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THE
STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY
ITS OBJECT, SCOPE, AND METHOD
PROBLEMS
or
LIFE AND MIND
ST
GEOEaE HENEY LEWES
PROBLEM THE FIRST
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY
ITS OBJECT, SCOPE, AND METHOD
BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY.
Cde Etocrciic Press, €am6rilig:e.
1879.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTEE I.
PAOB
THE OBJECT, 3
{The Relation of Psychology to Physiology), > . . 9
(5o(^y anci Mind), . 19
{Function and Faculty), 27
{Mechanism and Exjperience), ...... 29
. CHAPTER II.
THE MOTIVE, 39
CHAPTER III.
THE POSITION OP THE SCIENCE, 47
{Objective and Subjective Laxvs), .... 50
( Viewa of Comte, Mill, and Spencer), ...,•, 54
CHAPTER IV.
THE SOCIAL FACTOR, 71
CHAPTER V.
SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS AND THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD, . 82
CHAPTER VI.
LIMITATIONS OP THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD 90
CHAPTER VII.
THE FREEDOM OP THE WILL, , , 101
VUl CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIIL
PAQB
OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS, . 112
(Animal Psychology), 118
{Differences of Animal and Human), 129
{The Moral Sense), 144
{History), 152
CHAPTER IX.
IHE GENERAL MIND, . 159
CHAPTER X.
IHB MENTAL FORMS, .....»•. 171
CHAPTER XL
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS, 178
NOTICE.
The following Problem is published separately in
obedience to an implied wish of the Author, and has
been printed from his manuscript with no other
alterations than such as it is felt certain that he
would have sanctioned.
Another volume will appear in the autumn.
PROBLEM I.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY;
ITS OBJECT, SCOPE, AND METHOD.
" $i/x'7S o^p ^iffiv d^fws X6701; Karavorjcai ofet twarhv etvai &vev rrjs toO SXov
t/tiaeus ; "
Plato : Phcedrus.
"Kaum giebt es eine Wissenschaft, iiber deren Standpvinkt und Entwick-
lungsstufe grossere Zweifel und Widerspriiche herrschen, als die Wissenschaft
der Seele. Wahrend den Einen die Psychologie langst ausgelebt, keiner erheb-
licben Weiterbildung mehr fiihig scheint, sind Andere der Meinung, dass sie
kaum erst in den Anfangen ihrer Entwicklung begriffen sei."
WuNDT : Vorlesungen iiber die Menschen und Thierseele,
1863, i. I.
ft
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOG'
CHAPTEK I.
THE OBJECT.
1. In every science we define the object and scope of
tlie search, the motive of the search, and the means
whereby the aim may be reached. The purpose of
the following pages is to set forth what it is we study
in Psychology, why we study it, and how we ought
to study it.
A glance at the literature of the subject discloses
the utmost discordance on these cardinal points. The
conceptions of the object and scope are different, and
lead to the adoption of antagonistic methods. On
the one side stands the ancient metempirical concep-
tion of a so-called Eational Psychology, with its
deductive method of ontological research. Its adhe-
rents, even when condescending to what they call
Empirical Psychology, so little regard the data of
Experience, that they quietly ignore the complex con-
ditions of the living organism, and treat mental facts
simply as the manifestations of a Psychical Principle,
at once unknowable and intimately known, a myste-
rious agent revealed to Consciousness. On the other
hand, there is an empirical school which professes to
4 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
confine itself to tlie data of Experience, and to pursue
the inductive method : discountenancing Ontology,
and coquetting with Physiology. This school keeps
up the traditions of a Psychical Principle independent
of the organism, and of Introspection as the exclusive
method of research. Of late years there have arisen
writers who have tried to efi'ect a compromise : in-
voking physiological data for one class of facts, and
only invoking the Psychical Principle where physio-
logical data fell short.
The development of the science has been along
three lines : Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Condillac,
Hartley, and James Mill made imperishable contri-
butions to the introspective analysis of the phenomena
in their mental aspect. Cabanis, Gall, and recent
physiologists, have brought into prominence the phy-
sical aspect-, revealing many of the biological condi-
tions. Lotze, Wundt, Bain, Spencer, Taine, combine
and complete these efi"orts of subjective and objective
research, and have given the science a new impulse
by their thorough and constant recognition of the
twofold aspect of the phenomena.
2. And yet the constitution of the science has still
to be effected. The constitution of a science means,
l**, that circumscription of a class of phenomena
which, while marking its relations to other classes,
assigns it a distinctive position in the series of the
sciences ; 2°, that specijication of the object and
method of search which, when aided by fundamental
inductions established on experiment, enables all
future inquiries to converge towards a self-sustaining
and continuous development. In a science thus con-
stituted, the discovery of to-day enlarges without
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 5
overturning the conceptions of yesterday. Each
worker brings his hibours as a contribution to a com-
mon fund, not as an anarchical displacement of the
labours of predecessors. Henceforward there is
system, but no systems : schools and professors no
longer give their names -as authorities in place of
reasons. Astronomy, to take one example, is in con-
stant progress, but the progress is that of evolution,
not revolution ; and the doctrines taught are not
taught as Copernican, Newtonian, or Laplacian, but
as astronomical. Physics and Chemistry advance
with rapid strides to a fuller and more exact appre-
ciation of their respective phenomena. The same
may be said of Biology, but cannot be said of Psycho-
logy. We still hear of the Intuitional Psychology
and the Sensational School. We are referred to the
Psychology of Kant or Hegel, of Locke or Spencer,
as if the doctrines taught were still individual appre-
ciations of the facts on the guarantee of each author's
renown.
3. Nevertheless, while this is assuredly the present
state of the study, and one which is anomalous, the
materials exist whereby " a first approximation " to
the constitution of the science may be made. Neither
introspective analysis alone, nor objective observation
alone, nor even the union of the two, if confined to
the invest] oration of the individual mind and indivi-
dual organism, will suffice. Psychology investigates
the Human Mind, not an individual's thoughts and
feelings ; and has to consider it as the product of the
Human Organism not only in relation to the Cosmos,
but also in relation to Society. For man is distinc-
tively a social being ; his animal impulses are pro-
6 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AltTD MIXD.
foundly modified by social influences, and his higher
faculties are evolved through social needs. By this
recognition of the social factor as the complement to
the biological factor, this recognition of the Mind as
an expression of organic and social conditions, the
first step is taken towards the constitution of our
science.
The credit of this conception is due to Auguste
Comte. Others before him had of course recognised
the fact that social conditions greatly influenced
mental evolution; the fact was transparent, but no
one had seized its full significance. Nor do I think
that even Comte saw more than its general range.
His abstention from analysis and detailed investiga-
tion kept him from specifying the mode of operation
of the social factor; and his '^cerebral theory," so
unsatisfactory in its method, and so fantastic in its
anatomy, could not supply what he left unspecified.
4. It is not enough to transfer the point of view
from the individual to the race, and to take the social
factor into account ; we must also frankly accept the
biological point of view, which regarding mental
functions as vital functions, and states of conscious-
ness as separable from states of the organism only in
our mode of apprehending them, sets aside the tradi-
tional conception of the Mind as an agent apart from
the organism. This premised, we may define the
object of our search somewhat thus :
Psychology is the analysis and classification of
the sentient functions and faculties, revealed
to observation and induction, completed by
the reduction of them to their conditions of
existence, biological and sociological.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 7
An organism when in action is only to be under-
stood, by understanding both it and the raediumyro??i
which it draws its materials, and on which it reacts.
Its conditions of existence are first the structural
mechanism, and, secondly, the medium in which it is
placed. When we know the part played by the
mechanism, and the part played by the medium, we
have gone as far as analysis can help us ; we have
scientifically explained the actions of the organism.
This, which is so obvious in reference to vital actions
that it is a physiological commonplace, is so little
understood in reference to the mental class of vital
actions that it may appear a psychological paradox,
and a paradox which no explanation can make accept-
able so long as the Mind is thought to be an entity
inhabitincc the orfjanism, usinec it as an instrument ;
and so long as Society is thought to be an artificial
product of man's mind, — in which case it cannot be
one of the conditions of mental evolution.
5. Leaving the justification of our definition to
subsequent pages, we are enabled by it to specify the
class of phenomena which form the object of our
study. Instead of defining it as *' The science of the
facts of Consciousness," which is at once ambiguous
and restricted, we propose, as more precise and com-
prehensive, " The science of the facts of Sentience.'\
These terms have the advantage of at once ranging
the search under the general science of Life, and also
of rescuing many phenomena from the ambiguity
arising when these are unconscious.^' There are
* Sir W. Hamilton, treating of certain mental modifications, says —
" They are not in themselves revealed to consciousness ; but as certain
facts of consciousness necessarily suppose them to exist, and to exert an
8 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
many writers who not only limit tlie science to the
facts of Consciousness (which forces them to extreme
vacillation in the use of this term), but also regard
Consciousness as absolutely sui generis, unallied with
all other facts, even the organic, so that the science
calls for an unique position, and a Method that is
unique. In this work the science will be regarded as
a branch of Biology, and its Method as that which is
pursued in the physical sciences. The broad distinc-
tion of objective and subjective aspects I fully admit,
but deny that this calls for any change in Method.
I admit the speciality of what are called spiritual
facts ; I admit that because of this speciality they can
never be explained by, or reduced to material facts,
whether we assume their difference to be that of
agents or only of aspects ; I further admit that no
deductions from what is known objectively of the
material mechanism will explain the phenomena of
sensibility, as states of consciousness, any more than
anatomical knowledge of an organ alone will enable
us to deduce its function. But for all this I must
reject the separation of Psychology from Biology so
long as I am unable to separate Mind from Life.
The relation of Mind to Life is so plain that no
one has ever doubted it, yet so obscure that no one
has been able to present a precise statement of their
points of identity and difference. We may define,
we cannot explain it. We can define it by analyti-
cally distinguishing certain functions as sentient from
other functions as nutrient; but in reality no such
influence in the mental processes, we are thus constrained to admit as
modifications of mind what are not in themselves phenomena of con-
sciousness." — Lectures on Metap/iysics, 1859, i. 348.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 9
separation is feasible. If we classify certain pheno-
mena as psychical, and others as vital, the artifice is
patent, since all psychical phenomena are vital, and
in all of them sensibility is a factor. This identity
admitted, there is still need to specify the difference
which leads us to mark off Psychology as a branch of
the general science of life. That science — Biology —
includes plants, animals, and man, with the respective
subdivisions, Phytology, Zoology, and Anthropology.
Each of these is again subdivided into Morphology,
the science of form, and Physiology, the science of
function. Now clearly it is neither with the struc-
ture of the organism, nor with its phases of evolution,
that Psychology is concerned, but solely with the
sentient functions and faculties of the organism.
And as on a first glance this would seem to be the
peculiar province of Physiology, the science of func-
tion, — the question may arise, Why not be content
with it, why admit a separate science ? There are
writers who explicitly maintain that Psychology is
only another name for the Physiology of the sentient
organism ; but to be consistent in this they have to
extend the conception of Physiology far beyond its
scientific acceptation.
THE RELATION OF PSYCHOLOGY TO PHYSIOLOGY.
6. This is a point of considerable importance, and
one on which there seems great vacillation of opinion,
not only among the various schools, but in the
writings of each author. I will endeavour to fix with
precision the conception which will guide my own
exposition.
10 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
We see men and animals performing certain actions
in consequence of certain external influences ; and
other actions, the causation of which is hidden from
us, and assigned to internal influences. The resem-
blance of both classes of actions to those performed
by ourselves, irresistibly leads us to infer that in
them, as in us, the actions were stimulated and
guided by feelings. Sometimes we think only of the
movements which we see, and sometimes only of the
feelings which we infer. Accordingly, we may say
that we saw a man snatch up a stick and strike a
dog ; or that we knew the man was angry and
resolved to punish the dog. This twofold interpre-
tation of the same event we name its objective and
subjective aspect. A similar twofold aspect is pre-
sented in reflection on our own actions. We say
that we are both Body and Mind. We know that
we exist as objects, perceptible to our senses, and to
the senses of others ; and as subjects, percipient of
objects, and conscious of feelings. We live, feed,
and move. We feel, think, and will. The solidity,
form, colour, weight, and motions of the Body consti-
tute the objective, visible self (oparov). The sensa-
tions, ideas, and volitions constitute the subjective,
intelligible self (aetSeV). Thus opposed, there is the
broadest of all possible distinctions between Body
and Mind. It was appreciated by the earliest in-
quirers, who, naturally enough, concluded that the
inner self was the ruler, if not the fashioner of the
outer {to tov au,/j.aTo<i ap-xjoov) ; a conception which still
lingers in the fallacy of organs being created by
functions. Although modern science tends rather
to\\^ards the opposite extreme, in its pursuit of the
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 11
bodily conditions of mental functions, the broad
contrast between the objective and subjective aspects
remains unassailed. To many thinkers, indeed, the
contrast seems far more than that of aspects, it is
that of agents. They postulate a vital principle and
a psychical principle — a Body, the organism, as the
substance, or agent, of all the vital actions, and a
Soul, the subject, or agent, of all the mental phe-
nomena. The difference in the physical and mental
aspect is interpreted as implying a diflference in the
Vital Principle which stands for the one, and the
Psychical Principle which stands for the other. Yet
that these are merely two generalised expressions of
the observed phenomena, and that the different
actions are those of one and the same agent, are the
only conclusions which Experience warrants. They
are indeed conclusions which a philosophy claiming
another basis than experience rejects. What we
know is that the living organism has among its
manifestations the class called sentient ; and these
are known as sensible affections, i.e., the changes
excited by the contact of external causes, and assign-
able to visible organs of Sense ; and states of con-
sciousness, i.e., the changes of Feeling, excited by
internal causes, and not assignable to visible organs.
It is not known, nor is there any evidence to suggest,
that one of these classes is due to the activity of the
organism, the other to the activity of another agent.
The only agent known is the organism. That an
organism can feel and think is doubtless mysterious.
The fact that it does so is all we are concerned with,
and is neither more nor less mysterious than the fact
that the organism can live and move.
12 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
7. Keeping within the lines of Experience, we may
be said to know the nature of the Soul, as we know
the nature of the Body. We know the separate
manifestations ; and we know the logical artifices
which condense the manifold phenomena in abstract
terms. Sir W. Hamilton taught that "in so far as
mind is the common name for the states of knowing,
willing, feeling, &c., of which we are conscious, it
is only a name for a certain series of connected
phenomena or qualities, and consequently expresses
only what is known." Surely that is enough ? Not
for the metaphysician ; for he adds : " but in so far
as it denotes that subject or substance in which the
phenomena of knowing, willing, feeling, &c., inhere
— something behind or under the phenomena — it
expresses what in itself, or in its absolute existence,
is unknown" {Lectures, i. 138).
If that something is unknown, on what grounds
can we pretend to say what it is or is not ? We
cannot lawfully say that it is not some mode of
existence of the organism. Waiving this, let us ask
what definite and verifiable conception is expressed
by " a something behind the phenomena"? It may
mean either the conditions of which the phenomena
are the functions, or jpre-conditions which were indis-
pensable to the existence of those conditions then
and there. Both of these are amenable to empirical
methods. Anvthino; more than these is a metem-
pirical figment, an unknown quantity to which no
function is assignable, and which consequently can
have no place in a scientific theory dealing only with
known functions.
Dismissing then the metempirical postulate of a
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 13
"sometliing behind or under the phenomena," which
is neither their conditions nor their pre-conditions,
we have the two abstractions substance and subject as
the " something " in which the observed phenomena
are said to " inhere." If the reader will strike out
the terms mind, feeling, knowing, and willing, from
Hamilton's passage, and replace them by motion as
the common name for changes of position in space, or
by vitality as the common name for the changes in an
organism, he will see that the substance or subject in
which qualities inhere is only the abstract expression
for the sums of such qualities. Mind as a subject is the
logical conception of the qualities grouped in a class; if
we translate it into a physiological conception, and seek
the agent of which all the phenomena are the actions,
we get the organism. We no more come upon the
evidence for a Psychical Principle which is not the
abstract expression of this orgauism, than we come
upon a Motor Principle behind the conditions of
movement, or a Vital Principle under the conditions
of organic change.
8. Thus, and thus only, is it permissible in a
scientific treatise to speak of Soul or Miud, as sub-
stance or subject. Our search for the conditions and
pre-conditions of the phenomena is therefore solely
directed to the organism in relation to the external
world and to the social world. Thus defined, the
place of Physiology is that of the organic conditions
of production ; the place of Psychology being that of
th<3 products. Physiology deals directly and chiefly
with the objective aspect of sentient facts, and their
relation to the visible organism ; Psychology with the
same facts in their subjective aspect as states of
14 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
Feeling, not as organic changes. The physiologist
traces the sequence of stimulation through sensory
nerve, centre, motor nerve, and muscle. It is with
the mechanism that he is directly concerned, although
from first to last he has indirectly been occupied with
the changes in Feeling. Were it not for this implied
identity of molecular and sentient changes, the
sequences would have no more significance for him
than similar sequences in a machine. The psycho-
loofist has the same events before him, but reo-ards
them from a diff"erent standpoint. He is concerned
directly with feelings as such, and their relations to
other feelings — with the products, not with the con-
ditions of production. He must, indeed, imply the
co-existence of organic changes, because the feelings
are those of a living organism ; but so long as the
nature and succession of the phenomena in their sub-
jective aspect attract him, he need only tacitly imply
the co-existence of the objective. His concern is
with changes in feeling, with processes which are
conscious processes, or which have been and may
again be conscious.
This latter clause is of immense importance, and
points to the indispensable union of the j)hysiological
with the psychological investigation. For observe :
we can classify subjective facts while remaining
ignorant of their objective correlates ; as ordinary
men classify the cardinal facts of life while wholly
ignorant of Anatomy and Physiology. But if we
desire to know the subjective facts with accuracy
and fulness, it is obvious that we must learn
their objective conditions of production. A chemist
studies both thQ nature of the elementary substances
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 15
and the laws of tlieir combination ; having these
products before him, he analyses them in the search
for their conditions of production. Only thus can he
satisfy himself that he knows the products accurately.
But in seeking these conditions he is forced to pass
beyond the sphere of Chemistry proper : he has to
invoke the aid of Physics. The physiologist also has
to pass beyond the observation of functions, and
invoke the aid of Anatomy, Chemistry, and Physics.
In like manner, although the exclusive province of
the psychologist is that of the sentient changes as
products, the aid of Physiology is needed to supply
the conditions of production ; it alone can disclose
the operation of changes which escape subjective
appreciation.
To the physiologist there must appear a grave
misconception in the common declaration that " all
we know of a sensation is our consciousness of it."
This is a truism if sensation and consciousness are
equivalent terms, but such equivalence can only refer
to the subjective aspect of the phenomenon. Objec-
tively, as a vital fact, we know a sensation as a force
in the organism, a condition of movement, a com-
ponent in some conscious resultant, which, whether
itself consciously discriminated, or merely merged in
a conscious resultant, has the same vital, the same
psychical operation. And this force, this sensible
component, which lies outside the range of intro-
spection, may be proved experimentally to be in
actual operation ; and may even be experimentally
brought within the range of introspection. Thus,
much that is inexplicable when the study is limited
to the facts of consciousness on the method of Intro-
16 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
spection, becomes explicable when extended to the
facts of Sentience on the wider method.
9. The contrast between the two studies is this :
the aspect which the physiologist brings prominently
forward is left in the background by the psychologist ;
and vice versd. For example : I have certain musical
sensations which I recognise as representing three
bars of the Ninth Symphony. If, as a physiologist, I
attempt an analysis of these sensations, I seek all the
successive objective conditions — aerial pulses of certain
amplitudes and rapidities, neural changes in the audi-
tory tract, and excitations of the Sensorium : the
result of all these being the musical sensations. But
if, as a psychologist, I attempt the analysis, it is not
to these objective conditions that they are referred.
These are presupposed; and instead of aerial pulses and
neural changes, I call up the experiences which have
assigned every note to its position in the scale, and to
every grouping of the notes its position in my mental
history. I re-cognise the notes and their intervals. I
also re-cognise the arrangement as that of Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony. ~ The eflfect of these sounds is far
from being the simple response of my auditory tract ;
it is blended with nascent feelings, dim associations,
and distinct images. The musical value of each note,
and the musical feeling of each group, the recognition,
and the revivals, have indeed their particular organic
conditions ; but these are too obscure for our obser-
vation, and were they transparent they would not be
regarded in a psychological exposition.
There is a physiology of the sentient organism, and
this is the theory of the sentient functions as the
direct activity of the organs. There is a psychology
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 17
of the sentient being, and tliis is tLe theory of the
Soul, its functions and acquired faculties, considered
less in reference to the organism than in reference to
Experience and Conduct. The physiologist presup-
poses that the psychical facts are known, his task
being to detect the physical factors. The psycho-
logist presupposes the physical factors, his task being
to exhibit the mutual relations of the psychical facts.
A theory of the organism and a theory of the soul
equally demand a combination of the objective and
subjective data.
Kant {Anthropologie, W. x. 115), with many other
writers, regards all physiological explanation of psy-
chical facts as idle speculation, " because we know
nothing of the brain-fibres and their action." If
Physiology were limited to brain-fibres and their
action, the objection would be valid, for our igno-
rance is undeniable. But Kant admits that uncon-
scious sensations and obscure perceptions form the
larger proportion of our mental states ; and as Sense,
on its receptive side at least, is unquestionably an
organic function, the exclusion of Physiology is
manifestly impossible. He thinks that Physiology,
though incapable of telling us what the action of
brain-fibres is, can tell us " what helps or obstructs
them ; " and he assigns it therefore the position of a
pragmatical Anthropology. One cannot say that in
this, or in psychological investigation, Kant's success
was such as to render his exclusion of Physiology
wisely imitable.
10. Sensations and ideas spring up in the mind as
flowers spring np in the fields. We see them only
when they have emerged. We watch their changes
VOL. IIL B
18 PROBLEMS or LIFE AND MIND.
and disappearance. Science is prompted to seek out
the conditions of their appearance, their changes and
their disappearance. The search is for the most part
groping in darkness. We know that a seed placed
in suitable soil will throw out root and stem. We
can trace its development as it draws certain materials
from the soil and the atmosphere. But we know that
the seed itself is a product, and has its own special
determinism. The forms which the seed assumes
are partly peculiar to it and partly common to
myriads of others ; nay, some of its forms are common
to all plants whatever. Different seeds and different
soils yield different plants, but all have the same
fundamental substance and the same constituent
forms. A speculative botanist extracting these com-
mon forms may present them as a priori condi-
tions and call them Nature's innate ideas ; folio vvinor
thus in the track of speculative psychologists. The
psychologist admits that all knowledge arises in
experience, though not all out of it. The botanist
admits that all plants arise in earth or air, but not all
out of them. There are conditions and pre-conditions
of experience, as there are conditions and pre-condi-
tions of plant life. The first question to be solved is,
AVhat is the nature of these ? Is there an archetypal
plant existing somewhere and somehow behind the
phenomenal plants, a Soul or Spiritual Principle in-
dependent of the living organism ? or is there an
evolved product — seed — organism, which in a given
medium will continue its evolution into other pro-
ducts ? It is not less certain that before the eye can
enter on its function of seeing under the required
conditions, there are required pre-conditions of an
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY^ 19
optical mechanism and a sensorial mecLanism, than
that before the seed can enter on its development
there must be added to the conditions of soil, atmos-
phere, and temperature, the pre-conditions of ances-
tral adaptations which have formed protoplasm into
seed.
