They ought to have been at
school ; but they could not resist the invitation of the smiling day and the
sunny river. To our spectator, boating is no temptation, though in his own
way he is able to appreciate it as much as they. If, however, it be a choice
between the river and the performance of a duty, he unhesitatingly inclines
to the latter.
After what has been said in the preceding sections, this instance will not
appear as extravagant as it might otherwise do. Why does he incline to-
wards the duty rather than towards the boating ? It might be replied that
the duty affords him more pleasure or more satisfaction than the boating ;
but this is not the fact. Let us analyse the case more in detail. The duty
is to go home and write a promised answer to a letter. The matter in itself
has only to do with a trifling transaction, the delay of which would be im-
material. In writing the note there is no appreciable excitement of any
kind, pleasant or otherwise. The river, on the other hand, ofiers exquisite
enjoyment, and hours of it. Yet without any struggle, without weighing
arguments, without reflection, without excitement, without disappointment,
he turns homeward. With all its allurements the river has no fascination
for him. Imagine, however, no duty to stand in the way, and he enters
enthusiastically into the sport.
Such are the facts, pure and simple. What is their explanation? That
his decision is due to the greater pleasure the duty holds out, is an unten-
able theory in this case. That pain has any appreciable influence here,
must be denied. On the face of it, he acts in an organised fashion. He
18
274 GENERAL ANALYSES
goes straight for the duty ; he proceeds as he has proceeded before ; and
his action is unaccompanied by any emotion or reflection. The decision
is as readily arrived at as if both courses were palpably indifferent.
We have seen how, by inhibition, things which have an immense dis-
turbance value, often lose it altogether ; how we can fix or ignore them ;
how if we so will, they become meaningless from the pleasure-pain point
of view. The greatest possible prospective pleasure, given developed
nervous strength, can thus lose all its charm, possessing no more power to
move us than if it were dead or forgotten. We contemplate it placidly
as we might a psychological curiosity. Under these circumstances the
pleasure of boating and the performance of a duty are reduced to the
same simple category, and each leaves us unconcerned. Deliberation and
comparison are absent. The measure we apply is one of principle and
not of pleasure-pain, while we are guided by general and organised con-
siderations and not by passing special considerations. It is not that the
duty triumphs over the pleasure ; but that an organised inclination, dis-
ciplined to accord with some general principle, carries the day.
In the instance under discussion, the effect is not produced by deliberate
or ihought-of inhibition. On many prior occasions the man had practised
inhibiting courses of conduct which were opposed to duty. Gradually
inhibition grew more easy, until at last it became organised. As soon as
a desire then arose which conflicted with duty, so soon was it dismissed.
Except for duty's sake, it was difficult for him not to act in this way, and
for the same reason, his thoughts ran on the problems of duty. On
account of a confirmed inclination the notion of boating, under the cir-
cumstances, appears pale and indifferent when regarded from the emotional
and imaginative point of view. It has no attraction whatever. Nor has
the thought of duty anything to recommend it in the particular example.
Provided that his notions on the subject have remained unchanged, he
simply proceeds to the performance because he has proceeded thus in
the past.
A consideration of sec. 109 makes it obvious that strong excitement is
usually unprofitable to the human organism. An emotion, we there learnt,
tends to persist in proportion to its warmth, if we except shallow persons
and dream-life. Hence, instead of being able freely to disregard topics,
we have no option in the presence of strong excitement, but to develop
them, and that makes normal thought impossible. Instead of progressing
with whatever task we have in hand, we are forced by excitement to linger
by the way and ponder over otherwise unengaging trifles. If the field of
attention were like the limitless ocean of space, it would be within the
range of possibility to follow out every conceivable line of thought or
temptation. As it is, attention being rigorously limited, a large quantity
of imaginable arguments, reasons, motives and temptations do not, or at
least are not bound to, develop. They are eliminated by the struggle for
the field of attention, and we march, therefore, swiftly from position to
position.
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED
275
We understand now how some psychologists quietly analyse the pleasant
humour of the company they are in, instead of merely enjoying it ; how
they listen to a great singer with nothing but a psychological interest ; and
how they take an argument to pieces instead of judging of its value. Such
investigations are far from implying callousness. These psychologists
possess perhaps as keen a relish as anybody for humour, song and argu-
ment. Only they have deliberately, or incidentally, disciplined themselves
to psychologise freely. By often analysing, the power, as described in
■oh. 3, has insensibly increased until their ability has become highly
specialised.
What is true of the moral man and the psychologist holds good, by
parity of reasoning, of men generally. Wherever zve fi?id a?i absorbing
pursuit, there the emotional and the pleasure-pain value of objects is continu-
■ally ignored. Without deliberate inhibition we then pass by temptations
with indifference. We have seen that this must and does take place in
normal thought, and, accordingly, we must allow that pleasure-pain has
not the decisive and perpetual influence attributed to it. Its proper
function is readily defined : pleasure, or the attempted preservation of
neural disturbance, makes, within certain limits, for private and public
robustness ; pain, or the attempted escape from neural disturbance,
.similarly restrained, serves the same object, as we have seen in sec. 142.
By training, pleasure-pain may be rationalised ; and this must be one of
the aims of education. Hearty enjoyment could then be encouraged
without fear of extravagance, as also necessary stoicism. The primary
intention of the reactions which follow on pleasure-pain is, largely by
means of inherited measures, to protect the organism against violent
attacks.* Natural selection has accordingly favoured nervous systems
which are duly attracted by the good, and repelled by what is evil. In-
deed, were the system not sensitive to what is beneficial or hurtful, our
race would have no chance of existing at all. If we tend away from the
normal condition, it is because of the tendency of the organism to react in
that manner. When the tendency is in the contrary direction, that is to
say, when we hasten towards the normal state, we call the impelling object
painful. To say that we like what is pleasurable, is to say that we like
what we like, or that A is A. To say that we like what is painful, is to
say that A is not A, unless, indeed, we use the terms " like " and " pleasure-
pain" in various senses. When we speak of pleasure-pain, we assume
* According to Horwicz's general doctrine in his Psychologische Analysen — and Hor-
wicz does not stand by himself — all the senses as well as thought are bare modifications
of the sense of pleasure-pain. In connection with this theory, the following may be
quoted from Hoffding's Psychology, 1891, p. 2S8 : "As smell and taste facilitate a pre-
examination, which prevents anything injurious to life from being received into the
alimentary canal, and as smell gives notice of the approach of the enemy or of the prey,
so too, sight and hearing are from the first in the service of instinct." In fact, so far
back as Berkeley this was recognised : " We regard the objects that environ us in pro-
portion as they are adapted to benefit or injure our own bodies" {Neiv Theory of Vision,
1709, sec. 59). And so James, Psychology, 1890, ii, p. 175 : " Even to-day the main
function of the peripheral organs of our retina is that of sentinels, which, when beams of
light move over them, cry ' Who goes there ? ' "
276 GENERAL ANAL YSES
accordingly that a neural disturbance has taken place, for otherwise
unnatural antitheses are easily established. {Test this section experi-
mentally^
Prof. James {Psychology, 1S90, i, p. 144) says : " If pleasures and pains [as feelings]
have no efficacy, one does not see . . . why the most noxious acts, such as burning, might
not give thrills of delight, and the most necessary ones, such as breathing, cause agony."
The meaning of the same feelings varies, I hold, with circumstances, contrary to what
James assumes. If I abstract from the thrill the violent physical change of a particular
kind which accompanies it, I am at a loss to find a name for that which remains : it
might be an agony, for aught I know. James' theory implies that a man might shriek,
be shaken to his foundations, take hurriedly to flight, rid himself of an enemy, and yet
be contemplative, calm, unmoved and attracted. Let these latter elements be eliminated
from the thrill of delight, and we have left something resembling the famous cat's grin
without the cat. Surely, on James' hypothesis of a feeling added to an act, there is
no reason why bodily agony should not be accompanied by thrills of delight, i.e., a buoyant
desire to maintain the agony.
149.— Moods largely determine the Drift of Thought.
My head aches badly. It has been worrying me for several days. I
cannot think ; I am in a depressed mood ; and my thoughts are gloomy.
I do not like being in this state.
Where there were no feelings previously about the head, I now note
some. They have come without my bidding ; they are staying independ-
ently of my wishes ; and they will disappear at their own sweet will. They
are the result of certain changes or derangements in the nervous system.
They possess no meaning apart from these changes. In themselves these
feelings are neither pleasurable nor painful, and it is the accompanying
circumstances, some of which they represent, which lend them a fictitious
value. Were it not for these, the feeling might be wholly indifferent as
are those connected with my sitting while I am writing at the present
moment. Being, however, related to important neural states, they loom
large. Their unimportance is readily proved. I but proceed to study
them for a few moments, and their pleasure-pain pretence is instantly sup-
pressed, for while the feehngs continue, the pain has ceased. Like the
moon, the feelings shine with borrowed light.
Co-existing with the headache is an inability to think freely. My sur-
roundings and my life and existence bear a striking resemblance to a mist.
I seem to be dozing all the time. As the distant sea only murmurs, while
we hear it crash and boom as we draw near ; so the normal vividness of
thought seems far-off and appeals to me but faintly. If I were to remain for
ever in that condition, not another vigorous notion would bud within me.
The sensations and feelings have, of course, nothing to do with this dull
state on the thought exchange. An additional argument in favour of this
view may be found, if required, in the fact that such a state of torpor
often overcomes us, without being accompanied by the aggregate of feel-
ings we call a headache.
Thought is circumscribed in other ways. In sees. 109-11 we studied
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 277
the part played by excitement. Under its influence we continue feeling,
reasoning and imagining when the ostensible occasion is past, and the
same thing is true of the present case. As the derangement of the head-
ache is present, neural activity is concerned with that. Though we think
now of this thing and now of that, we tend, because of the persistent ex-
citement, to return to the thought of the headache. Hence we are con-
stantly revolving the headache in our thoughts, and we are never long
away from the gloomy subject. We do not choose the theme ; we should
prefer thinking of what is pleasant ; but it is imposed on us. The presence
of the neural excitement is a factor forcing the matter incessantly to the
foreground. While we are thus liable to be unduly concerned with what
is troubling us, there is a contrary inclination to be considered ; that is to
say, as a weight strives to reach the centre of the earth, so there is a
dogged tendency on the part of the neural system to regain its quiescent
condition.
One method of using up the attention, as we have seen, is to try to
remove the headache. In this way we do more than justice to the excite-
ment, for we surreptitiously introduce hopes which are in themselves
agreeable. A gleam of sunshine is thus gained, and the forcible discharge
in itself gives some ease. Any vigorous activity ordinarily helps ; but
that connected with the neural centre afflicted yields relief most readily. If,
in consequence of this, the abnormal tendency abates, the normal one
increases in power correspondingly, and as that is most likely to happen
when we make an extra effort to recover ourselves, such a state tends,
organically, to develop. As the result of natural selection, the nervous
system drifts in that direction largely of itself.
Besides the incessant occupation with the headache, due to the neural
excitement, we learn of another channel of relief. It is obvious, as in
crying ; or it may be hidden : the eyes, the eyelids, the forehead, the
muscles of the face, the heart, the lungs, in short, nearly the whole
organism may be involved, the tension being widely distributed. This
activity relieves the affected centres, and is to a large extent instinctive ;
or, at all events, there is a predisposition which makes such discharge
normal under the circumstances. If this be so, however, it must react on
our thoughts. It will tend to fix the attention on the headache, and keep
it there.
There is yet another direction into which our thoughts tend to flow.
All cases which are similar to those of the headache ; all sensations which
are consistent with the excitement and the peculiar general organic dis-
position, will take precedence over normal thought (sec. 109), and thus
gloomy adventures of every kind will by preference attract us. Since the
attention is bound to find employment, and since normal thoughts are out
'Of the question and the subject of the headache is exhausted, we revolve
related subjects, such as other headaches, ills generally, disappointments,
etc. The stage of thought, like a chamber of horrors, is in this way some-
times packed with gruesome figures. One dismal apparition follows
278 GENERAL ANALYSES
another, and a long procession of monotonous anxieties harrows our
feelings. The darkness is deepened till there is scarcely room for the
faintest beam of light. Even when the headache is gone, the twilight of
despair yet haunts us. It is not that we like these gloomy guests, or that
we have invited them. We do not love them, and we do not invite them.
An hour's sleep would be so pleasant ; but they will not depart. There
are other scenes which we are trying to revive and retain ; but in vain.
Were the discharge of energy in our keeping, we might bring pleasant
subjects to the front, or we might reduce the discharge till it just sufficed
to fit us for our work (sec. 134). Our likes, however, must stand aside.
The attention must be occupied, and can only be occupied with unprofitable-
topics. Our needs, accordingly, are not the exclusive builders of the track
which our imagination is following, and our desires often represent nothing
more than the normal neural tendency to regain or escape regaining the
lost equilibrium. It seems certain that the above explanation of the gloom,
as being the result of excitement, is the correct one, and that the issue
was not determined by desire for pleasure or fear of pain. Even organised
reaction plays an insignificant part here, for the nature of the excitement
is one important factor, while the other is the necessity for thought. For
the same reason we must equally reject the notion that I selected the
topics or that they were due to a process of ideational association.
What holds good of a mood thus created, holds good of all moods.
The waves of excitement, when we have been hurried into a violent
passion, will not at once subside, however large a quantity of the oil of
reason we pour upon them. In such a mood the noon-day sun itself
appears dull and cold ; a pall hangs over everything ; and our dearest friend
is not what he should be. We charge the daisy with pride, and the wild
rose we taunt with being an abandoned pleasure-seeker. In a spirited
mood, on the contrary, the opposite view is taken of the world. The very
mud in the street speaks, whispers soft nothings as we tread on it, and
dances as if in sport. Death has no sting left. Others' misery leaves us
unmoved.* We reproach ourselves for our levity ; but how hollow is the
reproach. We dismiss what is unpleasant, and what would otherwise have
irritated us, is now a superb jest, provoking laughter. Strictly speaking,
this uncontrolled joy does not result from any writ by which we may have
summoned it to the sessions of thought. The mood we are in, — the
peculiar nervous excitement due to the prick of a need or the state of the
organism, — explains the interest with which we regard even the meanest
topics, and we can no more arbitrarily dismiss this condition of thought than
we can its brother born of gloom. Two extremes have been depicted ; but
the argument holds good generally. We are, as beings goaded by needs,
always in some mood or another. Indeed, many individuals, for long
periods together, remain in some pronounced mood. The current of our
thought is for this reason determined primarily by our needs, and second-
arily by the consequent excitement. Pleasure, fear of pain, and choice, are
* That is one reason why young children appear callous.
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 279
not the great powers which decide whither our thoughts shall commonly
drift ; this is determined by our organised needs and the nature of the
neural mechanism. Our analysis reveals an apparent exception to this,
for in ch. 5 we saw that ordinarily little excitement is present. In this
restful mood we have a certain amount of liberty, though the excitement
involved in recency is the support for any train of thought. Moreover,
the depth to which we feel, is determined by our organism. Our passions
may be but passing clouds, hiding the light for a few moments, or they
may rage tempestuously for considerable periods. The various stages of
individual development — from birth to death — have corresponding moods,
and these, subject to the underlying needs, are the great rulers in the
realm of thought (sec. 152). [Determine carefully the drift of your thought
in various moods. Practise also to think out of relation to a mood, and try
to suppress and encourage moods. Do not forget that the general facts must
be arrived at by examination, and that ^^ opinions" mislead?^
One day I repeatedly felt that everything seemed to act as an irritant to my temper,
and that uncharitable thoughts were in the ascendant. After due reflection I discovered
that some unpleasant event of which I heard that morning had left its sting behind in the
form of a disagreeable mood. Here the mood may be considered as corresponding to a
disturbance of neural equanimity. Certainly the thought of the event — visual, audile,
verbal, tactile — had nothing to do with my bitter reflections throughout the day. As
with this somewhat abnormal condition, so with much that is normal. Dyspeptic,
choleric and weak-nerved people are perpetually influenced by their nervous state ; and
so are those who are of a robust and buoyant constitution. In the same manner, the
innumerable many-coloured prejudices or inclinations which few people are without,
sustain a particular class of thought. Interest, attention or absorption act similarly.
The effect of recency and memory is but one aspect of these moods. So also our
genuine wants guide and tone our thoughts.
On one occasion I received some critical news, and I was much affected in consequence.
I noticed that my thoughts were so many frowns. I then began to observe and to experi-
ment. There were the usual symptoms of excitement, though the notion which was re-
sponsible for them only developed now and then. I noticed that, on the one hand,
there was the tendency to re-develop what was unpleasant, while on the other, indifferent
or pleasing thoughts which I had deliberately re-produced were quickly permeated by an
atmosphere of depression. A certain physical state, then, however produced, brings
forth, favours and transforms thoughts according to a certain plan. Ideas, in the sense
of visual and aural images, are, therefore, not the only means of originating certain classes
of thoughts. \_Experiment and observation o?t an extensive scale are easy in matters of
passion.'\
150. — Conclusions.
It will be as well to bring together the scattered conclusions arrived at in
this chapter concerning neural disturbances.
(i) So-called pleasure-pain feelings do not admit of being arranged
according to pleasure-pain degrees ;
(2) nor can so-called pleasure-feelings be divided from other pleasure-
feelings or pain-feelings, and so-called pain-feelings from other pain-feelings
or pleasure-feelings as regards pleasure-pain quality ;
(3) nor can so-called pleasure-pain feelings be divided from indifferent
feelings ;
28o GENERAL ANAL YSES
(4) nor are feelings ever directly connected with each other;
(5) nor do they give birth to movement of any kind ;
(6) nor do they influence movement of any kind;
(7) nor, consequently, can they raise or lower vitality;
(S) but feelings follow or accompany movement ;
(9) and tliey are for the time being classed as pleasurable, painful,
indifferent, strong, weak, important, originating and passive, in agreement
with the changes in thought and action with which they are found to be
connected.
(10) The nervous system has only a limited power of resistance ;
(11) its normal work leaves the body free from disturbances ;
(12) organised activity is guided more or less by developed inclinations ;
(13) organic needs make the brain act as it does :
(14) under certain conditions the nervous equilibrium is disturbed;
(15) it then rights itself by deflecting the attention,
(16) by inhibition,
(17) by a lowering of vitality,
(18) by forcible expression, as crying or laughing,
(19) by thinking of means to right the equilibrium,
(20) by removal of the irritant. Also
(21) ordinary defensive, inclined or preventive action is indifferent as re-
gards pleasure-pain ;
(22) inclination is no measure of capacity, disturbance or emotion ;
(23) organised reaction, inference and one's point of view, largely in-
fluence the nature of reactions ;
(24) pessimism is unjustifiable in theory, and, therefore, inapplicable to
fact ; and
(25) an organised trend, such as is exemplified in walking, typifies indiffer-
ence ; smiling faces typify pleasure — a state where we tend for a time to
maintain the disturbance ; and sobbing typifies pain — a condition where we
strive to regain the equilibrium.
151. — A Bird's Eye View.
Needs or functional tendencies normally realise themselves according to
inherited and acquired inclinations, and not as the result of disturbances.
Disturbances are rare events ; they betoken the absence of ready physical
or mental adjustment, and they are partly dealt with by inherited reactions,
by inhibition, by turning away the attention, and by other means. We
must distinguish one from another : needs, disturbances, capacities, ejnotions or
excitements, inclinations, neural momentum and moods. Pleasure-pain is to
be described as a neural or mental disturbance, and not as an unanalysable
subjective state. We must allow for organised reaction and wrong in-
ference, and for the fact that feelings give us no clue to the nature of
pleasure-pain. For the compound word pleasure-pain we may employ the
term neural disturbance ; for pleasure, semi-opposed disturbance ; and for
pain, opposed disturbance.
SYSTEMS AS DISTURBED 281
Additional References. — Bain, Pleanire and Pain, 1892 ; Bain, On Feeling as Indiffer-
ence, 1887, 1889; Bourdon, La Sensation de Plaisir, 1893 '■> Dearborn, The Emotion of
Joy, 1899 ; Dewey, The Theory of Emotion, 1894-5 ! Dugas, La Timidite, 1896 ;
Dumas, Lajoie et la Tristesse, 1896 ; Fere, U Antithcse dans I Expression des Emotions,
1896; Oilman, Syllabus of Lectures on the Psychology of Pain and Pleasttre, 1893;
Grote, Une Classification Nouvelle des Sentiments, 1878 ; Hartenberg, La Peur et le
Mecanisme des Emotions, 1899 ; Hyslop, Desiderata in Psychology, 1895 (fieals with the
meaning of emotion) ; Irons, Prof James'' Theory of Emotion, 1894 ; Irons, The Physical
Basis of Emotion, 1895 ; Irons, Descartes and Modern Theories of Emotion, 1895 • Irons,
The Primary Emotions, 1S97 ; Johnson, On '■^ Feeling as Indifference,^'' 1888 ; Joly, La
Sensibilite et le Mozivement, 1886 ; Kroner, Gemeingefiihl und sinnliches Gefiihl, 1887 ;
Kiilpe, Zur Theorie der sinnlichen Gefiihle, 1887-8 ; Lehmann, Die Hatiptgesetze des
tnenschlichen Gefiihlslebens, 1892 ; M'Lennan, E>notioit, Desire, and Interest : Descrip-
tive, 1895 ; Marshall, The Cluisification of Pleasure and Pain, 1889 ; Marshall, The
Physical Basis of Pleasure and Paitt, 1891 ; Marshall, Pleasure-Pain and Sensation,
1892 ; INIarshall, Prof Bain on Pleasure and Pain, 1893 ; Marshall, Emotion versus
Pleasure-Pain, 1895 ("It is certainly clear that the separation of Pleasure and Pain from
the emotions is a psychological necessity," p. 193) ; Mason, On '^Feeling as Indifference^^
1888 ; Mercier, A Classification of Feelings, 1884-5 ; Nichols, The Origin of Pleaswe-
Pain, 1892 (deals with specific pleasure-pain nerves) ; Nichols, The ' Feelings,^ 1895 ;
Nichols, Pai7t Nerves, 1896: Payot, Sensation, Plaisir et Douleur, 1890; Rauh, Le
Sentiment et V Analyse, 1894 ; Richet, La Douleur, 1877 ; Schubert-Soldern, Reproduc-
tion, Gefiihl und VVille, 1887 ; Scripture, Vorstellung und Gefiihl, 1891 ; Sergi, Ueber
den Sitz und die physische Grundlage der Affecte, 1897 ; Shand, Character and the
Efuotions, 1896; Shand, Feeling atid Thought, 1898; Sidgwick, The Feeling-Tone of
Desire and Aversion, 1892 ; Sollier, De la Sensibility et de I Emotion, 1894 (supports
James); 'SiXaxAay, Relation of Feeling to Pleasure and Pain, 1889; Stanley, 0)i Primitive
Consciousness, 1892 (develops a theory similar to that of Ilorwicz) ; Stanley, A Study of
Fear as Prifnitive Emotion, 1894 ; Storring, Einfiuss der Gefiihle auf die Vorstellungen,
1896; Stratton, The Sensations are not the Emotion, 1895 ; Strong, The Psychology of
Pain, 1895; Stumpf, Ueber den Begriff der Gemiithsbewegung, 1899; 'ivWy, On ^'' Feeling
as Indifference," 1888 ; Wirth, Vorstelhvigs und Gefiihlscontrast, 1898 ; Wundt, Zur
Lehre von den Gemiithsbewegungeti, 1890; Wundt, Zur Theorie der Gefiihle, 1S99; and
-Ziegler, Das Gefiihl, 1S99.
CHAPTER VII
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED
All our acts, from a to s,
Find in needs their fountainhead.
152. — Experimental Willing.
(i) When I will to move my eyes, limbs or body, it is the action most
natural to those parts which results. \Repeat and test these experiments^ I
note that I am apt to repeat, or recur, to the same movements.
(2) Variety of action in experimental willing is with me usually suggested
by the rule of contraries, for example, if I have moved my arm to the
right, I move it afterwards to the left. To produce an uncommon suc-
cession of arbitrary movements is not easy, e.g., it is difficult to pass from
movements of the fingers to those of the legs, and from these to sight and
then to thought. (3) There are no separate verbal volitions always
present as I proceed from movement to movement ; where they do occur,
they form a link in an organised chain. The persistence and line of the
activity is decided by individual inclinations. (4) The following factors
exist in arbitrary haphazard willing : (a) we have the notion of, or the need
for, acting (represented on the non-bodily plane chiefly by an organised
feeling) ; {b) the cue to what we are to will is given by the first sensation
which happens to arrest our attention ; and (<r) we will what the feeling or
sensation suggests, i.e., we carry out the suggestion. The resulting action
is along the line of familiar activity. Such experiments as the above
possess no elements which are not involved in a train of organised thought
— as muttering a formula, or in a complex of muscular action — as when I
take off my coat. The use of phrases such as " I will," merely lengthens
the act. (5) In the course of the experiment I am able to desist at any
moment; hence it is reasonable to suppose that an organised stimulus or
need persists while I proceed from step to step (ch. 3). (6) I am not
aware of separately willing every step and each part of every step. I
merely observe a steady succession of movements with no discernible
volitions, notions or feelings intervening. This is a fair representation of
normal reactions, the process remaining the same even when we are doing"
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 285
something which is objectionable to us. (7) The end or aim is conceived
of organically, that is to say, dimly and intermittently. For example, a
slight feeling develops in my arm at the point which will be moved.
Normally we do not think of an end when we act ; but if the opposite be
true, then since all action displays the same characteristics, thought-of
ends exist in all action whatsoever — voluntary or involuntary. (8) When
the activity, as a whole, is of recent standing, I re-develop more or less
completely portions of the end as well as of the steps ; and both of these,
not being as yet well assimilated, are re-developed slowly and more or less
completely, so that I am enabled to act readily and confidently. By
parity of reasoning the vivid re-development of an end and of the steps
involved in its execution, is superfluous in normal process, since every-
thing is there re-developed easily and at once, while what is redundant is
repressed in the struggle for existence and comfort among primary and
secondary units. Hence we do not expect ordinarily to meet with any
thought-of end or means, since these have been reduced to their lowest
terms. (9) I can easily will what is impossible to carry out, for example,
I try to annihilate the pen I am writing with by a stern look ; I attempt
to flatten a wooden pen-holder by pressing it between my fingers ; I will
to lift a tremendous weight. Belief in the possibility of achievement plays
no part in ordinary action. I proceed to will actions which are out of my
range as if they could be performed. I will the impossible as easily
as the possible. We act as a rule organically, and we do not stop to
reflect or to weigh. If our attempt is unreasonable, we desist ; but this
we do only from practical considerations. We act because of a pressing
need, regardless of belief or possibility. In organised activity these
latter are thrown out as unnecessary ballast. For the same reason we
may wiU what we regard as the more painful of two courses. I resolve,
in this manner, to do whatever is casually suggested, and I proceed
accordingly. As regards belief and possibility, thought, imagination and
muscular reaction show the very same characteristics.* (10) I let
articulate sounds, regardless of sense, freely escape my lips : oar, weer, con,
laugh, log, fear, glue, gin, coroner, can, mine, more, fun, candle, dream,
doll, toon, wild, where, want, Solomon, Cinderella, tender, till, keer, coll,
darling, nantch, villa, careless, friend, folly, state, frieze, full, grand, eyes,
love, pick, noor, fire, almonds, truer, through, them. Mile End, varnish,
tiddle, Ptolemy. There was in this experiment, as can be seen, a tendency
to run on the same first letter, or on others near it in the alphabet, which
I now and then deliberately checked. In pronouncing, I made up in
most cases a word suggested by the bare sound. There was no direct
association between the words ; they did not suggest each other, as is
seen at a glance. (11) I build up the words and write them down, with-
out interfering with, or being influenced by, the current of my thought.
* Belief and possibility play a considerable part in current psycholog)'. Bain, Bren-
tano, Stout, and many others, speak at length on the subject ; but they do not refer, so
far as I can discover, to what actually takes place.
284 GENERAL ANALYSES
Association was need-determined or topical : I wished to utter syllables.
If I so desired, I might shape intelligent terms of one, two, or more syl-
lables ; or syllables without meaning ; or both classes combined ; or words
beginning with certain letters. I can also re-develop associated or con-
nected words, such as house, window, room, steps ; but even here the
topic is " house," leaving aside the presence of a decision to persevere in
a stated course. In the word series given I cannot suggest what ruled the
nature and the order of the initial and other sounds.* (12) I will to move
my hand to the right ; then I will to move it to the left. In each case
the act of willing is not willed. Will, then, does not explain itself; it
itself develops out of a previous system. {13) Ordinarily I perform many
actions. I pick up a chair and carry it across the room ; I shut the
note book, re-open it, and turn over its leaves till I come to a page I am
looking for. Actions thus succeed each other, most of them organised,
adapted and intelligent. I act readily because I have so often done the
same or a similar thing before. (14) As a matter of information we say
"yes" or "no." Or after weighing an argument, looking at a drawing,
deliberating over an action, we say "yes" or "no" in answer to a ques-
tion. We do not affirm or negative every statement which flits by. It is
the same with the will (sec, 164). (15) When I say " I will," I generally
refer to that portion of my thought or to those needs which most commonly
rule the field of thought. I can consequently defeat myself, and then one
need triumphs over another. The ruling need is identified with the self,
and, being but one among many needs, can be put to flight. Evil
thoughts may dominate us, and then we fight against virtuous inclinations.
In those who are shallow, the " I" is repeatedly identified with opposite
needs (sec. 163). (16) The incentives to action lie in our wants (sec. 156),
which may be divided into the following classes :
{a) Perennial Needs : these are such as are essential to the organism ;
for example, solid and fluid nutriment, fresh air, rest, sleep, exercise,
variety, warmth.
{b) Periodic Needs': these are such as distinguish the seven ages
of man.
(r) Personal Needs : these are peculiar to the individual organism
and supply us with our permanent individual character.
(d) Peculiar Needs : these result from our special environment.
{e) Political Needs : these are such as have reference to our social,
national, racial and physical environment.
(/) Passing Needs : these are such as are casual and passing.
All systems are thus initiated and sustained by definite stimuli and
functional tendencies on which they are dependent.
From the scientific standpoint there can be no justification for a chapter
on the will ; for if we admit the general fact of connected succession, the
notion of an arbitrary will, as ordinarily understood, loses all reality. We
-are bound to assume, until the contrary is proved, that the facts in
* Parrots thus talk unconnectedly.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 285
which we are interested are as strictly related as are those which form the
subject-matter of physics. The previous portions of this treatise have
uniformly referred to facts, and all that we have learnt has tended to
exclude the notion of a power which is not identical with organic needs.
The above abstract of a series of experiments points to the same con-
clusion; but we must nevertheless examine the subject of the will ex-
haustively, if only to attain to a knowledge of human limitations, and to
broad negations of current views.
The question of free-will is one of those ghosts which are easy to raise and difficult to
lay. It is like the strange being whom the knight, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, vainly
tried to break, to strangle, to crush or to pierce ; and who only yielded when held under
water. Since dialectic methods have been unsuccessful in the past, I have applied above
the ordeal by experimental introspection. Whether this attempt be successful or not
there should exist no doubt that the issue is amenable to such treatment.
The veteran psychologist, Wundt {Gruiidn'ss, 1896, p. 228), holds that theoretical
interests are sure to falsify inner observation. This supposition of Wundt's brings out the
lamentable fact that psychologists as a body make their profession subservient to other
interests. Apart irom such an explanation it is wholly inexplicable why there should be
the slightest danger from the side of theoretical interests. Surely, eagerness for facts
should outweigh tenfold the desire to verify some theory.
To return to our experiments. They make clear (i) that when we will movements
the movement to be willed is always suggested ; (2) that series of willed movements as
well as single movements, have their character determined organically ; (3) that word
series are brought about by the same factors ; (4) that needs initiate and maintain
movement ; (5) that ends or insistent volitions act within an organised system ; that they
cannot be thought of as acting otherwise ; and that therefore the barriers between volun-
tary and involuntary activity are artificial ; (6) that resolves are like a scaffolding which
becomes useless when an activity is built up ; (7) that deliberate volitions are rare ;
(8) that the act of will is itself suggested and usually unwilled ; and (9) that our total
activity is rigidly connected.
Further inquiries confirm this position. As I watch myself whilst active, I am per-
petually surprised at the independent and intelligent way in which the different muscle
systems perform their duties. I notice, for instance, a long succession of finger move-
ments and tongue movements which seem to be as little connected with my general
intentions as the behaviour of the clouds above me. I am, as it were, a spectator rather
than an actor in what I do. It seems as if each muscle had a brain and a life apart from
mine ; as if I were their fellow, and not their master. Repeatedly I admire the readiness
and resourcefulness of those actions. Now the more completely I accustom myself to
observe while indifferently going through routine labours, and the more hours and weeks
I am thus engaged, the more my wonder increases. Aims, referring to every step in an
action, are here much restricted. Only when extra effort is required in re-development,
or when an end has to be reached in an indirect and circuitous manner, can we speak of
"Will. As soon as confusion and effort disappear, so soon have we usually done with the
Will. Only when we have to think out a problem, do we image at all what we are
doing.
The place of the Will in the flux of thought can be determined experimentally in other
ways. I can deliberately will to re-develop what is contiguous to, or resembles, some
particular I am thinking of. The insistence is here the outcome of a need — an insistent
need, in fact, — and the resulting success or failure is determined by factors with which we
are now acquainted. However, more interesting tests are possible. {Test what follows.'^
(i) I can shut my eyes, determine on nothing, and watch the result. A noise, a bodily
feeling or a recent event will then capture the field of attention. (2) I determine to think
of nothing. The results resemble those just referred to. (3) I determine to think of
286 GENERAL ANALYSES
something, never mind what. Still the same results. (4) Lastly, I determine to think of
what is unlike something thought of. This is the most curious case. Usually the idea of
Ihe unlike becomes complicated with some oft re-developed fact, and this becomes more
and more the case as I proceed. If I deliberately ignore these complications, the result
is that I seem to hold things back, to inhibit something, and then, sometimes, the un-
like system develops. In every instance of this nature verbal images must be discounted,
for we have seen that their introduction destroys honest experiment. The liability, in the
.above experiments, to re-develop mechanically the same person or thing which we have
previously re-developed on a similar occasion, is, as pointed out in sec. 89, so great that
we exclude these contiguous occurrences in each case.
On experimental grounds our conclusion, therefore, is that all human activity is com-
prised in a rigidly interdependent system, antecedents and consequents belonging to an
organised order. Human action is of one piece, and no part differs essentially from any
other. It might perhaps be suggested that experiment is not necessarily borne out by
non-experimental processes. To this the reply is that on carefully comparing both sets of
processes, one finds that they agree in every detail (see chs. 4 and 8).
Against all the above will be brought " the testimony of consciousness." With that,
.as with any other mere opinion, we have nothing to do. Besides, persons who do not
believe in introspection on the ground that it is fallacious, should be the last to fall back
on such an argument. The student of psychology, as such, is only interested in the facts
of psychology, and must determine these honestly. If after his investigations he feels
compelled to take up an attitude for or against free-will, that is a non-psychological point.
To °'0 to psychology and to force it to yield him what his philosophy favours, is to wreck and
prostitute the science. If psychology demands intellectual sacrifices, some readjustment
of one's general views, that is only what every growing science has demanded, and what
we should expect and welcome.*
153. — The Effect of Volitions.
Let us assume that the will possesses unrestricted power. In that case,
I have only to decide to be wise in order to rank with Socrates, however
deficient in intelligence I may previously have been. \Exanii?ie these
assumptiofis.^ This is absurd on the face of it compared with what
volitions ordinarily accomplish. Assum.e, again, that I determine to be-
come wise without delay. My determination is unavailing, for willing as
such is no determinant. Assume once more that I will to be wise ; but
this time we will suppose a normal case, and also that I am intelligently
guided by a knowledge of my capacities. In this instance my determina-
tion is the outcome of a deep-seated need, so strong that most other needs
are subordinated to it. My decision focuses a tendency which has slowly
grown and struggled into supremacy. A firmly rooted need being present,
I necessarily devise measures for its satisfaction ; and if I boast of but a
spark of insight into human nature, I shall not attempt to become wiser
than my antecedents warrant. The flowers of wisdom can only be
plucked by those who have sought them in youth ; the uneducated adult
searches for them in vain. The will to be wise has no tangible effect
unless a person has limbs supple enough to climb the hills of learning,
and we, therefore, assume that in the above case, this indispensable
condition is complied with.
* In this connection, see Travis, An Introspective Investigation^ 1877. Compare
also sec. 186.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 287
Our organised reactions, when we are wanting in intelligence, are dis-
jointed, narrow in scope and inefifective, instead of being connected, wide
in scope and effective. To grow intellectually, we must remove the
former condition, and strive to establish the latter. This is, however a
difficult task, and a life-time of earnest labour is, therefore, scarcely suf-
ficient for its accomplishment. It implies constant study, and the
determination to profit by every favourable opportunity ; it excludes all
relaxation of effort. In this manner, stimulated and sustained by a ruling
inclination, we are gradually changed, and our reactions come to be more
and more in harmony with our conception of the wise man.
The stuff we are made of tells in every direction. If we are cast in a
•certain mould, our determination will soon be dead and forgotten ; if in
another, we shall toil and moil, and make but little headway ; if in a
third, we shall now lose heart, and now wax enthusiastic, with results,
naturally, of no great value. [ What class of fnind is yours ?] The
singleness, the purity and the earnestness of the desire, are only a few
out of many relevant factors.
The normal effect of our volitions is determined organically. Taught
by the course of events, we usually know what we can do, and we do not
attempt what we know is beyond us. For example, most men would de-
cline to join an expedition to the North Pole, knowing that they are not
fitted to undergo the necessary hardships ; but they will agree to a
proposal which they know falls within their range. If they are mathe-
maticans, they "intend" their minds without ado on some intricate
problem, and solve it ; if they are altogether unacquainted with mathe-
matics, they wisely refrain from the attempt. Willing in itself, other
things being equal, can do nothing ; and in what we do, or determine to
do, we merely realise the pressing needs of the moment in the manner
explained in ch. 4. Were our organism differently constituted, we might,
on the one hand, find the field within which our desires at present move
greatly restricted, or, on the other, possessing an immensely wider scope.
154. — Will as Absolute.
We saw (sec. 152) that it is possible to call spirits from the vasty deep.
There need be no half-heartedness about such willing, and it may proceed
■exactly as if we were willing what was possible. Possibility and impos-
sibility, belief and unbelief, are beside the question. Will the spirits,
however, come ? The facts answer, " No."* There are, then, bounds to
what we can do. Where are these to be found ? The answer is obvious.
The possibilities of the organism limit our will. Were there no nerves
proceeding from the brain to the fingers, we might helplessly will to the
crack of doom that our hands should open and close.
The following is an approximately correct account of actual willing.
^Test this.^ Some need, as represented by a central nervous stimulus
* See, however, sec. 232.
288 GENERAL ANALYSES
and a simple feeling, seeks for satisfaction. There results then, for
instance, a tune played on the piano, the stimulus provoking topical
nervous activity of an acquired kind, which we recognise in the regulated
movement of the fingers. All the interactions — the touches, sounds,
etc. — play, of course, their part, while the initial willing and the various
steps of the total process are, on the whole, organised. Should t/ie task
be a difficult ofte, there is no essential difference, as we saw in sec. 65; we
encounter only more steps of tJie satne nature.
Chs. 3 and 4 have shown that, at bottom, all activity is organised.
Especially in sec. 96 we saw that the same systems form an important
constituent in all action. In normal activity, therefore, the willing, as
well as the various steps in execution thereof, will pass almost as
mechanically and smoothly as a gently flowing stream. We generally
exhibit, therefore, a minimum of marked aim and foresight.
The above considerations are of some importance when we wish to
introduce changes in the economy of thought, for they teach us that it is
worse than useless to make sweeping demands on any individual. We
must, on the contrary, study capacity and educability, and then elaborate
educational measures in agreement with conditions existing in each case.
The attempt to force men into adopting an unwelcome line of action by-
telling them that they need only try, has, as a rule, results of less than
doubtful value. [ What effect has such a method on you ?]
We see how the will is circumscribed. On the one hand, the particular
organism has its rigid limitations, and, on the other, achievement in new
fields necessitates a protracted process, since the central nervous system is
irritatingly slow in adapting itself to changed or new needs. At the same
time, willing merely expresses the fact of the existence of a need pressing for
satisfaction. With hypothetical creatures, who are freed from the trammels
of a central nervous system, this may be different. Possibly nothing
raises difficulties with them. They perhaps have only to wish to be
wise or foolish, and, as with a conjuror, the feat is accomplished. I say
"perhaps" and "possibly," for I have no psychological notion of such
creatures. I only urge that it is mischievous, both psychologically and
ethically, to assume that human creatures are in possession of a faculty
superior to that which we know may be assigned to the brain. The
sooner this is admitted, the sooner shall we see an advance in both
theoretical and practical psychology. Ignorance, in this instance, is a
curse and not a blessing.
The following are some of the opinionG held by psychologists on the nature of the Will.
Bain (^Seiises and Intellect, 1894, p. 2) speaks of "Volition, or the Will, embracing the
whole of our activity as directed by our feelings ; " and in another place ( The Emotions
and the Will, 1875, P- 354) he writes: "Without some antecedent of pleasurable, or
painful, feeling— actual or ideal, primary or derivative — the will cannot be stimulated."
Bain exempts from the sway of the will, neutral excitement, spontaneity when due to
recency, fixed or ideo-motor ideas; and of emotions he says in this connection : "An
emotion persists in the mind and dominates the course of the thoughts, not because it is
pleasurable or painful, but because it is strong" {ibid, p. 381). Baldwin {Feeling and
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 289
JVt//, 1891), with many psychologists, holds that the idea of a movement is itself a nascent
movement, spontaneously leading to the movement proper. He says on this point :
"Every state of consciousness tends to realize itself in an appropriate muscular move-
ment" (p. 281). He sums up our problem as follows : " In all cases of intended bodily
movement there is, first, a reason why we will the reaction ; second, the actual decision
or act of will ; and third, the resulting movement" (p. 316). Bradley, Appearance and
Reality, 1897, p. 115: "In volition we have an idea, determining change in the self,
and so producing its own realisation." Chmielowski, Entstehiing des IVillens, 1874:
"All human actions may in the last resort be considered as simple muscular movements,
which, in their turn, consist of muscular contractions" (p. 5). "Stimuli excite our
motor-nerves, and these give rise to muscle-movements" (p. 29). In willino-, "the
ideas must appear in their objective aspect of pleasurable or painful" (p. 70). "The
second special mark of an act of will is the actual possibility of carrying out the necessary
movements" (p. 71). Fere, Sensation et Moiroeinent, 18S7, p. 16: "The idea of a
movement is the movement already begun." Hamilton, Metaphysics, ii, 1877, p. 433:
" Conation is a longing, — a striving, either to maintain the continuance of the present
state, or to exchange it for another. Thus, conation is not the feeling of pleasure and
pain, but the power of overt activity, which pain and pleasure set in motion." Herbart
(Psychologie, 1824, ii, p. 70) says that "Feeling, wiUing, desiring, are abstractions."
Hodgson, Metaphysic of Experience, 189S, iii, p. 165 : " Volition .... is a process of
conscious choice, a process of comparison and deliberation followed by a decision."
Hoffding, Psychology, 1891 : " Volition proper is characterised psychologically by the ideas
of the end of the action and the means to its realisation, and by a vivid feeling of the worth
of that end " (p. 313). " Merely the fact that a feeling has once found a vent or discharge
in a certain way, may be of decisive import for the manner of its later expression ; it may
have either an inhibitive, a strengthening, or a transforming effect" (p. 346). James,
Psychology, 1890, ii : "When a particular movement, having once occurred in a random,
reflex, or involuntary, way [in this James follows Bain] has left an image of itself in the
memory, then the movement can be desired again, proposed as an end, and deliberately
willed" (p. 487). James' criticism of the theory of innervation will be found on pp. 493
ff. "An anticipatory image of the sensorial consequences of a movement, plus (on
certain occasions) the fiat that these consequences shall become actual, is the only psychic
state which introspection lets us discern as the forerunner of our volitional acts" (p. 501).
"Every representation of a movement awakens in some degree the actual movement
which is its object ; and awakens it in a maximum degree whenever it is not kept from
so doing by an antagonistic representation present simultaneously to the mind " (p. 526).
Jodl, Lehrbtich, 1896, p. 427 : " Every voluntary movement is characterised by this that
it is guided by an image of that which is to be done." Ladd, Psychology, 1S94 : "We
never know nor feel, that we do not also will. Conation (or volition) enters into all per-
ception, memory, imagination, thought" (p. 212). "Conscious striving enters into all
the most primary psychical states" (p. 219). Lipps {Grtindtatsachen, 1883, p. 63) holds
tbat will and pleasure-pain are the soul's ornaments, and that they have no power in
themselves. James Mill, Analysis, 1869, ii : "We have now established, by an ample
induction, that the action of muscles follows, as an effect its cause ; first, upon sensations ;
secondly, upon ideas" (p. 348). Here Mill argues that since he has shown (mistakenly)
that every movement is preceded by a sensation, therefore that sensation is the cause of
the movement. The father stood evidently in need of his son's Logic (sec. 96). " Our
powerof willing consists in the power of calling into existence the appropriate idea ; ....
the power of the will is not immediate over the muscle, but over the idea" (p. 348).
" There appears no circumstance by which the cases called voluntary are distinguished
from the involuntary, except that in the voluntary there exists a desire" (p. 350).
"If . . . the idea of the outward appearance of the action calls up ... . the idea of
the internal feelings of the action, .... we are said to will " (p. 354). In other words,
when we paint the action in the imagination, no movements follow ; but when we become
absorbed in the feelings connected with the action, — when the need flows into a muscular
19
290 GENERAL ANALYSES
channel, — then the movements do follow. This sentence of MiWs embodies probably the
closest analysis we have of the last step in the volitional process. " We cannot will
without willing something ; and in willing we must have an idea of the thing willed "
<p. 358). I give in full the summing-up of his analysis. " In regard, then, to that state
of mind which precedes action, we seem to hive ascertained the following indisputable
facts : That actions are, in some instances, preceded by mere sensations ; that, in other
instances, they are preceded by ideas ; that, in all cases in which the action is said to be
willed, it is desired, as a means to an end ; or, in more accurate language, is associated
as cause, with pleasure as effiect ; that the idea of the outward appearance of the action,
thus excited by association, excites, in the same way, the idea of the internal feelings,
which are the immediate antecedent of the action, and then the action takes place : that
whatever power we may possess over the actions of our muscles, must be derived from
our power over our associations, and that this power over our associations, when fully
analysed, means nothing more than the power of certain interesting ideas, originating in
interesting sensations, and formed into strength by association " (pp. 378-9). Miinster-
berg. Die IVillenshandluvg, 1888: "The will is a complex of sensations " (p. 62).
" The essential in volition is the feeling of inner activity " (p. 62). As to the everlasting
innervation controversy, see p. 76 of his interesting book. Rieger, Die IVillensthd-
tigkeit, 1S85, is a restricted experimental study of control over movement. Robertson,
Psychology, 1S96 : "When I say, I will to open that door, I am representing to myself
the door as opened, through muscular acts of mine, for some end or purpose in conscious-
ness" (p. 219). Again, " Directly or indirectly, nearly or remotely, you will always find
an element of feeling involved in conation, together with intellection and representation"
(p. 220). Schneider, Z)^r w^«jr/i/?V/;^ IVille, 1882, p. 289 : " The act of choice produces
the sul)ordination of special, proximate, and direct aims, to an aim which is more general,
more remote, and more indirect." Spencer, Psychology, 1890, i: " In a voluntary act
of the simplest kind, we can find nothing beyond a mental representation of the act,
followed by a performance of it " (p. 497). "An involuntary movement .... occurs
without previous consciousness of the movement to be made " (p. 497). Stout, Psychology,
1896, i: "The mental attitude of voluntary decision is distinguished and characterised
by the dependence of the act on the belief that we are going to perform it" (p. 132).
"Mental activity exists in being felt. It is an immediate experience. The stream of
consciousness feels its own current" (p. 160). " The process of conation is, as such, a
felt process" (p. i56). Sully, Human Mind, 1892, ii : "It seems best, on the whole,
to make the terms conation, volition, comprehensive enough to include all actions which
have a conscious accompaniment, and which we will henceforth mark off as psychical
actions" (pp. 172-3). "The most obvious general differentiating circumstance in all
conative phenomena is the presence of the psychical correlative of muscular action " (p,
173). "A second main differentiating ingredient in the conative process is consciousness
of purpose, or forecasting of an end" (p. 175). " The prompting forces in our voluntary
action are feelings. We exert ourselves for the sake of some future gratification of
feeling, as pride or love" (p. 2). "Thought ... is characterised by a more or less
prolonged state of muscular tension, involving a balancing action of the antagonist
muscles" (p. 179). Here is a description of an act of will, which ignores the fact of
economisation : " The child has tasted an orange. You offer him another, and he puts
out his hand and lakes it. The psychical event in this case seems to consist of the
following stages. The complex of visual sensations supplied by the orange suggests, ac-
cording to the law of contiguous association, the representation of the taste and the
pleasure accompanying this. This representation of a pleasurable experience closely
connected in time with an actual presentation excites the state of desire. That is, the
child craves a renewed enjoyment of the orange-sucking. The idea of the succulent
pleasure-giving orange, fixed and sustained in the state of desire, suggests in its turn (also
by associative reproduction) a particular action or series of movements by means of which
the pleasure may be realised" (pp. 195-6). "As soon as a desire prompts us with suf-
ficieni intensity or strength and a suitable action is suggested with the requisite distinct-
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 291
ness and stability, the actual performance follows, provided that there is nothing to
counteract this prompting" (p. 211). Thompson, System of Psychology, 1884, i, p. 96:
" Volitions .... never occur independently of feelings but in connection with them
and stimulated by them." Ward, Psychology, 1886 : " We can by what is strangely like
a concentration of attention convert the idea of a movement into the fact " (p. 42, col. 2).
"Change of sensation is followed by change of movement, the link between the two
being a change of feeling" (p. 43, col. 2). "This change of movement through feeling"
is "brought about .... by a change of attention" (p. 43, col. 2). Wundt, Grimdriss,
1896, p. 221 : " When an evident struggle between opposed motives precedes an action,
we name the act of will an act of choice, and the process which precedes it, a process of
choice."
Reviewing the above, one feels constrained to believe that our present-day psycho-
logical achievements in the department of the Will are far from satisfactory. The most
prevalent notion seems to be that the idea of a movement fatally brings on the move-
ment, if there is no obstacle in the way ; that given the unopposed idea, the action
follows. James Mill alone seems to have recognised the fact that action only tends to
follow ideas of action under special circumstances, namely when the need flows along
muscular channels. The illustrations to be found in Bain, Carpenter, and others, are
not typical. It must be clear that as far as I am a visual, there is in me no tendency to
write the letters I imagine ; only as a motile, will there be such a tendency. Yet even
here the nature of the stimulus or need determines whether and to what extent there
shall be mimic or real movements. Finally, an idea of some change may exist in per-
fection, while no other opposing idea is traceable, and yet no action need ensue. [Test.]
155. — Uniqueness in Willing.
If the will were unique, the volitional problems we are here concerned
with would be unique also. On the one side, the will, like a freely
moving body, would appear to us dissociated from surrounding objects ;
on the other, we should encounter its unmistakable effects. This is not
so in reality.
There are degrees of willing as there are degrees of feeling. We hint
that we intend to do a certain thing, or we dwell repeatedly or continu-
ously on the intended act. We also know that often nothing but strenuous
and reiterated willing enables us to carry out a design, while events have
taught us that we must often lose ourselves in an aim, if we are to compass
it. Thus the more we possess the power of identifying our whole bent
for the time being with what we desire to realise, the more likely is it
that we shall be successful. If, however, we cannot collect or concentrate
our thoughts, — if they disperse as soon as they meet, — we may as well not
will, for assuredly we shall be disappointed. A man, for instance, habitually
dismisses thoughts of duty until no yearning, however genuine, is competent
to raise them for more than a moment. Here there may be keen willing
with little effect to correspond. The simple act of willing is not suf-
ficient : we must will continuously, repeatedly and arduously. [Oherve
and describe such experimental happenitigs^ On the theory which represents
the will to be a unique capacity, this is embarrassing. At what point shall
we be said genuinely to will ? How long and how often must we dwell
on a task which we wish to perform? What is to be the extent of the
concentration of our forces ? The lessons we have learnt, supply answers
.to these questions : a host of factors determine the will. Perhaps we
292 GENERAL ANAL YSES
are constitutionally weak or strong; perhaps education has lowered or
raised the will-value ; or perhaps circumstances have encouraged either
ill-directed or well-directed activity. The will or the insistence will be
strenuous in agreement with the stage of neural development.
As with strenuousness, so with purity. Theoretically, on the spirit-
ualistic hypothesis, the presence of the will should be obvious ; but in
practice, the contrary is true. We find there no harmonious assertion of
self, no evident feeling to which we can point as representing the will.
Owing to the organised nature of human activity such a thing is impossible.
The strength and purity vary indefinitely : we can imagine a firmer self-
assertion and a deeper conviction, and we can imagine a laxer determina-
tion and a shallower devotion.* Unless our analyses are fundamentally
erroneous, this could not be otherwise, for both the self-assertion and the
feeling are organised. Hasty observers choose indeed pronounced
examples; but even these examples yield nothing but vague feelings
which are freely misinterpreted.
A distinct appreciation of what constitutes the volitional feelings has
not tempted us to regard the will as a special and unique faculty. When
we consider clearness of aim, we reach the same conclusion. At best, the
clearest aim, like a changing cloud, offers but an imperfect outline \is that
so ivith you 1 test it\ and must be thought of organically. Let my aim be
to hit the wicket with the cricket ball. Owing to the organisation of
thought, I but re-develop what is essential. My turn comes to bowl. I
step a few paces backwards, and moving forwards, I let the ball go in the
required direction and in the customary way. To have in view the whole
of the actions is impossible, for most of them are not yet disclosed by
science, and the remainder which are known to us, are nearly all absent
from the memory. The clothing of our aim in words does not help us,
unless we assume that language has some magic power. Must I clearly
image what is exactly conveyed by the words " hit," " wicket " and
" cricket ball " ? Is my notion of these words not organised ? Or what
do I picture when I employ them ? It is, therefore, plain that whether we
are dealing with organised feelings solely, or whether we think of our
object in words, or pictorially, the aim must still be organically conceived.
Language assists us in conveying information to others by means of hints
rather than in formulating concrete aims. To identify the will, therefore,
with the presence of an aim is to leave the issue untouched. Let any one
who does not play cricket, aim at " hitting the wicket with the cricket
ball." Would his notion of what he was attempting be clearer than that
of the cricketer spoken of who can accomplish it ? Indeed, if we assume
that the non-player draws on no organised reserves, the whole aim becomes
meaningless. No fine distinction can be made between activities, and a,
* "Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer ;
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer."
Shakespeare, Sonnet 115.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 293
non-organised notion is, therefore, impossible. The expert visualiser
imagines the wicket down ; the audile hears the ball whizzing ; the word-
spinner constructs a neat sentence ; but these things are not of the sub-
stance. Need-stimulated and organised reaction alone account for the
intelligent act.
See an analysis of cricket from the psychological standpoint in Sully, Human Afind,
1892, ii, pp. 209-10. Stout (Psychology, 1S96, i, p. 167) says: "It belongs to the
essence of will not merely to be directed towards an end, but ideally to anticipate this end,
and consciously aim at it." My contention is that, in tiie sense that I have defined it
above, all action is of such a character, and that vividness of imagination is no guide to
the presence of will.
We have noticed in our experiments that volitions are possible only with-
in the limits of organised reaction. Strictly speaking, we identify the willing
with the emergence and pushfulness of a need. If the want is easily satis-
fied, as in playing a well known air, the fingers glide nimbly and intelli-
gently across the keys. When we willed the tune, we did not will every
movement connected therewith, for there was no necessity for that. When,
however, we were attempting to play the air for the first time, each step
had to be willed and re-developed in the fashion already described. In
fact, neither general nor special volitions exist for psychology, except in
the organised manner indicated.
It used to be held that in moving parts of the body we could feel the energy that we were
putting forth. These feelings were spoken of as innervation feelings. Gradually, however,
the opinion became prevalent that these so-called innervation feelings, instead of being
central feelings, were the feelings which resulted from the muscular movements themselves,
that is to say, that they were afferent and not central ; they followed the action instead of
preceding it. The controversy has now reached the stage of compromise. Observation
and experiment with young children and adults have shown that movements never before
made cannot be willed, e.g., a little girl of fifteen months, ineffectively tries to imitate a
series of sounds or movements which I make. It is, therefore, plausibly contended that
the motor feelings which developed on making a certain movement for the first time, — the
kincesthetic equivalents, — are re-developed whenever we will some movement, and that
these equivalents correspond to the feeling of innervation and precede the muscular sensa-
tions due to the act. On this theory, the immediate antecedent of the action would not
be and could not be a visual or audile image, but a re-developed muscular feeling. It
remains now to be seen whether such feelings are traceable, or whether there are not other
factors which have to be considered. It seems to me unlikely that these equivalents
should invariably precede muscular activity.
156. — Voluntary, Non- Voluntary and Involuntary Activity.
It is customary to divide actions into conscious and sub-conscious, or
habitual and reflective. We have seen, however, that this difference can-
not be upheld. The subtle thinker, drawing out a fine thread of thought,
exemplifies as much orga7iised reaction as the professional who for the
hundredth time accompanies a sentimental song. Actions must, therefore,
be classed as habitual or, as I prefer to name them, organised ; but if this
be so, what becomes of the distinction between voluntary and non-
voluntary ? The answer is that either all actions belong to the one group
294 GENERAL ANALYSES
or to the other. If the term voluntary is taken absolutely, then either we
deliberately will every single motion or idea, or we never deliberately will
at all. There is no halting between these two views.
Is, then, every action voluntary? If so, what is meant by voluntary?
Absent-mindedly I look into my plate, choose a plump cherry, pick it up,
and eat it. ^Describe such an instance /u/Iy.'\ Is this a voluntary act?
All the while I have been thinking about the peculiarities of the English
climate, and not a word has escaped me about the fruit. Having eaten
cherries and other fruits many times previously, there is no need to reflect.
Suppose I had stopped and said, " my aim is to eat a cherry ; " how far
would that have altered the situation ? We should still, I hold, be facing
an organised reaction, only one of a slightly different complexion. It is
by virtue of organised thought that such a sentence comes into being at
all (sec. 215). For practical purposes we may assert a difference between
deliberate and non-deliberate willing ; but only for those purposes. Theo-
retically both classes of willing must be regarded as one. A need initiated
and determined both courses of action.
James {Psychology, 1890, ii, pp. 522-3) says : " I sit at table after dinner and find
myself from time to time taking nuts or raisins out of the dish and eating them. My
dinner properly is over, and in the heat of the conversation I am hardly aware of what
I do, but the perception of the fruit and the fleeting notion that I may eat it seem fatally
to bring the act about. There is certainly no express fiat here." According to the view
in the text there is purely a question of degree between James' " fleeting notion" and his
"express fiat."
If we examine the reason why persons will as they do, we detect further
proof of the truth of our contention. \_Add, if possible to the folloiuing list,
and expand the text.] (i) The first group of needs we have named
Pere7inial. Let us illustrate this class. I am hungry, and decide to take
some food ; I deliberately make arrangements accordingly. Perennial
needs are thus the spring of much of our activity. A large portion of our
time is spent in procuring the means to their satisfaction. Our acts are
determined by certain definite functional tendencies. (2) Periodic needs
form the second group. The child is bent on playing with the sand ; the
youth dreams of fair women ; the man schemes how to carry through some
enterprise ; and he who is bowed down with age delights in calling up the
past. These various stages of man's life have little sympathy with each
other. What should we think of any two of these classes exchanging parts,
the youth fond of a toy, and the child of three years of age stirred by the
thought of a fair face ? The physical cycle which constitutes our existence
from birth to ripeness and decay is accompanied, as we should expect, by
a psychic cycle, and most of our willing is directed towards doing justice
to the changing needs of our nature. It is not by accident that the child
loves play, the youth thinks of the future, the man revels in the present,
and the aged in the past. Their physical development prescribes or
indicates the paths which they so readily find to their taste. The func-
tional tendencies are shadowed by a retinue of feelings, interpreted as
SVSTEAfS AS NEED-DETERMINED 295
desires, which serve the great purposes of Hfe. (3) Personal needs are
such as specially characterise the individual. One person has nerves of
steel ; another is hyper-sensitive : the former is boisterous, daring, fond of
adventure; the latter shrinks from human contact, loves quietude, and
breaks down speedily. Again, one man has an excellent ear for music,
while another entirely lacks the musical sense ; the former revels in things
which the other does not appreciate at all. Once more, one man has a
powerful intellect and delights in untying stubborn knots, while the other,
feeble intellectually, avoids everything which presents intellectual diffi-
culties. So also differences of sex form a dividing line. Individual peculi-
arities account in this manner for another portion of what we detest or
what we rejoice in. (4) Take, again. Peculiar needs. Civilised society
is broken up into layers, and to these layers correspond certain needs.
Let us watch for a day a costermonger, an individual belonging to the
middle class, and a man of wealth and culture, and striking contrasts will
be noticeable which cannot be accounted for by individual aptitudes. As
we shall see in ch. 9, the social pressure of any section of society is so
great and constant, and men are so elastic in their constitution, that the
average individual bears the impress of his class. Accordingly, the three
fundamental needs will be interpreted by a class-code and by environ-
mental influences generally, and hence the desires of any person must be
considered in that special light. (5) Political needs, or needs of space
and time, form the fifth class. The ways of a nation change with the
times. An average Englishman of to-day shows, therefore, peculiarities of
his own when compared with one who lived eight hundred years ago. In
the same manner, race, climate, soil, and other circumstances determine
our actions or modify the will.
The above, including Passing needs, are the forces which move us,
determine our conduct, and produce the strange panorama of human life.*
Strenuous willing is not necessarily connected with a condition of aware-
ness or deliberation, and hence when we are engrossed in our daily occupa-
tion and when we seem furthest removed from a state of deliberation, it is
no uncommon event for others to notice how we pause, reflect, stare and
knit our brows. There are indeed so many stages in willing that it is
impossible to separate strenuous activity from highly organised activity by
the intervention of a deliberative act. \Ilbistrate this experimentally^ On
the contrary, deliberate action is often extremely easy, while some classes
of routine work, such as that of the ledger clerk, are exhausting.
When an activity has become more than usually organised, we not
seldom observe a curious freak : we do that which we are anxious not to
do. We have, we may suppose, come to consider a certain line of thought
as fraught with danger. We decide not to pursue it, since it imperils our
honour and our peace. Yet, in spite of this, on account of organised re-
action, the thoughts present themselves again and again. We will deliber-
ately that which we deliberately willed not to will, and on the ground of
* On needs, see Paulhan, L'Activiie Mentale, 1889, pp. 199-209.
296 GENERAL ANALYSES
organised reaction this is what we expect, contradictory needs producing
contradictory thoughts. In this way, many men Uve to a large extent a
double life : they profess devotion to an ideal, and act in opposition to its
dictates. With them the better part is organically the weaker. On the
other hand, the better part of us may be triumphant in action, while fierce
struggles still proceed witliin. Deliberateness is not necessarily connected
with one all-powerful notion ; a jungle-full of beasts may dwell in us and
each rule in its turn.
This brings us to involuntary activity. We often speak of doing things
involuntarily. A child, for instance, has to choose one fine morning be-
tween going to school and severe punishment. He agrees to the former,
and marches to school " against his will." Had he, however, been left to
decide for himself, he would have selected the meadows. It is obvious,
nevertheless, that the child has willed to join his school-fellows, for no one
carried him to school, and yet he was not absent. He distinctly decided that
he would be at his desk, and went accordingly. Hence, after all, he did not
go " against his will.'' What we mean is that, like a man who "forces " him-
self to act rightly, he went because of extraneous pressure, and not because
he relished the notion of school. He " willed " the action as much as he
would have "willed" the game among the sweet-scented hay. Thus, phy-
sical force apart, there is no involuntary activity. Only when we are taken
along bodily can we be said to have moved without " willing."
In the Introduction (sec. lo) I offered the following definition of psychology : Psycho-
logy treats of the nature and satisfaction of those distinctive needs which are connected
with the central nervous system, and this it treats of in systematic conjunction with the
systems of sights, sounds, smells, etc., which are developing concurrently, i.e., psychology
treats of the needs which arise out of the relations of the various systems in the organism,
and out of the relation of that organism to its environment." In other words, psychology
is the science of central needs. The question now presents itself as to what is exactly
meant by needs and central needs. Here is the most precise explanation I can offer.
Some of the functions of the human organism are delegated to special systems. Thus
the heart, the lungs, the stomach, the kidneys, the bowels, the secreting glands, play each
in essential and separate part in the life of the body. These systems, by the nature of their
structure, have each assigned to them a particular task. This is evident when we com-
pare such systems as the stomach, the heart and the lungs, and observe how widely they
differ from one another. Each of them is primarily of an active nature. The stomach
digests food, the heart propels the blood, the lungs look to the air supply, and when the
functions proper to them are endangered, they cause widespread disorders. These
systems are of an unstable character, and freely respond to certain stimuli. When, for
instance, the stomach is filled, it readily and in its own manner elaborates the food which
is carried to it. For this purpose it possesses a complex mechanism which is itself a pro-
duct of natural selection, slightly transformed by its environment. From the standpoint
of its normal functioning, we speak then of alimentary needs ; and these would include
the needs of its smallest portions. These needs stimulate the alimentary system ; they
are functional tendencies. However, as we are aware, the stomach has no independent
existence. It supplies other systems, and is supported by them. Its life is a social life,
the total organism being the body corporal. The stomach, for example, cannot procure it5
own food. That is obtained by other systems. Thus absence of food initiates a set of
processes, mediated by nerves and muscles, which end in satisfying the stomach. The
central nervous mechanism is the great mediating system. It harmonises the various
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 297
functions ; it elaborates methods of defence and offence as against the environment sur-
rounding the body ; and it stimulates various systems, the end of the stimulation being
the intelligent locomotion of the body and its parts. The structure of the central nervous
mechanism, like that of the stomach, is an outcome of the ages, and only secondarily
transformed by environmental influences. It is a part of the body of which it forms an
integral portion. It is influenced by other systems, and influences them in its turn.
When I speak, therefore, of central needs, I mean the functional tendencies inherent
in the central system under the particular conditions of any moment, and I DO NOT
MEAN THAT WE ARE NECESSARILY CONSCIOUS OF THOSE TENDENCIES OR THEIR
SATISFACTION. Thus the empty stomach affects the central mechanism, and sets it
going, the active tendency forming the central need, and the effectiveness of its structure
determining the particular lines of action.
We have so far described what we mean by a need and a central need. What, how-
ever, are the precise features of needs of which the psychologist must take account?
Speaking quite strictly, it is probable that no delimitation is possible. However, if we
abandon this extreme position, we reach the following result. A complete psychology
would, for instance, tell us what is the effect of an empty stomach on the nervous system
and proceed to enumerate the physiological changes which supervene until the requisite
food reaches the stomach. Some of these changes would be represented by feelings, sen-
sations and ideas ; but the overwhelming majority of them would not be shadowed by
any feelings which were directly observable. Thus one department of psychology would
trace the physiological processes connected with central needs, while another would deal
■with the accompanying facts of feeling.
Psychology treats accordingly of intelligent activity, and is not in any way bound to
those non-bodily aspects which mark that kind of activity. Nevertheless, in the present
state of knowledge, it is our duty to examine minutely the constitution of the unexhausted
primary and secondary worlds, in order to obtain hints concerning the more enlightening
neural facts. On the physical side, we can at present only make use of data of a general
■nature such as are the common property of physiologists and physicists. The more
intimate neural processes we will not even guess at, since that would be following in the
wake of those who go beyond " the fringe which borders our knowledge." For ultimate
and measurable psychological facts we must look to future developments of the science.
A need might be defined as a condition where there is absence of equilibration, as in a
■ curled and moistened string, or a descending rivulet faced by a stone, or a tissue which is
breaking up, or a feeling which persists until certain changes have taken place (sec. 250).
In the animal body the nature of this condition and the mode of its removal are chiefly
controlled by hereditary tendencies. A need thus defined implies the presence of a
tendency ; it does not tiecessarily imply our awareness of that tendency.
157. — Depreciating and Appreciating the Will- Value.
All activity is the outcome of organised growth, and the way in which
systems develop is, therefore, determined by the manner of their previous
development. We cannot, accordingly, always react as the fancy of the
moment suggests, and sudden reform, except in minutiae, is, consequently,
out of the question (sec. 60). Let us consider a few of the notions which
favour a low will-value.
Some people hesitate when they ought to act with decision. Is it wrong
to do this or that ? they ask, and then they inconclusively debate the pros
and cons. In this manner, whenever a point arises which requires to be
settled, it is left undecided because of their pendulum-like incapacity to
bring an argument to a conclusion. At first, these mute discussions are
merely a plausible pretext for following their own bent. As time goes on,
298 GENERAL ANALYSES
an irresistible inclination develops, until at last these men find that they
have acquired an objectionable habit which it is beyond their power to
reform, though their whole individuality is at stake. Others choose the
line of least resistance by pretending that they cannot decide between rival
claims. " You say so-and-so, some one else says something different ; one
is as likely to be in the right as the other." They, therefore, cease to
judge any case on its merits. " Perhaps after all, this course which looks
desperately ugly, may be the right one," reasons another set of persons.
" Considering the circumstances, I am bound to do it," argues a fourth class
of individuals. When such hesitancy has become the ruling trend, perti-
nent judgments become rare. When a duty is in question, such men
persuade themselves that there is no immediate necessity for consideration.
When strenuous thinking is required, they feel convinced that the subject
is unmanageable. Resolve occasionally as they may, such persons lose all
intelligent control over themselves. Their will becomes a cypher. They
are governed by irrational organised inclinations (sec. 146).
Many persons are unimaginative. They are not aware of the drift of
what they are doing, and whatever course of action suggests itself, is, there-
fore, carried out unhesitatingly. Nor do they look before they leap. When
anything new is to be attempted, they do not feel equal to it, and what-
ever they have been accustomed to, they consider to be right. Under
such unfavourable circumstances the organism is not trained to sustained
and subtle efforts, and is, in consequence, incapable of them.
Unpleasant issues are not attractive to face, and hence we soon acquire
the capacity of dismissing every uncongenial topic. In the case of what is^
vitally objectionable, such a power is of immense advantage and is normally
exercised by all men. When, however, every difficulty is thus evaded, the
will-value dwindles almost to nothing. Deprived of vigorous exercise, new
notions lack every vestige of control over old ones. We gradually come to
do only what we are bound to do, and our character deteriorates com-
pletely. When this enervating attitude is general and continues for a con-
siderable time, there is no moral hope for the afflicted invalid.
Passion and desire possess to a large extent the power just referred to.
They are, when ignoble, the master-forces which mutilate character. When
under their influence, men, instead of judging of an action dispassionately,
lose the sense of proportion ; they magnify trifles, and reduce oceans to
pools. Under these conditions unlawful desires wear the white garb of
innocence, while what is opposed to them looks black and ugly. Yet the
game of life cannot be successfully played in this fashion, for only large
aims, fearlessly conceived, can prevent disaster. Impulses, therefore, when
unrestrained by, or not representing, general considerations, depreciate the
will-currency ; and hence desires, when they come to rule the actions of
civilised beings independently of a comprehensive aim, are degrading and
debasing. What is done once or twice is but a feeble precedent which we need'
not follow ; hit the wise or foolish suggestion which is repeatedly acted upon
becomes a compelling power which cares for neither Yea nor Nay.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 299
The unproductive treadmill does not inspire the prisoner with love for
labour, and, similarly, all unsuccessful efforts damp our ardour. Unless action,
therefore, be intelligently guided, we are sure to feel our tasks weigh heavily
upon us, even when we are not incapable of performing them. Where a
thing, then, is easily accomplished, objections are, as a matter of fact, sel-
dom raised. Other things being equal, let men be trained to readily grasp
and solve problems of a practical or a theoretical character, and they will
not be likely to ignore them or to misinterpret them. Training is requisite
in everything. Only experts in reading riddles enjoy solving them.
In training regard must be paid to the physical organism, for otherwise there will be a lack
of completeness in our attempted explanation of the facts of life. To illustrate this, let us
suppose that I am trying to discover what moved me to go out motoring yesterday in the
rain. I spend an hour over the problem, but about fifty minutes out of the sixty are
wasted. Scores of times I determine to think of my subject ; but in vain. [Does this ever
happen to you ?] Here the plain fact is that my volitions are not always followed by the
act to which they refer. Now if we probe this problem deeper, we come to the conclusion
that there is no reason, apart from what the brain teaches us, why volitions should ever
be connected with satisfactory results, or why they should not be altogether ineffectual.
On the same grounds, except for the fact of excitement, it becomes inexplicable that I should
recur so often to the subject. Furthermore, each resolve arises, not spontaneously, but as
an item in an organised series.
I have so far dwelt on certain types of conduct which depreciate the
will-currency. Little need be said in this place as to the methods of appre-
ciating that currency. The question being an organic one, it follows that
exhortation, persuasion and reproof must normally act as irritants alone ;
for particular actions are most generally a sign of particular habits. The
only rational course is to begin training early, continue it uninterruptedly
and intelligently for many years, and provide it with a broad foundation and
with reasonable opportunities. The educator's first object, therefore, must
be to raise the normal tone of daily thought and action to a higher level by
instilling into men a passion for the right and the true.
The training of the will should, accordingly, have for its object [notice this
sentence very carefully^ our doing what is right and reasonable, or our search-
ing for the truth, unhesitatingly, intelligeritly, thoroughly, cheerfully and
zealously. When we once come to act from the broadest general prin-
ciples, most of our difficulties vanish. It is only when we try to combat
every ill with a separate remedy that we morally sicken and eventually
succumb.*
What is right, what is true and what is beautiful, should each be established inde-
pendently, and be only compared afterwards. The love of right, truth and beauty, should
be uninfluenced by the others if an ethical, a scientific or an aesthetic decision is to be
arrived at. Many, if not most, erroneous conclusions are due to the neglect of this rule.
158. — Deliberation.
Deliberation is to action in general what formal reasoning or intercon-
necting is to need-determined thought in particular. As in the latter
* See Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 1875, ch. 9.
300 GENERAL ANALYSES
instance we do not indulge in syllogisms whenever some issue is to be
cleared up (ch. 4), so in the former we deliberate seldom and as to few
things. Organised reaction determines that of itself. The necessity of
working out afresh every problem which meets us scores of times within a
single day would indicate a serious flaw in the neural economy. Most
<luestions, too, as we have seen throughout ch. 4, are so intimately related
to others that the freshest of them are, on the whole, familiar. The conse-
quence is that lengthy deliberation is only casually required. It is, there-
fore, a matter of course that willing proceeds generally without recourse to
deliberation.
Let us, however, analyse a case of deliberateness, since every action is
not performed off-hand, \Analyse a similar set of facts.'] It promises to
be a glorious day. I have to attend a wearisome lecture on anatomy in
the afternoon, and for that reason I must read up a portion of the subject.
I look out of the window and across the lawn. How nice it would be, I
say to myself, to spend the day watching the cricket match at Lord's !
Just the day for it ! It is not often that I go there either ! How would it
be if I went ? But then what about the lecture and my preparatory work ?
I am none too forward in my subject. Still, one day won't make much
difference. Ah ! but one day cut off here, another there, a third somewhere
else, make serious inroads on my time. No, I am taking a too gloomy
view of my backwardness. Am I, though ? How can I pass my examina-
tion satisfactorily unless I cease to neglect my work ? No, I am too con-
scientious. A day of rest will lend me the strength of a giant. It is best
to break the routine. I shall, therefore, dismiss work for to-day, and go
to Lord's.
A war of words does not always accompany the act of deliberation, and
for this reason in a single minute's thought we may be occupied several
times with puzzling matters. The yeas and the nays, as feelings, displace
each other so quickly that, as in the case of a vibrating chord, exact obser-
vation of the process becomes difficult. On other occasions, fitful feelings,
blurred images and disconnected words stand for the act of deliberation.
Again, the faintest momentary feeling of hesitation which is followed by a
calm, is already typical of the state we are describing. \_Observe such in-
stances.'] When the timid dog alternately attempts to slip down the high wall
and then withdraws ; when the fowl is as much attracted by the grain as it is
repelled by the horse's hoofs ; when an orang-outang wonders whether it was
that particular part of the wall against which he struck when swinging;
or when a pig on a country road is measuring our good or evil intentions ;
in each of these instances we deal with an attitude similar to the one we
are analysing. S^Carefully observe the ways of afiimals.] The presence of
long strings of well constructed sentences does not assist, since they equally
require an explanation.
In pronounced deliberation we propound a question to which we seek a
satisfactory reply, and the topical interest in the reply secures a stream of
but's and ifs succeeding each other. This class of thought is one agreeing
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 301
in every essential with that of doubt, as analysed in sec. 99b. \Is itl\
Thus, if we represent one type of man, we eternally hesitate and deliberate •
if another, deliberation is rare. Similarly with the method pursued : it is
sincere and straightforward, or a mere pretext for arbitrary action jud^^-e,
jury, witnesses and defendant being bribed. Again, an ideal intellect at once
sees the path clear before him, while many an ordinary man blunders alon<'-
heavily.* Caution, fear, desire, each stimulate us to review a situation at
greater or less length.
Often the debate is prolonged till we feel compelled to adjourn it. There
is then no resolve or decision. When the argument in Lecture v. Lord's
comes to a point where, everybody being bribed, Lord's is left unanswered,
I clinch the matter and resolve ; that is to say, the last decision stands un-
opposed, and I make my arrangements accordingly. Usually we let a little
time expire for any startUng re-opening of the case ; but when that period
has passed without any fresh doubts arising, we sum up the subject in a
final judgment which represents the need that has triumphed for the time
being. This summing-up is the resolve or decision. The psychological
development of the trial we leave unconsidered, since it points to the symp-
toms already discussed in the analysis of doubt (sec. 99b). The whole
process is only conceivable as being organised. Apart from such a concep-
tion the above dialogue is inexplicable.
For some illustrations of the deliberative process, see, among others. Bain, Emotions
and the Will, 1875, pp. 410-I ; Chmielowsky, Entstehimg des Willens, 1874, p. 69, who
says that "deliberation and resolve have for their necessary antecedent the possibility of
movement and its inhibition, which possibility is derived from the accumulated experience
of the child"; James, Psychology, 1890, ii, pp. 528-30; Paulhan, VAdivite Mcntale,
1889, pp. 171-3 ; and Sully, Human Mind, 1892, ii, pp. 253-5.
159. — Desire.
To give birth to an act some psychologists require a midwife with many
and wondrous instruments, and we are told accordingly that what we will,
must have been believed in and desired previously. This elaborate but
fictitious machinery was built up in a natural manner ; for, bent on a psychi-
cal explanation of what is immediately given, men eagerly inquired into
origins. In the outer world they had always observed that events were
conditioned ; so they hunted for psychic conditions. An act without
any preliminaries in the way of willing, deliberating, deciding or desiring,
seemed to them as monstrous as a physical substance which refused to be
classified. Noticing, then, on certain exceptional occasions, that varying
acts were preceded by certain classes of acts, they concluded that, known
or unknown, these latter were ever present. To account for palpable con-
tradictions, it was assumed that acts tended to become habitual, in which
* Schneider {Der 7nenschliche Wille, 1882, p. 290) well says that "ceaseless choosing
and deliberating is not the mark of the man who is thoroughly cultured, but rather a
characteristic of him who is ignorant and shifty. He who is sane, . . . always knows
his business."
302 GENERAL ANALYSES
state they were the result of mechanical processes. Pritnitive knowledge
ihus lays stress on prominent features rather than on general facts. From
the point of view that all action is organically determined, such invariable
preliminaries become meaningless. Accordingly we have found that not
psychic preambles but primary and secondary complications throw light on
human activities, and, for this reason, our analyses dispense with every kind
of machinery. Normally an act is just an act and no more. It requires
no footmen to usher it in, and no host to utter words of welcome. Being
an expression of a need, it is its own explanation and justification. We
decide, then, that a desire does not normally precede an act.
It is worth while to distinguish between will and desire.* In formal
unopposed willing there appears to be an announce7?ient of action; whereas
in formal opposed desire there is a favourable contemplation of a course of
action. The former points to action, the latter to an attitude. The one
is normally realised, the other remains frequently unrealised. Where there
is, however, in connection with desires a co-existing tendency to action,
there we find that a volition is accompanying the desire. [^Experimentally
study desires.']
Bain, Emotions and the Will, 1875, P- 4^3 '■ "Desire is that phase of volition where
there is a motive, but not abihty to act upon it." Hodgson, Theory of Practice, 1870, i,
p. 382 : " Desire is nothing else . . . than an increase in the vividness of specific
pleasures or interests in contrast to the habitual feelings, or to the feelings which are vivid
and painful in antagonism to them." James Mill, Analysis, 1869, ii, p. 327: "The
simple idea of a pleasurable or painful sensation, is a desire or an aversion." Spencer,
Psychology, 1890, i, p. 126 : " Desires are ideal feelings that arise when the real feelings
to which they correspond have not been experienced for some time." Sully, Human
Mind 1892, ii, p. 208 : " A motive is ... a desire viewed in its relation to a particular
represented action, to the carrying out of which it urges or prompts."
I say to myself that I do not want to look at certain figures while about to look at
others near by ; yet I do so. Here there are two volitions or two needs seeking satisfac-
tion and not two desires merely. Thus wherever an objectionable course is very easy it
will generally be followed on the principle that easy actions tend to be realised. Hence
the very thought of an alternative has a tendency to support that alternative, a desire
being readily followed by a volition. Fascination offers another illustration of the above.
An express train rushing by us, a precipice, or a danger generally, make us think of the
possible absence of our equilibrium, and that very thought, therefore, disturbs the physio-
logical balance.
160. — Neural Disturbances.
Why do we pursue, or abstain from pursuing, a certain course? Be-
cause, it is often argued, that course is pleasurable, painful or indifferent.
But to pursue a course which is indifferent to us is plainly absurd, the
argument proceeds ; therefore, either pleasure or pain determines every
action. This pleasure-pain theory held its ground in reflective psychology
because it offered a uniform and comprehensive explanation. To the
♦ " If no external action follows upon the internal, how can I be certain that I have
really willed ? . . . When this happens, can that resolve be said to be anything more
than a wish?" (Hoffding, Psychology, 1S91, pp. 340-1).
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 303
-question why a person did one thing rather than another, the reply was
that the greater pleasure led to the chosen Hne of conduct. To the ques-
tion why a man did anything at all, the answer was that pleasure or the
dread of pain made man act as he did. In this manner a neat system of
uniformly acting forces was provided, a system which was to account for
human activities. Pleasure and pain were looked upon as feelings, and
feelings were regarded as originators of change. The more pleasure the
more motive power, the less pleasure the less motive power. As a plausible
theory the pleasure-pain view was complete, and left nothing unaccounted
for. Unfortunately, the facts do not support it. In our chapter on the
subject (ch. 6), we found (i) that all systems belong to one class, and that
hence there is no possibility of distinguishing effective feelings from non-
•effective ones, while there is no room left for unanalysable subjective states
corresponding to the feelings. The power residing in special pleasure-pain
feelings thus becomes more than i)roblematical ; for where is the Ime to be
drawn between a musical note and a pleasurable feeHng, if we except
abstract interpretation? (2) We arrived at the conclusion (sec. 138) that
pleasure-pain does not reside in feelings at all. We traced it to a peculiar
nervous condition, or to certain observed changes. We saw that pleasure,
pain and indifference attach themselves easily to one and the same feeling ;
and that we cannot distinguish pleasure-giving from pain-giving feelings,
except by recourse to a test which is not feeling. Hence we cannot admit
that pleasure and pain, regarded as feelings, produce changes. (3) We
-observed that marked feelings do not, as a rule, accompany bodily activity,
and that their intensity or aggressiveness, when present, is no trustworthy
guide to the existence of pleasure-pain. In the face of such sweeping
criticisms the pleasure-pain theory must be abandoned. It lacks even
plausibiUty when confronted with the facts. (4) Lastly, we learnt that the
theory of need-stimulated processes makes the pleasure-pain theory super-
fluous, and that at the same time the former theory assumes no factors
beyond those with which we are familiar.
The pleasure-pain theory which we are discussing boasts of no mere
metaphysical basis, for it is derived from common observation. Taking the
words pleasure and pain in their ordinary acceptation, it must be admitted
that we are frequently being disturbed, i.e., violently attracted or repelled.
Cold is normally shunned, warmth is normally welcomed ; one kind of food
we usually like, another we do not ; we enjoy laughter, and we flee sorrow.
Psychologists accordingly generalised from passing impressions. Seeing
that certain feelings of a certain warmth went with semi-opposed dis-
turbances — pleasures, and another set with opposed disturbances — pains,
they argued that every action belongs to either one or the other of these
two classes.
It was easy to overlook the facts which discredited the conclusion. To
illustrate : for weeks together I pass a certain spot at a particular time.
A carrier's cart regularly comes along at the same time, so I believe, from
the opposite direction. Do I meet that cart every day ? When I see it, I
304 GENERAL ANALYSES
think about it ; when I do not see it, my thoughts are far away. Hence we
easily conclude that a casually observed object is generally present. This
is specially so as regards theoretical conclusions. TJie very fact of our
being interested in a subject, makes it progressively easier for us to re-develop
instances which prove our t/ieory, and steadily more difficult to re-develop iti-
stances to tJu contrary. As men are usually unaware of this psychological
tendency — a tendency useful in practical life, — the belief that we are on
the right track grows apace, the swelling conviction itself aggravating the
state of affairs. Unless we are specially able, specially trained, or can de-
feat the tendency by employing the principles enumerated in sec. 136, it is
as difficult under these circumstances to see truly as when we look through
glasses which distort objects. \_Do you find this to be so?] Once we have-
fairly launched our theory, we are surprised at the mass of favourable evi-
dence and the paucity of the contradictions. Were respect for direct
observation (sec. 136) universal, it would be safe to state that not one out
of a score of theories met with by the student would ever have ripened.
Unreflective skipping, picking and choosing, are thus responsible for much
wasted effort. Had the pleasure-pain theorist tested one day's or one
hour's normal activity, instead of dwelling on facts strewn broadcast over
the field of time, he would never have published his conclusions. Every
philosophical system must, therefore, be tested by strict scientific rules.
[^Do you always apply this test .?]
The tendency to misinterpret is contagious. The ordinary reader,
following an exposition of any subject, rarely fails to be impressed with
its validity. The facts suggested by what he reads are all of one type, and,,
as he proceeds, related facts present themselves readily while opposing
facts elude him. Thus imperfect theories often impress whole generations
of clear-headed thinkers. For this reason, too, style is of great importance,
because of its power of " suggesting " favourable facts. Not even the
fiercest opponents elude its wiles. An adversary's skilful special pleading
staggers us, and leaves us momentarily without a word of defence, though
we are sure that the facts are on our side. It requires, in such a case,
some little time before what is appropriate is re-developed, and then
gradually, as after an eclipse, the obscured facts become visible. The
same method gives us what our opponent neglected. It was easy, there-
fore, for the propounders of the pleasure-pain theory to make their plea
appear irresistible.
In philosophical inquiries there has been no greater moulding power than the one com-
mented upon above. To this alone we must trace the incredible fact that though writer
after writer is mistakenly convinced that what he says amends what his predecessors
have accomplished, yet every fresh writer, the present author included, equally believes
in his heart that with him salvation has come appreciably nearer. We are dealing with
a psychological trick which, in practice, it is far easier to recognise than to escape. This
failing makes all men kin, of whatever clime or age or station they may be.
We must beware of one experimental fallacy. Let us suppose that I
believe in the pleasure-pain theory. I want to see whether experiment or
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 305
observation confirms or refutes it. I select an apple, eat it, and think that
it has a delicious taste. What am I entitled to conclude ? That depends
on how far I have illicitly introduced my theory. It is not uncommon
for a person to enjoy a dish merely because, though he has forgotten it, he
enjoyed a similar dish on some previous occasion, or for other reasons
equally fallacious (sec. 126). An experiment will, therefore, be worthless
when we slip into it a misleading factor ; and this is readily done in such
an instance as we are considering. In this way persons convince them-
selves that pleasure is a constant presence with them. The moment they
observe themselves, they introduce what is not normally there. Nay more,
convinced of the theory, they order their life accordingly, and really make
pleasure play a far more important part than it would have done if specu-
lative interests had been absent. Under these circumstances, only lines of
conduct are pursued which, on the whole, yield pleasure. Of such adapta-
tions, produced and fostered by self-deception, there are legions. Let
it suffice to have drawn attention to an error which is likely to mis-
lead all but the scientific on the one hand and the unimaginative on the
other.
Again, it has been shown that willing, as a preliminary to action, is not
seldom absent. That in itself settles the controversy as to pleasure-pain
moving the will ; for where there is no willing, there is no force needful
to project us along the course. The theory is only conceivable when an
aim, or a resolution, precedes the action. Where the action follows
organically, the feeling as a force is out of place, for it has nothing to move.
An experimental disproof has been supplied in the previous chapter.
The view which postulates pleasure-pain as a universal factor initiating all
reactions must, then, be rejected as contrary to fact.
Bain, Emotions and the Will, 1875 : " Either a pleasure or a pain, present or remote,
must lurk in every situation that drives us into action " (p. 411). Again, "Place food
before a bird in a cage, and at the same time open the cage and the window, and the
choice between a repast and liberty represents the greater pleasure " (p. 401). EouilHer,
Du Plaisir et de la Douleur, 1865, p. 122 : "I see a thing and I desire it ; I should not
desire it without the pleasure which it causes me, or which I expect from it." James,
Psychology, i8go, ii, p. 553 : "All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing,
the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is
utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realised con-
ditions. It is ideo-motor action." Here James, as is the common practice, overstates
the simplicity of routine. Robertson, Psychology, 1896, p. 239: " Feeling, in a case of
willing, always supplies the motive power." Sully, Human Mind, 1892, ii, p. 236 :
" Feeling supplies the spring or impelling force in conation." Additional references on
pleasure and pain are found in the preceding chapter.
161. — Choice from We.\ker AIgtive.
We must discuss here a question which is often raised, and which may
be illustrated by the following. [^Describe similar happenings, experimentally
induced^ In a room which I entered yesterday there were many chairs.
I looked at them carelessly, and then sank into the most comfortable
one and rested. Why did I not choose the most uncomfortable one ? I
3o6 GENERAL ANALYSES
" chose " as I did, it may be said, because I was actuated by the love of
ease ; I dismissed the thought of the one offering least comfort, because I
disliked discomfort. The "pleasure" involved in the thought of the one,
attracted me ; the "displeasure" implied in the other, repelled me. Could
anything, then, have made me choose the one which brought discomfort?
Other things being equal, no. Now suppose, it is then argued, that a
heavy penalty was attached to silting in the easy chair, and a great reward
for selecting the other. Then, the balance of pleasure and pain being
shifted, we should naturally change our opinion.
Analysing the illustration, it is readily seen that organised reaction and
not abstract motives were at work. Feelings, aims, resolves, desires, were
absent, and, for this reason, the explanation given above proves inconclusive.
We must nevertheless pursue the subject a little further. No penalty or
reward is necessary to change the balance. I simply reverse my customary
action, and I do so organically. If we are in an experimental mood, we
may thus freely will to sit in any of the chairs without being disturbed, i.e.,
without pleasure or discomfort arising. This feelingless will-factor, at least
to those who are not intimidated by passing will-o'-the-wisps, is an im-
portant consideration. Once the will is drilled to be its own " motive,"
and, to a large extent, the train of pleasures and pains lose their weird
power (sec. 148). When rational needs suggest a reversal of policy or
habits, we obey unhesitatingly. There is no necessity to weigh the quality
and warmth of our feelings.
This last remark leads to another observation. Warmth of feeling,
as such, is no guide to the strength of a motive. Suppose that for
years we have been making statements guided by interest rather than
by truth. In that case, to go on doing what we have practised so long,
is as easy as is swimming to a fish. It requires no great effort. Nay, so
ready are we to pervert statements that we do it without suspecting the
fact. A time then comes when new notions suggest a different course.
We passionately strive to overcome the vicious habit ; again and again we
inwardly protest, and yet do what we have sworn not to do. Here we
have a conspicuous feeling in favour of the new course, and hardly any on
the side of the old. It is as if we fought an invisible enemy whom we
could not wound, but who could injure us. While, on the one side, there
is warmth of feeling in the zeal for reform, there is, on the other, a fixed
organised inclination (sec. 146). With many persons, accordingly, life
presents a constant inner struggle ; they never do what they wish, and
they do what they do not desire. Warmth of feeling represents one of the
antecedents when all other things are equal ; but it is very seldom that
they are so. Usually it is a case of deeply rooted activity battling with a
fresh desire. If the stronger motive be that which is connected with the
greater sensory mass, then it is not the stronger which always or generally
prevails. And since this is so, the question of the strength of motives
must be fought out in the realm of neural inclinations. We are not guided
by feeling or by immediate motive, but by organised tendencies. Let the
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 307
*' motive " be ever so pronounced, it still lacks meaning unless we assume
an organised background. Ordinarily, however, as has been repeatedly
pointed out, the old-fashioned motives do not exist. The fatal rays of the
struggle for existence among systems evaporate them. We conclude,
therefore, that (i) formal motives are seldom present ; that (2) warmth or
intensity of motive is no measure of strength ; and that (3) we often freely
•change the balance between motives without introducing any disturbance
■or pleasure-pain factor. \Have you tested th^se assertions ?'\ The real
•motives are, of course, the needs or functional tendencies which were
enumerated in sec. 156.
162. — Action from Special Motives.
I am asked whether I will take an apple or a pear. According to the
motive theory what happens is this. An apple promises great pleasure ;
but a pear promises greater ; so I take the pear. Or the contrary holds ;
then I choose the apple. Whenever we are offered an alternative, we are
supposed to go through the above process. This theory, we see, is
essentially atomic, the notion of organised thought being foreign to it.
JNTo one act, it is implicitly held, bears any but an abstract relation to any
other act, while the|mind substance is equally fresh to every impression.
According to the view we are contending for, such atomism is untenable.
Perhaps we simply take the apple or pear on which our eye happens to
alight first ; perhaps something particular about the fruit catches our
fancy ; or perhaps we pick up the nearest. Apart from accidental circum-
stances, custom usually decides the matter. Pleasure-pain, in the ordinary
sense, is not always present.
An apple or a pear, as such, is a no-thing, and apart from organised
acquisitions we should not even discern it by the sense of sight. For the
same reason, its taste is not communicated to us by special revelation.
The fruit has only a meaning for us in so far as it is one of a known class,
and we can only feel towards it as we have felt towards its similars previously.
If, no matter for what reason, I have habitually been attracted by its kind,
I shall, other things being equal, be so now ; if the contrary, I shall be
repelled. In short, I shall take the apple primarily because I have taken
apples before, and because of an organised inclination. The taste which
now seemingly attracts me would, under other circumstances, appear
■loathsome or indifferent, while the more I lean towards it organically, the
more unfailing shall I be in selecting it from other fruits. An object
belongs to an order of objects, and this order is involved in a yet more
comprehensive scheme. Anything, therefore, which a mother does or
approves of is perhaps desirable to her children. Anything which has to
do with the sea fascinates the sailor, though otherwise it would leave him
indifierent. Anything to do with business arouses the trader's interest.
Anything to do with science makes the student of nature enthusiastic. In
this way men commonly look upon things from one selected point. With
3o8 GENERAL ANAL VSES
one man comfort, with the other studied interest, with the third ethical
considerations, are the leading factors. In all happenings organised
reaction is decisive, the apple or the pear by themselves determining
nothing. If we are ascetics, the one as the other will leave us unaffected,
and if we are lovers of fruit, we eagerly choose among them. The
question is how their similars have appealed to us in the past.
Which am I to take, the apple or the pear ? I pause. I weigh both
classes of fruit in the scales of my predilections. I temporarily incline
now towards the one, now towards the other. At last I deliberately
choose one particular apple. In choice of a deliberate character, is it the
quality of the object which decides, or is it the individual ?
These two questions are each, according to circumstances, answered in
the affirmative. The colour or size of apples influences our choice ; or
perhaps greediness is the motive. In the latter case we have a constant
inclination which in a vast number of instances determines the variables —
a mean passion uttering the last word. Such third parties are the rule,
since the present reflects our past conduct. A man who is careful of his
health, decides the issue on hygienic grounds ; another for economic or
ethical reasons. When it is a question of elaborate choice, our general
being has most influence. The various needs are put in motion, and their
nature sets the stamp upon the final resolution. The keenness, the fine-
ness and the comprehensiveness of our organised judgment, contribute to
the result. (Sec. 96.)
With some persons, rational considerations tell most heavily [do they ivith
■ you .?], because theyare jealous of the power of objects. Such men, however, 'do
not introduce a factor of a new kind, for, psychologically, the meanest and the
most exalted motive are of equal account, and in each process there is ex-
pressed a need and no more. In the same way the rationalist's attitude is the
same when he determines that he will select arbitrarily, i.e., when he permits
any passing circumstance rather than the usual one to settle the direction of
his activity (sec. 152). If he has trained himself to ignore nornial impulses^
the result in itself forms one of those normal impulses, and the situation has,
therefore, remained psychologically unchanged. We have seen in sec.
152 that arbitrary activity is like any other kind of activity. In fact, it is
no more capricious to let an accident than to let a rule settle a dispute.
It is possible, in some persons at least, so to train the impulses that no
average object shall have more than a passing [influence. In any case, it
is inadmissible to assert that felt or prospective pleasure-pain is the normal
and necessary determinant in human activity.
On the subject of the last three sections, consult especially Bentham, Principles of
Morals and Legislation, 1823, i, chs. I and 2; Gizycki, A Students' Manual of Ethical
Philosophy, 1889 ; Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 1883, bk. 2, ch. 2, bk. 3, ch. i, and
bk. 4, ch. 4; Hodder, The Adversaries of the Sceptic, 1901, ch. 9; Hoffding, Ethik,
1888; Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 1889, part 2, bk. 2, chs, i and 2; John
Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1863, ch. 2 ; Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 1893, who ex-
haustively deals with the subjects ; and Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, 1882, chs,.
2 and 10.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 309
163. — I Will.
Looking upon the nervous system as part of an organism, one can
readily understand that to it is due the initiation of bodily activity.* Its
original constitution, its power of growth, its impressibility and irritability,
and its environment, trace for us the necessary history of every human
being. This conception of the process, if correct, must enable us, in the final
issue, to explain everything, including those additional factors which
newly gathered facts may point to.
How, then, on our assumption, are we to understand such a term as " I " ?
Evidently, in the same manner as a certain objective complex is spoken of
as a ship or a daisy. The objective complex, on the physiological side, is
expressed in this instance by what we may roughly call the brain or the
central nervous system, and the word " I " must, therefore, be explicable in
neural terms. In a ship the relation between the parts is mechanical, and
hence they are, to a large extent, independent of one another. Not so
with the daisy. There the parts are intimately connected, and what
affects any portion of it often affects every other. The daisy is hence
much more truly one than the ship ; and the brain is, of course, compar-
able to the former rather than to the latter. A shock of pain or joy, or a
blow, may put an end to the vitality of the neural organism, though
the shock or blow has no direct physical effect on more than a limited
area.
Suppose I am asked "Will you do this?" and I reply "Yes, I will do
this." What do I mean here by " I " ? If what I am asked to do is
nothing out of the common, my answer comes unhesitatingly. There is
a stirring and a consent of the organism, the consent being communicated
verbally or by other signs. Organised reaction, we know, explains what
happens ; but what exactly interprets the word we are interested in ?
What does that stand for ? We are aware that ordinarily we repeat with-
out unfolding implications ; yet here we ought to assume that we are
doing so. To the word " I " we frequently attach hardly any meaning ;
often it is a name for a person ; and, at its best, it embodies many
characteristics. It is precisely as with any other object : we re-develop
one or other of its aspects when we think of it. The word " I " refers no
more to an essence beyond thought and action, than the words daisy or
ship. It belongs to the same category. Thus when we use the pro-
nominal "we" or "they," we loosely denote an assemblage of certain
objects. Just as we say that the stone is cold, when but a portion of
it is, so we constantly speak of ourselves as a whole when only this or
that need is implied. Convenience permits apparently no other use of
language.
When we say " I will do this," it is not necessarily implied that the
*" The reason for mental unity .... is to be found in the simple fact that the mind
is the expression of an organism and that every organism implies co-ordination, a
harmonious functioning of its various parts" (Paulhan, U Activity Mentale, 1889, p. 413).
3IO GENERAL ANALYSES
whole of"nic,"or the total organism speaks; for usually only a small
portion is involved. When ordinarily a certain need is aroused, then
only what is required for its satisfaction is implicated in the " I," and that
because the quantity of attention is limited, and because, therefore, the
satisfying of one need often absorbs it. If we were to look from all possible
sides at every demand made on us, — an impossible task, — we should never
decide on anything. Thus the greater part of our nature lies low and says
nothing when an appeal is made to any one fraction. Were we living as
solitaries, words such as " I " might be dispensed with, though the organised
nature of our being makes a general term reasonable. We could say " This
shall be done," "The imagination has been active to-day," "The feet are
tired," "The judgment was faulty," "That is satisfactory." We could
readily class ourselves with the surrounding objects. Since, however, we
live with others, some mark of distinction is desirable, and the use of " I "
indicates no more than that. The phrase " I will " is an amplification of a
usually limited organic consent or determination, and no more.