BODY AND MIND.
11. The fact of unconscious intellectual processes,
no less than of unconscious sensual and volitional
processes, carries two important consequences. First,
it disproves the notion that Psychology can be
limited to the facts of Consciousness ; for this would
exclude the greater part of our mental life, and would
imply that a judgment or a train of reasoning was
not a psychological fact when it passed unconsciously.
Secondly, it proves that Psychology, the science of
the products, cannot be divorced from Physiology, \
the science of the conditions of production, without
excluding all the processes known to be physiological
and known to be unconscious. The two studies
represent the two aspects of the relation between
Body and Mind, aspects which are expressed in objec-
tive and subjective terms. Only when sentient
activities have become so developed that a conscious
Ego or Personality has emerged from them, which
establishes distinctions between one class of feelings
and another, can this famous contrast of object and ^
subject arise. We learn to distinguish the different
parts of our organism and their different activities;
generalising and abstracting, we get the conception
of Body representing one group, and of Mind repre-
senting another.
20 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
Once formed, these abstractions are personified,
considered apart, and speculation is then busy trying
to discover the link which unites them. For centuries
men have puzzled themselves with this question. If
we consider the genesis of the Mind as revealed to
observation and induction, we see that at first there
could be no such contrast of objective and subjective ;
and ^ven now there are numberless indications of a
mental activity only recognisable as a neural process,
hot at all as a conscious process.
12. Much of the obscurity arises from not dis-
tinguishing between Sentience, the activity of the
nQuro-mu«cular system, and Consciousness (in the
special sense of Eeflectiou), the particular Mode of
Sentience. Thus, we are commonly said to be
sensibly afiected by an impression, but not to have a
sensation unless we are conscious of this affection : a
simj)le activity of the sentient mechanism does not
suffice ; there must be a special addition to it from
some other mechanism — a reverberation from some
other source. In this view, Sensibility is not the
vital property o^ tissue, Sentience is not the function
of the neuro-muscular system, but is the activity of
the Ego, according to the spiritualists ; the function
of the brain, according to the physiologists.
In future pages I shall explain how both physio-
logically and psychologically it is we who feel, and
,not any particular organ ; but that this ive means the
total sensibilities of the whole oro-anism. Meanwhile
I may remark, that we can only introduce the order-
liness of science into this question by regarding every
sensorial 'afi'ection as sentient, therefore psychical ;
and every such afi'ection as capable of rising into
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 21
conscious afifection when the conditions of relative
distinctness are present. The great mistake is trans-
formingf the antithesis of conscious and unconscious
into the equivalent of mental and physical. How
this arose, we know. Observation having detected
the mechanical conditions of numerous vital actions,
some of these sentient, Descartes argued that animals,
at least, were mere machines. All their actions, and
many of our own, were, he said, determined by purely
mechanical motors. In man there was a soul which
presided over the machinery, but in the animal
there was the machinery without the soul.^'" I tried
in my previous volume to show that this paradox,
which startled Europe and has been recently re-
vived, is true or false according to our interpre-
tation of its terms. It is true if it be understood
to say that animal actions, viewed solely in the
light of movements, must be rigorously dependent
on mechanical conditions ; for Mechanics is the^
science of Movement. It is false if it be under-
stood to say that the animal actions are exclu-
sively phenomena of Movement, either as an ab-
stract aspect, or a* identical with the action ,'of
machinery ; for these actions are chemical and vital,
no less than mechanical, and their motors involve
the co-operation of conditions never found in ma-
chinery. ",
* " Descartes a donnd une definition metaphysique de I'ame et une
definition physique de la vie. Lame est le principe superieur qui se
nianifeste par la pensee, la vie n'est qu'un effet superieur des lois de
la mecanique. Le corps humain est une machine faite pour elle
nieme ; Tame s'y ajoute pour contempler en simple spectatrice ce qui_
se passe dans le corps, mais elle n'intervient en rien dans le fonctionne-
ment vital." — Cladde Bernard, La Science Experimentale, 1878,
p. 15L
22 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
13. The paradox of Descartes was useful in fixing
attention on tlie -operation of mechanical conditions,
which had been too little regarded ; but while it thus
gave definiteness to research, and enabled men to
understand spinal reflexes, it was injurious in its
tendency to substitute the principles of inorganic
machinery for the principles of organic mechanism.
Hence, when a large class of actions were found to be
effected in the absence of the brain, and were assigned
to the reflex mechanism of the spinal cord, it was
rashly concluded that such actions were due to purely
mechanical motors. Sentience was excluded, because
that was assigned to the brain exclusively. The next
step was to conclude that since these spinal reflexes
were often performed unconsciously, even when the
brain was present, they proved Consciousness not to
be indispensable ; and Consciousness and Sentience
being taken as equivalent, the final conclusion was
that the real motors of such actions were mechanical.
The spinal cord became the recognised apparatus for
the transmission of movement and the production of
muscular action, but not an apparatus for the produc-
tion of sentience. Because it was demonstrably the
one, it was denied to be the other. That it might be
botli was not considered. It acquired the title of
excito-motor apparatus ; the brain being the sensori-
motor apparatus. But I have seen no rational grounds
for the conclusion that one part of the central nervous
system is both a mechanical and a sentient apparatus,
while other parts similar in structure are only mecha-
nical. The doubt on this head became a certainty
when observation proved that not only had the cere-
brum a reflex activity of the same kind as the spinal
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 23 '
cord, but that the cerebral reflexes were, like the
spinal, sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious
states. Here it became clear that the antithesis be-
tween these two sentient states could not be the equi-
valent of the antithesis between sentient and mecha-
nical, in the sense of mental and physical ; both states
were mental in one aspect and physical in another ;
the conscious state was proved to be also mechanical,
the unconscious state was proved to be (in some cases
avowedly) mental. We had no grounds for degrading
any action of a sentient mechanism from the psychical
to the physical sphere, solely because it might pass
unconsciously, and often did so ; nor could we refuse
to admit the mechanical aspect of a mental state when
that state was a conscious state. Objectively the
vital organism is an apparatus for the transmission of
motions, molecular and molar. In this view all its
actions are mechanical. It is also an apparatus for
the composition and decomposition of substances. In
this view it ceases to be purely mechanical, and be-
longs to Chemistry. It is further an apparatus for
morphological evolution and dynamic consensus — the
special phenomena classed as vital. Thus, even on
the objective side, the organism is more than an
automaton ; it is a chemical laboratory and a vital
system. On the subjective side the neuro-muscular
system gives place to the soul ; its actions are feelings.
Here there can be no question either of Mechanics or
of Chemistry. The phenomena are no longer move-
ments and decompositions. They imply such, and
are referred to such, when their objective expressions
are employed ; as, on the other hand, all objective
facts are finally expressible in terms of Feeling — such
n.
24 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND,
terms as movement and decomposition being symbols
of our sensible affections.
1 4. While, therefore, we emphasise the antithesis of
objective and subjective aspects, we must insist on
the organic state, and its corresponding meiital state,
as the antithetic terms for one and the same fact.
Their separation into two different fjxcts, and the con-
sequent search for the link connecting them, we must
dismiss as illusory. It is sustained by the popular,
but erroneous, view of the relation between cause and
effect, which assumes that one process or event (named
cause) calls into existence another process or event
(effect). This leads to the metaphysical puzzle of
-how one process can create another ? According to
the view expounded in Problems of Life and Mind
(vol. ii. Prob. v.), an effect is the causatum, the incor-
poration of the causes or co-operant conditions, not a ,
new and distinct event. That is to say, all the co-
operant conditions which may severally be detected
are the cause when viewed apart from their combina-
tion ; these same conditions are the effect wh"en viewed
as a resultant. In consequence of this abstract mode
of considering them, any one condition is often
selected as the cause, and any one detail in the result
as the effect. But in reality there is nothing in the
effect which is not one of the conditions of its pro-
duction ; there is no new creation either of matter or
motion, only new combinations of matter and re-
directions of motion.
If this be so, the relation between cause and effect
is simply the relation between two modes of viewing
a certain event ; and this also is the relation between
organic state and mental state, when organic state is
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 25
regarded as the cause, and mental state as the effect.
The one does not really precede and call into existence
the other ; but the one is the objective expression, the N
other the subjective expression of the same fact. The
organic state is the condition viewed objectively, not
the, pre-condition. i
15. After this statement of the relation of Body
and Mind, I will add that Psychology is somewhat
less, and somewhat more, than the subjective theory
of the organism. It is less, because restricted to the
sentient phenomena, whereas Physiology embraces all
vital phenomena. It is more, because it includes
the relations of the organism to the Social Medium,
whereas Physiology is concerned only with the rela-
tions to the Cosmos ; and the many and profound
modifications which arise from Experience and His-
tory, educating the sentient organism to react in new
ways, are not accessible to physiological investigation.
In treating of the human soul, we have largely to ad-
mit the influences called spiritual. The reader under-
stands thal^ by this term I mean to express the results
of Experience, which have, indeed, corresponding
modifications in the material mechanism, but these
correspondences are so vaguely assignable that we do
well to leave them unnoticed. For example, we are
reading a somewhat illegible letter ; physiological pro-
cesses are of course in operation throughout, but no
physiologist would attempt to explain how it is that
we combine the hints of the several signs, and divine
the meaning of each word by its context. The psy-
chologist explains it by reference to the spiritual
store of acquired experiences ; the signs vaguely and
successively suggest words, — i.e., render nascent for-
26 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
mer experiences ; but as one word after another is
suggested, tlie Mind perceives it to be incongruous
with the context, and rejects it, seeking another, till
finally one is suggested which, seeming congruous, is
adopted. Now, physiologically, i.e., considered as a
neural process, one word fits as well into the context
as another; or, to speak more accurately, there is
no such physiological process as would determine the
selection until the context of Experience has modified
the organism, and it is this which the term "spiritual"
indicates. There is here some influence in operation
which would very imperfectly be indicated by the
term material ; it is a psychological rather than a
physiological interpretation ; and although the term
spiritual was first used when men conceived the soul
to be a spirit, it may be still employed now we have
transformed that hypothesis. When some mental
anomaly cannot be assigned to a definite lesion of
the nervous system (neurosis), pathologists call it a
psychosis, as if it were a lesion of the unknown
psyche. In the same way the normal phenomena
which we cannot assign to definite physiological pro-
cess are called, by way of distinction, psychological.
This only means that our knowledge of the fact is not
completed by knowledge of the factor.
No physiological explanation of mental phenomena
can dispense with a constant reference to spiritual
conditions : present stimulations have to be completed
by past experiences. In the case of human beings,
the experiences are complicated by the operation of
social influences : it is through these that the hiojhest
powers are evolved. The conspicuous mental dif-
ferences between a Goethe and a Carib cannot be
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 27
assigned to differences in their organi-sms and functions,
but solely to tlieir developed faculties. The organism
of a Goethe in the social medium of the Carib would
constitute a very superior Carib, but not a wide-sweep-
ing intelligence with a sympathetic conscience.
FUNCTION AND FACULTY.
16. This leads me to suggest a more marked dis-
tinction between the terms function* and faculty than
is usual. By faculty is commonly understood the
power or aptitude of an agent to perform a certain
action or class of actions. It is thus synonymous
with function, whicli means the activity of an organ,
the uses of the instrument. I propose to detach
faculty from this general signification, limiting it to
the action or class of actions into which a function
may be diversified by the education of experience.
That is to say, let function stand for the native en-
dowment of the organ, and faculty for its acquired
va-riation of activity. The hand is an organ with the
function of Prehension. To grasp, pull, scratch, &c.,
are its inherited powers. But the various modes of
manipulation — cutting, sewing, drawing, writing,
fencing, &c. — are faculties acquired by intelligent
direction and the combination of other organs. In-
stincts are functions. Emotions are functions. Sen-
sation and perception are functions. Logical com-
binations are functions. Some functions are simple,
others compound ; that is to say, some are performed
by single organs, as vision by the eye ; others by
groups of organs, as Instincts and Emotions. The
co-operation is fixed and invariable. It is otherwise
28 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
with the co-operation of organs in faculties, and it is
because of this that the products are both optional
and variously modifiable. The function of Prehen-
sion becomes the varied faculties of Manipulation by
a variable co-operation of organs; the faculties of
drawing, of writing, of musical performance, &c.,
demand the union of other and variable element*.
As in the scale of the animal development we find
an increasing complexity of organs compounded of
simple tissues, and of apparatus compounded of
organs, so we find faculties which are compounds of
simple functions, and faculties again compounded of
these. We say of a man that he has '^remarkable
faculty" when he is ready to adapt himself dex-
terously to a great variety of conditions, and to
acquire skill in new operations.
This distinction of the activities which are fixed
and functional, from those which are optional and
modifiable, not only directs attention to the educable
activities, but also points to the intervention of social
influences. Thus, confining ourselves, by way of
illustration, to the functions and faculties of the
hand, we see the irrationality of the old notion which
attributed man's superiority to his possession of this
organ. The ape has hands very like man's, and these
hands have the same functions ; but the ape's faculties
are not a fiftieth part of those performed by the hand
of man. The ape is dexterous, and learns to apply
his hands in various ways ; he might be taught to cut
and sew, as he has been taught to break an egg and
fire a pistol. But no teaching could make him write,
draw, play the piano, &c. Before writing would be
possible, he would have to acquire the faculty of
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 29
Lnngunge, and if this acquisition were possible to
him — which it is not — he would need the further
faculty of translating sounds into symbols.'"''
Every function has its definite organ or group of
organs. It is their constant energy. Every faculty
has also its definite group of organs, but it is their
temporary synergy. Hence the irrationality of the
attempts to localise the various faculties in circum-
scribed regions of the cerebral convolutions. The
faculty of Language, for example, has recently been
localised in the third convolution of the left hemi-
sphere, in entire disregard of the complex of functions
which Language implies, and of the fact that Aphasia
may be due to a defect of Phonation, of Ideation, or
of Memory of sounds.
MECHANISM AND EXPEEIENCE.
17. It has already been intimated that Physiology
concerns itself directly with the sentient Mechanism,
tracing its operation in the production of those facts
* In answer to the notion put forward by Helvetius that man's in-
tellectual superiority over the horse was due to the fact of his having
flexible fingers in lien of an inflexible hoof, Bonnet well remarks that
Helvetius " n'avait pas consid^re qu'un animal quelconque est un
systeme particulier dont toutes les parties sont en rapport ou harmoni-
ques entre elles. Le cerveau du cheval r^pond a sa botte, comme le
cheval lui-nierae repond kid. place qu'il tient dans le systeme organique ;
si la botte venait a se convertir en doigts flexibles il n'en demeurerait
pas moins incapable de generaliser les sensations ; c'est que la botte sub-
sisterait dans le cerveau ; et si Ton voulait que le cerveau du cheval
Bubit un changement proportionnel k celui de ses pieds je dirais que ce
ne serait plus un cheval, mais un autre quadrupede, auquel il faudrait
imposer un nouveau num." — Palmgenisie Philosophique^ quoted by
Gall.
30 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
of Sentience which it is the special province of Psy-
chology to investigate as facts of Experience. Let us
see how these terms express related and contrasted
phenomena.
Mechanism sometimes means the complex whole of
interdependent parts which constitute the organism,
and sometimes the particular group of interdependent
agencies constituting a special function. In the latter
sense we speak of the -respiratory - mechanism, the
locomotive - mechanism, the reflex - mechanism, &c.
Psychologists also sometimes speak of the mechanism
of thought or of volition ; they have here the inter-
dependence of certain psychical states in view, with
or without explicit reference to the corresponding
physical states. Both uses of the term are justifiable,
since what on the objective side is material combina-
tion is on the subjective side spiritual combination ;
mechanical and logical are here only two contrasted
aspects of one and the same fact. If we observe a
man withdraw his arm when pinched, all that we
observe is the mechanical sequence of objective
motions; and could we see the molecular olianges
in his nerves, centres, and muscles, we should still
see nothing but sequent motions. The man himself
(or we ideally picturing his internal changes) feels
the pinch, and Avills the movement of his arm ; the
sequence of sentient states involves the psychical
mechanism.
Understanding, then, that in these pages the term
mechanism will be used indifferently for the objective
or the subjective aspect of the organic conditions of
production, so far as these are known or definitely
imagined as fixities of structure and function, let us
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 31
now pass to the correlative Experience, wliicli will
often be employed in contrast.
18. A preliminary caution may not be needless.
The reader is familiar with the tendency to personify
every abstraction, erecting it into what S23inoza calls a
res completa. Owing to this, we are apt first to divest
an object or event of all the special conditions which
determine it and constitute its reality, and then to
endow this abstraction with a new reality, assigning
to it qualities not given in the original res. Hence
the popular separation of Sentience from the sentient
Mechanism, the Subject from the Object, the sentiens
from the sensum, and the erection of each separated
term into a res completa. Logically and analytically
the distinction is useful. But its danger lies in this,
that Sentience is easily conceived acting on and
directing its Mechanism, as Ave direct our instru-
ments. And it is worthy of remark, that many
writers who energetically discard the fallacy in some
forms retain it in others. They speak of the mechan-
ism, which is admitted to be normally set going by
the stimulus of a sensation or an idea, as capable of
also acting without such stimulation — by insentient
reflex — and also capable, when once set going, of
keeping up its action without sentient stimulation.
This, which has its plausibility in the confusion of the
whole complex of conditions with one antecedent
— whereby a single incidental force is made to stand
for a whole group of forces — would never have
gained acceptance but for the theoretic separation
of Sentience from the sentient Mechanism, and
the consequent assimilation of the organism to a
machine.
32 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
19. Having this caution before us, and remember-
ing that all psychological processes are objectively
organic processes, we shall understand that the
mechanism of these processes may be expressed in
objective or subjective terms at will, sensorial changes
being equivalent to sentient changes. We now in-
quire what is meant by distinguishing between Expe-
rience and the Mechanism, so as to speak without
ambiguity of Experience directing the Mechanism.
The implication is that the one is to some extent
independent of the other, and that the latter alone is
dependent on structure. Neither of these implica-
tions is correct, but they roughly represent an
important distinction, namely, between a variable
progressive factor and an unvarying factor. The
Mechanism means the visible (or intelligible) fixed
structure with its corresponding fixity of functions.
Experience means the modifications and fluctuating
dispositions of structure, with the corresponding
variability and progressive development of faculties.
To a great extent the Mechanism is connate. Ex-
perience is acquired. The individual organism,
tliough modifiable, is not seen to acquire new organs,
only new aptitudes. Hence the constancy of type,
the fixity of functions. So long as the organs are
subjected to uniformities of stimulation, their action
is of course unvarying. Thus the nutritive and repro-
ductive organs present the constancy of machinery ;
once matured, their structure never sensibly alters.
It is otherwise with some fluctuating combinations
of the Sensorium. Subjected to varying stimulations,
and combinations of stimulation, it acquires new apti-
tudes, new modes of response ; and is incessantly
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 33
modified, if not in its elementary structure, at any
rate in the fluctuating disposition of its elements. It
thus forms, as it were, a spiritual mechnnism super-
added to the material mechanism. This is Experi-
ence on the subjective side, and is equivalent, on the
ohjective side, to a new central organ. Our principles
imply that it also represents a pliysiological modifi-
cation and a corresponding organic modification ; but
the precise nature of the organic modification is so
entirely hidden from our present means of detection
that we shall do well to abstain from all attempts
to specnfy the objective fact, content with our clear
apprehension of the subjective fact. Thus, for ex-
ample, while Physiology is utterly powerless to specify
structural and functional difi'erences between the
savage and the civilised man of the same race, Psy-
chology easily specifies wherein tlie spiritual organi-
sation of the two is markedly diff"erent. Tliere must,
indeed, be corresponding differences in their organ-
isms ; the residua of past feelings which constitute
the Experience of both are organic modifications ;
but what these are we cannot guess. No anatomist
could pretend to discern the difference between the
hand which executes a great variety of delicate
manipulations, and the hand which has acquired
none of these aptitudes ; but every one can recognise
the fact of the superiority, and can trace it to educa-
tion. No anatomist could trace the modification
which has taken place in the l.'rain of a child who,
having been painfully affected, remembers the pain
when the object which excited it is seen again. AVe
know that the child acts differently in consequence of
this experience ; but that is all we know. If we see
VOL. III. c
34 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
a motli returning to the flame after it 1ms been burnt,
or tlie fisli returning to the bait after it has been
torn by the hook, we conclude that no such modifi-
cation has taken place, no registration of Experience
determines a control of the primary impulses.
These two illustrations show how the oroanism
reacts on stimulation according to its coamate con-
stitution, and also according to its acquired constitu-
tion, — by the Mechanism which it brings with it as a
heritage, and the Experience which has modified that
heritage. We have sensations and emotions because
the sentient mechanism is set in action ; when these
leave behind them traces in our constitution, so that
on any fresh excitation the past feelings are revivable,
we have experiences. If an object comes within the
range of Sense, we feel it, i.e., we react on the stimu-
lation in virtue of our native and acquired mechanism.
The lower animals probably never get beyond this
stage ; but the plasticity of the Sensorium in the
higher animals permits its permanent modification,
so that impressions are grouped, and these groups
are revivable by any one of the impressions, and
by internal excitation : — they feel again what they
formerly felt, and their perceptions of objects are
surrounded b}^ an atmosphere of quite remote feelings.
This is Experience — the psychological mechanism.*
21. The foregoing considerations have made evi-
dent that Physiology and Psychology are two modes
of apprehending the phenomena of the sentient or-
ganism, two distinct studies (what the Germans call
Disciplines), which, nevertheless, mutually imply each
* For further elucidation of fixity and variableness iu the organic
responses see 77te Ph>/sical Basis of Mind, p. 326 et seqq.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 35
otlier. The physiologist has sentient facts to ex-
plain, and is guided by them in his interpretations
of the organic processes. The psychologist, in like
manner, has always to presu[)pose the operation of
organic processes, since these are the conditions of
production of the facts he is classifying. Both
studies are very immature, and this immaturity is in
no slight measure owing to their separation ; one con-
sequence of the separation being that the physiologist
accepts at second-hand the itnperfect theories of some
psychological school, and tbe psychologist accepts at
second-hand the imperfect physiological theories of
the day. There can be no satisfactory theory of the
functions and faculties until a truer classification and
theory of the psychical phenomena has been estab-
lished ; nor can there be a satisfactory theory of
Mind until there has been a more risforous reduction
of mental processes to biological and sociological
conditions.
This position may be illustrated by Mental Patho-
loQfv, which has run a course parallel to that of Mental
Physiology. Hippocrates, a great observer, whose
vision was little blurred by mists of metaphysics, saw
in mental maladies abnormal brain-action ; and his
immediate successors sought in abnormal conditions
of the organism for the direct causation of all the
forms of insanity. But during the reign of theo-
logians and metaphj'sicians this scientific standpoint
was deserted, and mental maladies passed from the
hands of physicians into the hands of priests: exorcism
and prayers took the place of hygiene and prescrip-
tions. The theologian regarded insanity as demo-
niacal possession. The metaphysician regarded it as
36 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
a spiritual perversion, and sometimes as a want of
harmony between the soul and its " instrument."