We sometimes assert that we perform an action against our wil!
(sec. 156). Such an action is as much ours as any other action. We
have no desire for it from one point of view ; but desires from other points
of view, compel us to act. To say that " I do not choose to act thus," is
only a colloquial manner of stating such a fact. In a similar fashion we
regard abnormal aspects of the self as if they were unrelated to us, e.g.y
when we are unable to control our thoughts.
Often, again, the " I " is identified with our ideal. The spirit says one
thing ; the flesh another. While we wish to think of some worthy aspect,
a loathsome thought obtrudes itself. In such instances, it is allowable
metaphorically to attach the first personal pronoun to what we consider
rationally the higher ; but only metaphorically, for otherwise the whole of
psychology would be thrown into confusion. Psychologically there is
nothing to distinguish the appetitive stimuli from the spiritual ones ; or the
recently acquired ideal from the deeply rooted objectionable dispositions.
The war between desirable and undesirable needs, the constant struggle
betwixt the lower and the higher, is a matter of indifference to the psycholo-
gist, qua psychologist; for he is only concerned to see whether what
happens stands on the same plane as regards fact or not.
Psychologically, all needs are equal. An acquired and obstinate apti-
tude to act in opposition, for the purpose of asserting one's individuality, — ■
one's independence of matter, — is the expression of a need on a level with-
others. The imagination may enthrone, and has thus enthroned, in-
numerable notions.*
Every object whatsoever is continually changed by its necessary interaction with its
environment, and this is especially so with animal organisms of a high type. The more
important adventures of such an organism modify it considerably, and fit it out with its
specific individuality. When, therefore, we think of a fellow human being whom we know,.
* The question of the " I " requires to be thoroughly re-examined. (See sec. 176a.)
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 311
we consider his physical appearance and the environment in which he is placed, and we
take note of the peculiar way his thought flows and the particular things that most
attract him. The manner of the development of secondary complications, especially of those
which are most far-reaching and recur oftenest, thus offers a full explanation of the
development of an individuality. If, again, we wish to distinguish the "immaterial"
from the "material" self, then we omit the peculiar exhausted complexes of touch,
resistance and sight, called body, and think of what we have spoken of in this work as
the "feelings," especially those connected with the stream of thought, e.g., combination
feelings, emotions, etc. We also include the train of memories and the way in which
these are most generally compounded to serve as a basis of new developments. As we
shall see, however, in the next chapter, the so-called outer world is strictly one with the
inner, and is built up gradually as is the so-called individual ego. Hence circum-
scribed differentiation alone distinguishes the various complexes of which our world
consists.
Such phrases as "/see," "/feel," " /am conscious," should not mislead us. All
they involve are complications: certain articulate sounds, certain combination feelint^s,
and a certain history which accounts for the utterance of those words at that particular
ti??ie. So when I say that I am conscious that I see a book before me, it is merely a
case of observation of the book and observation that I observe two systems connectedly.
It has been said that psychology, unlike the physical sciences, is individualistic, and
deals with the individual rather than with the universal. There are two answers to that.
If by it be meant that psychology does not deal with facts true of all minds, then the state-
ment is scarcely defensible ; and if it be urged that it is indispensable in psychology to
attach what happens to some some-thing, then the reply is that that is equally true
in physics where we have to deal with particular masses as they exist. If it be still con-
tended that physical science deals ultimately with atoms rather than with the fortunes of
particular masses, then I claim that psychology ultimately constructs the total universe
out of world-atoms, i.e., simplified touch feelings. It is only the backward state of our
science which compels a more individualistic treatment than would otherwise be necessary.
As the science advances, the whole psychological terminology is sure to be purged of
its individualistic character. At worst, however, psychology should be classed among
the biological sciences.
The problem of this section is fully discussed in ch. 8. The question of the self is
dealt with, among others, by Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 1897 ; Dumont, De
la Sensibilite, 1875, pp. 89-92; James, Psychology, 1890, ch. 10; Lipps, Grundtatsachen,
1883, ch. 19 ; Paulhan, VActivite Mentale, 1889, p. 165 ; Sully, Human Mind, 1892,
i, pp. 235, 264, 475-83, and ii, pp. 223-4 ; and Wundt, Grundriss, 1896, p. 261.
164. — Will as Assertion.
Our interest in dramatic action is great. The impressive scenes of life
engrave themselves sharply on our character — so much so that everything
else is either ignored or interpreted by their Hght. The activity implied in
imagination and that involved in common habits, are looked upon by us
as if they lacked reality. Even the portions which make up a complicated
act are only considered as results of one effort of will, because interest
fastens on what is most striking. When the nature of action is thought of,
a telling incident is re-developed and that stands for activity in general.
For a like reason, the will has allotted to it a prominent position in
primary and secondary processes. An imposing will, a capacity surpassing
that of the average man, challenges our dramatic faculty. It appeals to
the eye and to the stronger emotions. Yet, psychologically, there is no
justification for placing the will on a pedestal and doing homage to it.
312 GENERAL ANALYSES
Not xvliat is soul-stirringy but what is ge}ieral, interests t/ie man of science :
and as, from a broad standpoint, willing is a casual event, it must be
ranged with other events of a like nature.
Volition is a particular instance of assertion. Some one makes a
statement in my^presence, and appeals to me for support. I say, " Yes ;
it is true." Such assertions as to reality must in the nature of things be
rare, and, in truth, no one pretends that we endorse separately every
proposition that we hear made. We might as well claim that when
listening to an ordinary discourse, we study, from the point of view of
historical grammar, every word and phrase. There is a time for saying
Yea and a time for saying Nay ; we are not constantly saying Yea and
Nay, affirming and denying. What is true of assertions when truth is in
question, holds good generally. " It is good," " it is beautiful," " it is
clever," " it is humorous," " it is practical," " it is real," " it pleases me,"
these belong to the same category. Ideally speaking, we might be
asserting continuously ; but as a matter of fact, verbal assertion
is incidental and accidental. [Test th's.] Every moment of our waking
lives we are modified in some way ; but we generally stop short of
commenting upon the fact. Were it not so, every pebble, every tree,
every blade of grass I see, would be followed by a little speech, as " I see
a pebble" or "I see a blade of grass." Now in "willing" there is
present a need which is w^aiting for an opportunity to realise itself.
Willing is hence a kind of self-assertion. Just as a dog is determined to
obtain a certain bone, and keep it when once procured, so a human being
shows determination and expresses it verbally by such phrases as " I will."
In such instances t/iere is present a fieed which ivill realise itself when
occasion offers, and our '^'^ I will" merely expresses that fact prophetically.
Perhaps a time is approaching when strong wills shall be common ; and
then " willing," like anything which abounds, is certain to be considered
as of little importance, while keen insight may perhaps occupy its place.
Science, therefore, must not be swayed by practical and temporal
considerations ; for it belongs to eternity rather than to particular ages
and aptitudes. The incidental *' I will act," must be classed with the
incidental " I will see " or " I will appreciate;" or with " I shall act," " I
shall see," " I shall appreciate."
The fictitious machinery which is brought forward to initiate a " willed "
act may be introduced to explain all forms of assertion. Thus, how
comes it that I see a tree ? It is, it may be argued, because it gives me
pleasure ; because the strongest motive has prevailed ; because I willed to
see it. Why do I consider the inkstand before me real ? Because pleasure
bids me to ; because I am moved to it by such and such considerations.
Deliberation, hesitancy, weighing, doubting, believing, resolving, deciding,
acting, each find their fit place in every kind of human event, and all are
on an equality. If the need is of one class the peculiar question is,
What shall I think? or. What shall the verdict be? rather than. What
shall I do ? We cannot, therefore, be too much on our guard against the
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 313
;abuse of scientific progress by practical interests. A popular psychology,
elaborated in accordance with the notions which prevail in common life,
is apt to classify facts according to their importance among those who have
built it up. A theoretical psychology has to satisfy theoretical require-
ments, and these are often outside the pale of the startling phases which
mark the social advance of the race.
In probing the nature of " willing," we have seen that whether distinct
or not, it is equally organised. Naturally this is true of assertion in
general. Instead of saying " I see," I can say " Hm," or observe in
varying degrees the feeling of awareness or connection, or there is present
in me a feeling of recognition not understood as such ; or there is nothing
to mark off the event — by far the most common case. The proper place
for the discussion of " willing " should be in the chapter on Systems as
Need-satisfying, where the general modes of satisfying needs are dwelt
upon. There it would be grouped with occasional states such as doubt,
.belief or assertion.
165. — The Absolute Value of Felt Effort.
The greatness of an effort, as felt, is not directly related to the greatness
of its effect. [^Lift a heavy object, experiment with it, and observe the
consequences. ^^ By itself the former is an illusive measure of results, and
nothing can be deduced when we only know its warmth or intensity. In
practice this works out in various ways. As a child of five I make a
prodigious effort to lift a heavy object and fail ; grown to maturity I raise
the weight without feeling any strain. It is not the more strenuous
attempt, but the state of the organism which accounts here for the
divergent results. As the physical structure grows in capacity, so the felt
effort is followed by more striking effects. A powerfully built man
performs tasks without any appreciable strain which weaker mortals can
only accomplish by exhausting efforts.
What is true of motor action generally, holds good of every department
of activity. Though I try to keep my eyelids open in order to remove a speck
from the eye, they remain tightly closed. \^Test this.'] My deliberate aim is
frustrated by rooted organised aptitudes ; but what effort cannot do,
training accomplishes. If I return again and again to the attack, the
organised effect will be such that I shall probably be able to place an
object between my eyelids without any opposing tendency asserting itself.
\Acquire this trend, recordi)ig your progress.] Not effort, as such, but
organisation is usually decisive ; the former only supplies us with a notion
of the limits of the organism at any time.
Having finished their day's work, many persons are only fit for light
recreation. It is out of the question for them to pursue private studies :
they can neither grasp what they read nor re-develop the contents. They
try repeatedly, but in vain; and at last they become resigned to their
limitations. Others, again, are never tired ; they can always add to the
work which they have in hand.
314 GENERAL ANALYSES
The same holds good with regard to the guidance of thought. An
acute reasoner can start upon the solution of a problem when and at what
point he likes. He proceeds with it at his leisure, dismissing it when he
thinks fit. Irrelevant issues do not arise ; accidental suggestions do not
annoy him. [Is that so with you f\ Ju.st as a bat goes at full speed and
yet without apparently a moment's delay changes its direction, so the
competent thinker is free to leave his subject or pursue it to its conclusion.
Likewise prejudices, likings and irrelevant considerations do not detract
from the quality of his work. With a thoroughly trained intellect of this
character clockwork regularity and accuracy is normal. With those who
are untrained it is otherwise, for they appear to have no control over their
thoughts. Problems come uninvited and vanish in the same fashion, and
any side issue throws them off the track. They can neither start nor finish
when they like. Wishing to think of one thing, they are bound to think of
some other instead. Desirous of solving a problem, they make no progress.
Impertinent issues, prejudices and foregone conclusions deprive their
attempts of all value. Highly trained or untrained individuals do not
differ from each other in the quantity of effort put forth, but in their
native or acquired capacity. That I will at all, is determined organically^
and that my will shall realise itself is in each instance decided neurally.
Exertion itself is an organised quality. One man with a highly
unstable nervous system breaks down under the least trial, while another
with a robust constitution continues to make strenuous efforts without
overtaxing himself. Strictly speaking, we must regard the capacity for
strenuousness as varying indefinitely from zero upwards. The lives of twa
persons, on a certain occasion, depend on their presence of mind, and life
is dear to both of them. Yet one shows self-control, and the other does
not. Varying experimentally — in imagination — the exertion capacity of
an organism, we now see it go down to naught, and now reach unpre-
cedented heights. Thus the man of great will-power is an organised
product. If we were at liberty to experiment with his physical constitution^
we should find that the will-power is no extraneous factor, and that
organisms analogous to his would exhibit the same characteristics that he
does. Besides, a strong will is often only an effective will, one that is.
readily and without effort followed by the desired actions : being practised,,
for instance, in dismissing undesirable reflections, we are in that direction
all-powerful. [Practise dismissing one particular class of thought^^ In fact,
before a thought has fully emerged, it is without the slightest difficulty thrust
into the background. By a similar exercise of will we freely turn away
from anything we are dwelling on. On the other hand, we may be in such
a condition that we desire, but are unable to make an effort or produce
the effect we are bent on (sec. 23). In analysing a difficult problem,
our will is frequently defeated. Hence effort and willing are meaningless
unless we think of them in connection with an organism.
It has been argued that we are responsible for our habits, since we
might have prevented them from arising. There is no occasion to refute
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 315
at length such a contention, for organised reaction begins neither with
manhood nor with adolescence, but with infancy. No one who has
closely followed the growth of any child from birth onwards can seriously
urge that the habits of the one age do not form the foundation of the next.
Organised reaction has no beginning, nor is it initiated from without
(sec. 62). Our capacities develop; they are not made. The quantity of
exertion put forth, as well as its direction and effectiveness, are measured'
by the stage of development which the organism has reached. So also
the character of men is the outcome of the conditions under which they
live. We are, therefore, never far removed from our past in thought and
action.
166. — The Sense of Effort.
\^Let ike student repeat tJie folloivmg and related experiments and record
results fully.^ I hold a penholder between my fingers and thumb. Now
that I attend to the act, I note certain feeble feelings of touch, but hardly
any which suggest pressure. Ordinarily these results would not be
noticed, and furthermore, since the task is one which the organism is
more than prepared to bear, the general current of attention is scarcely
affected. I now press harder, as hard as I can. I observe that I cease
breathing, that I press my lips and teeth together, and that the field of
attention is very nearly annihilated. There is a sense of effort* present,
and the feelings connected with the increased exertion constitute the
sense. Just to grasp the penholder is not exhausting ; I hold it thus for a
considerable time before I am fatigued, or before it requires an appreciable
effort to continue. From the second chapter we know that only a small
portion of extra energy can be expended at once, and that only for an
insignificant period. The feelings speedily become more pronounced,
while the capacity for persisting declines. An effort, on the physiological
side, is a quickly-exhausting act [test tliis], and the peculiar feelings and
strains are synonymous with the sense of effort, and derive their name
from the connected exertion. Let the power of the organism be increased
through appropriate exercise, but without the knowledge of the individual.
Let that individual then hold in his hand a weight slightly heavier than he is
accustomed to, and he will feel no strain, allowing for mistaken judgment.
When, therefore, the expenditure of labour in any direction exceeds the
normal expenditure, certain systems develop which are named the feeling
of effort. Eliminate these, and the sense of effort is gone.
The sense of effort is synonymous with the feelings observable in
heightened activity. These feelings, however, are not to be regarded as
productive of changes ; they do nothing ; they but accompany the changes
in body or in notions. At best, they are a coarse instrument of measure'-
ment. They are not antecedent, but consequent or accompaniment, and
* Dewey {Psychology of Effort, 1897, p. 51) holds that " Efifort is nothing more, and
also nothing less, than tension between means and ends in action, and that the sense of
effort is the awareness of this conflict."
3i6 GENERAL ANALYSES
-are not distinguishable from other sense systems. It is the occasion which
gives them an apparent purpose ; otherwise these feehngs will, and do,
"bear diverse interpretations. The ordinary movements of the head, eyes,
body, etc., are mostly executed without suggesting the notion of effort ;
but when, as in trying hard to re-develop something, the head droops, the
forehead resembles a ploughed strip of land, and the eyes lose their
expression, then we connect with our search these abnormal movements
and the feelings which accompany them.
I observed in the last paragraph but one, that in pressing the penholder
between the fingers I ceased breathing. [Repeat the experiment!] I try now
whether this act of suspension, otherwise so common, is essential. I press,
and successfully exhale at the same time. I then breathe normally. In
further attempts I note that the field of attention need scarcely be affected,
that, indeed, with the attention much deflected, I may press and yet not feel
(sec. 19). In this manner the feelings and movements common to effort
can be largely varied. One person, when thinking, has the brow smooth,
another has one perpendicular fold nearly between the eyes, a third has
the forehead lined horizontally. [Catalogue perso?is from this point of view. ^
There is, in strenuous acting, a great variety of sensory systems, most of
which do not seem indispensable, however regularly they develop. Sup-
pose, however, that each of them separately may be absent, yet the sense
of effort, nevertheless stands and falls with them. Let there be no extra
feelings, and the sense of effort lapses, as when the attention is turned
away. As the feelings which we call a headache, do not lower the quality
of thought, but are themselves expressions of the total effects of the dis-
order ; so the sense of effort is a bald illustration of some neural fact,
[Experiment with elastic bands.]
Clearly marked strain is only noticeable in wearying action. To suspect
it everywhere, therefore, is to reason crudely. Water boils at 100° C,
does it similarly boil when it is freezing ? Boiling water bubbles ; does
water at an average winter temperature bubble ? A hot poker applied to
my finger-tips produces a blister ; does a poker ordinarily blister finger-
tips ? The key of a piano forcibly pressed down yields a note ; does a key
slowly pressed down give the same result ?* In an analogous way we must
reason that the existence of an appreciable sense of effort or of any system,
under certain circumstances, is no guarantee, unless special evidence be
forthcoming, that it is always present. In the absence of such evidence
we are justified in assuming that the sense of effort is only an accidental
occurrence which results, and receives its name, from abnormal exertion.
The systems implied in strain are, however, pretty general in the realm
of neural activity. Whenever, in normal thinking [test this carefully],
a slight obstacle is encountered, it is at once organically met by a
slight effort or felt activity. We do not notice these occasions ; they are
too insignificant and too numerous. It is even hard to observe them, so
* Many psychologists, from Leibnitz to the present day, reason in this manner. The
whole theory of minimal sensations and images is thus based on rash inferences.
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 317-
frequent are they. Indeed, there can be no relevant thinking, imagining
or developing without perceptible strain (sec. 134). When, for instance
we are accustomed forcibly to dismiss a thought, it requires counter-train-
ing to control that tendency.
In interest, especially when it is " breathless," the feelings we are discuss-
ing in this section are common. [^Test tkis.l The interest is aroused imper-
ceptibly, and a great deal of extra energy is employed — with the results
detailed — without our having any knowledge of the fact or any connected
or conscious aim to produce the effect. In these cases we are usually un-
aware that there is a special draught on our strength. We pass, for
instance, through a portion of a picture gallery, and afterwards we notice
that our head aches. We have been observing too closely ; we have drawn
too much on our fund of energy. Any one who has watched us could pro-
bably trace all the signs of the sense of effort ; but the exertion is so con-
tinuous that Ave do not observe the fact.
In the various forms of surprise, the same features are repeated. \Is
that so f\ The breath frequently fails us ; the muscles stiffen ; the world is
nearly a blank. We are in these cases in the same condition as when
about to embark on a difficult task. Properly, surprise should be classed
with the sense of effort. Our being unaware of our condition is no barrier
to such classification, for the sense of effort is sometimes keen and yet its
presence is unsuspected, as in breathless interest, or, as]sometimes happens,
when we are tired and still continue to work. With surprise must be
grouped such sets of systems as terror, admiration and awe. In each of
these the same tendencies are observable.
Surprise, interest and fatigue are not the only quasi-passive expressions
of the sense of effort. Wherever there is a tendency to direct the attention
into one channel exclusively, there we discover them. Different classes of
work make varying demands upon us : now we meet an obstacle which is
easily overcome ; and now we become entangled, our onward march is
blocked, and we extricate ourselves with difficulty. Thus attention fre-
quently reaches a high degree without our being aware of the fact, and when
it is developed most completely, we become engrossed, absorbed, lost.
The bells ring, the carts rattle along furiously, people hurry past us to
right and left, some one shouts our name close by ; but to us these things
are as if non-existent. We are bent on some pressing business, and are
unapproachable except from that direction.
Listening should be considered as a special case of effort. [7'^j-/.]
Enraptured with the songs of birds, or nervous at night, we pay prompt
attention to the slightest stir among the branches or the faintest crack of
the rafters.
Disturbances, or pleasure-pains, in one of their aspects, exhibit the
same features. When we enjoy our strawberries and cream, we unknow-
ingly but none the less deliberately prolong the pleasing torture. We dwell
on the taste, stopping short only of satiety. We turn our attention to it,
and become engrossed. We try to retain the aroma as long, as possible.
3i8 GENERAL ANALYSES
Effort is thus often connected with semi-opposed disturbances or pleasure.
In opposed disturbances or pain, attempts are usually made in the opposite
direction. We bite our lips ; we scream ; we seek for distraction ; we make
violent movements ; and the like. \Observe a tiuf>il>er of experimental in-
stances.'] As in interested attention, the various movements in pleasure-
pain are not determined by choice. They are such as are native to the
oro^anism ; and such as we detect in other species of animals. " Aimless "
effort is, of course, more common in minor disturbances. When, with us
civilised beings, the disturbances are great, we take special measures to
retain or dismiss them.*
It is not easy to account for the frequent inhibition of breathing when something is to
be done. One reason is undoubtedly that the noise we make in breathing often interferes
with attention to sounds, and even perhaps to other sensations. The matter should form
3. subject for experiments.
Prof. James is the champion of a supernormal will, a will that quite arbitrarily turns
the balance of motives. I have only space for two quotations from his Psychology,
1890, ii : "The immense majority of human decisions are decisions without effort"
(p. 534). This is wholly incorrect, unless he means by effort great and prolonged effort.
Again: "Effort complicates volition . . . whenever a rarer and more ideal impulse is
called upon to neutralise others of a more instinctive and habitual kind : it does so when-
.ever strongly explosive tendencies are checked, or strongly obstructive conditions are over-
come" (p. 548). Sully (ffti/nan Mind, 1892, ii, p. 291) says on the subject : "The inter-
vention of effort as an altering, reversing factor, analagous to the addition of a scale-turning
■weight, probably means in physiological language the co-operation of certain highest or
:iatest developed nerve structures, the action or discharge of which makes good the biologi-
cal deficiency, or effectually inhibits the biologically excessive action of certain lower
nervous planes."
I once observed a good illustration of the sensory nature of excitement and emotion.
Something surprised me very much. I noticed how warm I felt all over the body, almost
to the verge of discomfort ; and how my heart beat so violently, that it seemed almost
painful. I then effectually compelled myself to think of an unrelated subject, and tne
excitement disappeared from thought. If we, therefore, abstract the warmth, the violent
heart-beat, etc., it becomes absurd to speak of being moved or excited. Of course, we often
say " I am so sorry," when we are entirely unmoved ; but in those cases we ought to
say " I could be so sorry." If we had never had the physical sensations which express
sorrow, the words would possess no more meaning for us than the phrase " this is a pretty
colour" possesses for a blind man. An ideal being, however, would have one supreme
neural inclination easily controlling the others, and he would display no strong emotions
except those of joy and sorrow.t However, in the common order of things, alas, "the
mind is an orchestra, where the musicians are not always in agreement ; where the con-
ductor, when there is one, is not always obeyed" (Paulhan, V Activite Mentale, 1889, p.
413)-
167. — The Tripartite Division in Psvchologv.
Speculative sciences are the mirrors of their times. They owe their origin
to the restricted interests of a period, and they interpret the more or less
common wants, and clothe them in a literary garb. As fast as the aspira-
tions of men assume new forms, so these studies are remoulded. Thus in
the history of speculation there is change, but not progress. If it be
* Dewey, The Psychology of Effort, 18S7. t See Paulhan, Les Caracteres, 1894.
SVSTEAfS AS NEED-DETERMINED 319
•said that the physical sciences are not, like time past, unchangeable ;
that many a physical theory is found to be incomplete ; and that many
supposed facts turn out to be fictions, the answer is that, broadly speakin^-,
physical science, as compared with speculation, is coherent and progressive.
Time perfects the former, but merely changes the latter. Physics, like
a child full of vigour, joyously runs ahead ; not so philosophy.
The threefold division of psychology into Intellect, Feeling, Will, should
thus be connected with notions floating in the air of the eighteenth century.
It was no exhaustive examination of the facts which yielded that classifi-
cation. It had no better warrant than, say, the bipartite division into
Intellectual and Active Powers, which was changed by the fickle popu-
lar imagination. In the dry light of the earlier part of the eighteenth
century, everything was examined with the microscope of reason. Feeling,
therefore, was not thought of, and hence its absence from the early treatises
on psychology. Philosophers were then too prudent to allow themselves
to be swayed by passion, and self-interest, mostly unenlightened, was the
spirit which guided them. As morality was interpreted as a prudential
arrangement, passions, good, bad and indifferent, were despised and
•neglected. With the influences which found for their chief spokesman
Rousseau, the tide in favour of feeling and enthusiasm rose. The comfort-
less beacon of the intellect was cast into the shadow by the fierce flame of
the emotions. Henceforward the feelings could no more be neglected.
The Intellectualists, with their prudential calculations, had now to adopt
a classification which included feeling. The new enthusiasm came to be
recognised in the then current psychology.
After a time, morality took another direction. It had tired of prudence ;
it revolted from the sensuousness of the pleasure-pain view. Hence arose
the will-theory which, elaborated and glorified by Kant, took its place in
the tripartite division. Apart, however, from the erratic trend of popular
opinion, the division was unjustifiable, and psychology has thus been an
apology for unstable beliefs. If John Locke had been independent and
■had, for example, insisted on sensation and self-interest as the subject-
matter of psychology, he would easily have found followers. Were it not
that intellect enters so largely into philosophical treatises, it might have
teen imaginable that it could be omitted from a classification which pur-
ported to be comprehensive.
Science proper must take no account of the moods of the ages. It must
arise, not from the study of opinion, but from the examination of facts.
Hence the rejection of the prevailing tripartite division, and the criticism
t)f the position allotted to the will. Except as regards complexity, I recog-
nise no fundamental distinction between feelings, emotions and sensations ;
they belong to one class as regards the sensory content. And as to the
intellect, it must take its place as a secondary principle. Psychology only
knows of fieeds arid the process by which these needs satisfy themselves.
The will-theory is closely connected with existing metaphysical views.
For that reason I have felt bound to criticise it in detail. Otherwise the
320 GENERAL ANALYSES
chapter might have been filled in part, and to greater advantage, with a.
more detailed exposition of the needs which uniformly initiate and sustain
action.
It was not individual whim which suggested the old psychology. It
was always some social departure. Had the changes proceeded along
other lines, or had they been owing to individual idiosyncrasies, the classi-
fications might have varied a good deal more. Thus desire, which is much
more prevalent than will, might have occupied the latter's place. Especi-
ally would that have been so, if social transformations had favoured such
a doctrine. As the result of a possible turn in events, for instance, men
mi^ht have been tormented with aching desires. Psychology would then
have been christened The Philosophy of Desire. Further, the judicial
attitude of calm deliberation is very rare. Imagine it universal or widely
disseminated, and judgment would take the leading place in psychology.
A keen intellect judges rather than reasons ; observes rather than works
in syllogisms. Such a change in public opinion would quickly react on
intellectual studies. In the same way belief in some quarters and emotion
in others have gained a high distinction. Thus habit, attention and
other incidental aspects might have taken the place of will. If they have
not done so, it is because of the caprices of the social trend. Science
proper has never yet sanctioned a dressing-up of public opinion, and hence
I feel no compunction in dealing in what may seem an uncharitable way
with an almost universally accepted classification.
It may be useful to subject once more the Tripartite Classification to criticism. We
are told that the subject-matter of psychology has three fundamental aspects, namely,
Feeling, Intellection and Volition ; these three factors being invariably present. Further-
more Feeling is most generally defined as pleasure-pain ; Intellection or Cognition as
reasoning, and Volition or Conation as willing. It is as though it were said that the
subiect-matter of the physical sciences has three fundamental aspects, namely, Violence,
Interaction and Force ; and this classification would be as irrational as is the former.
If we define Feeling as being the sensations we name throbbing pain, piercing pain, etc.,
we learn as we have seen, that these sensations are valueless as guides to the interpre-
tation of pleasure-pain ; and if we define Feeling as something not to be expressed in
terms of sense or change in sense, then we have something about which no one can either
affirm or deny anything. Pleasure-pain, however, indicates a casual process of a violent
nature a process which is not an invariable aspect of every set of systems. Pleasure-pain
is merely violent action as distinguished from action generally. Coming to Intellection,
we have a case similar to the one of Feelings. If Intellection means reasoning, as ordi-
narily understood, then it is not a constant aspect, for we are not always reasoning ; and
besides it would exclude all the work of elaboration which goes on in bodily action and
in the forming of sensations. If Intellection, again, means Interconnection or Interaction
(or the satisfaction of a need), then it covers the whole ground ; but this is not the accepted
meaning. Lastly, as to Volition. If Volition means resolve, determination, self-directed
activity, etc., then Volition is a very casual process ; if it means striving or conation, as
water flowing downward strives, then it is only true to an extent, and is otherwise a petty,
superficial aspect of action, as if we said that everything in nature strives to change its
state • and if by Volition be meant impulse or action, we have still a very vague generali-
sation. Yet these positive facts of the Tripartite Classification are overshadowed by
faults of omission. That classification leaves entirely out of account the existence and
nature of the sense material ; it says nothing of the evidently organic nature of psychic-
SYSTEMS AS NEED-DETERMINED 321
processes ; and it tells us nothing of the great and uniformly acting functional tendencies
which explain the trend of thought and action. In fact, the Tripartite Classification is
hopelessly unscientific. For a further criticism of the Tripartite scheme, see Lipps,
Gnatdtatsachen, 1883, pp. 15-27.
Sully {^Human Mind, 1892, i, pp. 59-70, and Appendix A) gives an account of the
Tripartite division. See also Bain, Senses and Intellect, 1894, pp. 2-8. By Intellection,
or Interconnection, might be understood the need-determined elaboration of primary and
secondary systems ; and by Systems, or Developments, the whole material of thought and
action — systems pre-developed and re-developed. The first class would deal with'Jprimary
and secondary systems dynamically, while the second would treat of them statically.
168. — A Bird's Eye View.
The bodily structure which we inherit tends to maintain itself and to
develop itself. We speak accordingly of functional tendencies, and these
functional tendencies or needs we look upon as the stimuli which set us
and keep us going. Psychology is properly the science of needs.
Additional References. — Bain, Notes on 'Volition, 1891 ; Bastian, On the Neural Pro-
cesses underlying Attention and Volition, 1892 ; Bradley, On Pleasure, Pain, Desire, and
Volition, 1888 ; Bradley, Some Remarks on Conation, 1901 ; Davies, The Gro-ivth of Volun-
tary Control, 1899; Fouillee, Existence et Developpement de la VolontJ, 1892; Kirkpatrick,
The Developmettt of Voluntary Movement, 1899 ; Lindley, Motor Phenomena of Mental
Effort, 1896; Loveday, Theories of Mental Activity, 1901 ; Marillier, les Phhiomenes
Moteurs et la Volonte, 1890 ; Pfander, Das Bewusstsein des Wollens, 1898 ; Schubert-
Soldern, Reproduction, Gefiihl und Wille, 1887 ; Shand, Attention and Will : A Study
in Involuntary Action, 1895; Stout, Voluntary Action, 1896; and Wood worth, J 7/;^
Accuracy of Voluntary Movement, 1899.
CHAPTER VIII
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED*
Brain hath oft been pitched "gainst mind,
Vet the two are one, we find.
169. — Objective, Reflected and Imaged Sight.
Straight in front of me I see a certain room. V/hen accidentally turning
round I notice, to my astonishment, that another room runs parallel to
the one which had developed a moment previously. However, it gradu-
ally dawns on me that at my back there is a looking glass and not a room.
Which out of these two sights, then, from the purely visual point of view,
is the real thing ? Or is there no difference between the pair of pictures ?
Repeated examination compels me to state that, apart from non-visual
and indirect evidence, the two rooms convey to me precisely the same
impression. The sense of sight is, therefore, unable to divide things as
such from their reflections in a glass, and hence a reflex of the objective
or exhausted world is the same to us, as visuals, as the objective or ex-
hausted world itself.
I now shut my eyes, and re-develop the sight of the room. Does this
image fundamentally differ from the object and the looking glass picture ?
I fail to see where. Except for unimportant circumstances (sec. 124), the
primary and secondary visual worlds, or the visual worlds of sense and
imagination, are one. Each has depth, breadth and height, and these
qualities are the specific attributes of the visual order. To reason that
one picture is confined in a small brain area and that the other occupies a
thousand cubic feet, is to confuse the issue. Visually speaking, the brain
area and the imaged room are but two visual systems and do not dwell in
* The present chapter makes no pretence of being a full and final answer to the deeper
problems of existence. Its object is not so much to convince as to stimulate, nor are the
more important statements put forward with authority or confidence. My aim has been
to challenge the very bases of dualisms or aspect monisms, and to insist that only experi-
mental inquiry is admissible in the solution of these problems. Speculation or reflective
scrutiny is here as everywhere else impertinent, and worthy only of those who draw their
inspiration from the remote past. I may add that, for many reasons, I have thought it
wise not to encumber the chapter with literary references.
The nature of mind is discussed in sec. 176a.
SVSTEiWS AS UNIFIED 323
•each other. A room, whether " objective," reflected in a mirror, or imaged,
occupies visually the same quantity of space. \Is this so f\
The three-dimensional nature of visual images is more obvious in theory than when
examined. With me relief is generally imaged where it had been previously sensed.
For example, in imaging a friend whom I recently met in a certain street, there is a vague
image of the pavement on which we stood, of the houses which bounded the pavement,
and of the friend himself. The picturing of the situation, especially with the lapse of
time, is far from rivalling reality, tliough the main features are retained. However, if
there be any persons \^are yoti one?] whose images are invariably blurred, colourless and
lacking in environmental detail, they will, in imagination, only see ill-defined shadows,
that is to say, their imaging will be two-dimensional and not three-dimensional. [Expert-
■mentally compare sensed nnth imaged systems, as to colour, detail and depth. ]
170. — Other Classes of Systems.
What is true of the sense of sight, holds good of all the other senses,
separately and in combination. The secondary systems or images, where
they exist, are in every instance indistinguishable, except in certain non-
essential characteristics, from the related primary systems or sensations
(sees. 124 and 18 1).
There are some systems which are usually excluded from the list of sen-
sations and images. They are vaguely spoken of as " a pleasure, a
volition, a thought" (Bain); "thoughts, sentiments, and desires" (Sully);
"ideas, feelings, and volitions" (Wundt). If we analyse these vague
conceptions, a new fact becomes patent. These special systems are of
precisely the same texture as the so-called primary and secondary systems.
A train of thought (a secondary combination), for instance, is a series of
units of various degrees (sec. 107) woven together by the pressure of needs,
and each separate portion of the train is capable of entering into many com-
binations. To one simple portion, owing to its environment, are attached
the words "a judgment," to another "a doubt," and to a third, "a
volition," while those very words, or what at any time takes their place,
are united secondarily with the accompaniments they refer to. [Test.]
Besides, desires, emotions and volitions are complexes and not primitive
systems, for, as we have seen (sec. 71), even sensations are not that : they
are feelings of an indifferent nature attached to certain percepts and ideas,
and they are interpreted in the light of the processes with which they are
-connected. Hence we meet a systematic succession of systems and no
more. Desires, volitions and thoughts, regarded either as pre-membered
or re-membered, sensed or imaged, form no separate category in the
scheme of things. Nor can secondary systems be distinguished funda-
mentally from primary systems (sec. 181).
171. — Mind and Body,
We are now able to deal with a long list of problems of a peculiar
nature. First, as to the disparateiiess between mind and body. A certain
-change in the nervous system is said to run parallel with a change in the
324 GENERAL ANAL YSES
visual field, the former of which is looked upon as physical, and the latter
as psychical. Yet here the opposition is superficial. What is the central
nervous system but an exhausted visual and touch system ? What mean-
ing, then, is to be attached to the contention that the one differs in kind from
the other ? Strictly speaking, we picture now one thing — a house, and
now another — a volume of white and grey matter called brain, both being
sights.* The seen house is not inside the seen head ; they are two inde-
pendent visual systems, and, for that very reason, no looking into the one
could show us the other. Accordingly, the whole problem we are dealing
with has been in some quarters attacked in the wrong way. A special set
of reactions which can be followed in great detail, has been ranged in
opposition to a random set of reactions, the latter being named mental
and the former physical. As a matter of fact, it is only a (jt/esiion of
emphasis^ att artificial isolation, a derived opposition. Looking at the
matter as students, we must demand the demolition of these practical,
artificial and derived distinctions. The body seen and the body thought-
of are visually of one substance, the eye itself being a visual compound.
It may be argued that by the nervous system is meant the reality which underlies the
appearance of the nervous system. This, however, does not affect our problem, for as
against the real brain, we should then have a real house or a real sun. In other words,
if we regard the brain as an exhausted system, we must look upon the world generally as
exhausted. Hence the body is one exhausted system among many.
172. — Mind and Matter.
The exhausted primary or object world is supposed to be material,,
while the secondary or memory world is said to be immaterial ; but this
illusive contrast springs from the same source of error that was exposed in
the last section. The artificial contrast, too, is heightened by an additional
factor, since when we think of matter, we arbitrarily select certain features
of sight systems and resistance systems {or only resistance systems)
and leave everything else out of consideration.! Physical science has
in this way abstracted from existence all but grey resisting particles, ii:
To this procedure there can be no objection so long as the artificial barriers
are not represented as insuperable ones. We consequently see no reason
why these grey resistance points which are thought of by scientists when
they interpret sound, light and other sensations, should in the final analysis
be cut off from the total of systems. It is true that a bell, as far as seen,
has no sound, but neither can a bell, as far as heard, be seen. Thus the
one complex like the other possesses no claim to be isolated, except for
* The prevalent dualism is well exemplified when men regard an image, a memory
picture, as being utterly distinct from its primary counterpart, and imagine the former
alone to be immaterial and to occupy no space. According to our interpretation both
systems are alike sights (or contacts), and both have the same qualities and substantive
attributes.
t See Heinrich, Die Priticipiaifrage in der Psyckologie, 1899.
X I speak of grey resisting particles as indicating particles as seen. As we shall see-
further on (sec. 182a), the world is to us essentially a visual system.
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 325
practical purposes. It is conceivable, as we shall see in sec, 189, that
the sense of hearing may become as dehcately developed as the sense of
sight is now, while, at the same time, we can imagine a sense of sight as
backward as is now the sense of hearing. In the latter case hearing and
resistance feelings would constitute matter, while sight would be regarded
as a subjective appendage. Matter, memory and thinking, therefore, form
one plane.* As Mach {Empfindu?igen, 1886, p. 5) says: "Thing, body,
matter is nothing outside the complex of colours, sounds, etc. ; nothing
outside its so-called marks."
Ordinary reflection tends to divide resistance feelings from the thing which resists. To
" common sense " an identification of the two appears Uke a violation of thought. Yet
this seeming separation has no solid foundation. Negatively this is perliaps readily seen.
Assuming the existence of only one class of systems, that of touch, and granting that we
ignore the past and present acquisitions of that sense, we find that the word thing or
matter has no meaning whatever left, not even the significance of an undetermined x.
Usually we avoid such a conclusion by surreptitiously interpreting the present in the light
of the past, and that is the portion of truth embodied in present-day theories ; but given a
being only capable of touch, and a little reflection will convince such a be"ng that the word
matter or thing can have no other possible meaning to h;m than that of a combination of
touch systems.
Experiment yields the same results. With eyes closed we pick up some object, handle
it for a little while, and finally pronounce it to be a sea-shell. What we meet here is a
series of touch, pressure and resistance feelings, and, apart from memories of other like
reactions, nothing else. What appears to discount the immediate feelings is that the
notion of such an object as a sea-shell links itself to a vast mass of accumulated stores
where what is primarily given at any time is but an insignificant portion of the whole.
In this way the present tends to be dissociated from the larger mass of past reactions, and
men construct in the darkness a thing or an object which, in their opinion, is something
different from the tangle of touch combinations with which they have become abundantly
familiar. At least, experimentally inquiring into the meaning of matter, weight, size,
shape, space, motion, change, — as far as touch is concerned, — it becomes intelligible how
the-things-ive-toiich are systems-of-touches ; and how, through the far-reaching complexity
of the problem, men have become confused, and instituted a fresh category of things-
apart -from-feelings, i.e., of feelings behind feelings. {^Experimentally verify. '\
We conclude, then, both from negative and positive considerations, that touch systems
are of the same order as sight systems ; and this strengthens the conclusion that the pro-
blem of mind and matter, of spiritualism and materialism, arises out of a misreading of
the facts. Apart from such a misreading, matter and mind, as ordinarily conceived, are
impossible entities.
Prof. Ward {Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1899, i, p. x) insists that " it is only in
terms of mind that we can understand the unity, activity, and regularity that nature pre-
sents." His proof of that position is far from cogent. He minutely criticises the imper-
fections of physical theories, and at the same time boldly assumes the absolute correctness
of the random guesses which go by the name of psychology. It seems, indeed, bold for
Prof. Ward to attack the physical theories which are at least based on laborious research
* If this be so, Clifford's contention that " the universe consists entirely of mind-stuff""
{Lectures, 1886, p. 286) must be dismissed. Du Bois-Reymond's celebrated Iqnorabimns,
based on nothing but the impossibility of reconciling the current superficial views of
matter and mind [Die Grenzen des Natnrerkennens and Die Sieben IVeltrathsel, in his
Kedcn, 1886-7), must also be discounted. Nor can we agree with Ziehen who says:
•' Everything which is presented to consciousness, and only that, is psychical. Physical
is that part which we place in space and time as the cause of our sensations" [Leitfaden^
1891, p. 3).
326 GENERAL ANALYSES
and not on arm-chair speculation ; and were it not for brilliant style and great learning,
the thesis which he seeks to support would not be taken seriously by anybody.
In addition, he ignores the fact that his criticisms are commonplaces among physicists,
and that there are a number of other solutions besides his own in the field. While this
work has nothing to do with either Naturalism or Agnosticism, I emphatically hold that
present-day psychology, being yet in a pre-scientific stage, cannot offer a sound
criticism of physical theories from its own standpoint.
173. — Force,
A certain seen stone approaches a certain seen pane of glass, and the
glass is in the sequel divided into flying bits. For aught I know theoretic-
ally, the stone might have simply dived through the glass or been shattered
itself. Consistently observing certain effects of motions and certain
connected sequences, we give a name to them, the name of force. That
word means neither less nor more than the result of our observation,
except that in human beings certain otherwise indifferent feelings go along
with strenuous muscular activity (sec. 166). This striking and constant
effect of movements when objects meet, interpreted in the light of muscular
feelings, has been unjustifiably elevated to the dignity of a third substance.
If we ask why the approaching visual stone should be followed by the dis-
integration of the visual glass, we can only answer, as in all other cases,
that it is so as a general fact, and that it conceivably might be otherwise.
Hence modern science is, rightly enough, abolishing the notion of force.
Energy, its creation, conservation, transformation and destruction, except
as a matter of theoretical formulation, expresses only pseudo-science
which is eager to multiply substances. All that we note in observation is
certain recurring events when varying masses approach each other with
varying velocities, and science can but state what takes place (sec. 187).
These mass motions happen to be calculable ; but, as for conjectures, they
might or might not be reducible to rule.
On the notions of Force, Motion, Cause and Necessity, see especially Strieker^
Beweguiigsvorstellungeti, 1882.
174. — Motion.
The conception of motion, like that of force, is one which practical in-
terests have raised into prominence, motion being, of course, noticeable in
imaging as in sensing (sec. 120a). It expresses, visually, certain changes
in the field of sight; for example, when something covers successively
certain points in a straight and extended line of vision, we speak of that
something coming near or disappearing in the distance ; or, again, when
something can only be continuously observed if the eyes or the head are
in motion, we consider that a system is changing its position, [ Verify
this.^ Such changes, we call motion. Hence when horses are approach-
ing us from a distance, we see movement of head and limbs, but for-
ward motion we see only when something in the environment visibly
changes.
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 327
The nature of imaged motion is dealt with in sec. 120a. References to the " sense"
of motion will be found in all larger works on physiology, and the subject is also discussed
in Mach's Beweguvgsempfindungen, 1875. The general opinion seems to be that the
semicircular canals are responsible for the " sense " of motion.
175. — Appearance and Reality.
Owing to speculative interests and to the absence of scientific inquiry,
this problem is as yet far from solved. Encouraged by the fictitious contrast
between mind and body, the Kantian theory took shape, holding that the
mind could only apprehend things as they appeared to it, and that all we
could know were appearances or phenomena. We could not, it was
argued, slip out of ourselves, doff our own skin, so as to appreciate things
in themselves, and hence the ultimate reality or proximate reality was for
ever hidden from us. Kant's special object was to show that it is demon-
strably impossible to be cognisant of more than appearances or phenomena.
If our analysis has been correct thus far, the Kantian position is untenable.
If self and not-self be one, as we shall learn, what room is there for appear-
ances ? The semicircular slice of ocean which I see before me at this
moment, is a fact, a simple fact, a bare fact ; the boom of its waves is
another bare fact; and the taste of its water another. They are not
different aspects \ivhat is an aspect .?] ; they are different facts. They are
realities, if there be any meaning in the word. If there were an entity, X,
which was in contact with things, ?iot-X's, then, between them, there might
be some misunderstanding. This, however, is not our interpretation of the
data. The swollen sea is, not to me, but is. Next moment, its green has
turned to blue ; and then there is a blue sea. No elaboration can go be-
hind these facts. We may, for the sake of consistency, be compelled to
postulate some other knowable or unknowable existence to account for this
world ; but then the other world would be but another reality. The things
we know, are things in themselves, or else they are no-things. The dis-
tinction between appearance and reality, between phenomenon and
noumenon, is one referring to practical interests. We may look at
the sea, first with our own unaided eyes, and afterwards with coloured
glasses, and say that the former is reality, the latter appearance. In the
final issue they both represent final realities. For this reason, if, up to a
certain period, we had always seen a thing through coloured glasses, and
then saw it without them, the former views would not be in any sense less real.
An acquaintance tells me that when he was a boy he used to prefer landscape pictures
to real landscapes, and for this reason he went more frequently to picture galleries than to
the country. Later, finding that his eye-sight was defective, he procured suitable glasses,
as a consequence of which he discovered that nature was far more beautiful than he had
anticipated. He was now born into a new world, and visited the country haunts which
he had hitherto scorned. Both these visual worlds, according to our interpretation, are
equally real. Unfamiliarity, again, is frequently responsible for an original view of things.
A girl of seventeen, approaching the sea for the first time, looked upon it as a vast volume
of mist rising from the ground, while a girl of about six, seeing a boat some distance out
at sea and the sailors busy with the sails, mistook the boat and the sailors for a marvellous
working model of a boat.
32S GENERAL ANAL 1 'SES
Whate\'er turn we give to the argument, in a world consisting of one
plane, there can only be realities, underlying substances meaning, at best,
other substances. Hence we dismiss the problem of Appearance and
Reality as being based on a radical misreading of the data.
The facts on which our conclusions are based are in pari well stated by James : " Some
of these qualities, since they are more constant, interesting, or practically important, we
regard ;is essential constituents of the thing. In a general way, such are the tangible
shape, size, mass, etc. Other properties, being more Huctuating, we regard as more or
less accidental or inessential. We call the former qualities the reality, the latter its
appearances" (Psychohs^y, 1890, ii, p. 78).
The words "Appearance" and "Reality" are popularly employed to emphasise a
homely distinction. Thus we say that a man has the " appearance" of being intelligent
or gentle, but that in "reality" he is not. Here appearance means a surface reality
which suggests, through familiarity, a fiiore perinanent reality. The ordinary man
would not deny that the appearance is real, and it is difficult to see how any one could
reasonably deny that that was the case. For the same reason "common sense" would
define a reality to be an appearance about which there was no doubt, e.g., he who
appears gentle in thought, word and deed, is in reality so. Popular usage, therefore,
recognises no sharp distinction which would rob appearance of its reality or reality of its
appearance ; and it has yet to be shown that the distinction can be maintained scientifi-
cally and philosophically.*
176. — The Self.
In ch. 4 it was shown that the process of satisfying a secondary need
is one of gradual elaboration and development. The notion of self, there-
fore, cannot be of all-pervading importance, as is the atmosphere to a
flying bird. We have learnt already (sec. 69) that a notion is definable
not by immediate content, but by possible development, and hence we
deduce that the assumption of the constant presence of self in the form of
an idea assists little in its interpretation.
Let us now face the meaning of the words of which " I " is the best
representative (sec. 163). In insanity it is not infrequent for an individual
to be fitted out with two or more selves ; let us say, with the normal self
and with an abnormal self. These selves indicate that at different times
different centres attract and sort the matter of observation and thought.
In this way different abilities, different departments of knowledge and
different temperaments gradually develop — as in two unrelated children —
considerably widening the already existing breach. Psychologically this
is but a branching off of secondary complications, a process which, in
theory, is unlimited. Mental derangement, then, introduces the first
doubt as to the generally accepted meaning of " I."
Insanity is but sanity exaggerated in some direction. Among the sane,
accordingly, the majority have no supreme principle to which the whole
of their life does obeisance. In politics, for instance, a man may be dull,
slow, oversubtle, blind, prejudiced, a self-deceiver; while in business the
*". . . appearances exist. That is absolutely certain, and to deny it is nonsense.
And whatever exists must belong to reality" (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 1897,
p. 122).
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 329
same individual may be the opposite : keen, quick, penc'rntin-, clear,
impartial and a self-observer. Yet the co-existence of tliese two trends,
removed from one another like two rivers which never meet, is usually
not even suspected by the individual who generally thinks that he is
pursuing one consistent course.
Furthermore, what is true of large interests, is true generally. We have
innumerable principles of action for different circumstances, each of which
calls itself " I." We are continually changing the signification of the
word when we use the first personal pronoun, and if any one else had
to define for us its various meanings, he would be sadly perplexed. To
our superiors we are deferential, to our inferiors condescending, to children
patronising, to our family affectionate, to mankind indifferent ; in some
respects sympathetic and in others callous. In this way, also, our many
habits reveal almost as many characters (sec. 65a).
Now since inefficiency drives deathwards, confusion and insanity have
their rigorous limits. Hence needs will more or less have one centre
around which to turn, and consequently self-reference, reference to inci-
dents connected and to be connected with the deeper needs of the organ-
ism, is naturally of frequent occurrence. Accordingly the ideal man would
be one who used the word " I " unequivocally : he would be one perfect
organism. However, the very nature of the flow of thought rules that
no unnecessary reference should at any time occur, and, in consequence,
we find that, inspecting concrete stretches of thought, our key-word or
its equivalent, is generally absent. Even where it is frequently employed, as
for descriptive purposes, the word, like a quick-change artist, possesses no per-
manent features, but only appears in varying complexes, as it has appeared
before. Indeed, fundamentally it is but one of a host of systems, such
as those of time and space, which constantly recur or develop, and the
context supplies its significance at any time. We have not, then, some
great shadow in perpetual attendance, but a word with no exclusive con-
notation.
We must, therefore, reject the easy assumption that because a certain
word is frequently employed, its meaning always remains the same. Look-
ing back upon our own thought, we observe no Subject, like an admiral on
the bridge of his flagship, dictating and controlling, some man above the man
or in the man ; we only note a process of development which requires no
such assumption. Arduous examination finds no immaterial Subject
which is mysteriously affected and spontaneously affects other things ;
it only meets with a single plane without any unanalysable entities. A
contentless Subject, or one not analysable into elements like any other
thing, is neither more nor less than a pre-scientific conception. In its
place w^e must put the theory of developing complications (or associations)
where the importance and meaning of the word " I " is casual and
ephemeral.
Again. Needs gradually and systematically change from birth to death.
For this reason the longings for boisterous play, for adventure, for court-
330 GENERAL ANALYSES
ship or for strenuous endeavour, are no accidental suggestions of an ego.
On the contrary, the individual, the " I," but reflects or expresses these
developing longings based on changing needs. We only imagine that
we have been born, as an inference from general observation, and we are
greater strangers to the younger self of three years old than to any chance
passer-by who is about the same age as ourselves. Similarly, the staidness
of old age can only with difficulty be compared with the romping nature
of youth. In the truest sense, therefore, every great change which we
undergo, and we undergo many of these during a lifetime, creates a new
self, the old self bearing almost the same relation to us at any time as the
cast-off skin to the emerging snake. It is as if a succession of individuals
had occupied a certain tenement called a body, and as if we felt bound
by courtesy to ignore the differences in the tenants. As a matter of science,
however, we have, on the non-bodily plane, a number of individuals coin-
cidmg with the most important stages between infancy and senility.*
In the visual universe, organisms represent unmistakable landmarks
which can no more be safely ignored than walls or pits ; and these organ-
isms have histories. The organism that re-appears most, we refer to as
" I " ; or if we include what runs parallel with that organism's visual exist-
ence — smells, fears, and trains of various systems — the word " I " has
some other centre, not however unrelated to the seen organism. Hence
" I " and "you " have distinct meanings without implying anything definite
as to phenomena and noumena, appearances and realities. We have already
seen, accordingly, that the nature of self represents no stable existence,
quality or size. The problem before us is not to be solved by those who
assume that words can only be used in one sense, f
176a. — The Nature of Mind.
The point of view adopted in this work has been strictly analytical. That is to say,
to employ our terminology, we have reduced exhausted systems to unexhausted ones.
Hence the body as well as the mind and the world have been analysed out of existence,
as water is analysed away into oxygen and hydrogen, leaving it to a synthetic treatment
to reconstruct them. With regard to physics this reconstruction is unnecessary here ;
but we will try in this place to understand the meaning of the word Mind.
If we look closely into the matter, we shall probably find that the several senses do
not express the one world in so many separate terms, as if, for instance, colour were
another form of touch. At first sight the position which we are criticising appears
plausible, since we may imagine that with each sense perfect, each sense would give
precisely what the other gives, only in terms of its own. In that case we should be
confronted with several different worlds, each, in a sense, a copy of the other ; and v/e
should wonder why one world, interpreted in one sense, does not suffice. The inadequacy
of this plausible theory may be illustrated as follows. If we take the senses as viewed
■* As far as the memory of our past is perfect and influences us, so far does our whole
life present a single individuality. Where the memory, however, is very imperfect, as it
normally is, and where fresh influences rule, as they usually do, there we ought to speak
of successive individualities. Else, if we press the argument, we shall have to acknowledge
that our individuality belongs to the parents from whom we descend, and so on.
t The above analysis of the self agrees, I find, substantially with that of Mach's in the
first chapter of his Beilrdge, 1886. See also Bradley {Appearance and Reality, 1S97)
on the self.
SYSTEAfS AS UNIFIED 331
from the " physical " standpoint, the supposed equivalents of sound, sight, touch or
smell (air waves, ether waves, contact, or loose smell particles) may be imagined as
developed to perfection, the sense of smell, for example, yielding a prodigious quantity
of detail. Nevertheless the chasm between the different senses would remain precisely
as wide as ever. The differences \Yould be such as are implied in the differences between,
air waves and ether waves (compare sound with sight), in objects being directly in contact
or only through loose particles (compare touch with smell), and in specific processes (com-
pare the differences in the structures of the various sense organs). Here, then, we have
suggested not one identical world expressed in several different terms, nor several worlds
expressed in several terms ; but one world composed, so to speak, of so many parts,
corresponding to the various stimuli which affect the various senses. For this reason,
the knowledge gained by one sense cannot possibly tell us what the other senses disclose,
except it be by inference based on wide study ; and for this same reason, the parallelistic
and the pluralistic conceptions must be dispensed with or re-interpreted.
Reasoning along this line, we are enabled to question another plausible doctrine. It
may be said, for example, that the several sense worlds are one ; that is to say, that
different senses refer only to different degrees of complexity in sensory development, in
which case, supposing sight to be the highest sense, all the other senses, if sufficiently
developed, would become identical with the sense of sight. Against this one must con-
tend that perfecting each of the sense organs separately and on its own basis, like perfect-
ing various machines each of which has a different object, brings the different senses
no nearer, though fundamentally this does not exclude all "sensory" matter like all
" physical " matter from being one.
We now go a step farther, and imagine the world as a distinctionless continuum
capable of development in many directions, just as the physicist imagines his physical
world to be. We now obtain the possibility of many unexhausted and exhausted systems.
One of these systems regarded as exhausted we speak of as the body, another as the mind.
How are we to picture to ourselves the latter, assuming its existence? The following
tentative reply may be given. In his first stage, we imagine the individual as a feeling-germ
or germ of feeling, similar to the tactile or visual biological germ out of which the
"physical" organism develops. That germ of feeling is almost homogeneous at the
commencement ; it develops very slowly compared with the biological germ as exhausted ;
and its line of development follows the line of nervous development. Given that the
feeling-germ (like the physiological cell) has an environment, and interaction will ensue,
as a consequence of which the feeling-germ (like the physiological cell) will grow and be
modified. At first, mind, like body, is but a remote chance. Conditions favouring, that
feeling becomes in time more and more systematically differentiated, reacting differently
to different circumstances ; for example, the adult meets one remark with doubt and
another with belief. In the body as exhausted we have a cornplex, persisting and per-
manently modified system. What is to match these characteristics in the mind as ex-
hausted ? We answer that we have to regard the feeling-germ as growing in complexity
and as being permanently modified, though the mind as immediately given shows no
sensible trace, and though insight into its structure is yet a problem reserved for future
generations. We need not imagine this mental tissue as closely corresponding to that of
the organism, for much of the organism's work is extra-mental. We must, however,
imagine it as persisting and becoming well-defined or ill-defined according to the vigour
of its activity. As with the body, we shall have to judge of its reality and life by its
behaviour rather than by its more passive states, since the mind, for all intents and pur-
poses, like many parts of the body to which it corresponds, is dead in deep sleep. So is
it with the mind generally. Its existence for the observer lies essentially in its activity,
and in so far as we abstract from that, to that extent the mind loses its characteristics.
We have to imagine the mind's activity as we do the activity of the body. Owing to
special environment and original endowment, every feeling-germ will develop to some
extent differently. We note the fixed variety of ways in which the mind responds to
primary and secondary stimuli — to emerging sensations and emerging thoughts — and
332 GENERAL ANALYSES
judge accordingly. In agreement with tlie nature of the response we speak of individual
hope, fear, doubt, belief, passion, intelligence, resolution, obstinacy, kindness or justice,
and the bare states of feeling are interpreted by the general mental context as given by
wide knowledge. In this tissue of feeling, as it changes, we have the individual mind.
The general antecedents of mental action, or the propelling forces, also resemble only in
some portions the physical antecedents of action. To represent hunger, thirst, doubt,
joy, pain, we have feelings which show little individuality as compared with the accom-
panying physiological changes ; but these feelings, too, only disappear after a certain course
of activity, e.g., the feeling of hunger disappears after eating. For the mind these, and
not the stomach or the heart, are the concrete springs of thought and action. Thus,
too, according to the form which processes assume, we speak of doubting, thinking,
hoping and acting.
Leaving aside action, it is not easy to discover the features wliich mark off an individual
mind from the world which surrounds it. Foremost in fixing the nature of mind we have
perhaps the feelings of hunger, doubt, etc., and the general methods of response to varymg
and unvarying circumstances, as in deliberate and reflex action ; though even among
these factors certain inchnations or tendencies frequently take the lead and determine
other possible courses of action to a very consideral)Ie degree. Again, all that is given
secondarily, i.e., in the memory, — especially if elaborated by the imagination, — is con-
sidered part of the self as exhausted. Accordingly, since our thoughts and our speech
and action are but re-elaborated memories, they form constitutent parts in our notion of
the nature of an individual, and, therefore, that which is primarily given, is, by contrast,
regarded as extra-mental. The body, also, especially in so far as it is connected with
feelings, forms part of the mind or self. Everything else, therefore, as other bodies,
things or minds, is excluded from the notion of an individual mind. In retrospect, too,
the developed images represent the mind's past.
Since the self resembles the organism, its points of view will be organic. Hence
as the needs are connected in one interacting whole, each need represents the self more or
less completely ; and consequently the man as a whole speaks in every need-determined
action. To imagine the man as being placed behind this unfolded feeling-germ, is, as we
have said before, to assume a mind behind a mind. To assert that the mind, like a
showman with his marionettes, sits behind a curtain and directs the play, determines what
to do, and carries out plans, is merely to trifle with and to exasperate the searcher after
truth. For my part I prefer a conception of mind which shall be in ivarmony with facts
lather than one which merely coincides with some favourite theory.
If the reasoning in the last paragraph be correct, then it follows that changes in in-
dividuality are to be expected. Just as the body remains essentially the same in the child
as in the man, in the uneducated person as in the educated one, in habit as in reflection,
in insanity as in sanity, so does the mental tissue. Could we examine the latter, we
should find that strict continuity was not wanting. However, as the living mind is to us
fundamentally the active mind, we must allow for the radical transformations therein
observable.
Reviewing what has been put forward in these remarks on the nature of mind, it must
be evident that, necessary as some such notion must be, the absence of a traceable mind
organism, and the fact that that organism is regarded as exhausted, made it imperative to
build psychology on a soil that shall net be constantly subsiding, rising and shifting.
I have, therefore, rejected the individualistic standpoint in psychology ; and I have
made no pretence to a philosophic treatment, the grace and smoothness of which are
usually obtained by an extensive sub-editing of facts.
1 77. — Presentations.
With the Sttbject hypothesis is connected the presentational theory.
Objects were thought of as being placed before, or presented to, a mysteri-
ous something called consciousness, and those presentations were imagined
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 333>
as passive clay moulded into shape by Subjective Activity. Such a view is
as unprofitable as it is unwarranted. In the final analysis there is no
Subject and there are no Presentations ; there are only systems of one
kind, all happenings being /^-r se (sec. 80).
Note that the word Presentation is absent from our psychological vocabulary, and also,
that its meaning implies a spatial factor.
178. — Inner and Outer.
" Inside the skin " and " outside the skin " embody a fair distinction. As
the soul was supposed to feel in the body and through the body, secondary
and primary systems were referred respectively to the soul and to the
world. With a slight advance in discrimination this interpretation was
discovered to be a mistake, for the body, like the world, it was contended,
was material, while the soul was neither material nor spatial. Hence inner
and outer have now come to mean spiritual and material, and the eternal
self is regarded as that portion which at any time forms the core of in-
dividual existence. In accordance with the previous analysis we can,
of course, accept neither the older nor the more recent distinctions. To
us there is but one world.
1 7 9. — Experience.
A plain word such as Experience should scarcely need any comment.
It seems unambiguous enough. Yet philosophers have spoken about it in
subdued tones and with bated breath. No one can deny experience,
they argued ; but experience implies a supernormal Subject ; hence ex-
perience proves that there are Subjects. Now if experience be something
which has only to do with Subjects, then I do not know what it implies.
I take experience essentially to mean that which happens to anything,
stone, tree or man. Or if the word is to be restricted to highly organ-
ised beings, then experience would mean a developed form of undergoing
or happening. In this sense, whatever happens — the simplest system or
the most complex — forms an experience.
The above criticism is written with special reference to Prof. Ward's Naturalism and
Agnosticism. As the word Experience has a number of meanings attached to it, I have
rejected it from my psychological vocabulary.
r 80. — Psychophysical Parallelism.
The doctrine of psychophysical parallelism is supposed to express one
of the great truths wrested from nature. It asserts that every portion in
the secondary series has a physical counterpart in the nervous system and
vice versa, that is to say, everything nervous or mediate has its mental or
immediate correlate, and everything mental or immediate its nervous or
mediate correlate. Nothing could be more inconsistent with our data —
leaving aside fundamental assumptions — than such a theory. For instance,,
the complex and manifold processes, from the arrival of sight stimuli tcv
334 GENERAL ANAL YSES
the development of a visual system — consider only the enormously compli-
cated structure of the eye — which give the physical explanation its value,
are not at all represented on the supposed non-bodily plane. It is allowed,
in like manner, that the bodily processes which intervene between the
desire to move and the movement itself, a highly intricate series, are un-
represented on the non-bodily plane, and here, therefore, the parallelism
is again absent. In a similar way, the processes implied in the " as-
sociation of ideas," as well as the nature of retention, are generally recog-
nised as being traceable physically while unrepresented in the non-physical
series. So, also, the majority of the feelings must be taken as but poor
parallels to their physical counterparts. When we come to needs, we are
again faced by the same fact that the inarticulate feelings, like hunger,
etc., which correspond to them are very poor equivalents of the inherited
complex organic tendencies, and that a parallel to the mass of systems
which make up the body — nerves, muscles, blood, etc. — is entirely want-
ing. So it is with the process of satisfying a need as represented by
nervous elaboration. While the latter is immensely involved, the former
shows an insignificant medley or concourse of vague feelings and few
distinct images. \Test the above step by step.] Under these circumstances
one fails to see the usefulness of the theory, and one cannot conceive that
anything but speculative necessities could have evolved so monstrous a
comparison. If we consider physiological researches, we have something
like a complete scheme accounting for human activity ; but if we regard
the non-physiological portion, all coherency vanishes, and things happen
in a most unaccountable fashion, as far as human activity is concerned.
As Clark Murray (I/andbook, 1885, p. 407) well says: "Apart from
anatomical study, muscular sensation can no more reveal the structure,
or even the existence, of muscles than a sound can tell the form of the
cochlea, or a colour can reveal the rods and cones of the retina."
What is false in practice, is no truer in theory. The movements in the
lingual apparatus, which are supposed to run parallel with the vocal
sounds uttered at the time, are merely facts of the same order as the
sounds. Both sets of occurrences can with equal propriety or impropriety
be entitled mental or material. The lingual movements, whether con-
sidered as sights or resistance feelings, are but primary systems, and the
same must be said of the sounds ; thus to say the thing sounds is as correct
as to say the thing resists. Hence psycho-physical parallelism is a delusion,
for there are two sets of facts of the same order, and these only touch at
some points. The probable reason of the apparent parallelism we shall
learn later (sec. 189). Meanwhile we need only notice that the parallel-
ism or concomitance is such as we find, for instance, between usefulness
and pleasantness, and is owing to the presence of a central need from
which a large number of lines radiate.
The nature of parallelism may be illustrated as follows: whenever we see the bell-
hammer touch the sides of the bell, a sound is heard, and the loudness of this sound
corresponds to the violence with which the hammer is seen to move. So also the hands
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 335
■on a watch dial move parallel with the works inside the watch, as when on turning the
watch key, the hands on the dial move. Here there is a known connection accompanying
the parallelism. [Give other paralleh.'\ So also is it with the brain and anything seen.
" If while one watches ' the lark soaring and singing in the blinding sky,' the other peers
into his head as he watches" (Ward, Natitralisrn a>id Agnosticism, 1899, ii, p. 12), the
parallelism lies in the brain movements observed by the latter, which vary directly with
the pictures observed by the former. It is as if we followed the hurrying rain-clouds by
noting their reflections in a lake, or told the want of rain by the cracked and crumbled soil.*
181. — Memory.
If reactions left no more traces behind than clouds passing above the
sea which they momentarily darken, all comprehensive statements would
be impossible. Certainly, the assumption underlying all I have said or
all we can say is that of the existence of a memory. It is, therefore,
necessary to recapitulate the general conclusions on the subject. Com-
paring primary systems with secondary ones, we note the following
characteristics : The pre-membered system or, as we may call it, the
unco?itrollable system, (i) can be fixed for a long time; (2) is almost
inexhaustible as regards fresh detail ; (3) has an environment ; and (4)
appears generally definite in outline. The re-membered system or, as we
may call it, the controllable system, more or less lacks the above signs ;
and in so far as it approaches these by itself, it tends to be confounded with
the uncontrollable system or sensation. That is to say, the image (i) can
only be fixed for a short time; (2) is soon exhausted as to detail; (3)
shows but the barest suggestion of an environment ; and (4) is vague and
indistinct.
The above characteristics, however, do not touch the kernel of the
memory problem, for it is easy to imagine these distinctions abolished
without any confusion arising between primary and secondary systems.
The fundamental difference lies in the fact that the systems are given in a
series, and that position in a series indicates primary and secondary
systems. We have complications which emphasise the distinction : we
say " This happened yesterday," because that phrase is secondarily
attached to the imaged event. If, then, a view fits in at one end — the
to-day end — we call it primary ; but in proportion as it falls into the
scheme called yesterday, last year, or twenty years ago, so we call it
secondary. Position in a series is, then, the final distinction which divides
past from present (sec. 124).
Lastly, we are compelled to believe that this series is its own explanation,
since systems are not seldom ranged in the wrong portion of the series
without our suspecting the error. In insanity the positions may be fatally
mixed, and in sanity there is only a probability that any particular fact is
occupying its rightful place. Hence the trustworthiness of memory can
•only be tested by further appeals to the memory, a proceeding which has
no theoretical significance. f
* Heymans, Ziir Paranelismusfras;e, 1898 ; and Wundt, Ueher psychische CausalUdt,
1S94.
t See Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1899, pp. 156-9.
336 GENERAL ANAL YSES
182. — Space.
On account of some fanciful freak of fashion the nature of space has
played an important part in speculative inquiries, and for this reason, the
attribute of space is employed by writers to separate matter from mind.
"The object world," says Bain, "is distinguished by the property called
extension . . . The subject world is our experience of everything not
extended ... a pleasure, a volition, a thought, are facts of the subject
world, or mind Y^o\i<tx'^ (Smses and Intellect, 1894, p. i). "All pheno-
mena of the external world," writes Sully, " are phenomena in space, and
have the space-attributes of position and extension. The phenomena of
the internal world are said to be in time only, and not in space ; or, in
other words, to be unextended " {Human Mind, 1892, i, p. 7). Such
being the contention, we shall analyse the notion of space in detail,,
taking visual systems for our basis of discussion.
The first thing we notice is the narrow range of vision. We think that
we see a great deal at a glance ; but that is only becavise inference usually
fills out the spots left vacant by observation. A simple experiment will
illustrate the above. Take the following row of figures
73918835640273643859268312839271755981078
which in itself occupies little space. [Examine the row of figures upside
down.'] If the eye is fixed on the first figure for the first time, any figure
after the fifth or sixth figure ceases to be distinguised ; if on one in the
centre, the result is similar. This experiment makes it evident that little is
seen at a glance, however much this may seem to be contradicted
by what we know. Take again the word undenominationally.
[Examine the word upside down.] Here it is easy to imagine that we
do see the word as a whole, yet if we place a thin point before
the V or above the second a these points remain unseen if our eyes are
fixed on the first letter. (Or take the word Aufmerksamkeitsschwankungen.y
Clearly, we are able to observe at a glance very few details, inference
continually coming to our assistance. We casually look down the road, and
a great deal appears to develop ; but if we examine our memory, we find
that we have attended to, or there have developed, only broad and vague
outlines. In proportion as we wish for additional material, so we restrict
the immediate scope of vision. A glance out of my window as I write
reveals half a town, but continued observation of parts of the field of
sight yields ever unsuspected detail. What is seen is eked out by what is
inferred, and is indeed almost entirely made up of inferences. [Test.] In .
addition we must not forget that all so-called sensations are after-
sensations (sec. 19).
The suggested size of objects is largely a matter of inference. Looking
through the hollow of my nearly-closed fist at the silver bridge which the
moon has built right before me across the sea, the vast expanse shrivels
into a very little space. [Note generally the effect on size when one eye alone is
used.] Thus the large steamer far out at sea is but an inch or two in
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED
337
length when measured by its appearance. So in the seemingly extensive
panorama revealed through a pane of glass we notice that the stately
windows some hundreds of yards away appear but an inch high. Again,
the conspicuous letters of the sign-boards in the distance are very small
when we measure them by comparison with the finger which we hold up
for that purpose. What we see, therefore, is interpreted as to size by our
knowledge of what it would look like at close quarters ; or, more strictly,
this happens in t/ie comparatively rare cases when there is a need for
interpretation. The visual size of things, at any time, varies from nothing
upwards to the point of most convenient nearness, everything disappearing
at a sufficient distance. Trees, which are really about the same size,
when seen in a long avenue grow smaller or larger as we recede or advance.
The tall factory chimney, far away, which by comparison still looks tall,
occupies about one third of an inch in length in my view of it. So, too, a
small pond may reflect a magnificent view. Strictly speaking, then, the
real size of anything varies directly with the distance from which it is
observed, a near view being no more real than a distant one. [Experi-
mentally test the matter of this paragraph.^
The three-dimensional nature of space yields even more interesting
results. The first great fact we learn is that distance can only be
appreciated as, or is constituted by, a system of lines or surfaces. The sea,
for instance, appears to touch the shore which I am approaching from the
fields ; while seen near by, from the edge of the cliff, the waves are loo feet
below. In a case like this, supposing the shore to be previously unknown,
and I re-member such a case, it would be impossible to say that it was
not approximately on the sea level. Once more, I think I see a dark
growth on a low bush within a few yards of me, but the dark spot
proves, on closer inspection, to be a boat a mile or more out on the
water ; and in the same way a large vessel in the offing sails, as regards
sight, across the mast top of a vessel in the harbour close by. Again,
the water line of a vessel fairly near, seems higher than the breakers
on the shore, while a boat farther out is apparently higher still. Finally,
while from the position which I am occupying, the trunks of two lime
trees look about fifty yards apart, their crowns apparently melt into one
another. \Experimeiit in the above direction?^
It is a well known fact that snow-plains give no reliable indication of distance.
Abercrombie refers to this ; and Abbott {Sight and Touch, 1864, p. 43) says that " in
the Alps, for example, a glacier which is some miles distant may (if there are no inter-
vening signs of distance) seem only a few hundred yards off." Abbott learnedly argues
in his book that the notion of space is due to sight and not to touch ; but he makes no
attempt to show what space or dimension consists in. Bailey {Berkeley's Theory of
Vision, 1842) occupies an intermediate position, holding that sight develops independently
of touch.
Let us, however, examine a crucial instance. I know a view where
several sets of chimney stacks and the roof of some buildings occupy
about the same level. Looking out of the window in the ordinary way.
33S GENERAL ANALYSES
the many distances, owing to the traceable detail, are readily observable
and niL-asurable. Bending down, so that the bases of the stacks are
hidden from sight, all that is seen equally touches the window sill,
distance being wholly obliterated. This is even better demonstrated by
an experiment. Let two or more similarly placed sets of chimney stacks
be drawn on paper, the farthest being drawn largest and clearest. Then,
by covering over the bases and the intervening surfaces, the farthest would
be judged nearest, though all appeared in a line. Endlessly as the experi-
ment may be varied, we learn that apart from inference through perspec-
tive, distinctness and departure from nornial size (which are but an
indifferent measure) depth is only recognised when represented by visual
contours and surfaces. (See Lipps, Stiidien, 1885, p. 71.) Accordingly,
we find that when we profess to see depth we member in a rapid survey,*
a number of lines in relation, the result of which membering we call depth.
Uneducated sight, as illustrated by infants, knoivs accordingly nothing of
depth and distance, nor of vertical and horizontal, for only by seeing things
to<^ether, with Just the lines necessary, are 7ve provided with t/iese tiotions.
Depth-seeing is hence a complicated process where a number of visual details
have to develop in relation. [Test the above contention.]
From what is known of the eye, and by what can be established
experimentally, it follows that for something to be seen, it must not be
covered by an opaque body. Hence, since objects of vision must lie
parallel with the parallel-placed eyes, and since our eyes cannot move as
freely as our hands, immediate sight supplies us only with a knowledge of
opaque tactile surfaces. The third dimension, then, is indicated by
additional complexity in what is visually given, and will be developed or
not according to the visual possibilities existing at a given moment. Thus
when we look at the sea through somewhat distant railings on a terrace,
the visual conditions permit us only to see a perpendicular wall-like surface.
So again, if we observe the sea from behind some trees, the horizon opposite
only reaches some few feet up the tree trunks. Here, however, owing to
familiar differentiation, the sea is seen as horizontal and the trees as
perpendicular. Nevertheless the differences of plane, horizontal and
perpendicular, are not given in what is developed, our perception of them
being based on the common knowledge that the sea is large and trees
are small. So if I consider the blade of grass before me to be something
more than a green shadow, it is because the visual changes, due to a
strong wind, show that the blade of grass does not behave like a shadow.
Generally speaking, then, we speak of depth and distance when certain
groupings show certain familiar characteristics. Apart from such
familiarity we are, in certain cases, liable to be deceived, and assuming
extreme unfamiliarity, as with an infant, nothing but a blur develops.
* In all effective sij^ht there is continual movement of the eyes. Without such
continual movement very little can be seen, and hence the resting eyes have little sense
of space. Some authors contend that the muscular strain in eye movements measures the
space.
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 339
Taking, therefore, the facts as they are, we cannot speak of two or three
dimensions, or of dimensions at all, or of the plane of vision being perpen-
dicular rather than horizontal, or vice versa. We have rather to do with visual
distinctness and indistinctness, with familiar groupings and the like ; and
according to the features developed, so we speak of height, breadth and
depth. In agreement with this, it is as unjustifiable to say that only a
screen of colour is given to sight as that we only see depth. Both
statements are relatively true and untrue, and what are called the three
dimensions are simultaneously differentiated by the growing infant.
When, therefore, we dissolve visual details, by nearly closing the eyes, the
almost horizontal sea shore, as seen from the sea, and the perpendicular
cliffs which bound it, or, under like circumstances, the floor and the walls
of a room, readily form into one indefinable plane. {Repeat the experiments.^
We understand now how a smooth looking glass can, with absolute
fidelity, represent the supposed three dimensions of space. Since depth
consists of a systematic arrangement of lines, a mirror is able to display
every kind of visual fact. Other classes of data equally confirm this view.
A box drawn on paper in bare outline irresistibly suggests depth, and that
solely because the lines, being drawn in relation, represent depth, as such.
So, likewise, when a drawing now appears as a staircase and now as an
overhanging wall (James, Psychology, 1890, i, p. 256), the strange trans-
formation depends on the visual point of view we take of the lines present.
When, again, a painting only remotely hints at depth, omitting here
binocular vision, that is because the artist was either unable or did not
care to insert those lines which fully suggest the third dimension.
[^Determine the difference between seeing a picture ivith one eye atid with both.^
The stereoscope, by supplying evident depth where only apparent depth was
previously observed, is a seeming exception only, for in so far as certain
lines are absent, the stereoscope will not show relief. The secret of this
instrument lies in the character of binocular vision. Looking at any good
picture, such as Marcus Stone's " In Love," with one eye only, we seem
instantly to obtain a sense of depth which is almost one with the sense
obtained from observing the scene it pictures. In the ordinary stereoscope
advantage is taken of this fact of each eye exclusively emphasising
certain lines, so that through the fusion of two slightly differing views,
we obtain a sense of depth surpassing ordinary binocular vision (sec. 125).
Yet even this exaggeration is wholly and solely a question of lines, a
thoroughly bad photograph or picture necessarily appearing flat in
monocular as in stereoscopic vision. Shadows illustrate the other extreme.
Owing to the presence of but a single outline of one shade, or rather the
omission of certain other lines, the three-dimensional view is changed into
a purely two-dimensional one. [Test all the above. '\
Strictly speaking, a photograph or a picture of anything ihree-dimensioned, is three-
dimensioned as far as sight is concerned. To see the picture like a flat surface is next to
impossible, and if this were our object and we attained it, we should see a blur and not
a picture. Just as an exaggerated stereoscopic view betrays itself through its over-
340 GENERAL ANALYSES
emphasis, so the ordinary picture tells its tale of presumed tactile flatness hy under-
emphasis of the third dimension as ordinarily seen. By a gradual disappearance of
distinguishing lines, therefore, a retreating landscape slowly loses its pronounced tri-
dimensional character, showing that the differences between dimensions are of degree and
not of kind, while with a decrease of visual efficiency or an increase of darkness the same
eftect of dimensional obliteration will be produced. \Test these last points.']
Artificial distance is normally present, because things, to be seen,
properly, are usually observed from certain visual distances from the
body. This theoretical inconvenience of artificial distance may be, with
advantage, almost removed by looking with eyes nearly closed at the
sharp angle formed by two walls. The vagueness resulting has here a
double effect. Owing to the wiping out of distinct traces, depth is
abolished, while the indistinctness of the total visual field places the fiat
view where the eyelashes are. Here all depth whatever is lost. [^Experi-
menf.]
We may add one word more as to the nature of seen depth. The most
striking case which we can examine is certainly the view we gain when
standing in the middle of a thoroughfare with high buildings bounding it
right and left. Here, if anywhere, the three dimensions are to be met
with ; depth apparently stares us in the face, and the outlook seems the
very opposite to that offered by a white-washed wall. Yet any good paint-
ing or mirrored reflexion of such a thoroughfare dispels this mistaken
reasoning. We can see the frontages only in so far as they face us. Hence
extremely little is seen of each house, which allows for a great many of
them being seen before the field of sight is covered with them. Still, since
we are well acquainted with buildings, every inch in the line of sight is
recognised and clothed with meaning, wAen necessary. We know also
that the little which we see will develop into much on our approach, and
this possible material of vision is promptly thought of as actually present,
which it is not. A single house which we face occupies as much visual
space as a long array of simultaneously seen buildings, the difference being,
that in the latter case little is apprehended directly of each of the structures.
It is by reason of the quantity of detail seen and inferred, that a straight
avenue of trees seems to stretch to an interminable length before the two
sides meet. Abolish the seen and inferred detail, and a blank wall re-
mains. Precisely the same explanation accounts for the fact that the road
does not seem to rise like a wall, the plentiful known detail being such as
we connect with onward rather than with upward movement. Illusions as
to depth or height might, therefore, be experimentally induced. Thus
through some peculiarity of a bay at low tide, I thought that I was looking at
hills and the sky beyond, when sand and water constituted the real scene.
It is a matter for discussion how far the third dimension can be decom-
posed experimentally.
If we ignore the existence of visual depth, we have still the other two
dimensions^ to explain ; for the various forms which develop, spread out
and up at various angles. That such complex vision is not unacquired;,
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 341
can be easily illustrated. Negatively we notice it in the instance of a bold
sketch, where we say that we see a carriage when but a dozen strokes are
traceable. Positively we see it in the puzzle-picture where one set of lines
contains two sets of drawings. Here the obvious and well known figures
confront us, while the other figures are hidden and must be searched for.
Indeed, our visual education consists in finding details where none were
previously suspected ; while the specialist is one who sees much where
others see little. However, a simple experiment strikingly exemplifies
what is here contended for. I am looking at a full page reproduction in
an illustrated paper, portraying about a dozen officers sitting round a long
table on the South African veldt. Only two of these twelve sit on chairs,
while the others are seated on boxes of all shapes and sizes. There is also
on the farther side of the improvised dining-table a corrugated iron wall
or partition. The scene as a whole unfolds itself at the first glance as
though the eye mechanically and instantaneously assimilated the scheme.
I now turn the picture upside down, when the whole scene vanishes and
a confused patch alone is apparent. As I continue looking, I note how
I hunt for lines and shapes, and how I eagerly follow up any scent on
which I may have chanced. Discounting this development, the fact is
plain that the scene owed its existence to familiarity, and that the absence
of famiharity in the upside-down picture resulted in the blur which we have
described. Two-dimensioned form and size, then, — ignoring hereditary
predispositions,— are no more given than the third dimension. To trace
a thing up or down, to the right or to the left, implies the apprehension of
contours or outUnes, and as a perfect blur has no contours or outlines,
therefore all height and breadth dimensions are as artificially produced as
the depth dimension. In the upside-down picture some contours existed,
since the case chosen is scarcely an ideal one ; but reflection seems to
point to the fact that apart from visual activity or development there is no
visual differentiation — no Hues, no shapes, — in a word, no dimensional
sight. This is not so strange, if we allow that seeing, like everything
organic, forms a teleological process, and that hence nothing is seen apart
from such process. In strictness, therefore, the two-dimensional field of
vision, like the third dimension, is determined by what we have learnt in
the past, those lines which seemingly point throughward being matched
by others which seemingly point upwards and sideways. Thus possibly
in agreement with sec. 189, all the three dimensions are equally construc-
tions or rather developments, and this is borne out by the growth of in-
telligent vision in infants. [Examine tJie question of two-dimensional
vision. '\
If our surmise be correct, a conclusion follows which is of the utmost
importance to us. The difference between the scene on the South African
veldt and the reproduced photographic snapshot which reflects it, is great ;
but far greater still is the difference between the picture and the view
gained by the simple method of turning it upside-down. In the latter
case, vision scarcely exists, and in a perfect instance of this nature, the
342 GENERAL ANAL VSES
residue would resemble a throbbing ache or a tingling feeling, rather than
fully developed sight. We seem, therefore, to be face to face here with
the matter of vision, minus its subtle developments. If this be so, we
have come to the parting of the ways where the sense of sight separates
itself from, or unites with, its fellow senses.
When we sec colour, we observe at least a uniform surface environed by other sur-
faces, from which it is differentiated by its special characteristics. If we exclude these
other surfaces, we stare into nothingness and all colour is gone, or, at best, there remains
only a vague feeling. \_Is that so ?'\ Closed-eye vision, again, presents a changing multi-
tude of dots, very like pricks on the skin ; but even these dots are the result of a selective
or complicated process. When this process does not take place, we have no volume and no-
dimensions left, but merely cutaneous feelings. [A this so?] A shapeless cloud, a gust
of wind, a swarm of bees, an indifferent form like that of a rock, may be regarded as
having volume ; but a strange medley of dots, as in dim closed-eye vision, in no way re-
sembles masses, volumes or lines. The undeveloped man, then, is blind, and lacks a
colour sense and space sense, the former sense, like the latter, arising from development.
By organised attempts the chaos is reduced to cosmos, and this is done by systematically
developing visual systems, singling out in this way portions of the chaos and creating
points, lines, surfaces and volumes. Space, strictly speaking, has no dimensions. We
have only a complex of lines, or changes in the field of visual development or attention.
By persistent changes that field becomes gradually exhausted, and with it the content of
space. Hence space, as we know it, is all the space possible.
We speak, indeed, of three dimensions, i.e., height, breadth, thickness, as if space
could, like a triangle made of three sticks, be divided into three parts. To imagine three
lines meeting in one point at right angles to one another [construct siuh lines], would
convey no meaning of our space to any one who had been acquainted with only those
three lines. The notion of a point, of breadth, of crookedness, of form, that is to say,
of space as it is given, would be hidden from him. He would know those three lines and
nothing beside. Any added line, say one at an angle of 45°, or any thickening of the
lines, would open a new world to him. To the normal adult there exists an indefinite
number of lines, points, shapes and directions. If he sums these up in a formula, that is
merely for convenience.
The fact that space is regarded as tri-dimensional has suggested a mountain of
absurdities to those who have not asked themselves the pertinent question as to what is
the nature of space. It is as though it were said that since a perpendicular line may be
drawn in t^oo directions— up or down, tlierefore there could be in such a line three, or
four, or more directions ; or one direction only. j\Ien have also reasoned from a tri-
dimensional world to a two-dimensional and a four-dimensional one. Let us accordingly
assume a one-dimensional being who is part of a straight line. Now does it make sense
to think of a line that shall have no breadth and no depth ? It certainly does not.
Every imaginable line exemplifies every direction at once. A perpendicular line without
breadth or depth is a monstrosity, and cannot be conceived. Hence all the arguments
about one-dimensional or two-dimensional beings which are to illustrate the existence of
four-dimensional beings are based on bare abstractions. Though men are supposed to
be three-dimensioned, yet they neither live in the third dimension alone, nor are they
aware of taking advantage of any two-dimensioned or one-dimensioned being. Why,
then, assume beings who live in a fourth dimension aud play tricks on those who live
in three other dimensions ? Why not imagine a being which lives and moves (?) and has
its being in a mathematical point ? Why not have beings for every kind of direction ?
Why are we three-dimensional beings unaware of any two-dimensional beings ? How
could beings of four dimensions escape detection as regards their three dimensions ; and
how could a being of one dimension, a fourth dimension, interfere with beings of dimen-
sions to which it does not belong? The three-dimensional doctrine of space must be
regarded with suspicion ; for such a division merely selects certain few factors which are
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 343
not what they appear to be. We know nothing of a space less than three-dimensioned,
as ordinarily understood, and the conception of three bare dimensions, is empty. Thus
also the notion of a four-dimensional or five-dimensional space is a barren play upon
numbers, arising from the handling of misunderstood formulae.
We may turn now to more general considerations. We look upon a
piece of land, and we remark that there is space to build twenty houses
on ; so, too, we glance into our purse, and say that it is empty. Now note,
not only is vision three-dimensional, but its field is unbroken by any points
of no vision. Hence we never see nothing, never really gaze into vacancy.
What do we mean, then, by an empty purse ? There is but one answer.
Certain fines are observed, where certain other lines or complexes are
imaginable. Instead of the worn lining, sovereigns nught be seen ; instead
of heaps of refuse, houses might be seen. It is not that a full purse is an
empty purse plus coins ; it is a purse the lining of which is made of gold
and not of leather.
What, then, is meant by space and empty space ? Are they a mysterious
somewhere where lines are placed, a hole without walls where things are
situated ? One fails to catch the sense of these phrases, except in terms
of lines. If the nearest row of houses which is within the view were pufied
down, I could see the exterior of the next row behind it. So, too, the
exterior of the row to be pulled down could be made to vanish, by build-
ing in front of it, by changing the lines. Similarly, since only one line in
one position can be seen on a smooth two-dimensional plane, two things
cannot simultaneously occupy the same space. Again, most lines may
be displaced by others ; and hence men speak of latent lines, of space.
Infinite space, except as meaning infinite expanse, or infinite endeavour to
see, is infinite nonsense : you might as well say that you could imagine
a room without boundaries. If we could stand on an overhanging pro-
montory of a flat world and look outwards, we should have the immediate
environment of the eyes, and around us, perhaps, some grey expanse.
This expanse might be imagined indefinitely retreating as we advance
into the gloom ; but wipe out the lines, wipe out sight, and not space but
nothing is left. Assume that we are beings of but one sense, that of
vision, and there can be little doubt that by space we mean certain line
relations and details ; and that apart from these relations the word has
no meaning. Thus space, being a relation between systems, cannot exist
prior to systems, nor can it siu-vive them. Large, small, round, square,
are visual terms. When we are once convinced that space is not a glove
into which the world fits, our difficulties are soon overcome.
The space of touch or resistance has the same character as that of
vision. Take this example : resistance is felt ; I raise my arm with that
feeling of resistance in the palm of my hand ; I try to close the hand,
and certain uniform resistances develop. I then speak of holding in my
hand a large, heavy and smooth ball. These compounded feelings are
the immediately given solid matter (sec. 172). When, therefore, in
matters of touch we refer to moving things, or empty space, these tactual
344 GENERAL ANALYSES
facts of a highly developed order (sec. 19) are invariably implied ; and
apart from them the word Space loses all meaning. If, again, two senses
yield the same notion of space, it is because a comparison can be drawn
between what happens in each case. A large visual table viewed close
by is, for this reason, connected with the equally large supply of touch
material, and this because there is generally equality in relative size,
roughness, division, etc. [Tt-.c/.]
The other senses, if only regarded at their best, are likewise spatial.
We can tell by sound a big waterfall from a small one, or the crash of a
house from the fall of a piece of bread. Depth, too, can be well observed
in the increasing volume of sound of a heavy railway van that is approach-
ing us. Up and down, as well as position, have also something corres-
ponding to them in sound. Doubtless hearing is still far from rivalling
touch or sight, — since it is strictly three-dimensioned, offers few details, and
is discontinuous, — but it occupies nevertheless substantially the same
position. The rising and falling of the sound, however liable to misin-
terpretation, as are visual and tactile systems, is as much a spatial fact as
the visual scheme, and since they occur together, we may speak as
legitimately of aural space as of touch space or sight space. For this
reason it is allowable perhaps to imagine a man who can hear every
atom of his food, and hear his whole environment.* Again, the remain-
ing senses, those of smell, taste, temperature, pain, etc., can likewise be
conceived of as spatial, and that by virtue of their yielding details which
are comparable in some respects to those of vision and touch. Our cata-
logue is not yet ended, for, as far as the feeling element is concerned, all
desires, sentiments, emotions, doubts, hopes, fears, and volitions, corres-
ponding as they do in point of time with certain traceable nervous states,
have theoretically a right to be considered as spatial. Their rudimentary
condition, as regards wholesale correspondence with touch and sight, is a
mere accident so far as we are concerned. Special non-transferable
qualities all these have ; but this is true also of the two master-senses.
To say that a sound is not extended, meaning thereby that sounds are
not sights, is an unilluminating remark ; it were as true to say that sights
are not extended because they are not sounds. Nothing is easier than to
imagine sound to be a guide to touch, as sight is, and with a correspond-
ing three-fold aural division given, we have three-dimensional aural space.
And so on with all happenings. [Tt'i'/.J
The nature of secondary systems is here also of importance, for three-
dimensional visual space exists in that portion of the series which we call
memory, and might equally exist as regards touch images (sec. 169).
This is so plain that it is difficult to realise how a thought-of friend or a
re-developed visual system, having certain lines, could be considered as
unextended. To us it must be final that the thing sensed and the thing
* On the localisation of sounds, see Kries, Uehe}' das Erkennen der Schallrichtung,
1S90, and Miinsterberg and Pierce, The Localisation of Sound, 1894.
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 345
imaged are one, equally extended or non-extended, though blurred images
wipe out dimensions and motion. [Experimoit.']
Nor is it easy to understand what is implied in space being a single
expanse. I have many times observed simultaneity in primary and
secondary views ; for instance, while reading quickly, I have re-instated a
visual scene (sec. 120). There is no compelling reason, in theory at
least, why I should not think simultaneously of the same thing in the
same position in which I am now taking account of it by means of the
senses. As space is a visual complex, all we can say is that many spaces
may exist, but that on any one given plane, they naturally cannot
mingle. In this sense, too, we must interpret the spatial appearance of
things from different distances, for here we obtain an infinite number of
worlds or spaces, arbitrarily swelling and shrinking. [7^^^-/.]
We have completed our analysis of the nature of space. When exten-
sion is said to be a property of the primary world, one of two things may
be meant. It may be contended that only that which is seen or touched is
"primary ; but then the theory is reduced to this, that we arbitrarily include
in the definition of what is primary two only out of many kinds of systems.
Or else we may mean that sight and touch alone point to space ; but this
we have found to be more than doubtful. Hence we reject the philosophic
doctrine of space. Space is only a casual aspect of things, especially if re-
stricted to sight and touch, and introduces no fundamental divisions. It is
in itself a highly elaborated complex, which has no existence apart from
visual, tactile or aural systems; nor can we think of space as being the
mould in which shapes are cast, or as capable of pre-existing and surviving
shapes. For this reason one of Kant's forms of thought finds no support
in fact. Space is no underivable form of thought, nor is it the foundation
of a broad-based classification.*
Such is our ultimate conclusion on this important topic. To have
found a line of demarcation as definite as that which divides the sea from
the rocky shore, would have compelled us to re-consider our general stand-
point. As it is, the philosophical distinction is not a scientific one. It
was born in days when a close dissection of notions was only undertaken
in a speculative manner, i.e., from the point of view of some other equally
speculative theory. The psychologist is not satisfied with defining the
contents of such philosophic notions ; he shows them to have arisen
illegitimately.
For the sake of simplicity I have ignored those characteristics connected with vision
which seemed to be of less importance. They are the following :
(i) The field of sight cannot be correctly described as a perpendicular plane of colour ;
the inside of a bowl forming the concave of half a sphere would better represent it. At
the same time the concavity, since sight is partial and teleological, is not visible ; it can
only be traced in summing up the directions in which visual systems develop. On the
physiological side this is illustrated by the practically spherical nature of the eye, the ex-
posed convex half of which is the complement of the shape of the visual field.
* J. S. Mill (Exa!/iination, 1S65, p. 231) says that "the idea of Space is, at bottom,
one of time. "
346 GENERAL ANAL YSES
(2) Every porlitm of llie retina is not equally sensitive to light. In seeing, this is
observed in the fact that only a small part of what is within the view, when the eyes are
at rest, appears distinct. If we scan, with eyes fixed, the margin of the field of sight, we
find that what is observed loses in definiteness and in colour. \Experiincnt.'\ With
adults, however, what is vaguely seen at the margin is interpreted by relevant memories,
and also serves as a mode of visual transition.
(3) (rt) Without moving the head or the body, all the details in the field of vision im-
mediately in front of us, to right and left, up and down, may be developed consecutively
with equal clearness, the margins of sight being displaced. YExpcriinent.^ Along with
these changes go certain organic feelings of varying strain ; and if we look into a
mirror, we shall learn that in such a case the eyes move freely in their sockets to right
and left, up and down, to right and down, converging, becoming parallel, and the
like. (/') More can be seen, if the observer's eyes are consecutively observed to be op-
posite different stationary points. \^Experimenl.'\ Here also feelings are noticeable ; and
a mirror proves that the head is changing its position while the other portions of the body
are at rest, {c) Leaving out all complexities, I may be moving, or I may be on a
steamer or in a train, and then I have the largest possible visual field and a new set of
feelings, (d) Among other non-visual changes is the strain in seeing with effort and in
accommodation for near" objects. \^Test pomts (i), {2) aW(3).]
Berkeley was compelled to admit that "the visible square is fitter than the visible
circle to represent the tangible square" (Essay on Vision, 1709, sec. 142). With this
admission that argument breaks down which detects no likeness between touch and sight,
and deduces accordingly the notion of extension from touch alone, as if touch were not a
complex product like sight (sec. 19). In the same way J. S. Mill is without an answer
when Sir William Hamilton urges that if sight takes cognisance of colour, it can only do
so by taking cognisance of some sort of contour (J. S. Mill, Examination, 1865, pp. 238-
41). If these two positions be granted, as apparently they must be, then we have a.
complete case for the possible independence of the visual appreciation of space. Prof. Bain
contends that measurement by yards or feet implies paces and movements of the arms ;
but, strange to say, he offers no evidence beyond his assertion* (Bain, Senses and In-
tellect, 1894, pp. 389 ff. ). The visual yard, assuredly, is a valid one as long as it remains
true to itself and its enviroment, while its shrinking with distance, brings with it no jar
in the visual harmony. For the rest, it is injudicious to assume that in practice any sense,
visual or other, does not gain assistance from hints thrown out by its fellow senses. Thus
the feelings connected with the movements of eye, neck and limb, are sure to assist in
visual apprehension.
The following are articles on space perception which have appeared in psychological
journals. Arber, Convergetiz- und Accoininodationsbewegmigen, 1896-7 ; Ashley, Inten-
sity of Light itt Visual Estimates of Depth, 1898; Binet, La Perception de V Etendiie par
rOeil, 1886 ; Bourdon [La Perception Visuelle de la ProfonJeitr, 1897) concludes (p. 54)
that monocular vision supplies no notion of depth, nor does convergence do so properly ;
but biretinal vision does ; "normal space, in the strictest sense of the word, is a visual
phenomenon " ; Bourdon, Travaitx Pt'cents sttr la Perception Vis2ielle de la Profondeur,
1896; Bourdon, La Perception Monoculaire de la Profondeur, 1898; Cornelius, Zur
Theorie des riiwnlichen Vorstellens, 1891 ; Dunan, V Espace Visuel et V E space Tactile,
1888 ; Dunan, Un Nouveati Cas de Guerison d'Aveugle-ni!, 1889 ; Egger, La Perception
de r Etendue par r Oeil, 1886; Ford, The Original Datum of Space-Consciousness, 1893;
Hillebrand, Das Verhdlt)iiss von Accommodation und Konvergcnz zur Tiefenlokalisation,
1894 ; Hillebrand, In Sachcn der optischcn Tiefenlokalisation, 1897 ; Hyslop, Helmlioltz's
Theory of Space- Percept io)t, 1891 ; Hyslop, Experiments i)i Space Perception, 1894 ; Janet,
* Similarly James, Psycholos;y, 1890, ii, p. 267: "Measurement implies a stuff to
measure. Retinal sensations give the stuff; objective things form the yard-stick ; motion
does the measuring operation." Strieker [Das Bewusstsein, 1879, pp. 48-9) reasons that
place is directly apprehended, that movement adds extension, and that sound has no ex-
tension because the ears cannot be moved independently.
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 347
De la Perception VisneUe de la Distance, 1879 ; James, The Original Datum of Space-
Consciousness, 1893 ; Judd, Ueher Raumwahrnehmungen, 1896 ; Judd, Visual Perception
of the Third Dimension, 1898; 'SloxW.goxw^xy, Space and Touch, 1885; Miiller, Ueher
Raiimivahrnehmiing heiin monocularen indirecten Sehen, 1898 ; Rive, Sur la Gencse de la
Notion d'Espace, 1S89 ; Robertson, The Psychological Theory of Extension, 188S ; Robin-
son, Light Intensity and Depth Perception, 1896 ; Spencer, Our Space-Consciousness: A
Reply, 1890; Stratton, The Spatial Harmony of Touch and Sight, 1899; Stumpf, Ueher
den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung, 1873 ; Sully, The Question of Visual
Perception in Germany, 1878 ; Tawny, The Perception of Two Points not the Space-Thres-
hold, 1895; Venn, Our Control of Space and Time, 1881; Ward, ''The Psychological
Theory of Extension,^'' 1889 ; and Wundt, Zur Theorie der riiumlichen Gesichtswahrneh-
untngen, 1898.
182a.— The Space of Sight and Touch.
As we have seen, Bain and others allot the first place as regards space to touch, and
they regard sight as becoming intelligible only through tactile reactions. A study of
infancy, however, does not bear out such a view. The child learns to discriminate visu-
ally, iridependejitly of touching things. So true is this that adults are astonished when
infants respond to touch without in any way connecting it with what is seen, and vice versa.
It is when things move — when the same picture continuously changes its frame — that the
child begins to differentiate what is visually given to the adult. This being so, and the visual
interest having an independence of its own, the child's power of visual discrimination
becomes progressively perfected. Sight is, therefore, in no fundamental sense a handmaid
of touch, and the visual world has much in it that could not be imagined by blind men.
The words a house, a church, a street, afield, a landscape, convey to us scarcely any intel-
ligible meaning so far as touch is concerned. No blind man could feel these things, in
anything like the fulness in which we see them. And how, for instance, should a being
deprived of sight, translate our picture of a tree into touch thought ? The truth seems to
be that sight is not primarily dependent on touch. {^Compare a wall as seen with one
as felt. ^
The notion, again, that touch is something more primitive, more immediately given,
and less complex, than sight, is soon dispelled when we study its development in the
young child. There we see that grasping and handling, pushing and pulling, pressing
and caressing, are capacities which unfold very hesitatingly. It is only when these lower
stages are overcome that the hand seems easily to obey complex impulses, and to examine
minutely what is given by touch. When that stage, after some years, is reached, we
observe the process complementary to that of sight. Leaving aside lips and tongue we
know that the hands are the only appreciable medium for touch sensations. Just as the eyes
move to right and left and up and down, so the arms, hands and fingers form the focus
of touch. The tips of the fingers, being like short-sighted eyes on long movable stalks,
can see collectively round a small object ; but they can see very little at a time, and it is
with difiFiculty that they find themselves at home in the world without the large canvas of
sight. For this very reason, the blind man gropes his way, and, in the dark, we examine
objects repeatedly and delicately. Also, since the upper extremities are regularly applied
for measurement, measurement comes to be in time prompt and exact. Here, however,
what happens corresponds with what we know of sight, where also the normal appearance
of familiar things serves for guidance in matters of measurement. And again, as in sight,
so in touch, the spatial judgment represents the summation of a complicated series and is
properly an after-sensation. In addition, it need scarcely be mentioned that touch illusions,
like sight illusions are not infrequent. I find that with the imagination well in training
I can, excluding sight, imagine my resting extremities to be in almost any position, and I
also observe that my guesses as to their whereabouts are often wide of the mark. [Test.]
The conclusion, therefore, is that, as regards space, touch is not to be placed on a
different footing from sight. Both are complex developments, both develop to a consider-
able extent independently, and both are unintelligible unless we regard space as a com-
plicated touch or sight system.
348 GENERAL ANAL YSES
I S3. — Time.
Time implies certain observed changes, that which is being out of time.
When, accordingly, we see one tooth, in the wheel of a moving machine,
twice reach the spot whence it started, while a tooth in another wheel close
by makes but one revolution, we call that a difference in time. Were the
whole universe as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean, the notion
of time would not exist. Time merely expresses certain observed relations
of a certain class ; a kind of fourth dimension which enables two things to
occupy the same place. By the very nature; of the relation, then, all but
simultaneous happenings are comparable. While, for instance, the second
hand of a clock goes round once, certain sentiments, thoughts, sights and
sounds may recur several times. Hence, as in this world of change all
systems give way to others, they can be all compared in that respect, that
is to say in respect of time.
Measurement of time depends on regularity of occurrence. If the world
reeled along like a drunkard whose stumblings cannot be foretold, we should
only notice more or less of time without being able to measure it properly.
As it is, there is comparative order and regularity, and so we can, with
some degree of nicety, make temporal deductions by fixing on the passing
and coming of a system or complex like the sun.
To contend, therefore, that things happen in time, as in a womb, is to
forget that we have only to do with a labelled relation, and that in accor-
dance with normal development the relation, owing to its frequency, ob-
trudes itself, and is in due course baptised into the fellowship of notions.
Time, then, can only be thought of as a relation, and not independently of
things. To sweep away all changing systems is to destroy time ; for there is
no time apart from them. Pure eternity is pure nothingness. To look
before and after requires a position whence you look and one whither you
look, while to abolish these two positions and yet to retain time is as if you
deluded yourself with the hope that the corpse drifting landwards is a lusty
swimmer.
Time is a relation and not a thing ; it is a certain notion consequent
upon certain recurrent reactions. Kant's second great form of thought
must hence be discounted, his main contentions about it being question-
able in fact. Wide in scope as the time relation is, it is but one of in-
numerable relations, and of no special theoretical importance.*
184. — Order.
According to the needs of practical life and the stage which has been
reached in human development, various relations are observed and insisted
upon. Such words as far, near, close, removed — or much, little, adjoining,
* Glass, Ueher den Zeitsiun, 1887 ; Kollert, Ueber den Zeitsinn, 1881 ; Meumann, Ziir
Psychologic des Zeit sinus, 1892-3 ; Meumann, Zur Psychologic des Zeithe~d<usstsein';, 1896 ;
Schumann, Zur Psychologic der Zcitanschauitng, 189S ; Stevens, On the Time-Sense,
1886; and Vierordt, Der Zeitsinn, 1S68. See also Mach, Beilrdge, 1886, and Munster-
berg, Beitrixge, 1889-92.
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED
349
distant — apply not only to space, but to other relations such as time, colour,
tone and pleasure-pain schemes ; for instance, we say that certain things
are far removed from each other both in space and time. So, too, in the
several hundred distinguishable shades of grey which are intermediate
between white and black ; we speak of some as being farther removed
from black than others. Thus in the tone scale some notes are nearer to or
farther from some of the others. Nor is the spatial language employed
metaphorically. It expresses the simple fact that there is something in the
spatial relation which is to be found in a number of other relations, such as
those dealing with lines, colours or sounds.
However, at this point the reader need only be reminded that there are
armies of relationships, each of which may be called a form of thought,
relationships which it would be well to examine in a scientific temper for
the purpose of discovering the most pervading characteristics of systems.
The student may note that such terms as straight line, perfect circle, length without
breadth, mathematical point, absolute space, absolute time, perfections are, in the first in-
stance, notions drawn by the ordinary man from the naive observation of the fascts of
existence.
185. — Cause and Effect.
A young child meets facts in a spirit of refreshing originality. The
shilling piece, which, it is suggested, has disappeared because we whistled,
and which we bring back by clapping our hands, has, for the child,
literally vanished and then come back out of nothingness. Thus I can re-
develop an incident of two children watching with evident delight the sup-
posed act of throwing a coin into the fire and fetching it out again, or the
supposed act of sharply rapping the knuckles against the ends of the hard
table without consequent injury. For all the child knows matter and
energy may be freely destroyed or added to, while things may happen for
no reason or for opposite reasons. There is no necessity of thought
which compels him to assume an antecedent for every change, or a rigid
connection between what happens.
What is true of the child, holds good of the adult, or of some adults.
I personally feel like the children described. I do not see, apart from
mediate considerations, why the coins should not vanish into and out of
nothingness ; why I should not spirit the coins into and out of the fire ;
why the knuckles should not be safely rapped ; and why there should be
any one explanation or any consistent explanation for anything at all. If
we admit no backstairs interpretation, that is, no interpretation based on
inference, the adult's ordinary life leaves abundant room for such concrete
or anarchical generalisations. Nor do I, even as an adult, feel any com-
pulsion as regards the order of existence. That there is a certain order,
is merely a fact of memory, and our memory has feet of clay. As I have
said so often before, secondary and irresponsible complications form our
knowledge, and it is a game of chance whether our utterances are con-
sistent and orderly, or inconsistent and disorderly, while even this gener-
alisation is doubtful.
350 GENERAL ANALYSES
The law of identity has been invoked as an indisputable truth. Who
can doubt that A is A, or a button a button, or a tree a tree ? This sup-
posed law, considered as a matter of practice and not of theory, is as true
as it is trite since it ignores all distinctions and embraces everything. Yet
its truth is not so evident as people think. It is doubtful whether A is
ever A, however we hedge the saying round. Thought is in constant flux,
this statement being itself a passing theory, and therefore apparently every
word, every sentence, and everything is constantly changing its meaning.
In whatever way, accordingly, the sentence or the thought is framed, it is
in each case a concrete and differing thing. All we can say is that the
statement is very true, as far as truths go. What is more, I see nothing
necessary about it. A is B^ — black is white, — seems to me as sensible a
statement in pure thought as A is A. Both on theoretical and on prac-
tical "rounds, therefore, I feel tempted to question the foremost, and
of course the most barren, contention of logicians.
So with mathematics. Who can doubt that if to one apple you add
another, you have two ? No one, I answer, doubts this, who is easy-going
or who distinc'uishes between practical and theoretical statements. How-
ever if the cry "necessary" is raised, we are bound to consider the
question more closely. We have an apple before us. Its very nature
implies that it is ever changing. It is constantly losing certain particles,
and adding others to its body. It also parts with much of itself to its
environment in the form of smell. To this apple we add a second one,
and the scents mingle and a host of organic and other changes and
interchanges proceed rapidly and continuously. Hence it is only in a
practical and arbritary sense that there is a definite meaning in the con-
tention that if to one apple be added another, we have two apples. If we
abstract the changes mentioned, and speak of additions of figures, we have
the problem of y^ is ^ over again, for a figure, like an apple, is a changing
somethino". That i and i are 2 is merely a concrete and arbitrary state-
ment of capital importance practically, but of little value theoretically.
In this light the notion of cause and effect assumes a new form. As
we grow older we more and more consistently observe the same order of
facts : the trickster and the conjuror are exposed ; apparent divergences
are eliminated ; prediction is found to be trustworthy ; and anomalies are
seen to be explicable. Hence we express what happens in pompous
sentences of eternal and necessary laws of matter, energy and mind, wdien
all we are justified in doing is to regard the conclusions arrived at as
excellent working hypotheses which are not to be easily shaken or dis-
placed by theories which find them inconvenient.
We arrive at the same results when we consider the facts in detail. I
see a dish of butter melting by the fire, and I say that the fire melts the
butter. Now visually I see the glowing coals and I see the butter under-
going certain changes. Extensive observation is my only visual warrant
for findino- any connection between the two, otherwise it might be perhaps
my presence that is the cause of the butter's melting. If we go deeper
S YSTEMS A S UNIFIED 3 5 r
into the matter the A is A problem meets us again. Exhausted primary
systems or objects, like notions, are not so simple as they appear at
first sight ; they are not divided from one another as if they were so many
separate universes on rather distant terms of acquaintanceship. Thus if
we follow in thought the changes in the glowing coal molecules as they
affect their immediate environment and ultimately the butter molecules,
we shall be tempted, as in our analysis of the process of satisfying a need,
to speak of an elaborate and lengthy process of development rather than
of the fire melting the butter, or of cause and effect. It is as though we
were to argue that because we press a button and immediately see a hall
brilliantly lit up, therefore there is a direct connection between any button
pressed and a large place illumined. If the facts are to be truly stated,
the whole process must be minutely described, and such a description would
show it to be entirely different from the empty cause and effect formula.
Granting, however, that the complexity is so great, and the factors co-
operating so innumerable as to make an exhaustive statement of the
process impossible, it may still be urged that the cause and effect problem
remains. Let us assume, it may be argued, a less primitive formulation
than the one generally employed, yet it would still be true that, so far as
we know, every set of consequents flows out of a set of antecedents. To
this I answer that, practically, it is so ; every known change is encountered
in conjunction with other changes, the absence of which latter chano-es
known or unknown, is accompanied by the absence of the former. This
conclusion, stated undogmatically, but with a due recognition of the
ever-present difficulty of exhaustively tracing a process, may be accepted
as containing an important practical distinction ; but let us cease to speak
of necessities of thought.
I have often marvelled how illogical some human beings contrive to be. Recently I
<:ame across a girl of about thirteen who could only be said to be non-logical. Wherever
fancy or interest entered, her statements were absolutely unreliable and thoroughly in-
consequent. She rejected any course of reasoning which clashed with her notions, and
accepted in its place any and every assertion as proof of her position. Of course, where
pecuniary and other prejudices are allowed to prevail, as they so often are, there all
defensible reasoning also ceases. Logic, as commonly understood, is a matter of
temperament, except where necessity demands right thinking.
1 86. — Freedom.
According to the illustrious Kant, the unavoidable problems of the
pure reason are God, freedom and immortality {Kritik der reinen Ver?iunft,
2nd ed., 1787, Introduction, III). Our unavoidable problem is different:
it is to supply a consistent psychological theory as arrived at by an
analysis of facts, and our aim has, therefore, nothing to do with either
supporting or combating any particular philosophy or religion. The
question of freedom nevertheless interests us. Insufficient investigation,
undertaken under the guidance of preconceived notions, had suggested
that no connected account could be given of man's actions ; but a closer
352 GENERAL ANALYSES
inquiry seemed to threaten this apparently useful conclusion. Hence
Kant ingeniously suggested that since the law of cause and effect was, in
his view, phenomenal, and man noumenal, therefore that law did not affect
humanity. Man, therefore, was free. We have already appreciated the
vanity of the phenomenalist's position ; yet a further word is necessary
here as regards this special development of the theory. The world is one,
Subjectless and Objectless, except in a mediate sense. Even if it were
not, however, little would be gained for freedom by the Kantian position.
Of noumena we can postulate nothing, not necessity, nor freedom, nor
action. An action, for instance, is a distinctly phenomenal or observable
fact, and hence cannot be referred to the noumenal. The noumenal man
cannot be said even to be, still less to act ; to say, then, that his action is
free, is to confuse the two realms. Noumenal man cannot be said to be
bound by necessity, since we know nothing of him. We cannot assert
that he is, or that he acts, or that he is not bound by laws.
The whole position unfortunately was forced ; it assumed as false what
was true, and as true what was false. It postulated that motivated action
was fatal to morality, while, on the contrary, morality will only reach its
goal when the full import of these motives is appreciated. Kant pointed
to certain deductions from the indeterminist theory as proof of it, whereas
these deductions — such as those embodying the notions of forgiveness,
punishment, merit, repentance — are, on the whole, general methods of
evading the serious demands of morality. In short, the problem of
freedom was a fictitious problem whose solution was not to be found in
the noumenal world, but lay in the setting aside of the problem itself as
arising out of a confusion of thought. In a unitary scheme of things,
there is no room either for philosophic freedom or for the noumenal world
which is to serve as its explanation, nor do we admit that the negation of
necessity leads a step beyond such negation. The right doctrine on the
Kantian basis is that in the noumenal world, as in the Buddhist's Nirvana,
there is neither necessity nor freedom, neither action nor inaction.
187. — Mental Activity.
The " synthetic unity of apperception " is a well sounding phrase with
little meaning. It is usually illustrated somewhat in this fashion. " Nature
gives us only a mass of visual lines, or perhaps a distinctionless con-
tinuum, and our apperceptive powers pick and choose, carefully selecting
those lines which go to the making of a system, and pushing aside those
other lines which are irrelevant. At the same time, like a dressmaker,
we arrange things : we see the lines in such a way that the system is
developed with its parts in due relation to one another, while the system
itself is regarded in relation to other systems, thus yielding two-dimensional
and three-dimensional systems. As with single percepts, so is it with
trains of thought or with combinations. Subjective activity elaborates
the world of things and thoughts; it makes its systems out of a featureless
continuum, if that continuum be not flesh of its own flesh,"
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED
353
In observation we find no energy (except as defined in sees. 173 and
here), and hence neither physical nor mental activity, apperception beino-
something added to the facts. We observe only certain changes
following a certain plan, i.e., need-determined complications, and apper-
ception — in the sense of Subjective Activity — does not assist us in under-
standing that plan. At the same time no trace of this power — a thing
behind a thing — exists, while to assume it creates two problems where
formerly there was but one. I repeat, existence is one, and contains
no noumenal Subject or Object, — no subject and object behind every
subject and object. The world as given is the world, and theories of
apperception and activity are shadows of it, presuming to explain the
substance.
It is difficult to avoid such brief terms as Activity, Energy, Power and Force, and
these words are frequently employed throughout this work. Their real meaning is plain.
We speak, for instance, of attention energy, meaning by it certain complex changes which
the body undergoes. So we speak of physical force, meaning by it certain observable
changes when mass meets mass.* Accordingly in the secondary realm, mental activity
means the observable relations between ideas as regards their succession and development.
Those four terms, then, — Activity, Energy, Power and Force — are short formulae fjr
indicating certain definable changes.
188. — Reason, Understanding.
Reason and Understanding, with capital letters, are terms which should
not find entrance into a strictly psychological vocabulary. They embody
notions elaborated in speculative inquiries where facts are classified after
the fashion of the man who dispenses with rigorous research. Deeply
rooted as these words are in common speech, they must the more con-
sistently be ignored by psychologists, until they gradually fall into
disuse. They explain nothing, and they prevent explanation. They are,
as were astrology and alchemy, too deeply tainted ever to be converted
into valuable citizens in the commonwealth of science.
189. — The Senses.
In analysing the nature of space, we traced back the full-blown three-
dimensional picture to a something which scarcely retained any of the
properties of visual systems. The three dimensions were reduced to two,
and we learned that by deducting the distance of ordinary vision and
abolishing contours, the remaining two dimensions became doubtful in
character. In this way a door was opened for the effective discussion of
the problem of the senses. While each sense was considered in its most
highly developed aspect, in full dress uniform, comparison was out of the
question ; but the case is different when each of them is considered in its
simplest possible form. Unfortunately there is no room here to make an
* " A certain variable quality of matter (the rate of change of its motion) is found to be
invariably connected with the position relatively to it of other matter ; considered as
expressed in terms of this position, the quality is called Force " (Clifford, Lectures, 1886,
p. 278).
2^
354 GENERAL ANALYSES
extensive analysis of the various senses similar to the analysis we have
instituted of visual systems.* The visual inquiry must, therefore, be taken
as an illustration of the general method of solution. This is the more per-
missible as vision is the king of the senses, and as, therefore, the simpli-
fication of this one sense removes the chief obstacle to a general scheme
of conceptually reducing all systems to one class.
Let us assume, then, that careful examination has yielded the lowest
factor in each sense or class of systems. Sound has ceased to be the
sound we ordinarily know ; so has smell ; so have taste and touch ; and
so with all systems. We have noticed that sight thus reduced comes
to resemble conspicuously those vague systems we call elementary sen-
sations or feelings. We shall, therefore, take for granted that a
similar analysis of the various senses would produce a like result.
Hence we have left for consideration a number of systems which resemble
in their primitive condition vague feelings rather than definite integrals, or
sensations and images. From this it is only fair to conclude that vision,
hearing, etc., are not distinct qualities ; that they are not even related ; but
that in our model view of the world, they are various compounds of one
simple feeling. Thus just as chalk may be thought of as in a piece, or as
spread out on a blackboard to form the most dissimiliar figures, so the
sense products jnay be regarded as world atoms, diversely compounded.
The precise property of this residue is of little significance to us, its
simplicity and potency alone being pertinent. Hence as the feeling of
resistance is at once one of the most important and yet one of the vaguest
of feelings, we may regard it for the time being as the unit of existence,
though we must exclude from that feeling all complexity added to it by
accumulated acquisitions, or read into it by the inclusion of possible
relations.
It would be rash to deduce from this that the resistance feeling alone is
the reality, or that that feeling leads us one step nearer to the ultimate.
The conclusion is rather that a scarlet poppy and the dimmest of feelings
are essentially on the same plane, the matter of both being alike, only
variously compounded. Hence, too, all systems — all notions and objects
— no matter what their condition, are equally real and ultimate.
Something more, however, may be said as regards the close relation of
the sense material derived from different senses. In doing so, different
ways are open to us. In eating, for instance, analysis proves that much
of what has been attributed to the sense of taste is due to the sense of
smell. Here, then, men have uni\'ersally confused two senses. So also
with the senses connected with the skin, with pains and with movements :
because these various sensations — which analysis is dividing into ever
more species — occur frequently together, they have been more or less
thrown into one group by all but the professional psychologist. In this
case, too, sense differences are not obvious, the sensations of heat, cold
* The sense of touch is analysed in sees. 19 and 172.
SVSTEAfS AS UNIFIED 355
and contact being related to one another, as are the sensations, say, of blue,
red and green. We may approach the matter in another way, and say
that sense material as such forms a poor basis of division. Various factors
must be allowed for, as familiarity, quantity of detail, after-sensations and
after-images, strain, connection with sense organs, movements involved,
ease and continuousness of apprehension, and the like (sec. 120). [Experi-
ment with the several senses^ If we do that, it will be seen that there is at
least a prima facie case for denying that the sense material differs much,
even when hearing is contrasted with seeing. Probably if we could alter
the factors referred to, we might be unable to tell which is a sound sensa-
tion and which a sight sensation. Once more, then, we find reason to
think that the sense material offers no barriers to a unitary view of things.
In this section I have only attempted to show that a simplified view of things is pos-
sible which shall embrace all our acquisitions in one graduated scheme. There is no
attempt here to account for the differences ; but only to show that there are no violent
breaks and no deep chasms in the world as given. In the concrete the difference between
blue and yellow is as final as that between blue and sweet.
190. — Persistence.
There is one striking fact which we observe exclusively in primary systems.
To illustrate, the primary and the secondary views of a boy at a given moment
may be said to be alike ; yet under favourable circumstances the image of
the boy will remain unchanged after twenty years, while the sensation after
that period shows some one tall and broad and bearded. In the image,
assuming no active interference, wear alone is observable, while the size,
shape and colour have not changed except through fading. {^Analyse some
instance?^ Theoretically, secondary systems or images may change as
sensations or primary systems do, and in the exercise of the imagination
that happens to some extent. The broad division is, however, not to
be gainsaid.
When we look more closely into the matter, we observe the following.
I trace for one minute a cloud passing over the water and note the effect in
the change of colour of the sea. If I continued observing for another
minute the distance traversed by the cloud would have doubled. Instead,
I cease to look for the second mintite, and after that find, on reopening my
eyes, that the shadow is far removed from where it was when I closed
them — in truth, the distance is doubled. Allowance must be made for
this fact of systematically changing complexes, change, in the scheme of
things, being independent of the presence of seen bodies or selves, since
these bodies are but small arcs of a large circle. In secondary com-
plications — in association — therefore, the stability and continuous change
of the world is tacitly implied. Things, so to speak, change before our
eyes, and these changes are registered ; when things, then, are found to
have been transformed in our absence, the change is assumed to have
taken place in precisely the same manner, and a similar conclusion is
drawn. Whether I undertake to watch a lengthy process once or twice,
356 GENERAL ANALYSES
the final result in the first case is accepted as a guarantee that the second
observation would have seen a repetition of the first set of changes.
What has been, has been ; and hence if the earlier images of the world
series continued changing, they would lose their character and become the
later, thus destroying the sense of the past, or the series which constitutes
the present and the past. The world picture is one, and hence the past is
unchangeable. We do not in the strict sense re-develop what happened
yesterday, nor is yesterday here ; but yesterday is just yesterday, and to
live yesterday over again in imagination is yesterday. The past does not
insert its tentacles into the present, for then it would not be the past but
the present. In the same way an imaged future is a future. It is only
when we assume a Subject — a something within a something — that we can
mix up past, present and future. The world is one ; and past, present and
future are what they purport to be.
191 . — Evolution,
If we seek for a unitary view of things, it is vain to surreptitiously
assume feelings, touches and sights for the purpose of explaining the
origin of feelings, touches and sights, i.e., the cutaneous surface and the
retina which are to solve the riddle of touch and sight— the world as given —
are touches and sights themselves.* In this direction no progress is possible,
for the question is begged ; while even the end attained in this way gives
us merely two relays of sight and touch.
Let us assume a pure visual w^orld, and let us abstract all but visual
systems. Then, tracing back its evolution, we expect, as we go
back, to find that secondary systems did not assist primary ones, i.e.,
memories did not assist action ; that lines not being membered in relation,
dimensional space was not yet developed ; and that minuteness of detail
and colour were still unevolved. We should gradually work back in this
way to something resembling simplified resistance feelings. Accordingly,
at the beginning of life, slight changes, favoured by natural selection,
would result in slight visual differentiation. As these changes developed,
so vision, in this imaginary scheme which only aims at consistency, became
pronounced to the extent known at present.
For sight we may substitute any of the other senses, and in that case a
sound world or a smell world might develop from the imperfect rudiments
referred to above. Still, we must not omit to notice that since the various
developed systems — our various sensations — are all complexes, one class
of sensation cannot give rise to another, any more than a steel knife can
become a steel fork without ceasing to be a steel knife. The successive
presence of a sight and a smell, can never argue that the latter evolved
*As has been pointed out before (sec. 171), if we irean by the skin and the eye the
reality which underlies their appearatne, then the appearance of trees and houses must be
assumed to have underlying them respective realities. There is, therefore, no reason, on.
this hypothesis, why special importance should be attached to the development of the real
or iioumenal body, if it is a question of explaining the phenomenal world.
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 357
out of the former ; for sight, by hypothesis, must first be reduced to resist-
ance feehng or to something which is not sight, before it can change into
smell ; in other words, sight has first to cease being sight. It is possible,
then, to imagine beings whose smell or hearing is so highly developed
that they live in a world as complex as their brother visual. The actual
stage of human smell attainments, for instance, is immaterial to us here.
Already we know that some individuals gain appreciable knowledge and
guidance through this sense, while the dog and other animals stand far
higher in the scent scale than the human being. Just as a man may, by
some keen-scented individual, be distinguished by scent, so may his
clothes, and so indeed, might every point on every so-called physical
surface. We must, therefore, regard every sense as having the same
theoretical and convertible value. Thus by t/ii?igs we might mean certain
sound and smell systems, the other systems, on account of their supposed
vagueness, being looked upon as appendages to those two.
We have considered separate sense worlds. If we take the world as it
is, we have a congeries of senses constituting one world. Instead of
tracing forward the development of one sense, we follow the evolution of
a number of senses. To imagine a so-called physical world, thought-of as
sight and touch, receiving at some poiiit a shock ivhich introduces sight and
touch, is a method open to question, though it is one of the current methods
of explaining the evolution of mind. Just as sights became differentiated,
so did smells and tastes. A seen sense apparatus is a bare visual product,
and cannot explain sight, still less the other senses. The body, as a tactile
and a visual system, is only a convenient vehicle for following connectedly the
constitution of things.
192. — Others.
From the promenade where I often sit I watch the passers-by, and what
I specially notice is human bodies which are freely moving. I also hear
their voices and see them looking about. Their bodies may be touched
and seen, like that one — our oivn — which can always be touched or seen.
If I enter into conversation with one of them, articulate sounds are
heard.
Let us examine an instance. The various persons, as seen and touched,
are part and parcel of the world around my body, and so far they are
uninteresting. They also move freely, their movements conducing some-
times to my welfare, sometimes to the contrary, and so far they are decidedly
interesting. If they resemble one another closely as regards sense char-
acter, the view received by five of them looking consecutively in one
direction from one point is the same, as would be discovered if they ex-
changed opinions. So with smells and tastes. If five persons simul-
taneously put their tongues to a sugar loaf, the result in the taste is
precisely the same as it was in the sight. If, again, these five experi-
menters are pricked with a needle scientifically, there will be a pain
world, as there was a sight world. So again, under closely related con-
358 GENERAL ANALYSES
ditions, they say and they feel " How fine !" as they look upon an apple
tree in blossom. Thus, similarly placed, they re-develop some event in
concert, or use the same method to work out a problem. If it be granted
that two persons can see the same thing, it must be allowed theoretically
that they may equally have all systems in common. To say that " We
call physical whatever is the possible object of experience for several
subjects, and psychical whatever cannot be experienced by more than
one" (Mijnsterberg, Psychology and Life, 1899, p. 47), is to hold that all
the systems may theoretically be at one time physical, at another
psychical. To argue that five people looking at one radiantly hot sheet
of iron close by them, see something physical, while the pain caused to
the eyes of all five by the blinding white iron is psychical, only appears
reasonable if we assume that we ought to see the pain if it be one and
not five pains (for assuredly the eye-ache — like the sight — " is the possible
object of experience for several subjects"). However, this assumption is
absurd, since one might as well contend that the seen sheet is psychical
because it is not felt as pain. If there be more certainty and uniformity
in the one case than in the other, that is accidental, since men might re-
act equally to pains and unequally to sights. It is, therefore, superficial
observation only which can speak of one sheet of iron and five pains.
Hence we conclude either that there are as many worlds as there are
persons or that there is but one world. Miinsterberg's distinction does
not carry with it conviction.
If v,-e suppose, then, that sensations are alike in all men \ it will follow
that there are as many worlds as there are persons. In that case there is
a separate world in connection with each separate seen body. While,
therefore, I should, in the usual way, see a street with 500 people, I have
to imagine that each of the 500 sees a street of his own. The world
would, under these circumstances, have to be considered as consisting of
500 worlds, as the 500 men certainly sense 500 pictures. Even in
this case the unitary conception would still persist, for the one body would
simply be placed in imagination, in another place, — just as locomotion
gives us ever varying views, — and if the primary systems differed entirely,
then it would only be a case of ordinary complexity. By opening and
shutting my eyes twice in succession, I obtain two pictures of an object ;
I might thus acquire thirty, and can, therefore, readily understand a
multiplicity of worlds without affecting fundamentals. Whether, then,
there be one like world with many bodies, or many like worlds, no diffi-
culty exists that we need notice.
It is different when one man sees red consistently where another sees
green consistently. Here we have a certain seen body and a red view,
and another seen body and a green view. If sensations thus consistently
differed both as to their elements and their composition, we should truly
have a number of worlds. Yet curious as it may seem, the difficulty here
is not as great as it appears. We often see a thing at one time clearly
and at another indistinctly, and consequently differences in idiosyncrasy
SYSTEAfS AS UNIFIED
359
are readily imagined. We simply say that given a certain body we have
a red world, while given another seen body and we have a green world.
In speaking of persistence, it was pointed out that objects or exhausted
systems undergo systematic transformations and that every such system
has its own history. This is naturally the case with seen human bodies.
As but one class among many, these have each their own history. While
one piece of pottery falls onto a stone surface and is shattered, another
near by remains undisturbed and unbroken. So while one man's palm
comes down heavily on a smooth piece of iron, so that the whole hand
tingles, another standing by who merely watches him, naturally does not
feel the tingling. Different circumstances, different results. Thus through-
out the history of living and non-living things the reactions of different
individuals diverge rather than run parallel. One of the most striking
illustrations of this, is the case of memory. While ten people are seeing
or smelling one thing, each of them may be having different secondary
visual views, one thinking perhaps of a book and another of a meadow.
In this case the visual systems connected with two seen bodies are
different. Yet this raises no special difficulty, since the same thing may
happen in one seen body : we have merely diverging circumstances and
pasts, and hence diverging systems. Where the circumstances converge,
there the systems converge also, e.g., two persons think of the same thing
in the same words. Accordingly, with complete convergence of circum-
stances, complete and universal harmony in primary and secondary
systems would follow ; but this has to do only with the jointedness or the
disjointedness of things in general. In closing this section one may re-
mark that with a sense of smell as highly developed as that of sight, we
might indifferently speak of the seen body or the smelt body, the visual
reference being at present preferred in practice because accidentally it is
most marked. \_Imagine, in succession, the body having innumerable eyes,
ears, noses and palate s?\
Bain {Senses and Intellect, 1S94, p. 2) argues precisely as Munsterberg does: "In
observation, by the senses, we can work in the company of our fellow-beings ; the same
world that is open to one is open to all, and the impression made is substantially the
same for all. In the exercise of introspection, each of us works apart and alone ; hence
the study of the Subject is purely individual."
193. — Subject and Object.
The present field of sight reveals an extensive rural view, together with
a portion of a seen human body. This view and this body are objects.
Studying microscopically a pebble by the roadside, I can see how it is
affected by a variety of other objects or exhausted systems far and near.
The distant sun warms it, the shadow of the tree above it at a certain
time of day cools it, and wind and water round it and disintegrate it.
Furthennore, by watching it carefully, I can tell what changes are going
on in its environment. From its heat, I argue to the sun's rays ; from the
passing shadows to the shaking of the foliage above it by the wind. This
36o GENERAL ANAL YSES
relation of objects or exhausted systems naturally holds good throughout
the compass of existence. For the same reason one system may reflect
more accurately than another the state of other systems, and, therefore,
a thermometer and a barometer respectively tell much more of changes
of heat and atmospheric pressure than a pebble can. So likewise the
sea is more affected by wind than the land, while the surface of the sea
is more influenced than the depths immediately below. Reasoning along
this line we may imagine an object which shall be most delicately sensi-
tive to every change in its environment, registering with wonderful com-
pleteness what goes on in its vicinity or at a distance, and adjusting itself
to those circumstances. As regards impressibility, there would be but a
difference of degree between this one body and all others, and in this
position is that human body or object in the rural scene, which is ob-
servable whatever other visual changes take place. If I experiment with
that body, called usually ** my " body, I observe that it is so constructed
that little happens in its neighbourhood which does not affect it or to
which it does not react. In this sense I can know more about the pebble
by studying the body than about the body by studying the pebble.
There is one considerable difference, however, between all other ex-
hausted systems and that body. While pebble after pebble may vanish,
the body as a visual system normally remains, and is, therefore, the most
interesting system. We have, then, to regard it as a constant portion of
every imaginable environment as far as that is thought of as immediately
given. Nevertheless it is but one exhausted system among many, being
chiefly characterised by its permanence and its complexity. As the body
is only a visual thing among other visual things, our expectations are
confirmed. Through many media or channels influences come to it
which produce modifications. These modifications, apart from inference,
tell us nothing of other things, and are barely observable changes. If we
follow what is connected with the initial changes, we are led to other
bodies and things which are themselves more or less responsive to similar
influences. Hence apart from previoits knowledge of the rural scene, the
permanent body, when exami?ied, would yiehi no information except changes
within itself — no more, in fact, thati is yielded by the exa?nination of the
pebble. The point to notice, however, is that the internal bodily changes,
as in the pebble, bear some definite relation to the external ones. In this
sense, therefore, we can regard the body as an index of what happens in
its environment, and as expressing certain relationships in terms of itself.
I have advisedly spoken of the body as visual ; but theoretically such
language is indifferent. The sense of smell might be so highly developed
that our sense of sight could hardly equal it, or, to go still further, we
might imagine the relative stages of development of the two senses to be
the opposite of what they are now. In those circumstances the body
might mean to us a smell system which we should speak of as we speak
of the visual body under existing conditions. We might in such a case
interpret the world by our olfactory observations. And so it is with every
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 361
sense. It is an accident theoretically that the centre of existence is re-
garded from a visual standpoint and not from any and every one of the
other sense standpoints. The seen body, therefore, only reflects outside
changes in terms of its own life. It knows nothing of smell, taste, pains
or other feelings. Only if we imagined five sense bodies, reflecting the
five senses, could we have outer systems interpreted in five terms, for as
far as we smelt we should not see, and so on.
Yet how does it come that concurrently with smell changes there exist
sight changes ? Our answer must be the one I have previously ventured
to put forward. The senses are but diff'erent developments of one sense,
and hence, theoretically at least, the changes in one sense direction can
be to a certain extent observed in the direction of another sense. For
this reason the seen body hints at the vast expanse, colour, form, sound
and scent of the rural scene. It is certainly not that scene ; but if we
have studied the body's nervous changes alongside of other changes,
then the one may become an interpreter of the other.
The bodily organism is appreciably affected only by what can be of service to it ; and
we can imagine, therefore, an organism which shall have reached the same stage of evo-
lution as regards touch, sight, smell, sound and taste. As on the touch plane all that
happens with regard to sensation is reduced to atoms or vortex rings of a like character,
so every kind of primary and secondary system may be thought of as evolved out of a
simple and vague feeling or element.
We have learnt that one thing in every scene — a human body — is
famihar to us, and we have also noted that its visual expression is casual
and not fundamentally determined. From this follows the unity of exist-
ence. Our pains, our contacts, our smells, our tastes, our doubts, our
volitions, form a connected whole. They do not refer to the seen body,
nor are they produced fcy it, any more than the seen body refers to them
and is produced by them. The seen body, being, as it happens, most
minutely observable, the other less fortunate systems are interpreted in
terms of seen bodily systems, as well as referred to the seen body. All we
find, then, in observation is a number of items, the most prominent and
persistent of which is a certain system which we call the " self." In this
sense, therefore, every object is a Subject as far as all other Subjects are
concerned.
194. — Life.
Here is a pebble and here a human being. The former is said to be
dead, while the latter is regarded as being alive, one distinction being,
it is contended, that the latter hears and sees, while the former does not.
This plausible distinction we are now able, I hope, to abolish. The pebble
and the human being, as seen, neither smeU nor see. The pebble, being
primitive in its constitution, is almost wholly irresponsive, changes in its
environment having but an inconsiderable effect and then chiefly on
its surface. With the human being it is different. So complex and so
unified is his evolved structure that he delicately and quickly responds to
362 GENERAL ANAL YSES
outer changes, even to the length of moving about freel)\ Here then is
one difference — a difference of degree. Visually speaking a thing is alive
when it grows and moves like a human being, and dead when it sulks like
a pebble. It will be said, however, that the one feels, while the other
lacks feeling. If by this it is intended to assert that there is an unanalys-
able Subject which sees and feels, then we dismiss the question as unintel-
ligible, for it would be necessary to presuppose an infinitude of selves. If
what is meant is that the seen body sees, while the seen pebble does not
see, we again are bound to dismiss the question, after our analysis in the
last section. What we observe is as follows. There are visual, olfactory and
aural systems in the world, and all are fundamentally one as far as character
is concerned. A germ is fertilised, and a complex centre of activity develops,
of which the developing cell is one expression. According to the com-
plexity of this development, so there will be innumerable sense terms in
which the new being expresses itself and the world ; yet nothing different
in kind has been added, on the side of resistance feeling, to the germ or
the chemical elements of which it is composed. We have uniform develop-
ment along many lines, as along the lines of the seen body. We have
still something given, neither more nor less, provided we do not postulate
the seen body as a centre of sense things. So likewise with the pebble.
It is, theoretically speaking, a visual, olfactory or gustatory system, i.e.,
a thing affecting other things in various ways. Its homogeneity, its want
of unity between the distant parts, is but an indication that complexity of
sense as well as of movement is absent ; for the active olfactory apparatus
as seen or smelt, for instance, is but a hint to him who knows that a cor-
responding system exists. The seen body does not develop smell ; but the
ground sense or ground material develops in both directions. If, then, we
constructed a human being by some chemical process, we should really be
constructing a feeling being, for sight is but one modification of primary
touch ; we should be building better than we knew, owing to our ignorance
of the nature of the prime sense. Thus the evolution of life and thought
in the individual, and in its first beginnings, presupposes no catastrophe, no
break, no superaddition and no two substances, the pebble being merely
less highly developed than the man. Chaos and discord must arise when
we select one sensation complex, the one that happens to be the most
prominent one, and make all other sensation complexes depend on and
result from it. If we consider these complexes as developments from one
form, then we have no need to explain how, for instance, touch can pro-
duce smell, nor are we confronted with the problem of a double world
where one world is in attendance upon another.
In the tenth chapter of his lectures on Naturalism and Agnosticism, Professor Ward
suggests that just as machines are mind-made, so organisms are inert bodies which are
guided and controlled by minds. Life, accordingly, is not some specific vital energy or
vital force ; life refers rather to a psychical something, endowed with feeling and will. In
agreement with this view he contends that the factors in evolution are principally two :
self-conservation and hedonic or subjective selection. With Professor Ward's negative
contention, with his proof drawn from ignorance — that life has not as yet been explained
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 363
by the physicist — I have nothing to do. I only wish to draw attention to his psychology.
According to him, organic functioning is mind-functioning; and the departure of life in
plants and in animals implies, therefore, the absence of mind and vice versa. Hence it
must follow that since brute matter is inert, the innumerable organic functions that are
but slowly being revealed by the physiologist, are performed by minds — by ourselves, in
the case of human beings. So, too, we must assume that the growth of nails and hair
after so-called death, really proves the continuous presence of mind, of the principles of
self-conservation and subjective selection, of feeling and will, of spirit, of spontaneity, of
effort, of experience and of internal determination ! If organisms should really prove to be
machines guided and driven by minds. Dr. Ward will not only triumph over the physicists,
but he will have established a new psychology in addition.
195. — Death.
Life, we have concluded, is not something superadded to brute matter ;
it is but a development. Consequently any de-development is to that
extent death. This can now be easily traced, since the seen body may be
justly used as a common measure in the interpretation of existence. When
the eyes or important organs connected with them are destroyed, vision, ex-
cept of a secondary order, ceases for us. When disease attacks certain
portions of the nervous system, the memory is impaired or destroyed. For
similar reasons, sensibility, smell, taste and pain may depart. If the changes
are of a profound nature, the notion of self becomes erratic, or perhaps the
complex ego becomes a simple vegetative soul. Vivacity, stupor, sleep,
death, are, accordingly, but so many steps in a career. For this reason,
just as the complete cessation of some brain process means a loss of visual
memory ; so a complete cessation of general organic processes means death,
or, what is the same thing, change from a highly complex state to a rela-
tively simple one. There seems no alternative to such an interpretation.
If in life, smells and volitions had appeared apart from a centre inter-
pretable in given terms, the bodily collapse might have had no other disas-
trous results. As it is, the bodily collapse is only one aspect of a general
dissolution, our smell and volitional constitutions being but modifications
of the same fundamental fact. Death, then, is the end of life, as the ashes
of a fire are the degraded form of the consumed log of wood. Life comes
and goes, like a bubble or a rainbow.
Bishop Butler, in his Analogy., 1736, argued that since some dying men are unaffected
as regards their reason, therefore physical death does not prove that reason dies with the
body. The fact is that in some cases the brain remains unaffected till nearly the last
moment of life, while when it becomes affected, as in many cerebral diseases and in death,
the reason is seriously interfered with or ceases altogether.
196. — Immortality.
It might be urged that, as regards life, only a simplification takes
place, and that hence we not only continue to exist, but that we have
existed from eternity. This is a feasible view. A misunderstanding, how-
ever, must be guarded against, for that which is permanent in this case is
in incessant change and develops into individualities only under very special
364 GENERAL ANALYSES
conditions which are bounded by birth and death. Immortality, in any
other sense, for the />sycho/ogisf, becomes an unintelligible doctrine. We
have found lurking behind the series of systems no mysterious Subject
which may laugh at the revolutionary bodily changes, or delight in them
as a release from bondage. When, for instance, owing to some nervous
shock a man is stunned, there seems little to rejoice over ; is it likely, then,
that when we shatter the brain, the man will be any the less stunned ?
Unreasoning beings will say Yes to this, as to many other statements
equally devoid of foundation. As psychologists, however, we have only
to note uniformities, and we must, therefore, assert that life, like form, is
liable to evolve and devolve, and that the current notions of immortality,
so far as they are based on a false apprehension of the psychological facts,
must join the limbo of notions that more exact research has proved to be
unfounded.
197. — Science.
The view which has been put forward in this chapter demands no pro-
found reconstruction of scientific notions. Already science is factitive and
descriptive. It does not say that matter and motion are necessarily of a
certain nature ; it only takes observation for its guide, and its assertions go
no farther. Physical science, therefore, is not affected by our conclusions,
as its form and its methods are unexceptionable. Taking for its subject
the most stable and calculable elements of reality, as found in seen and
felt exhausted systems, it attempts to obtain the most comprehensive
descriptions, and it is only temporarily, we may be sure, that it ignores the
less stable elements. Inclined as science was at one time to assume that
the true substance lay in this or that detail, owing to superficial observation
and owing to the suggestions of the philosophers, its present mood excludes
theoretical assumptions. In the final issue, science must embrace the
totality of things — systems of sights, smells, volitions, etc. — in one descriptive
survey, and the narrow order which it has hitherto allowed for is likely to
be extended to systems in general. This, however, will be accomplished
by research and not by speculation. Already we have tried to meet the
physicists by describing the comprehensive uniformity which prevails in
the mental realm.
The modern notion of science and its tendencies can be gleaned from such a book as
Mach's Vorlesungen, 1896. There, on p. 229, he writes : " While we are at the beginning
of our task, it is as yet too early to determine how we shall look upon the world when
we are face to face with the closed circle of physical and psychological data, of which we
now see only the two separate facets. The men are sure to be found who will acknow-
ledge the reasonableness, and possess the courage, to enter the straight paths leading to
the heights whence the total stream of facts can be surveyed, and who will not meander
on tortuous byways, guided by chance conjectures."*
There is some danger that science, by its hostile attitude towards the crude notions of
our forefathers, should tacitly admit what it explicitly seeks to refute. For example,
* See also Pearson, The Grammar of Science, 1S91.
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 365
Pearson {Grammar of Science, 1891) reiterates that science does not pretend to explain or
give the why for anything. Science, according to him, only describes or resumes. The
difference is surely superficial ; for every how is a why, and every why is a how. When a
hung picture has fallen to the ground, and the string by which it was suspended is seen to
have been worn thin, every man regards such a discovery as explaining, not merely as
describing, the fall : much-worn strings, he knows, will not support weights. In explaining,
we supply the normal antecedent to the event, and this is considered especially satisfactory
when the antecedent is a familiar one. The most perfect explanation would be contained
in a simple and comprehensive formula which enabled us to foretell the position of anything
in the total series of things. For this very reason we must consider the fact of gravi-
tation as yet unexplained, since it stands isolated ; and for that reason, also, such
regular sequences as the rising and the setting of the sun suggest no permanent relation-
ship.
Similarly with such terms as energy, power, faculty, mind, matter, cause, effect. At
worst, they mean a something within a something as a satisfactory description or explana- •
tion of certain observable facts. At best, they are convenient terms summing up obscure
or comple.K processes. In any case, however, the terms must have always had a definite
meaning, unsatisfactory as that meaning may be in the light of larger knowledge. If,
then, these words are to be rejected or replaced, it must be because we have found words
which better sum up the facts, and not because these terms express something inex-
pressible.
Pearson's inquiry into the nature of science, admiral^le and suggestive as it is in manv
ways, is marred by a sweeping defect. According to him, the nature of the " perceptive
faculty," of the sense apparatus, determines and limits knowledge. What exists outside
that perceptive faculty, he contends, it must be ever idle to ask. It is the old story : the
earth must have some support, and that support is obligingly given by the tortoise ; but
what supports the tortoise ? So we ask, what is this perceptive faculty and this sense
apparatus ? Are these not tortoises to support the world ; and if so, are they really
required ? The plain truth is that Pearson makes an assumption which is as broad as it
is unjustified and mischievous. If we once admit an unanalysed perceptive faculty, a man
within the man, we might as well admit the most foolish of the ancient superstitions : it
is as if one exchanged the Hindoo Pantheon for the Pantheon of the ancient Greeks. The
widest scientific statements should be purely monistic, all-comprehensive, final, consistent
throughout, or they are not scientific statements at all. The explanation of Pearson's
attitude is that the nature of thought does not raise in him any problem. As regards
psychology he accepts questionable statements as would some young and trustful student.
To us the simplified view of things given by science, is a pari of the whole world, and not
something apart. Generalisations, relations and simphfied notions are particular facts,
and not products of " mind." It is only convenience which would say that existence in-
cludes "not only isolated contents of a simple and a complex character; but also
their properties, states and relations" (Ktilpe, Zur Lehre von der Azifmerksamkeit,
1897, p. 30).
Of speculations there is no end, and one of the boldest is embodied in the recent work
of Miinsterberg, Grundziige der PsycJiologie, 1900. Munsterberg contends that science
deals only with facts as observed ; and he concludes from this that life as lived, felt or
appraised, lies outside the domain of science, and that psychology as a science has, there-
fore, no possible influence on life or on theories of life. By appeal both to fact and to
reasoning he then attempts to prove the inanity and uselessness of psychology. The
answer to his conclusion is simple. Life, as immediately lived, consists of a series of sense
facts — of sounds, sights or touches ; only facts as observed or reflected upon yield things,
souls, life, judgments or feelings. Hence the opposite of Munsterberg's contention is
nearer the truth. Furthermore, the whole standpoint we are dealing with, is forced and
does not go deep enough. The world is one, and living, feeling, appraising, cannot con-
sistently be put in antagonism to observing. In appraising, for instance, as immediately-
given, we have a few sounds and feelings to which, under the particular circumstances.
366 GENERAL ANALYSES
we attach the name of "appraising." (Sec. 71.) Munsterberg's theory fails, because he
starts with philosophy and ndt with facts.*
198. — Physic.\l Science and Psvchologv.
Psychologists have usually desired to discriminate between psychology
and physics. Yet, excepting those who have reduced physics to a
department of psychology, psychologists have allowed for the origination
of sense materials by the senses and for the physical production of bodily
movement, as well as for the neural facts of retention and association.
They might safely have gone one step beyond, and traced physically the
relation of want and satisfaction. The standpoint here is not very
abstruse. Granting that the body is the best observable portion of that
centre called the " self," we shall have no difficulty in obtaining, by means
of a study of the body, the simplest possible description of the development
of life. To understand the body, is to fill in the countless gujhs which we
meet with in the smell schetne, the taste scheme, and the other schemes. It
will not, of course, be sufficient to inquire into the nature of the nervous
system, for that alone would explain only bodily movement and the fact
that some changes go on outside the body. Hence profound research
into the contents and changes in primary and secondary systems must
proceed simultaneously. Psychology would thus embrace the study of the
central fiervous system together with the connected moving and ftiodifying
influences, and this in systematic connection ivith the sights, sounds, smells,
etc., which are observable at the same time (sec. 156). General psychology,
at least, would only concern itself with the broadest outlines, with the
most general facts and their most general relations, leaving special
sciences to deal with the several features exhaustively. General physics,
on the contrary, would investigate the nature of seen and felt bodies,
approaching psychology in the study of light, heat, colour, etc. ; but laying
the main stress on the resistance feelings. Ultimately the two must merge
into a comprehensive descriptive scheme ; and meanwhile there is no fear
that either physicist or psychologist will have doubts as to the proper
sphere of their labours.
As against abstract physics may be placed abstract psychology. The latter science,
like the former, would only deal with the most general characteristics appropriate to its
sphere. In this sense psychology is wider and more abstract, farther removed from the
concrete, than physics ; in fact, it is the very opposite of the special sciences. In these
wc attempt to exhaust any single system of a class ; in psychology we make no such
attempt. Psychology wishes to explain the surface facts of any moment without
concerning itself with the extensive history of what it contemplates. It occupies itself
* Stout {Psychology, 1896, i, p. 159) writes: "The world of material phenomena, as
regarded by the man of science freed from the animistic bias of common-sense, presents
everywhere change, succession, transition, but nowhere experienced change, transition, or
succession. . . . Transition in consciousness is, eo ipso, experienced transition." If Dr.
Stout here implies that psychology cannot be objective like physics, i.e., that the animistic
bias of common sense is justified in psychology, then the criticism of Munsterberg's posi-
tion holds good of his view. My contention is that the animistic theory has no more place
in psychology than in physics.
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 367
with what is i;nvtediately given, and only asks for the most general reasons. For
instance, it investigates the peculiar nature of visual systems, and why they come and go ;
but it does not seek to know the nature of a spark or that of the clashing pebbles from
which the spark proceeds. Its time area is the present, and that is why it deals only
with what is immediately given and why it makes no attempt to exhaust any system.
In the special sciences, on the contrary, we are not interested in these most general
features. We try to exhaust a system by following its endless ramifications, heedless of
the barriers of space or time. In these cases we take for granted what is presented by
psychology, and follow out the logical or systematic consequences in the primary and
the secondary order.
When, therefore, tve speak of an object, ive usually understand by it some mediately
given or exhausted system rather than a system ifnmediately given or iinexhausted. How-
ever, while the distinction is valuable, its limitations must not be overlooked ; for the
most immediately given and most unexhausted system is to some extent a system mediately
given and exhausted. Nevertheless, in the rough, we may wisely distinguish between
psychological and non-psychological systems. The latter we may again divide into
exhausted tactile systems, the physics of to-day, and into exhausted systems generally
the science of to-morrow where the smell, sight and other systems will also be studied as
mediately given and in connection with one another.
A division of systems into exhausted and unexhausted will cover some popular
distinctions. Thus what I see and touch and smell this moment is not the flower ; for the
flower, in this case, is something regarded as exhausted and not as a passing and
unexhausted system. In this sense the object of psychology and the object of physics are
different, though the difference be only one of degree. As will also be seen from the
psychological vocabulary, exhausted systems are divided into primary and secondary, or
objects and notions, e.g., books and knowledge.
199. — Monism, Dualism, etc.
The problem of mind and matter has been one of the most stubborn
ones which thinkers have taken in hand. Beset as it is with difficulties
owing to the fact that early theories have warped the thought and twisted
the language to their uses, these difficulties have been still further increased
by persistent recourse to speculation instead of to scientific methods. In
this state of affairs, it will require very considerable efforts to cut a way
through the mountains of theory which obstruct the path of the pilorim
■\\ho is travelling truthward.
The one assumption which nearly all views on the subject seem to have
in common, is that there is some reconciliation to be effected. The
unanalytical man in the street admits a dualism or a pluralism ; and to
him it is as indisputable that there is a self as that there is a world and
other selves. Not so with those who have pondered over the problem •
not one of these agrees with the man in the street. To Berkeley the
world is a series of pictures placed by God before the eye of man. Hume
recognises only sensations in combination. Reid, while pretending to
agree with common sense, denies the world all reality as common sense
conceives it. Kant introduces a phenomenalism and noumenalism ; while
Spencer, who rails at these philosophers, ends by proposing a " transfigured "
realism.
Herbert Spencer {Psychology, 1890, ii) frankly admits a dualism. " That which
-distinguishes psychology from the sciences on which it rests, is, that each of its propositions
368 GENERAL ANALYSES
takes account both of the connected internal phenomena and of the connected external
phenomena to which they refer" (p. 132). "From the science which discovers by-
introspection the laws of this something [mind], there is no passage by transitional steps
to the sciences which discover the laws of these other [material] things " (p. 140). " The
antithesis of subject and object, never to be transcended while consciousness lasts, renders
impossible all knowledge of that ultimate reality in which subject and oliject are united "
(p. 627). " Under its most general aspect, tiierefore, all mental action is definable as the
continuous differentiation and integration of stales of consciousness" (p. 301). Spencer
discusses this subject fully in part 7 ; but most inconclusively in my opinion. The
taint of the supernaturalism of his earlier years is still visible in his " transfigured " realism.
James is, as usual, fresh, saying that the mind is "an organ added for the sake of steering
a nervous system grown loo complex to regulate itself" {Psyihology, 1890, i, p. 144). When,
we ask, did thepilot step on board? Fouillce ("Des Idees- Forces," Ti'ffrA Phil., 1S90, p. 137)
writes as follows : " A determinism which claims to be universal, has no right to disdain
anything as accidental, added, superfluous and cpiphenomenal ; there are no epiphcnomena,
there are only phenomena all equally necessary and reciprocally determined ; everything
is caused and causing, bound and binding, acting and acted upon, determined and
determining : even my shadow is as necessary as my body, and, in fact, as real." So in his
Psychologic des Iddes-Forces, 1893 '• "The phenomenon called external is at bottom one
with that called internal" (i, p. xiv) ; and "Internal observation is at bottom the same
as external observation " (i, p. xxxii). See also his EvohUionnisme des Idecs-Forces,
1890.
One of the most popular solutions is quasi-monistic. As Prof. Bain
expresses it : " The one substance, with two sets of properties, two sides,
the physical and the mental — a double-faced unity — would appear to
comply with all the exigencies of the case" {Mind and Body, 1874, p.
196). Or as Prof. Lloyd Morgan puts it: " Monism regards nature and
experience as one and indivisible, and all apparent dualism, as a dualism
of aspect, distinguishable in thought, but indissoluble in existence"
{Comparative Psychology, 1894, p. 9). This one substance with two
aspects is evidently two substances masked by bold figures of speech. It
is as though we referred to two parallel lines as one line with two aspects,
or as if we added a third line of which those two lines were properties.
The chief criticism, however, is based on the simple data : there we find
no exact correspondence between two classes of facts, nor two classes at
all ; we only encounter a single unitary world where the solution has no
place. In a strain similar to that of Bain, Huxley writes : " If we analyse
the proposition that all mental phenomena are the effects or products
of material phenomena, all that it means amounts to this ; that whenever
those states of consciousness which we call sensation, or emotion, or
thought, come into existence, complete investigation will show good
reason for the belief that they are preceded by those other phenomena
of consciousness to which Ave give the names of matter and motion"
{Hu7ne, 1879, pp. 80-1). Here we have two assumptions (i) that there exist
not things or systems but states of consciousness, and (2) that the
phenomena of the material world are distinguishable from sensations and
precede the latter. If by states of consciousness be meant merely things
or systems, — trees, pains, etc., — the phrase is unobjectionable; but if
something else be implied, then our analyses compel us to dissent. Again,
to claim precedence as between sensations and other phenomena is as
SYSTEMS AS UNIFIED 369
though we should say that in entering a room the limbs (part of the man)
precede the man (every part of the man). Physical phenomena are
sensations or primary systems, and hence cannot explain sensations as
such. Psychophysical parallelism swarms with these so-called parallels
which are the same class of thing counted twice over. Indeed, this
unsatisfactory parallelism is the monism now in vogue.
Followers of Kant who are eager to prove God, the soul, and freedom
— followers such as Prof. Ward — have attempted to turn their master's
flank, by saying that the phenomenal world is the result of an apperceptive
process ; that without Subject there is no Object. In a sense this position
is based on later researches; but it leaves the principal questions un-
touched. If presentations are not part of the Subject, as Ward contends ;
if the presentation continuum be not the Subject itself, then we
have still the Subject, which is admittedly unanalysable, and something
beside. In other words, while there can be no husband without a wife
and, by hypothesis, no Object without a Subject, yet that proves not
unity but relationship or dependence, and we have still left a dual
universe no more closely connected than Kant's phenomena and
noumena. Only with the reduction of Subject to Object or Object to
Subject, or by their resolution into what is common to them, or by their
rejection as fictitious, can we obtain a unitary conception ; to argue for
duality in unity, as Prof. Ward does, instead of for dualism, is to rely on a
neat wording for the solution of a difficulty.
Dr. Stout {Manual, 1898, ch. 3) urges a theory which assumes psycho-
physical parallelism. He suggests that the stream of individual conscious-
ness is part of an immaterial system, and that the stream of material
appearances has the same origin. Within that immaterial system, to
which consciousness and phenomena are traced back, the individual
consciousness is a determining factor : within this system it acts and is
acted on. To this system, " in some way," percepts or primary
compounds are due, and, it is held, that we are nearer the truth in
speaking of it as consciousness, than in speaking of it as matter. This
theory suffers from fatal defects. It is based first on a dubious parallelism,
since the grey substance of the cortex is as much a visual sensation as is
a seen house ; and it then assumes some unitary world, different in kind
from the one we know, where action and reaction actually take place.
How can we, however, escape the conviction that the phenomenal worlds
are, and if so, have we not three worlds instead of two ? And lastly, how
does this immaterial world, different in kind, come to give birth to two
worlds of appearances ; and ignoring this difficulty, whence do we
obtain the phenomenal parallelism except by a parallelism in the
immaterial world, for is it not acknowledged that there must be two
noumenal somethings to correspond to the assumed two phenomenal
somethings? Furthermore, how can we speak of this non-phenomenal
world, after all Kant's warnings, as being nearer to mind than to matter
or as causal or as acting ? This see-saw reaction from a crude materialism
24
370 GENERAL ANALYSES
to a crude psychologism seems, on the whole, a doubtful advantage, and
certainly gives no indication of an advance towards the solution of
a tantalisingly subtle problem.*
Kant brought forward his Critique {Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2nd
ed., 1787, preface), as the final word on the subject we are discussing.
He repeatedly contended that no successor could possibly introduce im-
provements into his system. So perfect did he believe his Critique to be
that he denied the possibility of his having overlooked anything. As the
present work is purely that of a pioneer, I make the opposite claim, i.e.,
that the notions on the points here raised are most imperfect. The task
is more than can be carried out by one individual who has many problems
before him. Only this, I think, seems established, that all parallelistic
and dualistic theories are based on a confused analysis.
Some may demur to treating the problem of monism in a work on
psychology. Such objectors occupy a false position, for they assume that
it is the business of speculators to peg out claims, retaining for themselves
all that is of value in the field which is to be prospected. I, however,
recognise in the realm of science neither speculator nor warden of the
gold-fields, and I, therefore, protest against a philosophy which proceeds
by speculation and lays down the law to investigators. I must repeat,
what I have often said, that hypotheses can bring us but a very little in
advance of facts, and that independently of scientific research, hypotheses
are of no use. Hence, while a piercing intellect has frequent oppor-
tunities of collecting, collating and combining limited generalisations,
there is no room for any science of things as yet. Such a science couk'i-
only be dreamt of in the far past, when the narrow range of speculation
and the wide range of the unexplored were still unsuspected.
200. — A Bird's Eye View.
The abrupt division between mind and body, or spirit and matter, is
fatal to the psychologist who wishes to obtain a comprehensive view of
his department of knowledge. On examination, however, he finds that
that division is unjustifiable. He discovers that the eye, for instance, is
not the initiator of visual systems, since it is itself a system of that class ;
and that accordingly the sensations or primary systems cannot be due to
the sense organs, since the latter are themselves sense complexes. Simi-
larly he notes that all systems are reducible to the same simple class and
are fundamentally alike, and that the differences in their actual human
stage of development are theoretically immaterial. Remaining faithful
to his method of investigating the facts themselves, the psychologist
finally learns that the data of existence form a single plane, and this
forces on him a unitary, as opposed to a dualistic or pluralistic interpre-
tation of nature and existence. Hence results a monism, pure and
simple, having but one aspect.
* Stout's view scarcely differs from that of Lotze as described in the latter's
Medidnische Fsychologie, 1852, pp. 79-80.
PART III
SPECIAL SYNTHESES
CHAPTER IX
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED
Power in this is mainly shown :
Others' wit to make our own.
20 1. — The Immediate Relation of the Individual to his
Environment.
In sec. 97 I referred to the fact that man's originality is restricted
within narrow boundaries. In this chapter I intend to treat the subject
exhaustively, and show what amount of truth or error underlies the
doctrine of the s pontaneity of the soul. I purpose defining, as far as
possible, the psychological relation in which the individual stands to-
wards his fellows and towards his past self, for both from a theoretical
and a practical standpoint it is desirable that the issue should be resolved.
To give our discussion a concrete basis, I will examine in detail
Shakespeare's Sonnets, after which I shall try to prove that what I have
stated of Shakespeare in particular holds good of humanity in general.
Here is the i i6th sonnet as an illustration of the class to which it belongs :
" Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove :
O, no ! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken :
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come ;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved."
202. — Shakespeare and the Sonnet.
The notion of sonnet writing did not originate with Shakespeare.
When we study his age, and especially the last decade of the sixteenth
374 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
century, we find that sonneteering was the rage. Watson, Spenser^
Daniel, Drayton, Griffin, Smith, Lodge, Fletcher, Constable, Barnes,
Chapman, and others, all published collections of sonnets between about
1590 and 1600. Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey were among
the first to experiment in England with this poetic form, and Sidney and
Spenser, with many more, made it popular.
Here is a list of Elizabethan sonnet writers. Anonymous, Zepheriah, 1594, 40 sonnets
(Arber's Garner, v). Barnes, Farthenophil, 1593, 104 sonnets {The Poems of Barnabe
Barnes, 1875). Barnfield, Cynthia with Certaine Sontutts, 1595, 20 sonnets {Com-
plete Poems of Richard Barnfidd, 1876). C. , J., 1595, 103 sonnets of 6 lines each
(Arber's Reprints, iv). Chapman, A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy, 1595, 10
sonnets (77i£ Poems of George Chapman, 1875). Constable, Diana, 1594, 68 sonnets
(Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles, 1896) ; and Spiritual Sonnets, 1595, 17 sonnets {The
Poems and Sonnets of Henry Constable, 1897). Daniel, Delia, 1594, first ed. 1592, 67
sonnets. Davies of Hereford, Dedicatory Sonnets, 1603, 35 sonnets {Works, 1878, i,
pp. 95-101) ; and 149 sonnets {Works, ii, pp. 6-2S). Donne, Philomel, 1602, 10 sonnets
(The Complete Poems of John Donne, 1873). Drayton, Idea, 63 sonnets, first ed. 1594,
(Arbers Reprints, vi). Fletcher, Licia, 1593, 52 sonnets (Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet
Cycles, 1896). Greville Fulke Lord Brooke, Caelica, before 1586, scarcely to be called
sonnets (Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles, 1898). Griffin, Fidessa, 1596, 62 sonnets
(Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles, 1896). Harvey, 1592, 22 sonnets {The Works of
Gabriel Harvey, 1884-5). L[inch], Diella, 1596, 39 sonnets (Arbers Garner, vii).
Lodge, Phillis, 1595, 40 sonnets (Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles, 1896). Percy,
Coelia, 1594, 20 sonnets (Arber's Garner, vi). Sidney (d. 1586), Astrophel and Stella,
1 10 sonnets {The Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, 1877). Smith, Chloris, 1596,
50 sonnets (Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles, 1896). Spenser, Amoretti or Sonnets,
I59S> 88 sonnets {Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, 1880). T[ofte], Laura, 1597,
120 sonnets (Arber's Garner, viii). Watson (d. 1592), The Passionate Century of Love,
1582, 100 sonnets ; and The Tears of Fancie, 1593, 60 sonnets (Arber's Reprints, No. 21).
Shakespeare's sonnets indicated, therefore, no spontaneous outburst on
his part. In choosing to address his friend, and in selecting the sonnet
as his medium, he did what a host of others were doing. As the corn
bends with the wind which sweeps across it, so the wizard breath
of fashion is irresistible, most of us yielding to its impulse. Seeing his
fellow poets pour out their souls in cycles of sonnets, entering into these
productions till he became saturated with their spirit, and being himself
in the throes of a passion, what other course could he take but join the
choristers ? The vis a tergo of fashion is despotic. We meet its expression
so continuously and persistently morning, noon and night that, struggle
as we may, we are compelled to surrender. There are none who escape
this power wholly, and there are few who are not its bond-servants.
Shakespeare, then, obeyed the spirit of his period when he ventured on
writing sonnets. Indeed, it was a mark of his character, perhaps even
more than of his time, to imitate his contemporaries.
Ctovi (Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles, 1896) says in the introduction to Daniel: "Shake-
speare's sonnets are full of echoes from the voices of Sidney, Constable, Davies, Lodge,
Watson, Drayton, and Barnes, as well as from that mellifluous one of Daniel" (pp. 3-4).
So Lee, A Life of Shakespeare, 1899, pp. 109-10: "The thoughts and words of the
sonnets of Daniel, Drayton, Watson, Barnabe Barnes, Constable, and Sidney were
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 375
assimilated by Shakespeare in his poems as consciously and with as little compunction as
the plays and novels of his contemporaries in his dramatic work." See his section on
The Vogue of the Elizabethan Sonnet, pp. 427-41.
203. — Shakespeare and the Sonnet Form.
We are not concerned with the evolution of the Italian or French
sonnet and its transference to, and development in, English soil.* All
that we are bound to note is that the literature of Italy and France was
extensively studied, translated and taken as a model, by the literary men
of the sixteenth century in England. To that tendency we owe our
sonnet. Many were the changes in form that it subsequently passed
through. On the whole, however, one form was by far the most general
among the Elizabethans, being employed by the Earl of Surrey, by
Daniel, Drayton, Smith, Lodge, Fletcher, and others. When Shakes-
peare wrote his quatorzains that was the ruling form, and so he straight-
way adopted it. Here is an early specimen by the Earl of Surrey
(d. 1547):
" The golden gift that Nature did thee give,
To fasten friends and feed them at thy will
With form and favour, taught me to believe
How thou art made to show her greatest skill :
Whose hidden virtues are not so unknown
But lively dames might gather at the first ;
Where beauty so her perfect seed hath sown,
Of all other graces follow needs there must.
Now certes, Lady, since all this is true,
That from above thy gifts are thus elect,
Do not deface them then with fancies new,
Nor change of minds let not the mind infect :
But mercy him, thy friend, that doth thee serve,
Who seeks always thine honour to preserve."t
Comparing this typical sixteenth century sonnet with the one we have
quoted from Shakespeare, we see how unreservedly he adopted the current
*See Lee's learned Bibliographical Note on the Sonnet in France, 1550- 1600, on pp.
442-5 of the quoted work.
t " The whole period from Wyatt to Shakespeare shows a slow and steady mastery of
the native over the foreign tendency. The change was not a sudden leap on the part of
Daniel and Shakespeare, but a gradual growth occupjang a half century and culminating
in the English form" (Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles, Introduction to Daniel, p. 5).
Here is an analysis of the sonnet form in the twenty-two authors quoted. Anonymous :
the placing of rhymes varies ; but many sonnets have the same form as Shakespeare's.
Barnes : many of 15 lines, and rhymes irregular. Barnfield : rhyme abbacddcef
fegg. C. J.:ababcc (only six lines). Chapman : rhymes as Shakespeare's. Con-
stable :abbaab bacdcdee. Daniel : rhymes vary ; but generally as Shakespeare's.
Davies, rhymes as Shakespeare's. Donne : rhymes as Shakespeare's. Drayton : rhymes
chiefly Shakespearian. Fletcher : rhymes as Shakespeare's. Greville, Lord Brooke,
rhymes undecided. Griffin: rhymes as Shakespeare's. Harvey : rhymes vary. L[inch :]
rhymes as Shakespeare's. Lodge : rhymes as Shakespeare's. Percy : rhymes as Shake-
speare's. Sidney : rhymes vary. Smith : rhymes as Shakespeare's. .Spenser : a b a
bbcbccdcdee. T[ofte], a b a b c c doubled, and ababcdcdee, these two
forms alternating. Watson : (early sonnets) three sets of a b a b c c, making 18 lines ;
and (later sonnets) as Shakespeare.
376 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
form. In both instances the number of lines is fourteen. In both in-
stances the rhymes are alternate in the first twelve lines. In both in-
stances the poem ends with a couplet which tends to sum up the argument
of the preceding twelve lines. In both instances the lines are all de-
casyllabic. There is an apparent difference in that Shakespeare occasion-
ally makes his lines end in a short syllable, an eleventh ; but, as a matter
of fact, all the sonnet writers allow themselves this deviation from the
normal. There are other striking structural resemblances. There is with
the sonneteers a tendency for their lines to run very smoothly. The
sentences are almost uniformly short and forcible, ending usually with
the rhyme, and it is rare for full stops to occur in the middle of the line.
This contrasts with the modern sonnet in which the sentences are long
and involved, and where little regard is paid to music as expressed by a
feeling for the metre and the rhythm, so that they read like cumbersome
blank verse. The student may with advantage compare the sonnet of the
nineteenth with that of the sixteenth century. Here is Wordsworth's
sonnet, "Scorn not:"
" Scorn not the sonnet ; critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours ; — with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart ; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound ;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound ;
Camoens soothed with it an exile's grief;
The sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow ; a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from faery-land
To struggle through dark ways ; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
Soul-animating strains — alas, too l^"^' ! "
The difference between the technique and the spirit of this sonnet and
of the one quoted from Shakespeare indicates not two individuals, but two
epochs. The reader who is acquainted with no other Elizabethan poet but
Shakespeare must be careful not to consider as characteristic of him alone
what is really a badge of the period. The sixteenth century sonneteers
whose names we have mentioned wrote in much the same strain. What
differences there were, consisted in stronger leanings in certain directions ;
that is to say, various writers accentuated various tendencies.
204. — Peculiar Sonnets.
We have insisted that Shakespeare's sonnet, its music, its perfume, its
splendour and its delicacy, was no creation of his own. Its atmosphere
betokens an epoch, not a man.
Among the sonnets we are analysing there are several which are curiously
affected and over-subtle. It might seem that these were native to our poet.
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 111
As a matter of fact, he but followed the fashion, often apparently going so
far as to adapt another's work. Compare his 46th sonnet :
*' Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war
How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar.
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
A closet never pierced with crystal eyes^
But the defendant doth that plea deny
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
To 'cide this title is impannelled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,
And by their verdict is determined
The clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part:
As thus : mine eye's due is thy outward part,
And my heart's right thy inward love of heart"
with Constable's {Diana, Sixth Decade, sonnet 7) : ■
" My heart mine eye accuseth of his death.
Saying his wanton sight bred his unrest ;
Mine eye affirms my heart's unconstant faith
Hath been his bane, and all his joys repressed.
My heart avows mine eye let in the fire,
Which burns him with an everlasting light.
Mine eye replies my greedy heart's desire
Let in those floods, which drown him day and night.
Thus wars my heart which reason doth maintain,
And calls my eye to combat if he dare.
The whilst m.y soul impatient of disdain,
Wrings from his bondage unto death more near ;
Save that my love still holdeth him in hand ;
A kingdom thus divided cannot stand ! "
Compare with the above two poems, Watson's sonnet 20, 1593 :
" My heart accused mine eyes and was offended.
Vowing the cause was in mine eyes aspiring :
Mine eyes affirmed my heart might well amend it,
If he at first had banished love's desiring.
Heart said that love did enter at the eyes,
And from the eyes descended to the heart:
Eyes said that in the heart did sparks arise.
Which kindled flame that wrought the inward smart,
Heart said eyes' tears might have quenched that flame,
Eyes said heart's sighs at first might love exile :
So heart the eyes and eyes the heart did blame,
Whilst both did pine for both the pain did feel.
Heart sighed and bled, eyes wept and gazed too much,
Yet must I gaze because I see none such."
The resemblance between the three sonnets is too great to be accounted
for by accident. With this, however, we have nothing to do, the point
378 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
being that wherever there is a change in the style of sonnets, as in sonnets
39, 40, 42, 45, 47, 66, 134-136, it is not difficult to find a model for the
new style in the work of his predecessors. Deviations from the normal
in the poems must not, therefore, be construed as original conceptions.
Shakespeare's weaknesses are those of his times. As silly sheep follow
each other unreasoningly, so he, in imitation of others, often allowed him-
self to be caught in the meshes of an over-subtle style.
205. — Shakespeare's Language.
A peculiarity, and not by any means an unimportant one, in Shakespeare's
style is his use of unconventional, vigorous and thoughtful adjectives.
Some of the depth and virility of his manner lies in these, and they also
separate him from modern poets. Thus he employs the word Time
eleven times with an adjective before it, as follows: "golden time,"
"never-resting time," "wasteful time," "devouring time," "swift-footed
time," " old time," " dear time," " sluttish time," " wasted time," " inviting
time," "reckoning time." Such adjectives give a ducal richness to the
sentences in which they occur. They convert what would otherwise be
personal and particular into what is impersonal and universal. Here is
a further selection from the sonnets : " Reckoning time whose millioned
accidents," "an all-eating shame and thriftless praise," "hideous winter,"
"winter's ragged hand," "hideous night," "sable curls," "sullied night,"
"stretchM metre of an antique song," " swart-complexioned night," "sullen
earth," "swift extremity," "dull flesh," "blunting the fine point of seldom
pleasure," "than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time," "all-oblivious
enmity," "world-without-end hour," "keep open my heavy eyelids to the
weary night," "beaten and chopped with tanned antiquity," "time's injurious
hand," "age's steepy night," "against confounding age's cruel knife,"
"time's fell hand," "outworn buried age," "hungry ocean," "the firm
soil wins of the watery main," "against the wreckful siege of battering
days," " captive good attending captain ill," " the surly sullen bell,"
"niggard truth," "filching age," "mouthed graves," "time's thievish pro-
gress," "heavy ignorance," "rude ignorance," "my saucy bark," "time-
bettering days," "lean penury," "in polished form of well-refined pen,"
"ungathered fruit," "teeming autumn," "proud-pied April," "white
despair," "resty Muse," "steeled sense," "adder's sense," "vexed oblivion,"
"tongue-tied patience," "testy sick men," "cunning love."
From no other series of sonnets or poems of the same length could
probably such an abundant harvest be gathered. One has only to attempt
to find adjectives of this character within one's own self to see how our
thought vainly strives to escape the beaten path of custom. We see in
them an effort to emancipate oneself from listless or slavish thinking.
However, our interest lies in other directions. We want to know whether
the difference in this respect between us and Shakespeare, is as great as
that which existed between him and his contemporaries. Our answer
cannot be as decided here. The notion of throwing off the shackles of
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 379
poverty-stricken custom is not traceable to him. Spenser's Fairy Queen
is replete with adjectives of this very class, and others of his contemporaries
are not unaffected by the charm. Shakespeare is, therefore, not original in
this respect. Still, no other sonneteer of his time made such extensive use
of expressive adjectives. He adopted the style, but increased its scope.
We read in Griffin of " all-withering age," "injurious fates," "all-reporting
fame," "kilHng grief," "traitor absence," "never-speaking silence," "ever-
flying flame," "all-concealing night," "men-devouring wrong," "soul-
tormenting grief;" and in Daniel we read of "cruel time," "time's
consuming rage," "tyrant time," "swift speedy time," "unsparing time,"
"sacrilegious time," "golden hairs shall change to silver wire," "mercy-
wanting storm," " care-charmer sleep." On the whole, however, significant
adjectives are employed casually, not systematically.
What has been said as to adjectives is true also of other important parts
of speech. Their value in the sonnets is often unmistakable, while, at the
same time, they tend to give weight and dignity to many of the sentences
and thoughts. In these details of Shakespeare's style he cannot be called
original, though undoubtedly he recognised their usefulness to a greater
extent than most of his contemporaries. In that, and in that alone, lay
his pre-eminence. His claim to inventiveness must be dismissed.
The 1 1 6th sonnet, already quoted, is a good illustration of Shakespeare
at his best, and he is that frequently. We must re-member in this connec-
tion that there is no necessary relation between poetry and imagery.
French verse up to the nineteenth century was, if I mistake not, almost
devoid of it. Poetry may reach a tolerably high level, and yet be almost
entirely wanting in this element. Taking versification as a whole, we find
specimens of every variety of colouring from monotonous grey to rosy
luxuriousness, each period of history having usually a tendency of its own.
The sonnet of Wordsworth which we cited is fairly typical of modern
poetry, allowing for Keats and Shelley. Even more true to their period
are the sonnets whose psychological origin we are endeavouring to trace.
They, too, offer, as regards imagery, a faithful picture of the Elizabethan
times. Both in matter and manner they reveal their birth-place. If we
had no other guide to the time of their composition, the secret of their
imagery would place them, for at no other date was poetic painting of just
this kind, and never did child betray its parentage so clearly as the colour-
ing of the sonnets discloses the Elizabethan touch. Strictly speaking, it
was not Shakespeare's soul that charactered in ink these lofty conceits ;
it was the inventive spirit of his time.
Elizabethan imagery is distinguished by wealth and character. Richness
of colour, however, is in itself no virtue, for many a writer is florid, and
yet lacks merit. He threads on strings a quantity of hackneyed and feeble
illustrations ; or invents what of itself is malapropos, uninteresting and
poor ; or he is bound within a small compass, so that we can almost divine
what form his fancy will take. Breadth, depth, vigour, grandeur, mark
the best Elizabethan word-painters, and these qualities we meet with in
38o SPECIAL SYNTHESES
Shakespeare. The moulder of stanzas who communes only with himself
and is dead to the throbbing world ; to whom nature, history, art, science,
commerce, the home, are pale abstractions, cannot fascinate our imagina-
tion. The Elizabethan poetry reflects the Elizabethan life, its liberal
interests and its thirst for action.
So much for Shakespearean imagery in general. Foremost in quantity
in the sonnets stands the conception of time and its derivatives, age, death,
night, sun and season. I have already referred to the fact that in the
first 126 sonnets the word Time is used with an adjective before it eleven
times. A close study reveals that Time is personified no less than forty-
eight times in these poems, and is employed altogether seventy-three times.
Whole sonnets are devoted to it, as 19, 64, 65 and 123, though this does
not exhaust the central conception. The frequent references to death,
age, the periods of the day, the seasons, are variations of the same theme.
The poetic handling of this conception on so large a scale can only be
defended on the ground of effectiveness, and, judging from modern poetry,
one would think it impossible that a notion should not have died of anemia
long before it was personified for the forty-eighth time. However, only
those spiritually sapless will think so. To an Elizabethan, Time was a
concept which grew in attractiveness before his eyes the longer he gazed
on it. Use did not wear it out ; it only unfolded its implications. It was
a notion which Shakespeare had employed before, and which he never
wearied of returning to afterwards. In the nature of things, time and its
family are leading conceptions in every strong nature which is not habit-
ridden. They are the matrix in which the tissue of our existence is em-
bedded, and only the poverty of our thought limits the richness of their
inner meaning.
This poetic simile of Time did not orginate with Shakespeare, for it is an
old and favourite personification. In Daniel's sonnets the allusions to the
subject are not infrequent. We find there "cruel time," " time's consuming
rage," " tyrant time," " time bestows," " time do spoil her," " time hath made
a passport," "swift speedy time," "to spend the April of my years," "no
April can revive." The likeness in thought is conspicuous ; and if Daniel's
reflections are less frequent, there is yet one unmistakable current under-
lying the works of both poets. So Sidney : " niggard time," " stealing time."
Drayton is fond of this word, witness: "time's flying hours," "time's defect,"
" lime's sacrilegious rapine,'' " his utmost date," " time might work," " time's spirit," " by
the locks he haleth aged time," " time on his life thy gathered store disperse," " timeless
death," "time offers," "time," "time still reads," " o'erworn wrinkled age," "this
Edward in the April of his age," "restless time that never turns again," " time's pesti-
lence," "time-fawning spaniels," "time festers and time mourns," "time's old trans-
gression," "world-devouring time" {The Tragical Legend of Robert, Duke of Normandy
[etc.], 1596). So Barnes : " Time's cancer," "devouring time."
The subject which stands next in quantitative importance to time, is that
of law. This is starthng, and deserves a special explanation. Shakespeare's
allusions, like those of his great contemporaries, are culled from so large a
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 381
field that occasional references to law should not surprise us ; but the
question assumes the dimensions of a problem when it is found that law all
but holds the first place. The two selected sonnets are pointed illustrations
of this. The first one starts in dry legal phraseology : " Let us not to the
marriage of true minds admit impediments." The other sonnet is more
remarkable still. It reads like a brief full of legal technicalities ; and yet
Constable's poem has not a trace of this element, though it is otherwise its
double. There are references to law in a large number of the sonnets.
Here we strike on something which cannot apparently be traced to
Shakespeare's professional environment. Given occasional allusions in his
contemporaries (Compare "that beauty which you hold in lease," with
Daniel " in beauty's lease expired " ; also in the same writer " cast th'
accounts," " summon," and possibly other similarities), and we discover the
plank over which Shakespeare passed to the abundant use of legal imagery.
Uncontrolled circumstance was probably the leading factor.
The circumstance is not so inexplicable as the text supposes. For instance, sonnets 20,
37, 38, in Anonymous, Zephcriah, are legal in character ; No. 20, in Barnes' Parthenophil,
has legal metaphors : " tenants," " freehold," " in tenour of love's service," " exaction,"
" rent " ; sonnet 5, in Griffin's Fidessa, belongs to the category of law ; Sidney's Stella,
sonnet 18, has: "audit," "accounts," "bankrout"; and, lastly, Lee, in his Life of
Shakespeare, quotes Sir J. Davies as ridiculing the frequent use of law in the sonneteers
of his time.
Apart from Time and Law, the similes in the sonnets are taken from
nature, music, painting, the stage, war, the Court, friendship, love, home,
disease, avarice, the sea, navigation, the Muses, the dial and the mirror.
Many of these subjects, as those implied in nature, the sea, painting, the
mirror or glass, occur repeatedly ; and all of them are favourite subjects of
the Elizabethans.
So-called Shakespearean imagery is not uncommon with his con-
temporaries. Most of them remind us of him who expressed them generally
best. Witness Daniel :
"The broken tops of lofty trees declare
The fury of a mercy-wanting^ storm."
Or
" The ocean never did attend more duly
Upon his sovereign's course, the night's pale queen,
Nor paid the import of his waves more truly,
Than mine unto her deity have been."
Or (of England)
" Neptune's best darling, held between his arms."
Or, to quote Constable :
" Care, the consuming canker of the mind !
The discord that disorders sweet hearts' tune I
Th' abortive bastard of a coward mind I
The lightfoot lackey that runs post by death.
Bearing the letters which contain our end I
The busy advocate that sells his breath,
Denouncing worst to him, is most my^friend !"
382 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
There is in this last passage something peculiarly characteristic of all that
can be said of Shakespeare. Here is his breadth, his depth, his simplicity,
his music and his vigour ! Extracts might be largely multiplied ; but the
above quotations must suffice.
Or, " Come, sleep ! O sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe.
The puor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low."
Sidney, Sonnet 39.
Or, " Thou blind man's mark, thou fool's self-chosen snare,
Fond fancy's scum, and dregs of scattered thought :
Band of all evils ; cradle of causeless care ;
Thou web of will, whose end is never wrought :
Desire ! desire ! I have too dearly bought.
With prise of mangled mind, thy worthless ware."
Sidney, Sonnet 109.
Or, "The marigold so likes the lovely sun.
That when he sets the other hides her face.
And when he 'gins his morning course to run.
She spreads abroad and shows her greatest grace."
Wation, 1582, Sonnet 19.
Or, " When May is in his prime, and youthful spring
Doth clothe the tree with leaves, and ground with flowers.
And time of year reviveth everything ;
And lovely nature smiles, and nothing lowers :
Then Philomela most doth strain her breast
With night-complaints, and sits in little rest."
Watson, 1582, Sonnet 26.
A peculiarity of Shakespeare is that he not only writes like his fellows,
but also makes free use of their productions. Often there is no more than
a strong likeness, suggesting the source of the line or sonnet, but frequently
there is no reasonable doubt as to their origin. I can only give a few
quotations in illustration. In the sonnets we find :
"Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,"
In Spenser we read :
" . . the dull drops ....
As from a limbeck did adown distil"
" From my love's limbeck still, 'stillest tears."
In Barnes :
In Lodge :
" The limbeck is mine eye that doth distil the same."
While Spenser speaks of "lofty trees, yclad with summer's pride,"
Shakespeare tells us that
" Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three su miners' pride."
Thus Lilly, praising the lark, says :
" How at heaven's gates she claps her wings.
The morn not waking till she sings."
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 383
And Shakespeare :
" Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven! s gate,"
Many more such resemblances might be insisted on. Let us instead
consider another class of parallels. Shakespeare repeatedly tells his friend,
with variations :
" O, give thyself the thanks, if ought in me
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight."
So Sidney
" in Stella's face I read
What love and beauty be ; then all my deed
But copying is, what in her, nature writes."
" All my words thy beauty doth indite.
And love doth hold my hand and makes me write."
So Daniel
" If any pleasing relish here I use,
Then judge the world her beauty gives the same."
Constable writes :
" I never will deny
That former ^o&Xs praise the beauty of their days ;
But all those beauties were hui Jigures of thy praise,
And all those poets did of thee but prophesy."
So Shakespeare :
" So all i\i^\r praises are h\xt prophecies
Of this our time, all you "^x&figuringP
Similar resemblances we have noted previously. An intimate study of
the Elizabethans would prove that our poet-in-chief was largely indebted to
others for special images, conceits, turns of phrases and ideas. He dwelt
lovingly on the good things which he found in his predecessors. For in-
stance, what could be prettier than the 99th sonnet (which, by-the-bye, has
fifteen lines) :
" The froward violet thus did I chide :
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
If not from my love's breath ? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair :
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand
One blushing shame, another white despair ;
A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both
And to his robbery had annexed thy breath ;
. But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
Moxejlowers I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee."
384 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
Compare this with a sonnet of Constable's :
" My lady's presence makes the roses red.
Because to see her lips they blush with shame.
The lily's leaves for envy pale became,
And her white hands in them this envy bred.
The marigold * the leaves abroad doth spread,
Because the sun's and her power is the same.
The violet oi purple colour came,
Dyed in the blood she made my heart to shed.
In brief, d\\ flowers from her their virtue take ;
From her sweet breath their stueet smells do proceed ;
The living heat which her eyebeams doth make
Warmeth the ground and quickeneth the seed.
The rain wherewith she watereth the flowers,
Falls from mine eyes which she dissolves in showers."
206. — Shakespeare's Insight.
Shakespeare's insight is universally acknowledged. It is as a thinker,
that we wish here to learn something of him from the sonnets. Necessity
does not ordain that epistles addressed to a friend or mistress should contain
genera] reflections. Accordingly, many of Shakespeare's sonnets are entirely
devoid of such ; while those of his contemporaries confirm our contention.
The value and weight of his cycle of poems depend almost entirely on the
impersonal element, and but for that Shakespeare would not be great. We
have already touched upon this side of his character when speaking of the
luminous adjectives he uses and of his references to Time and its derivatives.
And in the same connection we have seen that for Shakespeare cannot be
claimed the merit of originality on that score. We noted nevertheless that
what was comparatively rare in his models is a familiar strain with him.
This is emphatically true of what is impersonal in the sonnets. Lacking as
he may be in inventiveness, he yet almost changed the nature of his sonnets,
perhaps slightly marred them, by his wholesale introduction of reflections.
Where his compeers are absorbed in the object of their affection, he con-
stantly looks upon his love as connected with general characteristics. He
declines to dwell, perhaps he finds it impossible to do so, in the personal
sphere. Suddenly he breaks out with :
" O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told."t
Or, " Love is too young to know what conscience is :
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?"
In this way Shakespeare ever bursts through the narrow bounds of the
personal. The 11 6th sonnet, which is quoted at the beginning of this
* Compare the lines on the marigold I have quoted from Watson with these two lines,
and the two quotations with the image in Shakespeare's sonnet 25 :
" Great princes' favorites their fair haves spread
But as the marigo/d &i the suit's eye."
t The 1599 edition of this poem has " O, love's best habit is a soothing tongue," a very
inferior line.
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 385
chapter, may be taken as a choice specimen of his philosophising mood.
To quote other examples would be superfluous.
Animal species are not originated by a sudden fiat, but as the result of
an exploitation of such slight variations as are favoured by the environ-
ment. No evolutionist, therefore, should be startled when he finds that
Shakespeare did not come like a clap of thunder from the sky ; but only
showed certain modifications from his contemporaries. Great men do not
constitute species ; they merely raise a variety to that dignity by bringing it
into prominence. Shakespeare's insistence on the universal rivets our
attention on him, rather than on others who touch upon it incidentally.
Strictly speaking, therefore, it is quantity and not quality which distin-
guishes him. Had there been but two or three of the sonnets written in a
reflective vein, and only a dozen or two incidental impersonalities, the
name of Shakespeare, as far as the sonnets are concerned, would have
ranked with Daniel and other little known authors. It is the quantity of
finer work which has rescued him from the clutches of neglect ; or, to put
the matter differently, had Daniel quintupled his general references and
Shakespeare decreased his considerably, there is fair reason to believe that
Daniel would have been our great sonneteer. In illustration of this, I will
quote two of Daniel's sonnets to show the higher qualities in Shakespeare's
compeers {So/met 30, 1594) :
" And yet I cannot reprehend the flight,
Or blame th' attempt presuming so to soar,
The mounting venture for a high delight
Did make the honour of the fall the more.
For who gets wealth that puts not from the shore ?
Danger has honour, great designs their fame.
Glory doth follow, courage goes before,
And though th' event oft answers not the same,
Suffice that high attempts have never shame.
The mean observer (whom base safety keeps)
Lives without honour, dies without a name.
And in eternal darkness ever sleeps.
And, therefore, Delia, 'tis to me no blot,
To have attempted, though obtained thee not."
And what seems Daniel's best {So fine t 49, 1594) :
" Care-charmer sleep, son of the sable night,
Brother to death, in silent darkness born ;
Relieve my anguish and restore the light,
With dark forgetting of my cares return.
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth :
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the night's untruth.
Cease, dreams, the imagery of our day-desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow.
Never let rising sun approve you liars.
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.
25
386 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
Still let nie sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day's disdain."
Let me add one or two more ijuoialions. Here is a sonnet from Watson {Sonnet
77, 1582):
" Time wasteth years, and months, and hours :
Time doth consume fame, honour, wit, and strength :
Time kills the greenest herbs and sweetest flowers :
Time wears out youth and beauty's looks at length :
Time doth convey to ground both foe and friend,
And each thing else but love, which has no end.
Time maketh every tree to die and rot :
Time turneth oft our pleasures into pain :
Time causes wars and wrongs to be forgot :
Time clears the sky which first hung full of rain :
Time makes an end of all humane desire.
But only this, which sets my heart on fire.
Time turneth into naught each princely state :
Time brings a flood from new resolved snow :
Time calms the sea where tempest was of late :
Time eats whate'er the moon can see below :
And yet no time prevails in my behove,
Nor any time can make me cease to love,"
And here are three stanzas from Drayton, to which scores of similar ones from the
same author might be added. Speaking of Fortune, he says (Tragical, etc., 1596,
stanza 37) :
" A hap, a chance, a casual event.
The vulgar's idol, and a childish terror,
A what men will, a silly accident.
The mask of blindness, and disguise of error,
Nature's vile nickname, folly's foolish mirror ;
A term, a byword, by tradition learned,
A hearsay, nothing, not to be discerned."
Kgiin (Tragical, etc., 1596, stanza 129) :
'* Fair memory, awaken death from sleep.
Call up time's spirit, of passed things to tell,
Unseal the secrets of the unsearched deep,
Let out the prisoners from oblivion's cell.
Invoke the black inhabitants of hell :
Into the earth's deep dungeon let the light,
And with fair day clear up his cloudy night."
Also (Matilda, 1596, stanza 155) :
"Our fond preferments are but children's toys,
And, as a shadow, all our pleasures pass.
As years increase, so waning are our joys,
And beauty crazed, like a broken glass :
A pretty tale of that which never was.
All things decay, yet virtue shall not die.
This only gives us immortality."
207. — The Object of Shakespeare's Sonnets.
I have said that Shakespeare was but one of the sonneteers of his age.
If we ask for the object of Shakespeare's sonnets, we find that that also was
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 387
determined for him. I cannot enter into the question of how far it was
a new departure to send to a friend epistles such as are the sonnets i to
126. Careful study shows that while it was no custom among the Eliza-
bethans to address a long sonnet cycle to a protector, yet it was quite in
the spirit of his times. Platonic love and excessive admiration were in no
sense uncommon in that age. The notion of passionate friendship, with
its implications, is not originated or added to by him. The sonnet cycles
of his time almost invariably had love for their motive. His expression
•of devotion, humility, prostrate dependence, yearnings and loyalty are the
stock-in-trade of all his fellows. They vie with each other in the attempt
to prove their passion to be sincere and great. Indeed, Shakespeare is
often cold and distant compared with some of the other sonnet writers, as
if his inspiration came in great and sudden rushes.
Elizabethan poets wrote sonnets as readily as commoner folk say " How do you do?"
Just as, in a storm, we see rain-drops wherever we turn, so sonnets almost drench the
literary atmosphere of 1590- 1600. The very rage of the downpour, however, indicated
that the shower would not last long.
Though most sonnet cycles were addressed to ladies, yet we have many exceptions.
Barnes, Constable, Donne and others wrote cycles of spiritual sonnets. Chapman apos-
trophised his mistress Philosophy. Harvey composed a diatribe against Greene. Barn-
field addressed the boy Love. And almost everybody wrote dedicatory and other epistles
in sonnet form.
208. — The Place of Shakespeare's Sonnets.
Looking now at the sonnets as a whole, we shall find no difficulty in
placing them. Broadly speaking, we may now say that they did not
bubble up in Shakespeare's mind, regardless of time and circumstance.
On the contrary, our investigation proved that he was essentially a man
of his period, that he absorbed his manner and matter from his environ-
ment, and that he but painted the life and thought of his adventurous age.
That which is striking in the sonnets we have been forced to place to the
credit of the spirit which swept over the land towards the end of the six-
teenth century, and wherever he excelled it was by virtue of being an
Elizabethan. One who reads Shakespeare and knows him well, knows
the spiritual stress and delights through which his country passed. He is
a type, a representation, a personification of his times. He stands for the
genius of the Elizabethan era much more than for his own superiority. Sub-
tract what he derived from his contemporaries, and not even a bold shadow
of the man remains. He who honours Shakespeare, and not his times,
cannot know how absolutely he was its product and its avatar. He only
accepted the torch which was handed to him, the time spirit confirming in
him the apostolic succession of the church poetical. He was but a splen-
■did variety of the splendid Elizabethan species, being supreme primarily
because he was the son of a mighty age. A greater than Shakespeare
■ could only come to a greater environment. With nothing but modern
artificiality, pettiness and effeminacy about him, he would have remained
.an inconspicuous figure. He was fortunate in being hurled onto the rocks
388 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
of fame by the tremendous force of the Elizabethan groundswell, for the
impetus of his own nature was infinitesimal besides that given him by his
era. He was the favoured child of the fates.
I have consulted the following authors on the subject of the sonnets : Bodenstedt,
Sonetie, 1S62 ; Dclius, Ahhandlun^^en, 1878, pp. 1-47; Dowden, The Sonnets of W.
Shakespeare, 1S81 ; Dunning, The Genesis of Shakespeare^ s Art, 1897; Furnivall, The
Leopold Shakespeare, 1877, Ixiii to Ixvii ; Gorvinus, Shakespeare, 1872, i, pp. 560-602 x
Massey, Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1872 ; Sharp, Sons^s, Poems, and Sonnets of IVillian
Shakespeare, pp. I -36; Sjialding, Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1878; Tyler, Shakespeare's
Sonnets, 1890 ; and Wyndham, The Poems of Shakespeare, 1898.
209. — Shakespeare as Dramatist,
Shakespeare was, conventionally speaking, no more original in his plays-
than in his sonnets. It is superfluous to mention that we do not owe the
drama to him. Similarly, the blank verse which he employed he found
ready made. The important changes which that form of versification
passed through from the time Lord Buckhurst made use of it in Garbadoc
to the point of its highest development, about the time of Shakespeare's
death, were in the truest sense socially produced. There is no proof that
the scantier employment of endline stops, the increase in midline stops, the
use of \veak endings, the subjugation of the metre to the delicate require-
ments of thought, the substitution of dignity for bombast, and the intro-
duction of prose when simplicity was imperative, are traceable to any one
person. The improvement was gradual and universal. There is not a
scintilla of evidence to show that Shakespeare, or indeed any one else,
took the lead.
It is a universal custom among writers on Shakespeare to speak of his predecessors —
Lilly, Marlow, Kyd, Nash, Peele and Greene — and to compare his work with theirs.*
The implication here is that with the passmg of his predecessors the whole stream of
dramatic literature was forced to flow through one channel, that of Shakespeare. Ridicu-
lous as is this position ; evident as it is that there were numbers of dramatists following
Shakespeare's predecessors ; we have only to advert to the facts to see the weakness of so
many of the odious comparisons that fill the pages of works on Shakespeare. The sole
critic, to my knowledge, who has attempted to deal fairly with the matter, I mean Hazlitt
(On the Age of Elizabeth, 1821), wrote over eighty years ago.
The bard of Avon constructed his plays as his many fellow playwrights
did. He refashioned and utilised old plays ; he dramatised English and
foreign prose tales ; and he exploited Holinshed and Plutarch. He wrote
now dramas and now comedies, and his busy pen was no more fertile than
the pens of his competitors. His subjects were the ones usually preferred,
and the chief characters were socially determined. Like his contem-
poraries, he took little care with his plots. His maidens, his villains, his
fools, his princes, his courtiers, his rabble, his lovers, were of the well worn
type then in demand. Again, the large number of the motives which guide
the plays accord with the common stage practice. Even his over-grown
vocabulary and his coarse scenes obeyed an evil custom.
* See, for instance, Symonds, Shakespeare's Predecessors, 1900.
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 389
Attempts have been made, e.g., by Brandes {Shakespeare, 1898), to explain the nature
■of Shakespeare's plays from a consideration of the development of his individuality.* To
me the social factor seems the decisive circumstance. The poet dramatised English
history because that was the fashion ; every dramatist was doing it, and had to do it, it
being a question of demand and supply. So with comedies : they were in request, and
they had to be written ; and so also with tragedies. In the same manner Shakespeare's
characters or scenes were strictly of the kind current at the theatres. He was no inno-
vator. He was a strict conservative. The number of plays Shakespeare wrote would
never have surprised an Elizabethan groundling, for most writers wrote as much, if not
more, within the given time. The marvel vanishes if we reject the individualistic view in
favour of a social one. Let us but admit that most plays were merely refinements of other
plays or dramatisations of well known stories ; that the treatment generally, including
philosophical views, was, as a whole, determined previously ; that all characters, whether
Italian, French, Roman, Greek, were regarded as Elizabethans ; and we can easily allow
that plays might be written in a short time. The supposed learning in Shakespeare must
be explained by the same rules. Much of it was held in common, and a good deal of it
is shown in many writers. If we make due allowance for what was social property, for
what was expected of each dramatist, and reduce to their proper level the hasty generali-
sations as to Shakespeare's learning, we shall find little or nothing to excite our wonder.
Shakespeare's large vocabulary is not extraordinary, if we think of the Elizabethan stage.
Shakespeare's powers of characterisation have been inordinately praised.
He is supposed to have presented the various human types in perfection.
As a matter of fact, few even among his riper plays contain really well drawn
•characters. In the earlier plays the unsuccessful striving to depict individuals
true to life is evident; while many of the latest pictures are carelessly
delineated. Only hero-worshippers go systematically into raptures over
everything attributed to Shakespeare, magnifying every excellence, turning
every fault into a virtue, and depreciating everything which he did not
write. The scriptures of no race have ever been praised with greater
ardour and less discrimination, and no worshipper has ever been more
jealous of his god than is the pious Shakespearean. An impartial inquiry
will minimise the differences between Shakespeare and his compeers, and
lead to a more comprehensive admiration for the later Elizabethan stage.
There is no lack of rhodomontade in Hamlet. For example, the gentle Ophelia,
speaking of man exclaims : " How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in apprehen-
sion like a god ! " This is far from being a defensible summary, and would be ridiculed
if Marston had written it. Yet the latest authority on Shakespeare (Lee, Life of Shake-
jfeare, 1899, p. 357) boldly declares that "to Shakespeare the intellect of the world,
speaking in diverse accents, applies with one accord his own words : ' How,' etc., etc."