Neither doubted that the soul was one thiuo; and the
body another, and that the two were in all respects
absolutely dissimilar. Even so late as the present
centurv we have had the two antagonistic schools
of spiritualists and orgauicists, the one referring
insanity to disease of the soul, the other to disease
of the body. In Germany, Heinroth, long regarded
as the supreme authority, starting from the dogma
thnt the body was only the basis, but Reason
[Vernunft) the principle of human life, declared,
that all mental abnormities were due to the irrejiu-
larities of Reason, the instigations of Passion. In-
sanity thus became the symptom of Vice. "Inno-
cence is never insane, only guilt." The practical
absurdity of this theory has long been recognised.
No one now argues with a demented patient. No one
thinks of curine: mania with sermons. The existence
of a cerebral disease, which demands the physician's
care, is now the universal belief. Mental maladies
have taken their place beside bodily maladies, and
have become a subject of natural science, to be studied
on the same method as all other sciences. The obser-
vation of symjytoms directs the search into ccmses.
The abnormal function is referred to some abnormal
state of the organism. " The theory of mental mala-
dies," says the latest writer on this subject, "embraces
the modifications of the normal mental activity by
organic diseases." '"'
The parallel runs further. Just as the reaction of
the organicists against the spiritualists has led to an
* ScHiJLE : Handhuch tier Geisteshranhheiten^ 187 5
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 37
exclusive attention being fixed on one part of tlie
organism in neglect of the other parts, and the brain
made to do duty for the whole of the sentient
mechanism — an exclusiveness which has furtlier led
to the assignment of psychical functions to certain
nerve cells — so the alienists have followed this lead,
and, in Sj)ite of daily experience contradicting the
theory, have declared insanity to be brain disease and
nothing else. Even Scliule cannot rid himself of this
preconception, though both in his introduction and
in the body of his work he gives ample evidence tlmt -
its exclusiveness is unwarrantable. One j^oint which
he brings forward may be noticed here, becau se it
falls in so well with the views I advocate. " Mental 1
maladies " (he says, p. 3) " are cerebral diseases, but
they are more than tbis." The Tnore consists in con-
ceiving the patient, not simply as one suffering from
cerebral disease, but as a spiritual being, the product
of former generations, so that his ancestors must be
taken into account amono; the conditions of his
psychical symptoms. This recognition of the indi-
vidual as a product of his race, and consequently of
the individual abnormities as determined by ancestral
abnormities, is a true biological standpoint ; and only
needs to be completed by the sociological standpoint
which regards the individual mind as determined by
the General Mind (see § 118).
If the changed point of view which has caused
mental maladies to be studied as symptoms of organic
maladies is approved by the success of modern
medical treatment ; if — and no competent person
can have the slightest doubt on this point — our
understanding of mental maladies is only to be
38 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
effected by this union of physiological interpretta-
tion with clinical observation, it is obvious that a
similar Method is the only one on which we can hope
to reach an explanation of the normal mental actious.
22. The task of the future is plain : Physiology ,^
must trace for us the organic conditions of the
observed phenomena, explaining the sentient func-
tions by the sentient mechanism. It must study
man first as an animal. Psychology, receiving from
the hands of Physiology a theory of the mechanism,
must from Observation and History trace the 023era-
tion of this mechanism in the functions and faculties
which spring into existence through its adaptation to
the Cosmos and Societ3\ It must study man as a
social animah History discloses the stages of develop-
ment, from the simple emotions and conceptions of
rude barbaric social states to the ever-increasino^
complexities of civilised states. It shows how an
organism, not appreciably changed as to its external
structure and essential mechanism, acquires in its
psychical functions a predominance of the human
over the animal characteristics, as sentiments are
evolved from emotions, impersonal impulses from
personal impulses, science from experience. The
animal basis is never forsaken ; the social super-
structure is never wholly deficient. From the first
hour of his existence man is a social unit : he lives in
society, is mentally developed by it and for it.
CHAPTER II.
THE MOTIVE.
23. This is a twofold craving, such as determines
every other study, a craving both specuLitive and
practical. As a speculative craving it is theological
and scientific. An undercurrent of theological im-
pulses may be discerned directing the inquiries even
when the avowed aim is not that of establishinof
or undermining theological conceptions ; and Mr.
Collier, in a valuable essay on the " Development of
Psychology,'" regards this theological impulse as one
of the two factors which have in all times operated
in the construction of the science.
24. The speculative motive is that of ascertaining
the relation of the sentient organism to the cosmical
and social conditions in which and throuoh which it
exists. The practical motive adds the further aim
of modifying our impulses and adjusting our actions
to these external conditions, or modifying these con-
ditions and adjusting them to our needs. The true
purpose of Knowledge is the regulation of our
Conduct. The end and aim of Life is Welfare — in
its most abstract expression. Every organism shrinks
from what is disturbinor and disao^reeable, and clinos.
* Westminster Review, No. cc.
40 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIISTD.
to what is in harmony with it. Action is a neces-
sity ; all that is in our power is the direction of
activity, and this is momently guided hy neural
excitations, and by sensations which are pleasur-
able or painful. Taught by these, the individual
learns to direct his activities. Enlarging experi-
ence develops a iorecasting tendency, germinal in
animals and savnges, conspicuotis in the civilised
man. Looking beyond the immediate conditions
and feelings, this tendency prefigures images of
possible future conditions and feelings, whereby the
present action is restrained and adapted to the
anticipated circumstances. With such speculative
vision come vasjue nnd ao^itatinor imaocs of Invisible
Powers supposed to originate all visible changes.
These grasp the soul, and force it henceforward to
attend to them as the chief of all external con-
ditions. To them it is felt that action must be
adjusted. If they can be discovered, they may be
modified by prayer, sacrifices, or other means of
intercession, as chiefs and potentates are propitiated.
To be agreeable to them by flatteries, self-sacrifice, or
the sacrifice of others, will, it is hoped, soften their
severities, secure their favours. In this abject state
the majority of mankind still cowers.
25. But there are dawn-streaks of a brighter day.
Mental development has, in a small minority which
daily enlarges its circle, transformed these Invisible
Powers into visible Properties and intelligible Ee-
lations. Fear is replaced by the desire to know.
Experiment displaces intercession ; for reliance on
prayer is substituted obedience to ascertained laws.
The hope of modifying the Invisible by ceremonies
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 41
and sacrifices gives way to the hope of adapting the
properties of things to our needs ; and where this is
impracticahle the conviction teaches resignation and
the eflfort to adapt our impulses to agencies that are
inexorable. The scientific attitude is, therefore, one
of earnest endeavour combined with patient sub-
mission. It no more hopes to modify the ordi3r of
Nature by litanies and ceremonies, by flatteries and
self-reproaches, than it imitates those savages who
imagine they can lure the fish into their net by
shouting its praises across the river and vociferously
proclaiming the fish to be a mighty chief.
26. Man soon found that knowledge of the proper-
ties of things was not the only important object of
search. He a!so found that iiis own personal welfare
was not the only aim to which his activities should
be directed. Man is by his constitution forced to
live for others and in others. The welfare of his
family, his tribe, his nation, and at last the welfare
of Humanity at large, is felt or discerned to be inter-
woven with his own welfare. His life is part of a
social life, aided and thwarted by the needs and
deeds of fellow-men, which thus become external
conditions of his existence, on a par with cosmical
conditions, and must be studied with equal solici-
tude. Sf^ciety is far more modifiable than Nature ;
and its Euling Powers, namely. Passions, Sentiments,
and Ideas, may be modified both by direct appeals '
and by indirect action on their generating causes.
Much of this modification takes place spontaneously
by the interaction of human impulses and the neces-
sary subjection to external fact. The conscious efforts
to the same end are embodied chiefly in two oreat
42 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
Arts — the art of Educcation, whicli applies itself to
the indiv^idual, and the art of Government, which
applies itself to society.
27. We are thus conducted to the practical motive,
the importance of psychological science in the estab-
lishment of true principles of Education and Govern-
ment. As society develojDS, it shapes itself into
fixed Institutions of Religion, Law, Morality, Science,
and Art — the organs of Humanity with their social
functions. Each justifies itself, and requires no other
reason for its continuance than that it ministers to
individual needs and subserves a social end. When
instituted, Science has a social function, and pushes
its objects for its own sake, with only a remote
reference to any other end ; although, being a social
function, it must have social utility. In many of its
researches it may not bear on its face any other use-
fidness than that of furtherino: the welfare of the
Intellect ; but that usefulness is great, not indeed for
an individual considered apart from society, but for
society, of which Intellect is the servant.
28. The growth of Intellect out of Intelligence,
that is to say, the systematisation of experiences
under methodised symbols, we shall hereafter trace
as a purely social product. All cognition is primarily
emotion. We only see what iiiterests us. No phe-
nomenon is interesting until it is illuminated by
emotion, and we see, or foresee, its connection with
our feelings. Even so conspicuous an event as a
crash of thunder is to the child and the dos; an un-
observed event, because they have not learned to
associate with it any change in their own lives ;
whereas to the developed Intellect the remote events
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 43
of prehistoric ages or the possible constitution of the
stelkir universe are of thrilling interest, being in-
cluded in the wide sweep of contemplative emotion,
or satisfying a theoretic activity which has taken on
the intensity of a mental hunger. The impersonal
and indirect interest replaces the personal and direct
interest of the uncultivated mind. Facts which can
only have a very distant bearing on the lives of men,
and no conceivable influence on the present needs,
apart from the need of gratifying the Intellect, are
investigated with passionate patience.
29. Thus the desire to understand the operations
of the Mind has the same source as the desire to
understand the operations of Nature, whether these
are or are not recoonised as havins^ an immediate
practical bearing. The intellect, having reduced
external plienomena to some system of ideal con-
structions, endeavours to do the same for internal
phenomena. Cosmology terminates in Biology, and
Biology in turn terminates in Sociology. Philosophy
has thus all the materials for a conception of the
World, Man, and Society.
30. But, as was intimated just now, speculative
interest, although a sufficing, is not the only motive :
practical issues are at once desired and discerned.
The art of Education is to Psychology what Hygiene
and Medicine are to Physiology. Educators indeed
have rarely recognised this relation, but have pur-
sued their plans in an empirical and traditional in-
dependence, very similar to that which has directed
the teachers of Medicine, and from the same cause,
namely, the great imperfection of the sciences of
Psychology and Physiology. Hence teachers may
44 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
dispute the suLordination of tbeir respective arts to
the scieiices. But the indisputable fact that Educa-
tion and Medicine have hitherto followed their own
empirical methods without much regard to the
sciences, arises partly from tbe difference between
practice and theory, art and science ; and partly from
the urgency of practical application, which cannot
await the final results of research, and their systema-
tisation in abstract principles. The child has to \jq
taught and the patient treated according to the
means at hand ; tutor and physician must be guided
by such light as he has ; he cannot wait until science
has disentangled from the mass of mingled prejudice,
precipitation, ignorance, and knowledge the true laws
of mental and bodily life. All this is true. Neverthe-
less, it is likewise true that both tutor and physician
have been guided by the psychological and pliysio-
logical conceptions current in their time, although
supplementing these with empirical observations and
traditional j^rejudices, and following the latter even
Avhen they were irreconcilable with the ascertained
laws of science. The absurd notions respecting the
nature of the mind, its simplicity, autonomy, inde-
pendence of the organism, and its equality in all men,
are clearly recognisable in the current j^ractices of
educators ; just as, formerly, absurd notions respect-
ing a vital principle, and the nature of the entity
named Disease, directed medical practice.
Once recognise that Education is an art which has
its scientific basis in Psychology, and the importance
of having a rational and verifiable basis, rather than
one that is unverifiable, becomes obvious. In pro-
portion, therefore, as Psychology acquires scientific
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 45
precision its influence on Education will become
beneficent, and thus also an improved riiysiology
will lead to a better art of Medicine, without, in either
case, removing the difficulties belonging to each prac-
tical application of abstract [)rinciples. A knowledge
of the way in which faculties are evolved, impressions
organised, moral and scientific intuitions formed,
habits established, and the structure no less than the
furniture of tlie mind receives its individual character
from the silent and incessant modifications of Expe-
rience, will make parents and teachers keenly alive
to the incalculable importance of tlie conditions under
which the early years of the child are passed. AVho-
ever has closely studied the evolution of the faculties
will see the folly and the wickedness of leaving
children to the care of ignorant servants and vulgar
companions at a period when impressions are most
indelible, — a period \\hen, as we know, the germs of
the future character are deposited. If out of the
same nursery, the same schoolroom, and what seems
the same environment, children of the same parents
are so markedly unlike in disposition, talents, tem-
pers, it has to be considered that the original diffe-
rences in their organisms give rise, even under the
same circumstances, to a difference in an important
element — the individual experiences. To gain some
glimpse of the way in which intuitions are esta-
blished and dispositions formed is the first task of
parent and teacher.
31. Although Government, as an art, belongs more
to Sociology than to Psychology, it Avill necessarily
derive great aid from the latter. For one thing, it
must take into account what have been the influences
46 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
under wliicli the actual character of the nation has
been constituted, and what are the relations of that
character to theoretic reforms. Is this a truism ?
Then why has it been so persistently disregarded by
social theorists and reformers ? The idea of recon-
structing society otherwise than by a slow process of
moral and intellectual education, fitting the members
for the new institutions, is not less preposterous than
the idea of reconstructing a diseased organism other-
wise than by the slow processes of regimen and phy-
siological recuperation. A practical renovation of
society must be founded on the existing interests and
tendencies of its classes ; an abstract theory of possible
future society is a prophetic vision in which existing
facts are disres^arded or transformed. But for both
the practical and theoretic purposes a knowledge of
actual and possible human motives is required, and a
knowledge of psychological laws is as necessary here
as the knowledge of physical laws in any practical or
theoretic efforts to modify the external world.
32. Having thus stated what it is we study, and
why we study it, the final question how we ought to
study it remains, and this, being the most important
of the three questions, must have fidler treatment.
As a preliminary we must settle the position which
the science occupies in the series of sciences.
CHAPTER III.
THE POSITION OF THE SCIENCE.
33. Until quite recently, universal opinion assigned
Psycliology to the special group of Moral Sciences
which were held to be diametrically opposed to the
Physical Sciences, both in the matters treated of and
in the Methods of Inquiry, Tlie sciences of Human
Nature were supposed to have so little in common
with the sciences of Nature that their loiric and means
of verification were different. Men believed in the
co-existence of two independent orders of events,
having their common ground in a world beyond,
namely, the Suprasensible, — which as dogma was
claimed by Theology, and as science by Metaphysic.
God, Man, and Nature thus constituted three ob-
jects of knowledge, accessible through three different
avenues.
Physics, the study of Nature, slowly emancipated
itself from Theology and Metaphysics, and was suffered
to pursue its own Method. The Moral Sciences con-
tinued to form a class apart, even when they had
so far emancipated themselves as to disengage their
special object, the facts and laws of Human Nature.
This Avas followed by a recognition that Man, lieing a
part of Nature, ought to be studied on the Method
48 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
wliicli alone bad proved successful in the study of
Nature. But even this recognitiou was restricted to
the bodily functions of man ; the old bias still asserted
itself with reo-ard to the mental functions. Without
O
boldly affirming tliat, as a thinking being, Man was
not a part of Nature, philosophers insisted tliat
Thouijht had nothino^ in common with Nature : differ-
ing sui generis, it could not be amenable to the same
canons. Tlie scholastic dofjma tliat Mind was ex-
clusively appropriated by the theologian, wliile the
Body, with all its sensible affections, was handed over
to the student of Nature,'"" although not explicitly
avowed, was implicitly accepted.
A change has been effected. Among advanced
thinkers it is now unhesitatingly tKlmitted that Mind
is a form or function of Life ; consequently that the
Method pursued in the investigation of vital pheno-
mena is the only one rationally to be pursued in
mental phenomena. There are differences in the ap-
pliances, and in the respective proportions of observa-
tion, experiment, and subjective interpretation ; but
for all sciences there is one common Logic, one com-
mon Method, and it is on this ground that the growth
of j^hysical science has fed and stimulated the growth
of ^psychological science. The importance of this ad-
mission is capital.
In an essay, already mentioned, on the development
of the science in England, Mr. Collier has well pointed
out how the progress of Psychology has been aided in
all its stages by advances in the physical sciences.t
* Aquinas : Summd Theologuc, i. qii. Ixxv.
f Westminster Hnv!eri\ No. cc. No notice is taken in this essay of
Cabanis, Gull, Hehuholtz, and Wuudt, whose labours would have sup-
plied good illuatrations.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 49
34. Science is the sjstcmatisation of our experi-
ences ; it is Common Sense metliodised and gene-
ralised. All that we have felt, or may feel, it ranges
under two aspects : the subjective and personal, the
ohjcctive and impersonal. Every event, every feeling,
has this twofold aspect, is indissolubly objective and
subjective, according to the mode of its apprehen-
sion. I have a sensation. This is known to be a state
of my bodily organism, when viewed objectively ; a
state of my mental activity, when viewed subjec-
tively. I may so far detach the feeling from my own
personality as to j^roject it outside of me, and regard
it as an object, a cause. I then say this sensation is
a flame, a colour, a form. But I may also detach the
feeling from its objective aspect, and regard it solely
as a change in my consciousness. By this artifice of
abstraction the indissoluble reality of a twofold aspect
is overlooked, and each being separately named, comes
to be regarded as an independent existence. We tli( n
cease to thiuk of objects as feelings. Keflection may
convince us that objects are groups of feelings, all
their qualities being known to us only through our
sensible appreciations, or our symbolical conceptions
of such ; but whenever we see or think of objects and
qualities, irresistibly we project them outside our
sphere of feeling, and believe them to be impersonal
existences, and their .qualities due to their nature,
not at all to ours. So also when we feel a sensation,
or think of one, we isolate it from its objective as^Dect,
its real cause, and believe it to be simply a move-
ment of our spiritual nature.
VOL. III.
50 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE LAWS.
35. These abstractions are not only irresistible,
they are eminently serviceable. Founding on them,
we divide Science into laws of the Object and laws
of the Subject; or, in other words, laws of Nature
and laws of Human Nature. The first embraces Cos-
mology and Biology. Facts are observed, classified,
ranged in order of sequence and subordination. They
are explained when they are reduced to their fiictors,
their conditions of existence. They are summed up
in abstract formulae, the so-called laws of Nature;
which, we must remember, are neither sensible exis-
tences, nor descriptions of such, but ideal construc-
tions, representing the constant elements of the vari-
able combinations.
The second group embraces the laws of Human
Nature as laws of the Subject. Beginning with
Psychology and ending with Sociology, these pre-
suppose the objective laws, as the laws of Nature pre-
suppose the subjective laws. Biology is intermediate
between Cosmology and Sociology : on its objective
side it is a physical science, on its subjective side a
moral science.
36. These two contrasted groups are often thought
to be separated by an unbridgeable gulf, which no
dexterity of speculation can p9,ss. Viewing the phe-
nomena of Nature and Human Nature objectively,
we can, indeed, range tliem in an ascending series
from minerals to man, and from individual man to
society. All the modes of existence may thus be
graduated according to a scale of complexity. But no
sooner are these same phenomena viewed subjectively
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 51
— that is to say, no longer as modes or existences,
but as suh'i'ects or existents, — than a sudden break
seems to occur at that point in the scale where
Forces appear as Feelings. I mean, that between
the observed actions which embody forces, and the
actions which embody feelings, there is no objective
difference; tliey are both expressible in terms of
Matter and Motion. But interpreted subjectively,
there is a profound difference, resting on the j^resence
in the one of a factor — Sensibility — which has no
place in the other ; so that although there is an intel-
ligible expression of Matter and Motion in terms of
Feeling, there is no such intelligible expression of
Feeling in terms of Matter and Motion.
37. Admitting this, and emphasising the distinc-
tion between objective facts and subjective facts, we
nevertheless recognise that the observation, classifica-
tion, and explanation of both orders must proceed on
the same method. The laws of Human Nature are
discoverable in the same way as the laws of Nature.
Physicists have reduced all objective phenomena to
laws of Motion and one general conception of Force,
measuring all diversities by one standard. They pos-
tulate one Force having many Modes, and one Law of
Conservation eml)racing all these Modes. We cannot
know whether this conception accurately expresses
the reality of Nature ; enough that it expresses the
objective relations for us, and in a way which admits
of calculation. The unity assigned to the physical
forces is quantitative only — a standard of measure-
ment applied to the phenomena objectively — not a
qualitative expression of their nature as both objec-
tive and subjective. By a corresponding artifice all
52 PROBLEMS OP LIFE AND MIND.
the subjective aspects of plienomena may be reduced
to Feeling ; and if we can establish general laws of
Feeling, they will pair off with the objective laws of
Force.
38. Such metaphysical considerations need not here
be developed. Our point is that the Logic of Science
remains unaltered whether the events be expressed in
objective or in subjective terms. A sensation or a
thought is alternately viewed as a physical change or
as a mental change. It is usually classed among sub-
jective facts, but this does not discharge it from the
objective world; it only specifies the aspect in which
we contemplate it. Consider this contrast : the law
of gravitation and the law of diffusion are undeniably
laws of the object, and are sharply contrasted with
the law of association, which is not less undeniably
a law of the subject. Every one will declare the first
to be laws of Matter, and the second a law of Mind.
Why ? Because in the one case our interest is so
directed to the objective relations that the subjective
aspect is left out of account, and the laws are pre-
sented as if independent of the mind which conceives
them — a view manifestly erroneous ; and in the other
case it is the subjective aspect which interests us ; we
think only of the associated feelings, and not of the
external facts they embody, not of the neural pro-
cesses which are their physical correlates.
Parenthetically we may note a double fallacy
arising from this isolation of one aspect from the
other. First, there is the conviction that the pheno-
mena, which are demonstrably the part products of
our Sensiljility, do nevertheless exist with all their
sensible qualities where no Sensibility is present to
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 53
co-operate with them. This fallacy has long been recog-
nised by philosophers, who have not, however, always
recognised the second fallacy, namely, that ideas can
associate, and one mental state produce another, in
the absence of organic states, solely by virtue of sub-
jective activity. This is equivalent to supposing one
motion to produce another by purely dynamic in-
fluence, in the absence of moving bodies and the con-
ditions of movement. Yet this fallacy we shall find
even Stuart Mill falling into {§ 42).
To return to the law of gravitation. Obviously it
might be regarded as a subjective law, and that of
association as an objective law, if our point of view
chanoed. The facts observed and classified are neces-
sarily perceptions in the observer, and the law whicli
formulates these observations is indubitably an ideal
construction which has no objective reality. Both
laws — that of gravitation and that of association — are
symbolical conceptions, and what they symbolise are
states of Feelino;. If we think of them in this lidit,
they are both psychological facts. If we think of
them objectively, the one is a mathematical the oiher
a physiological fact.