Baynes (article "Shakespeare," Ettc. Brit.), Brandes {Shakespeare, 1898), Coleridge
(Notes on Shakspere, 1883), Collins {Essays and Studies, 1895), De Quincey {Shakspeare,
1864), Delius {Abhandlwtgen zu Shakespeare, 1878 and 1888), Dowden {Shakespeare^
1876), Dyce {The Works of Williatn Shakespeare, 1864-7), YXi^ {William Shakespeare^
1888), Fischer (A'zV/mrfl' ///, 1868, and Hamlet, 1896), Furnivall {The Leopold Shake-
speare, 1877), Gervinus {Shakespeare, 1862), Guizot {Shakespeare, 1852), Hallam {Litera-
ture of Europe, 1854, iii, pp. 77-124), Halliwell-Phillips {Outlines of the Life of Shake-
speare, 1887), 'LdiXnh {The Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb, 1891), Ma.ssey {Shakespeare's
Sonnets, 1872), Henry Morley (Introductions to Cassell's Shakespeare), Smith {Shakespeare :
* Robertson {Montaigne and Shakspere, 1897) also ignores the Shakespearean environ-
ment, tracing Shakespeare's thought to Montaigne. So does Hudson {Shakespeare, 1872)
who is otherwise judicious.
390 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
the Man, 1899), Taine (Eng/ish Literature, 1886, ii, pp. 45-141), Ward {Dramatic
Literature, 1899), Wyndham ( T/ie Poems of Shakespeare, 1898), and others, agree more or
less closely with Lee's estimate, on equally indecisive grounds. In this respect it is well
to note the general admiration lavished on Shakespeare's alleged power of suppressing his
personality. Every character drawn by him is said to be photographed from nature.
Strange to say, this docs not strike every one. See what an extraordinary share word-play
or quibble has in the comedies. Assuredly, there is no reason to believe that it entered as
much into real life. Is it not rather our impersonal hero, masked, dealing thrusts and
parrying them, because he could do it so well, having learned it from Lilly? Similarly
with the broad humour : Lance, Jack Cade, the constable in Measure for Measure, the
hostess in Ne/iry IV, the clown in IVie Winter's Tale, in Othello, and in Anthony and
Cleopatra, the gravcdiggers in Llainlet, and plebeian figures generally, appear all drawn
to one familiar artificial pattern. The same holds good of the ladies and children in the
various plays, as well as of the courtiers. Roughly speaking, the situations differ much,
and the actors very little. Shakespeare delighted in drawing complex characters ; but he
only succeeded after struggling for many years. The Bastard is a failure, and so is
Richard III. They are neither fish, flesh nor fowl. Prince Hal, too, is not what the
dramatist would have made him a few years later. Through three plays — Henry LV
(parts I and 2) and Henry F^Shakespeare vainly strives to make his hero intelligible,
and hiis at last to resort to verbal explanations. Macbeth, King Lear, Anthony and
Cleopatra, represent magnificent heights which their author only attained after the most
desperate efforts and after many defeats. Slowly, very slowly, the artificer gained
control over his material. Many a character had he to draw imperfectly, before his
ideal and its embodiment were, roughly speaking, as like as the two Dromios. Yet
modern criticism represents this great Elizabethan as if he turned out characters as
machines turn out flawless coins in the mint ! When will Shakespeare and his age have
justice done to them ? When will Shakespeare's biographers begin to study Shakespeare,
instead of speculating about him ? Up to the present, textual criticism has done its work
excellently ; but literary expositors have merely encumbered the road with theories.
It is remarkable that during his life time there was not one voice which
singled him out above all others. He was considered as one of the first
playwrights, and no more. He was neither over-praised nor over-blamed.
He was never accused of being an innovator. He lived an obscure life
like his fellows, and, like them, cared little for fame, doubtless because the
people were satiated with first-class plays. Accordingly, we are not sur-
prised to learn that Shakespeare's philosophy was to the minutest detail part
of the stock reflections current among the dramatists. The thoughts were
adopted, and not prepared, by him. He is not the original thinker he is
represented to be. That honour belongs to his age. ,The peculiar class
of reflections which we find scattered throughout his works are employed,
with variations, by the majority of the contemporary playwrights. His
originality was everybody's originality. We note one thing, however, that
just as in the sonnets he is the poet who returns oftenest to the impersonal
element, so his dramatic works disclose the same trend. From his earliest
to his latest play, this holds good. He is reflective in season and out of
season. Everybody mouths it. In dust-heaps, in mole-hills, and in rocks,
we catch the golden gleam. Every kind of stratum apparently, soft or
hard, recent or primeval, contains and displays gold. It is impossible not
to welcome the precious metal, even though we may think that a dust-heap
is not the proper place for it. Still, the critic's duty is to be above tempta-
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 39i
tion, and while, therefore, greedily abstracting the treasures, we must
question whether the dramas, as such, do not lose by the indiscriminate
presence of fine language ; whether it does not impart to them a certain
artificiality and coldness ; whether the Elizabethans were wrong, from the
dramatic point of view, in differing from us ; and whether the future will
not take a middle course and sympathise to some extent with those who
attended the earliest performances of Shakespeare's dramas. In this place,
however, we are only concerned to note that, roughly speaking, the im-
personal element is more uniformly predominant in Shakespeare than in
his contemporaries, indicating not originality but greater emphasis. This
divergence, as well as his abundant use of metaphor, is probably accounted
for by his particular line of development under his special circumstances ;
but on the discussion of this point I cannot enter here.
We have indications that Shakespeare was highly thought-of by his contemporaries.
(Halliwell-Phillips, Otttlines, ii, pp. 147-55.) That he was almost from the first regarded
as one of the principal playwrights is not disputed ; but beyond that the Elizabethans did
not go. When, for instance, Meres {Palladis Tamia, 1598) speaks of Shakespeare's
" sugared sonnets," we must bear in mind both that the Elizabethans were fond of honeyed
phrases (compare Meres' reference to Drayton as "golden-mouthed"), and that the
adjective was in common use. So, also, when the same author places Shakespeare first
in one of his numerous lists, we have but to glance at the other lists to see that Shake-
speare frequently occupies very low positions, and that, in truth, something other than a
standard of merit guided Meres in allotting seats at the literary banquet. So it is
throughout. Any other interpretation is due to the notion that the Elizabethans must
have taken the same view of Shakespeare that most moderns do.
Utterances of a reflective character were common among Elizabethan dramatists. It
would go beyond reasonable limits to illustrate this assertion at length. I will give two
quotations instead. Marston, who is the author of what follows, was twenty-seven years
of age when Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revejige were published in 1602, the
plays having been performed probably two years earlier, that is before Hamlet. I choose
Marston's words principally on account of his youth, and because of the early date at
which he wrote. *
"Why, man, I never was a prince till now.
'Tis not the bared pate, the bended knees,
Gilt tipstaves, Tyrrian purple, chairs of state.
Troops of pied butterflies that flutter still
In greatness' summer, that confirm a prince :
'Tis not the unsavoury breath of multitudes,
Shouting and clapping, with confused din.
That makes a prince. No, Lucio, he's a king,
A true right king, that dares do aught save wrong ;
Fears nothing mortal but to be unjust ;
Who is not blown up with the flattering puffs
Of spongy sycophants ; who stands unmoved,
Despite the jostling of opinion ;
Who can enjoy himself, maugre the throng
That strive to press his quiet out of him ;
Who sits upon Jove's footstool, as I do,
*Ward {Dramatic Literature, 1899, ii, p. 477) speaks of " the story of ^«/(7«w a«if
Mellida (printed in 1602, but probably acted two years earlier)." Dekker's Old For-
tunatzts, published in 1600, is another early play full of fine passages.
392 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
Adoring, not affecting, majesty ;
Whose brow is wreathed with the silver crown
Of clear content : this, Lucio, is a king,
And of this empire, every man's possesst
That's worth his soul."
Antonio and Melltda, act 4, scene I.
Ant. "Why then should I put on the very flesh
Of solid folly. No, this cockscomb is a crown
Which I affect, even with unbounded zeal.
Alb. 'Twill thwart your plot, disgrace your high resolve.
Ant. By wisdom's heart, there is no essence mortal.
That I can envy, but a plump-cheeked fool :
Oh, he hath a patent of immunities
Confirmed by custom, sealed by policy,
As large as spacious thought.
Alb. You cannot press among the courtiers.
And have access to —
Ant. What? Not a fool? Why, friend, a golden ass,
A baubled fool, are sole canonical,
Whilst pale-cheeked wisdom and lean-ribbed art
Are kept in distance at the halbert's point ;
All held Apocrypha, not worth survey.
WTiy, by the genius of that Florentine,
Deep, deep-observing, sound-brained, Machiavel,
He is not wise that strives not to seem fool.
When will the duke hold fee'd intelligence,
Keep wary observation in large pay,
To dog a fool's act ?
Mar. Ay, but feigning [when] known disgraceth much.
Ant. Pish ! most things that morally adhere to souls,
Wholly exist in drunk opinion :
Whose reeling censure, if I value not,
It values naught.
Mar. You are transported with too slight a thought,
If you but meditate of what is past,
And what you plot to pass.
Ant. Even in that, note a fool's beatitude :
He is not capable of passion ;
Wanting the power of distinction,
He bears an unturned sail with every wind :
Blow east, blow west, he steers his course alike.
I never saw a fool lean : the chub- faced fop
Shines sleek with full-crammed fat of happiness.
Whilst studious contemplation sucks the juice
From wizard's [wise men's] cheeks : who making curious search
For nature's secrets, the first innating cause
Laughs them to scorn, as man doth busy [punish] apes
When they will zany [mimic] men. Had heaven been kind,
Creating me an honest senseless dolt,
A good poor fool, I should want sense to feel
The stings of anguish shoot through every vein ;
I should not know what 't were to lose a father ;
I should be dead of sense, to view defame
Blur my bright love ; I could not thus run mad,
As one confounded in a maze of mischief,
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 393
Staggered, stark, felled with bruising stroke of chance.
I should not shoot mine eyes into the earth,
Poring for mischief that might counterpoise
Mischief, murder, and — "
Antonio's Revenge, act 4, scene i.
The Antonio plays of Marston are full of such moralisings. It is needless to say that
Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Ford and Webster, philosophise incessantly. For
-weight of language Webster's Duchess of Malfi seems unrivalled. I may add that all
the great dramatists supplement Shakespeare as he supplements them.
The absence of the judicial spirit in dealing with the work of Shake-
speare has made a somewhat controversial attitude necessary. The
upshot of our examination is embraced in the statement that Shakespeare's
dramas, like his sonnets, are so largely indebted to his environment that, by
comparison, his own contribution, a very real thing, shrinks into utter
insignificance, a ripple on a mountainous wave.
The extravagant praise of the great dramatist led directly to the theory that Bacon
wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare. Incautious reasoning, however, could not
stop there. So many other playwrights wrote in a ".Shakespearean" vein, that the
suggestion was made and accepted that Bacon wrote several hundred plays, and published
them under different names. Consistency could hardly go farther. The same problem is
disturbing the Shakespearean camp. Almost scores of plays have been attributed to
Shakespeare, besides those for which he is ordinarily held responsible. I shall not be
surprised to hear some ingenious theorist suggesting that Shakespeare had a hand in the
hundreds of Elizabethan plays which have in them any value. It is strange to see shoals
of critics who believe that Shakespeare was unapproachable, now maintaining and now
disputing the Shakespearean origin of a play or a passage.
210. — Obstacles to Genius.
Assuming that our critical scalpel has laid bare the truth with regard to
Shakespeare, are we, therefore, justified in asserting that every man of
genius is an expression of his age rather than a striking individuality?
That, at all events, is the conclusion which I have laboured to reach.
The psychological reasons are not far to seek. They lie within the limits
of what we have already learnt in the previous chapters. Each portion of
our nature contributes to the result.
(i) IfiJurent Limitations.— T\\q realm of possibilities is only rivalled
in extent by the realm of impossibilities. "Might-be's" are constantly
"balanced by " is-nots." In the first place the natural relations of things
are not self-evident: we often fail to suspect them, and generally our
guesses fall short of the truth. It is only when we weigh a matter carefully,
when we give to it prolonged attention, when we allow observation to
apply to it the touchstone of sanity, that we can feel at all satisfied about
the quality of a resulting thought. Unforeseen difficulties, in what is
seemingly a successful deduction, occupy us and prevent us from being
otherwise engaged. The poet is compelled to test his little improvements,
spending years in perfecting them. The architect applies his small archi-
tectural contributions, his life being absorbed in carrying out his limited
ideals. The prose writer has to learn what style is before he can become
394 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
a competent critic. So it is in every department of knowledge : with the
little reach the human brain yet possesses, the energy of the individual is
burnt up in securing a comfortable resting place. The oasis of learning
is so small that, like children, we feel safe only in, or close to, our
immediate environment. Not that bold explorers are wanting ; for, indeed,
it daring were always profitable, mankind would be revelling in the pearls
of culture. As a matter of fact, it is the rule rather than the exception to
fly to sensational methods for the purpose of wringing from nature her
meaning, and forcing her pace. To leave, however, our environment far
behind us, is to deprive ourselves of our native air, and to put ourselves at
the mercy of wild beasts. Unsatisfactory as from an ideal standpoint the
lessons learned by the race seem to be, they are yet a solid rock for us,
and away from them we plunge into and are swallowed up by the ocean
of possibilities. No sooner do we appear to alight on a great truth in our
original investigations than we have our hopes almost instantly dashed.
A developed system of education, itself the result of study, will, to a
considerable extent, increase men's powers ; but in the present state of
chaos, fruitful thinkers find that the fattest pastures lie nearest to the
outskirts of the known.
With our present organism genius of the mythical type, except as a
breach of continuity, is impossible. It takes a man a long time to acquire
the rudiments of knowledge. Years pass in polishing, in mastering, and
perchance to some extent perfecting these rudiments on the lines suggested
by observation. Happy is he, therefore, who chances to live in a period
which stimulates reasonable activity, for he can then with advantage
embody in his own attempts, as Shakespeare did, much of the work of
his contemporaries. A man never creates a great environment ; but an
environment full of greatness has been the invariable antecedent of the
men with whom we connect significant epochs.
Sully {Genius and Precocity, 1886) gives some statistics which bear on the question of
precocity. Of 30 musicians, 18 reached eminence before the age of 25 ; of 42 painters,
28 before 25 ; of 49 poets, 28 before 25, 36 by 30, 45 before 40 ; of 35 scholars, 7 before
25, 9 before 30, 16 before 40 ; of 37 scientists, 14 before 25, 12 between 25 and 30, 8
between 30 and 40 ; and of 35 philosophers, 3 before 25, 4 between 25 and 30, 14 between
30 and 40, 6 between 40 and 50, and 8 after 50 (among these last are Descartes, Hobbes,
Locke and Leibnitz). Sully holds that high development of special functions accounts for
the divergences in precocity which the above list reveals. That is to say the musician
has tone-sensibility early developed ; the poet an eye for form and colour ; the scientist,
mathematical ability ; the scholar, memory. Singularly enough this congenital equipment
is regarded by sane authors as explaining the intelligence of animals, and is referred to as a
proof of the absence of reason.
A similar line to that taken by Sully is exemplified in Gerard, An Essay on Genius,
1774, a solid book of the associationist school. This eighteenth century author holds
that "Genius is properly the faculty of invention" (p. 8) ; that imagination is at the
basis of invention (p. 31) ; that such imagination implies comprehensiveness (p. 42),
regularity (p. 46) and activity (p. 57). In its turn imagination depends on the suggestions
of sense-impressions (p. 95), on those of memory (p. 96), and on the laws of association
(pp. 108-25) ; 3.1so on the power of habit (pp. 125-47) and that of emotion (pp. 147-84).
Gerard contends that judgment is secondary, though necessary to a certain degree in
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 395
genius. On the basis of this analysis, he then argues that variety in genius is explained
by the prevalence of certain exclusive characteristics in individual men, z^z';., judgment
must be highly developed in philosophers, and taste in artists.
Galton (Hereditary Genius, 1869) holds the following view on the subject. Men differ
very considerably from one another in ability, and that apart from education. The birth
of a certain number of men of genius is, therefore, as determined as the birth of a certain
number of those who fall far below the average, namely imbeciles. Genius being inborn,
it is natural to infer that it runs in families ; and this Galton attempts to prove at length.
Being inborn, he reasons further, geuius will and does assert itself. Two answers have
been given to Gallon's theory of hereditary genius. Royse (A Study of Genius, 1891)
contends that there are scarcely any examples of several men of genius, of independent
reputation, in one family (pp. 157-86). Nordau {Psycho- Physiologic du Ginie et dti
Talent, 1897) further reduces Gallon's eminent men to ordinary men in fortunate
circumstances. Gallon's theory, therefore, as far as its claim to be important goes, meets
with difficulties. To the question of innate differences we shall return.
Spencer {Study of Sociology, 1880) insists that a man of genius cannot be conceived of
independently of his environment (pp. 30-6). This is a trite contention, since it does not
differentiate the man of genius from the ordinary individual, for granting that he is "a
product of its [society's] antecedents" (p. 34), there is still the possibility that he is
immensely superior to his fellows.
Allen {Nation- Making, 1878 ; Hellas and Civilisation, 1878 ; The Genesis of Genius,
1881) gives body to Spencer's shadowy view. He considers three elements as the vital
ones in the making of a nation, viz., the stock from which a nation springs ; the physical
features of its habitat ; and the lime which has elapsed since its settlement {Nation- Making,
pp. 590-1). From these three elements he deduces the differences in nations and races.
For him great commercial centres are always genius centres. He says "Wherever we look,
we see that intellect can only be produced by practical gains of brain-connection, made
slowly generation after generation in the ordinary course of life, and finally culminating
in a general average of high intelligence, varied by those exceptional deviations which we
know as genius" {Hellas and Civilisation, p. 168). To this he adds: "Even a
Darwin or a Spencer stands at a comparatively measurable distance from the average run
of our naturalists and our philosophical thinkers" {The Genesis of Genius, p. 373).
Indeed Allen holds that the bulk of progress is attributable to the efforts of the many, and
that not a few are ready to enter the niche open for a great man ( The Genesis of Genius,
p. 374). Allen's fault, if we are to speak of faults, seems to be that his doctrine is too
rigidly applied by him. He insists too much that " both genius and milieu are products
of the geographical conditions" {The Genesis of Genius, p. 380), and that "individual
characters themselves, in their totality, are wholly created by the external circumstances"
( The Genesis of Genius, p. 372). He forgets that men are part and parcel of an environ-
ment, and that, therefore, there is action and reaction, though the one force may be more
potent than the other.
Opposed to Allen, stands James {The Will to Believe, 1897). "The best wood-pile,"
he argues, " will not blaze till a torch is applied " (p. 242), the blazing torch being the
man of genius and the passive wood-pile the community. History, he reasons, is solely
made by great men. They see to it that plans are carried out. "The community
stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the
sympathy of the community" (p. 232). And whence do these men take their origin ?
Here is the answer. "The causes of production of great men lie in a sphere wholly
inaccessible to the social philosopher. He must simply accept geniuses as data, just as
Darwin accepts his spontaneous variations. . . . The visible environment . . . chiefly
adopts or rejects, preserves or destroys, in short selects him " (pp. 225-6). And
" physiological forces . . . are what make him " (pp. 234-5). As regards these emphatic
opinions, it is scarcely necessary to slate that they have a decidedly speculative basis.
James makes no attempt to analyse a single case.
Joly {Psychologic des Grands Homtnes, 1883) has written by far the best book on the
396 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
subject under discussion. He ri^litly argues against Galton that inherited genius
requires, as to its nature, as much explanation as any other conceivable kind of genius
(p. 65). He holds that a man of j^cnius is not merely a conspicuous figure in a community
(p. 15) ; that he gives birth to a tradition which largely stilles the influence of others (p,
35) ; that he develops best when institutions are lieing founded or organised (pp. 37-8) ;
that he " is evidently the culminating point of his race" (p. 53) ; that genius is creative
and not destructive (p. 130) ; that he begins with being a genuine disciple (p. 141) ; that
his apparent spontaneity is the result of accumulated reflection (p. 231) ; that his primary
gift is to conceive something great (p. 260) ; and that in him must be embodied enthusiasm,
perspicuity, breadth, imagination and power (p. 270). "At a given moment," Joly sums
up, " the man of genius is for the life of his country and his epoch, that which the brain
is to the complex organism, co-ordinating everything, disciplining the surbordinate forces,
and directing all things towards a single end, while receiving nevertheless his nourish-
ment from the infinitely minute labours and actions of the organism which he animates "
(p. 274). P'rom this it will be seen that Joly still fails to note that the man of genius
lives in an atmosphere of genius, and is but its fairest sample ; and, what is more, that
the genius theory is largely a convenient social convention, since it enables historians to
summarise the ivork 0/ a period in a simple 'way.
Nordau {Psycho- Physiologie du Genie et du Talent, 1897) has the following theory on
the subject. What is inherited is that which is commonplace, while that which bears
promise indicates deviation from the type (p. 17). The essential qualities of a man of
genius lie in the power of elaborating in his own fashion the apperceptions of the outer
world (pp. 54-5). Genius is something inborn, while talent is produced by labour (p. 59).
A powerful development of the centres of judgment and volition represents the physio-
logical basis of what we call genius (p. 147). Hence there is no such thing as genius
among painters, poets, etc., since these are dependent on emotional development (p. 157).
Altogether there are four classes of genius, viz., thinker and actor — statesman ; thinker
and experimenter — scientist ; thinker — philosopher ; and, by courtesy, artist — poet (pp,
160-5). Nordau makes no attempt to verify or test his theory.
(2) Organised Reaction. — We have seen how intrinsic are the difficulties
which lie in the way of striking originality. One more obstacle may be
added to those already discussed ; it is furnished by organised reaction.
It requires years to cut a path through the granite of a difficult subject,
and when at last we have arrived at our journey's end, it is an
exasperating task to obtain even a modicum of freedom. Suggestions
having been along a certain line, ceaseless effort is needed to resist the
dead weight of custom. New furrows have to be dug, old ones have to
be filled up. The Herculean undertaking involved is too great to be
performed by any one but a giant, and giants are creatures of the
fancy. Only shallow persons readily turn from one subject to another ; and
the world can hope for little from them. It is probable that mastery
profoundly impresses the brain structure, so that it is not easily impressed
again to much purpose.*
(3) Needs. — If the argument from organised reaction is convincing, that
drawn from the orderly succession of iieeds further strengthens it. We
are not like candles which give a uniform flan:ie from the time they are
kindled to the time they are extinguished. The brilliancy, the colour, and
* Even this, however, requires correction. In the great Italian period we find men
eminent in a number of pursuits, men like Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo,
and many others.
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 397
the size of the flame of our Hfe, vary ceaselessly according to a certain
plan. Accordingly, while we are children, or during adolescence, there
exists no tendency to strike out original paths. So also when we are past
maturity our power declines. There is, therefore, only a restricted portion
of our life time available for original research, while we must consider
besides, that during the first third of life we fall into the humdrum ways
of our fellows, and that organised reaction largely fixes us there.
211. — Men of Genius.
To all this it may be objected that granting Shakespeare's indebtedness,
and admitting that normally men are necessarily unoriginal, it still remains
a moot point whether what is called genius is not largely exempt from the
instrumentalities which clip the wings of the common flock. This
objection is valid theoretically, but not otherwise. As a may-be it cannot
be rebutted ; for what is there that may not be ? As a question of fact, it
is contradicted by the teachings of history.
I have shown in detail how dependent at least one man of acknowledged
genius was on his environment. It would be humanly impossible and
monstrously unprofitable to analyse the labours of all those inscribed on
the roll of fame, and it must suffice, therefore, if we can generally trace
the same apparent relation between the individual and his age as we have
done in the case of Shakespeare.
The genius of Raphael is a commonplace everywhere, yet he stands
in no way isolated. It would be an illustration of pure originality if,
among a savage tribe whose individual members hitherto neither scribbled
nor scrawled, one of them took to painting in the style of Leo the tenth's
period. That man would be compelled to discover the canvas on which
to paint, the colours and the brushes, the nature of perspective, and the
whole mystery of art. Such a state of things involves no contradiction ; it
is only one which has never been observed. As we should expect,
we find that the agreement between Raphael and the host of superb
painters of the Renascence is almost infinitely greater than the difference.
If only Raphael (died 1520) could be proved to have painted his pictures
a century earher, there would then be some hope of discovering a sudden
and startling departure in style from his brethren in the craft. As it is,
his work determines the time of its production, and his time determines
its qualities. The distance between the drawings on mammoth tusks,
or the pictorial attempts of low-class savages, and the golden era of art
in Italy, can only be bridged by microscopic arches made of the life work
of an imposing procession of successive workers, influenced in each case
more particularly by their environment as far as it affected the products of
the brush. Egyptian, Chinese, Japanese and Greek paintings vary in
essentials, and in no instance is the difference the result of the efforts of
single individuals. Manner and matter are historic products. The
painter's Madonna tells a long story of improvements. No one man
created her.
398 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
In architecture the ceremonial pace of progress is clearly traceable.
Nobody would dream of attributing to the illustrious Sir Christopher Wren
all the art exhibited in St. Paul's Cathedral. The mud-hut has a history ;
and the conception of a magnificent structure like that we are speaking
of is almost entirely a result of evolutionary processes. The several styles
employed by Wren have each a tale of their own to tell. Nor is the
general plan of the building original. If root-and-branch originality were
possible, it would be strange that the few architectural styles which we, and
other races, possess, should have been evolved in so deliberate a manner.
There is scarcely a minor style, such as the perpendicular, but has de-
veloped by slow degrees.
The above brief remarks on architecture find ample corroboration in the works of
Ruskin. In that great art critic's Seven Lamps of Architecture the reader will see many
illustrations of the very slow and almost accidental growth of architectural styles. So
convinced is Ruskin that individual genius by itself is powerless that he ridicules the
present-day architects who are too proud to be disciples, and contends that no great
English architecture will arise until a school of architecture has been established of which
the mass of English architects shall be followers. One beautiful passage well brings out
the truth that not individual but social genius produced the art exhibited in the great
cathedrals. "It needs but little inquiry into the spirit of the past, to ascertain
what, once for all, I would desire here clearly and forcibly to assert, that wherever
Christian church architecture has been good and lovely, it has been merely the perfect
development of the common dwelling-house architecture of the period ; that when the
pointed arch was used in the street, it was used in the church ; when the round arch was
used in the street, it was used in the church ; when the pinnacle was set over the garret
window, it was set over the belfry tower ; when the flat room was used for the drawing-
room, it was used for the nave. There is no sacredness in round arches, nor in pointed ;
none in pinnacles, nor in buttresses ; none in pillars, nor in traceries. Churches were larger
than most other buildings, because they had to hold more people ; they were more adorned
than most other buildings, because they were safer from violence, and were the fitting sub-
jects of devotional offering : but they were never built in any separate, mystical, and
religious style ; they were built in a manner that was common and familiar to everybody
ai the time. The flamboyant traceries that adorn the fagade of Rouen Cathedral had once
their fellows in every window of every house in the market-place ; the sculptures that
adorn the porches of St. Mark's had once their match on the walls of every palace on the
Grand Canal" {The Stones of Venice, 1888, ii, pp. 153-4).
Machinery, and what more marvellous modern product is there, displays
all those indications of development which we should expect to find. The
locomotive was not invented by one man ; the latest type of battleship has
not been thought out by one individual; the rotatory printing machine
boasts of a long history. Thus while the series of mechanical inventions
is endless, each is a slight variation of some previously existing form. The
machinery employed in the large industries is the result of favourable social
conditions on the one hand, and the efforts of a large class of inventors on
the other.*
The history of astronomy offers another appropriate illustration. Had
Laplace written his Traite de Mecariique Celeste without consulting his
forerunners, we should have a marvellous book before us. As it is, as-
*See Hobson, Evolution of Modern Capitalism, 1894.
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 399
tronomers were court favourites thousands of years ago ; they had every
opportunity for original research ; they were often enabled to spend their
lives in studying the tidal star wave, and yet progress was deliberate and
almost imperceptible. So with Newton. The way had been paved for
the Newtonian theory by the unwearied researches of Ptolemy, Copernicus,
Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Kepler, and thousands of humbler mortals, and
but for these, the name of Newton would be unknown in connection with
astronomical discovery. Without the succession of a file of thinkers,
neither Laplace, nor any one else, could hope to discover a great truth.
Newton is accordingly commonplace when he tries to pierce the secrets of
astronomy beyond contemporary stellar achievements.
Lectures, laboratories and text-books have familiarised the present
century with the spirit of science. Yet that blessed influence is not the
outcome of any one person's labours. There is not even an individual
with whom the notion is connected, and it grew through centuries before
it assumed definiteness. No one whispered to himself " I will be scien-
tific," and lo ! science was ; but many toiled, now hoping and now despair-
ing, until the darling of time was given birth to. And not even yet
has this Ariel found his Prospero. Men are trained in scientific method
by imitating others rather than by knowingly following its mandates. When
once, however, the theory of science will be reduced to rules, we rightly
expect that it will introduce the greatest revolution the world has ever
witnessed. Learning will then be no longer the privilege of the few, nor
shall we have to cling so desperately to the past.
One of the most significant results of modern research is the evolution
which it has traced in religions. The tendency at one time was to make
an individual responsible for the establishment of a religious system. As
a band of lightning illumines for an instant the sullen darkness, so these
legendary heroes were supposed to shed a momentary gleam into the sur-
rounding spiritual night. Diligent criticism has dispelled this illusion,
and has shown that a religious genius owes as much to the past as a poetic
genius. The one is no more original than the other, for they are both
representatives of their age. Accordingly, wrest from Confucius his rich
environment, and as little is left as of Shakespeare under the same circum-
stances. He was only one of the luminaries which appeared before the
dawn — for Taouism dates back to his time, — and his light was strong
because it represented the ardour of China's past. Confucius was no self-
centred recluse. Again, when Buddha preached his gospel of love and
reason, he was but a mighty echo of India at her best. As with Shake-
speare, so with Buddha, scarcely a notion can be proved to have originated
with him. The great Nazarene also was not born out of his time. He
was its child : the lineal descendant of the Hebrew prophets and of the
environments which made these. He embodied the accumulated develop-
ment of the morality of his nation, and his teaching can, therefore, be
placed as readily as that of Shakespeare. His insight was the stored result
of ages of zealous reformers. Unless he turned his back on his time, he
400 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
was compelled to speak as he did. As the Elizabethan breathed poetry,
so the age of the Nazarcne breathed religion, and for both developments
there was an environmental reason. Thus whether we turn to Socrates,
to Zoroaster, to I^ou-tze, or to minor heroes such as Luther and Knox,
the telling element is still the social factor.*
In the light of this chapter the individual, by himself, is a puny, worm-like creature,
and only becomes powerful and dignified when he represents the race owing to his haying
absorbed part of its accumulated intellectual treasures. It is for this reason that men
thrown much on their own resources in any sphere, as, for instance, in matters of morality,
become fanatical and narrow-minded. The good can no more be guessed at than can the
wise or the beautiful. It is, therefore, a deeper want than mere superstition which makes
men shudder when they contemplate being robbed of their sacred books. These books,
being the outcome of much tribulation, contain a considerable amount of the wisdom of a
race, besides being interpreted at any historic period according to some fixed and well
understood method. Hence the individual believer, who feels his helplessness, naturally
dreads being thrown back on himself; and he does well not to give too ready an ear to
those who wish him to find the moral law within himself.
It follows from the foregoing that an ethical system should be a reflection of the pro-
foundest generalisations based on observation, rather than a collection of maxims. The
moral system which only in a general way inculcates virtue, duty and love, is bound to
fail when it has to face the complex world of social and physical facts. On the other
hand, a system of ethics like that of Confucius goes far to satisfy a right ideal. This
Chinese thinker demands that men should be educated ; that want shall be far from them ;
that the powers that be shall be just ; that law shall have regard to reasonable social
conditions and to circumstances ; and that in all the relations of life obedience, for young
and old, shall be conditioned by righteousness. Hence the vitality and the longevity of
the Chinese nation. Scientific ethics will, therefore, seek to determine all those many
conditions, psychological, physiological and environmental, which shall enable us to see
the good and to embody it in our actions.
Whatever subject we investigate the same view is forced upon us.
Man's progress depends on the ages, and men's genius rests on the
explosive instability of their time. The history of the race is the grind-
stone on which the intellect is sharpened, and all that man can do, therefore,
is steadily to enlarge and purify the realm of knowledge. The intricacy of
unattacked problems ; the period required to put the?n to the test ; the organic
tendency to cling to cherished opinions ; the short period of years during ivhich
7ve are capable of the work, all tend ruthlessly to restrict original productivity.
Entirely exceptional men are conceivable ; but history presents us with no
example. Our only hope, therefore, lies in the solidarity of man's en-
deavours, in the possibility of disentangling, for educational purposes, the
chief factors of the reasoning process at its best. When this is achieved,
man will have risen as much above his past as the primitive man rose
above his ape ancestors.
The preceding analysis has, I hope, shown the environmental factor in genius. Our
great man, so far as his greatness is concerned, is neither independent of his environment,
as James and Galton suggest ; nor is he a mere tool in the grip of his environment, as
Allen appears to think. Both, environment and man, are real factors and actors. We
should probably be right in holding that a Newton is somewhat the superior in sheer
* So, generally, Lewes, Problems of Life ajid Mind, 1873-6.
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 401
ability to any of his scientific contemporaries along his line of research ; but that his
success is due more to his times than to himself. I, therefore, disagree with Galton's and
James' conception of the ability of the man of genius. Allen well says : " Except in a
generally mechanical race, you will not find a Watt or an Edison ; except in a generally
literary race, you will not find a Shakespeare or a Goethe ; except in a generally aesthetic
race, you will not find a Leonardo or a Beethoven. We never see an inborn Raphael at
Memphis discovering all the laws of perspective otf-hand ; we never see an original
Channing or Howard springing at once into existence amongst the head-hunting Dyaks ;
we never see an incongruous Newton hitting suddenly upon the law of gravitation in some
Zulu village " (77^^ Genesis of Genius, p. 373). The primary reason for the condition
pictured by Allen we have seen to lie in the greatness which has been accumulating in the
great man's environment. This notion is well expressed in a passage of Joly's book.
"The women of the seventeenth century, says Ste-Beuve, write with an infinite charm
simply because they wish to do so : they all have the gift of expressing themselves well ;
and Mme. de Sevigne is only the first in a numerous assemblage " {Psychologic des Grands
Homines, 1883, p. 114). Again, men do not usually allow for the fact that sciences and
arts have in most cases developed apart from men of genius ; and that where great men
played a part, as in Newton's or in Darwin's discovery, there the truths would generally
have been arrived at without them, though not so soon. Royse {A Study of Genius,
1891) agrees to a certain extent with James. He instances the following men as influencing
their environment as from the outside : Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Richter,
Burns, Scott, Byron, Hugo, Dumas, Dickens and Hawthorne {ibid, p. 282). The truth
of our theory with regard to these men is obvious. Royse is in error owing to his looking
upon the environment as always meaning the populace. There is no need to accept so
arbitrary a definition. To us the environment means any system of forces within the
environment, as the dramatic world or the poetic world. Accordingly, if we take the
names enumerated one by one, the social factor will in each case appear prominently.
Chaucer, for instance, the first in the list, largely translated his tales from Boccaccio's
Decamerone ; Dante lived in an age of intense activity ; Goethe had Schiller, Lessino-,
and a host of literary men about him ; Scott and Byron were surrounded by Wordsworth,
Keats, Shelley, and a galaxy of minor stars ; and Dickens was one of a great hierarchy,
constituted by Lytton, Scott, Thackeray, George Eliot, and himself. James attempts to
account for this invariable grouping of great men by sudden showers of men of genius
(The Will to Believe, 1S97, p. 243) ; but the facts laugh to scorn such far-fetched explana-
tions. Voltaire has around him Diderot, Rousseau, D'Alembert, and many others ;
Beethoven has an environment of genius ; Raphael is in the same position ; and so with
great men everywhere. The man of genius is apparently always a dweller in a sphere of
distinguished mortals. Were Galton and James right, such would not be the case ; but
there would be as constant a stream of men of genius as of imbeciles. The conclusion,
then, is that men of special, though not of extraordinary, sensibility in some direction,
tend to become pre-eminent when, and only when, the environment has duly prepared
the ground. Sometimes these men are of little importance ; sometimes they are of
great importance ; and sometimes they are absent when their presence would be a great
boon.
The following facts may be noted in addition. If we take the case of Charles Darwin,
for instance, we find that until the publication of his Origin of Species, he was merely
considered one of many eminent men. When he had written the latter work, he was
regarded as a man of genius. Yet if we leave out of view Darwin's principle of Natural
Selection, that last work does not strike one as essentially different from any of his former
ones. The difference, therefore, lay not in the workmanship, but in the conception.
Yet this conception had grown for nearly a century, so that Darwin did little more than
wed a brilliant conception with arduous research. His "greatness" was, therefore
chiefly due to the presence of a problem which he could solve. In its aljsence, Darwin
would have been an eminent man of science, but not great. Every age has in this way
many nien who are potentially great ; but who never become great because there
26
402 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
is no opening for them. Imagine Darwin grappling with the problem before it had
reached the acute stage, and he, too, would never have been spoken of as a man of genius.
There remains only the problem of the relation between Insanity and Genius. The
question was first pressed in modern times by Moreau (Za Psychologit Morbide, 1859)
who boldly contended that the man of genius is a species of madman, saying : " Genius
. . . has necessarily its material basis, and this basis is a semi-morbid condition of the
brain" (p. 465). He based his argument on the supposed prevalence of neurotic char-
acteristics among great men, arguing that " the pre-eminence of the intellectual fiiculties
has for its organic condition a special diseased state of the nerve centre" (p. 481).
Flourens {De la Kaison, du Genie, et de la Folic, 1861) attacked Moreau, claiming that
the essence of insanity is unreasonableness, whereas the essence of genius is pre-eminently
distinguished by its reasonableness. Lamb, who died in 1837, had already written,
"The greatest wits . . . will ever be found to be the sanest writers" (The Essays
of Elia, ed. 1890, p. 220), Joly {Psychologic des Grands Homines, 1883) showed
most clearly that the presence or absence of marks of insanity had nothing to do with
genius as such. Napoleon, for instance had a terrible temper, but his greatness lay not
in his temper but in his generalship (pp. 83-4). The same thing is true of the hallucina-
tions, epileptic seizures and fits of insanity, attributed to great men. Radestock (Genie
und ]Vahnsin7i, 1S84) traces back the various eccentricities to a highly-strung nervous
temperament ; and reasons that much of the excess might be prevented if the man of
genius carefully regulated his habits. Sully {Genius and hisanity, 1885), a year later,
expresses himself thus: "No elaborate calculations are needed, I think, to show that
mental malady occurs too often in the history of genius" (p. 959). At the same time he
argues that great mental tension, fine sensibility and bitter disappointments, are the chief
explanation of the vagaries of men of genius. In 1891 two books appeared on the
subject in English. Lombroso {The Man of Genius) bluntly tells us that "genius is a
neurosis" (p. vii). Ignoring what Flourens and Joly had said, he sets about finding
traces of extravagance in great men, and naturally finds them. He does not take any
one life as a whole for the purpose of carefully balancing the reasonableness or unreason-
ableness in the man. A single hallucination, a single fit of temper, is sufficient for him.
He does not reflect that such a standard of insanity applied to the bulk of men, under
anything like trying circumstances, would prove that all mankind is raving mad. Lomb-
roso's volume is only a store-house of tittle-tattle. Indeed, every anxious business man,
student, artist, be he ever so humble, shows precisely the characteristics which Lombroso
wishes to make the mark of genius. The second book I would refer to is that of Nisbet,
The Insanity of Genius. He says: "Apparently at the opposite poles of the human
intellect, genius and insanity are, in reality, but difierent phases of a morbid susceptibility
of, or a want of balance in, the cerebro-spinal system" (p. xv) ; and "What runs in the
blood is nerve-disorder, of which genius is the occasional outcome" (p. 325). To prove
his thesis Nisbet seems almost to hint that the very fact of a man of genius dying is a
proof of his insanity. At all events, the presence of one out of a multitude of diseases in
some one related to the man of genius, appears to this author to bear out his contention.
Let him apply this test to any section of men, and there is little doubt as to the result.
Besides, as has been repeatedly said, it is Carlyle's or Socrates' strenuous sanity which
make them dear to us, and hence the explanation of their temperaments or their visions
leaves the question of genius an open one. Nordau {Entartung, 1892), stimulated by
Lombroso, makes a new application of his master's principles. To our author, Whitman,
Rossetti, Swinburne, Ruskin, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Zola, and every one else of note, is a
neurotic of a very objectionable type. In fact, any deviation from the common in a
writer or artist, seems sufficient to brand that man as a victim of inental degeneration.
Hirsch {Genie und Entartung, 1894), a medical man, criticises Lombroso and Nordau.
His line of argument may be summed up in a sentence of his : " Genius resembles in-
sanity, as gold might be said to resemble brass" (p. 126). In accordance with this view,
he denies that most of the extravagant traits enumerated in men of genius are marks of
insanity. When, however, Hirsch analyses the concept genius itself, he is unsatisfactory
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 403
in his reasoning, contending that the word Genius has no definite psychological meaning
(p. 75). Other publications on the subject are Baldwin, The Story of the Mind, 1902, ch.
10; Hagen, Ueber die Verwandtschaft des Genies mit dem Irresein, 1877; Meyer, Genie
nnd Talent, 1878 ; Rosenkranr, Psychologie, pp. 49-55 ; Sanborn, The Vanity and
Insanity of Genius, 1886; and Walshe, Th& Nature of Genius, 1886.
212. — Individual Character.
I have traced in Shakespeare what distinguishes him from the moderns,
and what produces his resemblance to his contemporaries. I would now
attempt the solution of another aspect of the problem dealt with in this
chapter. Granting the likeness between Daniel and Shakespeare, we
nevertheless do not confound the two men. There is something which
impels us to distinguish between the poets, and this something I propose
to analyse.
Examining the Sonnets we find that apart from their subject they bear
a general resemblance. The similes are of a recurrent type. The vigour
which we encounter in a few poems, we come across again and again.
The tendency to deep-brained reflection of a certain order constantly
asserts itself. The references are like in character. Were every few
sonnets to suggest different philosophies of life, different treatment, differ-
ent technique, we should suspect that more than one hand took part in
their composition. We expect, and we find, uniformity. By Shakespeare
everybody understands an individual with certain definite characteristics.
There is a note, a tone, a breath, in what he writes, which betrays the one
source. A good Shakespearean scholar tells, by reading a sentence or
two, whether a passage is Shakespeare's or not.*
Evidently there is some uniformity underlying the typical characteristics
of the individual. Looking at the question apart from the lessons of life,
we wonder at this rigorously restricted range of a man's character. If ten
men have ten different characters, why should not one man have ten
characters? Why should not a man change his character repeatedly, or
why should he possess a character at all ? One is at a loss how to answer
these questions from a " spiritualistic " point of view. Fortunately, our
appeal to facts encounters no difficulties.
In the chapter on Re-development we saw that the powers of re-develop-
ment were limited. Were we able to re-member with ease and completeness
all that has happened to us, we should have a stock of knowledge to draw
upon such as is now beyond human reach. As it is, the memory is perish-
able, and the record of events, in so far as it is not concerned with living
interests, is reduced for lack of being referred to, whence results almost
total oblivion as to childhood and ordinary affairs. If our interests were
unlimited in range and depth, then, ignoring the overcrowding of thoughts,
our memory might be nearly perfect. However, many interests, probably
because of the inadequacy of brain-tissue, cannot co-exist, and when these
press hard on each other's domain, there ensues a death struggle among
* This is not so easy since the Shakespearean text is frequently corrupt.
404 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
the units of thought and action, which puts an end to overcrowding. Hence
our interests are few, and, therefore, activity and memory are restricted.
Organised reaction also plays no small part, for both the acquisition
and the manipulation of notions are strictly limited functions. The
plasticity of early childhood (to about the age of six) is remarkable, and as
much can be done during that period towards laying a solid foundation as
towards making a good one impossible. The time is past when reason or
enthusiasm alone can be supposed to decide what we are capable of doing,
and it is admitted on all hands that it is fatal to leave education to these
two stimuli. The light of reason soon begins to flicker and pale ; and the
heat of enthusiasm is soon spent, when they have trends against them.
Shortsighted interests are like vertigo ; they make our thoughts spin in a
small circle from which they never escape. For this reason, tendencies
the existence of which we do not suspect, and the origin and tenour of
which are unknown to us, determine our intellectual life to a critical extent.
Were we born thinkers or were those who had charge of us thinkers, the
evil might be considerably mitigated. x\s matters stand, our character is
largely a question of accident. The manner of our reasoning, our tempera-
ment, our active impulses, are rooted by the time we begin to think over
the propriety of things. With age preventing vital changes, and every
stage of human life having its separate instincts, it becomes impossible to
do much in later life. Thus opinions, the inspirers of thought, without
our being aware of it, obtain an ever greater hold on us, till they
control our veriest existence. So often do we refer to them that our whole
thinking becomes coloured by them. These ever-present forces are
responsible for our character. This uniformity is apparently no accident
of history, and we have to choose between it and a shallow, unstable
character. The nature of the brain, or our method of education, allows
no other alternative.
This must not be construed to mean that character is something purely-
individual. Only one aspect of it is so. The outfit is copied from the
environment, and then the special circumstances — the position of a notion
among other notions, the individual's place among his fellows, and the
physical structure he starts with — determine and, in so doing, slightly
modify, what is learnt. In this way are produced the marks which sunder
man from man.
Our "soul" does not invent or discover, and then cling to truths from
choice ; but life supplies us both with material and with the power of shap-
ing or mis-shaping it. Apart from growing observation and the nervous
system as we know it, character is meaningless. Our judgment, our reason,
our imagination, our fertility of resource, our power of thought, are moulded
according to the general facts which have been expounded in the previous
chapters. The sparkling wat, the poetic nature, the philosophical mind, the
lover of his race, would not be what they are, were it not for the peculiar
workings of the brain. Wit, fancy, aphorism and moral insight cannot be
considered as home-bred. They are the final result of a specially adap-
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 405
tive organism. We might as well expect an unadulterated specimen of the
Bushman type to be at home in a West End drawing room as to hope for
anything that is not the result of organised reaction. Our characters are
not created, but evolved. The uniformity in human nature is not the con-
sequence of choice, but of organisation.
From the impossibility of men being to any extent inventive, it follows
directly that they must be a mirror of their times. Their restricted ability
prevents their being so to speak more than moulds, casts or shadows of
something larger than themselves. The net spread by the community
hauls in everybody without exception, and it is for this reason pre-eminently
that men are social beings. So, too, the civilised man, or the man of
culture, is an absurdity apart from a civilised and cultured social state.
Men take their cue from their environment. Hence not only in large
matters, such as philosophy or art, but in the pettiest details our being is
derived from a higher source. E\-en the manner of our thought, as we saw,
results from contact with our fellows who embody a hoary tradition, and
there is in us, therefore, infinitely more of others than of ourselves. Accord-
ingly, the difference between myself and the fowls which walk about in the
field before me, is that I am naturally a much better pupil, and if I had
no more native taste for learning than they have, there would be little
difference intellectually between us. Being dead to the past I should be
dead to all that the words Civilisation and Culture imply. The difference,
again, between one able man and another lies in the peculiar development
of some sense or power, the painter's for colour, the musician's for sound,
and the thinkers for strenuous thought.*
Absence of originality bounds us on every side. Our interests, as well
as our facts, come to us, and are ours, only in the second resort. What
we feel most, what stamps us most in a calm and quiet hour, what repre-
sents our views on birth, life and death, is borrowed. The isolated human
creature never evolves rational conceptions. All he can do is to slightly
improve or mar what is put before him. He may favour this problem or
that ; but it must be a socially produced problem. Nay more, it must be
a live problem. Constantly hearing of the issues which stir the times ;
having them dinned into our ears ; learning them at our mother's knee
and from our teachers ; finding them incessantly referred to in literature
and in our intercourse with others, we become tacitly attuned to them.
The present, by the structure of the brain (sec. 108), appeals to us most
forcibly. It fomis the normal food of thought. The problems which rouse
a generation, and, in a lesser degree, a section of it, are by the nature of
the case ever with us. Our daily thoughts, therefore, run in that direction.
The growing capacity for thinking and enthusiasm ever encounters one set
of notions; we are whirled along by them ; and, according to minor deter-
minants, we end by taking sides more or less with one existing party or
another. The interests and feelings of individual men are, therefore, as
much due to infection, to magnetic transference, to a sympathetic thrill, as
* Sully, Ge7iuis and Precocity^ 1886.
4o6 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
the store of their knowledge is due to communication. From every direc-
tion the social impetus, like a glacier, carries us quietly but irresistibly
along. It is, therefore, only the action of the mass of men that can ap-
preciably influence the social pressure, and in this way we obtain the
changing characteristics of a race. Hence the spell of the past is despotic.
Not that men are patient under that rule, for they constantly tend to throw
it off, fighting desperately against being dependants. This revolt forms
the second great moulding force of developing humanity. We do not
readily allow ourselves to be buffeted about by the chances of fortune.
We resist, and though the resistance can avail us little, yet that little deter-
mines the rate and the direction of progress.
The hero worship of the old type is indefensible. We praise Shakespeare,
and ignore, and almost contemn, his fellows. The array of poets who in
the sweat of their brows fashioned the tools which Shakespeare used ; the
virtues of style discovered one by one by the meditations of the many ; the
power and passion with which his age supplied him, are forgotten. Yet
take these out of Shakespeare's mind and heart, and where stand his
magnificent works ? Rational worship should be period worship, an admira-
tion for the spirit which braced the times. The Elizabethan age, and
Shakespeare only secondarily, should receive our gratitude. At most, a
genius should be admired as a partial embodiment of a great era.
Recognition depends on character ; that depends on uniformity in human
nature ; and that again on the psychological principles referred to in previous
chapters. We saw in the last section how faithfully great men mirrored
their world. We will note here how perfectly they hold up the glass to
themselves. Shakespeare spoke in his works with no uncertain tone, and
so does every one, great or little. This is strikingly illustrated in many
ways. A lover of paintings who sympathetically visits the great galleries
of Europe, will bear testimony to this contention. Entering for the first
time a suite of rooms, in some famous gallery, he knows almost at a glance
who were the painters of the various pictures. Within a few seconds he
traces to their source a dozen works of art. Correggio, Tintoretto, Leonardo
da Vinci, Raphael, Diirer, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fra Lippo Lippi, one and
all are recognised without hesitation. To the practised eye deception is
almost impossible, except where there has been deliberate imitation. Who
could look at a Velasquez, and not tell it from a jNIurillo ; or a Rubens, and
not distinguish it from a Rembrandt ; or a Correggio, and not differentiate
it from a Raphael? For reasons I have already insisted upon at great
length, no one can be a Velasquez, a ]\Iurillo, a Rubens, a Rembrandt, a
Correggio, and a Raphael, all in one. The facts, as we see, unhesitatingly
confirm our statement.
As with painting so with poetry. A few lines recited to a connoisseur at
once betray the author. Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Tennyson, Brown-
ing, Swinburne, William Morris, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth have they not
each a certain something, a spiritual signature attached to their words, by
which they are almost instantly recognised ? Their individual vocabulary,
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 407
their sentences, their similes, their fancies come from the same foundry.
Viewing an exhibition of Watts' collected pictures, we observe a striking
similarity between them. A few hundred yards off, and on the same day,
we see Lord Leighton's pictures. How like these are to each other ; how
different from those of Watts. Thus, looking through any two poets, we
cannot help noticing the surprising unity there is in each of them, while
they differ equally from each other. The individual's range is almost petty ;
the pj'oducts of his time are almost indistinguishable ; only the cativas of
history is impressive.
It scarcely needs to be stated that what is true of painting and poetry is
true of all subjects and all men. The psychological machinery explains the
fixed and narrow boundaries of the individual. Character — individual,
national, racial, human, animal — is a necessary product. Dissociated from
its psychological connections, its fixedness and limitation lose all meaning.
213. — Relation to Needs.
The Sonnets are an imperfect representation of Shakespeare's life. They
delineate him at but one stage of his normal existence, and even here the
tale is of necessity incomplete. His topic was more circumscribed than his
nature, and we must, therefore, guard against too hasty generalisation.
We know that needs are the motor power of our existence ; that as far as
these vary in quantity and quality, so our characters vary with them. We
are not aware of any abstract reason for the existence or the nature of human
needs ; we have to accept them as evolutionary products. It is well, there-
fore, duly to appreciate the importance of a true conception of their changes,
for on account of this property of needs, character, in the larger sense, is
not fixed. The study of the pictures of Sir Edward Burne-Jones or the
collected poems of Tennyson is misleading in this respect. There is in
them a comparative uniformity which is not characteristic of the painter and
the poet, except in their professional capacity.
The characters of the babe, the child, the youth, the young man, the
matured man, the middle-aged man, the old man, the dotard, are not
determined in the first instance by social institutions or individual pre-
dilections. It is no accident that puppies, kittens, kids, Iambs and the
host of other mammals spend the first portion of their existence largely
in play. It is their inherited nature to do so. In this way the needs of
individuals vary with their age. The character of the new-born Shake-
speare differs immensely from the matured man with a history : the former
is interested only in sleeping and feeding, the latter' s interests are too
many to be enumerated. The fixedness is still an attribute; but the
needs being different, the character is different also. It would be tedious
to follow the development of the child into the man, and the man into the
dotard. All we have to recognise is that as our needs vary with our age,
so also does our character, and that such development is natural. It is
the 7idivetc of human nature which makes child and man forget that their
point of view is often one which only covers their age. It is amusing to
4oS SPECIAL SYNTHESES
hear a damsel of seven gravely pronouncing judgment; and it is sad to
observe in one who has reached maturity a want of appreciation of the
limitations of childhood. We nearly always live in the present, and view
things in general from that standpoint. In the ardour of youth we swear
eternal love and complete devotion, for the present is too all-pervading
for us to appreciate the changed needs which must ensue. We live not
only as if we were going to live for ever, but as if human nature were not
subject to change ; when, as a matter of fact, it is ever changing, though
in accordance with a determined order.
Looking more closely into the question, we may be said to possess, as
has been shown in ch. 7, a multiplicity of characters. (i) There is
to begin with the perennial character which lasts through life. The
child eats, so does the man, and so does the dotard. A number of pro-
cesses accordingly remain faithful to us throughout life. Young or old,
we are liable to heat and cold, hunger and thirst, comfort and discomfort.
These and many more wants ever wait on us.
(2) As we pass through life, numerous fresh needs develop, reign for a
time, and then vanish, giving place to others. Their appearance and dis-
appearance are universal phenomena, and should not be attributed to
social influences. Shakespeare's sonnet form was a social product; but
not his love for the " dark lady." The essence of the latter is older than
man himself. With the periodic needs which come upon us, we now like
to hear fairy tales and to play games ; now we desire sport and tales of
adventure ; now love is the exclusive theme ; now we are full of great
plans ; and now we long for rest and reflection.
(3) The above classes express what is universal in us, what makes us
resemble our kind. Then follows the personal equation. No two things
are alike in nature, and certainly human beings are not born as copies of
each other. To that must be added that the conditions under which we
develop always vary, and sometimes considerably, from which fact arises
the difference between species, races, ages, classes, families and in-
dividuals. Each has its character, and because the conditions surround-
ing them vary, they vary with them, due allowance being made for
heredity. The individual or persojtal character is that which differentiates
a man from his fellows. What must be emphasised is that the most
fundamental portion of individual character is determined early in life.
If our intellect and morals are neglected in the first seven years, it is likely
that we shall be lost to all high endeavour, unless very special circum-
stances modify the result. If we have remained uncultured — wavering in
thought, while intolerant of ideals — until we are in the twenties, we shall
be singular exceptions if we ever show any mental virility. Normally the
first twenty years, often the first six years, straighten us or deform us.
The exceptions to the rule are so inconsiderable that they are not worth
taking account of in a general estimate. Thus the first fourth of a life of
four-score years, perhaps the first eighth, is by far the most decisive as re-
gards the significance of our efforts. We cannot leave to the matured
Sy^STEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 409
reason to select the best path we are to travel on ; that path is already
settled. There is then no room for anything but barren repentance, and
gigantic labour ending in dwarfish achievement.
(4) To the list we will add, for the sake of completeness, omitting here
peculiar and political needs (ch. 7), what we call owr passing character.
Frequently individuals show ephemeral traits. They are interested now
in this thing, now in that. They are for a period bad-tempered, good-
natured or retiring. Those traits which float like foam on the surface of
a man's being should be put in this category. These characteristics are
not important.
214. — The Evolution of the Individual.
I have thus far dealt almost exclusively with what is more or less
striking in the Sonnets, and I have neglected to inquire into the method
of assimilating notions and applying them. I must now deal with that
last point. A study of early childhood convinces us that men do not
gather notions as they do nuts ; for the notions are never separated, but
organised and interdependent. They do not shoot up ; they struggle into
being. We cannot, therefore, embrace a truth as we might a child ; or
recognise it as we might our face in a brook. Truth has to take root in
us, and only with the passage of years does it become part of us. That
is as we should expect it to be, if we assume an organised psychological
basis. Yet so simple are the facts of life that to illustrate the generation
of notions, there is continual danger of having recourse to the familiar
conceit of Minerva issuing fully armed from the head of Jove, On a
transcendental presupposition that might be so; and the obscurity of
psychic origins has undoubtedly given rise to a catastrophic conception
which it nourishes.
The new-born babe, omitting potentialities, is much unlike fully armed
Minerva. He possesses hardly anything except the sense of temperature
and that of hunger. Nearly his whole life lies in these. Most of the
time he lacks even that scanty outfit, being lapt in the arms of sleep.
With sight, smell, hearing and taste he is unacquainted. Not even a
smile can be won from his lips. Slowly he begins to stare, as a pre-
liminary to vision. It is some time before he recognises his nurse, and
much longer before he welcomes other members of the household. Many
months pass before there is more than a casual interest in the visual
surroundings. The sense of hearing develops even more tardily, and
accordingly for a long time he ignores sounds. Then he cries when the
noise is deafening ; then he hears without localising ; then, at last, after
many adventures, he turns to the point from which the acoustic waves
proceed. The less important sense of smell develops much later. The
child either disregards the scent of a rose, or merely pretends to an interest
in smells.
For months, also, the child is unable to localise pain. Nothing in his
behaviour tells the puzzled mother whether he is cold, or has inward
410 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
pains, or is choleric, or is being irritated by a pin. All he does is to cry
when some mishap befalls him. Such obstinate taciturnity tries the
patience, and puts to the proof the intelligence of his custodians. In re-
lation to this we observe the noteworthy fact that his sensations are not
connected with the place of their origin. He simply feels. He plays
with his feet as if they were foreign to him. He has no sense of organic
unity, still less a conception of it (sec. 19). The child's reflection in the
mirror is hailed as a baby companion.
With a softened stare, a sensibility to sound, a reference of pain to its
source, a recognition of his body, comes the attempt at orderly movement
and intelligible speech. However strange it appears, the writing of sonnets
presupposes an uninteresting history of this nature, and one might say that
it is as reasonable to expect horses to deliver sermons as to suppose that
babes can write sonnets. Yet the story of the origin of Shakespeare's
poems begins with his birth. Consistently ignore these exploits of child-
hood and those that preceded manhood, and the sonnets might as well
have been written by a statue as by a human being. The child was father
to the man and to the sonnets. Without his early accumulations the man
Shakespeare would have been an idiot, possessing no powers of observa-
tion, discrimination, motion or speech, for these are the outcome of a
complex nervous structure, built up by long training. Subtract what the
child contributed to the sonnets, and they vanish out of sight ; that is to
say, all we do issues from our summed-up past. The organism which
produces sonnets brings its whole life history to bear on the task.*
The man is rapidly being constructed. The child has an absorbing
interest in motion. He moves about incessantly like a jackal in confine-
ment. We almost hear his heart beating, and we see the consuming ex-
citement in the face, as he makes a bold dash from chair to chair. Many
are his falls, but still he perseveres, and uses no little ingenuity in his
attempts to move about. After a year or two he can walk a little ; but
movement as a whole is yet in its first stages. The motions are still
awkward and imperfect. Not till he has reached the twelfth year, and
more, can he use his limbs with precision.
While still very young, about twelve months old, he begins to reason.
Seeing the hand under the table, he identifies the owner ; hearing a noise,
he traces the source ; he plays at bo-peep ; and he snatches up quickly
what he is afraid may be refused him. The vein of imitation is also very
strong. Eager to act and reason, he freely repeats what interests him.
Thus also he asks you to admire his dress, by pointing to it ; or he pre-
tends to smell the flowers.
Still, it is in connection with language that we find the richest growth of
notions. Language is the golden key which opens to us the golden gates
of knowledge. It is the sponge by means of which we absorb the thoughts
of our fellows and the treasures of the past. With its help we come to
* The peculiar inattentiveness of infants and their lack of knowledge are to be explained,
as in sec. 19, by the fact that all sensations are yet isolated.
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 411
make our own what it has taken generations of men thousands of years to
accumulate.
Shakespeare's flowing sentences are not the outcome of the soul's spon-
taneity. They did not gush up from a mysterious well. Inspired as he
felt sometimes, readily as the lines burst forth now and then, the inspira-
tion and the readiness had nevertheless a protracted history. Their begin-
nings lay in the prophetic babbling of the infant, for as the violinist tunes
his instrument, so the young child tries his vocal organs. For hours he
enjoys to hear and feel himself gurgling, chirping and lisping — it is an
earnest of what is to be accomplished a year or two afterwards. Where
intelligent language commences, it is the tiniest possible rill, and the
mighty river of conversation scarcely seems derivable from such a puny
fountainhead. The splashing and sparkling, the thunder and lightning, the
music and wit, of the final product are as yet unsuspected. Slowly and
painfully he learns and is taught homely words. Mamma, dadda, bupper,
b(r)ead, byby, tata, salt, milk, upstairs, chair, nice, naughty, gi(ve) me, etc.,
are the peculiar sounds he sometimes favours. Perhaps at the end of the
third year his vocabulary reaches to a few hundred words, though great
variations exist in this respect among children.* These words can only be
called words proper by courtesy. In the large majority of instances they
represent the barest skeleton as compared to the massive body of notions
which they convey to adults. Even such a word as "mother" signifies
to the learner not a hundredth portion which it does to us. While the
child admittedly uses a word, he cannot as yet be said to grasp it fully.
Only after many years does he acquire a just conception of all that it im-
plies. The child's vocabulary is, therefore, no reliable gauge of its acquire-
ments. It will be long before his conception of the words resembles ours
in fulness and precision. Adults absorb average thoughts easily, not be-
cause of occult powers but because the paltriest fraction only of the new
thoughts falls outside their past. In so far as words are comparatively
new, such as those which express philosophical conceptions, it takes us
several years to understand them honestly. The readiness with which we
enter into matters, is solely owing to the stock we have stored. We easily
react, because we react organically, and because our past has prepared us
for nearly every emergency. The reason which comes with maturity is
no deus ex machina, as writers like Lotze would have it ; but is the result
of protracted wrestling with the world, the beneficial results of which
wrestling are observable in the adapted nervous mechanism. Other factors
enter into the equation ; but the one just mentioned is the decisive one.
Thought is organised. Its capacity is a product of evolution. Reaction is
far-reaching, swift and sure, because, through growth, from birth onwards,
the brain, and its coadjutors, have become perfected.
As the child grows, and learns through exercise, so the few hundred words
change to perhaps 3000 or more. However, parts of speech, mixed hap-
hazard, do not form a language, not at least the language of adult life. As,
* See on this point Preyer, Die Seek des Kindes, 1884, pp. 439-42.
412 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
therefore, his vocabulary increases, the child constructs, mostly by imitation,
at first, broken sentences. "Gi(ve) me bupper, p(l)case," "I want this,"
" I want to go byby," " I like that," and similar word complexes are
employed. At first the imitated sentences are short, crisp, incomplete
and represent a speech. By degrees they become less and less imitations,
and, at last, become longer and longer till they are similar to those of
adults. Thus the language which it has taken untold centuries to form, is
acquired through long practice by every human being. The phrase which
we utter so glibly is the result of the functioning of an adapted organ. The
words we use, the sentences we construct, the notions which underlie them,
have each an unmistakable history. At the age of about ten, the child's
speeches fairly well express his notions ; but this stage of his development
implies only a limited outlook. The wide, wide world is still a closed book
to him. He listens to the conversations of his elders with wondering
attention. Love, adventure, the family, business, politics, religion, hardly
exist in his restricted purview. However, as he grows older, his vocabulary
expands, the range of his conceptions widens and deepens, and the power
of expression becomes sustained and virile. Then, may-be, he writes
sonnets ; but only when his past has provided him with skill, and supplied
him with material, is such a task feasible. Even then he must have a quick
ear for the subtle music of the metre. He reads till he becomes saturated
with the spirit of poetry ; he practises till he finds his wings ready for flight :
nor does improvement end here. For years after his first successful
attempts, his style ripens, showing a nearer approach to perfection.
There is a long distance to traverse from the crying infant to the writing
of King Lear. The span cannot be jumped. The poet has to creep
steadily upwards till he reaches the highest summits. From notions which
are concrete and insignificant, he marches to world-embracing abstractions.
From mediocrity he advances to unsurpass3d skill. The thoughts ever
broaden and deepen, and his power of manipulating them keeps step. On
innumerable occasions improvements in his manner of thinking suggest
themselves, and these he practises until the fluid fashion of thought crystal-
lises into a trend.
We have pursued the history of the child's acquisition of language and
thought ; but it is not our business to follow his development into every nook
and corner. We know how painfully slow is the progress in reading,
writing, arithmetic, or other school subjects. Years pass before we read
and write with any proficiency. Many a boy and girl who leave school
early, and imperfectly equipped, read badly for the remainder of their lives,
though they may be diligent readers. A twelve months' neglect revenges itself
sometimes for the rest of a normal life. In every direction, we, therefore,
observe how established aptitudes determine the nature of the mature man.
It has often been lamented that we have no sure means of rightly interpreting the child
mind. The fact, however, has been overlooked that adults are children in very many
respects, and that in this we have a valuable clue to the understanding of the passage from
childhood to manhood.
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 413
215. — The Acquisition of Language.
In the preceding sections I have roughly sketched the general develop-
ment of the individual. I must now examine in detail the method of
thought as embodied in language. If organised reaction alone enables us
to think and to speak freely and effectively, then it should be possible to
discover how the web of speech is woven, and, accordingly, intelligent
remarks, as they have a physiological aspect, and are due to development,
should readily disclose their origin to the critical investigator. We ought
to be able to show that the sentences betray in their composition the over-
ruling presence of established trends. Every intelligible set of words must
be hall-marked, if our point of view be correct. A sentence which cannot
be accounted for organically, is inexplicable on our assumption. ^\ e can
only deal with traceable complexes of a known order.
An average person speaks at the rate of about 160 words per minute
when he is engaged in conversation, and, unless he is addressing an audience,
scarcely any one is so slow of speech as to utter as few as 120 words during
that time. On the other hand, 300 words per minute is no impossible
speed. It would be interesting to know what is the exact number of words
which an average person employs during an average day. Undoubtedly,
as I had occasion to show in sec. 120b, thought is not infrequent in the
absence of language ; but we have as yet no experimental estimate to rely
upon. AVe will assume, therefore — // is only an assumption — that the
number of words used per minute is on the average sixty. This would
give 3600 words an hour. Neglecting what speech there is in the dream
state, v.e assume the waking hours to be fifteen. The words which are
spoken, heard, read or thought-of during the day would hence be 3600
times 15, or fifty-four thousand, or, in round numbers, fifty thousand. We
will further assume that the vocabulary extends to three thousand six
hundred words. If so, many of the more common words, as "and'' or
"of" must have been used more than fifty times during a day. Some of
the remainder perhaps have occurred but once or twice. Considering the
average number of words employed in the routine of life, we may almost
suggest that a large proportion of them is used every day. \AU these details
are open to close observation, and must be determined experimentally.'] Thus
very many words have been, perhaps, repeated by us every day for years,
so that the major portion of a man's vocabulary has been re-developed
thousands of times during a life time. His familiarity with it is unquestion-
able, especially if v\-e consider how short is the time that passes between the
use of the same terms (sec. 114).
Words seldom occur by themselves. Assuming about ten of them to a
sentence, we utter, read, hear or think about five thousand sentences every
twenty-four hours. The construction of these we must discuss somewhat
at length, for there is no definite list of sentences in any language, and
their number has no limit. To enter into their nature, therefore, we must
forsake the strictly statistical method, however interesting it might be to
414 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
know the frequency of repetition. Of course a child often says " I want a
piece of cake, i)lease," and we frequently say, " How do you do?" yet the
quantity of complete sentences we repeatedly use is small compared to
those employed occasionally. The repetition, we shall see, lies in the
structural arrangement of the sentences, rather than in the sentences them-
selves. The method is that of cross-classification ; that is to say, we vary
the words in some well known way to suit special circumstances.
Given that the extent of variation is limited, so as to allow of constant
reiteration, it becomes obvious that organised reaction will make us masters
in the use of them. All that is required is that the multiplicity of forms
shall be such as to allow of being assimilated organically.
This is precisely what we find to be the case. The overwhelming
majority of constructions are exceedingly common. Hence, with years of
practice, speech, uttered or unuttered, becomes fluent and intelligent. The
mechanism is such that we readily predict this result. Examine the
sentence : " Where is my brother ? " I wished to speak to him ; but he
was not where I expected him to be. So I asked the above question.
Presupposing that all was normal, my query arose out of curiosity. As
soon as I saw some one who might be able to give me the information,
the quoted words developed. I did not hesitate a moment. There was
no perceptible building up of a structure. The words were well known to
me ; I was used to asking questions ; and curiosity had often moved me.
The only problem which remains, then, is to account for the sentence as
such. The first word I had employed on many occasions in a similar
way, viz., '■'■ ivhere are you?" or ^'' where has he placed the box?" That
word would, therefore, on account of organised reaction, spring up at once
when there was a question of whereabouts. The second one has been
used even more frequently, viz., "Aunt Lucy is here," "Who is there?"
" What is there ? " However, not only have these two letters, is, found
their way into similar constructions ; they have many times been employed
in the manner here illustrated. " Where-is " is a common form. Hence,
on the recurrence of a similar occasion a similar phrase, such as " where-
is," is re-integrated. What I remarked as to the first two words holds
good of the third. It is often used like this : " What is my sister doing ? "
'■'My brother is here," etc. As with is, so with 7ny. " Where-is-my,"
" What-is-my," " When-is-my," " It-is-my," are every-day expressions.
Hence " Where-is-my " is re-produced as one phrase. If organised trends
be a fact, this must be so. There will be no piecemeal elaboration where
the necessity for it is wanting, and where a form is treasured up in the
memory. And, lastly, the whole phrase is probably re-developed as it
stands, because, like many others, it is often employed or heard, as
" Where-is-my-brother ? " We not only learn sentences by constructing
them, but by coming across them in social intercourse or in books.
The stock of sentences or portions of sentences thus known amounts
perhaps to scores of thousands, and, considering that the constructions are
frequently employed, this sum is not extravagant. There is an almost
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 415
countless army of them. Glance at the following few lines which I drop
upon blindly, so as to exclude choice. " This is precisely what we find
to be the case. The overwhelming majority of constructions are exceed-
ingly common. Hence, with years of practice, speech, uttered or un-
uttered, becomes fluent and intelligent." None of these three sentences
can be safely looked upon as merely re-developed. The structure of the
first sentence is " This-is precisely what-we-find-to-be the-case," or " This-
is-precisely what-we-find-to-be the-case." The thought being common, the
phrase is so also. The second will read " The overwhelming majority-of
constructions are exceedingly-common." In sentences like this last one,
words such as the fifth and the seventh often vary. This is true of many
adjectives, adverbs and other parts of speech. The choice lies usually in
three or four possible and known alternatives, and should their number be
large, it takes an appreciable time to select the appropriate one. The
third and last sentence is more difficult than the first two ; but on the
whole, nevertheless, the analysis of the other sentences applies absolutely.
The construction is either common or there is special effort, or else an
appreciable period elapses before the sentence is completed. Thus it is
only natural that one who has had exceptional opportunities should have
fair command over his tongue or his pen, a large vocabulary and consider-
able facihty in the manipulation of complicated sentences.
The contention for which I have been arguing is so generally true that
it would be tedious to push the examination farther. Fluency of language
can be without reservation accounted for organically. It is well within
the acknowledged powers of the human nervous system, and makes no
greater demand on need-determined re-development than can be satis-
factorily met.
Let us take one example of the elaboration of sentences implying much
thought. I ask some one what Casuistry is. After a little reflection he
replies " Casuistry is the art which deals with ethical difficulties." How
did these words fall together ? At first sight the labour involved in com-
posing the answer appears fabulous ; but it is not so as a matter of fact,
for it is evolved by organised trends. Being accustomed to the general
methods of definition, he at once starts with the word to be defined. In
all but exceptional instances that is undoubtedly the first word of the
answer. Given the noun singular, and the verb "is" follows as it has so
often done before. Similarly with the " the." We possess now " Casuistry-
is-the.'' Here he halts. Two words can only suggest themselves Art and
Science. A knowledge of the subject soon makes it clear that casuistry
has the features of an art and not those of a science, for the difference
between these two has often perplexed him till he has learned the distinc-
tion thoroughly. " Casuistry-is-the art " will, therefore, be uttered readily.
What immediately follows depends somewhat on the personal equation.
Probably most persons have sets of words which they employ on such
occasions. Instead of " which deals with," he might choose " that treats
of." His choice is limited and within that range organised reaction has
4i6 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
singled out one or two for use. Thus "Casuistry-is-the art which-deals
with " should be fired off quickly enough. The final two words are, of
course, the most difficult to obtain. What happens here, is that by need-
satisfying reaction we re-member what is the most salient feature — the
phrase or set of words most often repeated. According to our knowledge
of the subject and our skill in definition, the answer emerges more or less
reluctantly. The notion of casuistry dealing with difficulties must have
often occurred to him, and there could be no doubt that the difficulties
were of an ethical nature. Thus the answer " Casuistry-is-the art which-
deals with ethical difficulties " is reached. The possibilities of error and
selection were moderate. He is not obliged to run hurriedly over a huge
array of words, for there is practically no choice. Perhaps on some
previous occasion he has read that " Chemistry is the science which deals
with . . ." Now he just places " Casuistry " where " Chemistry " stood,
and "art" for "science." Language, we see, is an acquired instrument.
This is soon proved negatively. A person who is not accustomed to
definition or to precise language, and has no knowledge of the subject,
will wander in thought. He will probably decline to attempt a definition,
and if he tries, there is little doubt that the result will be disappointing.
He must practically be in possession of the phrase if he is to be successful.
A definition is a form into which a special thought is thrown. A Member
of Parliament asking a supplementary question in the House of Commons ;
a public man proposing a resolution ; a solicitor preparing an affidavit ; a
poet writing verse, offer illustrations of the same truth. Only he is ready
with words, who has the words ready. If we fail to propose a well worded
resolution at a public meeting it is not necessarily because we lack some in-
nate power ; it is almost certainly because we have had no relevant training.
In agreement with the above we must never assume complexity, except
where we meet with intense and continued effort. When a man is asked
whether he knows French, we should not forthwith think that he is going
over all his work so as to give a satisfactory reply, for if that were so, we
should be bound to seek for a more subtle theory than the one here pro-
pounded. If reference to a campaign implied the total re-development in
a moment's time of all we ever knew of it, our present explanations would
miserably fail. The student of French, as a matter of fact, has most likely
been asked or has asked himself the question pretty frequently. He has
often compared his knowledge with that of the writer of his Grammars, or
with the fluency of Frenchmen. While acquiring the language, he has
attain and again considered the question more or less deliberately. He
has perhaps been told that when he could read Victor Hugo's Noti-e Dame
with ease, and had mastered the grammar, he would then be a good French
scholar. His judgment is also called into requisition. He has had many
opportunities of deciding when a thing is well known or not. The instance,
from a general standpoint, is a common one, and, again, where the student
is not prepared for the question, he either declines to answer or fails to
give a satisfactory reply.
SYSTEMS AS INDIVIDUALISED 417
Seemingly complex instances are to be dealt with as above. If in
answer to a question I assert that a book is good, I do not review in
thought all that I have read. To speak truly, I have probably forgotten
most of the details. The impression grew on me as I read; I noted
perhaps the uniformly fine style ; or I re-integrated in reading more of
what is valuable than I usually do with books of that class. Whatever the
reasons, an immediate and accurate reply only results when there is nothing
left to do but to polish a sentence.
The elaborate structure of language, with its enormous implications, is
the result of slow and organised development.
216. — A Bird's Eye View.
Theoretically it might well be contended that most individuals differ
from one another very considerably, while some immeasurably surpass the
rest. Examination shows, however, that personal capacity mainly depends
on the desire and the ability to absorb and elaborate the accumulated intel-
lectual treasures of the environment, and that where little has been accumu-
lated, genius of every kind is out of the question. We have also seen how
the fundamental fact of equal incapacity is accounted for by the intricacy of
truths, by the nature of organised reaction, and by the existence of changing
needs. To these same factors the remarkable stability as well as the
narrow range of individual character has been traced. Finally, I have
pointed out the manner in which the infant develops into the man.
27
CHAPTER X
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED
As our efforts rise or fall,
So our thoughts prove great or small.
217. — Highest Products.
We cannot account for a perennial spring, or for the mind, by asserting
that it is its nature to pour forth, to create, a constant supply. The
previous chapters have shown that the present, as a whole, is the organic
outcome of the past ; that our wisdom and our tendencies are as much an
organic growth as the trees which pelt us in the autumn with their leaves.
Recognising, therefore, that spontaneity is a myth, and that our psychic
form and complexion is an intricately elaborated product, we at once ask the
concrete question : " What is the known process which gives birth to high
mental results in general, or, let us say, the last chapter in particular?"
To answer, that the preceding chapter was not spontaneously evolved, but
that it depended on organic developments, as shown in the portion of the
work which went before, is not the explanation we are seeking. Following
that principle, we should still be in the dark as to the concrete happenings
when a problem of importance is solved. To put the matter plainly :
Did I sit down at my desk, take pen and paper, and write off the chapter
as readily as an organ-grinder turns the handle of his organ ?
Our previous investigations have dealt either with general facts or with
microscopic sections ; but now we are considering concrete problems.
The question asked at the conclusion of the last paragraph cannot be
answered deductively, and we must, therefore, examine its precise implica-
tions. Many journalists are known to dictate lengthy articles with at least
apparent composure and undoubted readiness ; they neither stop to think
nor to correct; they "go right on." Some novelists are said to write
with the same ease and fluency. One author is thus supposed to have
written a book, with the help of phonographs, shorthand clerks, etc., in
about three days. In every such event ready-formed notions, convictions
and practice, contribute to the result. It would be surprising to hear that
Plato's Republic or Spinoza's Ethics were holiday exercises, completed
within a week or two ; that Tennyson's Iti Memoriam or Virgil's yEneid
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 419
had been dictated, without preparation, to shorthand writers at the
moderate speed of eighty words a minute, and published without correc-
tion. We know of no great book composed in this way. It is more
common to hear of slowly-moving years spent in the making of a profound
work. Leaving journalistic fluency unexamined here, let us consider our
example, the last chapter.
When its theme suggested itself, I did not sit down and mechanically
finish the chapter in so many hours of continuous labour. Perhaps a year
before I began to write it, the notion of treating the topic occurred to me.
Being most of my time otherwise engaged, I only thought of it occasion-
ally. I noted facts scattered here and there. I now and then re-developed
something relevant to its issues. I occupied myself casually with it
sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes for a few minutes and sometimes
for a quarter of an hour. As time advanced, more seconds and minutes
and quarter-hours were given to the topic. Lastly, for about three months
most of my leisure — often hours together, frequently stolen moments —
was absorbed in understanding and framing the task. During that period
my world was a magnet attracting whatever bore on my purpose. Every-
thing suggested the problem of the Individual. It was the one thing to
which the nervous system was specially alive. As we know, the very fact
that I occupied myself almost exclusively with it, gave the notion import-
ance and momentum (sec. in). It was this concentration upon it which
obscured all other problems, which suppressed other lines of interconnec-
tion or reasoning, which made it the centre of the universe of interests,
which enabled it to fill every pause between thought and thought, and
which gave it the power spontaneously to present itself day and night.
Then came the actual composition. The pros and co?is had been
repeatedly weighed. This was omitted, this reinstated, this added, this
corrected and that reviewed. With increased intimacy, came general
conclusions of a more and more comprehensive order, and, at last, the
various notions found their place in an all-embracing system. Writing
proceeded now, with the help of notes and occasional re-examinations,
pretty briskly, so many pages per day. Yet not a few difficulties required
to be cleared up ; many a sentence had to be re-shapen, and many a word
discarded in favour of a more correct or expressive one. At the same
time the concentration of thought was much more exhaustive than that
observed in routine activity. Again and again I wandered off to side
issues, or dwelt on chance objects in the environment, or entertained
myself with idle fancies, or pondered over what I was writing. At last,
the concluding word was reached. I then read the whole composition
over again several times, correcting, adding, omitting and re-modelling.
From this point my interest in the chapter gradually waned. Just
occasionally I tapped its bars and wheels with the hammer of reason, and
mended a flaw where I discovered one. The whole chapter was probably
re-written — once, twice, who knows how many times — advantage being
taken, of course, of the work already accomplished.
420 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
All writers do not adopt the same methods. Their end is reached by
divergent ways. Thi.s, however, does not affect our position, for the point
to be emphasised is that, for the purposes of psychology, an examination
of a written essay conveys no notion of the many thoughts that were
entertained by the essayist relative to his subject. Psychologically the
exclusive examination of The Origin of Species, or the Frincipia, is an
unwarrantable proceeding, for it yields us no insight into the concrete
processes of psychology. The logician may examine your written reason-
ing, the lover of literature your style, and the moralist the ethical value
of your contribution ; but one who is interested in the concrete problems
of psychology must regard books as one and only one of very many
expressions of a man. He must take into account the general nature
of intellectual growth, the method by which the individual has acquired
skill in the use of his tools, and, lastly, the actual quantity of thinking
connected with the final output. If we once consider the book by itself,
and apart from the above factors, we are landed into formal psychology,
which is nothing but formal fiction. Overlook the concrete building up,
and you misstate the issue. I repeat, the workings of thought cannot be
understood or deduced by examining their products in the last stage of
development. It is to an abstract view, such as we are here condemning,
that we owe the stringent divisions of the faculties, the conception of a
pure reason, the notion of a self, the mind's atomic mechanism and forces.
Great attempts, using the expression in an elastic manner, must be thought
of in relation to the process by which they evolved : allowance must be
made in the first place for the acquired aptitude, and in the next, for the
precise development of the particular book, picture or product generally.
A mechanical method of thought does not exist.
The highest class of thought, as we have seen, is not developed without much
strenuousness. Sub-conscious thought, therefore, except in a very restricted sense, plays.
a small part in the life of the intellect. The factors to be considered in this respect are
the following. We are positively dependent on others for almost our entire intellectual
furniture (sees. 97 and 210), and consequently if we were left to ourselves, sub-conscious
thought could not raise us much above the level of idiocy. As regards any capacities
which the adult may possess, these are also impossible without the assumption of a
development extending over many years. Sub-conscious thought accordingly has only
minor significance ; but it may be said to exist under certain circumstances, as when we
are influenced by a partial withdrawal of the attention (sec. 19), by what is recent
(sec. Iioa), by the momentum of an act (sec. Ill), by dim ideas (sec. 126), by a mood
(sec. 109), by indirect suggestions (sec. 129), or by intimate knowledge (sec. 215). It
may also be noticed when we are trying hard to re-collect, for strenuous thought is
merely the cross-classification of memories (sec. 102). These factors, however, as also the
existence of needs, have a conscious counterpart and are ever-present, and can, therefore,
only lead to a theory of a conscious and a sub-conscious aspect of thought. The plain
fact seems to be that there are no prolonged or complicated processes of thought taking
place sub-consciously. Where, as in sensation and thought, much remains partly un-
discriminated, we have not a question of sub-consciousness, but one of not co-relating
various facts, e.g., the muscular strain in the eye is only co-related with the guidance of
eye movements.
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 421
218. — Deliberate Action, Speech and Thought.
There is, of course, no theoretical distinction between the concrete
thought treated of in the preceding section, and that referred to here.
We build up walls of separation for practical purposes alone, and we cut
out sections from various parts of the thought continuum so as to obtain
an intimate view of concrete thinking.
Let us consider an example. A master is telling his class a story from
Daudet. Examining closely his words and sentences, we do not notice
anything ambiguous in the expressions. The flow is so even that the tale
would be readable if directly transferred to print. There has been but
slight preparation. Probably notes were made, possibly not. Perhaps
the story has been read more than once with a view to selecting the
suitable portions. Except with an expert story teller, some such prepara-
tion must precede the recital. Then comes the telling of the tale. The
high quality of the account is no necessary reflex of the teller's concrete
thought. Being a teacher, he watches his class while speaking. Finding
himself not entirely absorbed in his narration, he now and again takes
notice of various matters in his environment. Perhaps the noises from
the street, his own voice, or the lights and shades playing round his pupils'
lips, distract his attention on various occasions without breaking into his
word-fence. Perhaps one listener seems much interested, a fact which
gives him pleasure ; while another, showing lack of interest, puzzles him.
He may have felt annoyed with himself because he cannot tell the story
as he would like. Such conditions as these are more than likely to be
present.
While to all appearance the words are streaming forth with ease, the
thought proper is not running so smooth a course. Something or other
suggests irrelevant lines of thought whi ch, though dismissed, continue to
recur. Then, he often had to decide which of two courses to follow.
Shall he leave this out, or insert that ? Shall he point the moral of this or
that incident ? Will this prove amusing ? What will be the effect of
that ? Not unfrequently he adds a sentence or two of mere padding to
procure himself the necessary breathing space in which to arrive at some
decision or to give a fresh turn to the story. Many a word is repented of
or criticised. If, again, the master is a visualiser, he will, while talking, see
many a scene in his mind's eye. Image after image will be developed ;
sound after sound, heard only by himself, will be detected. Then, too,
he will feel what he is telling. Now he is slow and heavy, now quick and
light, according as the story affects him. Suppressed imagery, thought
and argument, both relevant and irrelevant, accompany his speech.
The master's attitude is that of deliberateness. Scarcely a word or a
sentence is uttered, but passes the lips grudgingly. Everything is checked,
as if custom-house officers were stationed there for the purpose. It is
vigilance which raised the general quality of the recital, and increased effort
along the whole line regulates the direction of word and thought. The
422 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
slow speech which marks the man of deh'beration, unaware though he may be
of the fact, is owing to the turnstile click-click of anxiety which has become
highly organised.
Though the story teller reflects the concrete state more faithfully as com-
pared with the chapter we discussed in the last section, we have not yet
obtained a photograph of human reaction. The telling of the tale suggests
an order, a correctness, a facility, a directness, an even temper, an absence
of effort, an unpreparedness, which are belied by the facts. Were we to
engrave the sum total on an ideograph, if that were possible, how confusing
it would be to the bystander, how different from the story as usually heard
or read. Yet, as psychologists, it is precisely the sum total which we must
be concerned with, if we are to avoid baseless conclusions. \_Experimentally
verify the above?\
219. — AvER.A.GE Thought.
The less deliberate our actions are, the less amenable are they to inspec-
tion. The changes which the thought series undergoes from moment to
moment are difficult to observe. When we suddenly turn our attention to
the thoughts which have just passed, we, as a rule, fail to re-develop any-
thing. \Is this so with you f\ The bird of fancy is timid, and takes to flight
when approached. Passing thoughts resent being focussed. We must,
therefore, make our attention a very delicate instrument ; our harking back-
ward must be circumspect, so that we may observe without disappointment.
We must be trained to veer round slowly, not violently ; and abstract no
more energy from the brain process than is absolutely necessary. \Note
this.] Prolonged discipline will yield that ease and minimum of effort
which alone enable us to do our detective work efficiently.
Let us examine an instance. One evening, after dark, I am walking
along the road. Suddenly, in the quiet manner indicated, it occurs to me
to retrace my thought movements, and I determine to start from the time
when I passed certain bushes a minute ago. Standing under an electric
street lamp I write down what happened. It runs as follows : " Looking at
the bushes. It does look like candles. No, perhaps not ; Oh ! the re-
semblance is sufficient. ' The candles of the Spring are lit.' X. says about
candles not being common — might be light, gas, or something — how would
' candelabra of the Spring are lit ' — are lit or are being lit. Is candelabra the
best word ? Does it convey the meaning ? Perhaps it is the best word
(63 words)." [ExJ>erime»t in this direction.]
The bushes which I passed, and which I sometimes pass every day for
weeks together, originally suggested the line quoted. The criticism referred
to was made about eight hours before, and similar criticisms I had heard
previously. Therefore, on seeing the bushes, I not infrequently think over
the line. The first remark " It does look like candles " conveys no more
than a percentage of the thought involved. The sight of the diminutive
perpendicular sprays suggested to me innumerable tapers, standing upright.
Probably that vision vaguely embraced memories difficult to localise.
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 423
Then, too, the sense of resemblance is a kind of wavering, with an inclina-
tion to one side — a rapid interchange of inarticulate Yeas and Nays, with
the emphasis on the Yeas. This state represents oscillations, proceeding
at about the rate of eight or ten a second. What is true of the first
sentence holds good of the others. The thoughts are gradually and
forcibly developed. The doubts, the affirmations, the negations, the pon-
derings, were accompanied by a slight and yet sensible strain. There was
an almost unceasing effort to think reasonably, so as not to be led away by
irrelevant suggestions from the environment and otherwise. The feeling
which is specially noticed with heightened exertion was almost constant.
Numerically speaking, therefore, about thirty efforts were made in the minute
which passed ; and yet the minute's thought looks very much like an
average of mental process. Still, the examination yields further material.
Not being engrossed in the train of thought, I must have heard much noise,
seen many things, and felt not a little. When intensely in earnest hardly any-
thing is heard, seen or felt ; but ordinarily the environment and the
bodily organs distinctly affect us. Being engaged in thought, the sounds
are not classified : the noise of wheels, the jolting of cars, the tramping of
horses, the cries of vendors, and other sounds, are not considered in con-
nection with a context. They are sounds and nothing else. The jolting
no more suggests the sight of a van than it does the notion of the evolution
of vehicular traffic in relation to civilisation. We distinguish a familiar
sound, and there are no thoughts whatever connected with what is heard.
We trace no notion of familiarity, of time, of space, of form, of part and
whole, or of hke or dislike. All these are so many additional notions of
which we are not necessarily aware. In the normal state there is always
some detail connected with what is heard. As our thought absorbs more
attention, so the sound of the car is gradually reduced to a vague featureless
sound which finally ceases to impress us as a sound at all. So is it also
with sight and other systems. We must not imagine, therefore, that life is
crowded with vast thought complexes, for what happens from moment to
moment is analysable. It is not necessary to maintain that we face a
gigantic complex when we say : " The candles of the Spring are being lit."
No image of a candle developed at that time. It is hardly necessary to say
that the heat, the feel, the physical and chemical nature, and the history of
candles and their relation to other things, were not before me. As we
learnt in sec. 215, the swiftness and the discrimination with which we utter
a sentence, bear witness that it was not spontaneously created. Making
this allowance, we assert, that, from the point of view of the feelings, an
uttered sentence is best thought of as a nervous product, the precise
manner of production being yet unknown. The assumption of vague
depths of feeling into which the simple words send their many roots, is
unwarrantable. Compared to the nervous system, feelings are extremely
simple, and that which they contain can be analysed almost exhaustively by
a careful experimentalist.
It is necessarily very difficult, perhaps impossible, to re-develop even five
424 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
minutes' thought in undoubted completeness, and it is questionable
whether the sum total of one minute's systems can be re-integrated ; but
even if that be so, we need by no means despair. We may overcome the
obstacle by taking a large number of observations at random, comparing
them, and seeing whether the result is compatible with the rest of our
knowledge. There is still another alternative. It is probable that excep-
tional persons may so train themselves as to follow the play of thought in
its entirety for some seconds. With the attention shedding its light on the
facts, they will be more easily and more faithfully re-produced, and after a
few seconds — say ten — recorded. For a fuller account of the workings of
thought such comprehensive search is sadly required. \The enthusiastic
student sJwuld come to the rescue.] We could then tell better what it is exactly
that occupies us normally. In principle, attending to the object of our
attention is comparatively easy. It only becomes difficult when we insist
on observing everything without exception in a section of thought.*
We have analysed one example, and for general purposes and in view of the
limitations of space that must suffice. We have noted the incompleteness of
language, thought and imagery, and we know consequently that a striking
contrast exists between normal reflection and the written expression of the
highest thought. Strenuous effort is absent in the former case, where the
thoughts flow freely. In the latter case, on the other hand, we, like Alpine
climbers, advance cautiously.
Thought is frequently wordless. [Is this so with you .?] For example,
I am thinking of a certain person and note the following images. I see
him sitting in a certain room ; then standing ; then talking ; then walking ;
then being introduced ; then in some other place on various well defined
occasions and in a variety of postures. Then I re-develop his house and
scenes therein ; persons he is acquainted with; and the like (sec 120b).
It must be noted that there is no connection virtually or in time between
image and image, nor are they related internally by similarity ; the need
alone rules the series. The contiguous and the similar, in the ordinary
sense, are excluded. This class of thought is by far the quickest. With me,
at least, two-thirds of a second, would be a maximum average for the
development of each picture \and with you .?] ; while what is thoroughly
familiar and serially related, like shops in a street, may require less than one-
tenth of a second for each picture. \Test this.] These images, again, are
not usually complete. We obtain just a hint, a faint sketch, of what
interests us.
What is true of visual thought, is true generally. [Zr it?] According to
occasion and idiosyncrasy thought is more or less broken, more or less like
a mosaic the various colours of which are supplied by the various senses.
As we saw in the illustration which we specially analysed, feeling plays an
important part when we investigate the smallest particles of thought.
The examples quoted in connection with these three sections must be
* The more familiar a passage of thought is the more easily can it be observed or re-
developed in completeness.
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 425
taken to be selections from a large stock. For adequate exposition twenty
or thirty pages of illustrations would scarcely have been sufficient, and
those chosen should, therefore, be regarded as typical rather than exhaus-
tive. We see, then, that strain and completeness are a sign of highly
developed thought. The vocabulary, the sentences, the similes, the logical
exactitude, the appearance of system, all prove this. On the contrary, in
our normal private meditations, laxity and incompleteness are the rule. A
single feeling, a solitary image, will in this case stand for what could only
be expressed by sheets of paper and repeated reflections. As we have
observed, ideal thought as embodied in men's best work, is not an even
outpouring. It implies long preparation and careful correction. By parity
of reasoning, therefore, we recognise that sections of normal ideation will,
on the whole, lack originality and system. Similiar stimuli make us dwell
over and over again on the same subjects, or else we merely give a
passing thought to whatever our environment presents us with. This is
the more natural as, according to sec. 134, constant reiteration alone
enables us to preserve our multifarious acquisitions. Were we not readily to
attend to them, they would drop out of the memory. Besides, great strain
being excluded as a constant, what has happened recently, combined with
established and superficial interests, holds us enchained. So also with the
absence of system and completeness ; while the normal strain is too petty
for them, the struggle for existence among the units of thought and action
imposes a time limit to every thought.
220. — Afferent Activity.*
We reached, in the last section, the domain of psychological thinking.
Before we proceed to examine lower orders of combinations, we will in-
vestigate a few fundamental questions.
I sit in a chair in which head, limbs and body are easily rested.
[^RepeatJ] I remain immoveable for a while, thereby making sure that
only a minimum of intra-organic and extra-organic incidents are registered.
The fixed eyes in the motionless head soon exhaust what faces them (ch. 2),
since the position permits no variety of visual information. The outside
world is only nominally represented, and my thoughts are not occupied
with external objects. Imagine now that I am thinking of the tenets of
a certain school of philosophy. At some point comes a dilemma ; for a
moment thought is suspended ; I knit the brows, and continue to think.
I wish a little later to understand a knotty problem ; but, being baffled,
there is another blind stare — this time without effect. Ordinarily, under
such circumstances, we clutch at some afferent or inflowing modification,
regain our equilibrium in this way, and re-commence our search for a
solution ; but afferent or incoming activity is excluded by consent. Assum-
ing that I keep my fixed position with perfect steadiness, the result will
be that I become sleepy or self-hypnotised. {^Test this.^ The stream of
* On the whole subject of afferent, efferent and central activity see Bain, The Senses
and the Intellect, 1894, ch. i.
4^6 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
thought, like any stream, requires constant feeding, if it is not to cease.
It will not move of itself; it has to be perennially stimulated from without.
Why that is, the physiologist must answer. We only know that, when a
train of thought is interrupted by an insurmountable obstacle, thinking
tends to stop unless the body is thrown into agitation or the senses fill the
gap. When, therefore, the stream of thought has ceased to flow on account
of the supply being stopped, it becomes, as we should expect, a dry river
bed. This, however, is not all, for we also desire to know whether pure
thinking, which so soon lapses into inanity when not stimulated from with-
out, will start of itself The above contention shows that the contrary is
the case. The current of thought is not only maintained by afferent
activity, but is set going by it in the first instance. \Observe^^ Once we
are asleep we should very likely never wake again, unless we were affer-
ently roused. T/u>ughf, therefore, is only possible w/ien we are in unceasing
contact with our e?wironment, and afferent impulses, therefore, must be re-
garded as an indispensable condition of the thinking process. In their
absence, functioning is impossible. Thought does not keep itself alive by
a force which dwells within. Its fires are fed by the senses. No senses,
no thought, [/j- that so .?]
We excluded in this experiment the more obvious bodily motions. To
be strict, we ought to discourage all movement, palpable or not. We
should, therefore, refrain from knitting our brows, setting our teeth, fixing
our eyes, or increasing in any way the susceptibility of the senses. To act
as suggested is to shun effort ; and, since inner effort is nearly a constant,
thought, but for neural tone, will be suspended almost immediately when
we become perfectly still. \^Test this?^ Special training is required in
order to accomplish our object with ease, while under certain circumstances
we shall be more successful. An illustration of the first category is to be
found in those individuals who have been repeatedly hypnotised ; of the
second, in the state of the body before sleep. In the latter case, it is the
fact with many that they are no sooner still than sleep supervenes.
\_Olf served]
From the general premiss it follows that a life is not complete unless it
has allotted to it a proper share of afferent activity. In ch. g we already
saw that the bulk of leadi/ig notions are taken from the environment, and
that the individual, at his best, can add but a mite to the general store.
Thought is, therefore, doubly depeftdent on the at7?iosphere from which it
derives its nourish7nent.
Some interesting facts can be brought forward in illustration. Many
have been the harrowing pictures drawn of the horrors of solitary confine-
ment. Men break down physically and otherwise under the treatment, and it
is touching to read the stories told in this connection. A prisoner makes
friends with a young rat. He tames it ; he brings it up ; he shares with it
his food and drink ; and he plays with it. When his comrade is discovered,
he, with tears in his eyes, begs for permission to keep it. Though he is
otherwise obstinate, the threat to remove his companion brings him to sub-
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 427
mission. Why has soHtary confinement such strange consequences? I
answer, because the nervous system is too much left to its own resources.
Why, again, is a rat which is petted, or a strip of soil which is cultivated, so
great a blessing ? We reply, because they yield constant food to the
attention. Often when a thought haunts us, external occupation drives it
away, and hence new views keep otir old ones sweet by preventing monotonous
repetition. Manifold interests remove over-attention, while regular work
relieves the strain of abstract thought. In the absence of liberty, therefore,
we pine. Give the thinker paper and ink, and his cell becomes for a time
his study. He exercises his brain and plies his pen. He keeps himself
sound by exploiting past afferent or ingoing impressions. Yet since
memories lapse unless frequently re-instated, and since the environment of
a prisoner is too restricted to suggest much, the stores will shrink and the
thoughts will wander.
Similar conditions give rise to similar results. Those who live in the
country and do not interest themselves in nature, affairs or books, are in a
position resembling that of the prisoner. To them town with its afferent
attractions, — the theatre, the concert, the visit, the street bustle, — is some-
thing to be desired. Were they to take a living interest in nature, their
organic wants would be satisfied ; so also would they be, if village politics,
or sports or books appealed to them. The dulness of the country
only makes itself felt in those to whom nature's happenings are a manu-
script where the writing is blurred. In any case, the conditions of content
or discontent are the same, and travel, therefore, owes its fascination to
the wealth of afferent charms which it yields.
The monotony which is produced by division of labour needs only to be
mentioned for us to recognise therein the lack of a variety of outer in-
fluences. The recurrent actions, claiming very little attention and that in
one direction only, tiring because of their persistency, and supplying little
or no new material to the nervous system as a whole, do not satisfy the
normal cravings, and hence a general mental torpor ensues. Not being
permitted to fall asleep, the labourer sinks to a lower level of being.
\0b serve the effects of monot07iy?\
For this reason the child who is constitutionally eager for facts because
its outlook is yet very limited, throws away its doll and hugs a piece of
wood, or neglects the clock-work mouse with its monotonously repeated
movements, and takes to playing with live cats and dogs. The child re-
quires a ceaseless stream of fresh information, and naturally tires of an
object such as a toy animal which is for ever feebly nodding its head.