39. So much on the general question. Biology
presents it in a peculiar light, for here for the first
time the twofold aspect of phenomena becomes con-
spicuous, our interest in the subjective side — that
of Feeling — being as great as our interest in the ob-
jective side — that of Force. It takes its undeniable
place among the objective sciences, for although vital
phenomena are special, they are specialisations of the
general properties of Matter, and are expressible in
terms of Force. It also takes its place among the
54 PEOBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
subjective sciences, since its phenomena include those
of Mind. In its evolution it passes from Vegetality
to Animality, and through Animality to Humanity.
With Animality a new factor, Sensibility, becomes
conspicuous. With Humanity another factor emerges
— Sociality. Although the facts of animal and hu-
man life, so far as they are objectively regarded, are
expressible in terms of Force, they are usually ex-
pressed in terms of Feeling ; and hence the long
debates respecting the true position of Psychology
amonof the sciences : some writers consider it a branch
of Biology, others detach it, and assign it a place by
itself.
My own opinions on this question have so often
fluctuated that I cannot be insensible to the difiicul-
ties it presents. I shall best make the reader ac-
quainted with my final decision by examining the
arguments of three thinkers with whose general prin-
ciples I am most in agreement.
THE VIEWS OF COMTE, MILL, AND SPENCER.
40. Because Auguste Comte contemptuously, and,
as I think, erroneously, rejected the Introspective
Method, and because he denied a place among the
fundamental sciences to a Psychology pursued on
that method, he has frequently, and with manifest
injustice, been accused of denying that there could be
any science of the moral and intellectual functions.
Assuredly he never thought of denying nor of under-
rating psychological facts, and the laws of such facts ;
what he asserted was that such facts were wholly
biological facts, and were to be investigated as such.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 55
No one has made this charge against Kant ; yet he
also denied that Psychology could be an independent
science. He referred its facts to a Transcendental
Logic, as Comte referred them to Biology ; when he
quitted this transcendental region, it was to refer the
facts to Anthropology.
I ao^ree with those who consider Comte wronoj in
his rejection of Introspection ; and liis error becomes
more conspicuous in his exposition of a cerebral
theory (Politique Positive, i. 675, et seqq.) founded
avowedly on subjective analysis, which is carried so
far that even the position of the imaginary " organs "
is not determined objectively. Apart from this, how-
ever, I think him justified in proclaiming that a
theory of the moral and intellectual functions can
only belong to a theory of the organism ; therefore
that Psychology is a branch of Biology.
41. Stuart Mill erred on the opposite side. Lay-
ing the chief emphasis on the subjective aspect, and
consequently on the Introspective Method, he was
thereby led to separate Psychology from Biology, not
as species from genus, but as two radically different
kinds. The existence of uniformities of succession
among states of mind, which could be ascertained by
observation and experiment, proved that a separate
science of such states was possible ; and he main-
tained that the only mode of studying these must
be Introspection, because, although sensations have
nervous states for their immediate antecedents, and it
is probable that all mental states have nervous states
preceding tliem, yet we are so imperfectly acquainted
with the characteristics of these nervous states that
"mental phenomena do not admit of being deduced
56 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
from the physiological laws of our nervous organi-
sation " (Logic, 6th ed., ii. 432).
Had Mill been better acquainted with Physiology,
he would have known that many mental phenomena
have been deduced from, and many more illuminated
by, the laws of our nervous organisation ; and this,
indeed, must necessarily be the case if organic state
and mental state are but different aspects of one and
the same process. But Mill had no clear conception
of this. On the contrary, he adopted, and insisted on,
the common mistake of regarding the neural process
as the antecedent and originator of the mental process.
I have already characterised this as equivalent to
regarding the convex of a curve as the antecedent to
its concave. To disengage it from an ambiguity, we
may note that there are neural processes which may
be thus regarded ; for example, the process of retinal
stimulation, which is the first stage of a complex pro-
cess, the final stage of which is a visual sensation,
may be said to be the antecedent of the visual sensa-
tion, and it may be called into existence without
being completed by the final stage of sensorial reaction
called vision. But it is not this, nor such as this,
which is meant when a neural pr 'ss or organic state
is called the physical correlate of a mental state : not
this isolated stage, but the completed synthesis is the
cause, or group of conditions, of the mental product.
Any antecedent which is merely a pre-condition, or
an isolated condition, can only represent the cause by
an ellipsis.
42. But the point of view here indicated Mill had
apparently never taken. " All states of mind," he
says, " are immediately caused either by other states
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 57
of mind or by states of body." This distinction im-
plies that he imagined some mental states to exist
which were not at the same time states of body. Of
what then were they states ? He did not believe in
the existence of a spirit animating the body ; yet such
a belief would have given consistency to his views.
To reoard Mind as a function of the oro^anism, and
yet suppose that some mental functions had no or-
ganic conditions, was a strange incongruity. States
of mind are always caused by states of mind, and
these are states of body when viewed objectively.
He says, " When a state of mind is produced by a
state of mind, I call the law concerned in the case to
be a law of mind." Good : when the subjective
aspect of the process is considered, the law is psycho-
logical. But he adds, " When a state of mind is
produced directly by a state of body, the law is a law
of body, and belongs to physical science;" and here
there is a confusion. The production is always
directly a state of body ; but is a physiological law,
when viewed as a change in the organism, a psycho-
logical law when viewed as a change in feeling ? The
point of view is different in the two cases, the event
is the same. Take, for example, a melancholy mood :
it is a mental state, and its law psychological, when
considered subjectively, and its cause referred to dis-
appointed affection or a fall in the Funds ; the condi-
tions here are all psychological experiences in which
not a thouo-ht is oiven to the oro;anic conditions. But
this same mood is also a state of the organism, and
considered objectively it is a change in the secretions,
and an alteration of nervous level ; the sequences are
58 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
in this case as exclusively physiological as in the
other they are psychological.
43. Thrown off the track by his misleading con-
ception, Mill, while declaring that all sensations
manifestly belong to the body, thought it an open
question whether other mental states were thus de-
pendent on neural states. Without positively affirm-
ing it, he said it was rational to assume that ideas —
unlike sensations — " might be recalled in virtue ol"
mental laws which are independent of material con-
ditions." I regret that my attention had not been
directed to this passage during the years when it was
my happiness to be in friendly intimacy with this
distinguished philosopher, so that, by questioning, I
might have ascertained all he really meant by a state-
ment which seems so very questionable. The only
interpretation by which it may be plausibly supported
seems this : we know that a perception gained origi-
nally through sensible affections may be reproduced
in the fainter form of an image when none of the
sense-organs are directly stimulated ; this reproduc-
tion is thus apparently independent of the neural
processes which produced it originally, and, being
thus regarded irrespective of such processes, is held
to be a psychological, not a physiological fact. But
observe : both the original production and the sub-
sequent reproduction are activities of the organism,
and imply organic states, known or uoknown. These
states are not precisely the same in the two cases,
neither are the mental facts — sensation and image —
precisely the same. We cannot fairly call the one
state bodily and the other mental, simply on the
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 59
ground that in the one case we can assign certain
definite conditions of stimulation of the sense-organs,
whereas in the other case we can only vaguely assign
certain changes in the Sensorium. The fact that we
can have coloured sensations internally excited years
after the eyes which originally excited the sensations
are destroyed, is evidence, indeed, that the Sensorium,
and not the eyes, is the seat of the sensations, but is
no evidence that the sensations are bodily states in
one case and mental states in the other. _^
In a word, to speak of "mental laws independent
of material conditions" is legitimate on the part of a
spiritualist, but is hopeless confusion on the part of
any one who believes Mind to be a function of the
organism. It is true that the mental laws are often
known where the material conditions are unsuspected,
or are but hypothetically assigned ; and the scientific
principle that we are to explain the facts by reference
to known and not to unknown conditions determines
our frequent disregard of the physiological for the
psychological point of view. Another reason for
this procedure is that Physiology being occupied
with the Mechanism and its functions mainly in rela-
tion to external Nature, and Psychology mainly with
Experience and the faculties, which admit of more
intelligible expression in subjective terms, *' the ma-
terial conditions" are so constantly left out of sight,
because always presupposed, that ** mental laws" seem
to acquire an independence.
44. In Mr. Spencer's exposition we have quite other
arguments to meet. He has so luminously expounded
how Mind is evolved as one of the forms of Life, that
we might expect him to be, above all men, ready to
60 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND,
admit that, in so far as mental functions are functions
of the nervous system, Psychology must be correlated
with the Physiology of that system, and in so far as
Mind is a function of the living organism, the science
of Mind must be a branch of the general science of
Life. Yet we find him admitting this only in a quali-
fied way. He detaches the functions of the nervous
system under the title of ^stho-Physiology, as form-
ing only the preparatory conditions of Psychology,
not properly belonging to it. *' So long as we state
facts of which all the terms lie within the organism,
our facts are morphological or physiological, and
in no degree psychological." This is in accord with
what we have previously laid down. Our difference
begins at the next step, where he concludes that a
change in the point of view alters the character of
the events, and that psychological facts cease to be
facts of the organism when they are viewed subjec-
tively. His definition of psychological is not the
subjective aspect of a process which objectively is
physiological, but " the relation between a neural pro-
cess and a feelinor when resjarded in connection with
some existence lying outside the organism." '"'
So great a thinker has clearly a right to introduce
a new definition, and carry out his exposition accord-
ingly. But readers who remain unconvinced may
be allowed to state why they cannot accept his defi-
* Spencer: Psychology/, i. 131,132. It may interest the reader
familiar with Mr. Spencer's work to note the coincidence between his
definition and that given by Carus in his Vergleichende Psychologie,
1866 ; because, wliile it is quite certain that Mr. Spencer's worlc ap-
peared first, there is no trace of Carus having seen it. He defines the
soul : " Eine in derselbeu als Empfindendes und Gegenwirkendes, bald .
leidend, bald tliatig sich bewei.sende Beziehung auf ein Aeusseres zum
Zweck ihrer eiiienen iniieru Ausbilduug und Entwicklung."
THE STUDY OP PSYCHOLOGY. 61
nitlon. I am unable to see the propriety of separating
(otherwise than as an analytical artifice) the facts of
Feeling from their organic conditions ; unable to see
why Psychology should be restricted to those facts of
Feeling which are explicitly recognised as in relation
to external objects. He has previously admitted that
neural process and sentient process are two aspects of
the same fact, but when he argues that it is impos-
sible to understand how the two are related, this
alleged impossibility is made to rest on the concep-
tion of a phenomenon being something apart from its
conditions, instead of its being (as I formerly tried
to prove) simply the synthesis or function of the con-
ditions. If we once admit that a change in Feeling
follows on and flows out of its organic process, as
one event follows another, and an explosion succeeds
the spark, then indeed the mystery of Feeling as
related to organic process presses on us with unique
impenetrability : such a transubstantiation is incon-
ceivable. But the alternation of objective and sub-
jective aspect, if it does not dissipate the mystery, at
least resolves it into the general background of dark-
ness w^hich for our vision surrounds all ultimate
facts.
45. The reader may have noticed that in the fore-
going paragraph the terms organic and neural are
used interchangeably. The reason of this will appear
in a subsequent place, where an explanation will be
given of how the nervous system, or the neuro-
muscular system, comes, in the short-hand of exposi-
tion, to be the representative of the sentient mechan-
ism. If we take the term " neural process " to stand
simply for the molecular change in nerve and centre,
62 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
and not as representing a change in 'the whole sentient
organism, then indeed a neural process is the ante-
cedent to a feeling, the spark which precedes the
explosion ; and in this sense it is absurd to regard
neural and mental as convex and concave.*
46. There is another light also in which Mr.
Spencer's definition seems to me unacceptable. When
he says that every psychological proposition is neces-
sarily compounded of two propositions, of which one
concerns the object, and the other the subject, we
may reasonably answer that every proposition what-
ever implies both. He has foreseen the objection
which must spontaneously present itself to all read-
ers who have followed his exposition of Life as the
" continuous adjustment of inner relations to outer
relations," and who will therefore ask, wherein is the
difference in this respect between biological and psy-
chological phenomena ? His reply, that in Biology
the external phenomena are only tacitly or occasion-
ally recognised, in Psychology they are at every step
avowedly and distinctly recognised, is hardly an
accurate statement. True, that in Biology the atten-
tion is very often directed mainly to the organism,
with only a tacit implication of its relations to the
medium. But this is equally true in Psychology,
the attention being often occupied with the changes
* This felicitous image of the convex and concave, first employed by
Fechner for the objective and the subjective aspects, may have been
suggested by a passage in Aristotle which one very near and dear to
me has brought under my notice: — A^yerai 5^ nepl ai^r^y i'^^V^) • . . rb
p.kv AXoyov avTTJi dvai, rb bi X6701' ^x<"'. ravra d^ Trdrepov SiwpiffTaL Kuddwep ri
ToO ci.ip.aTos fxbpia Kal wav t6 p-eptarbv, 1) Tip \6-yi{i Suo icrlv dx'^P'fT'a irer^vKbra,
Kaddnrtp ev ttj Trept^epeii/, t6 KvpTov Ka.1 t6 koIXov, ovdiv dia<p^pei Trpbs rb vapbv.
—Nic. Eih. I. xiii. 9.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 63
in consciousness, and not with tbeir objective corre-
lates. His assertion that no psychological proposi-
tion is expressible without a distinct and avowed
recognition of objective relations does not seem to
me reconcilable with fact. Three examples may-
suffice : — 1°, Feelings experienced simultaneously
tend to revive each other ; 2°, Perceptions are con-
densed into conceptions by generalising what the
perceptions have in common ; 3°, Memories are re-
vivals of past experiences. Now, although it is true
that in these, as indeed in all orders of propositions,
there is an implication of external relations, can we
say that it is more distinctly and avowedly recognised
than food is recognised in a proposition respecting
digestion, or the atmosphere in a proposition respect-
ing respiration ?
47. Mr. Spencer sustains his position partly by a
novel limitation of the province of Psychology, and
partly by an insistance on the total lack of com-
munity between the phenomena of Consciousness and
the phenomena treated of in all other sciences. It is
true that, while not adopting the broadly marked
separation of objective and subjective aspect as what
determines a corresponding separation between phy-
siological and psychological questions, he is somewhat
vacillating in his language, even to the length of
defining the branch of the science which he calls
iEstho-Physiology, and which is said to furnish the
data of Psychology, as that which treats " of nervous
phenomena as phenomena of consciousness" But
letting this pass, all that he has expounded under the
head of ^stho-Physiology may be taken as the phy-
siology of the sentient organism, which, under its
64 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
subjective aspect, is the classification of the facts of
Sentience ; and if the facts of Consciousness are not
to be included among the general laws of Feeling — •
an exclusion and limitation which I think render
Psychology hopeless as a science — then, indeed, the
physiology of the sentient organism will only be a
preparation for Psychology, and the latter science
may claim its place apart from Biology, no longer
being a science of any functions of the organism.
48. Among the many ideas which have occurred
to me in meditating on this cjuestion is the following :
A science might be constituted out of the facts of
Consciousness alone, wholly disregarding the objec-
tive aspect of such facts, and consequently their con-
ditions of existence. It would be an abstract science
of Feeling, to stand beside the abstract science of
Force — an jEsthesics parallel with Dynamics. The
general facts of Feelinof formulated in abstract laws
would then be disena;a2:ed from all concrete manifesta-
tions ; the organism and the medium would be left
out of account, as Matter and its Qualities are dis-
regarded in Dynamics. Physicists having reduced
Light, Heat, and Sound to vibrations, setting aside
all the special differences in the conditions, physiolo-
gists have imitated them, and reduced all sensations
and thoughts to cerebral vibrations — settino; aside all
the specific differences in the organic conditions. A
psychological Lngrange might arise who would reduce
all these vibrations to a single equation.'" Were such
* " Lagrange dans un ouvrage immortel s'est attache, en ranienant tout
au calciil et s'^levant au dessus des details et des faits, k remplacer les
ph^nom^nes par desformules qui les enveloppent et les cachent." — Beutrand.
(In the Appendix to vol. ii. of Problems of Life and Mind I have
treated of Lagrange's work in relation to Hegel.)
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 65
a science constructed it would assuredly be a power-
ful instrument ; but it would not be a Psychology —
it would be no theory of the soul — it would no more
expound the facts of Human Nature than Dynamics
expounds the facts of Nature. Therefore I had to
return from this hypothetical excursion to the posi-
tion that a theory of the soul was necessarily a part
of the-general theory of life ; and Psychology, in spite
of the dominantly subjective aspect of its phenomena,
must, for all students who reject the idea of the soul
as something independent of the organism, be a part
of Biology. That sentient phenomena belong to the
organism none dispute ; the only dispute is whether
psychical phenomena are special forms of Sentience.
Mr. Spencer agrees with biologists in regarding the
phenomena of Consciousness as subjective aspects of
certain organic phenomena — " such nervous changes
as are brought to the general centre of nervous con-
nections;" and since he would also admit that to
withdraw sensations, emotions, and volitions from
the group of animal functions would seriously trun-
cate the science of Life, leaving it only Nutrition,
Growth, and Eeproduction for its province, there
must be some very strong reasons which determine
his rejection of the conclusion, seemingly irresistible,
that Psychology must be a branch of Biology. What
are these reasons ?
49. One has already been debated. He separates
^stho-Physiology, the science of the sentient organ-
ism, on the one hand, from the science of the nervous
system, and, on the other, from the science of Con-
sciousness. '' j^Estho-Physiology," he says, "has a
position that is entirely unique. It belongs neither
VOL. III. E
66 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
to tlie objective world nor to the subjective world;
but, taking a term from each, occupies itself with the
correlation of the two." In the course of his ex|)osi-
tion he presents Psychology " as a specialised j)ai't of
Biology," but separated from it as Geology from
Astronomy, or Biology from Geology, by the conspi-
cuous presence of additional factors, which, however,
also make their appearance occasionally in Biology.
Now, since I too admit additional factors, and one —
the social — which he does not here enumerate, our
difference so far is not conspicuous^ nor is Mr. Spencer's
ground for his isolation of Psychology very clearly
marked. But it becomes evident in the following
passage : — " A far more radical distinction remains
to be drawn. While, under its objective aspect, Psy-
chology is to be classed as one of the concrete sciences
which successively decrease in scope as they increase
in speciality, under its subjective aspect Psychology
is a totally unique science, independent of and anti-
thetically opposed to all other sciences whatever.
The thouQ-hts and feeling's which constitute a con-
sciousness are absolutely inaccessible to any but the
possessor of that consciousness, form an existence
that has no place among the existences with which
the rest of the sciences deal" (p. 140).
50. The antithesis between objective and subjective
may serve to distinguish Physiology from Psychology,
but it does not mark out Psychology as totally opposed
to all other sciences, for the simple reason that tliey
likewise deal with phenomena having the twofold
aspect. The motions of the heavenly bodies, the
motions of minerals and gases, and the motions of
organic bodies, are objective aspects of our sensible
THE STODY OF PSYCHOLOGY. C7
affections ; what we know of colours, forms, heat,
weight, motion, &c., is due to the action of the
Cosmos and reaction of our organism : we believe that
there is a Notself acting on the Self; but all we know
of this is what we feel. The feelings are distinguished
and classified ; some are referred to causes outside
the organism, others to causes inside the organism.
Tlius_ each fact and each feeling has necessarily two
aj£ects, one turned towards the Notself, the other
towards the Self. The fact is not a fact except in so
far as it is felt ; the feeling has always a reference to
its cause, external or internal. When, therefore, the
question is asked. Why must a phenomenon have two
aspects ? the answer is, Because it is the product of
two factors, an organism that feels, and an external
that is felt.
The psychologist, indeed, has to explain how it is
that one set of feelings rapidly assume the position of
objective signs, becoming less and less referred to the
feeler, more and more to the felt, as when the Jiame
is referred to the objective fire, itself a synthesis of
feelings, but the pain of a burn is referred to the
organism, and not to the fire. The psychologist has
to expound this by his theory of knowledge. In this
respect his science is unique ; for whereas the other
sciences are concerned with the classification of know-
ledge, his science treats of how we come by know-
ledge ; but since that also is a department of know-
ledge, it comes under the same canons of research as
all the others. Moreover, Psychology is not limited
to the theory of knowledge ; it is the ascertainment
and classification of the facts of Feeling, both in their
subjective and objective relations, and in this way
68 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIXD.
also comes under the general conditions of science.
Hence we cannot separate Psychology from the other
sciences on the ground of its phenomena being feel-
ings, nor on the ground of the feelings being limited
to individual experience. All sciences deal with feel-
ings. Psychology alone deals Avith them in their sub-
jective aspect. It is not the presence of Conscious-
ness that marks off the phenomena as those of an
unique science, but the presence of a particular point
of view, a theoretic attention to the feelings as feel-
ings. The ordinary man feels as the psychologist
feels ; but he does not reflect on the peculiar nature
of these feelings as changes in his organism, does not
attempt to account for their production and succes-
sions. His consciousness no more suffices for a theory
of Consciousness than the perception of geometric
forms suffices for the construction of a science of
Geometry. Science begins when the facts are classi-
fied and systematised. And the psychologist classifies
and systematises the subjective aspects of Feeling,
irrespective of their objective aspects, as the geometer
isolates the relations of masfnitude from all other sen-
sible relations.
51. With regard to the second point, while it is
true, in one sense, that the thoughts and feelings of
others are inaccessible to us, in another sense it is in-
admissible. Psychology is in a bad way, if the philo-
sophers are to be trusted ; one school declaring that
each man can only Tcnow his own thoughts, and infer
the existence of other men's from certain appearances ;
while another school declares that he cannot really
know his own thoughts as they are, only as they
appear [Kant, Anthropologie, § 7). Now, granting
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 69
all that is claimed when it is said that the feelings of
others are inaccessible to us, this does not give Psy-
chology an unique position, for it is equally true of
the vital functions of others, and indeed of all that
belongs to the not-ourselves ; yet we know something
of them, and Biology and Cosmology are sciences.
And in another sense the feelings and thoughts of
others must be accessible to us, otherwise there could
be no science of Feeling, nor any communication from
others to ourselves of what they feel and think. It
is true that your subjective state can only be an ob-
jective fact to me, except in so far as I am able to
interpret the objective fact in its subjective aspect.
But this is true of all facts. I express my feelings
and thoughts in actions, gestures, and words. I ob-
serve other beings closely resembling me in all objec-
tive relations ; and observing these beings act, gesti-
culate, speak as I do, I conclude that they are moved
by similar feelings. It is of such conclusions that
knowledge is made. The distinction between Know-
ledge and Opinion is that, in the first case, the pre-
vision is founded on inferences that have been veri-
fied. We know something of an object when we
can, from past experience, foresee what its effects
will be, and not simply what they 7nay he under
changed circumstances. The psychologist interprets
certain visible facts as the signs of invisible feelings,
just as he knows that sugar is sweet and that dogs
bite. When a man is motionless and silent, we can-
not certainly know what is passing within him — there
are no visible signs to guide us. When an acid is
quietly lying beside an alkali we cannot know what
will be the effect of their combination unless past ex-
70 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
perience enables us to foresee it. The statement that
"each individual is absolutely incapable of knowing
any feelings but his own" is acceptable only on a very
restricted definition of knowledge ; and on this defi-
nition we must declare that man is incapable of know-
ing anything except his present feelings. Exclude
Inference, and we do not know that sugar is sweet or
that doirs bite ; admit Inference, and we know that
other men beside ourselves have feelings of the same
nature as our own.
50. My object in this discussion has been to rein-
force the position that Psychology is a branch of Bio-
logy, having for its special province the analysis and
classification of the facts and laws of Sensibility viewed
in their subjective aspect. It embraces Animal and
Human Sensibility ; but partly because of the supreme
interest of the human .phenomena, and partly because
we can less easily understand the mental phenomena
of animals, Psychology must — for the present at least
— be restricted to those of human beings.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SOCIAL FACTOR.
51. The first step towards the constitution of our
science has been the specification of its object and
scope, and the rehxtion it bears to all other sciences.
The next step must be to specify the Method and
register the fundamental inductions.
Biology furnishes both method and data in the
elucidation of the relations of the organism and the
external medium ; and so far as Animal Psychology
is concerned this is enough. But Human Psychology
has a wider reach, includes another important factor,
the influence of tjie social medium. This is not
simpl}^ an addition, like that of a new sense which is
the source of new modes of Feeling ; it is a factor
which permeates the whole composition of the mind.
All the problems become complicated by it. In rela-
tion to Nature, man is animal ; in relation to Culture,
he is social. As the ideal world rises above and trans-
forms the sensible world, so Culture transforms
Nature physically and morally, fashioning the forest
and the swamp into garden and meadow-lands, the
selfish savage into the sympathetic citizen. The
organism adjusts itself to the external medium ; it
creates, and is in turn modified by, the social medium
for Society is the product of human feelings, and its
^"2 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
existence is paiH passu developed with the feelings
which in turn it modifies and enlarges at each stage.
Obviously, then, our science must seek its data not
only in Biology but in Sociology; not only in the
animal functions of the organism, but in the faculties
developed under social develojDments.
52. This conception is novel. Formerly there was
but a vague appreciation of the relation between
Psychology and Physiology ; and even when the
advance of knowledge forced the admission of some
constant dependence of mental functions on bodily
functions, there was for the most part little precision
in the conception. Men knew that the mental func-
tions were conjoined with the organic activities, and
were in some way dependent on the external medium.
They knew also that the social conditions had some
influence ; but this knowledge found only fitful
application. Psychologists for the most part pursued
speculative inquiries ; they proceeded deductively
from certain imaginary principles, and troubled them-
selves little with induction and verification. The
abstract theory of Mind preceded all examination
of mental phenomena. Doctrine took the place of
Search. A similar procedure had been followed in
the study of Life, and still earlier in the study of the
Cosmos : unabashed by ignorance of Anatomy and
Physiology, undeterred by the absence of any in-
sight into physical laws, philosopliers constructed
theories of Life and the Cosmos, and soon presented
these theories as dogmas. Slowly the change came.
The futility of this philosophising is now a common-
place ; and all thinkers call upon inductive research
for the data which may be co-ordinated into doctrine.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 73
The manifest superiority of the new procedure is its
constant control of speculation by verification; hence its
step-by-step progression, slower but more assured than
that of the large and incoherent leaps of Metaphysic.
Psychology, if it is to take rank with the sciences,
must pursue their course. It cannot be too alert
against the tendency of accepting unverified infer-
ences, whether introspective or physiological. But
when thus alert, it may give free play to speculation.
The idea of submitting speculative inferences to objec-
tive verification slowly gained ground, as the convic-
tion grew that mental phenomena had a physiological
basis. This conviction had a severe struggle to go
through. The most accredited thinkers not only
detached Man from Nature, but the Mind from the
Organism ; they invented a Psyche as the source
of all mental phenomena, and endowed it with attri-
butes which were in all respects the opposite of
organic attributes. The metaphysical notions of im-
materiality, simplicity, spontaneity, &c.,had a certain
significance as abstract expressions of observed phe-
nomena ; unhappily they -were accepted as realities,
and were made the grounds of deduction, so that any
observations which seemed irreconcilable with one of
these abstractions were rejected or explained away.
53. Impatience at the futility of the speculative
method led to the first attempts of inductive analysis.
The facts revealed to Introspection were classified,
and some approximative interpretations were reached.
But still the fatal restriction of the science to the facts
of Introspection kept men from the study of the or-
ganism. The organs of Sense were too conspicuously
concerned in Sensation to be wholly ignored ; but
74 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
while, on the one hand, the Physiology of the Senses
was very little understood, on the other hand men
were deterred from the search by alarm at Matei:ial-
ism. Nor was this alarm without its justification at
that time. The spontaneity and subjectivity of moral
and intellectual processes stood in marked contrast
with the mechanical and physical terms in which the
materialists expressed them. The revolt against
Materialism was not entirely the revolt of Sentiment,
though no doubt Sentiment has powerfully aided and
sustained it, giving momentum to the iutellectual
discernment of a contradiction, so that what reason
regarded as a defective conception, sentiment dreaded
as a moral degradation. Who that had ever looked
upon the pulpy mass of brain substance, and the
nervous cords connecting it with the orgaus, could
resist the shock of incredulity on heariug that all he
knew of passion, intellect, and will was nothing more
than molecular change in this pulpy mass ? Who
that had ever seen a nerve-cell could be patient on
being told that Thought was a property of such cells,
as G-ravitation was a property of Matter 1
54. Although it is tolerably certain that the
materialists did not mean all that they were said to
mean, and quite certain that they repudiated the
consequences forced upon their premisses by adver-
saries, they did fall into the error which besets ana-
lysis — that of substituting a part for the whole — and
did not discriminate the objective from the subjective
aspects of the phenomena. But they, and we with
them, rightfully insist on the fact that mental phe-
nomena are functions of the oro^anism ; and we are
no more called upon to explain ivhy this is so than
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 75
why masses gravitate and plants germinate : our
object is to discover the how and not the why. A
vast mass of inductions led to the conclusion that
psychical functions are not only functions of the living
oriranism, but that in the mechanism of these func-
tions the chief part is assigned to the neuro-muscular
system. If this be granted, there is no more difficulty
in understanding how the vital property of Sensibility
should be chiefly manifested by the nervous tissue than
in understanding how the vital property of Contractility
should be chiefly manifested by the muscular tissue.
But this is only a step. Looking at the brain, and
asking, How can this pulpy mass be credited with
Thought ? is looking at one part of a complex me-
chanism and wondering how it can be credited with
mechanical products. You must know the whole
mechanism before you can rightly interpret the action
of a part. You must understand the living organism
before you can interpret the function of the brain.
And more : in looking at the brain you contemplate
the mechanism on its objective side : it is a material
mass, and its actions are molecular changes. If you
ask. How can these material changes be feelings and
thoughts ? you are suddenly shifting from the objec-
tive to the subjective point of view. Dissect an eye
with the utmost accuracy, and you will never divine
in such dissection that it is capable of responding to
the stimulus of light. Contemplate an ovum, and you
will never divine that this microscopic cell is capable
of developing into a complex and gigantic animal.
Induction proves the eye to be the organ of sight
and the ovum to be the starting-point of an organism.
But we must know these facts before we can read
76 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
them in our observations of eye and ovum. What
does this mean ? It means that the data which have
been studied apart must be reconstructed by a syn-
thesis before we reach an explanation. Our know-
ledge respecting the sentient mechanism is still
wretchedly imjDerfect, but, were it a hundredfold en-
larged, it would still be objectively nothing more
than watching a printing machine in operation, which
would disclose how the sheets of paper were laid on
the types and removed after the roller had passed
over them, but would tell us nothing of how the
types were set up, nor what was the significance of
the printed words.
55. From these considerations it appears that while
the subjective analysis of Introspection needs the
control of objective analysis, and Feeling must always
be regarded as a function of the Organism, there is
also the necessity of completing objective observa-
tion by subjective introspection, interpreting the facts
of the Orf>:anism in terms of Feelinoj. So lono^ as
mental processes were regarded as wholly distinct
from organic processes, the application of Physiology
to Psychology, or of psychological experiences to phy-
siological problems, could only be illusory. Modern
thought has revolutionised the question by its grasp
of the principle that mental state and organic state
are only two different aspects of one and the same
thing — distinct from each other in so far as they
are apprehended in different ways and expressed in
different terms. Thus illuminated, the two sciences
have a mutual instrumentality, and their respective
series of phenomena serve, like two versions of the
same original, to elucidate and amplify each other.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. H
56. A twofold advance has been made. Biologists
have ceased to isolate man from Nature, and they
have been followed by psychologists who have ceased
to isolate man from the animals. Observation has
revealed more and more of the fundamental similarity
in the structure and functions of man and animals.
Introspection could never have revealed this. And
now-a-days, instead of having to warn psychologists
against neglecting the data which are furnished by
observation of animals, there is need rather of a warn-
ing ngainst exaggerating their value.
57. The first great step in the right direction was
made by Cabanis when he endeavoured to point out
the invariable connection of moral phenomena with
.organic conditions. Imperfect as the attempt was, it
was a preparation for a more precise and comprehen-
sive view of the relation between functions and organs
— the basis of our science. Another great step was
taken by Gall in his search for the particular organs by
which particular functions were effected. His localisa-
tion of these organs in the cerebral convolutions was
indeed defective in principle, since it ignored the organ-
ism as a whole, and assigned to one part of a complex
arrangement the results due to many parts ; more-
over, his anatomical and physiological data were inac-
curate. Nevertheless his hypothesis was truly scien-
tific in character, and it gave an immense impulse to
research. He taught men to keep steadily in view
the constant relation between structure and function ;
he taught them the necessity of objective analysis ;
he taught them the futility of looking inwards, and
neglecting the vast mass of external observation
which animals and societies afi'orded ; he taught them
78 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
where to seek the primary organic conditions — in
inherited structures and inherited aptitudes.
The effect of this teaching is conspicuous in modern
works, however little of his special system they may
rej^roduce. Indeed, we may now say that the biolo-
gical attitude has displaced the metaphysical: mental
phenomena are everywhere regarded as vital, and not
as having a source which is independent of the living
organism.
58. But there is a final step to be taken for the
constitution of the science. The biological concep-
tion is defective in so far as it treats only of the
individual organism, and only of the organism in its
relation to the external medium. For Animal Psy-
chology this would suffice ; for Human Psychology it
is manifestly insufficient. Man is a social animal
— the unit of a collective life — and to isolate him
from Society is almost as great a limitation of the
scope of Psychology, as to isolate him from Nature.
To seek the whole data of our science in neural pro-
cesses on the one hand, and revelations of Introspec-
tion on the other, is to leave inexplicable the many
and profound differences which distinguish man from
the animals ; and these differences can be shown to
depend on the operation of the Social Factor, which
transforms perceptions into conceptions, and sensa-
tions into sentiments.
It is this final conception of the science which it
will be my aim hereafter to expound. I have ah-eady
intimated that others * before me had been impressed
with the fact that social influences modified mental
* Notably Mr. Spencer. See the luminous exposition : Psychology ^
ii. 521 et seq.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 79
phenomena ; indeed, the fact was too conspicuous to
be overlooked ; but I am not aware that any writer,
not even Comte, who expressly recognises it as a
psychological factor, had seen its vast reach or traced
its mode of operation. The influence of the external
medium was likewise too conspicuous in Physiology
to have been at any time entirely overlooked ; never-
theless a clear recognition of its mode of operation is
quite modern. The patent fact that Psychology was
by one school based on Introspection, by another on
Cerebral Physiology, and by the others on a com-
bination of these lines, proves how imperfectly the
Sociological basis was appreciated.
59. Let us suppose our knowledge of the organism
to be enormously extended, it would still be incom-
petent to furnish an explanation of moral sentiments
and intellectual conceptions, simply because these are
impersonal and social, arising out of social needs and
social conditions, involving, indeed, the organism and
its functions, but involving these in relation to ex-
periences only possible to the collective life. The
higher animals have structures closely resembling our
own ; they have sensations, emotions, perceptions,
judgments, volitions, generically like, though specifi-
cally different from, our own; but their experiences
are restricted to their personal needs, their emotions
are never developed into impersonal sentiments, their
loo^ic knows nothing of abstractions and the construe-
tion of abstractions in Science. Sentiment and
Science are beyond the range of Physiology, for they
are not interpretable by the Mechanism ; they are the
evolutions of Experience, and are acquired slowly
through the long periods of social evolution. Nay,
80 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
many sentiments and conceptions are not possible
even to human beings until the social evolution has
brought them in its train. So far from their being
innate, they are utterly unknown to the vast majority
of mankind.
60. Driven thus to seek beyond the organism and
its inherited aptitudes for the origin of a large portion
of our mental life, we can find it only in the consti-
tution of the Social Organism of which we are the
units. We there find the impersonal experiences of
Tradition accumulating for each individual a fund of
Knowledge, an instrument of Power which magnifies
his existence. The experiences of many become the
guide of each ; they do not all perish with the indi-
vidual; much survives, takes form in opinion, precept,
and law, in prejudice and superstition. The feelings
of each are blended into a general consciousness,
which in turn reacts upon the individual conscious-
ness. And this mighty impersonality is at once the
product and the factor of social evolution. It rests
on the evolution of Language, as a means of symboli-
cal expression rising out of the animal function of
individual expression by the stimulus of collective
needs. Without Language, no Society having intel-
lectual and moral life ; without Society, no need of
Language. Without Language^^no Tradition ; with-
out Tradition no elaboration of the common arts and
skill which cherish and extend the simplest products
of the community ; and without Tradition, no Reli-
gion, no Science, no Art.
61. It is therefore to History and the observation
of man in social relations that we must look for data
which may supplement those of Introspection and
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 81
Physiology. The conditions of existence of mental
phenomena are not only biological but also sociolo-
gical studies. A serious investigation of these will
serve to remove most if not all of the difficulties
which make men cling to the spiritualist hypothesis,
because they are profoundly impressed with the in-
adequacy of the materialist hypothesis. There will,
of course, always remain mysteries enough, on any
explanation of the phenomena, but these will not
interfere with the scientific orderliness of verifiable
conceptions, and Psychology will take its rank among
the positive sciences, pursued on the same Method as
all the rest.
CHAPTER V.
SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS AND THE INTEOSPECTIVE
METHOD.
62. Having stated the problem, we have now to in-
quire how its solution is to be pursued. The reader
will already have gathered that I range myself neither
on the side of those who proclaim Introspection the
only valid source of psychological knowledge, nor of
those who contemptuously dismiss it, and rely solely
on Observation of external appearances. The "de-
liverances of Consciousness" cannot furnish the solu-
tion of a problem which we have seen to be highly
complex, involving both biological and sociological
data. But while limiting the claims of Introspection,
we need not deny their validity.
Introspection is Observation, differing only in that
the phenomena observed are subjective states or
feelings, and not objective states or changes in the
Felt. We observe changes of Feeling, no less than
changes in the External ; and whatever place is
assigned to Observation in scientific method must,
on this ground, be assigned to Introspection.
63. A preliminary difficulty lies in the metaphor
of an '' internal eye," or " internal sense," co-ordinate
with the external senses.* The physiologist knows
* Kant divides the senses into external and internal, " The first is
tliat in which the body is affected by corporeal objects ; the second that
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 83
of no such organ. Nay, more, were sucli an organ
anatomically demonstrable, it would not suffice for
the observation of what passes in Consciousness ; the
simple reason being that no organ observes ; and Con-
sciousness is the state of the Sensorium, the attitude
of the sentient being alternately directed to each of
in -which it is ajfected throngh the mind." Here we have a complete
departure from every phy.-^iological conception of a sense : the mind
acting on the body to produce feeling — not in the mind, but in the
body ! " It is not," he adds, " the pure apperception, a consciousness of
what the man does, for this belongs to the faculty of Thought, but what
the man sjiffeis, in as far as he is affected by the play of his own thought."
— Anthropologie, § 13 and § 22. Corap. Kritik : Trans, ^sthetik, § 2,
where tlie inner sense is said to be the "special form under which the
intuition of inward changes is possible." A glance at the various
treatises shows how various and vague are the interpretations of this
inner sense. Snell {Empirische I'sycJiologie, 1802) defines the outer
senses as those which perceive objects in space ; the inner sense is that
which perceives what passes within us. The former have their definite
organs ; so must the latter have its organ, though we cannot define it,
p. 68. Daub {Anthropologie, p. 112) makes the inner sen?e the three-
fold sense of Time — past, present, and future ; and places it on a level
with the outer senses. Fries {Psychische Antliropologie, 1820) says
the inner sense is our susceptibility of being stimulated by mental
activity ; to it belongs the excitation of self-knowledge, consciousness,
and the emotions of grief and joy, p. 45. He expressly declares that by
outer and inner senses he does not signify bodily but spiritual organs,
BO that all the fundamental dispositions of the soul are called into
activity in the same way from the outer and inner senses, j). 46.
Beneke (Lehrhuch der Fsychologie, § 128) rejects the distinction alto-
gether. Fleming (Beitriige zur Phdosophie der Seele. 1830) identifies it
with the faculty of perception, and says it is sometimes synonymous
with intLdiigence, inner vision, and mind, i. 53. Vorlander (6V(tncZ-
linien einer organischen Wissenscliaft der Seele, 1841) holds that the inner
activities are perceived in the same way as tire outer, and therefore
require no special sense, which, rightly understood, is always a mediate
organ for the perception of what is not immediately given. I need not
multiply examples. The French and English psychologists usually
designate the inner sense by Consciousness. Cardaillac {tltudes
Elemeiitaires de Pliilosophie, 1830) limits it to the "sentiment de iios
facultes," i. 116. "Comment pourrions nous savoir que nous sentons
de mille manieres differentes si chaque sentiment, chaque idee, chaque
acte de la volonte ne luisait conscience de lui-meme ? " p. 118.
84 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MINT).
the various sentient affections. An animal moves
before us, and we observe either its motions, its shape
and colour, or the effect (curiosity or fear) produced
in us. A distention of our intestines directs con-
sciousness either to the unpleasant sensation or to its
imaojined cause.
The psychologist may perhaps object that, by the
" internal eye," he means neither an organ nor a
mode of observation limited to the s^^here of Sense ;
but a mental function, which is that of observingf all
the changes and operations of Consciousness : " It is
tlie Mind itself reflecting on itself." Now, since we
are undeniably conscious of our mental states and
operations, and thus the ]\Iind does reflect on them,
the metaphor of an internal eye may be accepted ; all
that remains for us, then, is to recognise it for a
metaphor, and to explain, if we can, what are the
conditions it expresses.
It is an idle objection that because the eye cannot
see itself seeing, therefore the Mind cannot see itself
thinking. The eye does not see at all, except through
its co-operation with the Sensorium which greets the
prese^ited object.
" Nor doth fhe eye itself
(That most pure spirit of sense) behold itself,
Not going from itself ; but eye to eye opposed
Salutes each other with each other's form." *
64. Kant, Broussais, Comte, and others have re-
jected the claims of Introspection ; but on grounds
that are not tenable. Kant declared that Psychology
could not become a science of observation and experi-
ment. Had he lived to our day he would have seen
* Troilus and Crcssida, Act iii. sc. 3.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 85
it not only become experimental, but some of its
phenomena quantitatively determined, with as much
precision as vital phenomena admit. He said, and
truly, that the elements of inner observation cannot
really be isolated and recombined at will, after the
manner of physical or cliemical observation. All sub-
jective analysis is ideal only, and so far is greatly
inferior to objective analysis. We have no micro-
scope, balance, and reagent, to see what is too minute
for the unassisted eye, to measure what is quantita-
tive, to test what is compound in mental processes :
our closest observation is iiiteyyretation. This granted,
we reverse the medal, and see that in the certainty
of Feeling there is more than a compensation for
the exactness of objective analysis. Nay, even the
observations of external data have all to be inter-
preted, and their value wholly lies in the interpre-
tation. Kant's objection therefore only states a defect;
and his final objection, namely, that the thoughts and
feelings of others are inaccessible to us [Metapli. An-
faiigsgrilncle, preface), we have already argued to be
an error (§ 51).
65. Comte is equally absolute, and, like Kant, de-
clares internal observation to l)e impossible, because
during the process the state of the observer is changed.
** There is an invincible necessity by which the human
mind is capable of observing directly all phenomena
except its own." How, then, in the name of Common
Sense, have we become aware of the existence of
mental phenomena ? It would have been more de-
fensible had Kant and Comte said that observation
of external phenomena was impossible because they
could only be observed through the internal changes
86 PEOBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
which they produced. By a singularly unpliysio-
logical notion, Comte thinks it possible for man to
observe his passions, "because they have a distinct
seat from the observing faculties ! " but " as to ob-
serving the intellectual plienomena during their opera-
tion, that is manifestly impossible." Perhaps so ; but
why ? Because " the thinker cannot divide himself
into two, one reasoning and the other looking on"
{Philos. Positive, i. 35, 36).
To say that we observe our passions, is to say that
we are conscious of the feelings as they arise, and can
recall them. The same is true of our intellectual
states. The same is true of external phenomena.
Having observed a fact, we ideally retrace its stages ;
having been conscious of a mental change, we ideally
recall its antecedents. The movement we observe is
really effected before our observation is completed : it
was a series of successive positions in space ; we re-
travel through that series ideally, connecting the point
of arrival with the point of departure. It is because
we can recall these points that we know there has been
a movement. It is thus also with the movements of
thought. The part of pure observation, or direct he-
holding, is the same in both ; and in both it has to be
completed by reflection, indirect beholding, which re-
forms the particulars into a total. Comte would hardly
have urged his argument had he not been biassed by
the metaphor of the " internal eye," and by his con-
viction of the deplorable nonsense which this " internal
eye "revealed to his contemporaries ; elsewhere he has
clearly expressed the very principle I am advocating.*
* " Toutes nos speculations, ineme geomdtriques, s'y rapportent h, des
phSnomenes qui ne sauraient etre iram^diatement explores. On n'y
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 87
66. We are not to loosen our hold of the indis-
pensable instrument Introspection because it is
limited in its range. It may be only applicable to
subjective changes, and need the co-operation of
Observation, which is only ai)plicable to objective
changes ; both may be, are, indispensable, and both
have the same common ground in the sentient organ-
ism. TJie feelings externalised, and ideally connected
with an External Order or Not-self, constitute objec-
tive consciousness in the perception of things, facts,
events. The feelino^s no lone^cr externalised, but
ideally connected with the Inner Life or Self, consti-
tute subjective consciousness in the perception of
states, changes, results. The antithesis between facts
and feelings, Physis and JEsthesis, is logical and
necessary ; but it is a logical artifice, not a psychical
reality. Both modes of Feeling must be referred to
one and the same Sensorium ; their modality is due
to the modes of stimulation. The various stimula-
tions of the organs only become feelings in so far as
pent propreinent voir que des directions simultan^es ou successives,
d'apres lesquelles I'esprit doit construire la forme ou le mouvement que
Voeil rCapu emtrasser."— Comte: Politique Positive, i. 500. Precisely this
is the construction of a mental process.
As a specimen of the nonsense allnded to in the text, take the follow-
ing declaration from Victor Cousin, the most accredited of Comte's
contemporaries ; " La m^thode psychologique consiste a s'isoler de tout
autre monde que celui de la conscience, pour s'etahlir et s'orienter dans
celui-la, oh. toute est r^alite, mais oti la r^alitd est si diverse et si d(ili-
cate " {Fragments Philosophiques, preface). Although crassly ignorant
of every science. Cousin had no misgiving in magisterially formulating
the principles of scientific Method. He was quite at ease in speculation
because he had never undertaken the rude labour of research ; and he
addressed audiences equally at their ease, equally flattered at being
absolved from the drudgery of investigating facts, by the promise of a
more valid enlightenment from simply looking in upon what seemed
passing in their own minds.