Sand, therefore, is the child's ideal companion. [ Watch children at play ?[
All forms of art and sport satisfy primarily because they occupy the
attention. As the next chapter will be devoted to proving this, we may
close the subject of afferent activity.*
* Dugald Stewart {Elements, 1808, pp. 328-9) already saw a portion of the truth con-
tended for in this section. He holds, for example, that relaxation of the attention, ceasing
to act and think, and listening to monotonous sounds, induce sleep. The dependence of
428 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
As atlention implies direction of activity, so sensory or afferent attention implies sense
activity to a certain extent. In seeing, for instance, the ocular mechanism is at work,
and the visual results will accord with the line of its activity. So with all the senses, and
also with efferent and central activity. Attention in every case argues some bodily move-
ment or adjustment. As Mach says : "It seems to me a very plausible contention that
the attention is (juite generally traceable to the mechanism of the body. If nervous work
is proceeding along certain line?, then the nature of the mechanism bars work along other
lines. And what holds of sensory impressions, probably holds of thought. Thinking
may be regarded as change inattention'' {Ziir Tlieorie des Gehorors^ans, 1863, vol. 48,
part 2, p. 297). Conse(|uentIy we shall understand the nature of attention when the
bodily mechanism is well known ; but meanwhile there can be no doubt as to the quantity
of atlentii>n being rigorously defined. On the physiological side another factor in atten-
tion is readily explained. In the normal waking slate the organism is always braced
up, alert, ready to react, prepared for making an effort, and the same holds good of the
attention under the same circumstances, to a similar extent, and presumably for the same
reasons. We have to consider, therefore, not only the direction but also the tone of at-
tention. As the lone is marked, so successful efforis of attention are assured, while
absence of a high attenlional lone will mean painful eftort and insignificant results. This
is obvious when we observe that in sensing and in thinking muscular strain is an essential
[Expo-imenfl, and that accordingly a low tone of the muscular system generally means
also a low attenlional tone. For the same reason, loo, the field of thought and memory,
both as regards extent and rale of change, will be the same in almost every respect with
the field of observation, and that because the same factors are involved in both fields (sec.
120). Lastly, just as every activity implies a modicum of tone, so also in allenlion strain
or tone is an essential factor.
22 1.-- Efferent Activity.
While employing such terms as afferent and efferent, or incoming and
outgoing, it must be distinctly understood that these processes do not ex-
clude central nervous influences, for sensibility is the result both of central
and afferent activity. Images are never presented to us, for the images
are part of us. In every instance the waves of light or sound are only
some of the conditions necessary to sight and hearing. Thus, when we
speak of afferent or efferent activity, it must be understood that central
activity is one of the factors in every reaction.
Efferent or motor action does but subserve afferent or sensory action,
and is really a help to it. To content ourselves with watching what
happens and hearing of what takes place, keeps us beggarly in intellect, for
speculation can tell us so little that we cannot trust to it for our supplies.
To overcome these hindrances we actively interfere with the process of the
suns. For instance, we attend a lecture on Chemistry, and are told what
to do in the laboratory. We see with our own eyes how the lecturer
manipulates the substances, and then we experiment ourselves. We are
astonished how often we fail ; how inordinately long each experiment lasts ;
but as time goes on, laboratory work becomes easy. It is difficult, there-
central activity on afferent or inflowing stimulation is discussed by Pfliiger, Theorie des
Schlafes, 1875 ; Heubel, Die Abhdnqigkeit des ivachen Gehirnziistandes von iitisseren
Regimgen, 1877 ; Slriimpell, Ein Beitrag zur Theorie des Schlafes, 1877; and Foster,
Physiology, 1897, §690. Tissie {Les Rives, 1890, p. 183) also remarks that "all our
dreams are provoked by an initiating sensory impression, even as are our thoughts in the
waking condition."
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 429
fore, to conceive the tons of information which would be an adequate sub-
stitute for ounces of practice, while in addition there are personal problems
which others cannot solve for us.
In afferent activity there is always efferent action, as in the adjustment
of the eyes, the head, the body and the limbs. Without such movements
we should notice almost nothing. ^Verify this?\ In complex motions,
such as are implied in experiments, in travels, in protracted observations,
in work, we meet the conditions most favourable to afferent activity. Thus
the child's playing with the sand on the sea-shore gives him the widest
scope as regards afferent possibilities. Looking at a heap of sand he learns
hardly anything ; playing with it, he receives a wealth of information.
Efferency and afferency are thus complementary, at least so far as continued
sanity is concerned. Both together yield the ideal result.
The system of motion which is expressed in efferency of itself demands
exercise. Not to employ the muscles is to allow them to deteriorate, and
that, in its turn, makes physical activity on a larger scale difficult while it
originates diseases which affect our vigour. Work, in the widest sense, is
hence one of the prime necessities of our being. Not to work, is to cease to
exist, even if we do not take central nervous activity into consideration.
Afferency is essential, and since efferency is one with it in purpose, the
one becomes as necessary as the other. The existence of needs alone is
more fundamental in that it conditions both sets of actions by supplying a
constant and uniform momentum. \Study the 7notor factor in observation^
222. — Central Activity.
We saw, in sec. 219, how, in random thought, we are occupied in
observing and passing in review what has previously been a centre of atten-
tion. We also insisted in the last section that reaction is always partly
central. This last point should be deliberately recognised. We must not
allow for a moment that because very little attention is employed in vision,
therefore a visual system is an "impression" or a " presentation " in the
literal sense of the word. If this be clear, the next stage is to recognise
the place of deliberation or endeavour. We have seen how Httle effort is
expended in average thinking as compared with the highest classes of thought,
and how, since sensible effort is almost synonymous with deliberation, such
effort may be regarded as an essential of vigorous thinking. When we con-
sider that firm endeavour transforms what is normally feeble, haphazard and
wilful, into something with at least the semblance of strenuousness and
system, we may concede that afferency and efferency are but a part of a
greater whole.
Well directed effort is an indispensable condition of strength. We are
not warranted in assuming that there is a single human being who forthwith,
or with perfect ease, understands every problem which crosses his track.
Pausing over difficulties, keeping them deliberately before us, alone tightens
our grip. We cannot learn to do by seeing alone ; we must practise. So,
also, undigested observation can never raise us to a high intellectual level.
430 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
It is melancholy to observe rational creatures absorbed week after week in
magazines and reviews, day after day in political events, and hour after hour
in questions of conduct, and this for a life time, without appreciable growth
of insight. A few years' honest work to start with, or a little occasional
hard reading and hard thinking, would have immeasurably increased the
value of their retlections. As it is, their notions are ever performing some
fantastic war dance. The wings of their thought have no power nor skill.
They are tossed about helplessly like a dead insect in a gale.
The highest forms of thought imply that primary and secondary systems
are ceaselessly ordered and re-ordered ; that we constantly have recourse to
effort in order to give our thought true sequence and method. Superficial
reading of books, magazines, and papers ; attending lectures of a so-called
l)opular character, travelling, or going into society, will have scarcely any
effect in raising the quality of thought. Training or deliberate exercise
alone fits men to rise in the scale of existence. \Is that soT\ Afferent,
efferent and central activity must be combined to give thought its maximum
value. We need hardly repeat that these three are one in any combi-
nation. \Test the central factor.']
223. — 'TwixT Waking and Sleeping.
Thus far I have maintained that impressions, presentations and per-
ceptions are unrealities if we abstract central activity. We will now investi-
gate experimentally the extent of our power to mould the primary and
secondary material.
Most persons are able to discern faces in the smoke-stains on ceilings,
the veining on doors, or the designs in wall-papers. [Are you?] Starting
from this minimum I attempt to see faces. Wherever irregular lines exist,
and there are few places where they do not, the human countenance
appears. The clouds which had previously suggested steam, masses of
snow, or mountain ranges, teem now with living outlines. Everywhere
without exception, after a few months' practice, I member known and un-
known features. At last, it requires special effort to avoid the annoyance
produced by these arbitrary shapes. [Repeat tJie experiment.']
To make my investigation a little less wearisome I chiefly experiment
with the clouds, since these do not often claim the attention. No longer
satisfied with building up human faces, I come to integrate full-sized human
beings, lions, tigers and other animals, both in part and as a whole. To
the menagerie I add specimens from the vegetable kingdom, from art
and from inorganic nature. Later, I see the forms in any proportion I
please.
I endeavour now to transform one shape into another. Where I see a
lion, for instance, I develop successively object after object that I am bent
on imagining. I continue experimenting till I am confirmed in my
success.
Lastly, I attempt to construct figures from a minimum of outlines. With
nothing but a straight line before me, I can only construct a serpent, a
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 431
reed or some similar object, and I cannot see the straight line as a circle or
a square cabinet. With an uneven line a variety of images can be con-
structed. Three points, with an indifferent background, allow considerable
scope to the imagination ; but always within the Hmits of the outlines.
In no case do we find images to which there are no corresponding outlines.
Similarly, the colours we observe are those of the object, and flat outlines
yield at first two-dimensional forms.
We conclude, then, that the imagination when turned outwards, freely
creates forms, which are bound by the given figures, their colour and their
flatness. [Tesf f/ii's.]
Looking at these experiments in the light of the second chapter it be-
comes manifest that they illustrate a general principle. A// pre-dcveloping
and re-developing is primarily imaginative or neural. The lion's head which
I see in the clouds, is formed by me neurally exactly as is the so-called
real lion which I may have seen in the desert. In both cases we pick out
the features which we choose to dwell on ; and in both cases the object is
equally real or unreal. The differences are practical and not theoretical.
They are determined by social agreement, by the desire for the satisfaction
of needs, and, in part, by hereditary predilections. The brain's activity is
essentially like that of the sculptor's. Its works, like his, are without
exception, art-products.
When Spitta {Schlaf- tmd Trawnzustiinde, 1882, p. 87) says that "in our dreams, as in
matters of temperament, we each dwell in our own world," he is correct so far as social
conventions, strengthened by hereditary tendencies, are concerned, though it is as true
to say that each lives in his own world whilst awake. Stout {Manual, 1899, p. 318)
agrees with our position, holding that "in general, whatever appears to the perceptual
consciousness as separate is so because it is a centre of practical interest."
I might even go farther. A little effort would soon enable me to trans-
form solid objects into solid shapes, and I might also succeed in giving
body to two-dimensioned outlines. I could, finally, by the same rules, see
the imaginary objects in motion. My experiments are few in that direction
because of the danger to sanity. I observe just sufficient to make
sure of the possibility and, indeed, we can deduce these steps from our
premisses without going to the data. However, it is so important to pre-
serve a normal grasp of facts that nothing but very serious considerations
should persuade a man to indulge freely in such activity.
We now experiment with eyes shut. One would think that closing the
eyelids produces the "darkness which the blind do see" (Shakespeare,
Sonnet 27) ; but an appeal to the facts soon convinces us of Shakespeare's
error. Looking straight before us, when our eyes are shut, we observe
various things according to the light surrounding us. With the summer
sun shining on the face, we observe a rose-coloured ocean of fire in
violent agitation. [7"^i-/.] The colours change with changes in our activity.
If we, under the above circumstances, pass a hand over the eyes, the
flaming field of sight becomes comparatively dark, and when the light is en-
tirely excluded, we note only a dark screen with lighter points and lines,
432 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
reminding us of a woven sheet.* Turning our closed eyes upwards, down-
wards or sideways the field of view changes \Tesf\ and with changed
conditions the colours vary indefinitely. Hence up, down, right, left, may
have a meaning for us even with eyes closed. [7'^.f/'.] Looking at the sun
for a moment and then closing the eyes, we observe sometimes, especially
when tired, a number of tiny suns which pass through a series of beautiful
colours. [T'^i'/.] TJie dark field is of t/ie same texture as the void which we
see in a very dark place with our eyes opeti ; for instance, in looking into a
box at night or passing through a long railway tunnel. [Test.] Only when
one eye is closed is there total absence of vision in that part. [7>i-/.]
If, then, outlines are available, experimental figures will be possible. I
try, therefore, to construct definite objects in the retinal or closed-eye
field of vision. This experiment is more easily described than carried out.
The whole of my energy is often wasted in preventing the eyelids from
opening. Frequently, again, I find myself dozing off in the attempt.
Sometimes, also, imaginaiic^n pure and simple is mistaken for observation.
If we, however, look upon these difficulties as overcome, we then
encounter the last and greatest obstacle. The outlines are sometimes over-
whelming in quantity, and are seemingly on the move without ceasing.
Success here is most difficult, and it is only now and then that, after
much effort, we develop objects suggested by our fancy. There are, however,
three points to notice, namely the field of vision appears to have volume,
colour and movement. [7>^/.] If, therefore, we fully succeed, we shall be
able to obtain a close imitation of reality, the imagination possessing here
an ideally plastic material for its purposes.
In the normal waking state these experiments have remained disappoint-
ing. Some shape or other is formed on occasion, and this is sufficient
to prove our contention ; but these shapes usually lack liveliness. We,
therefore, watch ourselves going to sleep. We find that as we withdraw
from the outer world, the imagination is for a while arrested by the closed-
eye field of vision. \Repeat the experiments?^ Perhaps I awake fifteen
times or more in a forty minutes' afternoon experiment. On each of these
occasions arbitrary figures and scenes are, as it were, created ; but only a
few can be re-developed after I wake, although I have pencil and open
note book lying close by me. The pictures are seen abruptly, and at the
moment where we usually plunge into sleep proper. Now it is a cow running
through a wood, or men-of-war at sea, or a bedstead, or a well, or a curious
bird flying, or a rocky shore, and the like. Around the sight grows up a
story, and that, with the picture and other systems, is the dream. The
more we study these phantasms, the more evident does it become that
they are painted on the canvas of the dark field. When once we have
fixed them in the memory, they are re-producible in perfection. They ex-
hibit the features which dream pictures possess. Their externality and
hkeness to life are the direct result of the impress of the imagination on
* Fechner speaks in this connection of light-dust.
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 433
the plastic, occasionally coloured, and three-dimensioned mass. Yet on
occasion, when exceptionally fortunate or after long training, we may ob-
tain complete experimental proof, for in the transition between waking
and sleeping we can sometimes remain fully alert, studying and shifting
the images at will.* Thus I see a forest, which changes into a view of
the roofs and spires of a town, which becomes again a large human crowd,
and so on. [Tf'i'/.] In such instances we observe the oneness of
waking and non-waking closed-eye images.
Gothe had already referred to these phantasms. Gruithuisen has vague allusions to our
subject in his Beytrcige, 1812, pp. 58-61, and pp. 362-72. Johannes Mliller {Ueber die
phantastischen GesichtserscheiuHngen, 1826) made an exhaustive study of the subject,
which has not yet been equalled. He describes the phantasms in detail (p. 21). lie
can see them in the day-time when he shuts his eyes and becomes absorbed (p. 21). The
will cannot produce them arbitrarily in normal cases (p. 23). Our dream-pictures are but
a continuation of slumber pictures (p. 24). The latter mostly appear suddenly, and aic
one with the blots of light (pp. 29-30). " Dream-pictures are nothing but the luminous
phantasms which, before falling asleep, are to be seen when the eyes are closed" (p. 49). In
these states we can see things which we have never seen in the outer world nor shall ever see
there (p. 100). Mtiller consistently and suggestively extends his applicatiou to the other
senses, and to such phenomena as witchcraft, hypnotism, somnambulism, spiritualism
and insanity. Burdach [Physiofogh-, iii, sec. ed., 1838) keeps close to Mliller. He speaks
of the slumber pictures as being the " elements of dream-life," and says that they are at first
not regarded as real objects and that they form an introduction to dreams (§ 600). Maury
{Le Somnieil et les Rcves, 1865) closely follows Burdach \sho followed Midler, adding no-
thing that is new. He, too, agrees that " hypnagogic hallucinations constitute the forma-
tive element in dreams" (p. 53) ; that at first we are not deceived (p. 53) ; and that the
hallucinations are not restricted to the sense of sight (p. 54). From Maury's time up to
the present little has been done save to quote him. I must, however, except an excellent
note on visual dreams by Ladd (in Mind, 1892, pp. 299-304). The experimental method
which is advocated in this work is successfully applied by him. He says " Almost with-
out exception, when I am able to recall the visual iinages of my dream and to observe
the character of the retinal field quickly enough to compare the two, the schemata of the
luminous and coloured retinal phantasms afford the undoubted clue to the origin of the
things just seen in my dream life," and he also tells us " that during the first hour or two
of sleep, the relative sensitiveness of the soul to all intra-organic changes is greatly in-
creased" (p. 301). In another place, Ladd {Direct Control of the Retinal Field, 1894)
refers to deliberate and successful attempts to build up chosen pictures. Greenwood
{Imagination in Dreams, 1894) considers that the slumber pictures are entirely independ-
ent of the will (p. 22) ; that they only consist of human faces (p. 24) ; and that they are
independent of the memoiy (p. 18). As with so many writers on the subject, scarcely
one of his contentions has general value. The very contrary of each one of his assertions
as regards the originality, vividness and independence of slumber pictures, can be proved
experimentally. See also Dearborn, A Study 0/ Imaginations, 1898.
Let me record another experiment. In going to sleep I, for experi-
mental purposes, repeatedly and deliberately open my eyes. [^ReJ^eal.^
I detect a peculiar tendency of physical outlines to weave themselves into
a pattern. White objects, such as a piece of paper, seem phosphorescent
* Ilerbart {Lehrbuch, 1816, p. 29) says that no one can observe himself falling asleep ;
and Cox {Sleep and Dreatn, 1878, p. 8) observes that "the passage from waking to
sleeping is momentary." We have, on the contrary, seen reason to think that the
pasfeage is observable, and that the process is not momcntar}-.
28
4 34 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
in their brightness ; and an article of clothing close by appears as a patch
of light on the wall, twelve feet beyond. The dimness alone does not ac-
count for what happens, because when wide awake and sitting in the dark,
I have never suspected these vagaries of the imagination. So, again,
waking in the morning I am wondering who has placed a strange brush on
the table when the vision resolves itself into two books. Again, on an-
other occasion, I imagine I see two of my manuscript books, when in the
morning I discover I had mistaken a brush for them. Rousing myself re-
peatedly liefore going to sleep, or in the morning, I become accustomed
to see semi-visions. Now I seem to see this person, and then that one. In
the earlier experiments the illusion was never complete, except in one in-
stance where the deHght of facing a real phantasm roused me completely
and dispelled the vision. But in every instance — I am speaking of wliat
happened nearly every day for weeks — there were elements of a human
figure so distinct that tliey could be traced in detail. On another occasion
I discovered a Rembrandtesque figure. I saw the Rembrandt hat, the
ruff, the coat, and the arm hanging down by the side. Each time I looked,
the appearance was so distinct that it was difficult to see the objects in
their normal guise. It takes some time to rid oneself of the phantasmal
presence.
Here is a satisfactory case transcribed from my note book. " Early this
morning I woke. I gather that I was not fully awake, since it was not
easy to keep my eyes completely open. I saw in the room a nurse. I,
then, experimentally imagined details of the figure. There was her dark
cap, her eyes, her face, her ears, the hat ribbon, the neck, the cloak, and
the girdle round her waist. In fact I was able to add any detail I pleased.
The figure was lifeHke ; the facial expression pleasant. For a Httle while I
also saw a woman, drawn on a two-thirds scale or less, and standing higher
than the nurse, seemingly doing something to the latter's head-dress. It is
surprising out of what unpromising material the nurse was formed, some
clothes being the basis of the first figure. I think that the white lining of
a waistcoat suggested the face of a nurse, and that I then selected the out-
lines, at first dreamily and afterwards with deliberation. I seemed to pro-
ceed as freely with my material as the potter with his clay. When I rose
in the morning I could trace everything. The phantasm of the other figure
was formed out of several objects on the mantel-piece about ten feet away,
thus producing a complete illusion of distance. Just before rising, about 7
a.m., I had another hallucination, a very striking one. I saw the head of
a warrior, cut as in adamant. He seemed to wear a low cap-like helmet.
Underneath I saw his eyes and his eye-brows. He had a long straight nose,
suggesting great power, a small protruding clean-cut mouth, and an incisive
chin. The face looked massive and strong. I believe I was not clear
whether it was a face itself or the vizor over it. I believe I was inclined
to the latter view. On closely examining the groundwork, the nose ap-
peared too long. It was probably that which suggested the vizor. Curiously
enough the fawn-coloured material out of which the head was formed ap-
SVSTEJ/S AS CLASSIFIED 435
peared verdigris in colour, which may have been suggested by the thought
of a vizor, or vice versa. When I rose a Uttle later, the apparition was still
there." The "nurse" hallucination decides once for all the essential one-
ness of the open-eyed and close-eyed hallucinations of the period between
■sleeping and waking.
In the peculiar condition when closed-eye phantasms are normal, ap-
pearances of an abnormal character can also be witnessed, as we see, with
the eyes open. The imagination, having become weak and wilful, follows
only minor suggestions, and adapts everything to its own secret machina-
tions. What we distinctly note once more is that these imaginings, how-
ever startling, are hewn out of the solid rock of primary systems. The
outlines which appear, are not imaginary ; they are real. The colour and
the depth, too, are objective. With a little training it is not impossible to
form three-dimensional shapes of every kind as freely as, when in dealing
with clouds, we create two-dimensional ones.
Apart from experiment it is exceptional for people to wake when the
conditions favour hallucinations. Hence many persons are not aware of ever
having encountered even a single illusion of this nature. Others, again,
are hallucinated when some organic stimulus wakes them in the midst of
a dream or otherwise, or when some hope or danger, or the knowledge of
a near death, for instance, disturbs the neural equilibrium. Naturally, the
images vary with acquired tende tides. Children frequently see grotesque figures ;
find so do savages. Custom and religion serve also as inierpt-eters. "We have a
Greek who sees the shade of a drowned mariner mourning that he cannot
cross the river Styx till his body is buried ; or the phantom of an
unbaptised child who bewails the misery of its suffering from having died
before the rite necessary to salvation ; or a Mussulman who sees in the
jungles, or the desert, the green mantle of the Iman Ali mounted on his
charger; or a Hindoo ghost who complains that low caste men have polluted
his tomb" (Ireland, in Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, 1892, ii,
p. 1359, article "Visionary"). As with the quality of the apparitions, so
with the quantity. JVhen conditions favour them, 7ve have, as tve should
expect, an epidemic of visions and voices. The uncultured individual, misin-
terpreting an unusual occurrence, gives it an objective explanation en-
tirely out of accord with the imaginative influences which fashion it, and
even provokes the physical state of semi-wakefulness (sec. 218).
A belief prevails that sane persons who are perfectly awake observe these
appearances. This is, I consider, a mistake, based on hasty judgment.
We seem to be awake, but are not. Here is an illustration. You are on
a visit, and have an improvised bedroom allotted to you, which is so
situated that it forms a passage to another bedroom. On several occasions,
shortly after you retire, you hear the occupant of the latter room mount
the stairs, open the door, pass through, and shut the second door. You
usually turn round and watch him cross your room. At such times you
are lying apparently wide awake, thinking over the events of the day,
wondering what the morrow will bring, or unravelling some problem.
436 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
You think yourself completely awake. \o\x would smile at the suggestion-
that you are anything but alert ; for what is to distinguish indubitable
wakefulness if not calm and ordered thought? One evening, turning
round to see your bodily familiar, he chances to ask you some simple
question. \o\.\ hear and understand what he says. Then you open your
lips to reply, and . . . begin to utter incoherent sounds. Here is a second
instance. I sit with my eyes shut, apparently fully awake. Some one enters
the room, and, to my surprise, I find it almost impossible to open my eyes.
Now since there is reason to believe that all hallucinations of the sane and
healthy occur in this twilight state, I regard them as fully explained.
\_Tesi t/iis ; try and find iiista7ices to the contrary ?\
I have only to add that what has been asserted generally as to sight,,
holds good of hearing and auditory hallucinations, and of the senses
generally. S^lllustratc from sound hallucinations^ There is no room to
enlarge on the subject.
Johannes Miiller {Uebcr die phanlaslischcn Cesichtscrschcinungcn, 1826, p. 75) allows
for open-eyed visions, though he does not go into details. Delhoeuf ( Une Hallucinalioii
<) FEtat Normal ct Conscient, 1885) describes a waking hallucination, without attempting
to trace its origin. Marillier (Quetqnes Cas <£ Halliuinaiio)!, 1886) recounts a number
of his own hallucinations, remarking that no direct differentiation is possiljle between
reality and hallucination. Marillier's case is not easily explained by my own principles,
I must also refer to a series of articles in The Ethical World (1898-9) on "The Case
against Telepathy,"' where I make an attempt to explain the current stories of telepathic
hallucinations at the time of death.
The distinction between a hallucination and an illusion is supposed to be that in the
latter case an object is present and that in the former an object is absent. Baldwin
{Senses and Intellect, 1890), for instance, says : " In hallucination, all extra-organic
stimulation is wanting " (p. 259). So Simon {Le Monde des A'eves, 1882) writes "the
state of hallucination consists in a sensorial perception without there being an exterior
object to produce it " (pp. 98-9). Recent research has not favoured this rigid division.
224. — Dreams.
Dreams form undoubtedly the lowest plane of thought. The reasoning
in the waking state is generally lax ; but never does it approach, except in
the insane, the chaotic stupidity of the dream-state. Nay, were it not that
we are often misled, we should learn that many of our dream-sayings are
even less intelligent than we suppose them to be.
225. — Extra-Organic Stimuli in Dreams.
Let us first consider instances where the afferent or outer influence is
evident. I thought that somebody knocked at the street door, was admitted,
and walked noisily up the stairs. (This dream would not claim more than
a second or so.) I woke immediately, and noted that the policeman had
roused some servant who was anxious to rise early ; that he had been
answered, and was tramping away. Similarly, a short time ago, I thought
I saw some one I knew, a grave old gentleman, walk about his room, ring-
ing a bell. [ JlViy the old gentleman ?] Waking, I observed that some early
SVSTEJfS AS CLASSIFIED 437
■vendor was using that instrument of torture in the roadway. Again, one
morning 1 dreamt that I was in a lecture room. Some one whom I knew
was making a few pointed remarks, which, as far as I re-member them, were
all nonsense. When he finished, there was general applause. Then all,
-except one, became silent. That solitary enthusiast declined to be sub-
dued, and kept on stamping his feet. Various persons, among them the
lecturer, approached, trying to reason with him, but in vain. [ Why did
the story take just t Ids form f\ Then I awoke, and discovered that, it being
late, somebody in the room close to mine was knocking loudly on the
wall. On another occasion I fancied that I was booking trains as they
rolled noisily into a station. In the morning I was informed that there
had been a terrific thunderstorm during the night. Thus I re-develop a
dream-story where a pistol shot was the centre of a sensational occurrence
the explanation of which I found, on waking, to be that some heavy object
had fallen from the mantel-piece onto the brass fender. In this case,
where the beginning forms the last act, we have to do with a perverse
judgment. The noise is heard and the tale is woven around it, — a second
or two is sufficient for this, — the feeble reason readily inventing a story to
account for the afferent infliction.
The query in the text as to why the particular old gentleman appeared, raises an im-
portant question. It has been a standing subject of wonder why we do not generally
dream about what occupies our minds seriously, and why we do dream about things of
no importance. So Hildebrandt {Dcr Traiivi, i88r, pp. 1 1-3) mentions that passing
things only are re-developed in dreams. Robert (Der Traum als Naturiiot/nveudigkeit
erkliirt, 1886) has the following highly ingenious theory to account for the facts. That
•which is fully thought out, is not dreamt of (p. 10) ; but thoughts which have Ijeen only
hurriedly or insufficiently attended to, form the matter of dream-life (p. 9). In the
dream, the hurried thoughts are digested, and hence a man would go mad if he did not
dream (p. lo). Should the dream-effort be insuthcient, hurried thoughts will recur in
the waking state (p. 21). Indeed, dreams are reappearances of suppressed thoughts (p.
26) ; they are safety-valves (p. 26) ; they " have a curative and relieving effect" (p. 32) ;
to induce dreams would probably mean the curing of insanity (pp. 32-3) ; it is to them,
and not to sleep, that the morning's freshness is due (pp. 37 -S) ; they have, consistent
with the theory, their origin in the waking state, though some images may be due to
sensory stimulation (p. 48). In short, " the causes [of dreams] are always the same :
the existence of undigested sense-perceptions or of uncompleted mental tasks " (p. 50).
I have no doubt that Robert's view is to some extent correct. Already, in ch. 5, we saw
that an undigested thought haunts us, and from that it is only fair to conclude that these
thoughts will recur readily in the sleeping condition, since they are crowded out by
urgent business in the waking state. To this extent Robert has vindicated his claim that
dreams have some function allotted to them in the human economy. But no farther. I
have specially tested the theory, with the following results. Undigested thoughts fre-
quently vanish altogether ; frequently they haunt us for very considerable periods ; and
frequently we recur to them in the waking state. On the other hand, in several cases
where I have made attempts to re-develop the material of dreams, it has been evident
that the thoughts or perceptions were in no exceptional sense hurried or undigested.
Thus in one dream — evidently traceable to my struggling for breath under the bed-
clothes — I could trace twelve memory pictures, all of recent origin. Each of these
twelve I could account for completely, and not one of them bore the mark of hurriedness
in any reasonable sense of that word. ' So in another dream I saw, while in some dream-
thoroughfare, a large number of clocks on churches and other buildings ; after which I
438 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
nolicetl that the name of the street was " UhrensUasse " (Clock Street). The day before
I had waited for some one at the corner of a thoroughfare, and could find no clock by
which to verify the time. I also looked several times al the name of the street, " Newton
Street," so as to be sure that there was no mistake. These events did not worry me ;.
they were the result of a method which I ([uietly apply all day long. Robert's view, as
a comprehensive theory, falls, therefore, to the ground.
There is no lack of other theories. Most of them assert that the Reason, the Under-
standing, the power of Comparison, the Will or the Higher Faculties are on leave, and
that the Associative Process, the Fancy or the Imagination are on night duty. I dis-
miss these powers as being superfluous. Fechner {Psydiophysik, i860, pp. 522-3) holds
that the dream-stage has traditions different from those of the waking state, and that it
is without the education which we have had in the waking state ; the dream-life is
different, in the sense that our country life may vary considerably from our town life.
This view is in part correct, and I shall refer to it in sec. 230. Miss Calkins (Statistics
of Dreams, 1893) also gives a good reason for the triviality of dreams. She says that the
things which mean most to us are very complex "and depend for their reproduction on
the integiity of very many lines of association" (p. 334). Leaving out her " lines," we
can readily agree that the organic tone or effort which is involved, as we know, in waking
thought, and which is absent in dream-thought, accounts for dreams being grotesque and
useless. Hence all memory proper, except casual pictures, is excluded, and consequently
we cannot live the waking state over again in our dream-life. To this must also be added
that centres much used, tend to rest ; and that, therefore, the dream-life would normally
be free from the echoes of the day. Indeed, the very slightness of a passing impression
or thought may, when the attention is at its lowest, make it more suitable for re-develop-
ment. Besides, the live interest which we have in the dream-idea excludes acting over
again our waking life, while the peculiar forms of the retinal pictures favour the forma-
tion of certain images rather than others.
The query with which we started is not yet answered. Why the particular image ?
Why the particular order of images ? Bearing in mind what has been said, I can only
add the following. I agree with Spitta (Schlaf- unci Tratiniziisliinde, 1882) that the
feelings (Geml'ith) or, as we might say, our moods, persist to some extent day and night*
(p. 116). When, then, the brain slumbers rather than sleeps, these moods will, in the
ordinary way, give rise to images and feelings. The first portion of the process is easily
explained. For example, as I sit reading, my elbow twitches, and, being a little
alarmed, I instantly imagine that some one is gripping me. Such lightning images are
frequently observable, especially when one's health is affected. Given, then, for instance,
a similar sensation whilst sleeping and an explanation will soon announce itself; we shall
act as the fancy dictates. But why the particular image of the old man ? The reply, sa
far as I can yet see, must be that the connection was not close ; that the old man tumbled
upon the scene, rather than walked onto it. The memory strings being loose, what
comes into the foreground is almost regularly out of place. Perhaps some blotches in
the dark field strongly suggested the figure of the old man. Whatever it be, it is the
business of psychology to find it out by means of the experimental method. Giessler [Aits
den Tiefen des Traumlebens, 1890) has an excellent study of the point raised in this note.
Tissie (Les Keves, 1890, pp. 200-2) also connects certain classes of dreams with the ab-
normal stale of different organs. \'olkelt {Die 7\aitmphantasie, 1875, PP- 43"S5) iii-
terprcts details of dreams by reference to bodily organs.
226.- — Intra-Organic and Efferent Stimuli in Dreams.
Systems originating within the body, or due to contact with the im-
mediate surroundings, such as the bed, form a staple source of dream-life.
I have already described the pictures seen at the moment of falling asleep*
*Sce also Volkelt, Die Trarimphan/asie, 1S75, pp. 109-17.
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 439
These have their origin presuiv.ably in afferency as much as ordinary
vision, though there exist probably various types of dreamers. They are
frequently the peg on which the dream is hung, or the charmed circle
around which the dream -story moves. With me at least they are almost
the normal introduction to sleep, though along with them, other influences,
especially auditory ones, have initiative power. The heavy breathing
suggests seething ocean waves. The beating of the pulse in the throat
suggests men on the march, some one running, walking, writing or using
a hammer, — in fact, every form of regular work. Especially are such
suggestions rife when anything occasions the pulse to beat more loudly or
more quickly.
Again, I have, so I believe, a fierce struggle with a man who nearly
crushes me. I wake and find that my arm is resting heavily on my chest,
and is the occasion of the unpleasant dream. Or I imagine that some one
thrusts a knife into me, and on waking I detect a piercing sensation about
the region of the heart. So I dream repeatedly that solely by stretching
my hands and legs out straight I am able to fly in a slanting downward
direction. After a time I discover whence the notion developed, and
also connect it with the fact of extending the legs. I dream that some
one has grasped my two hands, when I wake and find that I have the
cramp in those parts. A man dreams that a bear is coming in at the
window, and screams. Some one tries to rouse him ; but the dreamer
thinks the bear is laying hold of him, and becomes frantic. Thus I watch
a friend dozing ; suddenly his arm slips ; he wakes, and, in reply to a ques-
tion, he says that he imagined himself falling down the stairs, which could
easily be imagined in half a second.
In by far the greater number of instances an organic stimulus may be
at least surmised. For instance, I frequently dream that I am undressed
or that I am dressing, and it is difficult not to link this with a superficial
awareness of the fact that one is unclothed. The inability to satisfy our-
selves in such cases and the consequent dream-developments are but a
reflex of the unchanged stimulus. We cannot in the dream put our warm
socks on, because the feet remain cold and uncovered. Hence a confused
story, often lasting for a long time. Again, I repeatedly dream that I am
thirsty and have something to drink, and so also with other necessities of
nature ; the want, under certain circumstances, gives rise to the corres-
ponding dream.
The more carefully I record my dream-life the more I am convinced
that at every point, with me at least, physical stimuli, combined with
recent or permanent interests, originate and guide dreams. Take, for in-
stance, one dream at random from my note book. "I was, I don't know
how, floating or moving along in a canal, holding on to some railings
close by the water. I seemed to proceed with great rapidity and ease.
Then the water became suddenly deep. S. (whom I have not seen for four
years, but with whom I am in regular correspondence) was in front, and
he swam. The water then appeared to rise to my mouth. Then dry
440 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
land was esj^ied, and the danger was somehow past. Tlien we entered
a blind alley (the night before I had been in one). A number of persons
were assembled, and some householder was good enough to let us pass
through a door which led into a road," Why should I dream of a canal ;
why the extraordinary ease in movement ; why the sudden slope in the
canal bed ; why the feeling about the mouth ; and why the view of the
dry land ? The queries unmistakably find their answer in bodily develop-
ments which] arbitrarily change, and which the imagination presses into
its service. There is no logic connecting the parts of the story. Now
take the second dream I lived through on the same night. " I dreamt
that several of us were passing through a street, Miss X. among them (I
had met her on the previous evening, and often see her). She was push-
ing herself alongside of the others (contrary to her character), thrusting
me aside, when she^fainted. I caught hold of her and shouted. At the
same time she seemed (contrary to fact) a little thin woman of almost no
weight, something like an India-rubber doll. Then I supported her head
and shoulders ; and C, aged 12, and T., aged 7, both of whom I see daily,
held a leg each. I was angry with C. because he was carrying his burden
anyhow, looking all the time at picture scraps (which latter thing he often
does)." Here, also, as in the former dream, detail after detail suggests
actual bodily developments. Looking over the notes of the third and the
fourth dreams of that night, they read precisely as the first two. My
notes generally, and the re-developed dreams of my childhood, bear equal
testimony to'^the^above interpretation. For example, I dream that I look
at a disgusting spectacle which makes me feel sick, only to wake and
learn that owing to a bad cold, my throat is full of mucus. The same
night, and for the same reason, I dream that X. poisoned himself and that
everybody advised him to take an emetic. Or, on another occasion, I
think I feel hungry, and yet every dish inspires me, for the above reason,
with loathing. I explain a multiplicity of dreams as having reference to
severe colds'Jand fits of indigestion. It also happens not infrequently that
I dream of being sleepy or that it is very dark. Once I dreamt that I was
running with extreme swiftness along roads and at night time, being
totally unable to see any object and yet never colliding with anything.
Dreams of tastes and odours are universally acknowledged to be rare. Maur_v {Le
\Somi)ieil et les Keves, 1865, pp. 132-4), Monroe (A Sludy of Taste Di-eams, 1899), Ribot
{La Meinoire Affective, 1894), Titchener {Taste Dreams, 1895), Weed, Hallam and
rhinney {A Study of Dream Consciousness, 1S96) are among the writers who mention
experiments on the subject. Schwartzkopff (Das Leben im l^aiim, 1S87, p. 13) believes
that in dreams he tastes eatables and smells flowers.
Efferent activity also gives rise to dreams. Thus, moving my hand sud-
denly, I dream that I am opening a door. So, knocking the arm against
some object, I dream of two men-of-war in collision.* Most important
* The Spanish American war was then proceeding ; this and the preceding instance
were experimental afternoon dreams, and are not distinguishable from night dreams.
The influence of light in dream-vividness should be experimentally investigated.
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 441
in this respect, however, is our mimic activity, as when in our dreams
we either speak aloud or just move the tongue or Ups. In either case,
.as with sight, an illusory reality is suggested. A vividness results which
misleads the rudimentary judgment, even to the point of waking the
sleeper. The action involved in scanning the closed-eye field of vision,
and the mimic movements of the lips, limbs and organs, induce a belief
in a reality which differs from the waking imagination where these move-
ments are normally absent.
227. — The Place oy Reason in the Dream-State.
Let us now examine the place of reason in the dream-state. " I woke at
S a.m., in the middle of a dream. I was walking along a hard, sandy
country road and over viaducts. It was very dull, and also raining. Once
I dropped my umbrella, nearly losing it. I wondered as I walked back for
it, how one could let slip an umbrella in rainy weather. (It may have been
raining during the dream.) Nothing appeared to be clearly discerned; I
Tc-develop only the road. I was walking along a descending slope, it being
nearly dark. Meeting two lads, I was going to ask them how far I was from
my place of destination. I spoke to them, making several unsuccessful at-
tempts, until at last I mumbled out: "Graz." (The evening before, two boys
had asked me to direct them. Though I knew the locality well enough I could
not re-develop the street named. "Graz" is the place wheve an intimate
friend resides.) In the distance I saw two square towers, but as in the dark.
Then I met a man, aged about thirty, who told me I should have to retrace
-my steps as I had taken a wrong turning. He was travelling the same way,
and so we kept on talking about one thing and another. We came near to
a town. Before reaching it, my companion entered some building, while I
waited outside. Then he called me, and I went in. It was a chapel ; but
it looked like a bare room. We went right to the front. There were two
•desks, square ones, which looked like packing cases, and faced the congre-
gation. We sat down. The preacher stood a little to the left of us. 1 had
only my felt slippers on. I did not kneel down. I could not find the place
in the prayer book. The clergyman suddenly left, and my guide took his
place. A radiantly blond and chubby fellow came up to me and said that
he was ordered out for coming to church naked. I told my companion of this,
■and he replied that the man had frequently appeared in that way, being
besides only a farm-labourer." To say that need-satisfying development
was absent from this dream would be going too far. My reflections about
the umbrella, my conversation with the stranger, my behaviour in the chapel,
had reason in them. On the other hand, note that the word " Graz " was
a chance shot, that the word " naked " was employed inexactly, which
again implied a host of absurdities. The dimness of the towers, my not
being able to find the right place in the prayer book, my meeting the lads
and the stranger, the entering the chapel, the square desks, the clergyman
leaving, the being remonstrated with, are all unreasonable circumstances.
iSIy attitude could not be accounted for except by assuming afferent in-
442 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
fluences constantly modifying the trend of what was after all a connected
train of thought.
A dream is often much more grotesque than it appears to us when awake.
We think that we are uttering a series of brilliant paradoxes when, on waking,.
we find that what we were saying was not even coherent. The many-syl-
labled words we employ suggest that we are drenching our companions with
showers of magnificent thoughts. Hence an apparently intelligent conver-
sation turns out to be sheer nonsense. I find many signs of that. The
words " Graz " and " naked " are pertinent illustrations. So, dreaming that
I am reading Spenser, I am astonished to meet with the word "bicycle."'
Evidently the reading was a jumble of miscellanies. Thus, I am discon-
certed by some one urging something quite opposed to his usual views.
Most likely a haphazard phrase arrested my attention. Again, dreaming that
I am amanuensis to George Eliot, I note that the remarkable passages which
she dictates are already known to me, and what is new is very poor. Lastly,
I try in vain to make sense of a large poster which I am reading.*
Sometimes the reasoning is consistent. " I dreamt that I was out for a
walk in a park. It was misty and dark. (Probably sleep had a fair hold on
me.) A neighbour whom I did not personally know, nor recognise on re-
flection, and whom I need not describe, joined me. He asked me a ques-
tion concerning the word 'which.' I explained that the h is to be
pronounced before the iv ; that in Anglo-Saxon time it was so pronounced
as well as written. I pointed out to him that in the middle ages v was
written for ii, that the double v or iv was a double u : and that the sound
of the IV was as that of u. (I had lately been thinking about the connec-
tion between letters and sounds)." In this dream there is something like
perfect unity. Not an incident which does not fit in. My notes contain
only one otlier example of consecutive thought, though not so good as the
instance just cited. As will be seen, my dreams are on a much lower level
than ever, I hope, my thoughts are in the waking state. If but once my
day-thoughts were as confused as my night-thoughts, I should tremble for
my sanity. With some persons consistent dreaming is perhaps more-
common. In their case, they are sufficiently awake to think clearly. This,
however, will be referred to again later (sec. 232).
As to the unreasonableness of dreams in general, there can be little doubt. German,
French, English and American authors give exactly similar descriptions of the essential
nature of the dream-state. Binz {Ueber deii Traiiin, 1878, p. 33) is within bounds \vhca
he says that "among ten dreams, nine at least are absurd.'' So Macnish {The Philosophy
of Sleep, 1830, p. 60) says that " the province of dreams is one of intense exaggeration —
exaggeration beyond even the wildest conceptions of Oriental romance." So Mumford,
Wakings Sleeping a7id Dreaining, 1893, P- 24 : " If when awake we touch the cold iron of
tlie bedstead, we see the cause ; but when asleep, we think we are cast adrift upon an ice-
berg." So Sully, Human Mind, 1892, ii, p. 314: "Even the best of our dreaming is
but a confused chaotic reminiscence of waking experience." Sometimes, however, pro-
blems are solved in dreams ; forgotten things are re-developed ; and poetry is composed,
* Since writing the above, I have experimentally and exhaustively satisfied myself as-
to the general unreasonableness of dreams.
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 445-
For my part, I have not infrequently believed myself to have performed intellectual feats
in dream-life ; when, however, I awoke, these feats proved tantalisingly absurd. Burdach
^Physiologic, iii, 1838) recounts some striking dream-successes of his own, and Radestock
(ScJilaf laid Trauiit, 1879), Abercrombie {Inquiries, 1838, pp. 2S9-91), as well as other
writers, give a list of reasonable dreams. Such cases seem to show that those persons at
those times were in a physical condition which widely differed from that of the ordinary
dreamer. Reasonable dreams should be experimentally controlled. Cox {Sleep and
Dream, 1878, p. 55) speaks of the "exaltation of the mental faculties generally" in dreams,
and gives some doubtful instances in illustration. He forgets that the dream-stimuli are
real, that illusions are constant and that day dreams are normal. Greenwood {I magi na-
tion in Dreams, 1894) believes that reasonable dreams are not rare. Of himself he writes :
"Not rarely but commonly I have dreams which are throughout as consistent in scene
and circumstance as any of Mr. Kipling's stories for example " (p. 170). Is this, perhaps,
a sly hit at Mr. Kipling? I ask this because the dreams of his own which Greenwood re-
counts are of the quality only too common among common mortals. That rest, in the form
of sleep or otherwise, is often necessary before thought becomes clear on an important issue,
is universally admitted. Hence I should consider it likely that overnight the haze
should pass, and that the morning should have surprises in store. Accordingly, it is not
unreasonable to assume, wholly subject to experiment, that dreams should occasionally con-
tain a bright gem. So few, however, are the hits, and so enormous the number of misses,,
that we ought to be surprised at the trifling results of non-waking reflections.
2 28. — Influencing the Dream-State.
It is worth while to consider the interaction between the waking and the
dream-states.
Some years ago I left one country for another. Both the language and
the environment were different in my new abode, yet for some two or three
years at least, it was the old country, the old friends, the old tongue, the
old customs, which monopolised dream-Hfe. The recent cUd not exist for
me when I had lapsed from the state of wakefulness. \_Settlers in a neiv
country could vei-ify this?\ I used often to wonder at the persistency of long-
past happenings. This hold has not yet been completely relaxed, and oc-
casionally even now the dream-environment is that of many years ago.
(iradually, however, the more recent influences clamoured for admission tO'
the stage. The old and the new mingled in clown-fashion. Persons who-
knew no English spoke that language fluently, while English voices re-
sounded in the streets of non-English cities. It was only after some years
had passed that the new world of action entered into almost undisputed
possession of the wizard's court.
What is true of this general change, applies equally to less sweeping
transformations. The death of a mother or a brother is as a sealed letter
to the dreamer for many months after the event. At first the sad event is
entirely ignored. Later on, the figures appear seldom, since we think less
frequently of them in our nonnal condition. Yet for many years afterwards
friends, who are now permanent underground dwellers, re-appear in dreams
as if they had never forsaken us. I cannot find in my notes more than one
instance of a dream in which a death took place. This instance is too
striking and recent to be passed over. "I dreaint confusedly that my
mother was late in coming home ; and that people said she was dead..
444 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
That seemed to mc unreasonable. I saw then one i)hantasm and then a
•second. (I was then studying telepathy.) I became afraid. Somehow the
conjectures proved correct ; and I broke down completely and repeatedly
in consequence. The explanation of the dream is simple. The previous
-day at noon some particles of dust had entered my eyes, and I was unable
to dislodge them. During the night I woke several times on account of my
€yes watering. Hence the tears in my dream. The continuous watering
was interpreted as crying, and a story was developed to account for this."
As with the dead, so with the living. Friends who are thousands of miles
•away, familiarly mi.x with those in our immediate surroundings. Relatives
whom we have not seen for years, talk to us without causing any astonishment.
So is it also with dream-notions. Once the boyish spirit ruled. Any
one who hurt us, our friends or our goods, was made to pay dearly for his
audacity. We rated him, we fought him, and perhaps we went to the length
of killing him. As we grow more sentimental, traces of the change are
observed to trickle into the lower rivers of dream-life. If any one is angry
Avith us, we try in an exaggerated style of friendliness to reason with him
and calm his fury. In romantic fashion we refuse to stop the thief, or to
return blow for blow. We allow ourselves to be operated upon like dogs
in the vivisectionist's laboratory. When the captain asks for volunteers to
lighten the overladen boat, we jump overboard without hesitation. These
inspirations, however, do not embrace the whole dream-field. While one
night chivalrous, the next night we more than fully assert our rights.
Take one special instance. For various reasons I have become a total
abstainer from intoxicants. Shortly after my change, when in a dream I was
thirsty or at table, I had my glass without any qualm of conscience.
At last the message has reached the dreamer : Thou shalt not drink in-
toxicants. [^Deliberately suspend habits, and watch the dream-effect^ Again
and again I drink, and then am conscience-stricken. "Why did 1 drink it?
Had I not said that I would never taste it again ? What in heaven's name
induced me to do it ? Why did I break through my resolution ? " The
answers I tendered are often as interesting as the questions : " I had for-
gotten." " I was ill." " I required the potion." " I was persuaded to."
" I wanted to take it." Gradually a startling and ingenious solution gains
ground : " I have ceased to be an abstainer." I am, then, in the peculiar
condition that while, in the waking state, I abstain from, and am never
attracted by, intoxicants, as a dreamer I take them pretty freely — more
freely than I ever did before I was an abstainer. The dream-personality
■here, as in other instances, differs from the normal individual. Were the
question of drink displaced by that of purity, we should sententiously main-
tain that our failure was not due to psychological conditions, but to a
depraved free will.
In the above instance there was no endeavour to deliberately influence
the dream-state. But occasionally I have made experiments in that direc-
tion. \So might the sti/de>it.'\ For example, before going to sleep I
impressed on myself that I did not desire to dream of walking about in
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 445:
my night clothes, and, also, that I wished to wake when such a suggestion
arose. At first, no effect was traceable. Then, in my dream, I reasoned
that there was no harm in such conduct ; then, that I have changed my
opinion ; then, that I have walked into the road while asleep ; then, that
I have been stripped of my clothes ; then, that I have gone mad ; then,,
that it was too hot ; then, that I was in a tropical country, etc., etc. After-
each defeat I place the argument on the black list, and repeat it as a
warning before saying good-bye to the waking state.* The resolution
generally succeeds as far as conveying the message to the dreamer is con-
cerned, though, as we see, it has no permanent effect. After many efforts,
according to agreement, I wake or dismiss the subject. Then the notion
slumbers for a time. I now discontinue my nightly resolutions, till the
questionable dreams start once more. \Expe7-iineiit for yourself, keeping
compact nofes.] Complete success I have never been able to boast of..
Possibly, if systematic efforts were made to rationalise one's dream-life,
they might be successful. As the matter stands, our influence is painfully
limited. Probably indirect methods are discoverable which would effectu-
ally cope with the stubborn tendency to unreasonableness and, if necessary,.,
even with dreams altogether.
The ethics of dream-life are a never-failing topic of di.sciission. Maury (Le Soinuieil et
les R?ves, 1865) thinks himself different awake from what he is when asleep. He says :
" In my dreams I always succumb to evil inclinations " (p. 90). I am glad to say that I
cannot subscribe to this. Hildebrandt {Der Traiiin uiid seine Verwerthiiug fiir' s Leben,
1881, p. 52) strongly holds that our moral state in dream-life, as far as the initial motive
is concerned, frequently reflects our character, and that dreams may often yield food for
ethical reflection. Spitta (Scklaf- unci Trauinztistiinde, 1882) disagrees with Hildebrandt.
We are, according to him, not responsible for our dreams. He often dreams of climbing
mountains, a task to which he has a strong aversion (p. 1S7). When we are awake,
objectionable thoughts are repressed ; in sleep they become overpowering (p. 191).
Spitta denies that we can tell a man's character from his dream-behaviour (p. 196).
Bouillier {De la Responsahilit^ Morale dans le KCve, 1883) holds that we are to some ex-
tent responsible. Haffner {Schlafen iind Triiiimen, 1884), a Roman Catholic, asserts
that there are no ethics in dream-life (p. 319). He says: "The greatest crimes which
are committed during dream-life, and of which we accuse ourselves there and then, are
as void of moral guilt as our most heroic dream-deeds are void of moral desert " (p. 319).
Vet we are indirectly responsible. Schwartzkopfif (Das Leben im Tratim, 1887) returns
to Hildebrandi"s position. He holds tnat momentarily we often have bad thoughts in
the waking state to which we pay no attention (p. 79). Pure men dream purely (p. 80).
Lastly, we may mention Giessler who, in the last chapter of his book [Aus den Tie/en
des Trauinlebots, 1889), discusses the morality of dream-life.
Seeing that by general consent our dream-condition reflects our waking condition, —
" the miser dreams of wealth, the lover of his mistress, the musician of melody, the philo-
sopher of science, the merchant of trade, and the debtor of duns and bailiffs" (Macnish,
The Philosophy of Sleep, 1830, pp. 64-5), — I am inclined to agree with Hildebrandt's
and Schwartzkopft"'s moderate statements that there is some relation between dream -life
ethics and those of the waking condition, just as there is a general relation between
dream-life and the waking state.
■ * Nelson (The Study of Dreams, 1888, p. 376) tells that he efiectually learnt to dismiss
objectionable dreams isy recalling them before falling asleep. Ahercrombie {Inquiry^
1838, p. 292) refers to the subject. Radestock (Schlaf und Trauni, 1S79, P- I5l)> how-
ever, says, that " we possess no power over dreams."
446 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
The proper course is to investigate dreams experimentally, testing the
senses, the imagination and the judgment. Not until that is done can a
science of psychology be satisfied. The difficulties are perhaps not greater
than in rope walking or in fine mosaic work. We must bring to our
attempted observations the smallest amount of attention which will enable
us to register results. We must so train ourselves that our attention shall act
almost mechanically. My own labours in this direction, if I exclude de-
liberate dozing for purposes of observation, have been scanty. A few times
in going to sleep I have with great freedom observed what happened, and
•changed the dream-pictures experimentally ; but of these occasions, which
convinced me of the possibility of dream-experiment, I do not possess
many notes. Here is one. " In composing myself to sleep last night, and
while yet fully awake, the retinal images appeared to be very distinct. I
could see, at will, any quantity of any class of tree or shrub. (I had spent
that day of Spring in the country.) Everything was figured, and yet with-
out much detail. I also saw any number of birds — they resembled dots
— living rapidly to and fro. Looking deliberately to the imaginary ground,
the turf seemed very real, even to the green colour which I especially de-
sired to see." In this, as in other experiments, I have noted that colour,
except for shades of light and dark, is normally absent with me. I have
also frequently analysed the material out of which the objects are com-
posed. The lights and shades, again, appear to be manufactured at will.
Concentration or movement of attention or a similar factor must account
for this strange fact, the change in light taking place more readily as we
approach deep sleep. The outlines themselves are usually the result of
selection, and the form which the changing lines, dots and colours take,
depends both on the kind of material present and on the trend of our
thought. I have, however, observed that changes are freely inhibited and
accelerated. It may be added that I have on several occasions attempted
to distinguish between retinal vision and imagination. There seems to be
a clear division between the two, my eyes appearing to turn inward and
upward when it is a question of imagination, and outward when the dark
field is explored. \Qiiestion this?^ How far these two classes approach
each other, or are represented in dreams, I do not know. For the same
reason, I find it difficult to decide whether the eyeball is in motion in
retinal vision, though the evidence certainly points that way. \These various
assertions might he sepa7-ately put to the test by several advanced students ?\
My records include one experiment of another order. " In going home
I seemed to lose myself, I did not know how. I stood in a square where
everything looked neat and stately. The scene reminded me of a Conti-
nental city. It struck me vaguely that I was dreaming, and that I would
test the reality of the architecture by examining it closely. Then, to my
amazement, a pillar I looked at, or touched, began to twist, and every-
thing which caught my fancy kept changing, convincing me that I was
dreaming. The contortions of the houses were vivid and most ridiculous.
It seemed to me as if I had touched the sheets, and as if these had trans-
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 447
ferred their plasticity to the picture."* The absence of locah'sation, of
touch, etc.^ in dreams, is also traceable in the semi-waking condition. On
two occasions (and many times since) I have, to my surprise, observed that
when nearly asleep I could not tell the position of any part of the body ;
for instance, when I wished to ascertain where my arm was, I had to move
it. \^Test t/iis.'\ I have also noted several times that I find it most difficult
to tell whether my eyes are open or closed under the circumstances : I
think that I have raised my eyelids and look around me when, in truth,
they are closed ; I try several times before I partially succeed ; and to the
end I am doubtful (sec. 19).
Nothing which can be considered adequate has yet been done to study dream-life ex-
perimentally. Mtiller, as we saw, very thoroughly observed the slumber pictures, but
his was no experimental study. In the case of the ever-quoted Maury the experiments
were on so limited a scale that they are of little importance. Ladd's note, based on the
study of day dreams — the best and perhaps the only method for serious purposes — is
excellent as far as it goes ; but it does not go far. The quantitative school has scarcely
done justice to this subject. Nelson [A Study of Dreams, 1888) attempts to show, in a
mechanical manner, that a sex curve may be established as regards dreams both in man
and woman. The most important study, however, is that of Miss Calkins, Statistics of
Dreams, 1893, where 375 dreams, of two persons, are analysed.
The scholars of the psychological laboratory remind one of lawyers who, in quick
succession, appear learned in a variety of subjects ; or of restless individuals who can
never settle down to a task. I speak strongly, because I feel that the era of stray and
inconclusive essays must draw to an end. If it be an experimental study of dreams, let
it be such truly. Let the facts be minutely studied and noted ; let every state be experi-
mentally produced ; and, after sufficient study, we shall have an essay or a book
worth reading ; or if the results are doubtful, let the experiments be forgotten. For a
psychologist to attack problem after problem, leaving each unchanged, is as idle as to
sit by doing nothing. The psycho-physical school must determine whether its business
is to drug the market with indecisive columns of figures, contrary to the traditions of
science, or whether it is to advance psychology. If it is to be the latter, we must dis-
courage statistical tit-bits.
In sec. 8 it was already pointed out that psychologists first lauded the quantitative
method because that method was supposed to enable men to dispense with introspection ;
but that it gradually came to be felt that quantitative results were meaningless unless
introspectively interpreted. Such books as Sanford's Course in Experimental Psychology,
1897-8, and Titchener's Experimental Psychology, 1901, take us a step farther, for they
quietly dispense with the quantitative method altogether. This is a great gain. There
is a likelihood now that we shall no more hear of years spent in idly repeating ill-con-
ceived experiments, and that we shall no more be dazed by interminable rows of incon-
clusive figures. The danger, however, is that men will now entirely lose themselves in
aimless observation. It is good to be exact, and it is well to simplify the experiments ;
but it is also necessary to vary the conditions incessantly, to be unhampered by untested
theories, and to be ever aiming at generalisations. When psychologists will follow along
this line, which is the line pursued by men of science generally, they will reach those
valuable results which are the invariable reward of the application of the scientific method.
The suggestion to observe the nature of movement on the sleep border came from
Bradley {On the Failure of Movement in Drea>n, 1894). I have also observed that both
the muscular and sensory tone are greatly reduced under the circumstances : pinching,
for instance, produces little or no effect. The subject is discussed towards the end of
sec. 19.
* I have frequently since made similar observations.
448 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
229.— The Origin of Dreams.
We have reviewed the facts of dream-life. There can be no question
that dreams, when considered as a class, constitute only a lower category
of thought. In many hundreds of observations I have not met with
examples which display features requiring a treatment different from that
of the waking state.* I assume, in consequence, that the conclusions
arrived at in the preceding sections of this chapter are sufficient for our
guidance.
We have learnt that in the absence of perceptible bodily motion thought
cannot begin nor proceed. When we examine the collected materials
which must verify or condemn our induction, we find them to be in full
accord with our general conclusions. At every move in our investigation
we have encountered aff"erent and efferent factors. Not only were the
dreams started by some sense affection ; but they were continually fed
from without. Aware as we are that every kind of bodily development is
able to start and rule a dream, — I have records of every class of sense
dreams, — we can easily perceive the reason why many dreams appear to
lack an objective factor. Difficult as it is to track dream by dream to its-
lair, we must nevertheless conclude, in view of the evidence, that, subject
to the law of excitement (sec. 109), their origin is normally afferent,.
efferent or intra-organic. Experiment in the waking state has shown us
that the flames of thought subside if not fanned without intermission by
afferent influences. ^V'e are, therefore, bound to assert that " suspension
of afierency equals the suspension of dreams."
We recognised the place of effort in the waking state. We agreed that
highly developed products are dependent on hard labour, while ordinary
organised reactions point to much less effort and consequently to a re-
duced class of thought. When we come to dream-life there is a great
drop. The smooth plain of random fancies appears, when viewed from
the much lower level of the dream-depression, as a rocky mountain. We
find, accordingly, that effort is at its very lowest in the dream-state. To
this we owe the confused flow of units or ideas, the unintelligible sentences,
the ready determination of thought by chance systems of a primary and a
secondary character, and the want of intelligent originality. Hence all
strenuous thought is excluded, while memories dating far back are either
not admitted or perverted. The brain is too low-toned to systematise the
given data. Thought drifts along helplessly, catching at any suggestion
however absurd.
The effort factor cannot be over-estimated. As we learnt in sec. 134,
our efforts are as frequent as the tick of a telegraphic instrument in action.
Again, effort enters to a tiring degree into strenuous thought, for there
* Most writers on the subject fully agree that the facts of dream-life are to be explained
on the same principles as those of the waking condition. Schwartzkopfif (/)aj Lehen im
7rau?n, 18S7) echoes this opinion when he asserts that, " as a whole, the elements of the-
waking state are found in the dream-condition " (p. 20) ; and on this principle he ex-
plains all that, in dreams, is unique, fanciful, disconnected, rapid and hazy (pp. 23-31).
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 449
obscure or far-off memories are required, and recent and well known ones
have to be kept at arm's length. So important is this factor that con-
sistent thought is hindered by a low state of health, and accordingly, when
we are unwell, all sorts of irrelevancies and trivialities impede our thought.
Things that, in a normal condition, we can dismiss, recur again and again
till we are tired of dismissing them. Every attempt to pursue an issue is
frustrated by fits of distraction. In normal life it is only after years of
training that an objectionable thought can be prevented from developin<T if
it is based upon some rooted need ; but we can dismember it as soon as its
development commences. At a restaurant I see the waiter approach, and
I almost ask him for a plate of " Mr. Jones," of whom I am thinking. So,
recalling Ladysmith and a bridge near by, I catch myself saying. Lady-
bridge. In dreams, where the position as to effort is changed, we expect
curious results. Re-development will neither be pertinent nor extensive,
and hallucinations will take its place. Thought will not be selective, but
will be wandering, picking up any stray impression and vainly trying to fit
it into the scheme of things. Since needs persist into the dream-life,
notions of easily satisfying them will arise, and resist our feeble attempts
at dismissal. With the strings relaxed and the sense of localisation gone,
hallucinations of the various senses become the rule, and hence, again, the
seeming reality of the dream-state. There is, as we see, a world of
difference between the springs of normal thought and those of the dream-
state.
Looking over my records, I observe that recent or recurrent events form,
in disguise, no small share in the dream-economy, and if that be so, we
should perhaps allow that under certain circumstances thought may be
started centrally. Still, a recent or a recurrent happening is only a few
degrees removed from one taking place now. The great wave of inrush-
ing influences gives rise to smaller waves which, for a time, follow its
track. It is, indeed, difficult to tell how far the dream-contents are recent,
old or the result of hallucination ; but the closer our analysis, the more
we seem to find of the recent. Over and over again that which is strange
is reducible to a compound of what is recent. There is only space to con-
sider one example : " I dreamt I saw N. He asked Mrs. Z., in a very solemn
manner, whether he could lend her any money. She replied she did not
require any now ; but he could bring some in ten years' time. N. is some
one I well know. I spoke about his being ill to a mutual friend about 7
p.m. last night. Again, N, has intimate business relations with Mr. Z.
But why was the name of Z. mentioned ? This is very simple. Last
night, about 10 p.m., I spoke to some one about a famous money lender.
My companion thought that he was an Irishman, and suggested that his
name was Z. First then floated in N.'s picture ; then I dimly re-developed
the usurer incident. Mr. Z., being an Irishman, a friend of N.'s, and the
usurer's name having some resemblance to Z., the latter name developed.*
* Words arj thus frequenlly mistaken in dream-life, and help to add to the confusion.
29
450 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
" Mrs. " was one of those slips which so frequently occur. I cannot re-
develop seeing any lady. As Mrs. Z. is rich and N. very much the re-
verse, reason rebelliniij, Mrs. Z. declined. The "ten years" were the
i'lrst words which shot up. Again, N. looked and spoke very gravely.
Last Tuesday night I addressed a public body, and felt as grave.
The only image of the dream which was re-developed was N.'s, the
only one I knew, and he stood out strikingly clear." Apart from a
very careful analysis dreams give no hint of what they owe to recency.
^^'e shall accept the fact that dream-existence draws nourishment mostly
from what is recent.*
Granted now that extra-organic stimuli are necessary for dreams, as for
thought generally, does that enable us to tell whether all sleep is full of
dreams ? A definite answer is impossible in the present state of know-
ledge. We know the chaos which rules dream-life and we are aware (ch. 2)
of the condition of dozing when the world of thought is like the sounds
emanating from an empty sea-shell. There is, therefore, no difficulty in
conceiving a dreamless state, and the facts themselves, as far as known,
certainly favour that hypothesis. The dreams are vivid in proportion to the
length and breadth of the neural excitement. When at normal rest, there-
fore, we have every reason to surmise that sleep offers a blank from the
point of view of dreaming, at least to the degree of excluding developed
sense complexes and perceptible elaboration. The normal periods of
dreaming, early in the evening or late in the morning, also favour the
notion that only in ill-defined slumber do we dream. Besides, we are
bound to assume that the effort necessary for consistent topical thought is
absent in deep sleep.
In sec. 132 we learnt that there is generally no setting to our memories.
This fact alone broadly distinguishes re-developed from pre-developed life.
In the dream-condition this difference is obliterated in an ingenious fashion
which powerfully aids the illusion of reality. The method is simple enough.
As our eyes turn in any direction, so an imaginary setting is constructed.
\Test thisP\ Dream-imagery is thus made to depart seriously from memory
and waking imagination.
The importance of the manufactured setting can scarcely be over-esti-
mated in an explanation of dream-life. Yet there is one further characteristic
feature which we must notice. " I have observed during the last few days
a new detail of dream-life. Last night I dreamt that I was approaching a
horse (I did go up to a horse grazing in a field yesterday, about 4.40 p.m.).
I was saying that I must be careful (so I said yesterday), when the horse
made a sudden grab at me. About two nights back I dreamt that I was
on a bridge, and saw one boat and then another, and then there 7vas a
collision. Then I wondered whether the bridge was safe, and // at once
began to appear defective. The night before the last mentioned a horse
escaped and I tried to prevent it coming into the house, yet an opening
* See Max Giessler's admirable analysis of dream-life, in Aus den Tiefcn des Tfatim-
leheyis, 1890. It was his work which suggested to me the study of the recency factor.
SYSTE^fS AS CLASSIFIED
45r
■was to be seen wherever I looked. Only this morning I had a similar dream.
Something seemed loose in my bicycle. I then inspected the parts and
wherever I looked, defects were observable. Looking over my notes, I
observe a quantity of dreams of this nature. [ Verify in your own dream-lifeA
Expressing this aspect in the most general form, we may say that dread,
fear, hope, desire, anticipation, possibility, tend to actualise themselves in
dream-land. In the waking state this is prevented, though in low nervous
health the beginings are common with me. While I am awake, rising fears,
etc., are usually suppressed, and often the steadiness of sun-braced thought
negatives even the semblance of irrelevant considerations. In the relaxed
condition of sleep, on the contrary, every class of suggestion, such as anxiety
or hopefulness, has a natural tendency to realise itself, and is accentuated
by the unfit state of the organism. Hence arises much of the originality
and confusion of dream-life ; the growth of settings ; illusions of time
and space; and the transformation of objects and scenes. Herein lies
another telling difference between waking and dreaming.
Among physiologists generally it is held that the profoundness of sleep varies during
the night. Michelson {Die Tiefe des Schlafes, 1897) offers an interesting study of this
question, confirming experimentally the traditional views.* In accordance with this,
psychologists generally hold that dreams only take place in those states which partake
both of the waking and the sleeping condition. In deep sleep, thought, except that of
the most rudimentary kind, is held to be absent. My own observations, which require
experimental testing, coincide with the above opinions. Macnish {Philosophy of Sleep,
1830, p. 50) holds that "dreaming is a state of partial slumber." Chesley [Does the Mind
ever Sleep? 1877, p. 75) says that " normally during slumber the mind is unconscious, . . .
it neither thinks, feels, nor wills." Robert {Der Traum, 18S6) claims that we only dream
so far as we have undigested thoughts or sensations. Macfarlane {Dreantin^; 1891)
argues (p. 9) against Hamilton, and also contends that "it is during the intermediate
states of falling asleep and waking that dreams most commonly occur" (p. 12). Goblot
[Stir le Souvenir du Rcve, 1897, p. 329) says : " Each time that we remember a dream,
that dream takes place not during sleep, but during the period of transition between
sleeping and waking." On the other hand a number of writers contend for the opposite
view. Hamilton [Metaphysics, 1877, i) leads the van. "We may, therefore, I think,"
he sums up, " assert, in general, that whether we recollect our dreams or not, we always
dream" (pp. 323-4). The chief reason he alleges to be that whenever we are roused from
deep sleep, we find ourselves dreaming (p. 323). Two answers have been given to this
contention. The supposed general fact has been tested and proved fictitious ; and,
secondly, the act of rousing has been said to explain the dreams sometimes dreamt on
such occasions. On Hamilton's side are ranked Macario, Dii Sommeil, 1857, p. 22 ;
Striimpell, Die Natur tmd Eittstehung der Trdume, 1874, p. 15 ; Cox, Sleep and Dream,
1878, p. 88 ; Julia Gulliver, The Psychology of Dreams, 1880, p. 209 ; and Hildebrandt,
Der Traum, 1881, pp. 2-5. In this connection we may refer to Goblot [Le Souvenir des
Reves, 1896) who holds that "the dream which we remember is wrought in the waking
state " (p. 288), and that what we dream during sleep is always forgotten (p. 290). These
interesting assertions he bases on slender foundations. The matter, however, should be
settled experimentally. See also Dugas, Le Souvenir du Rcrje, 1897 ; and Egger, Le
Souvenir dans le Rcve, 1 898.
* On the question of sleep, see also Richardson, The Phenomena of Sleep, 1875 ;
Preyer, Ueher die Ursache des Schlafes, 1877 ; and Rosenbaum, IVarum miissen wir
ichlafen? 1892.
452 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
230. — Thk History ok Drkam-Life.
As children \vc are naturally unable to distinguish between dreams and
actuality, for to the child the wcjrld is one uniform tissue of fact. As we
grow older, with no discipline and no effort to rationalise our dream world,
the reckless judgments persist, the contents alone changing on account of
the decay of memory (sec. 115). It is mostly our waking pictures that are
transferred to our dreams ; scarcely any of our training. To a large extent
we still act in that state as strangely and as impulsively as children. We
learn little as we grow to manhood, if we except a feeble reflection such
as is offered by a turbid stream. There is in dream-life no bitter dis-
appointment to make us ponder, no harsh criticism driving us to re-
fashion our lines of thought, and no self-scrutiny suggesting improvements.
There, thanks to a judgment unchecked by relevant memories, every
problem is readily solved.* For this very reason we stagnate morally
because we can close the door to afferent influences. Were our character
exposed to the rude gaze of the world as our intellectual life is, and could
we as little screen our moral as our rational defects, the race would ethically
be as superior to that of the present day, as is our strenuous thought to
that displayed in an average dream. We are dreamers so far as our more
intimate life is concerned. The business of the pedagogue is to find a
camera which shall reflect on a visible canvas the play of the soul, and which
shall in this way admit afferent influences into morality.
231. — Additional Considerations.
Accepting what has been said in the preceding sectioas, there ye
remain sundry details to be considered. It is sometimes evident that the
scenes in a dream appear to last for hours when but a few seconds have
passed. AV'hat often happens and explains the great rapidity is that the
dreams are ragged scraps which, like fallen leaves, are hurried along by
gusts of feeling. According to the necessity of the drama and the fancied
demands of logic the feelings give us an illusive notion of the time elapsed.
Suppose that in the waking state we think of some one as crossing a room ;
we do not really see him move ; we see one blurred picture, with which
goes the attached summary feeling. The act which would occupy thirty
seconds, we have imagined in a third of a second or less. Thus the sweep
of the eye is to the imagination what bodily motion is to the reality. In a
dream of twenty seconds a whole tragedy develops. We hence learn
that our time illusions play as important a part as our visual or auditory
illusions, and that, therefore, the lengths and lengths of country we traverse
take but as many half seconds, as is shown by a study of re-developments
of travel. It is very doubtful, however, whether normally the dream-
process is rapid at all. {Experiment in this direction?^
* I have already in a former note referred on lliis subject to Fechner {Psychophysiky
1S60, ii, pp. 522-3) who had come to similar conclusions forty years ago.
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 453
The problem of the rapidity of dreams is one of the vexed questions of dream-psycho-
logy. Maury raised the point by recounting his celebrated " Revolution " dream, and
ever since attempts have been made to exhaust the subject. Stewart {Elements, 1808)
had a simple solution of such rapidity. For him thought is so rapid that the swiftness of
dreams raises no difficulty (p. 345). Hodgson [Theory of Practice, 1870, i, p. 446) says,
having Maury's dream in view, that " dreams, when suggested by external agency, and
referred to past time, are suggested in inverted order of time, which is corrected and
changed into the real order of history by a process harmonising them with the order of
events in actual life."' Cox [Sleep and Dream, 1878) says that " the dreaming mind sets
•at defiance all the waking conceptions of time "(p. 54). Hildebrandt [Dcr T.aum,
1881, pp. 24-5) holds that the swiftness is illusory; that it is produced by the sense of
reality ; and that the dream-proceedings are no swifter than ordinary imaginative thought.
He also suggests, on the strength of some observations, that the cominencement of any
dream which is due to sensory stimulation is not easily traced (pp. 39-40). Spitta,
[Schlaf- und Traurnzustdmlc, 1882, pp. 287-8) contends that, shortly befort waking, two
minutes are enough for the evolution of the most complicated dream. Schwartzkopff
[Das Leben tin Tratim, 1887, pp. 68-72) argues that anxious moments seem to last an
eternity ; that when we are surprised, we tend to seek instantaneously for an explanation
before the situation is yet clear to us ; and that dream-travels proceed no faster than
thought-travels. Baldwin [Feeling a)td Will, 1891, pp. 384-5) relates a story where the
beats of a clock entered a dream, and in this way measured ils length. This dream
favours Lorrain's view of Maury's case. Mumford ( Waking, Sleeping, and Dreaming,
1893, p. 26) quotes a striking instance where the noise of the pulled bell wire set the
dream going, making it appear as if the dream had started simultaneously with the ringing
bell. Lorrain [De la Durce dii Temps dans le Reve, 1894) argues that the guillotine
incident in Maury's dream was the last stage in that dream, being merely added. Paul-
han [De l^ Activity de P Esprit dans le Rcve, 1894) refers to Maury rather inconclusively.
Egger [La Dttr^e Apparente des Rcves, 1895, pp. 41-4) argues that Maury's dream was
not recorded at the time, and is hence unreliable. Maury argued backward from the
•severe blow which made him dream of the guillotine (p. 45). And, generally speaking,
the retrospective explanatory matter in such dreams is afterwards added (p. 56). Lorrain
\Le Rcve, 1895, p. 60) claims that Maury probably made up the dream during the time
■which elapsed between the blow and the full state of waking. L .... D .... (in
Rev. Phil., 1895) suggests that the inciting event merely forms a later portion of Maury's
dream. Claviere (in Rev. Phil., 1897) gives a case where a dream could be proved to
have lasted twenty-two seconds. Woodworth (77/^ Rapidity of Dreams, 1897) supplies
some experimental instances to show the great rapidity of picture thought in the waking
state, arguing that the rapidity of dream-incidents is not astonishing. {^The whole question
should be decided experimentally. ]
The inanity of dream-life lies in the imaginary solution of its difficulties.
A hungry man who is awake thinks of banquets ; but manages to discover
some means of obtaining a crust of bread. In sleep he also feasts ; is
again hungry and feasts again ; but on waking he learns that if the filling of
his stomach depended on dreams he would die of starvation. Accordingly,
together with an absence of awareness of the condition of things, there is
in dream-life almost invariably a fictitious solution. Men, therefore, become
tired of re-producing, or dwelling on, dream-fancies, until a general
tendency is established which prevents them from amioying our waking
life. Their pretensions are unbounded ; but in their performances we are
offered a sunbeam for a marketable bar of gold.
The opinion expressed in the preceding paragraph is the one generally held. Few go
■so far as to assert with Binz [Ueber den Iraitm, 1878, p. 33) that dreams are always use-
454 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
less and frequently the sij^n of indisposition. Most writers rather agree with Hilclet)raiidt
that occasionally the hurried impressions of day life, which Robert (Der 7'raum, 1886,
p. 34) speaks of, and which clarify in a dream, are of some value in giving us hints as
regards our character or those of others we have met, as regards events imperfectly
analysed, and as regards diseases which may Ije ajjproaching (Der Traitm, pp. 56-60).
Greenwood (Ii)ta>;i>t(Uiou in Dreams, 1S94) bitterly complains that " it has been decided
by the scientific that dreams are entirely profitless" (p. 27). His complaint, however, is
made regardless of the literature of the subject. Binz stands by himself in his pronounce-
ment on the uselessness of dreams. On the other hand, my observations have put the
value of dreams very near to the zero point. Greenwood's interesting comparison between
day and night dreams (pp. 155-7) is misleading, since the former are immeasurably
superior in value, and largely difierent in kind. IMy counsel to average dreamers would
certainly be to ignore dreams.
Closely connected with the useful dreams just discussed, is the question of dreams
which are supposed to open loopholes through which to catch glimpses of the otherwise
hidden past, present and future. Most writers on dreams notice the subject, and give
naturalistic explanations as, for instance, Abercrombie, IiKjiiiry, 1838, pp. 276-85 ;
Beneke, Lehrbuck, 1845, P- 293 ; Clodd, Myths, and Dreams, 1885, pp. 236-44 ; Graf-
funder, Trattm ttiid 'Iraumdeiituni;, 1894; Radestock, Schlaf itnd Traiim, 1S79;
Robert, Der Trauni, 18S6, p. 34 ; Siebeck, Das Traiimlehen , 1877, pp. 30-4 ; Simon,
Le Monde des Rcves, 1882, pp. 67-97 ; Spitta, Schlaf- und Traumzustande, 1882, pp. 309
ff; and Sully, Ilhisious, 1895, p. 147. On the mystic side we have Greenwood,
Imagination in Dreams, 1894 ; Haffner, Schlafen und Trdnnien, 1884, pp. 323 to end;
Macario, Du So»iiiieil, 1857, pp. 66-84 ; Pfaff, Das Tranmlehcn und seine Deiitung,
1868 ; Schmick, Die natiirliche Fortdauer der Fersdnlichkeit, 1891 ; Schubert, Die Sym-
btlik des Trantnes, 1840; and Ware, IVonderful Dreatns, 1883.
I have also glanced at a few nondescript dream-books, designed for ordinary believers
in the meaning of dreams. The value of these interpretations seems whcjlly dependent
on belief in them. We read, for example, that to see a clock means that we shall be, we
will say, successful in a love affair. If we are unbelievers, we are not likely to dream of
clocks in any special connection, if at all. However, if dreams impress us, then the day-
light hint of success in love will appear to us during the night in the form of our visionary
clock. So also prophecies will frequently lend to fulfil themselves by urging the believer
to action. As a whole, the dream-books appear to me void of any objective truth, being
built upon a purely fanciful foundation. Most of the articles or objects mentioned by
them, to judge from my dreams, never occur to those who know nothing of popular dream-
interpretations. The dream-books create the dreams which they are supposed to explain.
Some accounts of wonderful dreams have little foundation in fact. For instance,
Tissie {,Les Reves, 1890, p. 10) writes: " Burdach tells that he and his travelling
companions, staying at an inn, all dreamt at the same time that they were on a rough
road, bordered by precipices, and in the depth of night. The cause of all this was a storm
which had broken over the inn." Here is evidently a case of undoubted transference of
thought, for Burdach, the physiologist, is a witness whose word must be respected. When
we turn to Tissic's authority, we find that Burdach tells quite a different tale. " ' During
a fierce storm at night nearly all the travellers in an inn dreamt that carriages and guests
had arrived' [quoting H. Nudow, 1791]. While in an inn I dreamt during a storm
that I had departed in the depth of night and was in a precipitous road by a deep chasm.
My loud complaints [meine lauten Klagen dartiber] induced the same dream in my
travelling companion" (Burdach, Physiologie, iii, sec. ed., 1838, §601).
The vividness of some dreams requires careful consideration. Oftenj
indeed, our dream-environment is dark or undefined ; but there are dream-
situations which vie with waking life in clearness of outline. Closed-eye
vision may sometimes account for this; but it is probable that there is an
extra stimulus which brings about an added effect. In this connection
SVSTEAfS AS CLASSIFIED 455
there is at least one possible mistake against which wc must guard ; that is>
we ought not to confound vivid with accurate vision, for the one does not
involve the other. Judging by my records, minute detail is suggested
rather than present in dream-life. My waking memory of extremely well
known or recent events far surpasses in vividness the details of the dream-
condition. For example, glancing at passers-by for half a second or so, I
seem to re-develop clearly and faithfully the chief characteristics — chin,
mouth, nose, eyes, beard, complexion, size, etc. The picture, except for
its tendency to disappear, is not distinguishable in vividness or otherwise
from the reality. This is even more fully seen in re-developing those I
intimately know. Here the attention can be fixed on the image for a
considerable period, because of the number of details with which I am
acquainted.
There is considerable divergence of opinion as to the vividness of dreams. Schvvartz-
kopff (Z)a5 Lehen im Tranin, 18S7, pp. 10-3) contends that he sees scenes in full detail,
colour and movement being faithfully represented, and that he also tastes and smells eat-
ables, etc. Hildebrandt {Der Tjauni, 1881, pp. 40-1) describes the dream-figures as
being painted grey on grey, the environment being veiled, sounds softened and clearness
lacking. In a similar way, Huxley {Hume, 1879, p. 96) thinks that dream-pictures
resemble the view we obtain from ''out of the corner of the eye," and that our dream-
pictures "are, in short, generic ideas of many past impressions." My own observations
show no one type of vision. Sometimes, in dreams, total darkness reigns ; sometimes
things are believed in rather than seen ; sometimes the light is indifferent ; sometimes the
illumination is of the same kind as that of good day-light ; and not infrequently there is a
peculiar glare. This last effect is the least realistic, for objects look semi-transparent, like
reddish yellow wax in character, and phosphorescent. The colour seems the same as
that which I see with eyes closed when the visual field appears bright : as when the sun's
rays are piercing the eyelids.
It is generally admitted that dream-pictures are mainly visual, and it has also been
shown that our dream-vision has an afferent origin. Hence, according to the state of the
retina or other mechanism, we can let our fancy build up new shapes or transfigure
known objects, as we may do with clouds, with burning coals or with grained doors.
This explains whatever originality, vividness and detail is observable in dreams. It also
supplies a reason for the difference between normal memory and dream-pictures, since the
dream-pictures are partly suggested by the natural light-dust. As a matter of fact, except
for general prostration, it is rather surprising that under the new conditions most persons
are yet narrowly bound to their memories. It would, however, be going too far to
assert without experimental verification that " the materials of our dreams are seen,
when closely examined, to be drawn from our waking experience" (Sully, Illusions, 1895,
p. 130). The truth is that there are considerable individual differences. Delboeuf (Z^
Soinmeil et les Reves, 1880) exaggerates appreciably. He says : " In dream-pictures,
there is to be found nothing new, nothing actual" (p. 632); and, again: "The little
which dream-life opens to us is sufficient to induce us to affirm that, in the world of
thought, nothing is forgotten ; everything is entered, classified and labelled" (p. 647).
Vividness is also said to be gained in other ways than those mentioned above. So
Stewart {Elements, 1808, p. 344) rightly draws attention to the fact that engrossment
produces liveliness, and is most favoured when the senses are asleep. Schwartzkopff
{Das Lehen im Traiim, 1887, p. 40 and p. 51) substantially upholds the same view.
^\iWy {Illusions, 1895, p. 138) also says that in dreams the " image will gain a preter-
natural force through the greatly narrowed range of attention." Delboeuf (Z^ Sommeil et
les Reves, 1879-80) holds, among other douV)tful views, that "the perception and the
conception of one and the same object cannot simultaneously co-exist in consciousness "
456 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
(1879, p. 496), and from this he deduces that dream-imagery must appear real to us.
Taking a broad view, I am inclined to support Stewart's contention that absorption
assists us in procuring the sense of reality in dreams. \^Experivient along this line.\
We have assumed throughout that in dream-life we are ahvays acting
iind never thinking ; but this is only partially true. Careful observation
shows that in dream-life we often re-develop occurrences, and that dream-
events give rise to dream-reflection, dream-reasoning and dream-moralising.
The dream-world, for this reason, is only an effeminate copy of the robust
Avorld of waking life.
Broadly speaking, we may sum up as follows : ive are stimulated into
dreaming by afferent, intra-organic, efferent and 7'ecent reactions* Effort
heing essential to strenuous developing and almost absent in sleep, the
Judgment and reasoning, or need-satisfying development, are considerably
'veakened, and hence follo7V hallucinations, the creation of settings, t/ie int?-o-
duction of ii-i-eleva7it matter, the working out of faint suggestions, absence of
viuscular and sensory control and knoivledge, and poorness of me mo7y. Fin-
ally, the dream-state may be defined as a state due to sensory stimulation
in the first place ; and, in the second, to a lowering of the muscular and
sensory tone.
Further References on Sleep and Dreams. — Bertin, Sommcil, 1881 ; Boirac, La Veille
■continuee dans le Sommeil, 1881 ; Dechambre, Songe, 1881 ; Dugas, Le Sommeil et la
Cfrrbrafion Inconseiente, 1897 ; Galton, Inquiries, 1883, pp. 155-77 ; Goblot, Sur le
Souvenir du Reve, 1897; Guardia, Za Personnalite dans les Reves, 1892; Hagen, Psy-
^hologie und Psychiatrte, 1844 ; Heerwagen, Statistische Untersuchiingen iiber 7'rauf/ie
iind Schlaf, 1888 ; Hitschmann, Ucber das Traumleben des Blinden, 1894 ; Maillard,
Elude sur le Sommeil, 1893; Manaceine, Sleep: its Physiology, Pathology, Hygiene and
J^sychology, 1897 ; Prevost, Stir le Sommeil^ 1834 ; Purkinje, Wachen, Schlaf, Traiim,
■etc., 1846; Scholz, Sleep and Dreams, 1893 ; Sully, The Laws of Dream Fancy,
1877; Sykes, Dreams, 1883; Tannery, Sur L'Activite de V Esprit dans le Rcvc, 1894;
Tannery, Sur la Memoire dans le Reve, 1898 ; and Void, Einige Experimente iiber
Ucsichtshilder im Trait m, 1896.
232. — Provoked Dreams and Related Facts.!
In sec. 223 I spoke of phantasmal visions and voices which tend to
break in on us in the state between wakefulness and sleep. The story of
the brush indicated that occasional hallucinations were not infrequent in
such a condition. At the same time experiment proves that what is usu-
ally exceptional will, if attention be paid to it, become as common as
buttercups in May. We found proof of this when considering those historic
periods during which mistaken hypotheses took the place of experiment, and
we noted that during those periods visions were of frequent occurrence.
When the transitional state is in this way exploited, we are justified in
speaking of it as provoked. However, there are degrees of stimulation.
In instances such as that of the Maid of Orleans, there is at least to begin
* Sully (Article " Dream,"' Enc. Brit., 1877) misapprehends the very nature of dream-
life in his definition : " Dreams are a variety of a large class of mental phenomena which
may be roughly defined as states of mind which, though not the result of the action of
€xte'nal objects, resume the form of objective perceptions" (p. 452).
tThe physical condition of the dreamer I leave undetermined.
SVSTEA/S AS CLASSIFIED 457
with apparent spontaneity. In other cases, such as those of the Primitive
Church, or the modern seance room, there exists, on the contrary, a de-
h'berate attempt to exhaust the possibiHties of the semi-dream state. St.
Paul, in I. Corint/nans, 14, gives a full account of such organised provoca-
tions. He communicates to his brethren the rules which should guide
their assemblies. " If therefore the whole church be come together into
some place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are
unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad ? " " How is
it then, brethren? When ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm,
hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation.
Let all things be done unto edifying. If any man speak in an unknown
tongue, let it be by tvvo, or at the most by three, and that in turn ; and let
•one interpret." " If anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let
the first hold his peace." St. Paul thus attempts to introduce order into
these meetings where, owing to a strange conception of its importance, a
peculiar condition is encouraged, a condition in which fancies are regarded
as objective truths.
In sec. 220 we saw that persistent inattention necessarily leads to
sleep. There are at least three methods of attaining this result, (i) We
fix our attention on one thing exclusively : we stare at a brass button,
we think of the object of our worship, or any other person or thing, and
shut out every other thought ; we look at a piece of glass, at our nose, or
at any other physical point. Each of these attempts will, of necessity, be
followed by a suspension of thought and action, as explained in sec. 220.
The second and third methods accompHsh their aim by the opposite course.
(2) We fix no subject or object ; but we head back the current of thought,
or (3) we induce a state of rest by eschewing all effort. In these cases,
thinking at last ceases. Then comes a fresh metamorphosis. When the
object is not connected with anything of interest, and also when the experi-
ment has been performed by oneself on oneself with no ulterior object of
exploiting the state, we simply fall asleep. But let it be, however, imagined
that some one else or something else, by some peculiar power, is produc-
ing the condition. As soon as thought has apparently fled, the supposed
subject is roused to a semi-dream state, and the experimenter, imaginary
or real, takes full control of the other's imagination. The " agent " repre-
sents the afferent stimulus, and supplies the " subject " with the dream-
thoughts. Helpless as we are in the dream-state, it stands to reason that
the "agent" will have almost unlimited power, and this he can employ in
at least two ways. He can suggest any and every fanciful object or event :
the young girl becomes a sea-captain ; the young man an old lady ; while
actions and localities are arbitrarily selected and dwelt upon. Or the
" agent," seriously, or in fun, impresses on the dreamer a series of beliefs.
Then the " subject " becomes a devout Catholic, Buddhist, Mahommedan,
Spiritualist, Theosophist, or what not. Since the notions have their origin
within the imagination, there is no limit to their variety.
Training, as we should expect, plays an important part. The more
45^^ SPECIAL SYNTHESES
frequently a person is thrown into tlic provoked dream-state, the oftener
notions are insisted iij^on, tlie more ingenious the "agent" and the more
fit the "subject," the more remarkable is the result. Yet the height of
success is most conveniently reached when the individual experimented
upon believes, whilst fully awake, that it is some outside power which
takes possession of him. In such a case not only is his thought readily
guided ; but he becomes perhaps his own "agent." The notions he has
imbibed during the waking state, whatever they be, assume supreme rule
so soon as he falls asleep, and here also practice, combined with fitness,
yields the highest returns. In this way the dream-state, being now subject
to afferent, efferent and central influences, naturally approaches nearer and
nearer the coherency of the waking state. It is impossible that it should
be otherwise. At the same time we expect no high level of thought. To
reach that there must be an elaborate examination of primary and secondary
facts, and this can only be accomplished in the normal waking state, since
great effort is absent in the dream-state. Accordingly, we find no record
of any sustained original thinking being accom])lished in the semi-dream
condition. Assertion and repetition, wrapped in the cloak of rhetoric, are
the twin children of provoked dreams.
Let us go a little more into detail. We attend a "circle" for the pur-
pose of studying the machinery of provocation. A certain qualified investi-
gator, after several attempts, goes successfully to sleep. As soon as this is
observed some one approaches him quietly, takes his hand, and says,
" Good evening, dear spirit friend, how are you ? Won't you speak tO'
us ? " On the first few occasions there is perhaps no response. Gradually
an impression is made, and the sleepy face lights up : the " medium " keeps
on "developing." At first it may be he speaks only in unknown tongues, i.e.,
utters a string of meaningless syllables which, according to the intelligence
of the sitters, is explained as being African, Japanese, etc., or recognised
as mere nonsense. However, the efforts are not relaxed. Steady pressure
is brought to bear, and formative influences are allowed full sway until the
"subject" has attained to the level of sober speech. He is then made to
pray, to sing, to bring messages, to preach, to utter warnings or to prophesy.
He becomes proficient in these by the prosaic methods of training, though
they are not acknowledged as such. The contents of his imaginings are,
of course, entirely subjective. In a good laboratory, or " developing
circle," we see a number of persons with varying capacities in various
stages of development, and the methods applied, when successful, are uni-
formly those which an efficient drill-sergeant would recommend. In these-
circles we find waves of excitement which occasion half a dozen or more
to speak in "unknown tongues." We hear some one moaning (because
his head is in an awkward position), and forthwith one " subject " after
another rises and communicates sad tales to those present. It is super-
fluous to add that close-eyed and open-eyed visions reach their climax in
these training establishments. Fancy after fancy is thrown on the eye-lid.
screen or on the canvas of reality.
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 459
Thus far the mass of spiritist accounts prove easy of explanation,.
Those, in St. Paul's churches, who talked in unknown tongues, sang psalms,
prophesied or preached, offer no difficulties. Given the then existing
beliefs, coupled with ignorance of all unusual thought processes, and the
intellectual drift is plain. Yet in some instances more is claimed. The
"possessed" person undertakes to tell us, among other things, (i) who we
are, (2) what the future has in store, (3) what is ha|)pening in remote
places, and (4) he assumes other personalities.
My observations suggest that the first question is answered, as we
answer it in normal fife. Your age, your garments, your behaviour, your
speech, your expressions, are seized upon as points of departure. The
prophecies are alternately bold and vague, and the utterances and manners
of the person experimented upon are duly scheduled. If it be wrongly
suggested that you are ill, and you reply to that effect, you are informed
that you have been unwell. If you still demur, you are told that some one
nearly related to you is ill, or has been ill ; and, finally, you are warned
that the illness lies in the near future, but that you may possibly circumvent
it by extreme care. These ridiculous alternatives are the stock-in-trade of
the "prophets."* There are, of course, other methods: for instance, the
"agent" cautiously feels his way; or he describes near relatives in terms
of yourself;! or he contents himself with vague generalities. The in-
genuity displayed by the profession, paid or unpaid, is too varied to be
exhaustively described. Self-deception fights desperately for the mastery
with semi-deliberate and deliberate fraud. Given, therefore, a fair " sitter,"
a good medium will spell out correctly almost any name thought of. He
will gather from the sitter's attention to the letters, and from his almost
irrepressible excitement which are the letters he is expected to choose. I
have neither seen nor heard, so far, of a medium who reads us as we read
a book.
I once went to a medium armed with a numl^er of immediately verifiable test questions.
I was, however, told that it was one of the peculiarities of mediumship that the revelations
came spontaneously and could not be produced by set questions— an e.<cellent method this
for tricksters. One interesting point is that mediums give names, dates and details
which are incorrect, a result of second sight which demands an explanation. Answers to
mental cjuestions were with three mediums — West End mediums — produced in a purely
mechanical manner. In every case without exception, to satisfy their many anxious
customers, the answer was Yes, in combination occasionally with a few qualifying words.
The results of such a method are often amusing. At one seance where the medium
answered written cjuestions, I asl<ed " May I hope ?" nipaning " May I hope to succeed
in proving that Spiritualism is a fraud ?"' The answer was " Yes ; and you will not hope
in vain." Later on, I put a mental cjuestion " Am I right in my interpretation of your
answer?" and the inevitable reply came again "Yes." The crying shame is that these
meetings usually commence with hymns and prayers, and make a mockery of grief.
* Dr. Hodgson's A Furthe)- Record of Certai>t FheuotJicua of Tyaiice, 1898, dealing with
a "medium," Mrs. Piper, well brings out these questionable points.
fin one case this was done systematically, and with almost every one. At a private
seance with that same medium, he described to me l>oth a gentleman and a lady by
reading otif my features one by one, only adding that the peojjle referred to were white-
haired, old, and the like.
^6o SPECIAL SVNT//ESFS
'I'he same explanation applies to the second and third claims.
With regard to the change of identity, when the dreamer is only inspired
or uplifted, his own voice, thought and behaviour are naturally little
affected. When, on the contrary, some other being of a definite type
''controls" him, we look for differences of character. A good pcrsonator
is, however, rare, and the results are, therefore, unedifying. It is the rule
to have for one's " control " a little boy or girl, a black man, an Irishman,
a foreigner, or a very distinguished person, because in these cases imitation
imposes the least possible strain. Nevertheless, when tested, the persona-
tion fails even here at every point with the large mass of those who are
supposed to be "controlled." Usually a trick or two, easily recognisable,
embraces the whole difference between the normal and the quasi-abnormal
medium. Those who believe themselves changed into wolves, and the
whole tribe of the transformed, from the earliest dawn of ignorance to the
modern seance room and hypnotic laboratory, are, as we now see, invariably
victims of delusions. The semi-dream state permits any conceit, however
preposterous, to arise and develop.
Such and of such a type are provoked dreams. I have attended seances
in most parts of London, and my observations have been of a uniform
•character. What happened was in each instance exactly what was to be
expected from my investigations of the vagaries of the semi-dream condition
(sec. 223). I have heard dozens of mediums, and have spoken with scores of
spiritualists ; but I have not been able to discover any new facts.
Especially have I taken for my guidance the views of " sitters." When
persons have been spiritualists for twenty years and more; have "sat" in
many circles in various parts of the country, and they look upon a seance
.as good, the inquirer need not go far to discover what Spiritism normally
means. All those, again, who were converts, had stories to tell which argued
for exactly the same principles. And lastly, the whole history of Spiritism
among the different nations and races which have flourished, leads us to
the same conclusions.
If that be so, how are we to account for members of learned societies
seriously maintaining the objectivity of these pretences ? The less said on
the subject, the better. These scholars' names lure unwary souls into the
net of superstition, as the names of highly-respected lords and dukes help
to keep afloat spurious companies. They throw, by means of a just repute
gained in other directions, a halo over the carcass of a superstition. The
guilt is upon those men's heads ; and not upon the simpleton who quotes
their authority. If their scientific standing depended on the quality of
their spiritist researches, they would hold no recognised position at all.
There is no science of Spiritism and there are no works on the subject.
In the genuine sciences there is steady progress, whilst the most general
conclusions are elaborated with the utmost diffidence. In the so-called
science of Spiritism, it is different. A few hasty experiments settle the
fundamental principles once for all. There is no continuity or system in
Spiritist research. The whole mesh of scientific conclusions is cast aside
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 461-
with less ado than is made in tracing a particular nervous tract in the
spinal cord. Then, after the short experimental stage, comes undiluted
dogma and reckless speculation. Professors Wallace, Crookes, Lodge,
and James illustrate what I am saying. Only the last of these is a
psychologist, and he has never written anything bulky on the subject.
One long series of spiritualistic phenomena are explicable in a simple manner. If, for
instance, we attach a piece of metal to a string about eighteen inches long which we hold
in our hand, and desire it to move in one direction or another, either slow or fast, our
desire is fulfilled. That is to say, when intently thinking of, or being about to undertake
an action, we make minimal efforts to compass it. Very close observation of activity in
general bears this out. I also notice that with eyes averted, the string experiment fails.
Consistently with this I have not yet observed any one who, in thought-reading games,
simulates indifference successfully. Hence the thought-reader's triumphs. Similarly,
anxiety always betrays the victim at "table-rapping." The medium oflers, for instance,
to have our name spelt out, and each time the appropriate letter is nearing, our restless-
ness betrays us. In the same way, we move the table and the planchette semi-consciously.
There is no limit to these deceptive effects. James {Psycho/o,<^y, 1890, ii, p. 160) clearly
recognises the result of minimal attention: " The whole surface of the body is always
in a state of semi-conscious irritation which needs only the emphasis of attention, or of
some accidental inward irritation, to become strong at any point."
Fraud is, of course, rampant in the spiritualistic camp. Having frequently read in
high quarters of Mrs. X. and Miss X., as supplying " physical manifestations," I went to
" sit" with them. The objects of interest in the room were a musical box, a banjo, a
tambourine, a bell, and a horn, all slightly touched with phosphorus so as to be luminous
when the light was withdrawn. Then the room was made totally dark. On a sofa
opposite, about two feet away from us, lay the instruments. On either side of me sat
one of the mediums, each of my hands resting on the hands of one medium. Then, the
instruments being placed one at a time on the floor, they moved and rose about a foot
high, and there were attempts at music. During about fifty minutes, in unrelieved dark-
ness, these "manifestations" were continued. Carefully reflecting over what had
happened, I came to the conclusion that everything done betokened awkwardness and
limitations, though I did not understand the method of performance. After a few days
I sat again with Mrs. and Miss X. I asked Mrs. X. whether she and her daughter would
sit in a certain way, so that I might have appreciable control over their movements. This
was agreed to. We sat for one hour and three quarters. For perhaps three quarters of
an hour, to begin with, nothing happened, and during the remainder of the time about
one fifth of what took place on the previous occasion was re-enacted. Besides, every
movement of the objects was indicated as to its extent, degree and repetition, by the
movements of Miss X's skirt which were hampered by the position in which I sat. Ac-
cordingly, I could invariably tell by the skirt moving when anything was going to
" manifest " itself. Other circumstances, which need not be detailed, pointed clearly to
the conclusion that the " manifestations " were fraudulent, and deliberately so. It was
interesting to notice that these so-called miracle workers were even more anxious, for
good reasons, to hold my hands than I was to hold theirs.
Mediums in general form a marked type. They are ostentatiously brusque, simple-
minded and voluble. Most of those I have met were ignorant, unbeauliful in character
and void of idealism. And yet persons of such a confidence-trick type are to demonstrate
new and important truths !