88 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
tliey call the Sensorium into operation. There all the
processes are blended, integrated, and in certain rela-
tive intensities become states of Consciousness ; in
lesser intensities, states of Subconsciousness ; and in
still lower degrees of relative intensity, states of Un-
consciousness. We distinguish Vision from Touch,
and both from Hearing, as modes of Sensibility, and
assign each mode to its special organ of excitation ;
but we do not suppose for each a different Sensorium.
In like manner we distinguish between the feelings
which arise from external stimuli and those which
arise from internal stimuli ; changes in us that are
referred to changes outside, and changes that are
referred to changes inside ; but it is only thus that
objective and subjective consciousness are distin-
guishable. The object or thing is a group of feel-
ings, occasioned in us, we believe, by a substance
which is part of the great whole — Nature. The per-
ception, as a subjective state, is a group of feelings,
occasioned, we believe, by another substance, which is
also a part of the great whole — Nature. Even those
philosophers who believe that the substance of the
Mind is not in any way allied to the substance of
objects, have still to admit that mental and physical
phenomeim are only accessible "to us through Feeling ;
the divisions, therefore, which we establish remain
from first to last divisions 'of feelings.
67. If this seems too subtle for practice, too meta-
physical for inductive science, we may fall back on
the plainest fact of experience, which assures us that
states of consciousness, whatever their origin, are
feelings capable of being ?'e-felt in the forms of images
and memories. Here is the answer to those who
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 89
puzzle themselves with the question, How can the
mind think itself thinking, or the eye see itself see-
ing ? and then declare that the mind cannot observe
its own operations. The fact is that the mind does
observe its operations — and precisely in the same way
that it observes any other operations. Because they
axe felt and re-felt under varying conditions, and are
capable of being discriminated, classified, generalised,
and experimentally modified, they are data for scien-
tific constructions. One example shall suflSce. We
are quite sure that we remember past events, and
can retrace their order of occurrence ; this is ah
operation ; but we are equally sure that we remember
having rememhered ; this is consciousness of the
operation. The operation having been performed
many times, and under very difi"erent conditions, it is
generalised and abstracted as a mental function,
Memory, having its peculiar laws.
•woStoSK^k
CHArTER YI.
LIMITATIONS OF THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD.
68. Having vindicated the claim of Introspection to
a place in scientific Method, an aid without which
all the facts of Observation would be as meaningless
as the words on a printed page to the eye of one in-
capable of interpreting the signs, we have now to in-
quire into tlie validity of the claim set up for it by cer-
tain psychologists, who hold it to be the only ej0ficient
instrument of research. On a first glance it seems
obvious that a science of the facts of Consciousness
can only be constructed from data directly revealed
in Consciousness. '' To understand the mind and its
operations we must look within, and watch those
operations in ourselves, they being necessarily un-
observable from without." Plausible as this appears,
it rests on the double error of restricting the science
to the facts of Consciousness, and to the observation
of processes in the individual mind.
69. I have already pointed out the ambiguity of
the' term Consciousness, which means both Sentience
in general and a particular Mode of Sentience. It
is the latter meaning which the term commonly
carries in psychological discussion, though not with-
out frequent use of the former. A great gain in
clearness would be to substitute the term Experience
THE STQDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 91
whenever tlie subject-matter of Psycliology is treated
of. Consciousness in its usual acceptation is too
limited : it excludes many unconscious processes
"which are induhitably mental, and which, since Leib-
nitz directed attention to them, have been recognised
as essential to every theory of the soul. In 1846,
Cams boldly affirmed that " the key to unlock all the
problems of Consciousness is to be sought in the Un-
conscious." * The paradox loses its strangeness and
becomes luminous if we extricate it from the con-
tradictoriness of its terms, and translate it into the
expression of the constant and definite relation be-
tween function and organ, between mental and bodily
states. Thus translated, the formula will run some-
what in these terms : The key to unlock all the pro-
blems of mental activity is to be sought by studying
each strand of observation, organic facts and mental
experience, the Mechanism and its History.
We are thus made aware of the existence of pro-
cesses in the sentient organism which belong as such
to the psychological order, are facts of Sentience, and
yet are unconscious ; and because they are uncon-
scious, they lie outside the range of Introspection, to
fall within that of Observation and Inference. They
belong to objective science and must be studied
there, not in the personified negation, a mystic Un-
consciousness, t
* Repeated by him in the opening of his Vergleichende Psychologie,
1866. The idea has been worked out with great extravagance by
Hartmann in his Philosophie des Unbewussten.
t " II est jusqu'a present etabli que tout jugement conscient est
la conclusion d'une s^rie de jugements enfouis dans I'inconscience, et
qu'ainsi, pour leur etude, le sens intime ne pent nous 6tre d'aucun
secours. Les jugements inconscients appartiennent au pass^ de notre
individu, et comnie ce passe se perd k son tour dans celui de I'espfece
92 PEOBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
70. Consciousness is too limited a term. Experi-
ence, on the contrary, is comprehensive of all sentient
facts. While there is a contradiction in speaking of
''unconscious sensations," there is none in speaking
of " unconscious experiences ; " these take their place
among the mental modifications acquired through in-
dividual history. Experience has the further incal-
culable advantage of transcending the facts of indi-
vidual feeling and including those of the race ; so
that while we cannot be said to be conscious of what
passes in the mind of another, we can and do, through
Observation and Inference, and that sympathetic in-
ward movement which may be called mental conta-
gion, receive it as an element in our Experience ; and
the experiences of millions of men co-operate in the
determination of the thoughts and acts of the in-
dividual.
In view, therefore, of the ambiguity of the term
Consciousness, we may adopt that of Experience ; but
as it will be difficult to avoid altogether a term which
has obtained such wide circulation, some of its am-
biguity may be escaped by distinguishing between
objective consciousness and subjective consciousness,
to mark the mental operations which are mainly
directed to objects from the operations mainly directed
to the feelings. Objective consciousness would then_
designate M^hat Leibnitz calls those ''perceptions dont
on ne s'aper9oit pas" — that is to say, the aptitude
of mind in which we are contemplating things or
events as such, and not as changes in us, or as feel-
nous voil^ conduit a recherclier les premisses d'un jngement actuel
dans les actes intellectuelles des premiers 6tres sensibles." — Delbceuf:
La Psychologie comme Science Naturelle, 1876, p. 77.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 93
ings. These external changes must be recognised as
no less truly in the sphere of Consciousness, since
they are only present to us as changes of Feeling.*
But their significance to us is attached to the Not-
ourselves. It is only when they are viewed from the
personal side that they become psychological facts.
The movements of the planets, the combinations of
gases, the structure and functions of organisms, are
objects of physical and biological science, and as such
lie outside the domain of Psychology. But these
may be studied from the subjective side, as feelings
and relations of feelings, how we know them, and
how they are related : they then become psychological
facts. The consciousness — experience — which in the
one case had an objective attitude, in the other case
has a subjective attitude. It was consciousness —
feeling — experience — in both cases.
71. Some reader here may ask : In what does the
study of objective consciousness, thus explained, differ
from Physiology ? Physiology and Psychology, I
repeat, though respectively concerned with the same
organic phenomena, are distinguished in that the
former treats primarily of the Mechanism whereby
the functions are effected, the other of the functions
themselves, and how they are related. The objective
facts of the Mechanism and its operations belong to
Psychology when viewed in relation to subjective
Experience, that is, when the material mechanism is
interpreted in terms of the mental mechanism. For
* This distinction has been employed bj' Professor Baix: "Are we
conscious in any shape when engaged exclusively upon the object
world ? It seems to me that we are, and I designate this the object-
consciousness, to distinguish it from the elements of the subject-con-
sciousness." — The Emotions and the Will, 3d ed. p. 546.
94 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
example, a false perception may be interpreted by a
diseased condition of the organs : it is then a physio-
logical fact ; or it may be interpreted as an error of
judgment, the premisses not having their normal
position in the context of experience : it is then a
psychological fact.
Unconscious processes cannot, of course, fall within
the range of Introspection. They are, however, ob-
servable in their results, and iuterpretable by reflec-
tion. If we have formed a conclusion or performed
an action unconsciously, we may discover, on ana-
lysing it, that it could not have been performed with-
out the co-operation of sentient and logical processes
such as we recognise in conscious operations. Some
writers think that such actions belong to Physiology,
because they are unconscious, and are due to organic
states. They belong to Physiology or to Psychology,
according to the point of view from which they are
regarded. The events do not change their character
with our change of view. The organic state and the
sentient state are the same state under diiFerent
aspects. The proof that the unconscious events were
of the psychological order is twofold : first, that they
were processes in a sentient organism ; secondly, that
their genesis was from conscious processes. The same
proof is ready for the so-called " unconscious sensa-
tions." We are often quite unaware of the external
stimulus and the consequent stimulation, yet are
made aware of both by some after-effect. Fechner
says that opposite his bed there is the black fun-
nel of the iron stove conspicuous against the bright
wall, which is the first object visible when he opens
hi« eyes in the morning. Very often he does not see
THE STUDY OP PSYCHOLOGY. 95
this — that is to say, he has objective experience of
the fact, but is subjectively unconscious of it, i.e., he
is subjectively occupied with some other feeling ; yet
he sometimes notices that if accidentally he closes his
eyes he becomes aware of a vivid image of this funnel
(a negative image), which is clear proof that the
sensory stimulation produced its normal effect on the
organism, though this passed unconsciously when sub-
merged in the flood of stronger waves.
72. Helmholtz, after adducing examples of habitual
unconsciousness in normal sentient processes, which
may become conscious by attention properly directed,
remarks that we are wont to interpret sensations
mainly in their objective relations, as means of direct-
ing our actions and knowing the external order ;
their subjective aspects are mainly interesting in a
scientific view, and would greatly interfere with the
ordinary use of our senses were they attended to.
Hence it is that while we attain to an extraordinary
delicacy and certainty in objective observation, we
not only fail to attain this in subjective observation,
but acquire in a high degree the faculty of entirely
disregarding it."'" We have already admitted that
Introspection is scientifically defective, in that while
its disclosures are absolutely certain they are never
exact, and are alw^ays individual, never general. They
do not admit of being measured by sharply defined
standards of comparison ; they may be discriminated,
named, and classified ; they cannot be numbered,
measured, compared. They have no common mea-
sure, only a common nature. One feeling may be
more intense than another; it may be like another in
* Helmholtz : Physiol. Optih, 432.
96 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
an indefinite degree ; we can never say "how much
more" nor " how like." There can be no equation,
except through the substitution of objective standards.
So that it is only by having recourse to Observation
that we can interpret the results of Introspection in
terms of exact science, as it is only by Introspection
that we can interpret the significance of Observation
by the context of experience.
73. We might disregard the want of exactness, and
point to the compensating condition of certainty,
were it not that Introspection, in its direct operation,
is limited to the states of the individual observer.
By looking inwards he can only see what passes in his
mind ; but Psychology is a science of the human
mind, not of any individual mind. No science can
be founded on single specimens : it formulates general
laws, not cases. The individual observer has his
idiosyncrasies, peculiarities belonging to his organism
and education ; these have to be eliminated or reduced
to law. If the sexual tendency is weak in him, and
the aptitude for abstract speculation strong, he will
greatly err in making himself the standard, and by it
interpreting the motives of others. If he has been
reared in a medium of high civilisation, he will find
in his mental structure organised judgments that seem
elementary principles, which, nevertheless, he may
learn to be entirely absent from the minds of men
reared in other times and countries ; what are intui-
tions for him are inconceivable to them.'"* An in-
* " Many conceptions," says Kant, " arise in our minds from some
obscure suggestion of experience, and. are developed to inference after
inference by a secret logic without any clear consciousness either of the
experience that suggests or the reason that develops them." Until
those beliefs that have grown up in the dark recesses of the soul have
/
THE STUDY OP PSYCHOLOGY. 97
quiry into the genesis of his sentiments and opinions
would assure him that his mind was the product of a
history ; and with this assurance he must conclude
that, since his history has not been precisely that of
other men, their minds cannot be precisely like his
own. His consciousness, therefore, cannot be the
standard ; it is only material for science in so far as
it is in general agreement with the consciousness of
fellow-men. By striking off what is individual in
each, we may get at a conception of what is common
to all.'" It is thus we learn approximately to esti-
mate the operation of motives and logical procedures,
not only in ourselves but in others. By including
various races of men aud various stages of culture,
supplementing these by zoological observations and
physiological inductions, we rectify in some measure
the deficiencies inherent in Introspection, and reach
the solid data for a general science.
74. I shall perhaps be told that no psychologist
ever doubted this — none ever proposed to formulate
the general laws from his own individual experiences.
But in that case the Introspective Method forfeits its
claim to be the exclusive Method of Psychology ; and
I further ask, In that case what becomes of the asser-
tion so constantly advanced, that the phenomena of
been "broncjht into the light of conscious reason we can have no confi-
dence in tlieir validity. And very often there is a certain reluctance to
Buch a critical operation, especially in the case of conceptions that have
grown with our growth, and become, as it were, an essential part of our
habits of thought. Hence it is that the profound philosopher so often
"becomes a sopliist to defend the illusions of his youth," — Cited by
Caird : Philosophy of Kant, p. 151.
* Except that idiosyncrasies throw the light of possibility over abnor-
mal workings of the organism, and may thus have a value analogous to
tliat of pathological cases.
VOL. III. y
98 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AKD MIND.
Consciousness are limited to our inner sense, no man
being able to observe what passes in the mind of
/' another ? Of two things one : either the thoughts
' and feelings of other men are inaccessible to us, in
which case Psychology is impossible ; or they are
accessible to us, in which case another Method must
be followed beside that of Introspection.
In § 5 1 we touched on the question of accessibility,
and saw that the feelings and thoughts of others were
accessible to us, precisely in the way that all which
is not ourselves is accessible ; their objective expres-
sion being interpreted by our feelings. It is certain
that I cannot have the feelings of another, since I
cannot he that other. But I can know that other,
and know that his feelings are like my own, as he is
like me. I am forced to pass out of my own subjec-
tive sphere whenever I regard the known not as feel-
ings but as objects ; yet all objects are interpreted as
feelings or signs of feelings. What is accessible to
me on the objective side is not its subjective aspect;
therefore I cannot know your feelings as subjective
facts, but I can know them objectively. I can ob-
serve the effect of certain stimuli on your senses, and
the effect of certain moral suggestions on your actions.
I see you reacting as I myself react ; I hear you speak-
ing as I myself speak, reasoning as I reason, loving
as I love, tremblino; as I tremble. In Literature and
Art there are expressed the thoughts and feelings
which I can interpret by my own. I am certain that
the truths of exact science are apprehended by you
as by me ; and I am as confident in my knowledge of
the laws of mental operation being the same in you
and in me as I am in my knowledge of the external
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 99
order. Kant implies this when he maintains that
" not only is inner experience produced in the same
way as outer experience," but also that " it is secon-
dary and dependent upon outer experience, so that we
can only have consciousness of our own inner states
as such, in contrast with and relation to a world of
external objects." *
75. If, then, it is indispensable that Psychology
should formulate the laws of the human mind, and
not simply classify the individual states, the feelings
and thoughts of others must be accessible ; and if
these are not accessible on their subjective side,
access must be sought on their objective side. We
must quit Introspection for Observation. We must
study the mind's operations in its expressions, as we
study electrical operations in their effects. We must
vary our observations of the actions of men and
animals by experiment, filling up the gaps of observa-
tion by hypothesis. When the facts are known, and
their conditions are known, so that experimentally
the facts are reproducible, the aim of research is
reached ; the, doctrine may then be constructed.
And this leads us to remark on the absolute in-
capacity of Introspection, even were its range co-
extensive with psychical phenomena. There is some-
thing naive in the idea that simply watching the
changes in Consciousness will reveal the complexities
of the phenomena and the laws of change, to say
nothing of the conditions which determine the plieno-
mena. No science can be constructed out of data
furnished by observation of the phenomena as they
pass. We observe results, and analyse these into
• Cairo, p. 287.
100 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
their components ; we complete the visible order by
the invisible. Of what avail was the observation of
falling bodies ? Millions upon millions of observa-
tions under innumerable varieties of circumstance left
men blind to the essential and invariable conditions
of a fall, Newton imagined and then proved the
hypothesis that these conditions were — mass and
distance from the earth's centre: these two invari-
ables were expressed in the law of gravitation. From
that time, observation of falling bodies has been
fruitful and the fact intelligible.
CHAPTER VII.
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
7Q. And here, in order to exemplify the illusoriness
of the Introspective Method when pursued exclusively,
I am tempted into a slight digression. The advocates
of Free Will appeal to Introspection, and assert that
the verdict of Consciousness is unequivocally in favour
of this freedom. " Sir," said Johnson, in his charac-
teristic way, "we hiow the will is free, and there's
an end of the matter."
In certain relations the verdict of Consciousness, as
I have elsewhere said, is the highest, the ultimate
authority. No adverse proof can overturn my cer-
tainty that I feel this or think that. I feel a stinging
sensation in my foot. No certainty can be more ab-
solute. I think that an animal is stinging me. Again
it is an absolute certainty to me that such is my
thought. So far Consciousness has a simply direct
supremacy, and Introspection is but another name for
it. But the conditions or causes of my sensation arc
not given in my consciousness : my thought requires
to be tested by observation, and the supposed animal
being non-existent, analysis may have beforehand dis-
closed various causes of a stino^ine^ sensation, one of
which may agree with the conditions of my case.
Now, in relation to the freedom of the will, what
102 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
does Consciousness actually tell us ? It tells us that
we choose ; that out of several contemplated courses
we make choice of one. But choosing, like a stinging
in the foot, is an experience which may be analy-
tically reduced, and its conditions tested by observa-
tion. That we are conscious of choosins; does not
prove that our exercise of choice is equivalent to
Free Will, when this term is used to signify that
mental actions can go on apart from the general
system of sequences. All the massive evidence to
be derived from human conduct, and from our prac-
tical interpretation of such conduct, points to the
conclusion that actions, sensations, emotions, and
thoughts are subject to causal determination no less
rigorously than the movements of the planets or
the fluctuations of the waves. Indeed, no modern
thinker of any worth would affirm that our volitions
are uncaused,— are freed from the inexorable subjec-
tion to conditions. The question is, What are the
conditions ? While admitting that the strongest
motives determine the actions, we all recognise that
our freedom consists in our power of choice among
conflicting motives, and it is this power which
endows a motive with its superior energy. We feel
that we are free to choose, and know that the rejected
motives might have been selected motives. Over and
above the particular motives, the individual volitions,
we are conscious of a Will, a Personality, which de-
termines these to be what they are.
77. No sooner do we quit the metaphysical for the
biological point of view, and regard Volition as a
function of the organism, than the asserted freedom
is seen to fall within the limits of determinism as a
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 103
particular case of the general law of causation. It is
Avith freedom as with chance. When we say some-
thing happens by chance, we do not mean that it had
no conditions ; we mean that tbe conditions are un-
foreseen, unknown, out of the regular order of appear-
ance. It is by such chance that one black ball is
grasped among many white balls ; but tlie hand
was moved in this particular direction by rigorous
conditions. Because we do not know what these
were, and because we know that, so far as general-
ised laws are concerned, other conditions might have
operated and other balls been chosen, we call the
selection an accident. The organism is a part of
Nature, and is swept along in the great current of
natural forces. But the organism is also a system of
forces, and this system has within itself the condi-
tions of its special actions ; just as our world is a
part of Nature, yet, being a system, its movements are
in some sense independent of the solar system. The
vessel which is swept onwards by the waves does not
determine the individual movement of the sailors.
Each sailor knows that he moves with the vessel, but
knows also tliat he is free to move to and fro on deck.
The voluntary actions are actions of the organism.
On the physical side no one can doubt that every
stage is rigorously determined by the co-operant con-
ditions ; the physical mechanism is, indeed, very im-
perfectly known, but we are quite sure that there is no
freedom (in the sense of indetermination) in its action.
On the mental side we have the subjective correlates
of these objective processes : every element in Sen-
tience is represented by a corresponding element in
cerebral re-arrangement, all chancres in Feelino- beino;
104 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
neural tremors and groupings of tremors. To suppose
that when several conflicting motives arise there is
no corresponding struggle among neural groups, and
that when a choice is made there is no corresponding
neural arrangement, is to assume that Will is not the
function of the organism, but an independent entity.
78. Analysis of a voluntary action exhibits an in-
tention, an effort, and a motor result : three different
stages of Feeling, any one of which may exist sepa-
rately, or in other combinations. We may intend to
perform an act, but make no effort to realise the
intention, which then remains merely a cerebral
rehem^sal of the act ; we may make the effort, but
be unable to execute the act, or may arrest it when
begun. The organism, solicited by a variety of stimu-
lations which excite a variety of nascent impulses,
can only discharge in one motor effect at each mo-
ment, that one being the resultant of the composition
of forces. All these nascent impulses are unrealised,
although present as states of Sentience, more or less
conscious, and each is capable of becoming a motor
or motive under other combinations. In psycho-
logical language, the resultant is the chosen motive,
and is conditioned by three determinants, — 1°, The
nature of the stimulus ; 2°, The momentary state of
the mind ; 3°, The individuality of the person.
Now Consciousness, while revealing the fact of
hesitation and choice, tells us that out of several im-
pulst3S one has prevailed, but does not tell us that this
one prevailed owing to <?a;^ra- organic conditions ; and
if it seems to tell us that some other might have been
chosen, this illusion is explicable. While obeying the
prevailing imj^ulse, we are conscious and sub-conscious
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 105
of simultaneous solicitations in different directions ;
in recallinof the event, we recall some of the nascent
impulses which were in conflict ; and recalling thus
the rejected motives, we recognise in each a motive
which was formerly, and may again be, selected. This
reflection on our mental operations gives the con-
sciousness of variahilitij in impulse, and the persua-
sion that we could have chosen any one of those
rejected. But the persuasion, being interpreted,
means that under the given conditions an action
" might have been " difierently determined : — this
" might have been " is the imaginary displacement of
the actual conditions in favour of others. When it is
said, '* We might have chosen another motive had
we so willed," the meaning really is, that another
motive would have prevailed had it been stronger
at the moment ; and the sympathetic emotion, the
dread of wrongdoing, the vision of evil consequences,
or the ennobling resolve, would then have sufficed to
determine us.
79. The motor-impulse in a hungry dog, though
strong, is not strong enough to make him steal a bit
of meat, if at the same time he remembers the beat-
ings which similar indulgences have brought upon
him. The conflict between hunger and fear is decided
by the energy of his hunger or the vividness of his
revival of past beatings. Very often the strength
of the primary impulse is imperious. A fox wildly
running from the dogs has been known to step aside
to seize a duck on its path. Gall relates the case of
a robber stealing the silver snuff'-box of the priest to
whom he was making a dying confession, habitual im-
pulse blinding him to the futility of his theft. The
106 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
educated man foresees remote consequences, and this
vision enters into tlie complex of his motives. The
state of choosing is, in physiological language, an un-
resolved reflex ; the choice is the resultant.
80. Owing to the complexity of the conditions,
there is a variability in human actions which renders
them difficult of prediction ; and Mr. Sully well
remarks that " to the majority of minds inability to
predict seems a mark of the absence of objective uni-
formity " (Sensation and Intuition, 1874, p. 131).
Even in our own case, it is often impossible to detect
what were the conditions which made one motive
dominant ; the more so because some of them lie in
the unconscious region. Spinoza thought that men
believe themselves to be free because they are con-
scious of their actions but ignorant of the causes. Yet
there is something more in it than this. For we are
ignorant of the causes which determine the particular
direction in the growth of leaves and limbs, the
colours and dispositions of animals, &c., yet we never
doubt that causes are in operation, and that for each
particular detail a particular determinant was needed.
What is this something more ? It is our conception of
a Personality, which is not limited to the momentary
feelings, and not exhausted in the individual act.
The mere feeling does not suffice. We are conscious
of certain operations of our organs, which we do not
assign to volitional impulses. In a voluntary act
there is the intervention of the ive : that is to say,
accompanying the feeling of the act itself there is a
vague feeling of the act as one manifestation of a
variously manifesting Self This conception of a
Self or Personality as superior to and directing each
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 107
particular manifestation is another aspect of the rela-
tion of Organism and organs. Once formed, it comes
to represent an abstract Will which dominates con-
crete volitions ; so that although each particular
volition is assigned to a motive, and is thus admitted
within the rigorous limits of determinism, the mo-
tives themselves are said to be under the powcp of
a Will which is not determined. This is tenable on
the understanding that a metaphysical abstraction
has no physical determinants, and that the antithesis
of mental and mechanical is something more than an
antithesis of aspects ; but it is not tenable when we
reduce the abstraction to its concretes in subjective
and objective terms, and view the Will as the gene-
ralised expression of all volitional impulses.
81. The biologist recognises the fact of delibera-
tion, choice, which Consciousness testifies ; recognises,
moreover, that each particular choice is determined
partly by the fixed conditions of the Mechanism, and
partly by the variable conditions of Experience ; there-
fore that moral causation is conspicuously different
from physical causation, though both are examples
of necessary sequence, both are incorporations of the
operant conditions. That we have, within certain
limits, a power of arresting and redirecting the action
of our organs or the current of our thoughts, — that
we can acquire such a mastery over these as to exe-
cute with ease actions which the motive Mechanism
was incompetent to perform, — that with such control
we can place ourselves under the tutelage of Expe-
rience, and so enlarge, and even alter, the primary
tendencies, till what was once the immediate reflex
of the Mechanism becomes abhorrent and is sup-
108 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
pressed — all these facts of self-formation are as fully
recognised by the biologist as by the metaphysician ;
and the biologist conceives that they admit of an
intelligible explanation without recourse to extra-
oro:anic ao^ents.
82. So long as consciousness of freedom mea.ns
consciousness of deliberation, it simply means that
the sentient organism is capable of various simulta-
neous excitations. We are as "free" to perform one
action rather than another, as we are ** free " to think
one conclusion rather than another; that is to say,
each action, each thought, is possible under certain
conditions, and will be produced whenever these con-
ditions are untrammelled. Out of various ideas which
emerge at the moment, a conclusion is logically, in-
evitably reached. Opinion is "free" in the sense
that another conclusion would have been reached had
the premisses been different ; but opinion is not free
to reach another conclusion while the premisses re-
main unchanged. We are free to admit or to reject
a space of n dimensions ; no man is free to think what
he pleases of the square of the hypothenuse when the
geometrical demonstration has been followed. If
your conclusion differs from mine on any given point,
it is because the premisses have not the same signifi-
cance to you as to me. Our common freedom con-
sists in this possibility of the same symbols having
different significates, as our free will consists in the
possibility of the same sentient excitations having,
under different states of the organism, different resist-
ances.
^^—'83. Volition is Desire realised. The state of feel-
ing which, prompting to action, is yet from some
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 109
cause, internal or external, unable to find its active
response, is the blind or confused stirring we call
Desire. If accompanied by a cerebral rehearsal of
the act, — which means a more or less clear apprecia-
tion of the means by which the act may be efi'ected,
— and if this rehearsal is succeeded by a motor
impulse, it is called Volition. We may desire the
unattainable, we do not will it.
No one supposes that our desires are free. Such
freedom as there is consists in the conflict of desires,
and the choice determined by the predominance of
the most urgent ; and this predominance is partly
due to the strength of the immediate stimulus, and
partly to the vision of possibilities and consequences
which the desire awakens. It is here that Desire
passes into Volition ; so that however powerful a
stimulus may be in exciting a desire, if it be con-
nected in Experience with painful consequences we
are thereby educated to resist the desire, or to avoid
incurring the stimulus which awakens it. Because
the Will is thus the abstract expression of the pro-
duct of Experience, it is educable, and becomes amen-
able to the Moral Law, as architecture is amenable to
mechanical laws, and as thinking is amenable to
knowledge.
84. The whole dispute has arisen from two specu-
lative mistakes : first, the personification of the ab-
straction Will as something apart from the total of
volitional impulses, and, therefore, removed from
their conditions ; secondly, the analytical artifice of
detaching a particular feeling from the comj)lex of
co-existent feelings, and supposing that this feeling
110 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
has an unvarying value, whereas its value, as a
motive, is always relative. Because a man will
" Scorn delights and live laborious days " —
will endure the privations of hunger and the pains of -
cold and fatigue, that he may achieve some deed of
succour, some object of ambition, or some moun-
taineering feat, we do not suppose that he is insensible
to fatigue, cold, and hunger, or that he cannot enjoy
the rejected delights. Each of these motives will,
under other conditions, determine their appropriate
responses ; but under the vision of some prospective
end these impulses are suppressed. It is in this way
that our Personality intervenes to shape our conduct:
an abiding sense of our dignity, or of our duty, or a
loving devotion to another's welfare, suffices to re-
strain all the solicitations wbich are seen to be incon-
sistent with it, precisely as a vision of being beaten
restrains the hungry dog. It is thus, as Thomas h,
Kempis says, occasiones homineni fragilem nonfaciunt,
sed qualis sit, ostendunt. This is the only sense in
which we can say that the conscious Ego is the cause
of the determining motives.
85. In conclusion, let us note that the old dispute
about liberty and necessity is now-a-days resolved ''
/into a question of whether the Mind is a function of
the Organism, or an entity operating on and through
the Organism. By necessity may be understood
either, 1°, A rigorous invariableness of sequence, ii're-
spective of any variations in the conditions, or, 2°, An
invariableness in the conditions themselves : a clock-
work necessarily acts in only one way if it act at all.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. Ill
Now the testimony of Consciousness is invoked to
prove that such invariableness is not the case with
our actions, and that the Organism is to a great ex-
tent self-reguhxtively variable. Owing to the popular
misconception of the term Mechanism when applied
to organisms, there is the notion that if our actions
are mechanically determined they must have the
fixity of invariableness observed in machinery ; and
since Consciousness assures us that our actions are
not thus invariable, the conclusion reached is that
they cannot be mechanically determined. Our con-
sciousness tells us we are free, in the sense that
we have a range of motives surveyed by a Personality
which is the incorporation of our past experience, and
carries the prevision of alternative futures. It does
not tell us that our motives are unconditioned, nor
does Biology permit us to conclude that Conscious-
ness, Self, Personality, is unconditioned. The only
question therefore is. What are the conditions ? It
is the task of the psychologist to specify them.
CHAPTEK VIII.
OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS.
86. It is thus clear that our Method, while availing
itself of the indispensable aid of subjective analysis,
has also to call upon objective analysis on a very ex-
tensive scale, since every mental fact is at once a state
of Feeling and a state of the Organism. While the
order and genesis of mental facts are not wholly laid
bare to Introspection, their significance is wholly hid-
den from Observation. The physiologist could not stir
a step in interpreting the facts of the sentient me-
chanism were he not incessantly translating them into
facts of Feeling. Without the illumination of Intro-
spection he could see nothing but molecular move-
ments in neural processes. Thus do subjective and
objective analysis go hand in hand. Each has its
advantages and limitations. The physiologist ob-
serves and classifies the activities of the organism,
assigning these grouped classes to particular systems
and organs, reducing thus the facts of function to
facts of structure. Havino; succeeded in reducinsc
particular functions to general functions, and func-
tions to properties of tissues, he attempts a synthetic
reconstruction in which the facts observed are seen to
be consequences of the factors.
The procedure of the psychologist is analogous, but
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 113
from another station. He studies the facts and laws
of Experience, to which the facts and laws of the
Mechanism are subordinate. He therefore begins
by observing and classifying the various forms of
Experience, reducing them to elementary Feelings,
and these again to their conditions, namely, the
organic activities and the cosmic and social environ-
ment. What Anatomy is to the physiologist, Physi-
ology is to the psychologist. If the former limited
his science to the observation of the salient activities
without reference to structure, he would conclude
that Eespiration, Digestion, Locomotion, Vocal Ex-
pression, Manipulation, &c., were due to so many in-
dependent principles, and would never suspect that
the Sentient Mechanism was involved in each of
these, no less than in Sensation, Emotion, and Thought.
If the psychologist limited his science to Introspec-
tion, he would conclude — as indeed psychologists have
concluded — that Sensation, Perception, Emotion, and
Volition are the independent activities of different
agents. Forced to find some common ground for
their dependence and unity, he would feign the pre-
sence of a Psychical Principle. This substitution
of one mystery for another is the metempirical at-
tempt to explain the unknown by the inconceivable ;
for, as Kant truly says, the Psychical Principle can-
not be made the object of positive thought, since we
have no data for it in our sensations, and we are thus
driven to call in the help of negatives to aid us in
thinking of that which is utterly different from all
that is sensible. Instead of seekino: in the orofanism
the conditions of organic activities, psychologists pre-
ferred the fictions of imagination, and referred psy-
VOL. III. H
114 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
chical plienomena to an abstraction personified as the
Psycliical Principle. An ingenious thinker might as
well detach all the motor phenomena observed in
organisms — the walking, flying, swimming, dancing,
fencing, &c. — and erect these into a separate science.
To explain the observations he might invent a Motor
Principle, which would absolve him from all trouble-
some study of the motor-organs and their vital con-
ditions. His science would have the same value as
that of the metaphysical psychologist.
87. It will, perhaps, be thought needless now-a-
days to insist on the necessity of studying the organ-
ism, most recent works being conspicuously occupied
with nerve cells, fibres, and centres. There is even
danger of the reaction against the Introspective
Method being carried too far. A warning, therefore,
may fitly here be suggested. That warning is, not
to place reliance on the extremely immature know-
ledge of the structure and functions of the nervous
system which has hitherto been reached, but to accept
the statements of our text-books as provisional hypo-
theses, not as secure data for deduction. Much of
what passes for physiological explanation of psycho-
logical processes is simply the translation of those
processes in terms of hypothetical physiology. We
are indisputably certain of the facts of Feeling, even
when our subjective analysis of these into their factors
is open to question ; but no one who is competent to
speak on the matter would aflirm that our translation
of these into definite cerebral processes is at the best
more than a probability. In my previous volume, it
has been shown how very far we are from accurate
knowledge of nerve-tissue, and how contradictory and
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 115
chaotic are the attempts at localising particular func-
tions in 2:)articular portions of the nervous system. I
can never read without a smile the confident state-
ments which credit certain nerve- cells with the power
of transforming impressions into sensations, and other
cells with the power of transforming these sensations
into ideas — which assign Volition to one centre, Sensa-
tion to another, Perception to a third, and Emotion to
a fourth. As to the minute anatomy of the nervous
system, were it as exact as it is often supposed to be,
its value to the psychologist would be insignificant
compared with the more accessible observation of the
organic functions. Unless illuminated by a study
of the organism as a whole, investigation of nerve-
cells will throw no more light on Psychology than
investigating the molecular structure of iron rails will
explain the Kailway System. That a congested liver
w^ill influence the intellectual and emotional processes
is a demonstrable fact ; that a mental agitation wiU
arrest digestion and cause palpitation of the heart is
also demonstrable ; but that an impression on the
skin has to be transmitted to the optic thalamus be-
fore it becomes a sensation, and from thence to the
cerebral convolution before it becomes a perception,
is still very far from a demonstrable fact ; and the
parts played by cell and fibre in such transmission
and transformation are at present utterly imaginary.
For any one, therefore, to propose an explanation of
mental processes by adducing imaginary connections
between neural elements having imaginary proper-
ties, is to explain the imperfectly known by the
unknown.
88. I have given so much study to the minute
116 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
anatomy of the nervous system, that I shall not be
suspected of indifference to its future value, or of
joining in the contemptuous rejection which animates
those who pronounce it materialistic — a rejection on
a par with Bacon's sneer at Copernicus and Goethe's
at Newton for their one-sided treatment of Astronomy
and Optics on mathematical methods. The union of
Physiology with Psychology is henceforward assured,
like the union of Algebra with Geometry, by which
both sciences have been enormously improved.
Lagrange well said that so long as Algebra and Geo-
metry were independently studied, their progress was
slow and their applications limited ; since their union
they have given each other support, and have moved
rapidly towards perfection.
89. In objective analysis we seek to complete and
verify the data of subjective analysis. It embraces
observation of men and animals, as organisms and
as units of a society. The facts presented by Zoology
and History have to be reduced to their conditions
in Physiology and Sociology. Until this reduction
is effected, our observations only disclose symptoms,
not causes.
A glance at the history of Medicine will illustrate
my meaning. The old pathologists — of Body and
of Mind — classified diseases, abnormal states of the
organism, according to the salient symptoms. They
vainly tried to cure the diseases by attacking the
symptoms. The method now followed is that of
classifying diseases, not according to symptoms, but
according to functional derangements ; and their
cure is sought in the removal of the conditions of
such derangements. The old plan was necessary so
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 117
long as men were very imperfectly acquainted witli
functions and organs. The symptoms were not only
what obtruded themselves on notice, they were all
tfiat could accurately be conceived ; they must always
be the first indications for research.*
Progress of observation disclosed that similar symp-
toms reappeared in very various combinations, so
that diseases manifestly due to various causes and
to derangements of widely different organs presented
many of the same salient appearances ; and thus,
when the treatment of symptoms was pursued, the
remedy which proved beneficial in one case proved
disastrous in another. The modern pathologist en-
deavours to assign the symptoms to organic disturb-
ances, direct or sympathetic. These disturbances may
be, l**, structural — a lesion of tissue or an alteration
oi its plasmode ; f 2°, functional — an excess or arrest
of normal activity of the organ by direct or indirect
excitation. When he has acquired definite knowledge
of normal and abnormal organic conditions, he has
acquired a corresponding knowledge of the diseases
in which certain symptoms appear ; and when he has
learned the means of modifying these conditions,
restoring the organ to its normal activity, he has
learned all that can be learned of cures.
* The mistake of accepting symptoms for causes is natural but un-
scientific. The gross errors it leads to may be seen in abundant
examples. Here is one : — There is no symptom of Insanity more con-
spicuous than Hallucination ; it is, nevertheless, occasionally observed
in people who are not in the slightest degree insane, and it is not always
observed in the insane. If a man believes that he is " possessed " by a
demon having entered into his body, he is said to be insane, and
generally is so ; yet hundreds of perfectly sane ignorant people have
believed themselves " bewitched " or that a malevolent stranger has cast
" the evil eye " on them, the effect of which will be their destruction.
t For an explanation of this see Physical Basis of Mind, p. 47.
118 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
90. Psychology must be pursued on a similar
plau. Hitherto its classifications and its applications
to Education and Insanity have been too largely
founded on the consideration of symptoms instead of
the organic conditions. Naturally so ; the pedagogue
and the alienist had little else to direct them. The
salient manifestations they could note ; of the latent
causes they were ignorant. They could, therefore,
only teach and treat by rude empirical methods. A
change is happily gaining ground, at least among
instructed alienists, who now universally recognise
mental aberrations as dependent not on sin, not on
spiritual perversion, but on functional derangements
having organic causes. They no longer think of
curing Insanity by punishment or by sermons ; they
treat it as a malady. The pedagogue has not yet got
so far. The traditional conception of the Mind as
something different from the activities of the or-
ganism determines, implicitly or explicitly, his method
of Education. He tacitly assumes that all minds are
specifically, no less than generically, alike, and he
therefore teaches the same lessons in the same way
to all.
ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY.
91. Once recognising the necessity of observing
the sentient activities of men and of animals, and of
interpreting these by reference to their organic con-
ditions, what more natural suo'srestion than that our
study should begin with animals ? The comparative
simplicity of their organisms and their manifestations
would seem to mark them as furnishino; the safest
prolegomena to Human Psychology. I have already
THE STUDY OP PSYCHOLOGY. 119
stated (in the preface to Problems of Life and Mind)
that ill 1860 I was led to collect materials with this
view, but that fuller consideration showed it to be
impracticable. To show why it was impracticable
will be an answer to my Russian critic, M. Wyrouboff,
who {La Philosophie Positive, 1874, p. 106) objects
to my " sin against scientific method" in not proceeding
from phenomena that are general and simple to those
that are special and complex ; I ought, he thinks,
to have made the exposition of the simpler cerebral
phenomena in animals precede that of the more com-
plex phenomena in man. This was my own opinion
till experience proved its mistake. I found myself
constantly thwarted by the fallacies of anthropomor-
phic interpretation. It was impossible, even approxi-
mately, to eliminate these before a clear outline of the
specially human elements was secured. For example,
we see bees at work, and see that they do not sting
the keeper, but sting any stranger who may interrupt
them ; our interpretation is that they kiiow their
keeper and are angry when disturbed. Seeing them
act as we act under analogous circumstances, we
interpret their actions as we interpret our own. Yet
to credit them with Knowledge and Emotion like our
own is manifestly erroneous when we compare the
conditions in the human Mechanism and Experience
which cannot be present in bees. If we say the bees
hiow the bee-keeper, we apply the human vocabulary
to insect organisms. In that vocabulary Knowledge
is the formula of Feeling. The bees, although they
no doubt have Feeling, have not the same sentient
mechanism, consequently have not the same Feeling
as we have, and assuredly have not the same formula.
120 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
Grantinof, therefore, that the bees have sentient acti-
vities which may be called Knowledge and Anger,
it is certain that these must be very different from
such activities in ourselves ; and until we have gained
a clear insight into the special conditions which
operate in human activities, it is hopeless, even ap-
proximately, to estimate the nature of the activities
from which such special conditions are absent. There
is a general resemblance between the sensitiveness of
the bee and that of the man ; between the agitation, as a
symptom, of the thwarted bee and that of the thwarted
man; between the stinging of the thwarted bee and the
striking of the thwarted man : but the causes operat-
ing are not the same in each, the effects cannot be
the same ; and although we may speak of the agita-
tion of the bee, it is only anthropomorphism to speak
of its anger. If the bee is cut in two, its hinder
segment will sting as vigorpusly as before ; does this
hinder seo-ment feel anger ? That the semient is
sensitive, I admit, and this reflex stinging is the con-
sequence. But between sensitiveness and emotion —
between cerebral excitation and auger — the distance is
great.*
• It is this distance which is constantly overlooked. Thus in a
recent physiological work of repute the sensitiveness of the bee's seg-
ment is adduced in proof that "chaque segment paralt conserver pour
son propre conapte la faculte de sentir, de se mouvoir volontairement,
sciernment, et meme de sirriter. Chaque groupe ganglionnaire partiel
ainsi forme devient un centre partiel qui se suffit et possede les princi-
pales propri6tes etfacultes de I'ensemble. Que va dire la Metaphysique?
Une intelltyence qui se coupe h, coups de ciseaux ! " On reading this
passage a metaphysician would surely remark that nowhere are the
products of a whole to be found in any single part ; "the faculties" and
their generalised expression " intelligence" can no more belong to one
single organ, than Literature can belong to the steam-engine which
moves the printing-press.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 121
92. To attribute knowledge and emotion to bees is
either to speak in metaphors or to follow the classi-
fication by symptoms. And what is conspicuous in
this example is equally discernible in all interpreta-
tions of animal feelings. Anthropomorphism is in-
evitable so long as we follow symptoms and do not
penetrate to their causes. By such procedure the
uncultivated mind sees in all the changes of Nature
reflections of its own states ; the wdnds " howl " and
the rivulets "babble," the thunder "mutters" and
the planets " attract " each other. But when the
mind passes from symptoms to causes, it recognises
the irrationality of expecting the same effects to be
produced by causes that differ. The anatomical in-
vestigation which reveals the many and profound
differences between the human and animal oro-anisms,
is further emphasised by the psychological investiga-
tion which reveals the still greater differences in the
Experience of men and animals, so that in spite of
certain fundamental resemblances the mental states of
each are specifically unlike.
93. To make observations of animals really service-
able, it is necessary that we should eliminate all the
ascertainable differences, and leave standing only
those conditions Avhich animals and men have in
common. This of itself is an arduous task, and when
completed would need caution in application. We
must not express the results in other than general
terms ; we must not attempt precision of statement.
I mean, that if we attribute feelings to both, we must
not attribute feelings of the same complexity to both.
The anger of a bee or the foresight of a fox resembles
the anger and foresight of a man, much as the vision
122 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
of a mollusc resembles the vision of a bird, or as the
mathematical faculty of a savage who cannot count
beyond five resembles that of an undergraduate who
can wield the Calculus.
94. It is clear that we should never rightly under-
stand vital phenomena were we to begin our study of
Life by contemplating its simplest manifestations in
the animal series ; we can only understand the Amoeba
and the Polype by a light reflected from the study of
Man. It is also clear that we shall never form even
an approximate idea of the mental states of Animals
until we have a theory of those of Man ; and such a
theory must be constructed, not out of a classification
of symptoms, but out of a reduction of symptoms to
their causes.
This does not seem to have been apprehended by
the various eminent writers who have attempted an
Animal Psychology. Their researches have been
further biassed by a secret desire to establish the
identity of animal and human nature — a desire con-
sequent on their reaction against the irrational efibrt
of theologians and metaphysicians to sever human
nature from all community with animal nature. In
opposition to the doctrine that animals were soulless
machines, they insisted so strongly on the intelligence
of animals that they overlooked the conspicuous dif-
ferences in the conditions and results. They com-
mitted no such oversight in regard to Physiology.
They knew that fish could not run, having no legs,
and that cats could not fly, having no wings ; and, to
be consequent, they should have known that animals
could not manifest certain psychical activities in the
absence of the requisite physiological and sociological
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 123
conditions. The animal without Language is as in-
capable of abstraction, and of what we specially desig-
nate Intellect, as, without wings, it is incapable of
flight. In a social medium which evokes sentiments
and ideas, the mental organism of man acquires
organs, capacities, which are impossible to the ani-
mal, and these modify the whole Experience of man.
This being the case, it is difficult for us to form even
an approximate estimate of the animal mind, because
we must interpret it by our own wherever we have
no clear vision of the conditions operating in each ;
and even when we can specify a difference, it is diffi-
cult to estimate the result — a notable illustration of
which is the impossibility of accurately realising
what is the mental result of congenital blindness or
deafness.