There are no works on Spiritualism. Wallace [lifiraclfs and Modem Spiritualistiiy
1896) oft'ers a descriptive sketch by a strong partisan, with no attempt at scientific
handling. Crookes {Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism, 1874) has a few
interesting experiments. Podmore {Studies in Psychical Research, 1897) reviews the
subject from a non-experimental standpoint. Besides these studies there are the Proceed-
ings of the Society for Psychical Research, from 18S3 to the present, whicli contain some
462 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
reports, amonij; olliers, by Lodi^e, as well as ihe " Report on the Census of Hallucinations,"
in vol. lO, and Hodgson's " Further Record,"' already referred to. Among non-spirilual-
isiic interpretations we have Bradley, Eviilences of Spiritualism, 1S85, G. S[tanley]
H[all], Keviciv of the IVork of t/ie Society for Psychical Research, 1887 and 1895;
Hansen and I.ehmann, f/f/;<-;- iDiwillkiirliches Fl/isterii, 1895; Hodgson, iT/r. Davey^s
1 III it at ions bv Conjuring, 1 892 ; Jastrow, Fact and Fable in Psychology, 1900 ; Ncwbold,
Experimental Induction of Automatic Processes, 1895 ; Preyer, Die Erklarung des
Cedankenlesens, 18S6 ; Solomons and Slein, Normal Motor Automatism, 1896; Solomons
Automatic Reactions, 1S99 ; the present autlior. The Case against Telepathy, 189S-9 ;
Stein, Cultivated Motor Automatism, 189S ; Wundt, Der Spiritismus : cine sogcnannte
U'isscnschaftliche Frage, 1879. The whole subject requires thorough examination by
competent persons. The mediumistic phenomena should be reproduced experimentally
by scholars, and their basis in each case determined. Observation of any kind, of self or
others, apart from experiment, should l)e discouraged. Particularly must the investigator
be careful to apply rules such as those referred to in sec. 136.
233. — Animal Psychology.
Human activities are determined by human needs, while the animal's
life is circumscribed by animal needs. Hence, since the needs differ
in the two cases, the constitutions must differ also. We are consequently
unable to learn deductively the precise behaviour of an unknown living
being which possesses a central nervous system. Unfortunately I have
made no elaborate stu<iy of the total psychic life of any animal. My nearest
approach to such an undertaking has been to watch a few times for several
hours together three orang-outangs — successive tenants — at the Zoological
Gardens in London. Had I been able to repeat my visits daily for several
■weeks together, it is probable that I should be able to make some authori-
tative statement. As the matter stands, however, a few words must suffice.
The apes were generally occupied in action or observation, the facts of
attention applying to them in every way. The movements of their eyes
closely resembled — even in rate of motion — those of the human family.
Now the apes seemed curious, now interested, now fascinated, now agitated.
Now their eyes rested on an object ; now they took a comprehensive view;
now there were expressions indicating hesitancy, doubt, familiarity, surprise,
and alarm ; now the eyes returned again and again to an object. On
many occasions, too, their behaviour suggested that they were puzzled and
were seeking for a solution. The first of the apes, the most active of the
three, especially showed signs of thought. He would quietly gaze round
his capacious cage, his eyes furtively resting on various objects ; then they
would slowly alight on something, and he would move in that direction.
Frequently he appeared to look for some special article. Once while
swino"ing on a trapeze, he came in collision with the partition. He then
calmly turned round and looked at the particular spot. He never
appeared to be in a hurry. He seemed to observe, and quietly solve
difficulties. His whole manner was strangely reflective and human ; and
unlike that of a dog or a cat. If I held out my hand, the second orang-
outanff would look round, in an even more lazy fashion, for a suitable
piece of straw, pick it up, and give it me. When I kept my hand open,
SVSTEAfS AS CLASSIFIED 463
he would try in various ways to place the straw so that I should retain it,
this fact arguing decidedly for consistent thought. The third orang-
outang would, in taking a basket into a higher branch of his tree, overcome
difficulties in a variety of ways: he would hold the basket in one hand,
then in one foot, then between his teeth, and then place it on his head.
We are, therefore, justified in stating that at least one species beside the
human possesses intelHgent thought determined by a continuous and equal
current of neural energy, as described in ch. 2. ^Students would do ivsll
to examine 7ninutely and 7-epeatedly an ape's life in the light of the conclusions
arrived at in tlie second chapter, with ?iote book in hatid, of course I]
Examples in illustration or refutation of ch. 3 should be collected by the
zealous inquirer.
Since needs stimulate the ape to activity, it follows that his reactions are
need-determined. What has been said thus far makes elaboration of the
point superfluous.
The ape re-develops as well as pre-develops. He well knows his keeper
and the objects of his environment. He returns to a place whence he has
been driven by his companion.* The ape's thought possesses momentum,
falls under the law of excitement, and obeys the rules of re-development
which flow from the nature of the attention process. We have seen that
re-development at intervals is imperative if the past is not to be wiped out.
We know also that some animals identify their masters and other objects
after considerable intervals of time. Either, then, the animal has occasion-
ally visual or other images of things which are absent, or its memory is
much more tenacious than ours. The question should be determined both
by observation and experiment. It would be strange that neural excite-
ment and momentum, as when a dog is in search of his master, or a
parrot screams when hearing a friend approach, should be actualities, and
that the animal nevertheless should neither re-develop nor imagine any-
thing.!
Memory, as we know, has various aspects. In smelling a rose, for instance, we may
recognise the scent as being that of a rose, although we cannot deliberately re-develop the
scent, or the scent may be re-developed without recognising it for what it is. Again, re-
development of the scent may be dependent on seeing the rose, while the re-developed
scent may be able to suggest actions and not ideas. That is to say, we must allozv for primary
and secondary recognition ; ability to re-develop at all ; and association with and with-
out the presence of a primary or perceptual factor.
Thought, in the strict sense, is merely a form of the process of satisfying a need (sec.
106). A dull person often learns nothing by doing : he inanely acts as he acted before ;
or if we assume a somewhat more intelligent individual, we shall find that he learns very
slowly, or, lastly, a person may see the appropriate course of action at once. Furthermore,
discrimination may be so highly developed, that sweeping generalisations are the rule,
e.g., the monkey who has learned by trial and error to walk round a certain object which
is in the way of something he wants, may, after one success, not only repeat the success-
* A sparrow will thus fake to flight, and return when the danger is over. So a dog
looked up to a window where he had noticed me a moment before.
t " The possibility is that animals may have no images or memories at all, no ideas to
associate''' (Thorndike, Animal Intelligence, 1S98, p. 73).
464 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
ful process, but apply wliat he has learnt to every obstacle w hatever. We might thus
imagine a race of beings who have no trains of thought and who never reflect, and \\\\o
yet attain to far-reaching conclusions with ease ; what men have to discover in a
groping way, they can see at once. With human beings thought, roughly speaking,
consists normally of trains of thought, but thought which consists only of one step is not
infrcfjuent.
The existence oi trains of thought in animals wouM not, therefore, decide anything as
regards their intelligence, since long trains of thought may not be as effectual in the
solution of a difficulty as spontaneous insight. For this reason the distinction between
perceptual, ideational and conceptual process (Stout, Manual, 1898-9), is more important
theoretically tlian practically, and that because the distinctions do not mark corresponding
degrees of intelligence. Nevertheless the problem still remains to be decided whether
trains of thought of any length or coherency are to be found outside the human species.
The evidence, so far, discourages the belief. Indeed, an intelligent child of twenty
months whom I observed closely, and who scarcely knew any words, showed no signs of
other than perceptual thought.
All that has been stated in ch. 6 as to neural disturbances, neural inclina-
tions, emotions, and need-determined thoughts, holds good of animals.
The ape is impelled by organic needs. Since these differ from ours, it
is idle to measure his intelligence by the criterion of actions which only
arise out of human needs. For the same reason, the development of his
thought has a complexion different from our own. In experiments, there-
fore, we should sympathetically enter into the ape's or other animal's
nature, and set him ever higher tasks which fall within his purview. We
must aim at an ideal ape, and not at a caricature of a man.
The ape's thoughts are neurally determined. The sensory series with
him is not parallel with the neural series, nor do feelings give birth to
each other or affect the brain.
Most of our thought is communicated to us. I/7ve cut ourselves offfro7n
others, we bid adieu to every vestige of culture, and we become houseless, clothes-
less, languageless, bookless, art-less and science-less animals. The ape is in
this position ; and hence we must expect nothing deep or far-reaching
from him. A cultured man is fed by the many rivers which hurry down
the mountains of time, while an ape has to rely on his mother-wit solely.
Probably " culture " is not among his needs, and hence he holds it in con-
tempt. In experiments we must allow for the fact that our wit is borrowed,
that our training has occupied many years, and that consequently it is
unreasonable to expect that an undeveloped ape should react as intelligently
as a matured man.
The ape's thought is sometimes more deliberate than at other times..
His reactions are also frequently attention-determined.
A general survey of the preceding remarks can leave us in no doubt that
the agreements between human and animal thought immeasurably out-
number the differences. These latter are entirely accounted for by the
distinctive needs and the consequent absence of historically gathered know-
ledge. Man does not shiiie by his ability, but by his native capacity of
development and his social impressibility. Rob him of these attributes and
the one point of difference between man and animal is abolished. Psycho-
SYSTEMS AS CLASSIFIED 465
logically, therefore, we decide that the various capabilities of the higher
animals, including man, differ only in trifling details.* \Obse7^e, and
experiment with domesticated animals, carefully avoiding a7iy unkindness.'\
Nearly all the observations hitherto made on animals are usually interpreted in the light
of the current speculative psychology. Prof. Calderwood {Mind and Brain, 1892) and
others tell us that animals achieve successes, not by using reason, but by instinct and by
their highly developed senses. Yet, strange to say, writers like Sully assure us that one of
the conditions of genius is special congenital susceptibility in a certain direction, thus bring-
ing canine intelligence and human genius into dangerous proximity. The fact is that instinct
and inherited aptitude play a serious part in human development, and that without these
we should not be human beings at all. The ceaseless limb, eye and voice movements of the
infant, and the consequent development along the lines of play and curiosity, of love and
of adventure, are as much hereditary tendencies as the sniffing of a dog or the piping of a
chicken. The dog has certainly a somewhat different line of development ; but that has
nothing to do with fundamentals. The great fact which we have to admit is that apart
from inherited aptitudes which may be capable of more or less expansion, human activity
is as little intelligible as ape activity.
However, we are referred to the proverbial incapacity of an animal to infer and reason.
To drive that point home, we are assured that the wonderful feats of animals of which
we hear so much, are merely acquired tricks, void of the higher qualities. Thus, for
instance, Thorndike {Animal Intelligenci, 1898), with the aid of a long series of ingenious
experiments, endeavours to show that cats only come to open doors by chance, and not
by an effort of intellect, as men are supposed to do. For my part I believe that the
facts have been misinterpreted. Let me give some instances. A kitten which I know,
knows me well. The moment she hears my footsteps, she runs to meet me. When she
sees me, she almost shrieks with apparent pleasure. If I stop still, she lies down and
rolls over my feet in scores of different ways, eagerly looking up for encouragement.
"When, again, food is thrown down as she rests on a chair, and she is not very liungry, she will
look down and look away, then look again, and so on. Then she bends down and again
straightens herself. Then she lets herself almost down ; but once more looks indifferent.
Yet when removed from the chair, she will readily find and eat the food. Take another
case. I am in a room with the door closed, and on the sofa lies a cat which is a stranger
to me, though not to the house. Suddenly footsteps are heard ; apparently also some-
thing is scented, and the cat runs to the door. Mark what happens. She does not
inanely scratch. She tries deliberately the lower corner of the door where it opens, but
without success. She then walks along the door and looks at its edges. Then she looks
up and at the lock. Then she touches something that is hanging from a nail on the door
which object moves without the desired result. Then she touches the object again, but
quite gently, as who would say " It's no use." At last, she turns round, walks up to me,
though a stranger, looks at me, and miaws pitifully. Here surely is a picture utterly
different from that drawn by Thorndike.t
To multiply examples would be tedious. Such cases bear witness to deliberate and
* I must touch here on a singular psychological tradition. One prominent writer after
another has said that a chicken will, immediately on emerging from the shell, successfully
run and peck. Poultry keepers smiled when I questioned them as to the truth of the
tradition, and repeated observation showed no trace of successful running and pecking
with chickens just hatched. I am, therefore, glad to quote an authority on this point.
" On leaving the shell they [the chickens] are wet and helpless ; they struggle with their
legs, wings, and necks, but are unable to stand or hold up their heads. Soon, however
they may be distinctly seen and felt pressing against and endeavouring to keep in contact
with any warm object. They advance very rapidly. I have seen them hold up their
heads well, peck at objects, and attempt to dress their wings when only but four or five
hours old " (Spalding, Institut, 1873, P- 283).
tThe oldest of his cats was 19 months old {ibid, p. 13), and he expects these to act
like university graduates.
30
466 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
complicated activity. To say that these cats do not doubt, hesitate, discriminate, judge,
infer, learn, compare, re-develop, is surely to play with words. It is to deny the sub-
stance, because the shadow — the speech — is absent. Nevertheless men insist, and rightly,
that when animals are taught anything, they learn it by mere chance repetition. What
else can we expect ? A human being can only proceed from the known to the unknown,
and how then is the cat \o juinp to a conclusion? Thorndike mentions that when slight
differences were made, the cats readily appreciated these. He says in effect : " Previous
experience makes a difference in the quickness with which the cat forms associations. . .
Its tendency to pay attention to what it is doing gets strengthened " {ibid, p. 28).
Would it not be right, then, to say that only by graduated training, as with a human
being, should an animal be tested ?
It will, however, be replied that human beings reason out a case, and that they are
not dependent on learning every step. In this lies the fundamental fallacy, the assump-
tion that man proceeds differently from the cat, and in this Thorndike's human psychology
is hopelessly mythical, for, throughout his essay, thought means for him employing a
great number of words, while he implies that the humble kitten should, without training,
be a latter-day philosopher. According to the teachings of this work, the child's intelli-
gence grows very gradually : more and more complications or associations are acquired ;
cumbersome associations are slowly formed ; methods by which to answer nearly every
general question are assimilated, — until, after twenty years spent in studiously absorbing
the facts and the methods of his fellows, the man begins to philosophise. Yet this
philosophising is merely a further elaboration similar to the simplest kind of membering.
It suggests no new process ; for if it did, then man would be ever changing into some
different class of being. All that we have in a long train of verbal reasoning as dis-
tinguished from a simple act is greater complexity ; otherwise system after system follows
as promptly, and for the same reason, as in the chicken or the dog. Hence when Thorn-
dike says of the actions of animals that " they represent the wearing smooth of a path in
the brain, not the decisions of a rational consciousness " {ibid, p. 45), he draws a dis-
tinction without a difference. This has been so abundantly shown, especially in ch. 4,
that no more need be added. (See also Hobhouse, Mind i7i Evolution, 1901.)
The real differences between animals lie deeper. The dog has not, and man has, an
inherited aptitude to learn and to continue learning ; and the dog has little, and man
much, use for complicated combinations to satisfy his needs. Hence all that should be
attempted in training animals, is to make them patterns of their own species.
234. — A Bird's Eye View.
Considered from a theoretical point of view the satisfaction of a need
might never meet with obstacles ; or when obstacles did occur, there might
be no attempt to overcome them. In practice, however, we find that
obstacles do occur, and that strenuous attempts to surmount them are not
infrequent. Yet, under differing conditions, the magnitude of those
attempts varies : in the full waking state, the trained thinker, when he is
in earnest, is scarcely daunted by any obstacle ; under ordinary circum-
stances he only deliberates, and hence there is a drop in the value of his
reflection ; when he is roaming in thought, obstacles are not overcome, but
avoided ; and in dream-life, through changed conditions where the muscular
and sensory tone are lowered, primary and secondary systems, the imagina-
tion and the judgment develop most imperfectly. The quality of our re-
actions is, therefore, determined by the strenuousness of our endeavours; and
since such strenuousness can only be passingly exerted, there is a tendency
for the quality of our thought to be of a low degree, and this especially in
SVSTEAfS AS CLASSIFIED 467
idle moments, in a poor state of health, when the attention has not been
trained, and in dream-life whether provoked or not. Lastly, we discussed
the nature of the animal mind.
CHAPTER XI
SYSTEMS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED
'"Tis attention-needs explain
Humour, play, and beauty's reign.
235. — General.
The stream of attention is normally a constant in the waking state (sec.
22). Hence arise a multiplicity of problems, all bearing on the question
of how to preserve a normal flow. With many of these aspects I have
already dealt at length ; but in this chapter I wish to treat of one more.
AVe have seen how reluctantly the attention is concentrated, and how pros-
trate we become under sustained effort. Evidently, then, the highest satis-
faction will be obtained when there is something which genially occupies
the attention without demanding special muscular exertion or fatiguing re-
flections.
At the same time the organic view of thought which we have adopted
in this work implies that even in what is called self-determined activity
there is a satisfaction of needs, only the needs are prosecuted no farther
than they satisfy the attention mechanism. Accordingly every class of
aesthetic activity is but the playful pursuit of what otherwise is a serious
concern. We may say that cesthetic gratification exists whefi needs are satisfied
only in so far as they are agreeable to the attention mechanism.
236. — The Beautiful in Visual Forms.
Taking, therefore, the case of visual forms, we assert that that is beautiful
the co7itetnplatio7i * of which, of itself occupies the attention. [Test this defini-
tion in every possible way.] In examining the various parts of this defini-
tion we shall ascertain the facts which it embodies.
* " Perhaps the first and most striking peculiarity of lesthetic enjoyment is to be found
in its contemplative character " (Sully, Human Mind, 1892, ii, p. 135). By contempla-
tion is presumably meant the spontaneous and non-interested satisfaction of curiosity.
There seems reason to think that all a-sthetic activities are rudiments of some useful
function, and that thus the beautiful represents rudimentary curiosity as humour 7-epresents
rudimentary malice and as imagination and play represent rudimentary thought and action.
Hence a;sthetics are not unconnected with normal life and development. (Sec. 248.)
SYSTE.\fS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 469
The first point that strikes us is that playful or self-determined reactions
essentially depend on the bee-like nature of the attention process, and
that apart from this aspect, it is conceivable that the nature of nervous
functioning should be in exact correspondence with existing needs. On
this hypothesis, whenever these needs asserted themselves, the locomotive
■of thought would begin its journey, continuing until the needs were satis-
fied, or till interest flagged. In such an event, self-determined combinations
would be out of the question. They would serve no purpose, and have no
place in the human economy \ there would be nothing to set them going,
to control them, or to stop them. It is, however, a different matter
when we have to deal with the nervous organism, as we know it. The
functional tendencies are present, and their actualisation has important
consequences. Physical and neural strain, successful as they are, to a
■certain degree, in strengthening and developing functions, are neverthe-
less not normal to our nature. We require a stimulus to encourage
us in tiring labour. We recoil from oakum picking or the treadmill,
nothing urging us to that kind of occupation. On the other hand,
when we seek relief from strenuous endeavour, \ve are not fully satis-
fied with wandering thought. The contents, in the latter case, are often
unattractive. We are restless because we have to think continually of
fresh topics, and because the effort of random thought lacks the desirable
degree of strenuousness. What is demanded, under such conditions, is a
means of easily passing our time, with just the dash of effort * to keep the
organism sweet. The contemplation of certain forms satisfies this want to
perfection, and hence the conception of the beautiful is to us, human beings,
inconceivable apart from an organic structure such as our body presents us
with. \Try to disprove thisi\ " No body, no beauty," or, at all events, we
do not know how to connect the notion of the beautiful with anything but
the attention mechanism.
From the definition we have rigidly excluded objects which occupy the
attention, but which have a derived interest. \Note this distinction?^
When I am dining it is not the contemplation of the nourishment, for its
own sake, which attracts me. Behind it lurks the demon hunger. The
infant eagerly seeks his food when famished ; but when he is satisfied he
takes no more notice of it. Thus a person who is struck with horror, is
not moved by the white patch before him, but by the fear of certain con-
sequences, and once assured that the ghost is only a white sheet, due
allowance being made for the subsidence of his excitement, he looks at it
calmly and ceases to concern himself with it. So also a huge poster, a
monster hoarding or the soaring pyramids of Egypt do not attract us in
themselves. They do so because of their contrast with those posters,
hoardings and pyramids which are pigmies by comparison. Their fasci-
* The necessity for employing measurable effort in the contemplation of the beautiful
is recognised by Dumont, who says : "The beautiful is that which presents a great com-
plication in the unity of one conception, in such wise that the realitation of the conception
in the imagination, demands a considerable outlay of force'' {La Sensibilite, 1875,
p. 174)-
470 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
nation has its origin, therefore, in their " relative" size. \Test ////>.] Only
when contemplation has no before or after, do we speak of it as having
regard to the beautiful. In accordance with this, we miss the beautiful
when we are engaged in learning the outlines and colours of an object.
A person occupied in this way displays no appreciation, as commonly
understood. Again, one who contemplates objects because of an extraneous
reward, or because of the fear of punishment, is to that extent a stranger
to art.
" It has been the custom, from the time of Plato, to sharply mark off the beautiful from
the useful " (Sully, Human Mind, 1S92, ii, p. 134). So Kant, Kritik der Urtheibkraft,
1790 : " Every one must admit that an ;usthelic judgment in which interest plays ever so
small a part is partial and illegitimate. To be a judge in matters of taste, the existence
of the thing to be judged must be indifferent to us." So Spencer, Psyc/toloj^y, 1890, ii,
p. 635 : " In the conception of a thing, as fine, as admirable, as beautiful, as grand,
consciousness is not occupied, distinctly or vaguely, with ultimate advantage, but is
occupied with the thing itself as a direct source of pleasure." *
As to the place of pleasure in aesthetics. Sully speaks of "art in its relation to what
Englishmen at least in the main are agreed to regard as its end, pleasurable emotion"
(m Mhu!, 1893, p. 117). So Fechner, Vorschule der yEsthrtik, 1876, i: "Everything
which has the property of pleasing directly, independently of reflection and teleological
considerations, is, in the widest sense, called beautiful, especially if the property be pro-
nounced and pure" (p. 15), and " ^^Csthetics, according to our view, relate to pleasure
and pain, in so far as pleasure and pain directly depend on ideas and sensations awakened
from without " (p. 37). I, of course, reject the pleasure-pain theory in resthetics.
The following are the marks of the sublime according to Burke, The Sublime and the
Beautiful, Works, i, 1792: terror, obscurity, power, privation, vastness, infinity, succession
and uniformity, and magnificence. The beautiful, according to the same author, is the
exact opposite of the sublime, implying smallness, smoothness, gradual variation, delicacy,
and like qualities. Hence his strange question, " Will any one call the elephant, the
wolf and the lion beautiful animals?" (p 171).
We are well acquainted with the nature of the attention process. We
have observed its waves and its ripples (ch. 2). We know that it
impatiently presses onward like a torrent, and that it violently resents
interference. The nature of the beautiful, therefore, is defined by the
nature of the attention process. It cannot consist in a single act, for that
would only lead to a senseless stare. The only way in which an object
can occupy the attention is by displaying, in turn, a variety of features.
Accordingly we learn that an ideally simple object, one that is which possesses-
the minimum of characteristics, can appeal only minimally to our sense of
the beautiful. [^Contemplate a 7vhite sJuet of paper.\ Variety, therefore, is
one of the fundamentals in artistic contemplation, while lack of variety,
other things being equal, tires the attention and leaves us unsatisfied.
Yet a certain degree of strenuousness is equally necessary : there must
be gentle effort if the attention is not to be restless. A heterogeneous-
assemblage does not appeal to us. The items must appear in a more or
less close relation to one another ; they must be welded into some sort
* For a view identifying products of art as useful, see Him, The Origins of Art, 1900,.
and Collin, Literature and Life, 1900.
SYSTEMS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 471
of a system, not too easy to embrace at once. The object must be full of
obstacles which are readily, though not too readily, overcome. There
must be gentle exercise, with just a flush of effort ; and such exercise must
be provoked by no considerations except those of occupying the attention
satisfactorily. The ideally beautiful, therefore, will be that which most
succeeds in holding the attention for the longest possible time ; and the
ugliest will be that which the attention most shuns because variety is miss-
ing or gentle exercise inapplicable. \_Apply simple case, jiegative case,
opposite case, objective case, and cases of gradual extension and degree. \
The contemplation of a sunset offers an admirable illustration. \^Test
experimefitally.'] We lean against a five-barred gate and feast our eyes
on the magnificent spectacle which lies above us. We are lost in rapture
and admiration. We gaze and gaze. Then, when the battle of colours
is ended, we walk away, still dazed by the splendour we have witnessed.
So absorbed have we been that we are scarcely aware now of what has
passed. We did not deliberately reason, observe or admire anything.
We melted into the scene. Our many senses were reduced to one, the
sense of beauty. Our whole complex being shrunk, until this sense alone
remained. Yet the sunset was by no means the first one we had wit-
nessed. That five-barred gate, opening into a meadow full of sweet-
scented cowslips, is quite familiar to us. Evening after evening we cross
the little strip of oak wood which hides the west, and breathlessly we go
out to the dioramic vision. The young rabbit sits close by us, his ears
aglow, and the young mole joyously runs to and fro, oblivious of our
presence. Cloaked in contemplation, we form part of the peaceful scene.
Why should v.-e become ecstatic on account of a sunset ? Why not
choose a plain white sheet of paper for admiration .'' Is it anything but
custom which decides that we shall rave about the one and pay no attention
to the other ? Our principles give an unmistakable reply to these queries.
The sunset sky is an admirable object which sustains the attention [is it .?],
and for this reason. To occupy ourselves we require a quantity of details,
and the sky is full of them. Range after range of clouds are scattered
above us, all lavishly illuminated. The forms are of the most varied out-
lines. So manifold are the attractions that time scarcely permits us to
dwell on minor shapes. The colours themselves show an abundance of
minute variations. On the one hand they point to what would otherwise
remain unnoticed, while on the other, their differences and their shading
one into another, add largely to the material of our contemplation. It is
chiefly for this reason that the grey clouds of day are so little appreciated
until they approach the night. The grey is difficult to see ; delicate out-
lines are overlooked ; and in the distance the detail is blended into an
undistinguishable mass. The day clouds, therefore, are much inferior
from the point of view of beauty, growing uninteresting as they become
duller, or as their detail becomes blurred.
" The highest beauty of visible objects is obtained by lustre. The metals and precious
gems are recommended by it. The finer woods yield it by polish and varnish. The
472 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
painter's colours are naturally dead, and he superadds the transparent film. This property
redeems the privation of colour, as in the lustrous black. The green leaf is often adorned
by it, through the addition of moisture. Possibly, much of the refreshing influence of
greenness in vegetation is due to lustrous greenness. Animal tissues present the effect in
a high degree. Ivory, mother of fxjarl, bone, silk, and wool are of the class of brilliant
or glittering substances. The human skin is a combination of richness of colouring with
lustre. The hair is beautiful in a great measure from its brilliancy. The eye is perhaps
the finest example : the deep bl.ick of the choroid, and the colours of the iris, are lique-
fied by the transparency of the humours" (Bain, Senses and Intellect, 1894, pp. 250-1).
May we not say that lustre reveals and combines details, and that its oesthetic virtue lies
in that ?
The fascination has still another source. As we gaze on the sunset
colours, they imperceptibly but continuously change, and with them the
cloud shapes. If the changes were very slow, the attention would not be
affected by them and would tend to become tired. \Test experimentally^
If the changes passed very rapidly, vision after vision would be guessed at
without being fully integrated. [ Verify?^ The attention would be exasper-
ated instead of being satisfied, and we should witness a strange and painful
spectacle instead of a beautiful one. As if by an artifice, however, the
colours, shades and shapes are usually transformed just quickly enough
to prevent the attention being starved or overfed. The variety is suffi-
ciently large to hold us permanently enthralled.
Yet heterogeneity does not satisfy the attention properly. Unrelated
outlines require too large a number of small efforts or readjustments, and
attention, even in art, must, therefore, be topical, having a subject, and
subdivisions within it. This is obviously so, since contemplation of what-
ever type must obey the primary facts of the attention process. Hence
the sky must be more to us than a vast aggregate. And so it is. The
sun is the throne about which colours and shapes group themselves. The
variations in the degrees and kinds of tints are based on one centrally
determined scale, the view as a whole, and all its parts, belonging equally
to one system of relations. The whole expanse, from the sinking orb to
the opposite side in the east, shows one uniform plan of transformation.
So, too, the changes are symbolic of one supreme event, the setting of the
sun, while both the space and the time series are organically interwoven.
We thus meet boundless multiplicity, never the same from minute to
minute and from day to day; but all is ordered from one controlling
centre.
In the text of this section I have attempted not merely to expound, but to explain, the
well worn notion of unity in variety. Sully (Hzanan Mind, 1892, ii, p. 139) says that
the esthetic value due to certain modes of grouping the sensuous elements "depends on
... (a) variety, or (in its intenser degrees) contrast, and (b) harmony, or peaceful co-
ordination of diverse elements." Baldwin {Feeling and Will, 1891, p. 233) observes
that " the simplest empirical observation of beautiful things suffices to illustrate the
necessity of both unity and variety in form in any object to which we attach this predi-
cate." With this principle in view Fechner (Vorschule, 1876, i) remarks that "the
finest work of art becomes tiresome if we contemplate it too long " (p. 59) ; and that we
weary of twenty short stories, but readily read one long one (pp. 68-9). Bosanquet
(A History oJ\'Esthetic, 1892, pp. 4-5) alludes to the doctrine as historic.
SYSTEMS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 473
"The loosest weed that drifts and waves under the heaving of the sea, or hangs
heavily on the brown and slippery shore, has a marked strength, structure, elasticity,
gradation of substance ; its extremities are more finely fibred than its centre, its centre
than its root : every fork of its ramification is measured and proportioned ; every
wave of its languid lines is lovely. It has its allotted size, and place, and function ;
it is a specific creature" (Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1897, p. 202). In this
systematised variety within unity lies the beautiful. Ruskin, however, seems to have
a difterent theory. First, he argues, "all most lovely forms and thoughts arc directly
taken from natural objects" [ibid, p. 190), and hence speaks of a riband as "a vile
thing" [ibid, p. 203), limiting in this way the realm of the beautiful; and, secondly,
he contends "that, knowing a thing to be frequent, we may assume it to be beautiful ;
and assume that which is most frequent to be most beautiful : I mean, of course, visibly
frequent" (/(^iV, p. 192). In my opinion neither naturalness nor visible frequency are
essential marks of the beautiful. If a natural ol:)ject is beautiful, it is because it bears
those marks which I have referred to in the text. Hence many a natural oljject may be
unattractive, while many an artificial product may charm us. Besides, is it so easy to
show that a riband is not a natural object ? As to the relation of frequency or familiarity
to the beautiful, much might be said. The very fact that the attention does not deal
easily with what is unfamiliar, shows that entire unfamiliarity prevents asthetic develop-
ments ; and so, too, our knowing little of a thing implies a lack of visible variety and an
ignorance of organic unity, these being essential in the observation of the beautiful.*
Hence we are bound to conclude that frequency may exist without any corresponding
beauty, and that the satisfaction connected with what is familiar is not truly aesthetic.
The factors in aesthetics probably are : (i) the implied sense material ; (2) the fitness of
that material to satisfy the attention mechanism ; (3) the complications or associations
into which the sensations are formed ; and (4) the ease which comes through familiarity.
Our analysis is not yet complete. There are two non-aesthetic factors
which contribute to our admiration and determine the part played by
colours as such. \^Find other factors ?\ The first is the magnificent sweep
of the sky. Its /ar^'"^ness constitutes part of its grandeur. The size acts
as a constant tonic, and, though not theoretically to be counted as a por-
tion of sesthetic gratification, has, nevertheless, in practice considerable
influence. It helps to emphasise the ejisemhle. From the standpoint of
beauty, dimension is only of importance because it allows room for detail.
The second factor is the series of surprises connected with the novelty of
much that is developed. Our curiosity is attracted by new tints and new
shapes. We have not seen this colour before, and that fantastic form
■challenges attention. In either instance, purposive contemplation com-
bines with, or ousts, the purer form. However, these two factors act the
Tole of supers, and are by no means the heroes of the celestial fantasia
Avhich we are admiring from the green-carpeted pit.
What is said here explains why a painted sunset cannot compete with
a real one. At best, the picture will charm us because of subtle reminis-
cences of real sunsets ; for fine as it may be, it lacks the detail which the
magnificent and changing skies offer. Attention energy soon exhausts,
if only for the time being, what is presented for development. The neural
calls on us are too great to allow us to look very long at a picture.
* Note that the "safety bicycle" was once considered to be ugly, and the "ordinary"
graceful, and that now the opposite opinion prevails.
474 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
Coming back fresh, it may give us joy repeatedly, and perhaps for all
time we can linger over it for a moment; still, the machinery of the
attention process is such that only comparative freshness challenges us.
We see, therefore, that the beautiful has no arbitrary origin. Its roots
branch down into the very depths of the soil of life. What regulates it,
except for error, is a truth as lasting as our nervous structure itself.
Next to the glow of a sunset there is in nature perhaps nothing so
beautiful as Spring, while variety, transmutation and system are attributes
of the latter as of the former. The abounding snow-white blossoms of
the blackthorn, standing out sharply defined from the dark branches, in-
vite our gaze. The delicate rose-coloured blooms of the almond tree bid
us welcome. The leaf-buds are swelling, the cramped leaves burst
through, and gradually the bushes spread out their tiny sails. The
hardy celandine flanks the moist places. The wood-anemone, graceful in
outline and sprayed with soft white and red and blue, flies along the
ground. The pale primrose belies its pallor by its numerous progeny
and vigour. The wild hyacinth, most tender in colour and in form,
.sanctifies the ground it dwells on. The demure cow.slip with its tiny-
throat, its precious necklace, its hanging head, and its sweet scent, calls
us to the meadows. In this way, almost day by day, surprises are in
store. The violet, the daisy, the daffodil, the buttercup and the whole
array of elegant creatures, arrive in procession and greet us and give us
cheer. Meanwhile our ears are not less pleased. The prolonged notes
of the robin, the outbursts of the lark, the thrush's melodious litany, the
blackbird's call, the cuckoo's riddle, the nightingale's sweet challenges,
appear like echoes carried from mountain to mountain. The chorus
swells, till the music of the spheres has become a reality. And now the
earth's .standing armies, the trees, put on their quaintly-cut emerald
garments. Each tree looks as fresh as if it were the first of its kind : the
pines with their trimmings, the beeches with their cymbals, the oaks with
their golden patterns. Spring having arrived, we can no more peep
through hedges, and no more pierce the wood with our sight. Green
screens fence in the distance everywhere.
Spring time must be felt ; it cannot be adequately described. Its
burden, though its tempo be slower, is the same as that of the setting sun:
an immen.se surface, boundless variety, constant transformation and or-
ganic interconnection. We walk across spacious meadows, along river
banks, past flocks of sheep, through woods and lanes, and in this manner
we have the best opportunity of watching Spring's procession. If we
travelled too far — into various counties, for instance — we should miss
that organic hold which familiarity with a neighbourhood yields. \Is ihaf
so ?] At home we are stimulated, kept on the alert, without the danger
of tiring ourselves with the effort to understand what is largely novel.
Many delicate changes are overlooked abroad, and yet these, if observed,
would occasion a series of delightful shocks. To roam aimlessly, given
our nervous mechanism, largely reduces the pleasures of Spring. Indeed,.
SYSTEMS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 475.
townspeople who seldom make excursions into the country, and then each
time to a different place, who know a nightingale by night and a lark
when they see it poised, who are only sure about the cuckoo's call and
tell a violet by its colour : to such Spring hardly conveys a meaning.
For them there is too much to be observed, too little to be comprehended,
to make the landscape what it is to the poet who dwells in the midst of
the panorama of change. That is to say, away from what is homely, the
attention is wearied and stupefied instead of being easily occupied and
gently stimulated. On the other hand, if we observe Spring in a tiny
garden alone, it equally forfeits its right to be one of the wonders of the
world. The one or two bushes, the one or two trees, the few square feet
of turf, and the occasional chaffinch or robin that chances to alight,
beautiful as they are in their way, do not yield massive delights. There
is no breathing space for the attention, no incessant change on a large
scale, no coherent drama, to be observed. What is Spring time in a large
town ? It scarcely suggests the infinite enjoyments of the country. The
houses are scarcely affected, the roads only a little muddier, the rosy buds
turn dull, the leaves become dirty, the bark is uniformly coloured by the
smoke, and as for larks and thrushes and nightingales, these, even if they
came, would not be heard above the din of noise and the thick layers of
dulled sound. Whichever way we posit our problem, our conclusions are
still readily verified. The beautiful implies extensive variety and, there-
fore, a vast expanse. It identifies itself neither with what requires keen
effort for appreciation nor with that which needs no effort. It unmistakably
demands a gentle and sustained stimulus. It insists upon some
kind of systematic arrangement. In the absence of order the attention
wanders, for it cannot bear the strain involved in persistent readjustment.
Spring, the inspirer of the poet and the select companion of the lover of
nature, does not, then, owe its fame to fashion, custom, fancy or philosophy.
It appeals to the eternal in us. It satisfies the attention mechanism, as
food satisfies the digestive organs. Apart from an organism such as ours
we have no conception of the beautiful.
We have analysed two examples designed to bring out in full the
implications of the beautiful. We shall now descend to common facts.
Look at the dust in the road on a summer's day, or the mud on a dull
November afternoon. \_Test //«>.] Why do we not admire them, as we
do the sunset, the Spring, the sea or the stars? Plainly because they
are powerless to convey much to us. The mud is a monotonous grey-
brown, which prevents the emergence of recognisable outlines, [/jr this
so ?] There are no considerable variations observable. There is little for
the attention to dwell upon. There is no interdependence between the
different particles, the grasping of which should stimulate the nervous
system. There is no appreciable change going on to relieve the mono-
tony. We can only rivet the attention by repeated efforts. Hence we
do not contemplate the mud, nor look upon it as a bea utiful object. Yet
give the moonlight free play on a mud bank left bare by the receding tide^
476 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
and, the conditions being altered, we are face to face witli a brilliant
exhibition. Vox this reason, all formless and uniform accumulations repel
us, because they cannot hold the attention. The various aggregates pro-
duced by accident, such as the contents of a waste-paper basket, or the
litter on a table, fall under this condemnation. The attention shoots off
as it approaches them. In a moment it is satisfied ; the next moment, it
seeks fresh food. Seeming exceptions there are. Autumn's tinted leaves,
as they garland-like border a lake, or snow-like cover the house-steps, are
beautiful in spite of the absence of natural or artistic arrangements. The
explanation is simple. The organic shadings in the single leaves consti-
tute one attraction ; another lies in the great variety produced by the
immense assemblage of colour ; and a third in the contrast between gay
tints and decay. Pure heterogeneity repels, just as does pure homogeneity.
Let us look at definite shapes. \_Do so?\ Here is a triangle A, and
here is a square D . May we regard them as possessing exquisite beauty ?
Shall we contemplate them rapturously? Clearly not. Though an organic
connection exists there are few points, and the interdependence is so
obvious that we detect it forthwith. Regular forms, such as a triangle,
are pleasing ; but the pleasure is evanescent, since it takes very little time to
observe all that can be readily observed therein. Yet suppose that we
look at a row of ten triangles, or even ten rows of a hundred of them, will
these impose upon us ? We are no doubt struck by the number ; but we
take no pleasure in the sight. In an instant we recognise the unity and
the plan, and have done with it ; we wonder, but hardly admire. Nothing
lures us to prolonged contemplation. Of course, when angular forms are
interconnected, and when they are represented in a design, then, the con-
ditions being more favourable, we contemplate the result with more or less
enjoyment. Accordingly, such patterns commend themselves to the
simple taste. For ordinary purposes the momentary delight they give is
all that is demanded.
The higher we aim, the less obvious do patterns become. At first, they
are not elaborate ; but later on, they are over-elaborated and come to be
distasteful, since the attention shrinks from their complexity. At their
best, a hidden order is sought by the artist, such as challenges the imagi-
nation without completely yielding up the secret. In such instances
admiration knows practically no time limit. We take a perpetual
delight in dwelling on the form, hunting for that which we feel to be there,
but which ever eludes us. Those sets of outlines which seem to disclose,
and yet do not disclose, their secret, are favourites of the attention. They
are in direct contrast to the mechanical order observable in the paving
stones of a street, or in primitive and monotonous wall papers. He who
can produce forms which are easily but not completely grasped, has
mounted more than one rung of the ladder of art. Curves are of this
satisfactory and yet elusive type : they puzzle us and yet gratify us.
The best pictures are a good exemplification of our general contention.
The presence of colours, their happy arrangement, the supple forms, the
SVSTEAfS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 477
organic connection of the whole — all these contribute to the creation of
the intended effect. A "wooden" figure is one lacking in systematic de-
tail and boldness. [7>^/.] A perfect figure is one where much is seen,
and more is suggested \Test\ and for this reason the few strokes of the
caricaturist have their secret not in the quantitative or qualitative merit of
the outlines, but in what these hint at. In other words, the presence of
pertinent detail is a test of beauty, and accordingly an apparently simple
good picture embodies much labour : the work is there, but does not
obtrude itself. The life-like effect in inferior paintings, on the other hand,
depends on the line written underneath or on the general arrangement.
[7>^/.] The faces tell nothing; they are dolls' faces. Covering up all
but a face, we are at a loss whether it represents a boy or a girl, a man or
a woman. The face of the lover, and the face of his beloved, equally lack
expression. Fashion plates are also apt illustrations of this emptiness.
Now, for a picture to tell us nothing, or to violate our notions of things,
what is it but to lack organic detail and to repel the attention. If the un-
cultured classes admire bad pictures, it is on account of an obvious illusion
of judgment. As a matter of fact, it is only for a very short time that
they can study these cheap coloured prints, for, in themselves, they attract
the ignorant man as little as the cultured. It is a good omen when copies
of famous pictures figure in the households of the humble, and when
advertisers prefer a homely face to the presentation of expressionless beauty.
The realm of the ?esthetically indifferent, which has so large a place
reserved to it in life's routine, finds, of course, its explanation in our
principles. The grey pavement, the rows of brick houses lacking orna-
ment, the dingy shops, owe their unattractiveness to the same source.
Hence the difference between a room in a state of natural and one in a
state of artistic confusion. Every object, in short, has its fixed aesthetic
value, and, subject to what is said in the succeeding sections, yields the
same gratification to all. De gustibus non disputandum only holds good
when we confuse beauty with a number of things which have nothing to do
with it, for as a strictly scientific assertion it is false. The middle ages
might as well have argued that de scientiis 71071 dispiita7idii7n, because in
those times science and error were boon-companions.
Kant (Kriiik der Uriheihkraft , 1790, §7) goes to the extreme by insisting that there
can be no difference of opinion as to what is beautiful. His arguments are contradicted
by the fact of jesthetic development, and by observation generally. If it is easier to
differ concerning the agreeable than the beautiful, it is because the attention mechanism,
is far more uniform in its reactions than is the palate or the fancy.
Cultivated grounds admirably bring out the truth of our position. Let
us assume that when staying in the country, we traverse at short intervals
an area of twenty-four square miles. We pass woods, meadows, streams,
hills, fields and pastures. Our range is so large that it admits of an im-
mense expanse of attractive detail. Further, the changes we witness are
not designed by us, nor are they artificial or abrupt. Look now at a
478 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
garden. {Test this^ If there are beds of regular shapes, we condemn
them as lacking sustained interest. If the arrangement of the flowers is
artificial, it falls behind that of nature. The blossoms also lack ease and
grace. The space being limited, gorgeous and rich forms abound.
Nature's few petals become many ; the delicate colours become pro-
nounced. So cramped are the grounds that there is no freedom, no
natural environment for these earth-chained inhabitants. Hence we lack
the pleasure of seeing something unexpectedly, or of resting between sight
and sight. There is an attempt to make a tenth of a square mile equal in
beauty to twenty-four. The result is a miserable failure. No one but an
invalid, physically or aesthetically, will seriously compare man's garden to
nature's paradise. A garden-bred poet is a monstrosity. {Carefully study
gardens and town parks^
Thinking and observing are not effortless processes, and the greater the
obstacles consequently, the more strained and concentrated the attention.
"There is a condition, speaking of outlines, when the attention is readily
satisfied ; and the objects in connection with which this happens are called
beautiful. An all-powerful mind or brain would be unable to see any
beauty, for the necessary degree of attention would be absent. So, on the
other hand, children and savages, lacking as they do the power of quiet
contemplation, are naturally unable, except within the narrowest compass,
to appreciate what is beautiful. {Experiment?^
Ruskin supplies us with a fine example of what is revealed by a close intimacy with
nature. I give the passage in full : " A steep bank of loose earth of any kind, that has
been at all exposed to the weather, contains in it, though it may not be three feet high,
features capable of giving high gratification to a careful observer. It is almost a fac-
simile of a mountain slope of soft and decomposing rock ; it possesses nearly as much
variety of character, and is governed by laws of organisation no less rigid. It is furrowed
in the first place by undulating lines, caused by the descent of the rain ; little ravines,
which are cut precisely at the same slope as those of the mountain, and leave ridges
scarcely less graceful in their contour, and beautifully sharp in their chiselling. Where
a harder knot of ground or a stone occurs, the earth is washed from beneath it, and
accumulates above it, and there we have a little precipice connected by a sweeping curve
at its summit with the great slope, and casting a sharp dark shadow ; where the soil has
been soft, it will probably be wasted away underneath until it gives way, and leaves a
jagged, hanging, irregular line of fracture : and all these circumstances are explained to
the eye in sunshine with the most delicious clearness ; every touch of shadow being ex-
pressive of some particular truth of structure, and bearing witness to the symmetry into
which the whole mass has been reduced. Where this operation has gone on long, and
vegetation has assisted in softening the outlines, we have our ground brought into grace-
ful and irregular curves, of infinite variety, but yet always so connected with each other,
and guiding to each other, that the eye never feels them as separate things, nor feels in-
clined to count them, nor perceives a likeness in one to the other ; they are not re-
petitions of each other, but are different parts of one system. Each would be imperfect
without the next to it" {^Modern Painters, 1873, pp. 309-10). This passage, quoted by
Bosanquet, is supposed to " illustrate the beauty of characteristic expression" {A History
of ^Esthetic, 1892, p. 449) ; and if this be so, the reader has here Dr. Bosanquet's view
in a nutshell.
In another passage, speaking of the sublime in architecture, Ruskin says : " It is a
noble thing ... to make the face of a wall look infinite, and its edge against the sky
SYSTE^fS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 479
like an horizon : or even if less than this be reached, it is still delightful to mark the play
of passing light on its broad surface, and to see by how many artifices and gradations of
tinting and shadow, time and storm will set their wild signature upon it ; and how in the
rising or declining of the day the unbroken twilight rests long and luridly on its high
lineless forehead, and fades away untraceahly down its tiers of confused and countless
stone" (Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1897, pp. 140- 1).
The organic view of the beautiful which is here put forward is illustrated by facts
which are in part only identical with those dealt with in ^^sthetics. Men often sit before a
blazing fire watching the flames, or look out of the window when it rains or snows, or
note the dripping of water into a fountain. In such cases we may say that there is
aestlietic gratification in so far as the organic conditions mentioned in the text are
satisfied. The variety of detail here is generally sufficient to occupy the attention ;
but discontinuous observation keeps satisfaction at a very low level. Such activity is
disinterested, and agrees with our definition of the beautiful ; yet the absence of close
-organic connection changes it into something almost entirely different.
237. — Inference.
We have thus far proceeded on the assumption of a sense uninfluenced
by the environment ; but this supposition, we know, is gratuitous. We
will now correct this impression, and explain what would otherwise appear
.anomalous.
We sometimes insist on one aspect of an object. Being strongly in
favour of a truthful rendering of things, we come to believe that a picture
should hold the mirror up to nature. Guided by such considerations we
are readily fascinated by paintings of this order. We turn to them and
admire them passionately. Our eyes feed upon them like a bee nestling
in a blossom, extracting the nectar of delight. We are transported in
thought to the scenes called up. However, another man, who is primarily
attracted by general impressions, loves the canvas which, while only hint-
ing at the facts, suggests the mental attitude of the imaginary spectator.
To the impressionist a scene true to nature repels, for he finds no soul
therein. He asserts that a beautiful piece of country is transfigured by
him who gazes at it. He cries aloud that only that art is great which takes
cognisance of the mode in which we react on what is before us, and which
re-instates the atmosphere of indefinable feeling which envelops us when
lost in admiration. So, too, within the same school one man demands
that pictorial art shall serve the ideal, while others ask that it shall present
the various phases of life. As with pictures, so is it with the related
arts.
The sportsinan, again, has a keen sense of the beauty of thoroughbreds,
looking them over with evident enjoyment of make and shape, though
outside his own particular hobby, he may have few interests. The
admirer of the shire horse, on the other hand, may see no special beauty
in the thoroughbred. In both instances, predilections determine what
shall be praised; and in each case there is an objective basis for the
belief. If the two types of horse displayed few details, the attention could
not be fixed on them for any length of time. Both individuals have
specialised, and therefore disagree. The fact that their pursuits have pro-
48o SPECIAL SYNTHESES
bably suggested the respective objects of their admiration does not affect
our conclusion. So also a woman who shows taste in her dress and in the
arrangement of her furniture, has perhaps in other respects little venera-
tion for the beautiful. She goes into ecstasies over the latest fashions^
her drawing room is a model of taste, and yet a sunset leaves her cold.
The pressure of the environment has been one-sided, and her training forces
her to insist upon the beauty of one class of objects alone. Were it not
for that, she might perhaps have been indifferent to her idols ; but as it is
her restricted reasoning and her narrow outlook control her interests, and,
in the same way, predilections, due to many influences, lead men to single
out some dimly-lit corner where they erect an altar and worship.
This attitude has, as its correlative, a blindness to much that is beautiful.
Walking with eyes never raised, the most lovely sunset fixils to impress us.
The sky is aglow, but not for us. Our attention has never been drawn to
it ; we have not suspected anything beautiful there ; we have had no in-
ducement to let our eyes wander ; there has been resting on us the dead
hand of a belief that beauty does not lie in that direction. All our habits
have combined to divert our attention. Hence we never look, except
vacantly, and never know. We have grown into ignoring the beautiful.
When we were little children we played about in the meadows with no
patience to contemplate a beautiful sight. We have grown accustomed
to an object, and because it has not fallen within the circle of our practical
life, we have never fixed our attention on it sufficiently to determine its
value. So the child bred in the country, while yet too young to discrimi-
nate, hears the birds' songs ; but not having any actual dealings with the
feathered songsters, he comes to ignore them as he does the surrounding
atmosphere. So, too, the various changes in the seasons are overlooked,
because they do not actively enter into the routine life of the child. For
this reason much that is beautiful never appeals to us, and most things
would never do so, but for stimulating forces outside us. It requires social
development to direct men to an aesthetic or other discovery, for we do
not spontaneously respond, and are so guided by habit that we only rove
within the narrowest limits. It is because we have not previously looked
at a thing that we ignore it now. If we should venture far without guid-
ance, the world is so mighty a labyrinth, and we are so devoid of art, that
we are certain to lose ourselves. Only activity, stimulated from without,
enables us to see the true relations of an object.
Why, for instance, does w^ater rise only to a certain height in a pump ?
How evident is the answer to one who knows it. ' When we move our
arm rapidly, we note something which resists and touches us. That some-
thing we call air. That something, since it behaves like elastic fluids, must re-
semble them, for it occupies space, it can be displaced, and it presses against
objects. Hence it is but a more refined fluid, and has weight.
Accordingly the water rises in the exhausted receiver, until a column of it
is balanced by the weight of the atmosphere which presses on the ex-
posed water in the well, and no higher.' How simple ! Yet it took ages
5 Y STEMS AS A TTENTION-DE TERM I NED 48 1
to establish this truth, because at every turn some false doctrine or some
fallacious argument led men away from the truth.
It is for such reasons that our aesthetic outlook is capable of expansion,
and that we can observe now this, and now that. There was no fate to force
primitive man to the discovery that a gentle stimulus best satisfies the
mechanism of attention, and that the contemplation of certain objects is a
means to such an end. Extensive and correct reasoning, as ail raiiocinationy
is need-determined re-development (sec. 102). [Z^.y/.] An average man,
assuming that he is not engrossed in purposive pursuits, will, unless socially
stimulated, almost entirely ignore the realm of the beautiful, in the deeper
sense of the word. Yet, granted favourable conditions, the same man will
show genuine admiration for many objects. He will seek to penetrate the
starry depths ; he will gaze on a sunset till he seems turned to stone ; he
will lend a willing ear to the sea, and he will love mountains, hills and dales.
There dwells in him a yearning for the beautiful, for an ideal satisfaction of
the attention, and this once developed, he will tend to gratify it like other
cravings. His desire will not be subjective, in the sense that he can con-
template indifferently whatever object he arbitrarily chooses. His choice
lies only within the limits of those things which are able to oil the wheels
of the attention machinery.
238. — Misleading Beliefs.
Misleading beliefs introduce a disturbing factor in aesthetics as everywhere
else. We are told, for instance, that a cold morning bath is invigorating
and pleasant ; we act on the suggestion ; and we think we are much fresher
and better for the dip. Our friends, however, arrive at a different conclusion.
\_Collect such cases.^ They notice that while pretending to be full of activity,
we really show less elasticity than usual. They note that while we feign
cheerfulness, we are more low-spirited than is our wont. Nevertheless we
go on for years with such delusions, never aware that we are acting a part.
The contrary feelings exist ; but, owing to an idee fixe, we do not seek to
explain them. We are fatigued, and think ourselves refreshed. We are
miserable, and believe that we are in high spirits. Be it observed that our
fallacious reasoning has not affected the facts ; it has only warped our judg-
ment. This frequently happens in matters aesthetic. Deceived by the
description of some wretched daub as a fine picture, we buy it and often
stand before it, apparently lost in admiration, even asking our friends to
join in our worship. We think that outside the great galleries there is not
a finer picture in the world. For months we admire its supposed beauties.
Yet a close examination of our condition shows that what we could not do,
we have not done ; that we have fooled ourselves ; that we have not really
admired the picture. To make the case perfectly simple, let us imagine that
a plain blue sheet is the supposed object of our admiration. To gaze at
that for long without falling asleep is obviously impossible. [Trj:] The
attention has nothing before it, and instead of a gentle stimulus, there
is none whatever. How, then, is the illusion sustained? By our thoughts
482 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
wandering. Blinded by prejudice we do not notice that the pleasure yielded
is a mimic pleasure, that the satisfaction is forced, and that the time is not
occupied with the blue sheet. We may believe what we like ; but we can-
not admire what is not of itself admirable. Our judgment may be deluded ;
but not the resthetic sense.
The number of treacherous beliefs is very large, probably much larger
than we suspect. Sometimes individuals, sometimes whole nations, reason
themselves into the most stupid courses, almost derationalising their natures.
On the one hand superstition sometimes provides a semblance of happiness,
making its sour-faced devotees believe that perfect felicity is vouchsafed to
them ; on the other hand, people raise self-gratification into a philosophy,
arguing that they are husbanding their happiness when they are really em-
ploying the best means of making their existence as insipid as a tasteless
apple, or perhaps positively undermining the possibilities of a satisfactory
life. We need not study in detail the part which erroneous belief plays in
esthetics ; but let it be clearly understood that it does play some part, and
that pretended admiration has no objective justification. Such error will
often make a theory of the beautiful appear monstrous, and must, therefore,
be duly reckoned with. Unquestionably, misleading beliefs enter into all
our thinking to some extent ; but that need not trouble us, if only we are
aware of the fact.
239.— Education.
Education influences us greatly, as is natural, for the attention process is
sensitive to training. Hence there results another disturbing factor which
we cannot pass unnoticed. The attention, when untrained, naturally cannot
apprehend or embrace as much as when trained. The child and the savage,
therefore, will only be able to appreciate simple designs.* The moment
these designs are not simple, or are on a large scale, they turn away from
them. The object is too unfamiliar, and its comprehension requires more
than a gentle stimulus. Putting aside secondary considerations, unelabor-
ated forms, freely repeated, please primitive people as also do pronounced
colours, indifferently arranged. However, with training comes ease, and
these designs and colours are outgrown. Men then require something more
subtle and more satisfying, and forms must no longer be so easily readable
or so readily comprehensible. The primitive designs are consequently
abandoned in favour of less primitive ones. Accordingly, for those observ-
ing a sunset for the first time, the mass of detail and the novelty of the sight
almost repel because they tire. Practice, however, soon overcomes this.
By constant readjustment we discover the way to obtain the maximum of
enjoyment with the minimum of effort, while we learn that only discipline,
unpremeditated or deliberate, brings the highest satisfaction. In this way
our life resembles that of an eagle : as we grow older so our sunward ex-
cursions become bolder. What was difficult to understand once, is easy
**'At all events, get rid of equality; leave that to children and their card houses"
(Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture^ 1897, p. 235).
SYSTEMS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 483
Tiow ; what is easy now, will be of no interest later in life ; and what was
easy a long while ago, now leaves us unaffected. There is consequently
with the learner, as we should expect, a growth of power. To begin with,
it was difficult for us to see much in pictures ; they made on us a transi-
tory impression, for only what is strange and striking appeals to us at first.
Then gradually the unfamiliar becomes familiar, strangeness and novelty
are discounted, and we face the beautiful in all its purity. Our attention
feels at home when that stage is reached. It is the same throughout the
whole development in the appreciation of the beautiful, where the nature
and impressibility of the attention mechanism are alone decisive. From
the comparatively simple we rise to the relatively complex ; and, in every
instance, the craving for easy-flowing attention is the controlling factor.
When we ignore the education of esthetic development we may easily
beheve that likings are not objectively determined, and it is from this that
arises much of the present confusion of thought on the subject.
240. — Fashion.
Rapid changes in fashions obey, of course, the same rules. [^Examine suck
■i:/tanges.] Something is admired which is pretty in itself, enhanced by
novelty and recommended by social circumstances. Time passes, and
another object takes its place, and then another, and so on. Why the great
admiration at the start ? Why the cooling of the ardour and the ultimate
rejection of what was once admired ? The reasons are not far to seek.
At first, the fashion being new, our attention is for some time absorbed in
it. Then, the detail being restricted, interest wanes. Lastly, when we
become thoroughly familiar with it, it ceases to attract us. There are im-
portant secondary factors. The admiration of the butterfly of fashion, for
instance, is of a restless type. There is a capacity for excitement, but not
for calm contemplation, and novelty is eagerly sought for, because of various
society reasons. In this excitement it not infrequently happens that fashion's
choice falls on something that is not beautiful. In such a case admiration
is fictitious. We give praise to that which does not appeal to us.
241. — Secondary Factors.
In the contemplation of the beautiful, secondary factors, in one form or
another, enter almost as a constant. If we look at the sea, at the sky at
night, at a sunset or at a landscape, the /w/zl' of the object of attention un-
doubtedly fascinates us, since gigantic proportions are in themselves an
attraction. Thus a building like St. Peter's or St. Paul's affects us to some
extent by virtue of its dimensions. [Tes^.] If we were twenty times our
present size, or if buildings were commonly many storeys high, there would
be a distinct difference in the effect which, for instance, the cliffs of Dover
would have as compared with what we now feel at the sight of them.
What we have just said as to relative size is confirmed by Ruskin's definition of the
Sublime as " that degree of magnitude which is the lowest at which sublimity begins,
484 SPECIAL SVNTI/ESES
rudely definable as that which will make a living figure look less than life beside it"
(Sevett Lamps of Anhifecturtf 1897, p. 133). On the subject of the Sublime, see also the
third chapter in the aI)ovc work.
Novelty is another factor. The sky often shows a number of changes
which are, in their way, unique, and naturally these interest us, and we study
them. In this way we frequently satisfy curiosity, while the time spent in
the acquisition of knowledge is also included in our general estimate of the
value of the contemplation of the beautiful. If we went into the matter
more deeply, we should perhaps discover that a subdued curiosity is almost
a constant in admiration. We both enjoy and learn, though a moment
afterwards we forget the results of our observation.
Skill also influences our judgment. Men of a theological bent admire
what they describe as design in nature; while all, or nearly all, allow their
judgment to be influenced by the technique and the labour in pictures or
statues.*
Associations play a not unimportant part. No sane individual would
agree to admire anything and everything regardless of social conventions.
From some pictures he will turn in disgust ; they offend his tastes. To
others he will eagerly turn, for they appeal to his deeper feelings. In this
way associations, good and bad, influence our aesthetic judgment, though
we should beware of calling a thing inherently ugly because it offends our
moral sense.
The diffused aura of interests has a subtle power of its own. Latent
romances, a hardly suspected fairy world, dim visions, and semi-articulate
sounds group themselves around an impressive sight. These are almost
unanalysable. They are made up of inarticulate feelings and half-formed
imaginings. They are to our thought what the confused hum of a town is
to the sense of hearing, and in such an atmosphere, enveloped in half-
remembrances, we live when lost in admiration. They may be considered
an integral part of the beautiful. The attention constantly wanders from
the object to bask in the delightful feelings produced. It is this reverbera-
tion of the beautiful which impressionist painters attempt to incorporate
in their works.
Allowance must also be made for organised reaction. Once we love
beautiful sights, we shall mechanically continue to love them, the interest
being automatically maintained. One reason for going to the gate to see
the sunset is that we have often done the same thing before. Our likings
will lead us on irresistibly because they have become organised, though
* " There is not a cluster of weeds growing in any cranny of ruin which has not a beauty
in all respects nearly equal and, in some immeasurably superior, to that of the most
elaborate sculpture of its stones : and that all our interest in the carved work, our sense
of its richness, thougli it is tenfold less rich than the knots of grass beside it ; of its delicacy,
though it is a thousandfold less delicate ; of its admirableness, though a millionfold less
admirable; results from our consciousness of its being the work of poor, clumsy, toilsome
inan. Its true delightfulness depends on our discovering in it the record of thoughts, and
intents, and trials, and heart-breakings — of recoveries and joyfulnesses of success "\ Ruskin, ,
Scicn Lamps of Architecture, 1897, pp. 95-6).
SYSTEMS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 485
routine can make no difference to what is beautiful. \Tesf the above state-
me?its^
Alison, in his Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, 1815 (first ed. 1790),
applies the association theory in most thorough fashion to the subject of the beautiful.
Interesting associations offer to him a complete explanation of the problem we are con-
sidering. He sums up in this way: "Wherever the appearances of the material world
are expressive to us of qualities we love or admire; wherever, from our education, our
connections, our habits, or our pursuits, its qualities are associated in our minds with
■affecting or interesting emotion, there the pleasures of beauty or of sublimity are felt, or
at least are capable of being felt. Our minds, instead of being governed by the character
of external objects, are enabled to bestow upon them a character which does not Ijelong
to them ; and even with the rudest, or the comm.onest appearances of nature, to connect
feelings of a nobler or a more interesting kind, than any that the mere influences of
matter can ever convey " (ii, p. 428). Fechner, in his Vorschule, 1876, takes a similar
view to Alison's. He claims that men look upon the orange as the most beautiful of
fruits, because of the romantic associations with the south which it calls up (i, pp. 87-9),
a claim which few men would agree to. Brown held that Alison's associated images did
not, as a rule, exist. With this I certainly agree. However, he went farther, arguing
that we were influenced by a mean, or cluster, or residue of associations, including the
opinions which we have imbibed. " When we behold a beautiful form, all the images
suggested by it, live in like manner in it" {Lectures, 1824, iii, p. I49). His argument is
■well maintained throughout ; and I see no reason to doubt that predilections enter con-
siderably and vitally into ixisthetic judgments. Nevertheless, the power of these sup-
pressed associations lies, if I mistake not, in the fact that they form a desirable whole
for the attention to contemplate. The purest beauty can only be said to exist where
there is no portion of a contemplated total which is not considered part of an organic
whole. Other ingredients, non-contemplative ones, must not be regarded as truly
aesthetic in character. Still, Brown goes too far when he says tliat he has "found
suflicient reason to ascribe to this slow and silent growth of circumstances of adventitious
delight, almost all the beauty which is worthy of the name" [lectures, iii, p. 150).
It is not so easy to decide whether colour, and the groundwork of form generally, should
be admitted as sesthetic factors. Kant (Kritik dcr Urtheilskraft, 1790, §14) argues
against such admission, classing sensory effects as agreeable rather than as pleasing. I
am, on the whole, inclined to think that ease of apprehension gives to sensation its
desirable character.
Burke, in the work already quoted, dismisses the doctrine of right proportion as a
cause of beauty (pp. 156-70), that of fitness (pp. 170-5), and that of perfection (pp. 176-9).
Burke's criticisms are to me the only readable portions of his book.
242. — The ^^sthetic Standard.
What I have said implies, in one sense, that there is no absolute
standard of beauty. That which appears beautiful to one man, does not
necessarily appear so to another, and we also, as we have seen, outgrow
forms of beauty. This argues a standard relative to the state of the
attention apparatus at any given moment; but if this is so, there yet
remains a definite measure by which to jtidge objects, and by which to
separate the higher from the lower. Still, to avoid the confusion which
is introduced by the personal equation we can fall back on an abstract
standard. According to this standard, objects would be weighed by the
first effect they leave on spectators, or by their aesthetic constitution. A
man who is tired of a picture, may thus find a common standpoint with
486 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
another who sees it for the first time. While, then, for scientific purposes
we recognise the relativity of the beautiful, for practical purposes we
would set up an abstract ideal, based on some mean of impressions. We
call an object beautiful, because it has the marks which normally go with
beauty, though, for assignable reasons, we are not imi)ressed by what we
integrate or perceive.
Here are some adclilinnal opinions regaidini; ihc subject of icsthetics. In ihe second
volume of his Essays, 1891, Sjjcnccr tiiscusses various aspects of x-sthetics. He points
out, aiiionij; other things, that "the appliances of one era serve as emhellishmenls to the
next," and that " eejually in institutions, creeds, customs, and superstitions, we may
trace this evolution of beauty out of what was once purely utilitarian" (p. 370, — this-
essay was first published in 1852). Speaking of personal beauty (essay first published in
1854), he remarks that "the saying tiiat beauty is but skin-dcop, is but a skin-deep
saying'" (p. 394). Here, too, the obscured states must be supposed to form a solid part
of onc"s conception of personal beauty, and not to exclude the physical features. In
The Nature of Got/lie, 1892, Ruskin supplies us with the supposed characteristics of the
gothic style, characteristics which reflect the great art-critic's view of the beautiful, and
which also give authority to our conception of a>sthelics. The first mark is that of
Savageness, imperfection being general because of the absence of undesirable mechanical
repetition ; then we have the principle of Changefulness which yields variety ; then comes
Naturalism, where the works of art reflect nothing morbid nor soft, but that which is
hearty, human and all-embracing, this resulting from the workman's freedom of choice ;
and then come Grotesqueness, Rigidity, and Redundance which offers something pleasant
to everyone. Morris (Hopes and Fears for Art, 1882) can only be regarded as art
enthusiastic disciple of Ruskin. Fechner [Vorschule, 1876) gives the following aesthetic
principles: (i) the resthetic threshold, (2) aesthetic helps, (3) combination of multiplicity
in unity, (4) truth, (5) clearness, and (6) association. Baldwin {Feeling and Will, 1891)
explains the aesthetic nature of curves physiologically. He holds, and perhaps rightly,,
that "the normal movement of the eye, except in its vertical and horizontal axes, is a
curve of gentle and somewhat irregular curvature"' (p. 237), and he is proljably correct
in stating that " the ideal of form is indicated by the most facile and pleasurable adaptation
of the eye at once to detail, and, by easy transition, to the plan as a whole" * (p. 237).
We have seen Burke pointing to the lion as a specimen of something which lacks beauty,,
and Fechner making the homely looking orange the king of beautiful fruits. In the
same incredible spirit Baldwin tells us that "the beauty of a landscape is cold and
formal until the smoke of a peasant's hut, or the spire of a country church, is added to
give it a touch of human interest " (p. 234). Bosanquet (.-/ History of ^Esthetic, 1892)
thinks that the beautiful lies in expressiveness. " Among the ancients the fundamental
theory of the beautiful was connected with the notions of rhythm, symmetry, harmony
of parts ; in short, with the general formula of unity in variety. Among tiie moderns we
find that more emphasis is laid on the idea of significance, expressiveness, the utterance
of all that life contains; in general, that is to say, on the conception of the character-
istic" (pp. 4-5). The opposition between ancient and modern lesthetics, it appears to
me, is artificial : rhythm, etc., are necessary elements in aesthetics now ; and significance
was not ignored in old times. Without the former, as Fechner ( Vorscliule, ii, pp. 64-8)
has pointed out, the characteristic ceases to be a distinguishing mark of the beautiful ;
and without the latter, rich natures are left unsatisfied. The expressive closely connects
the beautiful with life and conduct, and hence serious natures shrink from an art which
is out of touch with the deeper realities. Everywhere Bosanquet adheres to his text
that the characteristic is the beautiful, never properly explaining, defining or illustrating
his position. Marshall {.-Esthetic Principles, 1895, p. 114) is very vague, as witness this
*See also Gueroult, Dti Mouveinent dans les E/notiofis Esth^tiqties, iSSi.
S YSTEMS AS A TTENTION-DE TERM I NED 487
definition. " The beautiful is that . . . which produces effects in us that in retrospect
remain permanently pleasant The ugly .... is that which produces effects
that remain permanently painful in retrospect." Bradley ^Appearance and Reality, 1897,
p. 464) defines the beautiful as follows: "That which is aesthetic may generally be
defined as the self-existent emotional." Allen {Physiological Esthetics, 1877, p. 39)
argues that " the sesthetically beautiful is that which affords the maximum of stimulation
with the minimum of fatigue or waste, in processes not directly connected with vital
functions."
None of the books or essays on aesthetics which I have read show an inclination to
face directly the psychological aspects. Lovers of the beautiful seem to have shrunk
from the task of analysing that notion, and for a similar reason the beautiful in nature,
v^'hich is not to be found in cloistered studies, has been almost entirely ignored.
243. — Prose and Poetry.
I have defined the beautiful as that, the contemplation of vv'hich, of
itself, occupies the attention. The beautiful in connection with language
falls, therefore, within this definition. Let us consider an example, the
introductory lines in Browning's Pippa Passes.
"Day!
Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last :
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay.
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away ;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled.
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world."
Everything beautiful in literature appeals to the senses. Milton's
JLycidas, L' Allegro, or // Penseroso, Gray's Elegy, Goldsmith's Deserted
Village, Wordsworth's Ode to hnmortality , Shelley's Skylark, Tennyson's
Locksley Hall and hi Memoriam, Bryant's Thanatopsis, and similar
masterpieces alike bear out this contention. Indeed, it is impossible to
re-develop any fine poem which does not primarily appeal to the eyes.
\Test this?^ Colourless and yet beautiful poetry implies almost as great a
contradiction in terms, as warm ice. [Does itl\ A really blind Milton
could scarcely appeal to us on the aesthetic side. The Milton we love
abounded in imagery. Is there, then, no poetry without colour? Such
poetry, we know, exists and may even be of high quality. Still, apart
from sonority and happiness of arrangement, poetry of this kind is not
beautiful. What appeals to us here is the thought ; and that leaves our
aesthetic sensibilities unaffected. Pope's brilliant couplets, which express
with ease what is difficult, please us because they are didactic and make
no great claim on our attention ; but they scarcely touch our aesthetic
sense. Such poetry serves all kinds of purposes, but never those of
aesthetics. Let us, however, note that even in these cases of eyeless
poetry the few grains of aesthetic gratification are derived from the
488 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
readiness with which the method of presentation is apprehended. Remove
the easy flow of word and thought, make the trend uneven like a neglected
highroad, and every spark of delight is gone.
The exjilanation of this fact lies in the principles which are expounded
in this chapter. I have spoken of the pleasure which we derive from
the vision of natural objects, and we have seen these transferred to canvas.
In poetry the impressions which these objects created in the spectator, are
brought before the reader. A poet who has a rare appreciation of the
beautiful communicates his knowledge, inner mingled with outer, to his
fellows. In proportion as the attempt is that of a true seer, to that
degree do we return to his descriptions as to a sunset.
The nature of beautiful poetry is determined. Let us make sure of a
few points. In mediocre poetry the imagery is often of a threadbare
type, and does not, in consequence, fix the attention. Again, the poem
sometimes rambles on without pictorial or descriptive passages, and
the piece is then jesthetically tame. In other cases we find a large
variety of commonplace similes, and these the attention no sooner detects
than it rejects them. So also vagueness is a serious defect : the absence
of clear notions, or the inability to express them, results in the would-be
poet telling us next to nothing. We obtain no definite information, and
are, therefore, dissatisfied. He has a charlatan's vocabulary, using a few
inexpressive words to stand sponsor to a large variety of shades of thought.
[7t?^/.] Good poetry is without these faults. The gigantic lingual
resources of the Elizabethans are well known. They are continually
varying their turns of speech, their adjectives and verbs alone adding
much to the richness of effect. So, too, their imagery is remarkably
fresh, plentiful, apposite and imposing. Instead of using a small stock
of trite phrases, which have lost the power of appealing to us, they con-
stantly aim at originality. Their own varied life is interwoven with their
work ; or else they borrow from such remote sources that the effect, on at
least the modern reader, is not diminished. The quality of the thought
contributes to the result. The Elizabethans speak not only of sweet and
tender things, but of great things. They express frequently a profound
observation in a form which instantly appeals to us, as when Massinger
says of Love :
". . . . thou art feigned blind,
And yet we borrow our best sight from thee."
Had he written forty lines instead of two, and resorted to no suggestive
pictures, we should have been bored, and perhaps we would not have
understood him. Yet the abstract thought, attached to an appropriate
image, becomes at once clear and beautiful. Still, it is not enough to
have beautiful lines or couplets which, like tiny caskets, hold precious
notions. The graduate in literature requires a larger horizon, a concept,
which though complex shall yet be readily grasped. Accordingly, in a
sonnet, the various pictures move round a common centre, and together
they express one theme. And, likewise, a century of sonnets are strung
SYSTEMS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 489
on one thread, and form one thought. It is so with Tennyson's series of
commemorative poems on Arthur Hallam, which have a common source.
Take, again, an outburst such as that with which Browning's Pippa
Passes begins. The description of the sunrise, which I have quoted,
like so much else in Browning, is a remarkable illustration of the training
required to reach the higher peaks of aesthetic creation and enjoyment.
\ConsuIt that poem.'] An ordinary person would be utterly Ijaffled in
trying to scale them. A Pippa would in vain attempt to break out into
such language, embodying, as it does, in so involved a form such minute
and discriminating observation and such wide knowledge.
The love of poetry is built on a strong foundation. Given our brain
as the type of our present state of development, and no other kind of
poetry could possibly satisfy us. We cling to earth and to sense, because
they alone satisfy the attention process. [/^ that so .?] We clothe even
our most abstract thoughts in material garments in order to make them
attractive, and nothing is so holy but we enlist some sensuous metaphor
■to give it the additional charm of beauty.* On the other hand, we are
deeply affected only by that poetry which deals with what is not
ephemeral, and it is accordingly our larger interests which are most suited
to rhythmic treatment. Still, since there must be no strain involved, pro-
found themes are dwelt on suggestively, as they haunt us, rather than
■minutely and precisely, as in the lecture room. Our love of sunsets, of
artistic representations and of imagery is hence natural, and if, therefore,
human nature remains the same, we need not fear that a time will come
^vhen men will smile at our prostration before the sensuous. Abstract
thought is difficult to grasp, and so long as this is so it will be vain to sub-
stitute it for sense systems. Let us suppose, however, that it served to
occupy the attention agreeably. Then the abstract would delight us ; we
should go into raptures over the definition of a noun, while on the other hand,
the sensuous, except in the most complex forms, would cease to have any
fascination for us. Browning's most perplexing poems would then perhaps
be selected as nursery rhymes, while poetically conceived metaphysical con-
ceptions would soar as far above Pippa' s morning song as that transcends
Twinkle, tzvinkle, little staf. It is possible that even our most abstract
notions would be too simple for poetic treatment. However, it
would be tedious to prolong this inquiry. The beautiful changes with the
nature of the attention mechanism, and as that varies so vary the objects
of our admiration. In the absence of an attention process, the funda-
mental notion of aesthetics loses its meaning. Our conclusion must,
therefore, be that non-corporeal beings possess capabilities entirely differ-
ent from those of corporeal humans.
What has been said of poetry holds good also of prose. There must be
something in the style or in the matter which makes assimilation desirable.
Here also the attention is held enthralled by a gentle stimulus, though
* So Ward, Psychology, 1886, p. 70: "Art eschews the abstract and speculative;
'however plastic in its hands, the material wrought is always that of sense."
490 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
rhythm is almost entirely dispensed with and there is more freedom of
movement. Sensuousness is generally an essential. Bacon, Milton,
Emerson, O. W. Holmes, Jean Paul Richter, and others, shine by its light.
There are yet other methods. One man describes striking events with a
brilliancy which allows of our easily picturing the scenes ; another throws
a vivid light upon the inner life of others. One succeeds in delineating
the passions; another charms us by his mosaic-like methods; another
attracts us by his wit ; while yet another employs every one of these
methods in turn. Except in occasional passages, no attempt is made in prose
to carry us away jesthetically, and some derived interest, therefore, is
needed to make the reading tolerable ; nor do we ever find in prose the
intensity of delight which poetry produces. When prose reaches its highest
level it becomes, as we should expect, prose-poetry. Then the rules of
poetry, except those of metre, have to be obeyed, though even here there
is not that complete enchantment which supervenes on reading an exqui-
sitely wrought piece of verse. As a compensation, however, a larger
quantity of prose-poetry may be produced, and we can read more at a
time without becoming surfeited ; still when the writing is highly charged
with imagery, it is difficult to read quickly or much at a time. So varied
are the methods of appeal that it is not easy to enumerate them. We can
only say that in each case the style and matter must be such as will yield
sufficient food for the attention, and that the details must be combined in
systems which are neither too easy nor too difficult of comprehension.
Books, consequently, will interest us jesthetically in precisely the propor-
tion in which they satisfy the objective test. Compositions which are
obscure and disconnected appeal to us as little in prose as in poetry. A
small vocabulary, an absence of delicacy and discrimination, lack of
similes or the use of trite or poor ones, a flitting to and fro from subject to
subject, triviality, and similar failings, are signs that aesthetically the work
will displease us.
There is no very clear distinction between poetry and prose ; at least the historic ten-
dency has been to minimise existing differences. The cruder EHzabethan form of play, for
instance, was rhymed throughout ; and it was considered a great improvement when the
rhyme, as an essential, was dropped. After that we encounter metrical plays where, as
a rule, every line constitutes a sentence and every sentence a line, the line being decasyl-
labic. However, as we approach the Elizabethan drama in its ripest condition, we note
a tendency to suppress the jingle, to add an eleventh syllable, and to avoid sentences
which end with the line or are e(jual in length to a line. In short, all but the rhythm
has been swept away. Add to this that a good reader presses the sense and largely sup-
presses the metre, and all we have left is smooth reading, not so much musical as not un-
musical. Similarly, with a good reader ordinary lyric poetry loses perhaps all its qualities,
except that of not being unmusical. Hence it becomes a pertinent question whether the
good reader's interpretation should not be adopted by the poet, rhyme and arrangement
in lines being avoided. We can go still farther. It is not uncommon in lyric poetry to
ignore very considerably the length of line as well as the arrangement of accents. At
this point good prose begins. Here, too, what is unmusical is considered bad composi-
tion ; and a certain swing is always demanded. The only remaining difference, then,
is that in poetry metre is in general distinctly traceable, while in prose this is not the
SVSTE.US AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 491
case. Nevertheless, to balance this, it is commonly agreed not to regard as poetry
that which lacks distinction. In the same way we might contend that where art
is absent, prose ceases to be present, i.e., there exists doggerel prose as well as doggerel
poetry. Brilliancy, fancy, imagination, weight, depth, clearness, subtlety, compre-
hensiveness, music, mark good prose. Some writers of the seventeenth century, like
Bacon and Milton, and a host of writers of the eighteenth, like Addison, Hume
and Gibbon, supply us with good examples of the nature of studied prose. To-day the art
of prose is almost dead. Occasional fine sentences or passages are embedded in tracts of
unattractive soil. It is as if the painter presented us with a daub wherein by careful
search we are able to detect a few good points. Not so with Milton, Hume, Gibbon,
and their fellows, for what these men lay before us is a true art product in which every
part aims at perfection. Perhaps we may compare ordinary writing to necessaries, prose
to comfort's and poetry to luxuries, ignoring any subtle partition.
If this psychological interpretation of style be accepted, it will be seen that what has-
been said concerning visual beauty holds good to the utmost detail of lingual beauty.
As, through social endeavour, the intellect and the emotions increase in keenness and
depth, so the obviously formal in language is gradually displaced by a style rich, full,
brilliant, subtle and varied. Hence the measure of the superior style is solely the social
development of the attention at any period, the method employed being otherwise indif-
ferent. Jean Paul conquers by his brilliancy ; Victor Hugo by his warmth ; Emerson by
his depth ; Carlyle by his insight ; Scott by his historic background ; Thackeray by his
minute descriptions ; Dickens by his kindly humour ; George Eliot by her sympathies ;
and Bjornson by his subtle touches. As long as the attention is held by the manner of
exposition, so long is the style to be commended.
In connection with style, the student may be referred to Hume's essays Of Simplicity ancT
Refinement in Writing, and Of the Standard of Taste ; to Herbert Spencer's essay on The
Philosophy of Style in the second volume of his Essays ; and to Mr. P>ederic Harrison's
Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and other Literary Estimates, 1899. See also Guyau, VEsthi-
tique du Vers Moderne, 1884.
A study of the orator's art will show the essential need in oratory of sys.ematised variety,
precisely as in written prose or poetry, perhaps even more so.
244. — Music, etc.
It need scarcely be insisted upon that music, to be agreeable, must,,
equally with poetry, have regard to the nature of the attention mechanism..
If we attend a concert as reporters, our attention is perhaps sustained, in
the absence of habit, by some reward. Still, when no secondary interest
compels us to follow the music, the mechanism itself must be gratified, or
else our thoughts wander. Music, then, should offer a variety of detail,
and should consist of a system the comprehension of which requires gentle
exertion. It will not be difficult to show that, broadly speaking, this is-
the case. The music of savages, in its simplicity and lack of system,
approaches very nearly to noise. Then comes the lyrical music which
alone attracts the uneducated : a song, now serious, now fanciful and now
light charms their ear, or a few threads are woven into some unpretentious
pattern. Lastly, come the sonatas, such as those of Beetho\en. Here
the variety and complexity are such that the musically untrained endeavour
in vain to follow and enjoy the performance.
There is neither space nor is there a need to elaborate the matter further.
What was said in sec. 236 with reference to outlines, holds good here in
every respect. No doubt, there are peculiarities ; but they do not affect
492 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
the pillars of our theory. Such and such should be the demands of music
to conform with our definition, and such they prove to be. Had we found
sonatas appreciated by savages and not by civili.sed mankind, or songs
taking the place of .sonatas as we become more at home musically, the
startling facts would have demanded an explanation. As it is, data and
doctrine harmonise.
Gurney, in his monuincnial work, The Tower of Sound, iSSo, has a passage which goes
to eslablish our position. He says: "The use of 'subjects' in music is a perpetual
feature, and l)ecomes most prominent in large and complex pieces, to which it is the great
means of imparling organic unity" (p. 98). As I am a stranger to musical theory, I shall
not enter into matters musical. I have frequently listened to music with the attention
lixed on the separate sounds. I notice that while some instruments sound much more
agreeal)ly than others, there appears to me no relation between the agreeableness of a
sound and the agreeableness of the system of sounds which forms the melody. The mere
tones of the violin appear to me human in expressiveness ; but certainly not specially
agreeable. The preference shown for this instrument is due to the nice gradations of
sound which it is capable of, thus enabling it to satisfy the attention ideally. Still, a
single instrument gives us only shades of one tone or colour, wliile an orchestra supplies us
with variety of colour as well as of shade, and hence an instrument would be ideal if it yielded
both shades and colours. However, the chief delight of music seems certainly derived
from the structure of a piece rather than from the series of single sounds of which it is
composed. Ruskin (Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1897, p. 271) speaks of Archi-
tecture as "not essentially composed of things pleasant in themselves, as music of sweet
sounds, or painting of fair colours." As to the elements of music, see llelmholtz, l^on-
einpfindu)i:^en, 1S77, and Gurney, Po-ver of Sound, 1880. [Consider the notable differences
i>i sound quality between piano, 7'iolin, organ, flute and the human voice.'\
What is here said as to the organic nature of beauty in sounds is apparently contradicted
by the music of birds. Not even the nightingale, the thrush or the skylark satisfies much our
definition of the beautiful, though organic combination of sounds and variety of detail are
most developed with those birds. We must, therefore, class the songs of birds as inter-
mediate between beautiful things and such sights as a flaming fire or a fall of snow ;
and we must assume that environment and pleasant associations largely account for the
attractiveness of the songs of birds. In that case the beauty would reside in a whole of
which the special song forms a part only.
Lastly. Wherever the ivord beautiful is legitimately applied, the same
foundation facts will be discer/ied. A beautiful sentiinent, a beautiful diar-
acter, a beautiful bon mot, a beautiful deed, a beautiful life, a beautiful
thought, a beautiful moral, a beautiful arrangement, a beautiful niove?nent,
imply, one and all, that the object thus spoken of is contemplated by us because
it has those characteristics, now 'well known to the student, which, of t Item-
selves, occupy the attention. Further illustration is superfluous, as this defi-
nition covers each and every instance without exception. [Test by rules
in sec. 136.]
245. — The Comic.
The recognition of the beautiful arises out of an incidence in the atten-
tion machinery the primary purpose of which is to satisfy the needs of the
organism, while interest in the beautiful is principally needed to fill the
interstices between the serious moments of life. The Comic, teleologically
.speaking, occupies the same position. It is one other means to prevent
SYSTEMS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 493
brooding and aimless or difficult reflection. It, like the beautiful, offers
an ideal outlet for the attention. It, too, slips into the crevices left open
by strenuous work and thought. It, too, has no justification except the
office which it fills. [7>j-/.]
In defining our subject, we assert that tlie Comic implies a humiliating
situation where the sense of malice is aroused so far as it satisfies and mechani-
cally occupies the attention. [Examine this definition.]
The various known forms which the Comic assumes well illustrate this.
The popular " tall stories " from America are almost of a uniform character.
Thus, to indicate the speed of transatlantic trains, we are told that a man was
leaning out of the window to bid good-bye to some one, when he dis-
covered that he was hailing one of the porters at the next station. In
America, exaggeration is the prevalent mode of provoking laughter, Irish
stories have a different trend. Under the guise of reason an utterly in-
adequate explanation is proffered. Thus a man insists that the rifle is his ;
that, in fact, it had been in his possession ever since it was a pistol.
Americanisms and Irishisms are pretty nearly always true to the type they
represent. In Shakespeare's plays we find two methods prominent. One of
these runs through the majority of the plays, and is a mode of repartee,
connected with euphuism. There is in it an interminable doggedness on
both sides to construe a remark in a sense not intended by the speaker, or
else to draw unsuspected conclusions from the words. In Hamlet, in
Love's Labour's Lost, in As You Like It, in Much Ado About N'o thing, and,
indeed, in most of Shakespeare's attempts at humour, from his first to his
last play, this is almost the only class of wit resorted to. The other
method in Shakespeare's works, one fairly general in literature and life, is
to make a man use words which he does not understand, as with the
constable in Measure for Measure, Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothins;^
Launce in Two Getitlemen of Verona, the hostess in He7iry IV, the mob
in Henry VI, or the gravediggers in Hamlet. There is a closely allied
sub-division where a man is muddle-headed, as in the case of the characters
just mentioned, and rambles in his thought. Repartee allows, of course,,
of wide expansion, and is not necessarily verbal or trifling. It is often
absolutely crushing, and when that is the case, and the argument is con-
tinued on the same level, the highest results are obtained. Caricature
attains the same end of pleasing us, by bringing out in striking relief certain
abnormalities. Farce of every type produces the same effect, and is
caricature in action. At the same time we must recognise that sheer
stupidity does not lead to fun any more than to malice. Thus, if the
Irishman had insisted that the rifle was his because he once was a boy, we
should merely suspect his sanity. So a child trying to jest in imitation of
his superiors, fails completely in its object. Some traceable relations must
always be present in the Comic, and the mixture of the reasonable and the
unreasonable, or the dignified and the undignified, is in each instance
implied. The situation must be a likely situation, the things said or done
being such as normal persons in seriousness occasionally say or do. Thus
494 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
American and Irish humour reflect sober national characteristics, while the
humour in Shakespeare has equally its basis in reality. The most absurd
"bull" must, therefore, be a possible slip by a sober individual. \Take jest
.after jest in comic papers and analyse each, neglecting your general memory 7\
Those who are not morally refined laugh at one who makes a stupid
■remark. \Ohsen'e.\ They rejoice over the misfortunes of those who are
not their friends ; and they are glad to see their enemies disconcerted,
hurt or defeated. When some one is disappointed, it is to them an
occasion for mirth, and they are gratified by the plight in which their
adversaries find themselves. This attitude belongs to the serious business
of life. In humour proper, on the contrary, we have malice without its
sting. \ls this universally true T\ We still laugh at a stupid remark, at
our neighbour's misfortunes, at his disappointment, or his defeat in argu-
ment, while we never laugh at their contraries, a wise remark, or a neigh-
bour's good fortune. \Test ihis.^ We do not laugh at a person ; we laugh
with him ; nor do we rejoice over any notable mishap or where our mirth
would hurt. \^Test this.^ Nevertheless, the malice is not gone, [/y this
so ?] It still forms the basis of humour ; but the stress is transferred from
malice to amusement. We train ourselves to the uttermost in detecting
unfavourable points, and delight in our discoveries. We spend some of
our time inventing good things and retailing them. True humour is
distinguished from jubilant malice, as the shadow is from the substance.
With this shadow we play.
In the Comic, as such, there is no contemplation. [TJ^^/.] The wit
must burst upon us, and from an unexpected quarter.* We must be taken
by surprise; for, in proportion as fun develops, so does it fall fiat. A
J)on mot should be well told. The attention must be enlisted, the explosion
judiciously led up to, and the point unveiled at the psychological moment
while its nature is still unsuspected. All humour is explosive, and what is
not explosive is not humour. [Test.] Hence the beautiful, which invari-
ably depends on contemplation and is never explosive, is widely separated
from the humorous. [Question this.] Contemplation sometimes leads to
humour ; but never embodies it. Again, the pleasant mood into which
we are thrown by the ludicrous, is mechanically sustained by the momentum
produced by the act of explosion. It is not the discovery of characteristics,
which impels us to continue amused, but the momentum or the vis a tergo
alone. Only when the incongruity strikes us like a sledge-hammer — and
this may happen repeatedly with the same story — are we amused, and no
oftener.
We see clearly that the Comic occupies the attention without requiring
a considerable strain, and that it prevents the tedium of aimless rambling
as well as the fatigue of effort. Indeed, within limits, it imparts a glow of
freshness to the human system on account of its very violence. It is for
* In norrr.al reasoning there are no startling developments, while in the most brilliant
reasoning everything is still closely connected. Not so in far-fetched reasoning where the
apparent agreement is utterly outweighed by the obvious disagreement, and where the
development, therefore, naturally takes us by surprise.
SYSTEMS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 495
these reasons that the attention is readily attracted and retained by the
humorous, while its limitations are implied in our organic structure. The
attention becomes tired of humour, as of everything else, if too prolonged.
Humour is most effective where the process of attention is best gratified,
as when we are skilfully prepared and preserved in a humorous mood. It
depends for its existence on the peculiar nature of our attention mechanism.
The humour of a bodiless being is, therefore, to us who are in the body,
an amusing conception. Education, habit, false opinions, fallacious
reasoning, insistence on or ignoring of certain aspects, the mingling of
other factors, our views of right and wrong, must all be allowed for, as was
•done in our analysis of the beautiful.
The nature of the Comic has given rise to much discussion. Kant, in his Kritik der
Urtheihkraft, 1790, §54, defines laughter as that "which results from the sudden
transformation of strained expectancy into nothing." Such an explanation misses the
whole of the facts ; for the surprise is no more a nothing than a beautiful scene which we
unexpectedly chance upon, or a stupid reply which has not the merit of causing laughter.
In humour, we have to do with a relation of a particular class, and it is the business
of science to discover that relation. It has already been shown that a genuinely humorous
answer is never haphazard, stupid or meaningless.
Brown examines the nature of the ludicrous in Lecture 58. He holds, without
venturing on an illustration, that "we laugh as readily at some brilliant conception of
wit, where there are no infirmities of others displayed, as where they are displayed in any
awkward blunder" ^Lectures, 1824, iii, p. 186). In conformity with this he defines the
sense of the ludicrous as " the pleasure arising from the discovery of unsuspected re-
semblance in objects formerly conceived to be known to us, or unsuspected difference in
objects formerly regarded as highly similar" {ibid, iii, p. 188). It will be seen, therefore,
that Brown denies the ever-presence of malice in humour. I feel, however, that the
Comic always depends on levelling down, and never appears in levelling up. Unsus-
pected differences or resemblances, every one must admit, may exist entirely apart from
the ludicrous ; it is peculiarly the business of the scientist to disclose these. Brown's
classification, moreover, of the ludicrous into the burlesque and mock-heroic, the un-
expected, the awkward, and bulls or blunders (pp. 197-203) shows that loss of dignity is
an essential. Spencer (vol. 3 of .ffjjaj'i-, "The Physiology of Laughter," first published
i860) has the following Kantian explanation. Our thoughts, he argues, are engaged
intently along one line ; there follows now an interruption which is not sufficient to occupy
the place of that which has engaged us ; hence the discharge goes along physical lines.
This explanation does not commend itself to me ; it seems forced throughout. We
need not in humour be engaged intently, and an irrelevant interruption is usually ignored
or causes annoyance. Dumont {La Sensibiliti, 1875) argues that it is the unexpected and
contradictory which occasions laughter. He also draws attention to the fact that "we
laugh when other people tickle us ; but that we do not laugh when we tickle ourselves "
(p. 206) ; and this he would explain by saying that there is no adjustment possible when
others tickle us. Yet laughter is by no means an invariable concomitant to tickling,
however unexpected, and tickling may be followed by convulsions without laughter. In
his Des Causes du Rire, 1862, he says: "The Comic may be defined as . . . that
which determines our understanding to form simultaneously two contradictory state-
ments" (p. 48). Bain [Emotions and the Will, 1S75) argues that " the occasion of the
ludicrous is the degradation of some person or interest possessing dignity, in circumstances
that excite no other strong emotion " (p. 257). Here, also, we may readily imagine a
case where there is degradation without the presence of any strong emotion or of the
sense of the ludicrous, while the definition scarcely distinguishes between humour and
malice. Baldwin {Feelings and Will, 1891) claims that "a joke turns on a misplaced
496 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
gramiuatic.il or logical relation which, if properly placed, would have been aesthetic"
(p. 242). Lastly, Sully {Hurnaii MitiJ, 1892, ii) aHirms, as I have done, that "it seems
certain that the feeling of glory, or of superiority, is a common ingredient in comic
laughter'' (p. 150); that "we have in the feeling of the ludicrous a transferred and
refined form of the primitive brutal laughter of triumph " (pp. 150-1); and that "the
most characteristic form of modern humour occurs where there is a touch of kindly or
humane feeling"' (p. 152). Mirth presupposes that what surprises us shall not affect us
seriously either in body or in reputation ; and hence the very same remarks under different
conditions appear now as comic and now as tragic. Thus the ambassador who, being
intoxicated, fell down before Majesty instead of kneeling, might have caused laughter if
the king had been in good humour, or indignation if he had been in an irritable mood.
Probably the onlookers were inwardly convulsed with amusement.*
246. The I.M.AOINATION.
It is possible to imagine the whole of our thought to be infra-conscious
or neural, as part of it is. Deliberation and reflection would then be
indicated by a time gulf. We should have immediate knowledge of results ;
but we should be deprived of active thought in every form. There being
no necessity for secondary reflections, the play of thought would, of course,
be entirely physical, and hence this section would be left to the neurologist.
As the matter stands, the secondary world does not ordinarily lack con-
tinuity, nor signs that the central nervous system is busy. A need being
given, it is possible that its satisfaction shall be compassed instantaneously.
The brain occasionally works thus, and it is imaginable that at some future
period the man-machine will generally reach that high level. However, as
this is not yet an accompUshed fact, we must inquire as to the mode of
satisfying a need. The process, we learn, has at least three aspects, and
follows the method of cross-classification (sec. 102). \_Is fkis so ?^^ We re-
develop what is to tlie point ; we think of zvhat the future has in store ; or
we analyse the ifistance before us. As to the first, when some difficult
problem presents itself, we attempt to overcome it by bringing the past to
our assistance. We consider whether similar incidents have occurred in
our life or in another's, so far as our knowledge extends. We recall cases,,
and dismiss them if they are not pertinent. Thus we let the light of the
past illuminate the present and the future.
Again, we may be aware of a problem which we shall be compelled to
face in the future. What shall we do ? We think of what X, will say,
what action Y. will take, or how circumstances will shape themselves. We
picture to ourselves a variety of situations and consider how we shall
modify them by our action. We endeavour to divine all that can possibly
happen, so that we may be equal to the occasion. We also consider how
we may create conditions favourable to us.
Lastly, we have to deal with the intimate present. We do not now
wander far and wide, for the notion to be embodied in a piece of work
requires repeated attention. We stop again and again for a few moments
to consider a problem which requires immediate solution. Or we wish to
* On the suliject of the Comic, see also Fischer, Ueber den Witz, 1889, and Bergson,
I^e Eire, 1900, which has a bibliography of the Comic.
SYSTEMS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 497
make ourselves well understood, and proceed deliberately to use more or
less explanatory illustrations. When we thus conjure up the past ^ or antici-
pate the future^ or move cautiously along in the present^ we are said to
employ the imagination. \Observe carefully?^
Given serious work-a-day reflection, and we at once learn that under the
peculiar circumstances of our attention mechanism, a play of thought is
certain to result if the situation be appropriate. What we pursue under
the limitations of effort, we willingly do when restraint is thrown to the
winds. When purposely summoning up the past, we treat ourselves with
monkish severity ; the topic in hand brooks no indiscriminate re-develop-
ments ; and we think only of what serves our end. A time comes, how-
ever, when no necessities press upon us. We then wander about at will
over the plains of the past. As a child which is bathing in the sea, rushes
now this way and now that, shouts and splashes the water, bound by no law
of reason or decorum, so we revel in our vivid fancies. Now we laugh in
imagination, now we are sad, now we are excited, now we discern a lovely
face or a fine character, now we travel abroad or revisit the scenes of our
childhood. Our only purpose is to remain in this restful mood, and we
use effort only in turning away from what has ceased to be attractive. The
series of images is not a firmly connected one, as when re-development
serves a serious purpose. We make no desperate effort to re-develop
certain things in preference to others. We do not try to curtail the life of
a scene, or to dismiss it, because it is wasting our time. Effort of an acute
kind is absent. We drift, and delight in drifting. The attention me-
chanism, as in all cBsthetic activity, is exploiting for its own ends an activity
otherwise seriously employed. It wants to be occupied ; but not to be
tired or distressed. [^Experimentally test the working of the imagination^
The future also we are apt to treat dreamily. It is a relief to cut the
conventional moorings — a delight to discard rudder and sail, and leave the
boat of life to take care of itself. If we cannot attain to a royal crown, our
fancy depicts us as the rulers of the world. If the laurel be tardy in coming,
we see in imagination the whole earth bow to our genius. If we are scoffed
at, we dream of the sincere repentance of the scoffers. On the other hand,
we worry ourselves pitilessly. Perhaps we are dullards after all. Perhaps
we deserve contempt. Perhaps we are chasing a phantom. Perhaps we
are but weaklings. Or, again, in imagination, we successively walk, run,
climb, soar, delve and grope. Pleasant or unpleasant the mood may be ;
but as long as the thoughts move along readily, and require no marshalling,
so long is the attention satisfied.
Once more, our own imagination is assisted by those of others. Our
thoughts are perhaps not sufficiently prolific to satisfy our demand, so we
sit down and read novels, biography, history and poetry. The treasures
which the community in this way offers are so great that many are tempted
to effeminately dream away a life time in a harem of fiction. The imagina-
tion, the normal object of which is to assist us in meeting emergencies and in
overcoming difficulties, is degraded into a purposeless fancy. Instead of
32
498 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
pleasant rest from arduous labour, we indulge in emasculating lassitude.
Leisure should be the complement of work ; unconnected with work it
ceases to be costhetically gratifying.
In conversation, in artistic endeavour, and in all kinds of amateur under-
takings, there is a play of thought. The well shaped sentences which are
to assist clearness, are often formed for the pleasure of forming them.
The ready response which is to cover our retreat or prepare an attack,
is cultivated frccjuently for its own sake. The weighty pronouncement
which is to help on the progress of humanity, is sometimes uttered for
the sake of complaisance. Metaphor, necessary in primitive life and
useful in modern civilisation, is at times employed without ulterior motive.
\Obsei-ve the process in t/ie creation of metaphors?^ As children play at school,
so adults play at life and ivork. The tools of the pioneers of humanity
become our playthings.
The practical imagination, owing to the nature of the attention, gives
birth to fancy-winged thought. Every power we develop is, in this
manner, expanded into a capacity which is of itself desirable, until our
light-born fantasies appear to us in a shaded or sober Hght. At bottom,
they are a continuation of the child's playfulness. Our imagination roams
hither and thither, according to the stage of its development. The spaces
between the occasions for necessary work must be filled up, and how else
can that be done except by continuing in play what we began in earnest ?
Undoubtedly, too, the very play assists us to a limited extent in keeping
the memory fresh and bright and our various capacities in good order ;
but, if we are prudent, we shall not lay much stress on these secondary
advantages. Smooth thought, for such is normal thought play, forms a
doubtful preparation for arduous work.
The play of thought in children, which is normally so abundant, finds
its explanation in the fact that they are incapable of much effort. With
them the play has a valuable side. They live in the present, and absorb
the elementary social knowledge of things and their qualities. They learn
the nature of the world they will have to face. Hence their indifference
to the most perfect doll which, by reason of its perfection, offers so little
to the attention, and their preference for a whip or a broom. Hence
their contempt of such playthings as crowing cocks, roaring lions, and
other perverse mechanisms whose simplicity exasperates them. The
attention is a born traveller, and, especially with children, hates to be
detained since it has to perform an educational mission in the dark
interior.
All that has been said of secondary influences when dealing with visual
forms applies here. We define attention-determined thought as need-
satisfying development which, of itself occupies the attention.
Playful effort of thought is cultivated in several ways. In such games as chess, neural
strain is courted. Similarly many parlour games have a predominantly intellectual
character. In the same way, we readily pursue favourite studies, though the neural effort
required may be considerable. In all these, and related instances, however, the efforts
SYSTEMS AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 499
made possess scarcely any value outside the immediate field of application. Ideal intel-
lectual games, which shall rival field sports, are yet to be invented.
Only space and time have prevented the expansion of this important section into a
chapter. It would be interesting, for instance, to analyse the visual imagination. When
I attempt to think of a golden mountain, I tend to re-integrate some rugged piece of gold
or some sun-lit mountain. I can imagine no golden mountain similar to the ordinary
mountains I have seen. So also I cannot think of a man whose face is violet in colour.
On the other hand, I can imagine printer's types of all sizes and classes. If I wish to
think of a church on a hill with its steeple downward, I succeed after a while, probably
by picturing a reflection from a pond or river. With me at least memory largely supplies
the imagination, while variety in observation is necessary to give the imagination
elasticity to transcend the known. Imagination through the medium of language, where
varying combinations are the rule, proceeds readily, and organised reaction has made lingual
thought almost free. Nevertheless, if we compare the different kinds of stage plays
of the same and of various periods, we shall see how the field even of verbal imagination
is very much restricted, and is in general determined socially. [Some advanced students
should make a close study of the nature of the imagination, applying, of course, all the rules
mentioned in sec. 136.] It may be noted in passing that, given all sensations to be funda-
mentally alike (sec. 189) ; given a possibility of constructive imagination ; given also a
single sensation ; and imagination could develop the whole world.
247. — Play.
It need hardly be said that motor activity is essential to a normal life.
Without the aid of the muscles, action would be paralysed, the environ-
ment acting on us without our being able to react. Yet it is rare for the
complete wants of the muscular system to be satisfied by our ordinary
activities, while the child's work consists principally in play. Muscular
exercise of a rational kind stands on a different basis from the exercise of
the imagination, for in the latter case the useful results are, at best, very
limited, while in the former, they are often ideally satisfactory. Motor
play emphatically fits us for motor work.
The play of muscle is not based on the same necessity for continued
exercise as the play of thought. In motor action we have the alternative
of rest for a prolonged period, an alternative which is wanting in thought
proper.* Nevertheless, only appropriate and varied employment preserves
the physical tone. If we neglect exercise, the muscles grow flabby and
dwindle, and if our work only makes demands on a few muscles, these
alone are kept in a state of elasticity. So also over-exercise has the un-
wholesome effects with which we have become acquainted in our study of
thought. Muscle play is distinguished in yet another way from thought
play. We have seen how uniformly strain is discouraged in the latter
case, while we know that physical effort is a salient feature in the former.
This is an additional illustration of the organic basis of our nature. Where
effort is genial, we greet it with delight ; where it is tiring, we recoil. Hence
what is pleasant in motor culture is generally shunned in neural culture.
Two additional differences moreover must be observed. The muscular
system is normally more inured to effort than the neural system. Just as
* We have seen, however, that complete muscular inactivity produces almost immediate
sleep (sec. 220).
500 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
dreams, through the ahiiost entire absence of effort and of the criticisms of
others, show least rationaUty, so the motor system through the presence of
effort and the criticisms of others is ready for effective action. Our teachers
can insist upon a physical movement ; but in the present state of knowledge,
they are easily baffled in matters of morals. If we can once bring controll-
able pressure to bear on men's thinking and moralising, it will become
possible to teach strenuous thought and noble aspirations, while consider-
able effort will then form a part of thought play (ch. lo). Still, we must
not forget that unrelieved muscular labour is not pursued for its own sake.
The strain must never be very great or prolonged, and there must be
variety. Various muscles must be called into action, and the exercises
must not be monotonous, for a complex organism has to be satisfied in a
complex fashion. If we could benefit a muscle only by prolonged effort,
then a set strain alone would gratify us. In motor activity we are never
blind to the fact that only what suits the muscle machinery produces the
desired result. Personally we may believe that some curious drug which
we are taking preserves us in health and strengh ; but the spectator who
notes the absence of firmly developed muscles smiles in derision. No
schoolboy can make his master believe that he is strong when he is not.
In the ages to come the distinction between what we believe ourselves to
have achieved morally and intellectually, and what we have actually ac-
complished, will be similarly drawn on objective grounds. Perhaps we shall
then be able to trace the precise elements which rivet our attention in the
contemplation of a sunset, and we shall then know, not only that system
and change are necessary, but the precise constitution of the system and
the whole of the particular change.
Our definition of attention did not exclude muscular activities. To
attend means to perform work, to expend energy, to keep going certain
portions of our organism. Attention, in the wider sense, embraces all
activities, though the attribute of constant and systematically changing-
activity, if we exclude such functions as those of the heart, only applies
to the central nervous system. This fact, in itself, assures us that the
organism varies in the mode of its activities ; but not that it varies arbit-
rarily, or that anything is ever performed without mechanism or without
functioning. Muscle play finds its justification in the nature of the
organism in general and of the attention mechanism in particular. When
our normal bodily activity satisfies the demand for variety, play becomes
unnecessary from the utilitarian point of view, yet even then the attention,
longing for easy occupation, induces men to take to sport, sometimes even
to live, move, and have their being in sport. With the normal individual,
whose bodily occupation leaves much to be desired, physical sport, in the
shape of cricket, football, rowing or running, is one of the means of simul-
taneously relieving the attention and exercising the relaxed muscular system.
The play of muscles should be defined as motor activity which, of itself,
occupies the attention, subject, of course, to all the secondary considerations
referred to at the end of the sections dealing with visual forms (sees. 237-42).
SVSTEA/S AS ATTENTION-DETERMINED 501
248. — A Bird's Eve View.
Given discontinuous needs and a continuous attention process and, as
we saw, self-determined activity follows. Also, the lines along which that
activity develops are as various, we know, as the forms of our thought,
while individual differences find their explanation in social development
and personal growth. Hence arises our appreciation of forms and sounds,
of unity in the life of the intellect and the affections, of humour, and of
intellectual and physical play.
However, we can make our outlook more comprehensive. With one
bold sweep of thought we may gain a harmonious view — a view unblurred
by divisions — of the totality of man's existence. The life of work and the
life of play are not then to be looked upon as two unconnected realms
which develop independently of each other. Rather must we see in them
an organic whole without break and without cross purposes. Both tend-
encies together, when neither is irrrational, blend into one vivid aesthetic
picture. The eager pursuit of wealth, the lust for pomp and luxury and
domination, the instincts which keep us on the level of the beast and the
brute, the selfishness and ignorance which blind and mutilate : all these
make life a jarring discord, setting man against man, and self against self.
What is more, the evolutionary view which we have adopted, plainly makes
for a life with large purposes and a broad horizon, and is opposed to the
narrow esthetic conception which ignores the oneness of work and play.
To dally with what is mean, sensual, enervating, selfish, and disconnected
with a rational ideal is to make impossible the higher cesthetics which
embrace purposive and self-determined activity. From this standpoint one
cannot countenance any severance of aesthetics from ethics. The man who
craves for intoxicants, for tasty food, for fine raiment and houses ; who
wears out a life in voluptuous and irresponsible ease, is far from deserving
our emulation. What he admires is out of relation to life as a whole, and
is, therefore, a discord in life's harmony. A conception of beauty which
is true to itself, transfigures our being as such. It does more than justice ;
for it not only contemplates life, but expands it. Hence the aesthetic
ideal will go in harness with the moral ideal. Above all things, it will
strip off the ugly vesture in which the body social is clothed, as well as
remove the imperfections of the individual. It will cause all the arts to
have a serious aspect. It will aim at harmonising and purifying man's
inner world. It will shed brightness and joy everywhere. Lastly, it will
not develop at the expense of the larger life. In all our aesthetic specula-
tions we must re-member, what we have learnt throughout this work, that
life is an organic whole, and that the esthetic ideal, therefore, must be one
in harmony with the most comprehensive ideal which the human mind is
able to fashion.
Additional References. — Allen, The Origin of the Sublime, 1878; Allen, The Origin
of the Sense of Symmetry, 1879; Allen, ALesthetic Evolution in Man, 1S80; Arreat,
L' Esthetique d'apres quelques Recents Oiivrages, 1899 ; Bain, Emotions and the Will,
502 SPECIAL SYNTHESES
1875, pp. 225-56 ; Benard, J.a Miiniqtte liaiis le Systlnu des Beaux-Arts, 1SS9 ; Bosanquet,
On the Nature of ^Esthetic Emotion, 1894 ; Coulurat, La Beautif Plastiquc, 1893 ;
Donkin, Suggestions on ^Esthetics, 1897; Doring, Die crsthetischen Gefiihk, 1890;
Kttlinger, ^Elsthetik des Khytlunus, 1900 ; Gurney, Relations of Reason to Beauty, 1879 ;
Gurncy, On Discord, 1879 ; Hall and Allin, 7'/ie Psychology of Tickling, Laughing, and
the Comic, 1897 ; Ileymans, JEsthetische Untcrsuchungen in Anschluss an die Lipps'schc
Theoric des Koviischen, 1896; Heymans, Zur Tsychologie der Komik, 1S99 ; Kraepelin,
Zur Psychologic des Komischen, 1883 ; Lange, Gedanken zti eincr yEslhetik auf entwicke-
lungsgeschichtlicher Grundlage, 1897 ; Marshall, The Field of yJ'lsthetics, 1892; Marshall,
Hedonic ALsthetics, 1893 > Meumann, Zur Psychologic tmd ALsthctik des Rhytltunts, 1894 ;
Mind: Review of P'echner, 1877, Review of Allen, 1877, Review of Krause, 1882,
Review of Carriere, 1S86, Review of Guyau, 1887, Review of Bosanquet, 1893, Review
of Santayana, 1897 ; Naville, La Beauts Organique, 1892 ; Paulhan, Sur V E>notio7i
Esthctiqttc, 1885 ; Pierce, Aesthetics of Simple Forms, 1894 ; Sorel, Contributions
(l r Etude Esthetique, 1890 ; Sully, Sensation and Intuition, 1874; Sully, Article
"Esthetics" in Enc. Brit., 1875; ZvWy, Harmony of Colours, 1879; Sully, Pleasure
of Visual Form, 1880 ; Witmer, ^Esthetik einfacher raumlichcr Fortiivcrhaltnisse, 1893.
CHAPTER XII
SUMMARY
To the brim this phial's filled,
Its quintessence love distilled.
249. — The Totality of Existence regarded as Static.
The contents of thought and action, i.e., what is given, are usually
classed under such heads as thing, sensation, feeling, desire, volition,
action, thought, imagination, dreams and memory, and each of these classes
is usually regarded as more or less rigorously separated from every other. A
close analysis, however, modifies the prevailing impression ; for in search-
ing for the most comprehensive formula, or the simplest view of things,
we discover that our element may be taken to be a simplified touch system,
and also that every appreciable fact — thing, sensation, feeUng, etc. — can be
pictured as a more complicated development or aspect of the almost
detailless element or atom we set out with. That is to say, the differences
between the various classes mentioned are, for the scientist, secondary or
partial, and not primary or complete. At the same time we must allow
that our simplified notions do not simplify things, do not prove that nothing
but elements exist ; but they only bear witness that a simplified view of
what is given, a model view, is possible.
Coming to detail, we may say that even what is simplest is given in a
system, and that such systems may be divided into present and past, or
primary and secondary systems, (i) Starting out from what is simplest,
we have vague, undefined systems called elementary sensations or feelings, of
which the feelings of touch, of hunger, of pain, of doubt, of effort, of astonish-
ment, afford examples, and the names of which feelings are interpreted by
those groups of systems which regularly accompany each of them. Some-
what higher in the scale we meet with what we have called semi-advanced
sensations, which embrace the senses of smell and taste. And, highest in
order, we have hearing and sight, of which sight is the more complex.
These last two sets of systems — sight and hearing — we have called ad-
vanced sensations. Any of the above three classes of systems, forming as
they do the simplest things given, we call an Integral. (2) Next in order
504 SUMMARY
of complexity, we have a Compound, where several systems are intimately
blended, as in the matter of ordinary observation. (3) Then we have a
Complication where, as in association, otherwise unconnected systems
appear uniformly together. (4) Then a Combination, which consists of a
train of thought or action. (5) Then systems regarded as exhausted, such
as objects, e.g., a clock, or notions, e.g., loyalty, and systems regarded as
ufiexhatisted, such as a clock as immediately seen or loyalty as immediately
felt. (6) Then a Connection, which deals with the lines of development
possible in any instance, and is ordinarily called awareness, consciousness,
knowledge, belief, doubt, certainty, reasoning and judgment.
The world is given in a coherent series, the abrupt tail-end of which is
termed the Present, and every other portion of which, fitting in somewhere,
is the Past. On this principle we determine, when necessary, the place of
a fact in the total series — whether it be imagination, dreaming, illusion,
simple memory, etc. — by noting what develops or forms alongside of it.
The secondary series has usually many minor characteristics ; a section of
it is much poorer in detail, is less defined, lacks a distinct environment,
and disappears more easily than the sections of the primary series. To
this may be added that the secondary series which, in the first few moments
after primary observation, merely rivals the primary series, dwindles gradu-
ally until the given system is completely de-developed or forgotten, i.e.,
can no more be developed, this de-developing process being only prevent-
able by early and repeated re-development. Lastly, in the panorama of
action, thought, imagination and dreams, we have an elaboration of
primary and secondary integrals.
The totality of existence, considered as stationary or static, is within
itself distinguished only by difference in complexity — integral, compound,
complicated, combined, connected, and other systems ; or sensation,
perception, association, train of thought or action, knowledge, all these
constituting one series in the final analysis. Hence we do not acknowledge
that matter and thought, or body and mind, refer to two mutually exclusive
or discontinuous realms, and hence we abandon in psychology such
notions as Self and Energy, which presume to account for the known and
analysed by systems which are unknown and unanalysed, i.e., by a system
within a system. The world as given is neither chaos nor cosmos, neither
a disorderly heap of facts nor a symmetrical structure as science presents
it; but any of these at diiferent times. The formulations of the under-
standing are as truly part of the world as is a model of a machine or a
reflection in a lake. The very sense apparatus which is to explain what is
given, is itself an integral part of what is to be explained, and can, there-
fore, explain nothing (ch. 8).
250. — The Totality of Existence regarded as Dynamic.
As regards changes, the following general statements — to be further
defined — commend themselves if we take the human body as the con-
SUMMARY 505
venient type of things. We are born with certain gradually changing
wants, or functional tendencies, and with a mechanism approximately able
to re-establish equilibrium. The wants may be divided into personal
(such as distinguish each individual), perennial (such as hunger), periodic
(such as the child's love of play), peculiar (such as depend on one's par-
ticular environment), passing (such as depend on passing circumstances),
and political (such as are determined by society, climate, etc.) (sec. 156).
These press for satisfaction, and the process of satisfying them is, in one
aspect or another, conventionally called action, thought, attention, reason-
ing, judgment, deHberation, volition, abstraction, and the like. Owing to
the limitations of the mechanism, the process is confined within narrow
and well marked boundaries, ?>., only a certain quantity of detail is given,
no more and no less ; whilst awake, systems are developing unceasingly;
and topics, like details, tend to be displaced by other topics. For this
reason, so soon as a topic is becoming detailless, there develops simul-
taneously a second and perhaps a third connected or unconnected topic ;
and in proportion as a topic is comprehensive, so a fraction of it tends to
monopolise the whole field of immediate existence. Hence also the
quantity which can be done or thought of at any moment, is strictly limited
and rigidly defined (ch. 2). The principal conclusion which flows from
the state of things pictured here is that a struggle ensues between needs, or
tendencies, as a result of which primary or secondary systems of every
class are simplified and economised to the uttermost, a process culminating
in the almost entire suppression or elimination of every detail which is
possibly superfluous and in the simplified scheme of things furnished by
science (ch. 3). The nature of the mechanism is responsible for other
consequences, e.g., there must be frequent and arduous repetition at
defined intervals if a system is to be readily re-developed, thought out, or
pre-developed (ch. 5) ; the crudity of the mechanism excludes individual
genius or precocity and proves all great achievements to be social products
(ch. 9) ; owing to the difficulty of closely attending, the highest class of
thought is rare, our ordinary thought being poor in quality, while dreams
present a chaos which is due to the low tone of the organism during half-
sleep (ch. 10); and, lastly, there being a certain best way of satisfying the
conditions of the mechanism, we obtain the various forms of aesthetic
gratification (ch. 11).
If we turn to the systems as they change, we learn the following (ch. 4).
No separated sensations or images are given in any train of thought or
combination, there being traceable only a process of development which is
incessantly controlled and guided by existing needs. This process termi-
nates quickly in proportion as similar processes had preceded it. That is
to say, the present process is only a slightly modified past process, and the
substance and form of that process must be, as a whole, given. A motion
to and fro of the eye, for instance, will yield what is required ; or else any
point in a system may be developed along given lines ; or lastl}', excite-
ment resulting from recency, or moods, inclinations, what is well
5o6 Si'MMA/^V
known, or disturbances, may be the factors in change. Hence while the
most untrained mortal may yearn as much as the most highly skilled, to
solve some subtle problem, the latter only will succeed, because with
him alone the roads to success are constructed and in excellent repair.
Needless to add that as a consequence of the organic nature of thought,
innumerable tendencies or inclinations develop in the course of life, the
growth and .sim];)litication of which tendencies remain usually unobserved.
However, all primary and secondary processes satisfy some need or needs,
and hence systems in a combination or train of thought are neither
associated nor do they suggest one another ; but the need — the striving for
satisfaction — determines the development of any process from moment to
moment along the given lines, being always aided by a host of subsidiary
needs and by the effects of recency and excitement. All combinations are
thus equally need-determined, only differing from one another in the
manner of arrangement and the degree of complexity.
In speaking of needs and their satisfaction, and of functional tendencies,
we have introduced teleological notions, i.e., notions yet complex and
unanalysed. To avoid possible misapprehension, the process summarised
above may be briefly described and illustrated as follows : A certain
feehng, called that of hunger, develops and persists; then a certain number
of changes occur, the end of which changes ordinarily is that the feel-
ing, called that of hunger, disappears. Primary and secondary integral
systems are thus all connected with a centre, forming to the view combina-
tions or trains having a certain recognisable beginning and a certain
recognisable ending. The beginning — looked at in the light of the whole
process — we call the need ; the changes ensuing we call the process of
satisfying the need ; and the cessation of the feeling marks for the onlooker
the point of satisfaction. Most generally stated we may, therefore, say
that t'n a primary or secondary combination the systems are foimcl to follow a
system which persists until certain changes supervene, and that such systems
do not folloiv each other directly. This means, in other words, that the
processes dealt with by psychologists resemble those observable in phy-
siology and not those known in physics.
251. — Disturbances.
When something specially favourable or unfavourable happens, we have,
as a consequence, a disturbance of normal process. Under such circum-
stances attempts are made to ease the strain, as through laughing or
crying, or through removing the disturbance. In these cases we speak
of pleasure (semi-opposed disturbance) when the disturbance is ultimately
beneficial and is fed, and we speak of pain (opposed disturbance) when the
disturbance is ultimately harmful and is strenuously resisted. The sole
measure of the pleasure-pain is the extent of the disturbance. The
accompanying feelings are indifferent in themselves, though in the lowest
organisms feelings probably always co-exist with disturbances and disturb-
SUMMARY 507
ances with feelings. Naturally, too, such disturbances are comparatively
rare, needs, and not disturbances, being the feeders of action, or the
initiators of systematic change (ch. 6).
252. — The Business of Psychology.
From the above we conclude that the business of the psychologist is to
inquire into the following facts : {a) The nature and the growth of needs ;
{b) the range, {c) the effectiveness, {d) the liability to deterioration, to {e)
improvement or to (/) breakdown, of the mechanism which is to satisfy the
needs ; {g) the process of satisfying the needs ; and {Ji) the distinguish-
able parts of such process.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
The letter " n " added to the number of the page indicates that the reference is to a footnote.
Abstraction, nature of, 165.
Acquired tendencies and heredity, i68n.
Action memory, described, 206.
Activity, meaning of, 365 ; deliberate
activity, 421 ; afferent activity, 425-8 ;
efferent activity, 428-9 ; central activity,
429-30; arbitrary activity, 141-2, 282-6,
308.
Admiration, mentioned, 270 ; admiration
and effort, 317.
Advanced systems, meaning of, 41, 59.
/Esthetics, its existence due to the nature
of the attention-mechanism, 427, 469 ;
explanation of aesthetic activity, 468,
505 ; resthetic activities as rudiments of
useful functions, 468n, 497-8 ; effort as
a factor in appreciation, 469 ; variety and
unity in a-sthetics, 472 ; the factors in
aesthetics, 473 ; things which are sesthe-
tically indifferent, 477 ; on the place of
associations in aesthetics, 485 ; the
aesthetic standard, 485-6 ; the sense
material in esthetics, 492 ; the inter-
relation of morality and testhetics, 501.
{See also Beauty.)
Afferent activity, nature and place of, 425-
8 ; in dream-life, 436-8, 456 ; thought as
dependent on afferent activity, 448 ;
afferent activity and morality, 452.
After-images, mentioned, 192; their nature,
210-1.
After-sensations, as essential to sensations,
56 ; mentioned, 210.
Aim, as traceable in action, 283, 285, 305 ;
clearness of aim, 292.
Anger, as a mood, 178-9 ; mentioned, 270.
Animals, psychology of, mentioned, 3, 159,
162, 261 ; animals have no general
memory, 226 ; deliberation in animals,
300 ; genius and the congenital equip-
ment of animals, 394 ; animal psychology,
407, 462-6 ; the fundamental difference
between man and animal, 466.
Appearance and reality, problem of, 324,
327-8, 356n, 369.
Apperception, as defined by Wundt, 152 ;
process of apperception referred to, 369.
Aptitudes, as factors in likes and dislikes,
251.
Arbitrary activity, 141-2, 282-6, 308.
Assertion, will as self-, 31 1-3.
Association, history of the doctrine of, 4-8 ;
association as determined by relevancy to
a topic, 4 ; value of the principle of
contiguity, 4n ; laws of association as
stated by Bain, 7 ; Associationists and
Ilerbartians, 87n ; nature and criticism
of the theory of association, 141-52 ; the
process of association, 141-3 ; association
and contiguity, similarity and recency,
141-3 ; association by contrast, 143-4 ;
association as development, 144-6 ; law
of association as revised, 149 ; quasi-
associations, 150; associations and moods,
278 ; associations as need-determined,
284 ; theory of association, 329 ; bodily
aspect of association, 334 ; a stable order
as implied in association, 355 ; an ex-
perimental study in association, 424 ;
associations in dreams, 438 ; association
with and without the presence of a pri-
mary or perceptual factor, 463 ; the effect
of experience on associations in animals,
466 ; growth of associations, 466 ; associ-
ations in aesthetics, 484, 485 ; mentioned,
504-
Attention, nature of, 9, 505 ; attention
need not be directed to one object alone,
19, 779 ; attention and inattention, 45 ;
sensations, images and feelings do not
exist apart from attention, 45-7 ; atten-
tion is dependent on stimuli, 47 ; atten-
tion as keen, normal and lax, 59-60 ;
attention as distribution of details, 6on ;
attention as a stable quantity in all men,
60, 468 ; the desire to attend, 61 ; effort
of attention, 61-2 ; opinions on the nature
of attention, 62-3 ; criticism of these
opinions, 63 ; attention physiologically
defined, 64 ; definition of attention, 64,
510
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
89 ; attention as deliberate, 65-6 ;
opinions on voluntary and involuntary
attention, 66 ; the measure of attention,
C6-7 ; the focus of attention, 67 ; atten-
tion as compulsory and eciuable, 67n ;
attention as abnormal, 67-8 ; the subjects
of attention tend to change, 69 ; the de-
tails in a subject tend to change, 69-70 ;
narrowing the normal field of attention,
70-1 ; expanding the normal field of at-
tention, 71 ; ph)siology of attention, 71 ;
the field of attention, 72 ; attention
energy and motion energy are one, 72-4 ;
attention and heredity, 74 ; attention and
observation, 75-77 ; attention in habits,
79-80, 95n ; attending to habits, 80 ; at-
tention in the routine of life, 81 ; memory
as dependent on attention, 81-2; condi-
tions which favour attention, 84-6 ;
attention as teleologically determined,
86, 505 ; the education of the attention,
87 ; factors producing changes in the
field of attention, 87-8 ; general con-
clusions concerning attention, 88 ; des-
cription of the process of attention, 8S-9 ;
the liberation of attention in habit, 98-9 ;
attention determines the process of com-
bination or thought, 165-6 ; re-develop-
rnent is attention to surviving traces,
191-2 ; attention and re-collection, 217,
226-7 > attention in interest and effort,
250 ; attention and moods, 279 ; aware-
ness and attention, 317 ; its place in
psychology, 320 ; partial withdrawal of
the attention, 420 ; attention in average
thought, 422 ; attention to what we at-
tend is easy, 424 ; attention argues
bodily adjustment, 428 ; attentional tone,
428 ; engrossment of the attention as in-
tensifying vividness, 455 ; inattention
leads to sleep, 457 ; minimal attention
and spiritualism, 461 ; attention in
animals, 462-3 ; aesthetics as attention -
determined, ch. 11 ; variety, com-
plexity, and unity in the beautiful as
requirements of the attention, 470-1 ;
the Comic as attention-determined, 492-
5 ; imagination as attention-determined,
496-9.
Attitude, as tending to actualise itself,
258-9.
Audile, meaning of the term, 195-7 ; the
place of auditory systems in the memory,
197-205.
Automatic ; does a habit ever become auto-
matic? 99-101 ; automatic association,
Average thought, its imperfection, 225,
422-5.
Awareness, meaning of the term, 82-3n ;
mentioned, 243, 266, 295, 504 ; aware-
ness and bodily processes, 249 ; aware-
ness and needs, 297 ; awareness and
attention, 317.
Awe, mentioned, 270 ; awe and effort,
317.
Beauty, in visual forms, 468-79 ; defini-
tion of the beautiful, 468 : the beautiful
as rudimentary curiosity, 46Sn ; effort and
the beautiful, 469; disinterestedness, use-
fulness and pleasure and the beautiful,
470 ; variety, unity, and gentle eflFort in
the beautiful, 470-2 ; familiarity and the
beautiful, 473 ; size and novelty and the
beautiful, 473, 4S3-4 ; things which are
lesthetically indifferent, 477 ; the ques-
tion of taste, 477 ; children and savages
and the beautiful, 478 ; the borderland
of the beautiful, 479 ; inference and the
beautiful, 479-81 ; impressionist and
realistic art, 479; misleading beliefs and
the beautiful, 481-2 ; education and
fashion and the beautiful, 4S2-3 ; skill,
associations, interests and organised re-
action and the beautiful, 484-5 ; the
resthetic standard, 4S5-6 ; the beautiful
in prose and poetry, 487-91 ; the beauti-
ful in the orator's art, 491 ; the beauti-
ful in music, 491-2 ; the sense material
in the beautiful, 492 ; the beautiful in
the widest sense, 492 ; beauty in thought,
496-9. {.See also /Esthetics.)
Belief, meaning of the term, S3n ; men-
tioned, 164, 217, 312, 504 ; belief and
possibility of achievement, 2S3, 287 ; its
place in psychology, 320 ; misleading
behefs, 481-2.
Binocular and monocular vision, described,
2II-3-
Bodily movements as independent of sen-
sations, 57 ; bodily movements and
ideas, 137 ; bodily movements and feel-
ings, 233 ; bodily processes apart from
awareness, 249 ; bodily activity and the
nervous system, 309 ; the relation of
mind and body, 323-4, 333-4 ; the ex-
amination of the body can tell us nothing
about the outer world, 360 ; thought is
impossible apart from bodily movements,
448.
Brain physiology, some of the more impor-
tant facts of, 25-8.
Capacity, as distinguished from emotions,
inclinations and disturbances, 268-70,
280 ; capacity and effort, 314 ; capacity
in genius, 417 ; development in capacity,
42.
Caricature, nature of, 493.
Cause, mentioned, 326, 365 ; cause and
effect, 349-51.
Central activity, nature and place of, 429-
300.
Certainty, meaning of the term, 83n,
mentioned, 217.
Change, as essential to sensing, 55 ; motion
as change, 326 ; change as independent
of selves, 355.
Character in the individual, 403-7, 417;
character as a necessary product, 407 ;
character as perennial, periodic, personal,
peculiar, political and passing, 407-9.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
511
Chickens do not peck and run on emerging
from the shell, 465n.
Child, psychology of the child referred to,
3, 120, 165, 196 ; sensations in the child,
Sl> 56, 57 ; early education and the
child, 107-8, 299 ; the evolution of habits
in the child, 109, no, 117; a child
learning arithmetic, 115; childhood's
memories, 186; evolution of memory in
the child, 205-7 ; there is in the child a
strong tendency to repeat, 206 ; child
and adult as regards the memory, 229-
30 ; callousness in children, 278n ;
imitation in the child as dependent on
development, 293 ; the child and peri-
odic needs, 294 ; the child and habits,
315 ; the child and the problem of mind,
332 ; the notion of space in infants, 338,
347 ; the notion of cause and effect in
children, 349 ; childhood and originality,
397 ; plasticity of childhood, 404, 408 ;
character in the child, 407-8 ; the de-
velopment of the child's mind, 409-12 ; a
method of studying the child mind, 412 ;
children's attitude towards toys, 427 ;
children and play, 429, 498, 499 ;
hallucinations in children, 435 ; dreams
in children, 444, 452 ; instinct in child
life, 465 ; reason in children, 466 ; love
of food in infants, 469 ; children and the
beautiful, 478, 480, 482n.
Choice, mentioned, 266, 273, 279, 310,
318 ; choice, as defined by Wundt, 291 ;
choice from weaker motive, 305-7 ; de-
liberate choice, 30S ; choice and char-
acter, 408.
Cognition, mentioned, 320.
Combination, meaning of the term, 39, 41,
504 ; combination as modified by the
processes of attention, economisation
and memory, 165-7.
Combination feeling, meaning of the terms,
41 ; mentioned, 58, 197, 207, 233, 311 ;
combination feelings are easy to re-de-
velop, 198-9.
Com fort and localised sensations of pain, 242.
Comic, the, as rudimentary malice, 468n ;
the nature of the Comic, 492-6 ; de-
finition of the Comic, 493 ; the Comic in
Shakespeare, 493 ; the Comic reflects a
likely situation, 493-4 ; malice and
humour, 494 ; humour as explosive and
not contemplative, 494 ; the Comic as
attention-determined, 494-5 ; secondary
factors in the Comic, 495.
Comparison, nature of, 161 -3 ; comparison
in dreams, 438.
Complementary image, described, 211.
Complication, meaning of the term, 39, 41,
504 ; complication of ideas, 141-3 ;
primary and secondary complications,
143-4 ; relative age of complications,
144 ; complications in thought, 155-9 ;
socially determined complications, 159 ;
complications in the re-development of
the unlike, 286.
Compound, meaning of the term, 39,
41, 504 ; compound and unit, I22n ;
percepts and ideas are compounds,
I22n.
Conation or willing, as defined by Hamil-
ton, 289 ; mentioned, 320.
Connection, meaning of the term, 39, 41,
207, 504.
Consciousness, meaning of the term, 82-30 y-
acting with and without consciousness,
100; consciousness and habit, 118;
mentioned, 311, 504; consciousness and
phenomena, 369.
Contemplation, as rudimentary curiosity,
46Sn.
Contiguity, association by, 141-52; men-
tioned, 285, 424.
Contrast, association by, 143-4.
Counter-connection, meaning of the term,
164.
Cross-classification of memories is thought,
167, 420.
Dark field of vision, mentioned, 222n.
{See also Vision.)
Death, as the end of life, 363.
De-development, the nature and process
of, 1 90- 1.
Definition, of hypothec , 11 ; of experi-
ment, 34-5 ; of psychology-, 38, 296 ;
of Weber's law, 53 ; of feeling, 59 ; of
attention, 64, 89 ; of sub-consciousness,
82n ; of knowing, 82-3n ; of habit, 121 ;
of the process of complication, 144, 146,
149 ; of thought, 151 ; of apperception,
by Wundt, 152 ; of a need, 160, 297 ;
of generalisation, 165 ; of effort, 166, 315;
of need-satisfying reaction, 172 ; of sen-
sation, perception and image, by Sully,
174-5 ; of sensation, percept, image and
idea, 175 ; of mood, by Sully, 1790 ; of
recency, 181-2 ; of knowing and con-
necting, 207 ; of primary and secondary
systems, 209 ; of positive and negative
after-images, by Helmholtz, 2 ion ; of
memory, by Gratacap, 21 5n ; of the
Present, 223 ; of feeling, by Sully, 243 ;
of a disturbance or pleasure-pain, 251,
256 ; of the object of pleasure and
pain, 275 ; of willing or volition, 288,
312 ; of choice, by Wundt, 291 ; of
deliberation, 300 ; of desire, 302 ;
of intellection or interconnection, 321 ;
of systems or developments, 321 ; of
force, 326 ; of motion, 326 ; of space,
337 ; of time, 348 ; of object, 367 ; of
genius, 401 ; of a definition, 416 ; of
hallucination, by Baldwin, 436 ; of
dreams, 44S, 456 ; of dreams, by
Sully, 456n ; of aesthetic gratification
in general, 468 ; of the beautiful, 468 ;
of the Comic, 493 ; of imagination, 497,
49S ; of play, 500.
Deliberation, mentioned, 266, 295, 312 .
nature of deliberation, 299-301 ; defini'
tion of deliberation, 300 ; deliberate
512
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
action, speech and thought, 421-2 ; the
place of deliberation, 429.
Desire, as idea, 125, 243, 323 ; its place
in association, 145-6 ; our desires are
guided and determined by functional
tendencies and capacities, 247 ; desire
for pleasure and lear of pain are not
universal factors, 278 ; desiring and
willing, 2S7 ; mentioned, 298, 503 ;
the nature of desire, 301-2 ; desires do
not normally precede an act, 302 ; will-
ing and desiring distinguished, 302 ; de-
finition of desire, 302 ; the place of
desire in psychology, 320.
Detail, its relation to general fact, 23-5.
Develo[)ment of ideas and sensations,
144-6 ; definition of a system or a de-
velopment, 321.
Discomfort and localised sensations of
pain, 242.
Discovery, the process of, 11-2.
Discrimination and sub-consciousness, 420.
Distribution of systems, meaning of the
phrase, 42.
Disturbance, meaning of the term, 42,
280 ; re-development of disturbances,
200 ; pleasure and pain are neither sen-
sations nor feelings, 240-6, 276, 303 ;
pleasure-pain is to be identified with
a central nervous disturbance, 242, 253,
275-6, 506-7 ; the nervous system and
disturbances, 24650 ; the antecedents
in a disturbance, 250-1 ; disturbances
and aptitudes, 251 ; definition of a dis-
turbance, 251, 256 ; process of dealing
with disturbances, 253, 277 ; points of
view in relation to disturbances, 254 ;
optimism and pessimism, 254-5 ; dis-
turbances not connected with normal
needs are ignored, 254n ; outward ex-
pression in disturbances, 255 ; the
nature of pleasure, 255 ; undisturbed
activity, 256 ; disturbances are not
always present, 256 ; the suppression
of disturbances is hereditarily deter-
mined, 258 ; minimal disturbances are
indifferent, 258 ; methods of allaying
disturbances, 259-62 ; the suppression
of disturbances through the diversion
of the attention, 261 ; mistaken inter-
pretations of disturbances, 262 ; habit
largely decides what shall be regarded
as a disturbance, 263-4 ; inference as a
factor in disturbances, 264 ; normal de-
fensive activity is free from disturbances,
265-6 ; normal thought and action are
neutral as regards disturbances, 266-7 5
disturbances and their relations to the
emotions, 267-71 ; inability and dis-
turbances, 267 ; disturbances as distin-
guished from emotions, inclinations and
capacity, 268-70 ; feeling pained, and
imaged pain, 271-3 ; the nature of grief,
272 ; principles of action are superior to
disturbances, 273-6 ; the object of plea-
sure and pain defined, 275 ; conclusions
as regards disturbances, 279-80 ; dis-
turbances and the process of willing,
283, 302-5 ; difficulties in tracing the
disturbance factor, 305 ; choice from
weaker motive, 305-7 ; action from
special motives, 307-8 ; the place of
effort in disturbances, 317 ; the nature
of disturbances, 320 ; disturljances as
imaged, 323 ; disturbances in animals,
464.
Division of labour, and monotony, 427.
Doubt, meaning of the term, 83n ; nature
of doubt, 163-4 ; mentioned, 217, 301,
312, 504 ; doubt, as imaged, 323.
Dozing, the state of, 68.
Dreams, nature of, 13, 456, 504, 505 ;
sense of position whilst dreaming, 56,
447 ; the state of dreaming, b8 ; men-
tioned, 74, I56n, 202, 204, 209, 221,
223, 225, 226, 428n, 500, 503 ; dream-
disturbances, 254 ; whether dreaming or
waking we dwell in our own world, 431 ;
experiments in dreams, 433-6, 446-7 ;
the oneness of waking and non-waking
images, 433 ; the nature of dream-
pictures, 433 ; dreams as forming the
lowest plane of thought, 436 ; extra-
organic stimuli in dreams, 436-8 ; why
we do not dream about important
matters, 437-8 ; dreams and our waking
life, 438 ; intra-organic and efferent
stimuli in dreams, 438-41 ; dreams of
tastes and odours, 440 ; dreams by day
and night, 440n ; the place of reason in
the dream-slate, 441-3 ; influencing the
dream-state, 443-7 ; the ethics of dream-
life, 445 ; dreams reflect the waking
condition, 445 ; on the loss of muscular
power and sensibility in dreams, 447,
466-7 ; the source of dreams, 448-51 ;
the place of effort in dreams, 448-9 ;
do we always dream in sleep? 450, 451 ;
the creation of settings in dreams, 450-1 ;
the possible tends to become actual in
dreams, 450-1, 456; the history of
dream-life, 452 ; the rapidity of dreams,
452-3 ; the inaniiy of dreams, 453-4 ;
why most dreams are forgotten, 453 ;
dreams as prophetic and symbolic, 454 ;
dream books, 454 ; a misinterpreted
dream, 454 ; vividness of dreams, 454-
6 ; dreams as mainly visual, 455 ; dis-
tinction between images and dream-
pictures, 455 ; memory, reflection,
reasoning and moralising in dreams,
456 ; provoked dreams and related
facts, 456-62.
Dualism, the problem of, 367-70 ; dualism
and duality in unity, 369.
Duration, as implied in sensing and in
memory, 174.
ECONOMISATION, meaning of the term,
42 ; science as due to the process of
economisation, I2in ; some results of
economisation, 152-3 ; economisation
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
5»3
qualifies the process of combination,
166-7 ; econoniisation determines in part
the nature of thought, 201-2.
Effect and cause, 349-51 ; effect, men-
tioned, 365.
Efferent activity, nature and place of,
42S-9 ; efferent stimuli in dreams, 438-
41, 456.
Effort, nature of, 61 ; occasions when
effort is present, 61 ; limitations to our
efforts, 61 ; effort as exercised in habit,
95n, 103, 109, 314 ; reduction of eflbrt
in habit, 97 ; eflbrt as exhausting work,
Ib6 ; effort without awareness, 166 ;
effort is an essential in rc-collection,
224-7 ; a great effort defeats itself, 232 ;
mentioned, 246 ; limits of effort, 247-8 ;
effort tends to be dismissed, 250 ; the
attention is concentrated when we are
making an effort, 250 ; effort and will,
285 ; effort of will, 311 ; the absolute
value of felt effort, 313-5 ; effort and
thought, 314, 418-25, 466 ; the sense
of eflbrt, 315-8 ; normal thinking re-
quires an effort, 316 ; special eftbrt in
speech, 415, 421-2 ; complexity in
thought and effort, 416, 421-2 ; effort
in average thought, 422-5 ; thought as
impossible without effort, 426, 429-30 ;
effort as dependent on attentional tone,
428 ; effort in the waking state and in
dream-life, 448-9, 452, 456, 500 ; ab-
sence of effort leads to sleep, 457 ;
effort and the beautiful, 469 ; genial
and tiring effort, 499 ; effort and imagi-
nation, 500.
Ego, the, as thinker, 120 ; meaning of the
term, 243, 253 ; meaning of " I," 309-
II, 328-30; subject and object, 359-
61, 369.
Elementary system, meaning of the terms,
41 ; nature of, 58-9, 503.
Emotile, meaning of the term, 195-7 ; the
place of emotile systems in the memory,
197-205.
Emotion, as idea, 125 ; the emotional
factor in association, 148 ; emotional
interest, 149 ; the nature of emotion,
261 ; the relations of the emotions to
disturbances, 267-71 ; emotion distin-
guished from inclination, capacity and
disturbance, 268-70, 280 ; emotions as
unconnected with disturbances, 270 ; the
motor aspect in emotion, 270 ; emotions
as persisting, 274 ; emotions as absent
from absorbing pursuits, 275 ; emotions
as imaged, 323 ; emotions in animals,
464.
End {See Aim).
Energy, mentioned, 64, 326, 353, 365, 504.
Engrossment as producing vividness, 455.
Ennui, nature of, 86.
Environment, its relation to the individual,
373, 417 ; its relation to thought, 426.
Ethics, as a science, 400 ; ethics and
aesthetics, 501,
33
Evolution, the, of the senses, 356-7.
Excitement, persistence of, 74 ; excite-
ment and the development of ideas,
144-6 ; neural excitement, 178-9 ; neural
excitement implies neural momentum,
182-3 ; mentioned, 196, 274, 299 ;
action under excitement, 197 ; excite-
ment as absent from absorbing pursuits,
275 ; the place of excitement, 278, 280,
Exercise, with accompanying eflort, 97,
248 ; the place of exercise in the forma-
tion of habits, 102-3 ; special features in
exercise, 103 ; exercise and the growth
of the memory, 103 ; superiority of
judgment over exercise, 103-5 '■> exer-
cise memory, 205-6.
Exhausted system, meaning of the terms,
4I) 367. 504 ; mentioned, 176, 322, 324,
,330. 33 1 > 332, 351. 360. 366.
Existence, the unity of, 361.
Expectancy, the influence of, 263.
Experience, meaning of the term, 333.
Experiment, definition and description of,
34-5 ; experiment as essential in psycho-
logical inquiries, 35 ; as applied to
pleasure-pain and volition, 35-6 ; a
number of experiments suggested, 37 ;
experiment and general fact, 211; ex-
perimental introspection as applied to
the problem of tree will, 285-6 ; ex-
perimental fallacies, 305 ; experiments
during dreams, 433 ; experiments as
essential in the study of dreams, 43S,
443, 446-7 ; experiments as essential in
the study of spiritualism, 462 ; experi-
ments with animals, by Thorndike, 465.
Explanation, the nature of the process of,
365-.
Extension, what has only extension is
difiicult to re-develop, 230-1.
Extensity, the nature of, 53.
Faculty, mentioned, 365.
Fainting, mentioned, 68.
Faith cures, mentioned, 257 ; the influence
of faith cures, 258-9.
Familiarity and novelty, nature of, 217-8.
Farce, the nature of, 493.
Fascination, the nature of, 302.
Feeling, definition of, 59 ; feeling as a
connecting link between ideas, 159;
circumstance alone determines the in-
terpretation of a feeling, 163 ; neural
feelings, 175; feelings and images,
177-8 ; the place of feeling in the
memory, 197-205 ; feelings in the
muscles of articulation, 204-5 > feelings
as compared with bodily processes, 233 ;
pleasure and pain are neither sensations
nor feelings, 240-6, 276, 303 ; feelings
as generally understood, 242-3 ; feeling
as indifference, 243-6 ; feelings and the
nervous system, 246-50, 423 ; feelings
do not develop when the attention is
diverted, 248 ; theory of innervation
514
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
fedlnjjs, 293 ; feclin;; ami willing, 305 ;
warmth of feelint; is no guide to the
strjnL^tli of a motive, 306; the "sense"
of effort, 3I5-S; feeling as a department
of psychology, 319-21,503: the feeling
of resistance and the thing which re-
sists, 325 ; the bodily aspect of feelings,
334 ; the feeling of resistance as the unit
of existence, 354; feeling and thought,
424 ; a single feeling as representing a
thought, 425 : feeimg as present in
sleep, 438 ; feelings as suggesting rapidity
in dreams, 452.
Feeling tone, mentioned, 53 ; the nature
of feeling tone, 242-3.
Felt strain, the nature of, 61 -2.
Force, the nature of, 326 ; force, as de-
fined by Clifford, 353n.
Forgetting, the nature and process of,
190-1.
Four-dimensional space, the problem of,
342-3-
Free-will, the problem of, experimentally
investigated, 285-6 ; the problem of
freedom discussed, 35 1 -2.
Functional readjustment, mentioned, 152.
Functional tendencies, the influence of,
249-50, 284 ; functional tendencies as
equivalent to needs, 247, 280, 321 ;
functional tendencies as motives, 307.
Fury, the nature of, 270.
Future, the, as imaged, 356.
Of:neual facts, their relation to details,
23-5 ; as an aid to memory, 237 ; gene-
ral facts and primitive science, 302.
General ideas, the nature of, 128-9, 193-
Generalisations, the nature of, 164-5, 3^5 J
their place in observation, memory and
thought, 237, 463.
Generic ideas. {See General Ideas.)
Genius, obstacles to, 393-7 ; inherent limi-
tations of genius, 393-4, 505 ; genius and
precocity, 394 ; the genius theory as a
useful social convention, 396 ; organised
reaction in genius, 396 ; needs and
genius, 396-7 ; men of genius, 397-405 5
genius in painting, architecture, ma-
chinery, astronomy, scientific method,
religion and morality, 397-400 ; the
ability of the man of genius, 400- 1 ;
genius and environment, 400-2 ; men
of genius and imljeciles, 401 ; definition
of genius, 401 ; insanity and genius,
402-3 ; the nature of genius, 417 ;
congenital susceptibility in genius,
465-
Grief, the nature of, 256, 272.
Habit, its nature yet unexamined, 8-9 ;
mentioned, 74 ; the history of a habit,
91-2 ; equivalent terms for the word
habit, 9in ; memorising the facts in
establishing a habit, 92-3 ; casual diffi-
culties, 92-3; the memorising of efforts,
93 ; the process of simplification in the
formation of a habit, 93-7 : the place
of appropriate exercise in habit, 97 ; the
liberation of attenliijn energy in habit,
989 ; does a habit ever become auto-
matic? 99-IOI ; the absence of sensations
in habit, lOO ; habit and memory, 101-2 ;
the place of judgment in habit, 103-5 ;
the slow growth of habit, 105 ; why it
is diflicult to influence a habit, 105-7 ;
the prevention of bad habit'^, 107 : early
education and habit, 107-8 ; each habit
is based on other habits, loS-io; the
growth of ability, iio; each habit forms
a basis for other hai)its, 1 10- 1 ; the
nature of a habit, 111-4, 505; transitory
habits, Ii2n; the place of repetition in
habit, 113; all thought partakes of the
nature of habit, 1 14-20; habits divided
into specific and non-specific, 118-9;
hai)ils as yielding insight into the nature
of thought, 119-20; habits and the
method of inquiry in psychology, 120 ;
the scope of habits, 120 ; the exidanation
of habits, 1 20- 1 ; science is due to the
process implied in habit, I2ln ; habits
as the basis of thought, 167-9 ; organisms
exemplify bundles of habits, 168 ; re-
cency as a habit, 181-2 ; habit controls
desires, 247 ; habit partly determines
our lines of activity, 249 ; a mistaken
interpretation of habits, 262 ; habit
largely decides what shall be regarded
as a disturliance, 263-4 ; habit as re-
tarding and assisting activity, 267-8 ;
inhibition as organised, 274 ; habit,
needs, excitement and thought, 278 ;
habit, belief and possibility, 2S3 ; the
effect of our volitions is determined
organically, 287 ; subtle thought and
simple acts are both organised, 293 ;
particular actions are a sign of particular
habits, 299 ; habits and motives, 306,
307; habits as unreal, 311 ; habit and
effort, 313 ; habits and responsibility,
314-5 ; the place of habit in psychology,
320 ; habit and character, 329, 404,
417 ; habit and genius, 396 ; organised
reaction and language, 413-7 ; the place
of habit in aesthetics, 484-5.
Hallucinations, experimentally induced,
433-6 ; the natural history of hallucina-
tions, 435 ; hallucinations and the state
of wakefulness, 435-6 ; hallucinations in
dreams, 449, 456 ; hallucinations dis-
cussed, 456-62.
Heredity and attention, 74 ; heredity and
evolution, 168 ; heredity and the pro-
cesses implied in disturbances, 275 ;
inherited inclinations, 280 ; hereditary
tendencies and needs, 297, 431.
Horror, the nature of, 270.
Humour. (See Comic, the.)
Hypnagogic hallucinations, mentioned,
433-
Hypnotism, mentioned, 68, 433.
Hypotheses, the uses ancj the lirnitations
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
515
of, 10-4, 370 ; definition of the term,
by Volkmann, 11 ; mentioned, 21 1.
Idea, its implications, 122-3 '■• 'he time
occupied in the development of an
idea, I22n ; richness and poverty of
detail in an idea, 123 ; the material of
ideas, 124-5 '■> desires, volitions, emo-
tions and thoughts as ideas, 125 ; ideas
which are generally overlooked, 125-6,
420, 422 ; word ideas as such, 126 ; why
ideas tend to have little content, 127 ;
ideas reflect individual situations, 127 ;
the nature of general ideas, 128-9 > ideas
cannot be stored, 134. ; ideas are one
with sensations, 136-7 ; ideas are one
with bodily processes, 137 ; trains of
ideas, 137-8; the scope of an idea, 139-
40 ; the complication of ideas, 141-4 ;
development and excitement, and ideas,
144-6 ; the classification of ideas, 145-6 ;
ideas as conceived by associationists,
150, 174-5 5 we are not restricted to one
idea at a time, 154-5 ; feelings as con-
necting links between ideas, 159 ; ideas
and moods, 279 ; ideas are confused in
the dream state, 448. {See also Images.)
Identity, its place in association, 145 ; the
law of identity, 350.
Ideo-motor theory, referred to, 259, 305 ;
as expounded by Bain, Fere and James,
289 ; criticism of the theory, 291.
Illusions and hallucinations, 436 : the
place of illusions, 504.
Images, their sources in nerve-endings,
49-50 ; the nature of an image, 174-5,
207-S ; images do not resemble photo-
graphs, 192 ; images are soon exhausted,
193-5 '■> simultaneous sensing and imaging,
196-9 ; motion as imaged, 203-4 ; third
dimension imaged, 203 ; well known
and recent images, 220-1 ; vividness
in images, 220-2, 455 ; complementary
images, 21 1 ; dim and illusory images,
213-5, 305 ; images generally lack a
setting, 221 ; pain as imaged, 272-3 ;
aims as imaged, 292 ; minimal images,
316, 461 ; sight, as objective, reflected
and imaged, 322-3 ; images as three-
dimensioned, 323 ; desires, volitions,
thoughts, etc., as images, 323 ; images
and nature, 356 ; the incompleteness of
images in average thought, 424 ; single
■ images as representing thought, 425 ; the
study of dream-images, 433 ; the one-
ness of waking and non-waking images,
433 ; distinction between images and
dream-pictures, 455. {See also Idea.)
Imagination, during the state of waking
and dreaming, 1 3-4, 441, 466 ; its place
in the world series, 209, 504 ; imagina-
tion regarded as unreal, 311 ; mentioned,
355, 503 ; imagination as transmuting
sensations, 430-6 ; imagination and re-
' tinal vision, 446 ; imagination and
dream-imagery, 450 ; the rapidity of
the imagination explained, 452 ; imagi-
nation as rudimentary thought, 468n ;
imagination as attention-determined,
496-9 ; the business of the practical
imagination, 496-7 ; definition of im-
agination, 497, 498 ; imagination as a
play of thought, 497-9 ; novels, bio-
graphy, history and poetry, 497-8 ;
imagination follows the line of normal
activity, 497-8 ; the value of imagination,
498 ; the power of imagination, 499.
Immortality, the problem of, discussed,
363-4-
Impulsion, meaning of the term, 42.
Inability and disturbances, 251, 267-8,
276 ; inability and etilbrt, 314.
Inattention and attention, 45 ; inattention
as leading to sleep, 457.
Inclination, meaning of the term, 42 ;
mentioned, 250, 279, 280, 2S2, 308,
505 ; inclinations distinguished from
emotions, capacities and disturbances,
268-70 ; inclinations and disturbances,
274 ; the inclination to remove dis-
turbances, 277 ; irrational organised in-
clinations, 298 ; inclinations and motives,
306 ; inclinations in animals, 464.
Indifference, feeling as, 243-6 ; normal
activity is free from disturbances, 266-7.
Indifferents, mentioned, 196.
Individual, his relation to his environment,
373, 417 ; individual character, 403-7 ;
the evolution of the individual, 409-12.
Infant. (5<r<r Child.)
Inference, as a factor in disturbances, 264 ;
in aesthetics, 479-81.
Inhibition, the place of, in disturbances,
253-4, 266, 2S0 ; the nature of inhibition,
256-7 ; the influence of inhibition, 258,
263, 265 ; inhibition as paralysed, 268 ;
inhibition as organised, 274.
Inner and outer, meaning of terms, 333.
Innervation, the theory of, 293.
Insanity and control, 267n ; insanity and
the ego, 328 ; insanity and genius, 402-
3 ; nature of insanity, 433 ; dreams and
insanity, 437.
Instinct in children and animals, 465.
Integral, meaning of the term, 39, 40, 503.
Intellect, meaning of the term, 319-21.
Intellection, definition of, 321.
Intensity, the nature of, 51 ; rejection of
the word, and the proposed substitutes,
52 ; intensity in attention, 6on ; intensity
in feehngs and sensations, 264 ; in-
tensity in disturbances, 273, 303 ; in-
tensity of effort, 313.
Interconnecting or reasoning, mentioned,
96, 166.
Interest, and attention, 86 ; interest in
habit, 95n ; the nature of interest, 250 ;
interest and disturbances, 261 ; men-
tioned, 278, 279 ; the effort factor in
interest, 317 ; interest and memory,
403-4 ; interest and the environment,
405-
5i6
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Introspection, the problem of, 15-20 ;
introspection is practicable, ami essential
to a science of mind, 15 ; introspection
and retrospection are one, 19 ; conditions
of easy introspection, 19, 23 ; passions
and dreams are open to introspection, 19 ;
rules of introspection, " be normal," 21 ;
"be minutely observant," 23; intro-
spection under excitement, 22 ; intro-
spection is only a form of observation,
23 ; the nature of experimental intro-
spection, 34-7 ; experimental introspec-
tion, 152, 171-2 ; experimental intro-
spection and a free will, 2S5-6 ; men-
tioned, 2S6.
Intuitions, the nature of, 213-5.
Involunlariness in bodily and mental work,
73. 294, 296, 310.
Judgment, its place in habit, 103-5, 248 ;
the growth of judgment, 115; its re-
lation to disturbances, 262 ; its place in
choice, 308 ; its place in psychology,
320, 504 ; judgment as imaged, 323 ;
its place in dreams, 452, 456, 466.
KlN^ESTHETlc equivalents, mentioned,
293-
Knowing, meaning of the term, 82-30,
504 ; knowing as distinguished from re-
developing, 207.
Knowledge, the method of its growth,
76-7 ; knowledge is mostly a social
product, 159, 295, 400, 420, 426, 464,
480.
Language ; word ideas as such, 126 ;
words rich and poor in meaning, 126-7 >
speech and thought, 130-1 ; words are
only visual, audile, or motile images,
131 ; the nature of language, 138-9 ; the
language of the adult, 153-4 ; words
are readily re-instated, 165 ; thinking in
words, 204-5 ; why sentences are diffi-
cult to re-collect, 231 ; words and voli-
tions, 282, 283-4, 294, 300; the presence
of verbal images in re-developing what
is unlike, 286; verbal aims, 292 ; growth
of language in the child, 410-2 ; the
acquisition of language, 413-7; the build-
ing up of sentences, 414-6; deliberate-
ness in speech, 421-2.
Leisure, only rational as the complement
of work, 497-8.
Life and no life, 361-3 ; life as an organic
whole, 501.
Listening, as a case of effort, 317.
Localisation of systems, mentioned, I78n,
201, 203 ; description of the process,
209.
Localised seniations and comfort and dis-
comfort, 242.
Logic, as a matter of temperament, 351.
Man, as primarily a social being, 405-6.
Matter and mind, the relation of, 324-6,
367-70, 504 ; mentioned, 365,
Memory, as a poor copy of observation,.
19 ; as dependent on attention, 81-2 ;
instantaneous memory, 920 ; memory is
always the outcome of teleological effort,
95n; memoryisassisted by interconnection
in thought, 96 ; difiiculties as regards the
memory in habits, IOI-2 ; memory and
exercise, 103; memory tests, 103; re-pro-
duction of motion and detail, 131-3 ; the
memory contents dwindle, 134; memory
and recency, 142 ; words as easily re-
membered, 165 ; the process of combin-
ing as a form of memory, 167, 496 ;
primary systems imply re-collection, 173-
6 ; the memory continues faithful and
complete for some time, 176-8 ; the case
of sudden re-collection, 179-81 ; recency,
neural excitement and neural momentum
as factors in memory, 178-83 ; the
memory fades slowly but surely, 184-5 >
the slow growth of the memory, 185 ;
cramming, 185-6 ; we forget most things,
186-90 ; our earliest re-collections, 1S6 ;
re-collections of a life time, 186-7 »
memories survive by repeated revival,
188, 505 ; memories live for about two
years, 189 ; the process of forgetting,
190- 1 ; memory is attention to surviving
traces, 191-2 ; recognition is easier thaa
re-collection, 192 ; there are no fixed
and complete images, 192-3 ; the lime
taken in re-developing, 193 ; classes of
memories, 195-7 ; the matter of memory,
197-205 ; the matter of memory and
sensation is one, 200 ; motion as imaged,
203-4 ; thinking in words, 204-5 5 the
growth of the memory, 205-7 ; re-
developing distinguished from knowing,
207 ; the elements of memory, 207-8 ;
the nature of a perfect memory, 208-9 >
recognition without re-collection, 20S,
463 ; memory and reality distinguished,
209, 335 ; after-images, 210-1 ; the
superiority of after-images over ordinary
images, 210 ; dim and illusory images,
and intuitions, 213-5, 420, 422 ; memory
as organised, 215-7 ; novelty and famili-
arity, 217-8 ; imperfect re-collection,.
218-9 ; re-collection is partial, 219 ; why
the memory leans forward, 219-20;
vividness is no test of objectivity, 220-2 ;
well known and recent images, 220-1 ;
images generally lack a setting, 221 ; the
waning of the images, 222 ; the Present
distinguished, 222-4 5 we do not re-
develop everything, 224 ; effort is an
essential in memory, 224-5 > monotonous
activity and memory, 225 ; a general
memory scarcely exists outside a de-
veloped society, 226 ; the evolution of
the memory, 226 ; repetition and
memory, 226 ; effort in re-collection
must be intermittent, 226-7 5 the old in
the new, 228 ; the advantage of direct
observation, 228 ; what has only ex.
tension is difficult to re-develop, 230-1 ;
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
$17
colours, figures, proper names, and
sentences are difficult to associate, 230-
1 ; the physiological aspect of memory,
231-4. 334; the cultivation of the
memory, 234-9 ; the problems of the
memory, 234-5 ; general forgetfulness,
238 ; the nature of the memory, 239,
503, 504 ; trying hard to re-member
something, 316; matter, memory and
thought form one plane, 325 ; our
memory and our individuality, 33on ;
memory in different minds, 359 ; the
limitations of the memory, 403-4 ; in
dream-life the memory is confused,
448-9 ; memories alone change in dream-
life, 452 ; the swiftness of re-develop-
ment in dreams, 452-3 ; images and
dream - pictures distinguished, 455 ;
memory in dreams, 456 ; memory in ani-
mals, 463 ; the various forms of memory,
463 ; reasoning as need - determined
re-development, 481 ; imagination as
strengthening the memory, 498.
Mental activity, the theory of, 352-3.
" Mental Science," referred to, 259.
Mentals, meaning of the term, 195-7.
Metaphor, its place in thought and
imagination, 498.
Method, the nature of scientific and
unscientific, 9 ; examples of method,
24-5; rules of method, 26-7 ; method as
applied to the study of pleasure-pain and
effort, 29-30 ; the growth of method,
116; the psychological method, 120;
general methods in thought, 155-9 5
methods employed in solving problems,
156-7 ; method applied to the study of
after-images, 210; method applied to
observation, memory and thought, 234-
9 ; inference, 264 ; method as applied
to the investigation of the will, 299 ;
a danger to be guarded against, 304 ;
method as applied to minimal sensations
and minimal images, 316 ; method in
science, 319, 364-5 ; method applied to
the problem of matter and mind, 322n ;
the absence of method, 351 ; the scientific
method, consciously applied, 399 ; a
method of studying the child mind, 412 ;
the scientific method in psychology, 447,
Mind and body, the relation of, 323-4,
370, 504 ; mind and matter, the relation
of, 324-6, 367-70, 504 ; the nature of
mind, 330-2 ; mentioned, 365.
Momentum, the neural nature of, 182-3 >
momentum distinguished from other
states, 280 ; mentioned, 420.
Monism, the problem of, 367-70 ; monism
and parallelism, 369, 370.
Monocular and binocular vision, described,
21 1-3 ; mentioned, 339.
Monotony in movement excludes sensa-
tions, 55 ; monotony and memory, 225 ;
monotony induces sleep, 425 ; monotony
in the division of labour, 427.
Moods, the nature of, 179 ; moods largely
determine the drift of thought, 276-9 ;
depressing and spirited moods, 278 ;
moods and the various stages of life,
279 ; mentioned, 420, 505.
Motile, meaning of the term, 195-7 ; the
place of motile systems in the memory,
197-205.
Motion, as sensed, 203 ; as imaged, 203-
4 ; the nature of motion, 326-7 ; the
" sense " of motion, 327.
Motives, the nature of, 250 ; mentioned,
252, 266, 312; choice from weaker
motives, 305-7 ; needs are the real
motives, 307 ; action from special
motives, 307-8.
Motor aspect in emotion, 270.
Muscular activity as a part of brain
functioning, 233n ; the muscular strain
as an essential in sensing and thinking,
428, 499 ; the muscular tone is lowered
in dreams, 456, 466 ; motor activity as
attention-determined, 499-500.
Music, the aesthetic aspect of, 492 ; the
music of birds, 492.
Natural selection, referred to, 160, 172,
174, 258, 275, 277.
Necessity, mentioned, 326, 349-51.
Needs, meaning of the term, 42, 297 ;
satisfaction of a need, meaning of the
phrase, 42 ; the pressure of needs, 57 ;
mentioned, 82, 109, 127, 16S-9, 280,
308, 420, 429, 431 ; needs in habits,
loi ; thought represents the satisfaction
of needs, 15 1-2, 463; continuity of
thought as due to needs, 159 ; the origin
of needs and their classification, 160-1 ;
only a strong need overcomes obstacles,
166 ; secondary needs, 169-70 ; needs
determine our lines of activity, 249, 505,
506 ; needs, and not disturbances,
account for activity, 250-1, 252 ; pains
which are not connected with normal
needs are ignored, 254n ; the suppression
of disturbances is due to hereditary
needs, 258 ; minimal disturbances do
not interfere with needs, 258 ; needs as
supported by excitement and by the
necessity for being active, 278-9 ; needs,
belief and possibility, 283 ; periodic
needs, 284, 294, 329-30, 407-8 ; the
classification of needs, 284, 294-5, 408-9 ;
needs determine the will, 286 ; the nature
of needs, 296-7, 506 ; we are not
necessarily aware of our needs, 297 ;
definition of needs, 297 ; needs are the
real motives, 307 ; needs and values,
310 ; psychology only knows of needs,
319 ; psychology is the science of needs,
321 ; the self as the centre of needs,
329 ; the bodily aspect of needs, 334 ;
needs and genius, 396-7 ; needs and
character, 407-9 ; needs and association,
424 ; needs in dream-life, 449 ; dis-
tinctive needs in men and animals, 462-
4 ; obstacles to the satisfaction of needs,
5i8
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
466 ; the place of needs in attention-
determined activity, 46S, 469.
Negative case, the, meaning of the phrase,
Nervous system, the, and bodily activity,
Neural, ap])ertaining to the brain.
Neutral activity, nature of, 266-7.
Notion, meaning of the term, 41, 367.
Noumena, the nature of, 327-8, 352, 356n,
369-70.
Novels, why they are read, 497.
Novelty and familiarity, the nature of,
217-S ; their place in a;sthelics, 473, 844.
Object, meaning of the term, 41, 367.
Observation, the nature of the process of,
20 ; observation as systematically applied,
25-30 ; observation and attention, 75 ;
observation is teleologically determined,
^33' '95 > observation as essentially
organised, 192-3 ; correct observation
is the art of the specialist, 194; obser-
vation is guided by previous observation,
194 ; the primary and secondary field
of observation are alike in extent, 203,
428; the advantage of direct observation
in the storing of the memory, 228-9 ? the
value of direct ol)servalion, 235 ; obser-
vation of the process of thought, 423-4 ;
observation of familiar thoughts, 424n.
Old age, mentioned, 196, 294.
Opposed disturbance, meaning of the
phrase, 280; meniioned, 303, 318.
Opposite case, the, meaning of the phrase,
237-.
Optimism and pessimism, discussed, 254-5.
Orator, the art of the, and the beautiful,
491.
Order, the nature of, 3489.
Organised activity, meaning of the phrase.
Organised reaction, meaning of the phrase,
91. {See also Habit.)
Organised systems, meaning of the phrase,
42 ; sensations as always given in
organised systems, 56.
Organised trend, meaning of the phrase,
91.
Other minds, 357-9.
Pain. [See Disturbance.)
Pain nerves, alleged existence of, 245.
Pain sensations and other sensations, 242.
Parallelism, theory of, criticised, 172, 331,
333-5. 369. 3.70.
Parrots, as talking unconnectedly, 284n.
Part-connection, or belief, meaning of the
term, 164, 217.
Passing needs, described, 284, 295, 409,
505.
Past, as imaged, mentioned, 356.
Peculiar needs, described, 284, 295, 505 ;
mentioned, 409.
Percept, or to perceive, meaning of the
terms, 41, I22n.
Perception, the nature of, 174-5, 504'
Perennial needs, liescribed, 284, 294,''4o8,.
505.
Periodic needs, described, 2S4, 294, 329-
30, 407-S, 505.
Persistence in n;iture, 355-6.
Personal needs, 2.'- 4, 295, 408-9, 505.
Pers(_)nality and ihe freedom of the will,.
267n.
Pessimism and o[''iimism, discussed, 254-5.
Phantasms, the i.aiure of, 433-6 ; discussed,
456-62.
Phenomena, the nature of, 327-8, 352, 356,
3^9-
Physical and p^vchical, distinction between,.
35«-9.
Physical science and matter, 324 ; the re-
construction of physical science, 330 ;,
physical science and psychology, 366-7.
Physiological psychology, its present stale,
9- .
Physiology, yet of little use to psychology,
45n ; attention as physiologically defined,
64 ; the physiology of attention, 71, 428 ;
the physiology of thought, 145 ; the
physiological aspect of memory, 231-4 j
the physiology of pleasure-pain, 24cn.
Play, nature of, 499-500 ; motor activity as
essential to thought and action, 499 ;.
definition of play, 500 ; work and play,
SOI.
Pleasure. {See Disturbance.)
Points of view, their relation to needs and
disturbances, 254-5.
Political needs, described, 2S4, 295, 505 ;.
mentioned, 409.
Power, meaning of the term, 353 ;
mentioned, 365.
Present, the nature of the, 222-4.
Presentations, criticism of the theory of,
134-6, 332-3 ; mentioned, 173, 369, 42S,
429.
Primary systems, meaning of the terms,
40, 203 ; the matter of primary and
secondary systems is one, 200-1 ; primary
and secondary systems distinguished, 209,
Principles of action as overriding dis-
turbances, 273-6.
Prose and poetry, the aesthetics of, 487-91 ;
prose and poetry distinguished, 490- 1.
Psychical and physical, distinction between,
358.
Psychology, recent employment of the
term, 3n ; the foundations of present-day
psychology examined, 3-10; reflective
and physiological psychology are unsatis-
factory, 9 ; approaches to the study of
psychology, 14-5 ; psychology as a
practical subject, 20-3 ; definition of
psychology, 38, 296, 366; the extent of
the literature of psychology consulted,
38 ; a new psychological terminology,
39-42 ; psychology and analysis, 275 ;
psychology and a free will, 2S6 ; what
psychology treats of, 297, 507 ; is
psychology individualistic.'' 311; the
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
519
dangers of a popular psychology, 313 ;
the tripartite division in psychology
examined, 31S-21 ; psychology as the
science of needs, 321 ; psychology and
physical science, 366-7 : general psy-
chology, 366.
Psycho-physics, referred to, 9, 72n, 259 ;
the theory of psycho-physical parallelism
discussed, 333-5 ; psycho-physical me-
thods criticised, 447.
Quality, the nature of, 53.
Quantitative psychology, 31-4; criticism
of, 32-4, 447 ; quantitative and qualita-
tive psychology, 447.
Races, psychology of, referred to, 3, 261,
Rage, mentioned, 270.
295, 407, 478, 482, 491.
Read, the process in learning to, 220.
Reality, the place of, in the world series,
209 ; vividness is no test of reality, 220-
2 ; appearance and reality, 324, 327-8,
3S6n.
Reason, oljjeclion to the term, 353 ; the
place of reasoning in the dream-state, 441-
3 ; reason in animals, 465 ; reason in
children, 466 ; the nature ot reason, 466,
504 ; reasoning as need-determined re-
development, 481.
Recency, mentioned, 141, 144, 149, 153,
279, 283, 420, 505 ; the problem of
recency, 142-3 ; the nature of, 181-2 ;
recency memory, 206 ; recency in dreams,
439-40, 449-50, 456. _
Recognition, its superiority over re-col-
lection, 192 ; mentioned, 194, 207 ;
recognition memory, 206 ; recognition
without re-collection, 208, 463 ; recog-
nition as dependent on stability of
character, 406 ; primary and secondary
recognition distinguished, 463.
Relations, the nature of, 365.
Repetition, tendency to, in children, 206 ;
its place in the process of re- collection,
226, 234 ; mentioned, 232.
Representation, the term as used by Ward,
175- .
Resolutions, the nature of, 95n ; mentioned,
305-
Resolves, mentioned, 246, 312 ; the
limitations to resolves, 247 ; resolves, as
an item in an organised series, 299 ; the
nature of resolves, 301.
Rest, as excluding all sensations, 55.
Retrospection as a psychological method,
15 ; retrospection is introspection, 19.
Rules, to be applied in observation,
re-collection and thought : opposite case,
negative case, rule of degree and rule of
variety, 237-8.
Science, as due to the process of econo-
misation, I2in ; the attitude of science,
364 ; our notions of existence, 503-4.
Secondary systems, meaning of the phrase,
40, 203 ; the matter of piimary and
secondary systems is one, 200-1, 324n ;
primary and secondary systems dis-
tinguished, 209, 323 ; the primary and
the secondary field alike in extent, 222.
Self, the nature of, 310-1, 328-30, 504.
Self-determined change, meaning of the
phrase, 42.
Semi-advanced systems, meaning of the
phrase, 41, 59, 503.
Semi-connection, the nature of, 163-4.
Semi-opposed disturbance, meaning of the
phrase, 2S0 ; mentioned, 303, 318.
Sensations, the beginning or the threshold
of, 47-9 ; passing effects of casual
sensations, 48 ; sensations are absent
when the attention is diverted, 49 ; the
sources in nerve-endings of sensations
and images, 49 ; the sense problem,
50-7 ; sensations in the child, 51, 409-
10 ; sensations are said to possess
intensity, quality, feeling tone, extensity
and duration, 51 ; the term intensity is
not easily applied to sensations, 52 ; the
common factor in sensations, 53 ; sensa-
tions have no primitivequality of extensity,
55 ; six important conclusions as to the
nature of sensations, 55-7 ; classification
of sensations into elementary, semi-
advanced anti advanced systems, 57"9>
249, 503 ; absence of sensations in habits,
100 ; sensations are one with images,
136-7 ; sensations do not come first in
psychology, 173; sensations, as defined
by Suily, 174; the nature of sensations,
174-5, 207-8, 503 ; the matter of sensa-
tion and memory is one, 200 ; pleasure
and pain are neither sensations nor
feelings, 240-6, 276, 303 ; sensations and
feeling tone, 242 ; localised pain sensa-
tions and Comfort and discomfort, 242 ;
minimal sensations, 3i6n, 461 ; feelings,
emotions and sensations are fundament-
ally one, 319; the "sense" of motion,
327 ; indirect factors in sensations, 355 ;
discrimination and sub-consciousness
as regards sensations, 420 ; thought is
dependent on sensory stimuli, 426 ;
muscular strain as an essential in
sensation, 428 ; the moulding of sensa-
tions, 430-6 ; sight sensations with closed
eyes, 432-3. {See also Sense problem.)
Sense apparatus, the, explains nothing, 504.
"Sense" of effort is absent when the
attention is diverted, 56-7.
"Sense" of motion, mentioned, 327.
Sense problem, the, 50-7 ; there are more
than five senses, 50 ; the current
classification of sensations is unsatis-
factory, 50 ; all the senses except those
of sight and hearing constitute one group,
50 ; the last two form a separate group
in the adult, 51 ; attempts at unifying
the senses, 51, 342; the senses shade
into one another, 53 ; the classification
of systems, 57 ; simultaneous sensing
520
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
and imaging, 196-7; "sensory" and
" pliysical " material, 331 ; the sense
material is fundamentally one, 353-4 ;
the close relation of the various sensa-
tions, 354-5 ; the sensory tone is lowered
in dreams, 456, 466. [See also Sensa-
tions.)
Sentience, meaning of the term, San.
Setting, in dreams, 204, 450- 1, 456 ; as a
means of classifying systems, 14, 209 ;
a setting is usually absent in images, 221.
Sight, its place among other sensations,
50-1, 5S-9, 353-5 ; as objective, reflected
and imaged, 322-3 ; the space of sight
and touch, 347.
Similarity, association by, 141-52, 285,
424-
Similars, suggestion of, mentioned, 147.
Simplest case, its place in observation,
memory and thought, 236-8.
Sleep, dreamless, 67, 450, 451 ; sleep is
induced through rest or monotony, 425 ;
sleep as due to absence of effort, 426 ;
the state between waking and sleeping,
430-6 ; inattention leads to sleep, 457.
Smells, their place among other sensa-
tions, 50-1, 58-9, 353-5 ; smell imagery,
mentioned, 188 ; the nature of, 197-205 ;
smells are difficult to re-develop, 198 ;
smells in dreams, 440.
Somnambulism, mentioned, 433.
Sonnets, the, of Shakespeare analysed,
^ 373-88.
Space, as a relation, 209 ; space remains
the same whether oljjective, reflected or
imaged, 323 ; the nature of space, 336-
47 ; the narrow range of vision, 336 ;
the suggested size of objects, 336-7 ;
three-dimensional space, 337-40 ; the
notion of space in infants, 338 ; move-
ment and the sense of space, 338n ; the
looking-glass, monocular and binocular
vision, the stereoscope and shadows,
339 ; pictures and the three dimen-
sions, 339-40 ; two-dimensional space,
340-2 ; the development of the sense of
space, 342 ; what is meant by three
dimensions ? 342 ; the problem of a
fourth dimension, 342 ; empty space,
343 ; space as a relation between
systems, 343 ; the space of touch,
sound, etc., 343-4 ; imaged space,
344 ; space as a single expanse, 345 ;
minor characteristics as to space, 345-6 ;
the space of sight and touch, 347.
Speculation, and investigation, 10, 370 ;
speculation as an unsatisfactory method,
428 ; speculation in animal psychology,
465-
Spiritualism, mentioned, 259, 433 ; spiritu-
alism and hallucinations, 435 ; spiritual-
ism discussed, 456-62 ; the method of
going into trance, 457-8 ; the claims of
" mediums," 459-60 ; incorrect revela-
tions, 459 ; the effects of minimal atten-
tion, 461 ; "physical manifestations,"
461 ; the mediumislic type, 461 ; ex-
periment necessary in this subject, 462.
Spontaneity, the doctrine of, criiised, 418.
Standpoint, its place in observation,
memory and thought, 235-8.
Stereoscope, the, and binocular vision, 212.
Stigmata, mentioned, 257.
Strain, as felt, 61.
Sub-combination, meaningof the term, 175.
Sub-conscious activity, process of, 82-4 ;
mentioned, 153, 293 ; sub-conscious in-
fluence, 215 ; its nature and limitations,
420.
.Subject. i^See Ego.)
Subjective, feelings as, 242-3 ; disturbances
are not subjective, 257, 280 ; subjective
states and the will, 303 ; subjective
activity, mentioned, 333, 352.
Sublime, the beautiful and the, 469-70,
482-3 ; Burke, on the sublime, 470 ;
Ruskin, on the sublime in architecture,
478-9.
Summary of the whole work, 503-7.
Summary feeling, meaning of the phrase,
41 ; mentioned, 162, 177, 193, 197,
207, 452.
Surprise, as determined organically to
some extent, 263-4 ; mentioned, 270 ;
the effort factor in surprise, 317.
Syllogism, the nature of the, 157 ; men-
tioned, 300.
System, meaning of the term, 39, 40,
503 ; the term includes also desires,
emotions, volitions and thoughts, 125 ;
primary and secondary systems distin-
guished, 209 ; psychology only reveals
sj'stems in various combinations, 243.
Systems, as distributed, ch. 2 ; as organ-
ised, ch. 3 ; as need-satisfying, ch. 4 ;
as redeveloped, ch. 5 ; as disturbed,
ch. 6 ; as need-determined, ch. 7 ; as
unified, ch. 8 ; as individualised, ch. 9 ;
as classified, ch. 10 ; as attention-deter-
mined, ch. II.
Tastes, their place among other sensa-
tions, 50-1, 58-9, 353-5 ; as difficult to
redevelop, 198; taste-dreams, 440.
Telepath}', mentioned, 436.
Terminology, psychological, 39-42 ; the
chief pillars of a solid terminology, 40.
Terror, its relation to effort, 317.
Thinghood, meaning of the term, 243, 503.
Third dimension, as imaged, 203-4 ; three
dimensional space, 337-40 ; what is
meant by three dimensions? 342.
Thought ; all thought is organised, 56, 57,
114-20; thought and speech, 130-1,
424 ; thought represents the satisfac-
tion of needs, 151-2, 463, 505 ; the
thought currency has no standard value,
154 ; general methods in thought, 155-
9 ; thought as need-determined, 161 ;
thought is the reproduction of what is
relevant, 167, 496 ; habits as the basis
of thought, 167-9 '■> interdependence and
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
521
interaction in thought, 169-70 ; the
matter of thought, 197-205 ; the matter
of thought and action is one, 200-1 ; the
normal thought process is distinguished
by a low degree and restricted range of
Jictivity, 201 ; thinking in words, 204-5 »
the imperfection of average thought,
225 ; thought as tending to actualise
itself, 258-9 ; mentioned, 266, 283,
503 ; moods largely determine the drift
of thought, 276-9 ; thought as com-
pulsory, 278 ; subtle thoughts and
simple acts are both organised, 293 ;
thought and effort, 314, 466 ; normal
thinking requires effort, 316-7 ; thought
as imaged, 323 ; the highest class of
thought, 418-20; sub-conscious thought
analysed, 420; deliberateness in thought,
421-2; the nature of average thought,
422-5 ; solitary feelings and images as
representing thought, 425 ; thought; as
dependent on afferent activity, 425-8 ;
muscular strain as an essential in
thought, 428 ; efferent activity and
thought, 428-9 ; central activity and
thought, 429-30 ; thought in dream-
life, 448-9, 456 ; thought in trance,
458 ; thought as attention-determined,
496-9.
Thought reading, the principle of, 259 ; its
explanation, 461.
Tickling, the psychology of, 251, 495.
Time, as a relationship between systems,
209, 34S.
Touch systems, their place among other
systems, 50-I, 58-9, 353-5, 503; as
difficult to re-develop, 198 ; touch
systems in dreams, 440.
Transformed systems, meaning of the
phrase, 41.
Travel, why it fascinates, 427.
Trial and error, as a method of thought,
149-
Tripartite division in psychology, 318-21.
Ugliness, the nature of, 471.
Unconscious activity, discussed, 82-4, 100,
420.
Unconscious mind, mentioned, 84.
Understanding, the, objection to the term,
353-
Unexhausted systems, meaning of the
^ phrase, 41, 367, 504; mentioned, 135,
" 1.76, 297, 330, 331.
Unitary conception of things, 355, 369.
Units of various degrees, their nature, 175.
Unlike, the re-collection of what is, 143,
286.
Vision, the physiology of, 345-6 ; the
nature of closed-eye vision, 431-3 ;
vividness in closed-eye vision, 454-6 ;
closed-eye vision in mediums, 458.
Visual, meaning of the term, 195-7 ; the
place of visual systems in the memory,
197-205.
Vividness is no test of reality, 220-2.
Volition. (^-^Will.)
Waking ; the state between waking and
sleeping, 430-6.
Why, meaning of the terms, 365.
Will, and effort, their relation, 61-2 ; the
supposed omnipotence of the will, 247 ;
mentioned, 266, 503 ; personality and
the freedom of the will, 267n ; experi-
mental results, 282-6 ; the question of
a free will, 285-6, 351-2 ; effort and will,
285 ; psychology and a free will, 286 ;
the effect of volitions, 286-7 5 the will
is limited by capacity, 286-7 ! ^he will
as absolute, 287-8 ; the process in will-
ing, 287-8 ; definition of willing, 288,
312 ; movement follows when a need
flows into muscular channels, 2S9-90 ;
criticism of the ideo-motor theory, 291 ;
uniqueness in willing, 291 ; degrees in
willing, 291 ; keen willing may have no
effect, 291 ; to succeed, we must will
continuously, arduously and repeatedly,
291 ; the purity of the will, 292 ; will-
ing and aiming, 292-3 ; voluntary, in-
voluntary and non-voluntary activity,
293-6 ; actions cannot be divided into
voluntary and involuntary, 294 ; strenu-
ous willing and awareness or delibera-
tion, 295 ; contradictory needs, 295-6,
302 ; involuntary action, 296 ; depre-
ciating and appreciating the will value,
297-9 ; volitions and their results, 299 ;
the rule for the training of the will, 299 ;
the nature of deliberation, 299-301 ; the
nature of resolves, 301 ; will and desire
distinguished, 302 ; neural disturbances
and willing, 302-5 ; acts of will are fre-
quently absent, 305 ; choice from weaker
motive, 305-7 ; action from special
motives, 307-8 ; the self as willing,
309-11 ; will as assertion of a need,
31 1-3 ; all willing is organised, 313 ;
felt effort, 313-5 ; the "sense" of effort,
315-S ; the will as a department of psy-
chology, 319-21 ; volitions as imaged,
323 ; volitions in dreams, 438.
Witchcraft, mentioned, 433.
Wonder, the state of, 270.
Work, mentioned, 64 ; as a prime neces-
sity of our being, 429 ; leisure and work,
498 ; imagining as a preparation for work,
498 ; the child's work consists principally
in play, 499 ; work and play, 501.
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
The letter " ii " added to the number of a page indicates that the reference is to a footnote.
Abbott, on the nature of space, 337.
Abercromljic, mentioned, 136, 337, 443,
445n> 454-.
Adam, mentioned, I4n.
Addison, mentioned, 491.
Alison, on the nature of the beautiful,
4S5-
Allen, on the nature of pleasure-pain, 243 ;
on the nature of genius, 395, 401 ; men-
tioned, 400, 501, 502 ; on the nature of
the beautiful, 4S7.
AUin, 207, 502.
Angell, mentioned, 89, 121, 197.
Angelo, Michael, mentioned, 396n.
Anonymous, mentioned, 374, 375n, 38 1.
Anonymous [Mall, G. S.], 462.
Aristotle, mentioned, 4, 170; on the value
of good habits, 92n.
Arreat, mentioned, 239, 501.
Arrer, mentioned, 346.
Aschaffenburg, mentioned, 150.
Ashley, m.entioned, 346.
Aubert, mentioned, 197.
Avenarius, mentioned, I2in.
Bacon, on unscientific methods, 12 ; men-
tioned, 170, 490, 491 ; Bacon and
Shakespeare, 393.
Bailey, on introspection, iS ; on attention,
62 ; on the nature of space, 337.
Bain, on the principles of association, 6-7 ;
on writing one's signature with eyes
closed, 2in ; mentioned, 34, 64, 114,
146, 147, 151, 171, 174, 197, 243n,
267, 281, 283n, 291, 301, 321, 425n,
501-2; on attention, 62; on the re-
collection of what is salient, 148 ; on
the method of trial and error, 149; on
lecency, 181 ; on ideas as copies of
past experiences, 196 ; on the improve-
ment of the memory, 238 ; on the nature
of pleasure-pain, 243 ; on the nature of
emotions, 271 ; on the process of willing,
288 ; on the nature of desire, 302 ; on
disturbances as motives, 305 ; on the
distinction between the object world and-
the suijject world, 336 ; on sight as de-
pendent on touch, 346, 347 ; on the
study of the Subject as purely individual,
359 ; on matter and mind, 368 ; on the
highest beauty of visible objects as ob-
tained by lustre, 471-2 ; on the nature
of the Comic, 495.
Baldwin, on the principles of association,
7 ; on the importance of theories, 13 j
on the defects of introspection, 18; on
the nature of attention, 62 ; on attention
as voluntary, 66 ; mentioned, 197, 234,
403 ; on the process of willing, 288-9 >
on the nature of hallucinations, 436 ;
on the rapidity of dreams, 453 ; on
unity and variety in the beautiful, 472 ;
on a characteristic in the beautiful, 486 ;
on the nature of the Comic, 495-6.
Ballet, mentioned, 205.
Barnes, mentioned, 374, 375n, 387 j
quoted, 380, 381, 382.
Barnfield, mentioned, 374, 375n, 387.
Bastlan, mentioned, 9, 64, 321.
Baynes, mentioned, 389.
Beaumont, mentioned, 393.
Beaunis, mentioned, 121, 26in ; on the
nature of pleasure-pain, 243-4 ; on ex-
treme forms of pain, 255.
Beethoven, as a man of genius, 401.
Benard, mentioned, 502.
Beneke, mentioned, 8 ; on the value of
introspection, 18 ; on observation as an
art, 2in ; on experiment in psychology,
35 ; on the nature of attention, 62; on
the fundamental law of association, 147 ;
mentioned, 454.
Bentham, on the measurement of disturb-
ances, 269 ; mentioned, 30S.
Bentley, mentioned, 197.
Berger, mentioned, I02n.
Bergson, mentioned, 207, 496n.
Bergstrom, mentioned, 151, 234.
Berkeley, on the nature of general ideas»
129 ; on sensations as being in the
INDEX OF AUTHORS
525
service of instinct, 275n ; on the space
of sight and touch, 346 ; on matter and
mind, 367.
Berry, mentioned, 213.
Beitin, mentioned, 456.
Bettmann, mentioned, 34.
Biervliet, mentioned, iS6n, 197.
Bigham, on the relative value of memories,
234-
Binet, mentioned, 34, 89, 175, 197, 239,
257, 346 ; on the law of fusion, 150 ; on
alter-images, 213.
Binz, on the unreasonableness of dreams,
442 ; on dreams as always useless, 453-4'
Birch, mentioned, 89.
Bjornson, mentioned, 491.
Bodenstedt, mentioned, 388.
Bohm, mentioned, 239.
Boirac, on the word Psychology, 3n ;
mentioned, 14, 456.
Bolton, F. E. , mentioned, 46n ; on the
accuracy of re-collection, 234.
Bolton, T. L. , mentioned, 234.
Bonaiclii, mentioned, 175.
Bosanquet, on variety and unity in
aesthetics, 472 ; on the beauty of char-
acteristic expression, 478 ; on the
beautiful as that which is expressive, 486 ;
mentioned, 502.
Eouillier, mentioned, 114, 234n ; on
pleasure-pain, 244 ; on a qualified
optimism, 255 ; on desire as due to
disturbances, 305 ; on the ethics of
dreams, 445.
Bourdon, mentioned, 151, i86n, 197, 207,
28 1 ; on space as a visual phenomenon,
346-
Bradley, on the principles of association, 6;
on llie failure of n.ovement in dreams,
56, 447 ; on the nature of attention, 62 ;
mentioned, S9, 147, 151, 22on, 239, 311,
321, 330n, 462 ; on the process of willing,
289 ; on appearance and reality, 328n ;
on the nature of the beautiful, 487.
Brandes, mentioned, 389.
Braunschweiger, mentioned, 89.
Breese, mentioned, 257.
Brentano, on the defects of introspection,
16 ; on attending to one thing at a time,
79 ; on the nature of presentations, 135 ;
mentioned, 176, 283n.
Brochard, mentioned, 151.
Brown, mentioned, 6, 136, 146, 150, 171 ;
on the fundamental law of association,
147 ; on the law of contiguity, 147 ; on
secondary principles of association, 148 ;
on emotion and association, 148; on
recency, 181 ; on the place of associations
in aesthetics, 485 ; on the nature of the
Comic, 495.
Browning, mentioned, 77, 489 ; quoted,
487.
Bryant, Mrs., mentioned, 151.
Bryant, W. C, mentioned, 4S7.
Buckhurst, Lord, mentioned, 388.
Buddha, as a man of genius, 399.
Burdach, on the elements of dream-life,
433 ; on reasonable dreams, 443 ; on a
curious dream, 454.
Burke, on the sublime and the beautiful,
470, 485.
Buinham, mentioned, 234.
Butler, on immortality, 363.
Byron, Lord, as a man of genius, 401.
C, J., mentioned, 374, 375n.
Calderwood, on reasoning in animals, 465.
Calkins, Miss, on dreams, 32 ; mentioned,.
33, 151, 447 ; on the trivial in dreams,.
438-
Cappie, on the nature of attention, 62 j
mentioned, 64.
Cardaillac, mentioned, 6.
Carlyle, mentioned, 491.
Carpenter, mentioned, 87n, io3n, loSn,.
26in, 291, 299n ; on the responsibility
of the ego, iijn.
Carriere, mentioned, 502.
Cattell, mentioned, 34, 89, 151.
Chapman, mentioned, 374, 375n, 3S7.
Charcot, mentioned, 197.
Chaucer, as a man of genius, 401.
Chesley, on the mind as normally un-
conscious during slumber, 451.
Child, mentioned, 1 81.
Chmielowsky, on the process of willing, 2S9;
on deliberating, 301.
Claviere, on the rapidity of dreams, 453.
Cliftbrd, on the universe as consisting of
mind-stuff, 325n ; on the nature of force,
3S3n.
Clodd, mentioned, 454.
Coiegrove, mentioned, iS6n.
Coleridge, mentioned, 389.
Collin, mentioned, 470n.
Collins, mentioned, 389.
Comte, on the defects of introspection, 15;.
mentioned, 35.
Confucius, as a man of genius, 399 ; his
system of Ethics, 4CO.
Constable, mentioned, 374, 375n, 381, 387;
quoted, 377, 381, 3S3, 384.
Cook, mentioned, 7on.
Cordes, mentioned, 151.
Cornelias, C. S. , mentioned, 346.
Cornelius, H., mentioned, I02n, 151.
Copernicus, mentioned, 399.
Couturat, mentioned, 502.
Cox, on the passage between waking and
sleeping as momentary, 433n ; on dreams
as reasonable, 443 ; mentioned, 45 1 ! ^i^
the rapidity of dreams, 453.
Crookes, mentioned, 461.
Crow, on Shakespeare's Sonnets, 374 ; oti
the sonnet form, 375".
D., L., on the rapidity of dreams, 453.
Daniel, mentioned, 374, 375n, 385, 403 %
quoted, 379, 380, 381, 3S3, 385-6.
Daniels, mentioned, 47n.
Dante, as a man of genius, 401.
Darlington, mentioned, 89.
524
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Darwin, mentioned, 12, 253n, 401 ; his
genius analysed, 401-2.
Davidson, mentioned, 175.
Davies, H., mentioned, 321.
Davies, J., mentioned, 374, 375n.
Dearborn, mentioned, 197, 207, 2S1, 433.
Dechambre, mentioned, 456.
I^effner, mentioned, 151.
Dekker, mentioned, 391 n.
Delabarre, mentioned, 64.
Delboeuf, mentioned, 436 ; on the nature
of dreams, 455-6.
Delius, mentioned, 3SS, 389.
De (^uincey, mentioned, 3S9.
Descartes, his four rules, 40; mentioned, 170.
Destutt de Tracy, on the nature of habit,
92n ; mentioned, 114.
Dewey, on the essential characteristic of
attention, 62; mentioned, 2S1, 3i8n ;
on the nature of eflort, 3i5n.
Dickens, as a manof genius, 401 ; mentioned,
491.
Dissard, mentioned, 64.
Dodge, mentioned, 197 ; on thinking in
words, 205.
Dohrn, mentioned, 89.
Donkin, mentioned, 502.
Donne, mentioned, 374, 375n, 387.
Doring, mentioned, 502.
Dowden, mentioned, 388, 389.
Drayton, mentioned, 374, 375n, 391 ;
quoted, 380, 386.
Drew, mentioned, 89.
Drobisch, on voluntary and involuntary
attention, 66.
Du Bois-Reymond, mentioned, io2n ; on
exercise, I03n ; on matter and mind,
3250-
Dugas, mentioned, 197, 224n, 281, 451,
456.
Dumas, mentioned, 125, 2S1.
Dumont, on the nature of habit, 92n ;
mentioned, 114, 311 ; on the nature of
pleasure-pain, 244 ; the relation of eftbrt
to the beautiful, 469n ; on the nature of
the Comic, 495.
Dunan, mentioned, 346.
Dunning, mentioned, 388.
Dwelshauvers, mentioned, 89.
Dyce, mentioned, 389.
Ebbi.nghaus, on defects in introspection,
16 ; on experiments with nonsense
syllables, 32, 233 ; mentioned, 33, 213,
220n.
Eckener, mentioned, 7on.
Egger, on defects in introspection, 18 ; on
thedistinction between special and general
habits, Il9n ; mentioned, 128, 346, 451 ;
on the rate of speech in thought, 222 ;
on the rapidity of dreams, 453.
Eliot, George, mentioned, 491.
Elze, mentioned, 3S9.
Emerson, mentioned, 490, 491.
Erdmann, mentioned, 197.
Ettlinger, mentioned, 502.
Fbchnkr, mentioned, 31, 34, 452n, 502 ;
his definition of Weber's law, 53 ; on
re-membering colours, tastes and smells,
I98n ; on light-dust, 432n ; on the nature
of dreams, 438 ; on the place of pleasure
in aesthetics, 470 ; on variety and unity
in aesthetics, 472 ; on the place of associa-
tion in aesthetics, 485 ; on the aesthetic
principles, 486 ; on the Characteristic,
486.
Fer^, mentioned, 64, 281 ; on ideas as
weak repetitions of sensations, 197 ; on
the nature of pleasure-pain, 244 ; on the
process of willing, 2S9.
Ferri, mentioned, 4n.
Ferrier, mentioned, 31 ; on the motor
centres as the basis of attention, 64 ; on
eye movements in imaging sights, 2C)on ;
on feigning grief, 202.
Fischer, mentioned, 389, 496n.
Fletcher, G. , mentioned, 374, 375n.
Fletcher, J., mentioned, 393.
Flourens, on the sanity of genius, 402.
ford, E., mentioned, 346.
Ford J., mentioned, 393.
Foster, examples from his Physiology to
illustrate the nature of scientific method,
25-9 ; mentioned, 31, 7 in, 428n ; on
the nature of habit, 92n ; on the function
of the human organism, 160 ; on the
nature of pain, 244.
Fouillee, on the effect of attention, 62 ;
mentioned, 64, 321 ; on matter and mind,
368.
Franck, on the art of re-membering, 238.
Franklin, mentioned, 213.
Franz, mentioned, 213, 234.
Furnivall, mentioned, 388, 389.
Galileo, mentioned, 4, 396n, 399.
Galton, on the nature of general ideas, 129 ;
mentioned, 131, 188, I90n, 2i3n, 400,
401, 456 ; on the power of visualising,
197 ; on the nature of genius, 395.
Gassendi, mentioned, 92n.
Gerard, on the nature of genius, 394-5.
Gervinus, mentioned, 388, 389.
Gibbon, mentioned, 491.
Gibson, mentioned, 40.
Giessler, mentioned, 13, 222, 438, 445,
45on ; his non-quantitative analysis, 33,
Gillette, mentioned, 213.
Gilman, mentioned, 281.
Girycki, mentioned, 308.
Glass, mentioned, 348n.
Goblot, mentioned, 151, 456; on dreams
between waking and sleeping, 451.
Goddard, mentioned, 259n.
Godferneaux, on the association of feelings,
125 ; on the nature of emotion, 270.
Goldsmith, mentioned, 487.
Gdthe, as a man of genius, 401 ; mentioned,
433-
Graffunder, mentioned, 454,
Granville, mentioned, 197 : on how to
re-member, 225, 238.
INDEX OF AUTHORS
525
Gratacap, on habit as enfeebling passion
and strengthening action, 1 14 ; on the
nature of niemcry, 2i5n.
Gray, mentioned, 487.
Green, mentioned, 308.
Greene, mentioned, 388.
Greenwood, on the nature of slumber
pictures, 433 ; on dreams as reasonable,
443 ; on the value of dreams, 454 ;
mentioned, 454.
Greville, Lord, mentioned, 374, 375n.
Griffin, mentioned, 374, 375n; quoted, 379.
Griffing, mentioned, 89.
Grote, mentioned, 2S1.
Gruithuisen, mentioned, 433.
Guardia, mentioned, 456.
GutToult, mentioned, 486n.
Guizot, mentioned, 389.
Gulliver, mentioned, 451.
Gurney, on the use of " subjects " in music,
492 ; mentioned, 502.
Guyau, mentioned, 491, 502.
Haffner, on the ethics of dreams, 445 ;
mentioned, 454.
Hagen, mentioned, 403, 456.
H[all], G. S., mentioned, 462.
Hall, mentioned, 502.
Hallam, F. M., mentioned, 440.
Hallam, H., mentioned, 389.
Halliwell-Phillips, mentioned, 389, 391.
Hamilton, mentioned, 4n, 146, 147, i86n,
234n ; on the principles of association,
6 ; on the defects in introspection, 17 ;
on intensity of consciousness, 6on ; on
attention as voluntary, 66 ; on the neces-
sity of attending, 67n ; on attending to
several things at a time, 79 ; on the
formation and the nature of habits, 102 ;
on the nature of pleasure-pain, 244 ; on
the process of willing, 289 ; on colour
and form, 346 ; on dreams as accompany-
ing all sleep, 451.
Hamlin, mentioned, 64.
Hansen, mentioned, 462.
Harrison, mentioned, 491.
Hartenberg, mentioned, 281.
Hartley, on the principles of association,
5 ; mentioned, 6, 136, 171.
Hartmann, his theory of the unconscious,
84 ; mentioned, 255.
Harvey, mentioned, 374, 375n, 387.
Hawkins, mentioned, 234.
Hazlitt, mentioned, 388.
Heerwagen, mentioned, 456.
Hegel, on intuitions, 2i4n.
Heinrich, on defects in introspection, 16 ;
mentioned, 34, 52n, 324n ; on the nature
of attention, 62.
Heller, mentioned, 197.
Helmholtz, mentioned, 31, 213, 492 ; on
after-image experiments, 2ion ; on the
nature of positive and negative after-
images, 2 ion ; on the method of observing
complementary images, 21 in.
Henkle, mentioned, l86n.
Henri, mentioned, 34, I99n, 239.
Henri, V. and C., mentioned, i86n.
Herbart, on the principles of association,
7 ; accounts of tletbart's teachings, I5n ;
on the defects in introspection, 15 ;
mentioned, 35, 171 ; on the nature of
attention, 62 ; on attention as partly
voluntary and partly involuntary, 66 ;
Associationists and Herbartians, 87n ;
account of Herbarl's psychology, 136 ;
on the nature of sensations, 175 ; on the
preservation of ideas, 234n ; on the nature
and place of emotions, 270 ; on feeling,
willing and desiring, 289 ; on observing,
oneself in falling asleep, 433n.
Hering, mentioned, 92n.
Herrick, mentioned, 234.
Hess, mentioned, 213.
Heubel, mentioned, 428n.
Heymans, mentioned, 257, 335n, 502.
Hibben, on sensory stimulation by attention,
68n.
Hildebrandt, on the subject matter of
dreams, 437 ; on the ethics of dreams,
445 ; mentioned, 451 ; on the rapidity of
dreams, 453 ; on the value of dreams,
454 ; on the vividness of dreams, 455.
Hillebrand, mentioned, 346.
Hirn, mentioned, 470n.
Hirsch, on the sanity of genius, 402.
Hitschmann, mentioned, 197, 456.
Hobbes, on the principles of association, 4 ;.
mentioned, 5, 7, 170.
Hobhouse, mentioned, 466.
Hobson, mentioned, 398n.
Hodder, on past and present, ign ; men-
tioned, 308.
Hodgson, R., mentioned, 459n, 462.
Hodgson, Shadworth, on the principles of
association, 6 ; on the nature of attention,
62 ; on the complexity of ideas, 135 ;
mentioned, 147 ; on secondary principles
of association, 148 ; on the process of
willing, 289 ; on the nature of desire,
302 ; on the rapidity of dreams, 453.
Hoffding, on the nature of attention, 62 ;
on attention as voluntary and involuntary,
66; mentioned, I02n, 114, 151, 175,
207, 308 ; on the association of feelings,
125, 178 ; on the nature of pleasure-
pain, 244 ; on the nature of emotions,
371 ; on sensations as being in the service
of instinct, 275n ; on the process of
willing, 289 ; on wishing and resolving,
302n.
Hofler, mentioned, 64.
Holinshed, mentioned, 388.
Holmes, mentioned, 490.
Horwicz, on the primitive sense, 51 ;
mentioned, 114, 281 ; on the nature of
pleasure-pain, 244 ; on the senses as
modifications of the pleasure-pain sense,
275n.
Houston, mentioned, 234.
Howe, mentioned, 151.
Hudson, mentioned, 3891:1.
«;26
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Hugo, mentioned, 491.
Iluiiie, on the principles of association, 7 ;
mentioned, 7, 35, 146, 171, 175, I78n,
491 ; on the defects in introspection,
15; on ex])eriment in psychology, 35;
on the nature of general ideas, 129; on
forcible and feeble perceptions, 174 ; on
matter and mind, 367.
Huxley, on the nature of general ideas,
129; on matter and mini, 368; on the
nature of dream-]5ictures, 455.
Hylan, mentioned, 64, 70n.
Hysloji, mentioned, 28 1, 346.
Ireland, on hallucinations as socially
determined, 435.
Irons, on emotion as distinct from cogni-
tion, pleasure-pain and conation, 270 ;
mentioned, 281.
James, on the principles of association,
7 ; mentioned, 8, 35, 46n, I43n, 147,
151, i66n, I73n, 2i8n, 270, 281, 301,
311, 347, 400, 401, 461 ; on the defects
in introspection, 18 ; on the effects of
special effort, 30 ; on exlensity, 54 ; on
the nature of attention, 62 ; on attend-
ing to one thing at a time, 79 ; on the
value of good habits, 92n ; on the
nature of habit, I03n ; on producing
changes in habits, io7n ; on the nature
of gener.il images, I29n ; on impartial
redintegration, 147 ; on topical associa-
tion, 149 ; on sensation and perception,
175 ; on the improvement of the memory,
238 ; on the nature of emotion, 271 ; on
sensations as being in the service of
instinct, 275n ; on the efficacy of pleasure-
pain, 276 ; on the process of willing,
289 ; on fleeting notions and express
fiats, 294 ; on disturbances and ideo-
motor action, 305 ; on a supernormal
will, 31S ; on appearances and reality,
328 ; on the stuff of space and its
measurement, 346n ; on the mind and
the nervous system, 368 ; on the nature
of genius, 395 ; on sudden showers of
men of genius, 401 ; on minimal atten-
tion, 461.
Janet, mentioned, 346-7.
Jastrow, mentioned, 46n, 151, 462.
Jerusalem, mentioned, 151.
Jesus of Nazareth, as a man of genius,
399-400.
Jevons, on the advisability of employing
hypotheses, 11 ; on the failures of
the alchemists, 12 ; on his logical
theories, 158 ; on good and bad " cram,"
186.
Jodl, on introspection, 16 ; mentioned,
114 ; on the nature of pleasure-pain,
244 ; on the process of willing, 289.
Johnson, mentioned, 243n, 2S1.
Joly, mentioned, 281 ; on the nature of
genius, 395-6 ; quoting St. Beuve, 401 ;
on the sanity of genius, 402.
Jost, mentioned, 151, 239.
Judd, mentioned, 46n, 347.
Kant, on the defects in introspection, 16 ;
mentioned, 319, 345, 348, 369 ; on
phenomena and noumena, 327 ; on the
problems of the pure reason, 351 ; on
matter and mind, 367 ; Kant and the
finality of his Critique, 370 ; on the
beautiful and the useful, 470 ; on the
beautiful as fixed, 477 ; on the nature of
the Comic, 495.
Ke.Us, mentioned, 379.
Kennedy, mentioned, 239.
Kepler, mentioned, 399.
Kiesow, mentioned, igSn.
Kirkpatrick, on verbal and direct memory,
234 ; mentioned, 321.
Knox, mentioned, 400.
Kohn, on the sphere of attention, 60.
Koilert, mentioned, 34Sn.
Kozaki, mentioned, 89.
Kraepelin, mentioned, 502.
Krause, mentioned, 502.
Kreibig, on the nature of attention, 62.
Kries, mentioned, 344n.
Kroner, mentioned, 281.
Kiilpe, mentioned, 5on, 28 1 ; on the
nature of attention, 62, 66n ; on
properties, states and relations, 365.
Kyd, mentioned, 388.
L[inch], mentioned, 374, 375n.
Lachelier, mentioned, 158.
Ladd, on the principles of association, 8 ;
on the uses and limitations of introspec-
tion, 18 ; on the sphere of attention, 60 ;
on the nature of attention, 62 ; on no
attention without previous attention,
72n ; on the nature of pleasure-pain,
244 ; on the process of willing, 2S9 ; on
visual dreams, 433.
Lalande, mentioned, 89.
Lamb, mentioned, 389 ; on the sanity of
genius, 402.
Landmann, mentioned, 64.
Lange, C. G., mentioned, 270 ; on the
nature of emotion, 271.
Lange, K., mentioned, 502.
Lange, N., mentioned, 7on.
Laou-tze, mentioned, 400.
Laplace, mentioned, 398.
Lasson, mentioned, 239.
Lay, mentioned, 197.
Le Comte, mentioned, 213.
Lee, on Shakespeare's Sonnets, 374-5 ;
mentioned, 381, 390; on Shakespeare's
greatness, 389.
Lehmann, mentioned, 7on, 207, 281, 462.
Leibnitz, mentioned, 3i6n.
Lewes, mentioned, 9, 31, 175, 400n ; on
introspection as a psychological method,
18.
Lewey, mentioned, 239.
Lilly, quoted, 382 ; mentioned, 3SS.
Lindley, mentioned, 321,
INDEX OF AUTHORS
527
-Lipps, mentioned, 8, 46n, 311, 321, 338;
in defence of introspection, 18 ; on the
value of quantitative statements, 33n ;
on attention as a stable quantity, 60 ;
on attending to one thing at a time, 79,
99n ; on unconscious activity, 82n ; on
the fundamental law of association, 147 ;
on the nature of pleasure-pain, 244 ;
on the process of willing, 289.
Locke, on the principle of association, 5 ;
on the nature of habit, 8, 92n ; men-
tioned, 40, 120, 157, 158, 170, 319;
on the necessity ofattending continuously,
67n ; on the nature of general ideas,
128-9 ; on the fading of memories,
i89n, 224n ; on the memory of superior
created intellectual beings, 234n.
Lodge, O., mentioned, 461, 462.
Lodge, T., mentioned, 374, 375n ; quoted,
382.
Lombroso, on genius as a neurosis, 402.
Lorrain, on the rapidity of dreams, 453.
Lotre, on the principle of association, 8,
147 ; mentioned, 47n, 55n, 37on ; on
the development of judgment, 1150;
on the nature of memory, 193.
Loveday, mentioned, 321.
Luther, mentioned, 400.
Macario, mentioned, 451, 454.
MacDougall, mentioned, 64.
Macfarlane, on the occasions of dreaming,
451-
Mach, mentioned, I2in, 327, 348n ; on
subjectivity, 243 ; on matter, 325 ; on
the self, 33on ; on the goal of science,
364 ; on the nature of attention, 428.
Macnish, on dreams as fanciful, 442 ; on
dreams as reflecting waking life, 445 ;
on dreaming as a state of partial slumber,
451-
Magnus, mentioned, 53n.
Maillard, mentioned, 456.
Maine de Biran, on the effects of habit,
92n.
Malapert, mentioned, 207.
Manaceine, mentioned, 456.
Mantegazza, on pleasure-pain, 244-5.
Marbe, mentioned, 7on.
Marchesini, mentioned, 131.
Marillier, mentioned, 64, 321 ; on hal-
lucination and reality, 436.
Marlow, mentioned, 388.
Marshall, on the nature of pleasure-pain,
245 ; mentioned, 245, 246, 281, 502 ;
on the nature of emotion, 271 ; on the
separation of pleasure-pain from the
emotions, 281 ; on the nature of the
beautiful, 486-7.
Marston, mentioned, 389 ; quoted, 391-3.
MarLineau, mentioned, 308.
Martins, mentioned, 89.
Mason, mentioned, 243n, 281.
Massey, mentioned, 388, 389.
Massinger, mentioned, 393 ; quoted, 488.
Maudsley, mentioned, 9, 31 ; on the
defects in introspection, 16 ; on the
nature of attention, 62 ; on attention as
voluntary and involuntary, 66.
Maury, on the formative element m
dreams, 433 ; mentioned, 440, 447 ; on
the ethics of dreams, 445 ; on the
rapidity of dreams, 453.
Meinong, mentioned, 175.
Mercier, mentioned, 281.
Meres, on Shakespeare, 391.
Mervoyer, mentioned, 4n ; on contiguity
as continuity, i42n.
Meumann, mentioned, 348n, 502.
Meyer, mentioned, 403.
Mezes, on the nature of pleasure-pain, 245.
Michelson, on the profoundness of sleep,
451-
Middleton, mentioned, 239n.
Mill, James, on the principle of association,
6 ; on the nature of attention, 63 ; on the
contents of ideas, 124; on the nature of
general ideas, 128 ; mentioned, 135, 146,
171, 174, 291 ; on the process of associa-
tion, 149 ; on the process in re-collection,
2i6n; on the nature of pleasure-pain,
245 ; on the process in willing, 2S9-90 ;
on the nature of desire, 302.
Mill, J. S., on the principles of association,
6 ; on introspection and retrospection,
17 ; mentioned, 146, 157, 158, 171, 175,
269, 308 ; criticism of his canons of in-
duction, 158 ; on space as being one with
time 345n ; on colour and form, 346.
Milton, mentioned, 487, 490, 491.
M'Lennan, mentioned, 2S1.
Moliere, mentioned, 120.
Monroe, mentioned, 440.
Montgomery, mentioned, 347.
Moore, mentioned, 89.
Moreau, on genius as a special nervous
disease, 402.
Morgan, Lloyd, on the principles of associa-
tion, 7 ; on the province of the psycho-
logist, 10 ; on legitimate speculation, 10 ;
on introspection as impossible, 17 ; on the
nature of attention, 63 ; on the term
Sub-conscious, 82n ; on the frailty of the
memory, 184 ; on differences in memories,
186 ; mentioned, 222n ; on pain-nerves,
245 ; on matter and mind, 36S.
Morley, mentioned, 389.
Morris, on the beautiful, 486.
Mosso, mentioned 271.
Moyer, mentioned, 89.
Midler, F. M., on thought without speech,
131.
Miiller, G. E., mentioned, 239.
Miiller, ]., on the nature of dream pictures,
433 ; on hallucinations with open eyes,
436 ; mentioned, 447.
Miiller, R., mentioned, 347.
Mumford, on dreams as tanciful, 442 ; on
the rapidity of dreams, 453.
Mtinsterberg, on introspection as a psycho-
logical method, 18, 19 ; mentioned, 34,
48, 7on, 89, 151, 344n, 348n ; on the
528
INDEX OF AUTHORS
relative value of memories, 234 ; on
sensations as essential factors in emotion,
270 ; on the process in willing, 290 ; on
the distinction between \shat is physical
and what is psychical, 358 ; on life as
observed and lived, 365-6.
Murray, mentioned, loin ; on the bodily
aspect of sensations, 334.
Nahi.owsky, on introspection as impos-
sible, 16 ; on the nature of pleasure-pain,
245-
Nash, mentioned, 3S8.
Navillc, mentioned, I4, 502.
Nelson, on a method of preventing objec-
tionable dreams, 44Sn ; on a sex curve in
dreams, 447.
Netschajefl, mentioned, 239.
Newbold, mentioned, 462.
Newton, mentioned, 5, 12, 400, 401 ; on
the use of hypotheses, 13 ; his genius,
399-
Nichols, mentioned, 281.
Nisbet, on genius as a nerve-disorder, 402.
Nordau, on eminent men, 395 ; on the
nature of genius, 396 ; on genius and
insanity, 402.
Okersteiner, mentioned, 64.
Pace, mentioned, 7on.
Passy, mentioned, I98n.
St. Paul, on speaking with tongues, 457.
Paulhan, mentioned, 5n, 150, 171, 177,
lySn, 197, 295n, 301, 311, 3i8n, 502;
on the principles of association, 8 ; on the
defects in introspection, 18 ; on attending
to one thing at a time, 79 ; on conveni-
ence as the associative principle, 148 ;
on systematic association, 149 ; on the
perfect individual, 267n ; on the reason
for mental unity, 309n ; on mental dis-
cord, 318 ; on the rapidity of dreams,
453-
Payot, mentioned, 175, 281.
Pearson, mentioned, I2in, 364n ; on ex-
plaining, and on the nature of science,
365-
Peel, mentioned, 388.
Percy, mentioned, 374, 37Sn.
Pfaff, mentioned, 454.
Pfander, mentioned, 321.
Pfltiger, mentioned, 428n,
Philippe, mentioned, igin, 197.
Phinney, mentioned, 440.
Pick, on the memorising of grammatical
exceptions, 239.
Pierce, A. II., mentioned, 89, 344n.
Pierce, E., mentioned, 502.
Pillsbury, mentioned, 89.
Pilzecker, mentioned, 65, 239.
Plutarch, mentioned, 388.
Podmore, mentioned, 461.
Pope, mentioned, 487.
Prevost, mentioned, 456.
Preyer, mentioned, 5in, 41 in, 45in, 462 ;
on the sense of position, 55n ; on the
field of attention 6on.
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research, mentioned, 461.
Ptolemy, mentioned, 399.
Purkinje, mentioned, 456.
(^)UAIN, on the weight of male brains, 7in.
Radestock, mentioned, 121, 443, 454 ; on
the sanity of genius, 402 ; on control over
dreams, 445n.
Raehlmann, mentioned, 197.
Raphael, mentioned, 397 ; as a man of
genius, 401.
Rauh, mentioned, 281.
Ravaisson, mentioned, 1 14.
Reid, on impulsiveness as a mark of habit,
92n ; on matter and mind, 367.
Ribot, mentioned, I5n, 125, 131, i7Sn,
188, 209n, 267, 440 ; on introspection
as an uncertain guide, 18; on attention
as an exceptional state, 61 ; on attention
acting always by means of muscles, 65 ;
on attention as voluntary and involuntary,
66 ; on the nature of pleasure-pain, 245 ;
on reason as subsidiary to emotions, 270.
Richardson, mentioned, 45in.
Richet, mentioned, 234n, 281.
Richter, mentioned, 490, 491.
Rieger, on the process in willing, 290.
Rigg, mentioned, iin.
Rive, mentioned, 347.
Robert, on the nature of dreams, 437 ; on
the limits of dreaming, 451 ; on the value
of dreams, 4';4 ; mentioned 454.
Robertson, Croom, mentioned, 4n, 347 ; on
the introspective method, 18 ; on habits
as automatic, loin ; on association and
reveries, i46n ; on the nature of pleasure-
pain, 245 ; on the process in willing,
290 ; on willing as due to pleasure-pain,.
305-
Robertson, J. M., mentioned, 389n.
Robinson, mentioned, 347.
Rollett, mentioned, 213.
Rolph, on the struggle for comfort as a
principle of selection, i2on.
Rosenbaum, mentioned, 45 in.
Rosenkranz, mentioned, 403.
Ross, mentioned, 234.
Royse, on genius and heredity, 395 ; on
genius as influencing environment, 401.
Rumelin, mentioned, 114, 121 ; on in-
stincts, 160.
Ruskin, on the art in the great cathedrals,
398 ; on variety and unity in cesthetics,
473 ; on familiarity as constituting beauty,
473 ; on the beauty of a steep bank of
loose earth, 478 ; on the sublime in archi-
tecture, 478-9 ; on children and their
card-houses, 482n ; on the nature of the
sublime, 483-4 ; on technique and the
beautiful, 484n ; on the characteristics of
the beautiful, 486 ; on the sense material
in aesthetics, 492.
INDEX OF AUTHORS
529
Sanborn, mentioned, 403.
Sanctis, mentioned, 65.
Sanford, mentioned, 447.
Santayana, mentioned, 502.
Schmick, mentioned, 454.
Schneider, on the process in willing, 290 ;
on choosing and deliberating, 30in.
Scholz, mentioned, 456.
Schopenhauer, mentioned, 255.
Schubert, mentioned, 454.
Schubert-Soldern, mentioned, 239, 281,321.
Schumann, mentioned, 239, 348n.
Schvvartzkopft", mentioned, 13, 445 ; on
dreams of tastes and odours, 440 ; on the
nature of dreams, 44Sn ; on the rapidity
of dreams, 453 ; on the vividness of
dreams, 455 ; on engrossment as produc-
ing liveliness, 455.
Scott, as a man of genius, 401 ; mentioned
491.
Scripture, mentioned, 34, 151, 175, 197,
281.
Secor, mentioned, 197.
Sergi, mentioned, 271, 281.
Shakespeare, quoted, 292n, 373, 377, 378,
382, 3S3, 384 ; his Sonnets discussed
373 ft. ; Shakespeare and the sonnet,
373-5 ; Shakespeare and the sonnet form,
375-6 ; peculiar sonnets in Shakespeare,
376-8 ; his ctioice language, 378-84 ; his
insight, 384-6 ; the object of his sonnets,
386-7 ; the place of his sonnets, 387-8 ;
Shakespeare as dramatist, 388-93 ;
Shakespeare and his predecessors, 388 ;
Shakespeare and Bacon, 393 ; mentioned,
394. 397, 399. 403. 406, 407, 408, 410,
411 ; on the darkness which the blind do
see, 431 ; on the comic element in
Shakespeare's plays, 493-4.
Shand, on the nature of attention, 63 ;
mentioned, 281, 321.
Sharp, mentioned, 388.
Shaw, mentioned, 324.
Shelley, mentioned, 379, 487.
Sidgwick, mentioned, 269, 281, 308.
Sidney, mentioned, 347, 375n; quoted, 380,
381, 382, 383.
Siebeck, mentioned, 454.
Sigwart, mentioned, 158.
Simon, on the nature of hallucinations,
43 ; mentioned, 454.
Smith, G. , mentioned, 3S9.
Smith, T. L., mentioned, 234.
Smith, W. G., mentioned, 82n, 151, 226 ;
on the place of repetition in memory, 234.
Smith, W., mentioned, 374, 375n.
Socrates, mentioned, 400.
SoUier, mentioned, 281.
Solomons, mentioned, 462.
Sorel, mentioned, 502.
Souriau, mentioned, 175.
Spalding, D. A., on newly hatched
chickens, 465n.
Spalding, T. A., mentioned, 388.
Spencer, on the principles of association,
7 on primitive shock, 51 ; on the
nature of intensity, 5in ; on the nature
of habit, 102 ; mentioned, 146, 147,
158, 171, 174, 213, 347. 491; on
memory as consisting ol weak repeti-
tions of primary systems, 196 ; on the
distinction between knowing and re-
membering, 207 ; on the nature of
pleasure-pain, 245-6 ; on the nature of
emotion, 271 ; on the process in willing,
290 ; on desires as ideal feelings, 302 ;
on the problem of matter and mind,
367 ; on the antithesis of subject and
object, 367-8 ; on the nature of genius,
395 ; on the beautiful and the useful,
470 ; on the nature of the beautiful,
4S6 ; on the nature of the Comic, 495.
Spenser, mentioned, 374, 375n, 379 ;
quoted, 382.
Spiller, mentioned, 8, 436, 462.
Spitta, on dreams as isolating men, 431 ;
on feelings as present in sleep, 438 ;
on the ethics of dreams, 445 ; on the
rapidity of dreams, 453 ; mentioned, 454.
Stanley, mentioned, 90, 281 ; on the nature
of pleasure-pain, 246.
Stein, mentioned, 462.
Stephen, mentioned, 308.
Sternberg, mentioned, 55n.
Stetson, mentioned, 234.
Stevens, mentioned, 348n.
Stewart, on the field of attention, 6on ; on
attending to one thing at a time, 79 ; on
attention in habits, Son ; on the nature
of habit, 102 ; mentioned, 128 ; on mono-
tony as leading to sleep, 427-Sn ; on
the rapidity of dreams, 453 ; on en-
grossment as producing liveliness, 455.
Stcirring, mentioned, 281.
Stout, on the principles of association, 7,
147 ; mentioned, I5n, 65, 94n, 126, 129,
135, 149, 150, 152, 175, 176, 226, 283n,
321, 37on ; on introspection, 17 ; on the
nature of experiment, 35 ; on the sphere
of attention, 61 ; on what characterises
attention proper, 63 ; on attention as
self-direction, 66 ; on sensory stimula-
tion by attention, 69n ; on attending to
one thing at a time, 78n, 79, 99n ; on
absence of attention in habits, 8on ; on
attending to habits, 8on ; on sub-con-
sciousness as one with sentience, 82n ;
on factors producing changes in the
attention, 8Sn ; on the effects of habit,
92n ; on habit as automatic action, 102 ;
on the effect of repetition, I03n ; on the
term "meaning,"' I23n ; on the associa-
tion of feelings, 125 ; on economisation,
127 ; on what constitutes an idea, 138 ;
on sequence determined by associations,
I46n ; on the re-collection of what is
salient, 148 ; on ideas and general
trends, 156; on the aggressiveness of
the percept, 222 ; on the nature of
pleasure-pain, 246 ; on interest as at-
tention, 25on ; on the process in willing,
290 : on the essence of will, 293 ; on
34
530
INDEX OF AUTHORS
experienced transition, 366n ; his view
on consciousness and phenomena, 369 ;
on centres of practical interest, 431 ;
t)n perceptual, ideational anil conceptual
process, 464.
Stralton, mentioned, 2S1, 347.
Strieker, on the localisation of sensations,
55n ; on the principles of association,
147 ; mentioned, 197 ; on motion as
imaged, 204 ; on word images, 204-5 •
on pleasure-pain, 246 ; on the nature of
space, 346n.
Strong, mentioned, 281.
Striimpell, mentioned, 428n, 451.
Stumpf, on interest as attention, 2Son ;
meniioned, 2S1, 347.
Sully, on the principle of association, 7 ;
on the defects in introspection, 17 ; men-
tioned, 460, 5in, 53n, 65, 114, 146,
150, i63n, 175, 242, 243n, 255, 257,
2S1, 293, 301, 311, 321, 347, 405n,
454, 456, 502 ; on the nature of atten-
tion, 63 ; on voluntary attention, 66 ;
on the term " sub-consciousness,'' 82n ;
on the nature of habit, 92n ; on the
nature of general ideas, 129 ; on per-
ception, 140 ; on the fundamental law
of association, 147 ; on the suggestion
of similars, 147 ; on contiguous associa-
tion, 147 ; on the conflict of suggestive
tendencies, 148 ; attention and associa-
tion, 150 ; on assimilation, 150 ; on sen-
sations, perceptions and images, 174;
on what characterises a mood, I79n ;
on cramming, 186 ; on feelings as the
subjective side of our experience, 243 ;
on the nature of pleasure-pain, 246 ; on
functional dispositions, 249n ; on illu-
sions of introspection, 262n ; on anger
as pleasurable, 27on ; on the nature of
emotion, 271 ; on the process in willing,
290-1 ; on the meaning of desire, 302 ;
on conation as due to a disturbance,
305 ; on effort as an altering factor,
318 ; on the distinction between the
external and the internal world, 336 ;
on genius and precocity, 394 ; on
genius and insanity, 402 ; on dreams
as fanciful, 442 ; on the source of
dream-materials, 455 ; on engrossment
as intensifying liveliness in dreams, 455 ;
on the nature of dreams, 456n ; on con-
genital susceptibility in genius, 465 ; on
the contemplative character of aesthetic
enjoyment, 468n ; on the beautiful and
the useful, 470 ; on the place of pleasure
in esthetics, 470 ; on variety and unity
in the beautiful, 472 ; on the nature of
the Comic, 496.
Surrey, Earl of, quoted, 375.
Swift, mentioned, 90.
Sykes, mentioned, 456.
Symonds, mentioned, 388n,
Taine, on word ideas, 126; mentioned, 129,
390; on the principles of association, 147.
Talbot, mentioned, 89, 197, 234.
Tannery, mentioned, 456.
TavMiy, mentioned, 347.
Tennyson, mentioned, 4S7.
Thackeray, mentioned, 491.
Thiery, mentioned, 46n.
Thompson, on the process in willing, 291.
Thorndike, his experiments with animals,
T)}„ 4S5 ; on memory in animals, 463n ;
on the efiect of experience in aniinals,
466 ; on the actions of animals, 466.
Tissie, on dreams as provoked by sensory
impressions, 428n ; on dreams and the
abnormal state of the difi'erent organs,
438 ; on a curious dream, 454.
Titchener, on introspection as impossible,
iS ; meniioned, 34, 460, 114, 178, 213,
440, 447 ; on the nature of experiments,
34 ; on the efifect of attention, 63.
T[ofte], mentioned, 374, 3750.
Tonnies, on philosophical terminology, 40.
Trautscholdt, mentioned, 151.
Travis, mentioned, 286n.
Turner, mentioned, 175.
Twardowsky, meniioned, 136, 239.
Tycho Brahe, mentioned, 399.
Tyler, mentioned, 399.
Tyndall, on the use of hypotheses, 14 ;
mentioned, 31.
Uebekhorst, mentioned, 90.
Uhl, mentioned, 90.
Uphues, mentioned, 239.
Urbantschitsch, mentioned, 7on.
Vaschide, mentioned, 209n, 234n.
Venn, mentioned, 14, 347.
"N'erdon, on the growth and decay of
memory, i84n ; on the necessity of
forgetting, 186 ; on the effect of time
on our memories, I90n ; on forgetting
quickly, 225.
Vierordt, mentioned, 348n.
Vinci, Leonardo da, mentioned, 396n.
Vogt, mentioned, 121.
Void, mentioned, 456.
Volkelt, on the nature of introspection,
20n ; on dreams and the bodily organs,
438 ; mentioned, 438n.
Volkmann, mentioned, 411, 8, 11, 37 ; on
the definition of the term "hypothesis,"
II ; on the defects of the introspective
method, 16 ; his psychology, i6n ; on the
meaning of attention, 63.
Voltaire, as a man of genius, 401.
Waitz, on introspection as only revealing
what is past, 16.
Wallace, mentioned, 461.
Waller, mentioned, 65.
Walshe, mentioned, 403.
Ward, A. W., mentioned, 390 ; on the
date of Marston's Antonio and Alellida^
39in.
Ward, James, mentioned, I5n, 3on, 129,
150, 151, 169, 171, 175, 207, 209n,
INDEX OF AUTHORS
531
22on, 242, 333, 335, 335n, 347 ; on in-
trospection, 17 ; on extensity, 53 ; on
animal habits, 74n ; on the threshold of
consciousness, 84 ; on use as blunting
feeling and favouring intellection, 114;
on infinitesimal presentations, 135 ; on
the distinction between sensation and
representation, 175 ; on the process of
observation, I95n ; on the process in
willing, 291 ; on mind as explaining the
unity, activity and regularity of nature,
325-6 ; on the principle of life as mental,
362-3 ; on Subject and Object, 369 ; on
art as eschewing the abstract and specu-
lative, 489n.
Ware, mentioned, 454.
Warren, mentioned, 234.
Washburn, mentioned, 65, 207, 213.
Watson, mentioned, 374, 375n, 384n ;
quoted, 377, 382, 386.
Weber, mentioned, I99n ; his law defined
by Fechner, 53.
Webster, mentioned, 393.
Weed, mentioned, 440.
Whately, mentioned, 157.
Wheatstone, mentioned, 212.
Whewell, on an art of discovery, 13.
Whitehead, on matter as memorised aurally
and visually, 234.
Whittaker, mentioned, i6n.
Wirth, mentioned, 281.
Witasek, mentioned, 151.
Witmer, mentioned, 502.
Wolfe,onsome experiments on memory, 234.
Wood worth, mentioned, 321 ; on the
rapidity of dreams, 453.
Wordsworth, quoted, 376 ; mentioned,
379, 487-
Wren, mentioned, 398.
Wundt, on self-observation as affecting
psychic processes, 16 ; on the nature of
observation, 20 ; mentioned, 31, 34,
46n, 6on, 150, 151, 169, 175, 2S1, 311,
335", 347, 462 ; on the nature of atten-
tion, 66 ; on the complexity of ideas,
135 ; on the principles of association,
I44n ; on apperception, 152 ; on a
characteristic of memory, 193 ; on
localisation in time, 209n ; on theoretical
interests as falsifying introspection, 285 ;
on willing and choosing, 291.
Wyndham, mentioned, 388, 389.
ZiEGLER, mentioned, 281.
Ziehen, mentioned, 222 ; on the nature of
what is psychical, 325n.
Zoroaster, mentioned, 400.
Zwaardemaker, mentioned, igSn.
INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS.
Archiv fiir die gesammte Physiologic des Menschen und der Thiere, i86S, etc.
Brain, London, 1S7S, etc.
L'Annee Psychologique, Paris, 1895, etc.
La Revue Scientifique de la F"rance et de I'Etranger, Paris, 1871, etc.
Mind, London, 1876, etc.
Philosophische Studien, Leipzig, 18S3, etc.
Psychologische Arbeiten, Leipzig, 1895, etc.
Revue Philosophique dc la France ct de I'Etranger, Paris, 1S76, etc.
The American Journal of Psychology', Baltimore, 1887, etc.
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Saint Louis, 1867-89.
The Philosophical Review, Boston, 1892, etc.
The Psychological Review, New York, 1894, etc.
Vierteljahrsschrift fiir wissenschaftliche Philosophic, Leipzig, 1876, etc.
Zcitschrift fiir Psychologic und Physiologic der Sinnesorganc, Hamburg and Leipzig,.
1890, etc.
Abbott, Thomas Kingsmill, Sight and Touch : an Attempt to Disprove the Received (or
Berkeleian) Theory of Vision, London, 1864.
Abercrombie, John, Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers and the Investigation
of Truth, London, 1838.
Adam, — , L'Imagination dans la Decouvertc Scientifique, d'apres Bacon, Rev. Phil., 1890.
Alison, Archibald, Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1815.
Allen, Grant, Physiological ^Esthetics, London, 1877.
Hellas and Civilisation, The Gentleman'' s Magazine, London, 1878.
Nation-Making, The Gentleman'' s Magazine, London, 1878.
The Origin of the Sublime, Mi7id, 1878.
The Origin of the Sense of Symmetry, Mind, 1879.
/listhetic Evolution in Man, Mind, 1880.
. The Genesis of Genius, The Atlantic Monthly, Boston, 1881.
Review of Les Problemcs de I'Esthetique Contcmporaine, Mind, 1887.
Allin, Arthur, Recognition, Am. J. ofPs., 1896.
The " Recognition-Theory" of Perception, Am. J. of Ps., 1896.
{See Hall, G. S.)
Angell, James Rowland, and Pierce, Arthur H., Experimental Research upon the Pheno-
mena of Attention, Am. J. of Ps., 1892.
and Moore, Addison W., Reaction-Time: A Study in Attention and Habit,
Ps. Rev., 1896.
Thought and Imagery, Phil. Rev., 1897.
Habit and Attention, Ps. Rev., 1898.
INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS 533
Anonymous [? Hall, G. S.], Review of "Proceedings, etc." and "Phantasms of the
Living," Am. J. of Ps., 1887.
Anonymous, Zepheriah (1594) (Arber's English Garner, vol. 5, 1882).
Arber, Edward, An English Garner : Ingatherings from our History and Literature, 8
vols., 1877-96.
Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics of, Peters' translation, London, 1881.
Arreat, Lucien, Memoire et Imagination, Paris, 1S95.
L'Esthetique d'apres quelques Recents Ouvrages, Rev. Phil., 1899.
Arrer, Maximilian, Ucber die Bedeutung der Convergenz- und Accommodationsbewegun-
gen flir die Tiefenwahrnehmung, Phil. St., 1896-7.
Aschaftenburg, Gustav, Experimentelle Studien liber Associationen, Ps. Arbeiten, 1895
and 1897.
Ashley, M. L., Concerning the Significance of Intensity of Light in Visual Estimates of
Depth, Ps. Rev., 1898.
Aubert, Hermann, Die innerhche Sprache und ihr Verhalten zu den Sinneswahrnehmungen
und Bewegungen, Z. f. Ps., 1890.
Avenarius, Richard, Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemass dem Princip des kleinsten
Kraftmasses, Leipzig, 1876.
Bacon, Francis, Novum Organum, London, ed. 1893.
Bailey, Samuel, A Review of Berkeley's Theory of Vision, London, 1842.
Letters on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, London, 1855, 1858, 1863.
Bain, Alexander, Mind and Body, London, 1874.
Education as a Science, London, 1879.
On ' Association '-Controversies, Mind, 1887.
On Feeling as Indifference, Mind, 1887.
" On Feeling as Indifference," Mind, 1889.
• (On Attention), Brain, i8go.
Notes on Volition, Mind, 189 1.
Pleasure and Pain, Mind, 1892,
The Respective Spheres and Mutual Helps of Introspection and Psycho-physical
Experiment in Psychology, Mind, 1893.
The Senses and the Intellect, London, 1894.
The Emotions and the Will, London, 1899.
Baldwin, James Mark, Handbook of Psychology : Senses and Intellect, London, 1890.
Handbook of Psychology : Feeling and Will, London, 1891.
Internal Speech and Song, Phil. Rev., 1893.
Mental Development in the Child and in the Race, New York, 1895.
and Shaw, W. J,, Memory for Square Size, Ps. Rev., 1895.
The Story of the Mind, London, 1902.
Ballet, Gilbert, Le Langage Interieur et les Di verses Formes de I'Aphasie, Paris, 1886.
Barnes, Barnabe, The Poems of, Grosart's edition, Manchester, 1875.
Barnfield, Richard, The Complete Poems of, London, 1876.
Bastian, Henry Charlton, The Brain as an Organ of Mind, London, 1880.
On the Neural Processes underlying Attention and Volition, Brain, 1892,
Baj-nes, T. Spencer, Shakespeare, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1886.
Beaumont and Fletcher, The Works of, Darley's edition, 2 vols., London, 1840.
Beaunis, Henri Etienne, De I'Habitude en General, Montpellier, 1856.
Les Sensations Internes, Paris, 1889.
Benard, Ch., La Mimique dans le Systeme des Beaux- Arts, Rev. Phil., 1SS9.
Bencke, Friedrich Eduard, Die Neue Psychologie, Berlin, 1845.
~— — Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft, Berlin, 1845.
534 INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS
Bcnlham, Jeremy, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 2 vols.^
London, 1823.
Bentlcy, Madison L, The Memory Image and its Qualitative Fidelity, Am. J. of Ps.,
1899.
Berger, G. O., Ueljcr den Einfluss der Uebung auf geistige \'orgdnge, Phil. SL, 18S8.
Bergson, Henri, Memoire et Reconnaissance, A'ev. Phil., 1896.
Le Rire, Paris, 1900.
Bergstrom, Jt)hn A., Experiments upon Physiological Memory hy means of the Inter-
ference of Associations, Am. J. of Ps., 1893.
The Relation of the Interference to the Practice Ettcct of an Association, Am.
J. ofPs., 1894.
Berkeley, George, An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) (Eraser's edition
of Berkeley's Works, Oxford, 1871).
A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) (Eraser's
edition of Berkeley's Works, Oxford, 1871).
Berry, George A., After-images, Brain, 1884.
Berlin, Emile, and A. H., Sommeil, Dictionnaire Encyclopediqiie des Sciences MedicaUs,
Paris, 1 88 1.
Bettmann, Siegfried, Ueber die Beeinflussung einfacher psychischer N'organge durch
korperliche und geistige Arbeit, Ps. Arbeiten, 1895.
Biervliet, J. -J. van. Images Sensitives et Images Motrices, Rev. Phil., 1897.
La Memoire, Paris, 1902.
Bigham, John, Memory, Ps. Rev., 1894.
(Sec Miinslerberg, H.)
Binet, Alfred, L'Image Consecutive et le Souvenir Visuel, Rev. Sc, 1885.
La Psychologic du Raisonnement, Paris, 1886.
La Perception de I'Etendue par I'Oeil, Rev. Phil., 18S6.
L'Intensite des Images Mentales, Rev. Phil., 1887.
L'Inhibition dans les Phenomenes de Conscience, Rev. Phil., 1890.
La Concurrence des Etats Psychologiques, Rev. Phil., 1890.
Sur un Cas d'Inhibition Psychique, Rev. Phil., 1S91.
et Charcot, J.-M., Un Calculateur du Type Visuel, Rev. Phil., 1893.
Psychologic des Grands Calculateurs et Joueurs d'Echecs, Paris, 1894.
et Henri, V., La Psychologie Individuelle, An. Ps. for 1895.
La Memoire des Mots, An. Ps. for 1894.
— La Memoire des Phrases, An. Ps. for 1894.
— La Mesure en Psychologie Individuelle, Rev. Phil., 189S.
Attention et Adaptation, An. Ps. for 1899.
Binz, Carl, Ueber den Traum, Bonn, 1878.
Birch, L. G., A Study of Certain Methods of Distracting the Attention, Am. J. of Ps.,
1897.
Bodenstedt, Friedrich Martin von, Wilhelm Shakespeare's Sonette, Berlin, 1862.
Bohm, Karl, Zur Theorie des Gedachtnisses und der Erinnerung, Philosophische Monats-
hefte, Leipzig, 1877.
Boirac, E., La Veille Continuee dans le Sommeil, Rev. Phil., 18S1.
La M^thode Experimentale et les Axiomes de la Causalite, Rev, Sc, 1898.
Psychologie, La Grande Encyclopildie, 1900.
Bolton, Frederick E., The Accuracy of Recollection and Observation, Ps. Rev., 1896.
A Contribution to the Study of Illusions, Am. J. of Ps., 1898.
Bolton, Thaddeus L., The Growth of Memory in School Children, Am. J, of Ps., 1892.
Bonatelli, Fran9ois, Remarque sur les Sensations et les Perceptions, Rev. Phil., 1SS4.
Bosanquet, Bernard, A History of -Esthetic, London, 1892.
On the Nature of .Esthetic Emotion, Mi^id, 1894.
INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS , 535
Bouillier, Francisque, Du Plaisir et de la Douleur, Paris, 1865.
De la Responsabilite Morale dans les Reves, Rev. Phil., 1883.
Ce que deviennent les Ideas, Rev. Phil., 1S87.
Nouvelles Etudes Familieres de Psychologie ct de Morale, Paris, 1887.
Bourdon, B., Les Resultats des Theories Contemporaines sur 1' Association des Idees,
Rev. Phil., 1 89 1.
Recherches sur la Succession des Phenomenes Psychologiques, Rev. Phil., 1893.
La Sensation de Plaisir, Rev. Phil., 1893.
Influence de I'Age sur la Mcmoire Immediate, Rev. Phil., 1894.
Recherches sur les Phenomenes Intellectuels, An. Ps. for 1895.
Les Resultats des Travaux Recents sur la Perception Visuelle de la Profondeur^
An. Ps. for 1897.
Observations Comparatives sur la Reconnaissance, la Discrimination et ('Associa-
tion, Rev. Phil., 1895.
Experiences sur la Perception Visuelle de la Profondeur, Rev. Phil., 1897.
La Perception Monoculaire de la Profondeur, Rev. Phil., 1898.
Bradley, F. H., The Principles of Logic, London, 1883.
Evidences of Spiritualism, Fortnightly Review, 1885.
■ — Is there any Special Activity of Attention? Mind, 1SS6.
Association and Thought, Mind, 1887.
Why do we Remember Forwards and not Backwards? Mind, 18S7.
On Pleasure, Pain, Desire and Volition, I\Iind, 1888.
On Professor James' Doctrine of Simple Resemljlance, Mind, 1S93.
On the Failure of Movement in Dream, Mind, 1894.
Appearance and Reality, London, 1897.
Some Remarks on Memory and Inference, Mind, 1899.
Some Remarks on Conation, Mind, 1901.
On Active Attention, Mind, 1902.
Brandes, George Morris Cohn, William Shakespeare, 2 vols., London, 1898.
Braunschweiger, D., Die Lehre von der Aufmerksamkeit in der Psychologie des 18.
Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1899.
Breese, B. B., On Inhibition, Ps. Rev. (Monograph 11), 1S99.
Brentano, Franz, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, Leipzig, 1874.
Brochard, Victor, De la Loi de Similarite dans 1' Association des Idees, Rev. Phil., 1880.
Brown, Thomas, Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 4 vols., Edinburgh,
1824.
Bryant, Mrs. S. [See Cattell, J. M.)
Burdach, Carl Friedrich, Die Physiologic als Erfahrungswissenschaft, 3 vols., Leipzig,
1835-40.
Burke, Edmund, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, 8 vols., London,
1792-1827.
Burnham, W. H., Memory, Historically and Experimentally Considered, Am. J. of Ps.y
1888-9.
Butler, Joseph, The Analogy of Religion, ed. 1885.
C. J., Alcilia (1595) (Arber, An English Garner, vol. 4, 18S2).
Calderwood, Henry, The Relations of Mind and Brain, London, 1892.
Calkins, Mary Whiton, A Suggested Classification of Cases of Association, Phil. Rev., 1892.
Statistics of Dreams, Am. J. of Ps., 1893.
Association, Ps. Rev., 1894 and 1896.
Association : an Essay Analytic and E.xperimental, Ps. Rev. (Monograph 2), 1896.
Short Studies in Memory and in Association from the Wellesley College
Laboratory, Ps. Rev., 1898.
536 INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS
Cappie, James, Some Points in the Physiology of Attention, Belief, and Will, Brain, 1886.
Carpenter, William B. , Principles of Menial Physiology, London, 1876.
Cnttcll, James McKeen, Psychomelrische Unlersuchungen, Phil. St., 18S6-7.
Experiments on the Association of Ideas, Mind, 1887.
The Psychological Laboratory at Leipsic, Aliiid, 18S8.
and Sophie Bryant, Mental Association Investigated by Experiment (with re-
marks l)y Stout and others), MitiJ, 1889.
Mental Tests and Measurements, Mind, 1890.
Aufmerksamkeil und Reaction, Phil. St., 1892.
Mental Measurement, Phil. Rev., 1893.
Chapman, George, The Works of, 3 vols., London, 1874-5.
Charcot, J.-M. (,Sce Binet, A.)
Chesley, E. M., Does the Mind ever Sleep? /. of Spec. Phil., 1877.
Child, Charles M., Statistics of " Unconscious Cerebration," Am. J. of Ps., 1892.
Chmiclowski, Piotr, Die organischen Bedingungen der Entstehung des Willens,
Leipzig, 1874.
Claviere, Jean, La Rapidite de la Pensee dans le Reve, Rev. Phil., 1897.
Clifford, William Kingdon, Lectures and Essays, London, 1886.
Clodd, Edward, Myths and Dreams, London, 1885.
Colegrove, F. W., Individual Memories, Am. J. of Ps., 1899.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Lectures and Notes on Shakespere and other English Poets,
London, 1883.
Collin, Christian, Literature and Life (Ethical Democracy, ed. by Stanton Coit,
London, 1900).
CoUins, John Churton, Essays and Studies, London, 1895.
Comte, Auguste, The Positive Philosophy of, trs. by Harriet Martineau, 2 vols.,
London, 1875.
C, H. [Constable, Henry], Spiritual Sonnettes (1595) {See Park, T.).
Constable, Henry, Diana (1594) (Crow's Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles, London, 1896).
The Poems and Sonnets of, London, 1897.
Cook, H. O., Fluctuation of the Attention to Musical Tones, Am. J. of Ps., 1899.
Cordes, G., Experimentelle Untersuchungen iiber Associationen, Phil. St., 1901.
Cornelius, C. S., Zur Theorie des raumlichen Vorstellens mit Rucksicht auf eine Nach-
bildlokalisation, Z. f. Ps., 1891.
Hans, Das Gesetz der Uebung, Viertelj.f. w. Philosophic, 1896.
Couturat, Louis, La Beaute Plastique, Rev. Phil., 1893.
Cox, Edward W., A Monograph of Sleep and Dream, London, 1878.
Crookes, William, Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism, London, 1874.
Crow, Martha Foote, Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles, London, 1896, etc.
D . . ., L . . ., A propos de I'Appreciation du Temps dans le Reve, Rev. Phil., 1895.
Daniel, Samuel, Delia and Rosamond augmented [etc.], London, 1594.
The [Poetical] Works of. Newly Augmented, London, 1601.
Daniels, Arthur H., The Memory After-image and Attention, Am. J. of Ps., 1895.
Darhngton, L., and Talbot, E. B. , A Study of Certain Methods of Distracting the Atten-
tion, Am. J. of Ps., 1898.
Darwin, Charles Robert, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, London,
1890.
Davidson, William L., Definition of " Sensation," Mind, 1881.
Davies, Henry, The Growth of Voluntary Control, Ps. Rev., 1899.
Davies, John, The Complete Works of John Davies of Hereford, 2 vols., Grosart's
edition, Blackburn, 1878.
Dearborn, George V. N., A Study of Imaginations, Am, /. of Ps., 1898.
INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS 537
Dearborn, George V. N., Recognition under Objective Reversal, Ps. Rev., 1899.
The Emotion of Joy, Ps. Rev., 1899 (Monograph 9).
Dechanibre, A., Songe, Dictiomtaire Encyclopediqiu des Sciences Medicales, Paris, 1881.
Deffner, Karl, Die Aehnlichkeitsassociation, Z. f. Ps., 1S98.
Dekker, Thomas, Plays, ed. by E. Rhys, 1894.
Delabarre, Burke, L'Influence de I'Attention sur les Mouvements Respiratoires, Rev.
Phil., 1892.
Delboeuf, J., Le Sommeil et les Reves, Rev. Phil., 1879-S0.
Une Hallucination a I'Etat Normal et Conscient, Rev. Phil., 18S5.
Delius, Nicolaus, Abhandlungen zu Shakspere, Elberfeld, 1878.
Abhandlungen zu Shakspere, Neue Folge, Elberfeld, 1888.
De Quincey, Thomas (d. 1859), Shakspeare : a Biography, Edinburgh, 1864.
Descartes, Rene, Discours de la Methode, Leyde, 1637.
Destutt de Tracy, Antoine Louis Claude, Projets d'Elements d'ldeologie, Paris, 1801.
Dewey, John, Psychology, New York, 1887.
The Theory of Emotion, Ps. Rev., 1894-5.
The Psychology of Effort, Phil. Rev., 1897.
Dissard, A., Influence de I'Attention sur la Perception des Sensations, Rev. Phil., 1895.
Dodge, Raymond, Die motorischen Wortvorstellungen, Halle a. S., 1896.
(See Erdmann, B.)
Dohrn, H., Das Problem der Aufmerksamkeit, Schleswig, 1876.
Donkin, E. H., Suggestions on ^Esthetic, Mind, 1897.
Donne, John, The Complete Poems of, 2 vols., Grosart's edition, 1872-3.
Doring, A., Die asthetischen Geftihle, Z. f. Ps., 1890.
Dowden, Edward, Shakspere : a Critical Study of his Mind and Art, London, 1875.
■ The Sonnets of William Shakspere, London, 1881.
Drayton, Michael, The Tragical Legend of Robert, Duke of Normandy [etc.],
London, 1596.
Idea (1594-1619) (Arber's English Garner, vol. 6, 1883).
Drew, Frank, Attention, Experimental and Critical, Am. J. of Ps., 1896.
Drobisch, Moritz Wilhelm, Empirische Psychologic, Leipzig, 1842.
Du Bois-Reymond, Emil, L'Exercise, Rev. Sc, 18S2.
Reden, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1886-7.
Dugas, L., La Memoire Brute et la Memoire Organisee, Rev. Phil., 1894.
Recherches Experimentales sur les differents Types d'lmages. Rev. Phil., 1895.
La Timidite : Etude Psychologique, Rev. Phil., 1896.
Le Sommeil et la Cerebration Inconsciente, Rev. Phil., 1897.
Le Souvenir du Reve, Rev. Phil., 1897.
Dumas, Georges, L' Association des Idees dans les Passions, Rev. Phil., 1891.
Recherches Experimentales sur la Joie et la Tristesse, Rev. Phil., 1896.
Dumont, Leon A., Des Causes du Rire, Paris, 1862.
De I'Habitude, Rev. Phil., 1876.
■ Theorie Scientifique de la Sensibilite, Paris, 1875.
Dunan, Charles, L'Espace Visuel et I'Espace Tactile, Rev. Phil., 1888.
• Un Nouveau Cas de Guerison d'Aveugle-ne, Rev. Phil., 1889.
Dunning, Edwin James, The Genesis of Shakespeare's Art, Boston, 1897.
Dwelshauvers, Georg, Untersuchungen zur Mechanik der activen Aufmerksamkeit, Phil.
St., 1890.
Dyce, Alexander, The Works of William Shakespeare, 9 vols., London, 1864-7.
Ebbinghaus, Hermann, Ueber das Gediichlnis, Leipzig, 1885.
Ueber Nachbilder im binocularen Sehen, etc., Archiv, 1890.
Grundzuge der Psychologie, vol. i, Leipzig, 1897-1902.
538 INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS
Eckencr, Hugo, Unlersuchungen liber die Schwankuiigen der Auflassung minimalcr
Sinnesreire, JViil. St., 1892.
Egger, Victor, La Parole Intcrieure, Paris, 18S1.
La Perception de I'Elendue par I'Oeil, I\ev. Phil., 1S86.
La Durte Apparente des Keves, Rev. Phil., 1895.
Le Souvenir dans le Reve, Kev. Phil., 1898.
Elze, Karl, William Shakespeare, London, 1888.
Erdmann, Benno, and Dodge, Raymond, P.sychologische Untersuchungen uher das
Lesen, Halle a. S., 189S.
Elllinger, Max, Zur Grundlegung einer Aesthclik des Rhylhmus, 'L. f. Fs., 1900.
Feciiner, Gusiav Theodor, Elemente der Psychophysik, 2 vols., Leipzig, i860.
Vorschule der Aesthetik, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1876.
Revision der xlauptpuncte der Psychophysik, Leipzig, 1882.
Fere, Charles Samson, Sensation el Mouvement, Paris, 18S7.
Note sur la Physiologie de I'Attention, A'ev. Phil., 1890.
L'Antithese dans I'E.xpression des Emotions, A'ev. Phil., 1896.
Ferri, Luigi, La Psychologic de I'Association depuis Hobbesjusqu'a nos Jours, Paris, 18S3.
Ferrier, David, The Functions of the Brain, London, 1886.
Fischer, Kuno, Shakespeare's Charakterenentwickelung Richards IIL, Heidelberg, 186S.
Ueber den Witz, Heidelberg, 1889.
Shakespeare's Hamlet, Heidelberg, 1896.
Fletcher (See Beaumont and Fletcher).
Fletcher, Giles, Licia (1593) (Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles, 1896).
Flourens, Marie Jean Pierre, De la Raisoa, du Genie, et de la Folic, Paris, 1S61.
Ford (See Massinger).
Ford, E., The Original Datum of Space-Consciousness, Jlfi/td, 1893.
Foster, Michael, A Text Book of Physiology, Part HL, London, 1S97 ; Part IV.,.
London, 1899.
Fouillce, Alfred, (On Attention), Brain, 1890.
L'Evolutionnisme des Idees-Forces, Rev. Phil., 1890.
L'Evolutionnisme des Idees-Forces, Paris, 1890.
Existence et Developpement de la Volonte, Rev. Phil., 1892.
La Psychologie des Idees-Forces, 2 vols., Paris, 1893.
Franck, Ph., L'Art de s'Instruire et de se Souvenir, Paris, 1888.
Franklin, Christine Ladd, The Bearing of the After-image, Ps. Rev., 1894.
Franz, Shepherd Ivory, and Houston, Henry E., The Accuracy of Observation and of
Recollection in School Children, Ps. R»v., 1896.
The After-image Threshold, Ps. Rev., 1895.
After-images, Ps. Rev. (Monograph 12), 1899.
Furnivall, F. J., The Leopold Shakspere, London, 1877.
Galton, Francis, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, London, 1883.
Hereditary Genius, London, 1S69.
Statistics of Mental Imagery, Mind, 1880.
Gerard, Alexander, An Essay on Genius, London, 1774.
Gervinus, Georg Gottfried, Shakespeare, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1862.
Gibson, Boyce, The Regulae of Descartes, Mind, 1898.
Giessler, Max, Aus den Tiefen des Traumlebens, Halle-Saale, 1S90.
Gillette, J. M., Notes on After-images, Ps. Rev., 1899.
Oilman, Benjamin Ives, Syllabus of Lectures on the Psychology of Pain and Pleasure,
Am. J. of Ps., 1893.
Gizycki, Georg von, A Students' Manual of Ethical Philosophy, London, 1889.
INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS, 53^
Glass, Richard, Kritisches und Experimentelles liber den Zeitsinn, Phil. St., 1887.
Goblot, Edmond, Le Souvenir des Reves, Rev. Phil., 1896.
Sur le Souvenir du Reve, Pev. Phil. (June), 1897.
Sur le Souvenir du Reve, Rev. Phil. (September), 1897.
Sur la Theorie Physiologique de I'Association, Rev. Phil., 1898.
Goddard, Henry H., The Effects of Mind on Body as evidenced by Faith Cures.
Am. J. of Ps., 1899.
Godfernaux, Andre, Le Sentiment et la Pensee et leurs Principaux Aspects Physiolo-
giques, Paris, 1894.
Graffunder, P., Traum u. Traumdeutung, Hamburg, 1894.
Granville, Joseph Mortimer, The Secret of a Good Memory, London, 1S80.
Gratacap, A., Theorie de la Memoire, MontpelHer, 1866.
Green, Thomas Hill, Prolegomena to Ethics, Oxford, 1883.
Greenwood, Frederick, Imagination in Dreams and their Study, London, 1894.
Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke, Caelica (before 1586) (Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles,
1898).
Griffin, Bartholomew, Fidessa (1596) (Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles, 1897).
Grifhng, Harold, On the Development of Visual Perception and Attention, Am. J. of
Ps., 1896.
Grote, N., Essai sur les Principes d'une Classification Nouvelle des Sentiments, Rev.
Phil., 1878.
Gruithuisen, Franz v. Paula, Beytriige zur Physiognosie und Eautognosie, Mtinchcn, 1812.
Guardia, J. ISL, La Personnalite dans les Reves, Ps. Rev., 1892.
Gueroult, Georges, Du Role du Mouvcment dans les f^motions Estheiiques, Rev^
Phil., 1 88 1.
Guizot, Francois Pierre Guillaume, Shakspeare et son Temps, Paris, 1852.
Gulliver, Julia H., The Psychology of Dreams,y. of Spec. Phil., 1880.
Gurney, Edmund, On Discord, Mind, 1879.
Relations of Reason to Beauty, Mind, 1879.
The Power of Sound, London, 1S80.
Guyau, M., L'Esthetique du Vers Moderne, Rev. Phil., 1884.
Haffnkr, Paul Leopold, Schlafen u. Traumen (Frankfurter zeitgemassc Broschiiren,
vol. 5, Frankfurt, 1884).
Hagen, F. W., Psychologic und Psychiatrie (Wagner, R., Handworterbuch der Physi-
ologic, vol. 2, Braunschweig, 1844).
Ueber die Verwandtschaft des Genies mit dem Irresein, Allgeineine Zeitsch7-ift
fiir Psychiatrie, Berlin, 1877,
H[all?], G. S., Review of " Proceedings, etc." and " Phantasms of the Living," Am. J.
of Ps., 1887.
Psychic Research (Review), Am. J. of Ps., 1895.
Hall, G. Stanley, and AUin, Arthur, The Ps}chology of Tickling, Laughing, and the
Comic, Am. J. of Ps., 1897.
Hallam, Florence M. {See Weed, S. C.)
Hallam, Henry, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the 15th, i6th, and 17th
Centuries, 3 vols., London, 18^4.
Halliwell-Phillips, James Orchard, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, London, 1887.
Hamilton, Sir William, The Works of Thomas Reid, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1863.
Lectures on Metaphysics, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1877.
Hamlin, Alice J., Attention and Distraction, Am. J. of Ps., 1896.
Hansen, F. C. C, and Lehmann, Alfred, Ueber unwillkiirliches Fiiistern, Phil. St., 1895.
Harrison, Frederic, Tenn3'son, Ruskin, Mill, and other Literary Estimates, London,
1899.
'540 INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS
llartenberg, La Peur et le Mccanisme des Kmotions, Kev. Phil., 1899.
Hartley, David, Observations on Man, etc., London, 2 vols., 1749.
Hartniann, Carl Robert Eduard von. Philosophy of the Unconscious, trs., 3 vols.,
London, 1884.
Harvey, Gabriel, The Works of, Grosart's edition, 3 vols., 1S84-5.
Hawkins, Chauncey J., Experiments on Memory Tj'pes, Ps. Kev., 1897.
Hazlitt, William, Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, London,
1821.
Heerwagen, Friedrich, Statistische Untersuchungen iiber Triiume und Schlaf, Phil. St.,
1S88.
Hegel, The Logic of, trs. by W. Wallace, Oxford, 1892.
Heinrich, W., Die Aufmerksamkeit und die Funktion der Sinnesorgane, Z. f. Ps., 1S96.
Die moderne physiologische Fsychologie in Deutschland, Zurich, 1899.
Zur Prinzipienfrage der Psychologic, Zurich, 1S99.
Heller, Theodor, Studien zur Blinden-Psychologie, Phil. St., 1895.
Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen,
Braunschweig, 1877.
Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik, Hamburg, 1S86-96.
Henkle, W. D., Remarkable Cases of Memory,y. of Spec. Phil., 1871.
Henri, Victor, Les Laboratoires de Psychologic Experimentale en Allemagne, Rev. Phil.,
1893-
• Recherches sur la Localisation des Sensations Tactiles, An. Ps. for 1895.
et Catherine, Enquete sur les Premiers Souvenirs de I'Enfance, An. Ps. for 1896.
(.S'^tf Binet, A.)
Herbart, Johann Friedrich, Sammtliche Werke, 12 vols., Hartenstein's edition, Leipzig,
1850-2.
Lehrbuch zur Psychologic, 1816, Hartenstein's edition, vol. 5, 1850.
Psychologic als Wissenschaft, 1S24, Hartenstein's edition, vols. 5-6, 1850.
Kurze Encyklopadie der Philosophic, 1831, Hartenstein's edition, vol. 2, 1S50.
Hering, Ewald, Ueber das Gedachtniss als eine allgemeine Funktion der organisirten
Materie, Wien, 1870.
Herrick, C. L., The Propagation of Memories, Ps. Rev., 1897.
Hess, Carl, Untersuchungen iiber die nach kurzdauernder Reizung des Sehorgans auftre-
tenden Nachbildern, Archiv, 1891.
Heubel, Emil, Ueber die Abhangigkeit des wachen Gehirnzustandes Yon iiusseren
Erregungen, Archiv, 1877.
Heymans, G., Aesthetische Untersuchungen in Anschluss an die Lippssche Theoric des
Komischen, Z. f. Ps., 1896.
Zur Parallelismusfrage, Z. /. Ps.. 1898.
• Zur Psychologic der Komik, Z. /. J^s., 1899.
Untersuchungen iiber psychische Hemmung, Z. f. Ps., 1899, 1902.
Hibben, John Grier, Sensory Stimulation by Attention, Ps. Rev., 1895.
Hildebrandt, F. W., Der Traum und seine Verwerthung fiir's Leben, Leipzig, 1881.
Hillebrand, Franz, Das Verhaltniss von Accommodation und Konvergenz zur Tiefen-
lokalisation, Z. f. Ps., 1894.
In Sachen der optischen Tiefenlokalisation, Z. /. J's., 1897.
Hirn, Yrjo, The Origins of Art, London, 1900.
Hirsch, William, Genie und Entartung, Berlin, 1894.
Hitschmann, Friedrich, Ueber Begriindung einer Blindenpsychologie von einem Blinden,
Z.f. Ps., 1892.
Ueber das Traumleben des Blinden, Z, f. Ps., 1894.
Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, 1651, Henry Morley's ed., London, 1885.
Hobhouse, L. T., Mind in Evolution, London, 1901.
INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS 541
Hobson, John Atkinson, The Evolution of Modern Capitalism : A Study of Machine
Production, London, 1894.
Hodder, Alfred, The Adversaries of the Sceptic, London, 1901.
Hodgson, Richard, Mr. Davey's Imitations by Conjuring of Phenomena sometimes
attributed to Spirit Agency, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research,
1892, vol. 8.
Hodgson, Shadworth Hollway, Time and Space, London, 1865.
— — The Theory of Practice : An Ethical Inquiry, 2 vols., London, 1870.
The Metaphysic of Experience, 4 vols., London, 1898.
Hoffding, Harald, Die psychologische Bedeutung der Wiederholung, VierteLj. f. rv.
Philosophic, Leipzig, 1883.
Elhik, Leipzig, 1888.
Ueber Wiedererkennen, Association und psychische Activitat, Viertelj. f. w,
Philosophie, Leipzig, 1889-90.
Outlines of Psychology, London, 1S91.
Zur Theorie des Wiedererkennens, Phil. St., 1S92.
Hofier, A., Psychische Arbeit, Z. f Ps., 1894-5.
Horwicz, Adolf, Psychologische Analysen auf physiologischer Grundlage, 3 vols., Halle
and Magdeburg, 1872-8.
Houston, Henry E. (See Franz, S. I.)
Howe, H. C, "Mediate" Association, Am. J. of Ps., 1894.
Hudson, Henry Norman, Shakespeare : his Life, Art, and Character, 2 vols., Boston, 1872.
Hume, David, A Treatise on Human Nature (1739) (The Philosophical Works of, ed.
by T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, 4 vols., London, 1874-5).
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1747) (Green's ed. of Hume).
Essays, Moral, Political and Literary (1742-52) (Green's ed. of Hume).
Huxley, Thomas Henry, Hume, London, 1879.
Hylan, John Perham, Fluctuations of the Attention, Ps. Rev., 1896.
The Fluctuation of the Attention, Ps. Rev. (Monograph 6), 1898.
Hyslop, James H., Helmholtz's Theory of Space Perception, Mind, 1891.
Experiments in Space Perception, Ps. Rev., 1894.
Desiderata in Psychology, Phil. Rev., 1895.
Ireland, William W., Visionary, Puke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, 2 vols.,
London, 1892.
Irons, David, Prof. James' Theory of Emotion, Mind, 1S94.
The Physical Basis of Emotion, Mind, 1895.
Descartes and Modern Theories of Emotion, Phil. Rev., 1895.
The Primary Emotions, Phil. Rev., 1897.
The Nature of Emotion, Phil. Rev., 1897.
James, William, The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols., London, 1890.
The Original Datum of Space-Consciousness, Mind, 1893.
Mr. Bradley on Immediate Resemblance, Mind, 1893.
The Will to Believe, and other Essays in Popular Philosophy, New York, 1897.
Talks to Teachers on Psychology : and to Students on some of Life's Ideals,
London, 1899.
Janet, Paul, De la Perception Visuelle de la Distance, Rev. Phil., 1879.
Jastrow, Joseph, A Study of ZoUner's Figures and other Related Illusions, Am. J. of Ps.,
1S92.
Community and Association of Ideas, Ps. Rev., 1894.
Fact and Fable in Psychology, Boston and New York, 1900.
Jerusalem, W. , Ein Beispiel von Association durch unbewusstc Mittelglieder, Phil. St:,
1S94.
54:: INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS
Jevons, William Stanley, The Principles of Science, London, 1877.
Cram, Miitd, 1877.
Jodl, Friedrich, Lehrbuch der Psycholopjie, Stuttgart, 1896.
Johnson, \V. E., On " Feelinp; as IndifTerence," Mind, 188S.
Joly, Henri, Psychologie des Grands Hommes, Paris, 1883.
La Sensibility et le Mouvement, J\ev. Phil., 1886.
Tost, Adolf, Die Associalionsfestigkeit in ihrer Abhangigkeit von der \'erteilung der
Wiederholungen, Z. f. Ps., 1897.
Tudd, Charles Hubbard, Ueber Raumwahrnehmungen im Gebiete des T;istsinnes, Phil.
SC, 1S96.
Visual Perception of the Third Dimension, Ps. Pev., 1898.
A Study of Geometrical Illusions, Ps. Pev., 1899.
Kant, Immanuel, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781), Reclam's ed., Leipzig, 1S7S.
■ Kritik der Urlheilskraft (1790), Reclam's ed., 1878.
Anthropologic, Konigsberg, 1800.
Kennedy, Francis, On the Experimental Investigation of Memory, Ps. Per., 189S.
Kiesow, Friedrich, Beitrage zur physiologischen Psychologic des Geschmackssinnes,
Phil. St., 1894-6.
Kirkpatrick, E. A., An Experimental Study of Memory, Ps. Pev., 1894.
The Development of Voluntary Movement, Ps. Pev., 1899.
Kohn, Harry E., Zur Theorie der Aufmerksamkeit, Halle, 1895.
Kollert, Julius, Untersuchungen iiber den Zeitsinn, Phil. St., 1881.
Kozaki, N. {See Miinsterberg H.)
Kraepelin, Emil, Zur Psychologic des Komischen, Phil. St., 1883-4.
Kreibig, Josef Clemens, Die Aufmerksamkeit als Willenserscheinung, Wien, 1897.
Kries, J. v., Ueber das Erkennen der Schallrichtung, Z. f. Ps., 1890.
Kroner, E., GemeingefLihl und sinnliches Gefiihl, Viertelj. f. w. Philosophic, 18S7.
Kiilpe, Oswald, Zur Theorie der sinnlichen Gefiihle, Viertelj. f. w. Philosophic, 18S7-8.
Grundriss der Psychologic, Leipzig, 1893.
Zur Lehrc von der Aufmerksamkeit, Zeitschrift f. Philosophic u. philosophische
Kritik, 1897.
L[inche], R., Diella (1596) (Arber's English Garner, vol. 7, 1883).
Lachclier, G., Etude sur la Theorie du Syllogisme, Rev. Phil., 1876.
Ladd, George Trumbull, Contribution to the Psychology of Visual Dreams, Mind, 1892.
Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, London, 1894.
Direct Control of the Retinal Field, Ps. Rev., 1894.
Lalande, Andre, Sur un Effet particulier de I'Attention appliquee aux Images, Rev. Phil.,
1893.
Lamb, Charles, Sanity of True Genius (The Essays of Elia, London, ed. 1890).
The Dramatic Essays of, London, ed. 1891.
Landmann, S., Ueber die Beziehung der Atmung zur psychischen Thatigkeit, Z. f. Ps.,
1895-
Lange, Carl Georg, Ueber Gemiithsbewegungen, Leipzig, 1887.
Lange, Konrad, Gcdanken zu einer Aesthetik auf entwickelungsgeschichtlicher Grund-
lage, Z. f. Ps., 1897.
Lange, Nicolai, Beitrage zur Theorie der sinnlichen Aufmerksamkeit und der activen
Apperception, Phil. St., 1887.
Lasson, Adolf, Das Gedachtnis (Philosophische Gesellschaft, Berlin, Folge 3, Heft 2, 1894).
Lay, Wilfrid, Mental Imagery, Ps. Rev. (Monograph 7), 1898.
Le Conte, Joseph, Sight, London, 1881.
Lee, Sidney, A Life of William Shakespeare, London, 1899.
Lehmann, Alfred, Ueber Wiedererkennen, Phil. St., 1888.
INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS 543
Lehmann, Alfred, Kritische und experinientelle Studien iiber das Wiedererkennen,
Phil. 5/., 1 89 1.
Die Hauptgesetze des menschlichen Gefiihlslebens, Leipzig, 1892.
Ueberdie Beziehung zwischen Athmung und Aufmerksamkeit, Phil. St., 1893,
{See Hansen, F. C. C. )
Lewes, George Henry, Problems of Life and Mind, 5 vols., London, 1S73-9.
What is Sensation ? Mind, 1876.
Lewy, Waldemar, Experinientelle Untersuchungen Uber das Gedachtniss, Z. f. Ps., 1895.
Lilly, John, The Dramatic Works of, 2 vols., London, 1858.
Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit, London, ed. 1868.
Lindley, Ernest, H., A Preliminary Study of some of the Motor Phenomena of Mental
Effort, Am. J. ofPs., 1896.
Lipps, Theodor, Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, Bonn, 1883.
■ Psychologische Studien, Heidelberg, 1885.
Raumasthetik und geometrisch-optische Tauschungen, Leipzig, 1897.
Locke, John, The Philosophical Works of, London, 1843.
Lodge, Thomas, Phillis (1595) (Crow, Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles, 1896).
Lombroso, Cesare, The Man of Genius, London, 1891.
Lorrain, Jacques Le, De la Duree du Temps dans le Reve, Pev. Phil., I894.
■ — Le Reve, Pev. Phil., 1895.
Lotze, Rudolf Hermann, Medicinische Psychologie, Leipzig, 1852.
Grundzlige der Psychologie, Leipzig, 1881.
Microcosmus, trs., 2 vols., Edinburgh, 18S5.
Loveday, T. , Theories of Mental Activity, Jllind, 1901.
Macario, M., Du Sommeil, des Reves, et du Somnambulisme, Paris, 1857.
MacDougall, R., The Physical Characteristics of Attention, Ps. Pev., 1896.
Macfarlane, Alexander William, Dreaming, Edinburgh, 1891.
Mach, Ernst, Grundlinien der Lehre von den Bewegungsempfindungen, Leipzig, 1875.
Beitrage zur Analyse der Empfindungen, Jena, 1886.
Popular- wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen, Leipzig, 1896.
Zur Theorie des Gehororgans. (Sitzungsberichte der mathematisch-naturwissen-
schaftlichen Classe der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, 1863,
vol. 48.)
Macnish, Robert, The Philosophy of Sleep, Glasgow, 1830.
Magnus, Hugo, Die Entwickelung des Farbensinnes, Jena, 1877,
Maillard, Em., Etude sur le Sommeil, Savenay, 1893.
Maine de Biran, Marie Fran9ois Pierre Gonthier, Influence de I'Habitude sur la Faculte
de Penser, Paris, 1803.
Malapert, P., La Perception de la Ressemblance, Pev. Phil., 1898.
]\Ianaceine, Marie de. Sleep : its Physiology, Pathology, Hygiene, and Psychology,
London, 1897.
Mantegazza, Paolo, Physiologie du Plaisir, Paris, 1886.
Physiologie de la Douleur, Paris, 1888.
Marbe, Karl, Die Schwankungen der Gesichtsempfindungen, Phil. S(., 1893.
Marchesini, Giovanni, Sur les Idees Generales, Pev. Phil., 1893.
Marillier, Leon, Etude de quelques cas d'Hallucination observes sur Moi-meme, Pev>
Phil., 1886.
Remarques sur le Mecanisme de 1' Attention, Pev. Phil., 1889.
Les Phenomenes Moteurs et la Volontc, Pev. Sc, 1890.
Marshall, Henry Rutgers, The Classification of Pleasure and Pain, Mind, 1S89.
The Physical Basis of Pleasure and Pain, Mind, 1891.
Pleasure-Pain and Sensation, Phil. Rev., 1892.
544 INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS
Marshall, Henry Rutgers, The Field of .F.slhctics Psychologically Considered, Mind, 1S92.
Hedonic /listhelics, Mind, 1893.
Pain, Pleasure, and /Esthetics, London, 1894.
Prof. Bain on Pleasure and Pain, Mind, 1893.
Emotions 7'if;'j//j Pleasure -Pain, Mind, 1895.
— .'Esthetic Principles, New York, 1895.
Marston, John, The Works of, 3 vols., London, 18S7.
Martineau, James, Types of Ethical Theory, 2 vols., Oxford, 1S89.
Martius, Gotz, Ueber die muskularc Reaction und die Aufmerksamkeil, Phil. St., 1890.
Mason, Frances A., On " Feeling as Indifference,"' Mind, 1S88.
Massey, Gerald, The Secret Drama of Shakspeare's Sonnets Unfolded, London, 1872.
Massinger, Philip (The Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford, ed. by IL Coleridge,
London, 1848).
Maudsley, Henry, The Physiology of Mind, London, 1S76.
Maury, Louis Ferdinand Alfred, Le Sommeil et les Reves, Paris, 1865,
Meinong, A., Ueber Begriffund Eigenschaften der Empfindung, Viertelj.f. w. Philosophie,
1888-9.
Mercier, Charles, A Classification of Feelings, Mind, 1SS4-5.
Meres, Francis, Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury, London, 1598.
Mervoyer, P. I\I., Etude sur 1' Association des Idees, Paris, 1864.
Meumann, Ernst, Beitrage zur Psychologic des Zeitsinns, Phil. St., 1892-3.
Untersuchungen zur Psychologic und Aesthetik des Rhythmus, Phil. St., 1S94.
Beitrage zur Psychologie des Zeitbewusstseins, Phil. St., 1896.
Meyer, Jiirgen Bona, Genie und Talent, Zeitschrift ftir Volkerpsychologie und Sprach-
wissenschaft, Berlin, 1880,
Mezes, Sidney E., Pleasure and Pain Defined, Phil. Rev., 1895.
Michelson, Eduard, Untersuchungen liber die Tiefe des Schlafes, Ps. Arbeiten, 1S97.
Middleton, A. E., Memory Systems, New and Old, New York, 1888.
Mill, James, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, J. S. Mill's ed., 2 vols.,
London, 1869.
Mill, John Stuart, A System of Logic, 2 vols., London, 1875.
Utilitarianism, London, 1864.
An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, London, 1865.
Auguste Comte and Positivism, London, 1865.
M'Lennan, S. F., Emotion, Desire and Interest: Descriptive, Ps. Rev., 1895.
Monroe, Will S., A Study of Taste Dreams, Am. J. of Ps., 1899.
Montgomery, Edmund, Space and Touch, Mind, 18S5.
Moore, Addison W. {See Angell, J. R.)
Moreau, Jacques Joseph, La Psychologie Morbide, Paris, 1S59.
Morgan, C. Lloyd, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, London, 1894.
Psychology for Teachers, London, 1894.
Morley, Henry, Cassel's edition of Shakespeare's Plays, London.
Morris, William, Hopes and Fears for Art, London, 1882.
Mosso, Angelo, Fear, trs., London, 1896.
Moyer, F. E., A Study of Certain Methods of Distracting the Attention, Am. J. of Ps,,
1897.
Muller, Friedrich Max, The Science of Thought, London, 18S7.
Three Introductory Lectures on the Science of Thought, Chicago, 18S8.
Muller, G. E., and Schumann, F., Experimentelle Beitrage zur Lehre vom Ged'achtniss,
Z.f Ps., 1893.
and Pilzecker, A., Experimentelle Beitrage zur Lehre vom Gedachtniss, Z.y; Ps.,
1900.
Muller, Johannes, Ueber die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen, Coblenz, 1826.
INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS 545
Mtiller, Robert, Ueber Raumvvahrnehmung beim monocularen indirecten Sehen, Phil.
St., 1S98.
Mumford, Alfred Alexander, Waking, Sleeping, and Dreaming, Manchester, 1893.
MUnsterberg, Hugo, Die Willenshandlung, Freiburg i. B., 1S88.
Beitriige zur experimentellen Psychologie, Freiburg i. B., 1S89-92.
Die Association successiver Vorstellungen, Z. f. Ps., 1890.
Ueber Aufgaben und Methoden der Psychologie, Leipzig, 1891.
and Pierce, Arthur II., The Localisation of Sound, Ps. Rev. 1894.
and Bigham, J., Memory, Ps. Rev., 1894.
and Kozaki, N., The Intensifying Effect of Attention, Ps. Rev., 1894.
Psychology and Life, London, 1899.
Grundziige der Psychologie, vol. i, Leipzig, 1900.
Murray, John Clark, A Handbook of Psychology, London, 1885.
Nahlowsky, Joseph Wilhelm, Das Gefiihlsleben, Leipzig, 1862.
Naville, Adrien, La Beaute Organique, Rev. Phil., 1892.
Ernest, De la Place de I'llypothese dans la Science, Rev. Phil., 1876.
Les Conditions des Flypotheses Serieuses, Rev. Phil., 1877.
Les Principes Directeurs des Hypotheses, Rev, Phil., 1877.
Nelson, Julius, A Study of Dreams, Am. J. of Ps., 18S8.
Netschajeff, Alexander, Experimentelle Untersuchungen iiber die Gedachtnisentwickelung
bei Schulkindern, Z. f. Ps., 1900.
Newbold, W. R., Experimental Induction of Automatic Processes, Ps. Rev., 1895.
Newton, Isaac, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 2 vols., Motte's
translation, London, 1729.
Nichols, Herbert, The Origin of Pleasure and Pain, Phil. Rev., 1S92.
' The Feehngs,' Phil. Rev., 1895.
Pain Nerves, Ps. Rev., 1896.
Nisbet, J. F., The Insanity of Genius and the General Inequality of Human Faculty,
London, 1891.
Nordau, Max Simon, Entartung, 2 vols., Berlin, 1S92-3.
Psycho-Physiologie du Genie et du Talent, Paris, 1897.
Obersteinkr, II., Experimental Researches on Attention, Brain, 1879.
Pace, Edward, Zur Frageder Schwankungen der Aufmerksamkeit, etc., Phil. S/., 1892.
Park, Thomas, Ileliconia (Elizabethan poetry published between 1575 and 1604), 3 vols.,
London, 1815.
Passy, Jacques, Revue Generale sur les Sensations Olfactives, An. Ps. for 1895.
St. Paul, First Epistle to the Corinthians.
Paulhan, Fr., Images ct Mouvements, Rev. Phil., 1S83.
Sur I'Emotion Esthetique, Rev. Phil., 1885.
Les Phtnomenes Affectifs, Rev. Phil., 1S85.
'Le Langage Interieur et la Pensee, Rev. Phil., 1S86.
La Simultaneite des Actes Psychiques, Rev. Sc, 1887.
L'Activite Mentale et les Elements de I'Esprit, Paris, 1889.
L' Attention et les Images, Rev. Phil., 1893.
Les Caracteres, Paris, 1894.
A Propos de I'Activite de I'Esprit dans le Reve, Rev. Phil., 1S94.
Payot, Jules, Sensation, Plaisir et Douleur, Rev. /y«7., 1890.
— Comment la Sensation devient Idee, Rev. Phil., 1891.
Pearson, Karl, The Grammar of Science, London, 1900.
Percy, W., Coelia (1594) (Arber's English Garner, vol. 6, 1883).
Pfaff, Emil Richard, Das Traumleben und seine Deutung, Leipzig, 1868.
35
546 INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS
Pninder, A., Das Bewusstsein cics Wollens, Z. f. Ps., 1898.
Pfliiger, E., Tlieoric des Schlafes, Archiv, 1875.
Philippe, Jean, Sur les Transfoimalions de nos Images Mentales, Rev. Phil., 1897.
Phinney, Emma D. (6V^ Weed, S. C.)
Pick, Eduard, Memory and its Doctors, London, 18S8.
Pierce, Arthur 11. {See Angeli, J. R., and Mlinslerberg, II.)
Pierce, Edgar, /Esthetics of Simple Eorms, Ps. A'ev., 1894.
Pillsbury, Walter Bowers, A Study of Apperception, Am. J. of Ps., 1897.
Pilzecker, Alfons, Die Lehre von der sinnlichen Aufmerksamkeit, Miinchen, 1889.
Podmore, Frank, Studies in Psychical Research, London, 1897.
Prevost, P., (^uelques Observations Psychologiqucs sur Ic Sommeil, Geneva, 1834.
Preyer, William, Ueber die Grenzcn dcs Empfindungsvermogens und des Willens,
Bonn, 186S.
Die fiinf Sinne des Menschen, Leipzig, 1870.
Ueber die Grenzen der Tonwahrnehniung, Jena, 1876.
Elemente der reinen Empfindungslehre, Jena, 1877.
Ueber die Ursachc des Schlafes, Stuttgart, 1877.
Naturwissenschaftliche Thatsachen und Probleme, Berlin, 1S80.
Die Seele des Kindes, Leipzig, 1S84.
Die Erkliirung des Gedankenlesens, Leipzig, 1886.
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, London, 1SS3, etc.
Purkinje, Jan Evangelista, Wachen, Schiaf, Traum und verwandte Zustande (Wagner's
Handwcirterbuch der Physiologic, 4 vols., 1842-53, vol. 3, part 2, 1846).
Quain's Elements of Anatomy, 4 vols., London, 1890-6.
Radestock, Paul, Schiaf und Traum, Leipzig, 1S79.
Gqnie und Wahnsinn, Breslau, 1884.
Habit and its Importance in Education, Boston, 18S6.
Radoslawow-IIadji-Denkow, Zwetan, Untersuchungen liber das Gediichtniss fiir
raumliche Distanzen des Gesichlssinnes, Phil. St., 1899.
Raehlmann, E., Physiologisch - psychologische Studien liber die Entwickelung der
Gesichtswahrnehmungen bei Kindern und bei operierten Blindgeborenen,
Z.f. Ps., 1891.
Rauh, F., Le Sentiment et 1' Analyse, Pev. Phil., 1894.
Ravaisson, Felix, De I'Habitude, Paris, 1838,
Reid, Thomas, The Works of. Sir W. Hamilton's ed., 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1S46-63.
Ribot, Theodule Armand, La Psychologic de Ilerbart, Pev. Phil., 1876.
Les Maladies de la Memoirc, Paris, 1S81.
Psychologic de I'Attention, Paris, 1889.
EnquL-te sur les Idees Gencrales, /•lev. Phil., 1891.
Recherches sur la Memoire Affective, Rev. Phil., 1894.
The Psychology of the Emotions, London, 1S97.
L'Evolution des Idees Generales, Paris, 1S97.
Richardson, B. W., The Phenomena of Sleep (Half-hour Recreations in Popular Science ;
first series, Boston, 1874).
Richet, Charles, La Douleur, Rev. Phil., 1877.
Les Origines et les Modalites de la Memoire, Rev. Phil., 1886.
Rieger, Conrad, Experimentelle Untersuchungen iiber die Willensthiitigkeit Jena,
18S5.
Rigg, J. M., The Place of Hypothesis in Experimental Science, Mind, 1SS7.
Rive, L. dc la, Sur la Genese de la Notion d'Espace, Rev. Phil., 18S9.
Robert, W., Der Traum als Naturnothwendigkeit erkliirt, Hamburg, 18S6.
INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS 547
Robertson, George Croom, Association of Ideas, EncyclopcEdia Britannica, 1875.
The Psychological Theory of Extension, Mind, 18S8.
Elements of Psychology, ed. by Mrs. C. A. Foley Rhys Davids, London, 1896.
Robertson, John M., Montaigne and Shakespere, London, 1S97.
Robinson, T. R., Light Intensity and Depth Perception, Am. J. of Ps., 1896.
Rollett, Alexander, Versuche tiber subjective Farben, Archiv, 1891.
Rolph, W. H., Biologische Probleme, Leipzig, 1SS4.
Rosenbaum, Emanuel, Warum miissen wir schlafen? Berlin, 1S92.
Rosenkranz, K. , Psychologic oderdieWissenschaft vomsuhjectivenGeist, Kdnigsberg, 1843.
Ross, James, On Memory, Brain, 1891.
Royse, N. K., A Study of Genius, Chicago, 1891.
Riimelin, Gustav von, Reden and Aufsatze, 3 vols., Tubingen, 1875-94.
Ruskin, John, Modern Painters, vol. I, London, 1873.
The Seven Lamps of Architecture, London, 1897.
The Stones of Venice, 2 vols., Orpington, 18S8.
The Nature of Gothic, London, 1892.
Sanborn, Kate F., The Vanity and Insanity of Genius, New York, 1886.
Sanctis, Sante de, Studien Uber die Aufmerksamkeit, Z. f. Ps., 1898.
Sanford, Edmund C., A Course in Experimental Psychology, 2 vols., 1897-8.
Schmick, J. Heinrich, Die nachirdische Fortdauer der Personlichkeit, Leipzig, 1891.
Schneider, Georg Heinrich, Der menschliche Wille, Berlin, 1882,
Scholz, Friedrich, Sleep and Dreams, trs., New York, 1893.
Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Idea, trs., 3 vols., London, 1883-6.
Schubert, Gotthilf Heinrich von. Die Symbolik des Traumes, Leipzig, 1840.
Schubert-Soldern, Richard von, Reproduction, Geflihl und Wilie, Leipzig, 1887.
Schumann, F., Zur Psychologie der Zeitanschauung, Z. f. Ps., 1898.
(See Milller, G. E.)
Schwartzkopff, Paul, Das Leben im Traum, Leipzig, 1887.
Scripture, Edward W., Arithmetical Prodigies, Am. J. of Ps., 1891.
Vorstellung und Geftihl, Pliil. St., 1891.
Zur Definition einer Vorstellung, Phil. St., 1S91.
• Ueber den associativen Verlauf der Vorstellungen, Phil. St., 1891.
Psychological Measurements, Phil. Kev., 1S93.
The New Psychology, London, 1897.
Secor, W. B., Visual Reading: a Study in Mental Imagery, Am. J. of Ps., 1900.
Sergi, G., Ueber den Sitz und die physische Grundlage der Affecte, Z. f. Ps., 1897,
Les Emotions, Paris, 1901.
Shakespeare, William, Sonnets. (See Sharp, W.)
Works (See Dyce.)
Shand, Alexander F., An Analysis of Attention, Mind, 1894.
Attention and Will : a Study in Involuntary Action, Mind, 1S95.
Character and the Emotions, Mind, 1896.
Feeling and Thought, Mind, 189S.
Sharp, William, The Songs, Poems and Sonnets of William Shakespeare, London, 1S85.
Shaw, W. J. (See Baldwin, J, M., and Warren PI. C.)
Sidgwick, Henry, The Feeling-Tone of Desire and Aversion, Mind, 1892.
The Methods of Ethics, London, 1893.
Sidney, Sir Philip, The Complete Poems of, Grosart's ed., 3 vols., London, 1877.
Siebeck, Hermann, Das Traumleben der Seele, Berlin, 1S77.
Sigwart, Christoph, Logic, trs., 2 vols., London, 1895.
Simmel, G., Skizze einer Willenslheorie, Z. f Ps., 1895.
Simon, Paul Max, Le Monde des Reves, Paris, 18S2.
548 INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS
Smith, Gokhvin, Shakespeare: the Man, Toronto, 1899.
Smith, Theodate L., On Muscular Memory, Am. J. of Vs., 1896.
Smith, W. G., Mediate Association, Mind, 1894.
The Relation of Attention to Memory, Mind, 1895.
The Place of Repetition in Memory, Ps. Kcv., 1896.
Smith, William, Chloris (1596) (Crcnv, Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles, 1897).
Sollier, Paul, Recherches sur les Rapports de la Sensibilite et de I'Emotion, Kcv. Phil.,
1894.
Solomons, Leon M., and Stein, Gertrude, Normal Motor Automatism, Ps. Rev., 1896.
Automatic Reactions, Ps. Rev., 1899.
Sorel, Georges, Contributions Psycho- Physiques a I'Etude Esthetique, Rev, Phil., 1890.
Souriau, Paul, Les Sensations et les Perceptions, Rev. Phil., 1883.
Spalding, Douglas A., Instinct, Macmillan^ s Magazine, 1873.
Spalding, T. A., Shakspere's Sonnets, The Gentleman^ s Magazine, London, 1878.
Spencer, Herbert, The Study of Sociology, London, 1880.
The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols., London, 1890.
Our Space-Consciousness : a Reply, Mind, 1890.
Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, 3 vols., London, 1891.
Spenser, Edmund, The Poetical Works of, London, 1880.
Spiller, Gustav, The Case against Telepathy, The Ethical World, London, 1898-9.
Routine Process, Mind, 1899.
The Dynamics of Attention, Mind, 1901.
Spitta, Heinrich, Die Schlaf- und Trauuizustande der menschlichen Seele, Tubingen, 18S2.
Stanley, Hiram M., Feeling and Emotion, Mind, 1886.
Relation of Feeling to Pleasure and Pain, Mind, 1889.
On Primitive Consciousness, Phil. Rev., 1892.
A Study of Fear as Primitive Emotion, Ps. Rev., 1894.
Attention as Intensifying Sensation, Ps. Rev., 1895.
Stein, Gertrude, Cultivated Motor Automatism, Ps. Rev., 1898.
{Sec Solomons, L. M.)
Stephen, Leslie, The Science of Ethics, London, 18S2.
Stern, L. William, Die Wahrnehmung von Bewegungen vermittelst des Auges, Z. f. Ps.,
1S94.
Sternberg, Maximilian, Zur Lehre von den Vorstellungen Uber die Lage unserer Glieder,
Archiv, 1885.
Stetson, George R., Some Memory Tests of Whites and Blacks, Ps. Rev., 1897.
Stevens, Lewis T., On the Time-Sense, Mind, 1886.
Stewart, Dugald, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, London, 1808.
Storring, Gustav Wilh., Zur Lehre vom Einfluss der Geftihle auf die Vorstellungen und
ihren Verlauf, Phil. St., 1S96.
Stout, G. F., The Ilerbartian Psychology, Mind, 18S8.
■ Herbart compared with English Psychologists and with Beneke, Mind, 1889.
The Psychological Work of Herbart's Disciples, Mind, 18S9.
Apperception and the Movement of Attention, Mind, 1891.
Voluntary Action, Mind, 1896.
Analytic Psychology, 2 vols., London, 1896.
A Manual of Psychology, 2 vols., London, 1S98-9.
Stratton, George M., The Sensations are not the Emotion, Ps. Rev., 1895.
The Spatial Harmony of Touch and Sight, Mind, 1899.
Strieker, Salomon, Studien uber das Bewusstsein, Wien, 1879.
Studien iiber die Sprachvorstellungen, Wien, 1880.
Studien iiber die Bewegungsvorstellungen, Wien, 1882.
Note sur les Images Motrices, Rev. Phil., 1884.
INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS 549
Strieker, Salomon, De la Parole et des Sons Int^rieurs, Rev. Phi!., 1886.
Strong, C. A., The Psychology of Pain, Ps. Rev., 1895.
Striimpell, Adolf, Ein Beitrag zur Theorie des Schlafs, Archiv, 1877.
Ludwig Heinrich, Die Natur und Entstehung der Traume, Leipzig, 1874.
Slumpf, Carl, Ueber den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung, Leipzig, 1873.
Tonpsychologie, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1883-90.
Ueber den Begriff der Gemiithsbewegung, Z. f. Ps., 1899.
Sully, James, Sensation and Intuition : Studies in Psychology and /Esthetics, London,
1874.
/Esthetics, Encyclopiedia Briiannica, 1875.
The Laws of Dream-Fancy, Mind, 1877. ,
Dream, EncyclopLtdia Britamiica, 1877.
(Review of Fechner's Vorschule der Aesthetik), Mind, 1877.
(Review of Allen's Physiological Esthetics), Mind, 1877.
The Question of Visual Perception in Germany, Mind, 1878.
Harmony of Colours, Mind, 1879.
Pleasure of Visual Form, Mind, 1880.
Illusions of Introspection, Mind, 188 1.
(Notice of Krause's Vorlesungen Uber Aesthetik), Mind, 1882.
Genius and Insanity, The Nineteenth Century, 1885.
Comparison, IMind, 1885.
Genius and Precocity, The Nineteenth Century, 1886.
On "Feeling as Indifference," Mind, 1888.
The Psycho-Physical Process in Attention, Brain, 1890.
Pessimism. A History and a Criticism, London, 1891.
The Human Mind, 2 vols., London, 1892.
(Review of Bosanquet's History of /Esthetic), Mind, 1893.
Illusions, 1895.
Surrey, Henry Howard Earl of. The Poetical Works of (Anderson, The Poets of Great
Britain, vol. i, Edinburgh, 1793).
Swift, Edgar James, Disturbance of the Attention during Simple Mental Processes,
Am. J. of Ps., 1892.
Sykes, William, Dreams, Doncaster, 1883.
Symonds, John Addington, Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama, London,
1900.
Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe, On Intelligence, trs., London, 1871.
History of English Literature, trs., 4 vols., London, 1886.
Talbot, Ellen Bliss, An Attempt to Train the Visual Memory, Am. J. of Ps., 1897.
{See Darlington, L.)
Tannery, Paul, Sur I'Activite de I'Esprit dans le Reve, Rev. Phil., 1894.
Sur la Memoire dans le Reve, Rev. Phil., 1898.
Tawny, Guy, The Perception of Two Points not the Space-Threshold, Ps. Rev., 1895.
Thiery, Armand, Ueber geometrisch-optische Tauschungen, Phil. St., 1895.
Thompson, Daniel Greenleaf, A System of Psychology, 2 vols., London, 1884.
Thorndike, Edward L., Animal Intelligence: an Experimental Study of the Associative
Processes in Animals, Ps. Rev. (Monograph 8), 1898.
Tissie, Philippe, Les Reves, Paris, 1S90.
Titchener, Edward Bradford, The Leipsic School of Experimental Psychology, Mind,
1892.
Ueber binoculare Wirkungen monocularer Reize, Phil. St., 1892,
Affective Attention, Phil. Rev., 1894.
Affective Memory, Phil. Rev,, 1895.
55© INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS
Titchener, Edward Bradford, Taste Dreams, Avi.J. of Ps., 1895.
An Outline of Psychology, New York, 1896.
(Review of Santayana, The Sense of I'.eauty, and Ilelwig, Eine Theorie des
Schonen), Mind, 1897.
A Psychological Lalioratory, Mind, 189S.
The Equipment of a Psychological Laboratory, Am. J. of Ps., 1900.
Experimental Psychology. A Manual of Laboratory Practice, 2 vols., New
York, 1 90 1.
T[ofte], R[obert], Laura (1597) (Arber's English Garner, vol. 8, London, 1896).
Tonnies, Eerdinand, Philoso])hical Terminology, Mind, 1899.
Trautscholdt, Martin, Experimentellc Unlersuchungen iiber die Association der Vorstel-
lungen, Phil. St., 1S82.
Travis, An Introspective Investigation, Mind, 1877.
Turner, G. Lyon, ' The Senses,' in a Course of Psychology, Mind, 1SS9.
Twardowski, Kasimir, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, Wien,
1894.
Tyler, Thomas, Shakspeare's Sonnets, London, 1890.
Tyndall, John, On the Scientific Use of the Imagination, London, 1870.
Ueberhorst, Karl, Das Wesen der Aufmerksamkeit und der geistigen Sammlung, Archiv
fiir syitematische Philosophie, Berlin, 1897.
Uhl, Lemon L., Attention : a Historical Summary of the Discussions concerning the
Subject, Baltimore, 1890.
Uphues, Goswin K., Wahrnehmung und Empfmdung, Leipzig, 1888.
Ueber die Erinnerung, Leipzig, 1S89.
Urbantschitsch, Victor, Ueber eine Eigenthiimlichkeit der Schallempfindungen geringster
Intensitat, Ceniralblatt fiir die Aledicinischen Wissenschaftcn, 1875.
Zur Lehre von der Schallempfindung, Archiv, 1881.
Vaschide, N., Surla Localisation des Souvenirs, An. Ps. for 1896.
Venn, J., The Use of Hypotheses, Mind, 1878.
Our Control of Space and Time, Mind, 1881.
Verdon, Forgetfulness, Mind, 1877.
Vierordt, Karl, Der Zeitsinn, Tubingen, 1868.
Vogt, Ragnar, Ueber Ablenkbarkeit und Gewohnungsfahigkeit, Ps. Arbeiten, 1899.
Void, J. Mourly, Einige Experimente iiber Gesichtsbilder im Traum, Z. f. Ps., 1896.
Volkelt, Johannes, Die Traum-Phantasie, Stuttgart, 1875.
Psychologische Streitfragen, Zeitschrift fur Philosophic und Philosophische
Kritik, 1887.
Volkmann, Wilhelm Fridolin Ritter von Volkmar, Lehrbuch der Psychologie vom
Standpunkte des Realismus, 2 vols., Cothen, 1894-5.
Waitz, Theodor, Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft, Braunschweig, 1S49.
Wallace, Alfred Russel, Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, London, 1896.
Waller, Augustus D., The Sense of Effort : an Objective Study, Brain, 1891.
Walshe, Walter Hayle, The Colloquial Faculty for Languages, Cerebral Localisation,
and the Nature of Genius, London, 1S86.
Ward, Adolphus William, A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death ol
Queen Anne, 3 vols., London, 1899.
Ward, James, Herbart, Encyclopcedia Brilannica, 1880.
Psychology, Encyclopedia Brilannica, 1886.
"The Psychological Theory of Extension," Mind, 1889,
Assimilation and Association, Mind, 1S93-4.
INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS 551
Ward, James, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 2 vols., London, 1S99.
Ware, James Redding, Wonderful Dreams, London, 1S83.
Warren, W. C, and Shaw, W. J., Further Experiments on Memory for Square Size,
Ps. Rev., 1895.
Washburn, Margaret Floy, The Process of Recognition, Phil. Rev., 1897.
Subjective Colours and the After-image : their Significance for the Theory ol
Attention, Mind, 1899.
The Colour Changes of the AVhite Light After-image, Central and Peripheral,
Ps. Rev., 1900.
Watson, Thomas (15S2, 1590, 1593) (Arber's English Reprints, 1870).
Weber, E. PL, Der Tastsinn und das Gemeingefiihl (Wagner's Handworterbuch der
Physiologic, vol. 3, part 2, 1849).
Webster, John, The Works of, Dyce's ed., London, 1857.
Weed, Sarah C, Hallam, Florence M., and Phinney, Emma D., A Study of the Dream-
Consciousness, Am. J. of Ps., 1896.
Whately, Richard, Elements of Logic, London, 1844.
Wheatstone, Charles, Contributions to the Physiology of Vision, Part I, 1838, Part II,
1852 (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London).
Whewell, William, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, founded upon their
History, 2 vols., London, 1847.
Novum Organon Renovatum, London, 1858.
Whitehead, Louis Grant, A Study of Visual and Aural Memory Processes, Ps. Rev.,
1896.
Whittaker, Thomas (Review of Carricre's /Esthetik), Mind, 1886.
Volkmann's Psychology, Mind, 1890.
Wirth, Wilhelm, Vorstellungs- und Gefiihlscontrast, Z. f, Ps., 1898.
Witasek, Slephan, Ueber willkiirliche Vorstellungsverbindung, Z. f. Ps., 1896.
Wilmer, Lightner, Zur experimentellen Aesthetik einfacher riiumlicher Formverhaltnisse,
P/iii. Sf., 1893.
Wolfe, H. K., Untersuchungen iiber das Tongediichtniss, P/ii/. St., 1886.
Woodworth, R. S., Note on the Rapidity of Dreams, Ps. Rev., 1897.
The Accuracy of Voluntary Movement, Fs. Rev., 1899 (Monograph 13).
Wordsworth, William, The Poetical Works of, London, 1891.
Wundt, Wilhelm, Der Spiritismus. Eine sogenannte wissenschaftliche Frage, Leipzig,
1879.
Ueber psychologische Methoden, Phil. St., 18S1.
Sclbstbeobachtung und innere Wahrnehmung, Phil. St., 1887.
Ueber die Methoden der Mes-^ung des Bewusstseinsumfanges, Phil. St., 1890.
Zur Lehre von den Gemlithsbewegungen, Phil. St., 1890.
Zur Frage des Bewusstseinsumfanges, Phil. St. 1S91.
Bemerkungen zur Associationslehre, Phil. St., 1S91.
Grundziige der physiologischen Psychologie, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1893.
Sind die Mittelglieder einer mittelbaren Association bewusst oder unbewusst ?
Phil. St., 1894.
Ueber psychische Causalitiit und das Princip des psychophysischen Parallelismus,
Phil. St., 1S94.
Grundriss der Psychologie, Leipzig, 1896.
Zur Theorie der raumlichen Gesichtswahrnehmungen, Phil. St., 1898.
Die geometrisch-optischen Tauschungen, Leipzig, 1898.
Bemerkungen zur Theorie der Gefiihle, /'hil. St., 1899.
Wyndham, George, The Poems of Shakespeare, London, 1S9S,
ZiEGLER, Theobald, Das Gefiihl, Leipzig, 1S99.
552 INDEX OF PUBLICATIONS
Ziehen, Th., Leilfaden der Psychologic, Jena, 1891.
Zwaardemakcr, II., Der Umfangdes Gehorsin den verschiedenen Lebensjahrcn, Z. f. Ps.y
1S94.
Die Physiologic des Geruchs, Leipzig, 1895.
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