95. The great advances which have been made,
owing to the extensive studies of comparative Physi-
ology, naturally suggested that equivalent advances
might be made through studies of comparative Psy-
chology. The anatomist having traced a community
of plan in the composition of organisms, and the
physiologist having traced a corresponding commu-
nity of function, so that the animal series came to be
viewed as a graduated differentiation of simpler into
more complex forms, and the complex thus became
intelligible in the light of the simpler forms, the
psychologist readily concluded that since the mental
functions were organic functions, they also might
profitably be studied on the comparative method.
All those animals that possessed a nervous system
would necessarily present the sentient functions of
124 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
that system ; the system in its simpler forms would
present the functions in simpler forms.*
96. This idea fascinated me, as it has fascinated
others. And I owe to it not a little of my scepticism
respecting the classic views of the brain as the exclu-
sive organ of feeling and intelligence ; for the com-
parative investigation, confirmed by experiment, left
no doubt that animals which had nothing to be called
a brain (except by an extravagant extension of the
term) did, nevertheless, manifest several of the func-
tions classed under sensibility and even intelligence,
which it was a mere evasion to call Instinct. But
although comparative studies were of great service
in enabling me to form a conception of the sentient
mechanism, they were absolutely misleading in rela-
tion to the conditions of Experience. The fallacies
of anthropomorphism were not to be escaped; and
the reason of this will explain why comparative
Psychology cannot be placed on the same footing
as comparative Physiology. The anatomist and
physiologist have the same means of investigation
and verification, both when studying the animal organ-
ism and when studying the human organism. The
issues and organs, the secretions and other active
manifestations, are objective facts which need no
subjective control or interpretation. That the
muscle of a dog, a horse, a rabbit, a frog, or a
* " Se la facolta psichica nei suoi element! eseenziali si attribuisce all'
uomo exclusivamente, il regno aiiimale si annienta, e 1' uomo stesso
rimane un enigma insolubile" — a just remark, but followed by this
■which is questionable^" se soltanto a lui ed agli animali, quelle
vegetale rimane un mistero ancor piu inesplicabile." — Tito Vignoli :
JSaggio di Psicologia Comparata, 1877, p. 69. Whence his conclusion that
rightl)' to understand the mind of man we must also investigate the
mind of plants.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 125
fisli has the property of contractility ; that the
mucous membrane of a dog, horse, rabbit, or frog has
the property of secretion ; that animals move by
means of contracting muscles, and digest by means of
the secretions, are facts which admit of no doubt. It
is quite otherwise when the psychologist compares the
sentient phenomena presented by animals with those
presented by man. The external appearances may
be very similar, but what assurance has he that the
internal feelins^s are similar in each ? A doo^ fastens
on a rat ; the rat struggles and bites; the dog adjusts
his movements to every movement of his prey,
growls with fierce rage, eats and digests the flesh,
rejecting the indigestible hair, claws, &c. We inter-
pret the actions of the dog by our knowledge of
similar actions in ourselves. We suppose the dog to
have feelings like our own, and that these feelings
prompt and accompany his movements. And our
supposition is warranted by our knowledge of the
great resemblance between the organs and tissues
involved in these actions efi"ected by the dog and by
man. From the objective similarity of the effects we
conclude a subjective similarity in the causes, and
inversely from the similarity in the organic causes
we conclude a similarity in the subjective feelings.
So far all is clear. But now observe the polype
clutching a worm or waterflea, mastering its struggles,
drawing its victim into its inside, and then, having
extracted its assimilable juices, rejecting the indi-
gestible shell or skin. The actions, as objective facts,
are singularly like those of the dog mastering the rat ;
the results are similar. Shall we then conclude that
the polype felt very much as the dog felt ? Shall we
126 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
here also conclude a similarity in the feelings to ex-
plain this similarity in the acts ? On proceeding to
verify this inference, we are forced to admit that it
was precipitate. From a certain objective similarity
we have inferred that the two cases were similar
tlirougliout. In this way a spectator observing the
actions of Vaucanson's mechanical duck to be very
similar to those of a living duck, would infer that,
together with this agreement in mechanical conditions,
there was also an agreement in the vital conditions :
he would suppose that Vaucanson's duck was alive
and had feelings. This inference he would rectify as
soon as he learned that the movements of Vaucanson's
duck were effected by springs and wheels, and not by
living muscles and nerves. A knowledge of the vital
conditions would enable him to see that the observed
similarity was limited to the mechanical aspects of
the two cases. And thus also, in the case of the
polype and the dog, a knowledge of the organic con-
ditions rectifies the inference from observation. The
conditions are conspicuously different in the two
cases. The structures of the dog and the polype have
only the most general resemblances ; their mechanisms
and experiences are so unlike that it is only by a vast
knowledge of details and a large theory of organic
evolution that we can bring them under one general
rubric. Nor does the difficulty cease here. Observe
a sensitive plant, the hairs of which an insect touches :
the insect is clutched, struggles vainly, is enfolded,
pressed down upon the leaf, which pours forth a
secretion, and the insect is digested, as the waterflea
and rat were digested, the indigestible materials being
rejected. Shall we here also recognise the presence
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 127
of feelings similar to tlie feelings in the dog and
in ourselves ? There are distinguished writers who
attribute a soul to the plant, no less than to the
animal. The hypothesis lies wholly beyond disproof,
because it lies wholly beyond proof. But I would
urge, that if we credit plant and polype with souls,
we are bound by every consideration to deny that
these souls are like our own, beyond that general like-
ness which may be detected between their organisms
and our own, when both are resolved into differenti-
ations of protoplasm. There is a theoretic advantage
in assigning Sensibility to all living organisms, and
thereby giving unity to our conceptions of organic
phenomena ; but while fully recognising this, we must
not overlook the conspicuous diversities of organic
phenomena, and the specific characters which result
from the differentiations of Sensibility under complex
conditions. Once clearly apprehend that every pheno-
menon is a function of its conditions, and you appre-
hend that the marked variation of the organic condi-
tions presented by the various animal structures must
produce marked dissimilarities in sentient phenomena.
A priori, then, we are certain that a plant or a polyjDe
cannot possibly feel like a dog or a man; and although
we may credit it with feeling, what the nature of that
feeling is must remain entirely inconceivable to us.
97. Here, and indeed throughout, we have only
tbe positive data of objective observation without the
control of subjective verification. How illusory may
be the subjective interpretation of animal actions is
apparent in the familiar fact that even men may and
do exhibit the same objective phenomena when the
internal states of feeling are different — they laugh
128 PROBLEMS OP LIFE AND MIND.
and cry from central agitations which have nothing
ludicrous or pathetic ; they struggle and shriek when
feeling nothing whatever of the pain which normally
excites such actions. We know this is so, for they
inform us that it is so, and we have ourselves ex-
perienced it. But the animal cannot tell us the feel-
ings that underlie its manifestations ; and since we
have positive evidence, first, that the objective facts
are not always interpretable in the same terms of
feeling ; secondly, that every feeling is a function of
its sentient conditions, varying with these conditions,
who shall venture to say what may be the precise
mental state even of the highest ape ? Ilis me-
chanism is in many details unlike our mechanism ;
this of itself implies a dissimilarity in the sentient con-
ditions the range of which we cannot estimate. But
still greater is the difference between his Experience
and ours ; and the influence of that factor is quite
incalculable.
98. On these grounds we can only assign a very
subordinate place to Comparative Psychology. It has
its place, and furnishes objective analysis with im-
portant data ; and at times affords us a clue even
in subjective analysis. But it can only mislead re-
search if its limitations are ignored, and if we unre-
strainedly interpret animal actions in the light of
human consciousness. The psychology of animals
may be simpler than that of man, but it is assuredly
less intelligible. Now the effective procedure of in-
vestigation is not that of passing from the simple
phenomena to the complex, but from the more easily
accessible to the less easily accessible, — from the
better known to the less known. This principle
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 129
determines tlie selection of the physiological inves-
tigation of the Mechanism, in cases where the phe-
nomena are more easily accessible and the inductions
more easily verifiable, than through the analysis of
Experience ; and vice versa.
Our Method is, therefore, pari passu, objective
and subjective. Animal Psychology offers a vast
field for experiment and verification ; it is rich in
suggestion respecting the Functions, though of little
value respecting the Faculties ; it presents us with
certain analyses, so to speak, made without disturb-
ance of the organism ; but, assign what value to it
we may, it cannot take precedence of Human Psy-
chology, nor can its facts be intelligible until seen in
the light reflected from the human mind.
DIFFERENCES OF ANIMAL AND HUMAN.
99. The gi'eat Aristotle studied animal life with a
keen appreciation of the fundamental community and
specific diversity between men and animals. Sub-
sequently, theological dogmas arrested this line of
inquiry, and metaphysical dogmas consolidated the
prejudice. Descartes threw his great authority into
the scale, and started the idea that animals were
sentient machines without intelligence, because with-
out souls. In spirit and in conception this cele-
brated explanation of the animal phenomena was
vicious, but it seized one true and important aspect
in recognising the operation of mechanical principles,
and another in roughly marking the broad distinc-
tion between animal and human. Descartes fully ad-
mitted, what his successors quickly forgot, and what
VOL. III. I
130 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
liis adversaries rarely appreciated, that the animal
mecbanism was a sentient mechanism. This at once
disposes of the absurd interpretation that animals are
machines, and, therefore, cannot feel. Although not
verifiable, the opinion is tenable that animals, if
sentient, have little or no consciousness of their
sentience. I mean, that their actions may have
a sentient mechanism, and yet never evolve the
secondary states of reflected sentience. It is neces-
sary that the animal should perceive objects : it is
not necessary that he should perceive his own per-
ceptions as objects. To hear a sound is to have a^
sensation; to attend to its concomitant external object
is to perceive that object; but to attend to the mental
state of sound, or to the operation of perception, is IjU'
another and more com[)licated process. We have no
evidence that animals are capable of this ; and if w^e I
restrict Consciousness to such cases, we must deny I
consciousness to animals. - — *
The Jesuits Bonjean and Darmanson took up the
idea of Descartes in its most irrational aspect. The
former declared that all the animal manifestations
which looked like the operation of a spirit were in
truth the operation of Satan ; the latter [La Bete
Transformee en Machine, 1684) urged this dilemma:
If animals have feelings and passions, there is no
God ; and if the animal has a soul, it is mortal, and
our soul is mortal (Cakus : Vergleichende PsycJiologie,
18G6, p. 20).
100. It was not until the middle of the last century
that an earnest voice was raised in vindication of the
animal claims. The speaker was Reimarus, the friend
of Lessing. His work is still worth consulting, though
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 131
it is more concerned witli tlie instincts tlian with the
higher phenomena. At the same epoch, Georges Leroy
wrote an agreeable little book, enriched by the per-
sonal experience of a sportsman. Frederic Cuvier
followed in 1825 ; and in 1840 Scheitlin attempted a
complete survey. Recently we have had the valuable
observations and collections of Houzeau, Brehm, and
the great Darwin.""'' All these works are open to the
objections urged in §§ 96 and 97. I shall, however,
here confine my remarks to the last, and endeavour
in a running commentary to bring out the distinctive
position of Human Psychology.
^101. No reader will suppose that in giving promi-
nence to the distinctively human phenomena I mean to
deny or underrate the community which exists be-
tween men and animals. On the principles of Evolu-
tion, we expect to find well-marked differences and
serial gradations. When we are tracing the serial
development, or taking a general survey of organic
phenomena, our attention is mainly fixed on the
resemblances ; when we are classifying and describ-
ing, our attention is mainly occupied by the diversi-
ties. For Mr. Darwin's purpose it was needful that he
should emphasise the position that " there is no funda-
mental difference between man and the higher animals
in tlieir mental faculties" (p. 35). For our purpose
it is needful to point out that, while there is no
* RsTMARUS : AUgemeine Betrachtungen ilher die Triebe der Thiere,
1760. Georges Leroy : Lettres Fhilosophiques sur l' Intelligence et la
Perfectihilite des Animaux, 1762. (It has been translated by Mrs.
Richard Congreve.) Scheitlin : Vers^ich einer volhtdndigen Thier-
seelenkunde, 2 vols., 1840. Houzeau : Ji'tudes sur les Facultes mentales
des Animaux, 2 vols., 1872. Brehm : Das Thierleben, last edition,
1877. Darwin: The Descent of Man.
132 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
fimdamental difference in the functions of the two,
there is a manifest and fundamental difference in the
Q,\o\vQ,di faculties (according to the definitions of § 16):
men exhibiting some faculties of which animals have
not apparently even the rudiment. When Comte
affirms that there is nothing in Humanity, the germs
of which are absent from Animality, the assertion
requires qualification. Animals may be said to have
the germs of our moral and intellectual life in some-
what the same sense as serpents have the rudiments
of our limbs. If the biologist recognises the many
points of community in animal structures, the zooto-
mist has to insist on the points of diversity ; and he
will not admit that because limbs are vertebral ap-
pendages, therefore limbs exist wherever a vertebral
column exists. If the psychologist recognises in all
animals the fundamental facts of Sensibility, he must
still doubt whether all animals manifest the same
modes of Sensibility ; and on this ground he must
qualify the statement that because man possesses the
same senses as the lower animals his fundamental
intuitions must be the same : qualify it to the extent
that, in the first place, the senses are not the same,
but only more or less similar ; in the next place, that
we have no accurate means of ascertaining the deo^ree
of similarity ; and finally, that the intuitions are to
be referred to the Sensorium, not to the sense organs.
By way of example, consider the organs of scent in
man, wolf, and dog. They are constructed on the
same type, and are very similar in detail. Yet we
know that the wolf and dog are sensitive to impres-
sions inappreciable by man, and are utterly indifferent
to fragrancies which powerfully affect man. To these
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 133
animals the external world seems a continuum of
scents, as to man it is a continuum of sights. They
track their invisible prey by scent as we by sight.
They smell, as we see, the approaching or receding
prey. Sensations of smell have, therefore, a different
influence on their Sensorium, a different significance.
Pass now to the organ of sight. As an optical appa-
ratus it is very similar in dog and man ; but the
optical experiences of the two are so unlike, that it
is eminently doubtful whether the dog has any equi-
valent of the sensation of colours, over and above
their degrees of luminosity. This conclusion is made
probable by the evidence we have that even in man
the fine distinction of colours is a developed product.
Animals distinguish coloured objects by distinctions
of luminous impression, but it has yet to be proved
that they distinguish colours. All the observations
of naturalists respecting birds and insects being
attracted by colours demand reinvestigation. The
facts may be explained sometimes by differences in
the luminosity of the objects and sometimes by the
odours of the pigments.*
* There seems good evidence that some men born blind have been
able to distiiiguisb coloured objects by* scent (Goethe : Gesch. d. Farben-
lehre, W. xxxix. p. 355), and other men by touch. It is also certain
that Daltonians, who fail to distinguish scarlet from green, yet do not
confound objects thus coloured. How birds and insects discern objects
we do not know. Since this was written, a correspondent in Nature,
Oct. 18, 1877, p. 522, has recorded observations showing that it is the
scent and not the colour of plants which attracts insects. " A bee
settling on a scarlet geranium will not go from it to another species or
variety, but gives its attention to this particular variety only, irrespec-
tive of colour, whether scarlet, pink, or white, never going from a
scarlet geranium to another scarlet flower, even if in contact." Other
correspondents questioned this ; but I think they only showed that
insects could detect different degrees of brightness. The subject is very
obscure. It has been treated by Sir John Lubbock {Linnoean Society^s
134 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
102. Without pushing this consideration further,
we may say, that granting a much closer resemblance
between the organs and functions of animals and men
than is demonstrable, we should still have to allow
for the conspicuous diflferences. And were the con-
nate Mechanisms identical, there would still remain
the immense diversity in the Experiences of the two ;
and it is these which determine the faculties of the
functions, and to a great extent the quality of the
feelings. Comte instructively observes that the men-
tal inferiority of animals has been much exaggerated
for want of distinguishing sufficiently between indi-
vidual capacities and social results. In descending
the series of organisms, we find the Experience and
the Mechanism becoming simpler and simpler, having
smaller range and less development, till, on reaching
the lower stages, we come upon organisms to which
the hypothesis of their being sentient machines is not
inapplicable. Moved only by the immediate stimuli,
and moved always in the same way, they are incap-
able of what we know as Experience : they feel and
they react ; they never learn through feeling to modify
their reaction and to anticipate a future result. Ob-
serve a snail, how perfectly its reactions resemble
those of a machine. Then pass upwards to the fish.
A fish feels the hook, and darts away, but, having
released itself from the irritation, returns again and
Journal, vols. xii. and xiii.) with his accustomed patience and in-
genuity ; but his observalions no more prove that insects have the
sensation of colour than simihir observations prove insects to have the
sensation of sound because they react on the stimulus of vibrations
■which to us are heard as sounds. Insects cannot have sensations of
sound like those in us produced by vibrations : they have not an audi-
tory organ, much less the Sensorium of man.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 135
again to tlie bait, undeterred by any memory of past
feeling and a torn mouth. How different a dog 1
If he has been hurt in an attempt to gratify some
desire, he approaches the object with caution, perhaps
restrains his desire altogether by the fear of the recur-
rence of pain. The dog learns. The fish is incapable
of learning. Applied to fishes and animals of a lower
organisation, there is a certain truth in what Buffon,
following Descartes, says of all animals : " L'animal
est un etre purement materiel, qui ne pense ni ne
r^flechit, et qui cepcndant agit et semble se deter-
miner." The error begins when he adds : " Nous ne
pouvons pas douter que le principe de la determination
ne soit dans l'animal un effet purement mecanique et
absolument dependant de son organisation." Abso-
lutely dependent on organisation indeed, but therefore
not purely mechanical, since the organisation is not
purely mechanical ; and in so far as actions are depen-
dent on organisation, the actions of animals are not
of another order than those of man. The point of
departure is the Experience which arises with a more
complex organisation.
103. One important consequence of this more com-
plex Experience is the evolution of that principle of
Eeflection, generally called Consciousness, that Inner
Sense which Kant marks as the distinguishing attri-
bute of man when it makes its own affections objects
of thought (Werke, i. 17). In how far animals parti-
cipate in this power of reflecting on what passes in
themselves, reflecting on their own operations and
distinguishing the objective and subjective aspects of
the same, it is impossible to say ; but the probabilities
are all against their having more than the faintest
136 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
rudiments of such experiences. And every psycho-
logist must be alive to the immense influence of the
power of Reflection, and the separation of Self from
Not-self, of objects from feelings.
104: Insistance on the manifold points of diversity
need not blind us to the manifold points of com-
munity. Animals and men are alike, though diffe-
rent, in structure ; they are alike, though different,
in functions. The senses, instincts, primary apti-
tudes are similar. The nutritive organs, the repro-
ductive organs, the sense organs, and the motor
organs are similar ; from whence it is rational to con-
clude a corresponding similarity in functions. That
animals feel, and combine their feelings according to
laws fundamentally the same as those which operate
in man, is scarcely to be gainsaid ; but not less cer-
tainly their feelings and the results of their combina-
tions of feelings are more or less diff"erent. They
cannot have precisely the samfe intuitions if the sen-
sible elements of such intuitions are dissimilar. If
animals have Logic, it is never the Logic of Signs,
which condense ideas in symbols ; it operates on
materials of an Experience which is special to each
organism, and is far more restricted in its range than
that of ma;i. Animals have egoistic impulses ; they
have scarcely any sympathetic altruistic impulses
beyond the sexual and parental. They manifest a
certain tenderness towards young and small animals
(probably a derivation of the parental instinct), but
this tenderness vanishes in the presence of any ego-
istic impulse. Mr. Darwin refers to Brehm's female
baboon, whose heart was so capacious that she not
only adopted young monkeys, but even stole young
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 137
dogs and cats, which she continually carried about.
Her kindness, however, did not go so far as to share
her food with her adopted offspring, at which Brehm
was surprised, as his monkeys always divided every-
thing quite fairly with their own young ones. Here
we see how the egoistic impulses dominate. In the
human mother we should find altruism raising the
maternal instinct into a maternal sentiment, through
the intellectual appreciation of the claims of the help-
less — her adopted child would be fed before herself
Again, this baboon was one day scratched by an
adopted kitten. " Greatly astonished, she examined
the kitten's feet, and without more ado bit off the
claws." This shows intelligence ; but it is not an in-
telligence which, profiting by experience, knows that,
the kitten's claws are useful to the kitten, and that
she could be taught not to scratch her adopted mother
w4th them. Language, which condenses the experi-
ence of others, and communicates results to tho'se
who have not personally experienced them, was
denied to the baboon ; she could only learn from 'her
own ' experience, Avhich was sipiply of the scratching
action of claws.
105. The animal tends its sick offspring ; 'the
savage mother tries to cure her sick child ; the civil-
ised man devotes laborious days to succour any one
that is sick, tending the wounded soldier of an alien
race, and passionately seeking for , methods of cure
that may be applied to all suffering. The law of
animal action is Individualism ; its motto is " Each
for himself against all." The ideal of human action
is Altruism ; its motto is " Each with others, all for
each." " To succour those who suffer," said Turgot,
138 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
''is the duty of all and the business of all." But in
enumerating the various splendours of Social Life we
must not overlook its dark shadows. The animal's
ignorance is at least free from the curse of supersti-
tion ; his happiness is not marred by the multitude of
misleading ideas which pervert man. The animal's sel-
fishness is at least free from the perversions of vanity,
and from the vices with which aberrant imagination
has degraded the passions of men. Human history
on its darker side is a frightful succession of cruelties
and debaucheries, such as find no parallel in the
history of animals. It is true that animals have
no virtues ; for Virtue is the suppression of our
egoistic impulses to promote the welfare of others ;
and animals are incapable of this conception. Their
instincts lead directly to actions, never to ideas.
Hence, while they share with man the sexual instinct,
they know nothing of Love. On the other hand,
while animals suff"er the contagion of Disease and the
contagion of Fear, man alone suffers the contagion of
Folly ; for him error is as catching as a disease. Lest
this should read like an unworthy sarcasm on human
nature, I will add : Man alone knows the contagion
of Enthusiasm, of Glory, of Virtue. If the animal is
less miserable because untormented by the unresting
search for happiness and ideal life, and unterrified by
superstitions, he is also less enviable, because un-
touched by spiritual desires —
" For who -would lose,
Thougli full of pain, this intellectual being,
These thoughts which wander through eternity?"
106. The objection may perhaps be urged that in
the foregoing remarks man is represented in his
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 139
developed state, after centuries of culture have modi-
fied his organism, not in the primitive nor even in
the savage state, and in so far the comparison with
the animal is unjust. But my object was to make
prominent the effect of the social factor, and to take
man in his developed state as the peculiar exemplar
of its power. The distinguishing character of Human
Psychology is, that to the three great factors Organ-
ism, External Medium, and Heredity, which it has in
common with Animal Psychology, it adds a fourth,
namely, relation to a Social Medium, with its product,
the General Mind (see next chapter). Even in con-
fining our comparative survey to the human race, we
see evidence enough how supremely important is this
social medium. The confio-uration of the savasre and
all his functions are indistinguishable from those of
the civilised man. The marked diversities between
the mental phenomena of the two result from the
more complex social relations and the consequent
enlargement of Experience. Note, further, that the
historical evidence of the evolution of sentiments and
faculties disproves both the metaphysical doctrine of
innate sentiments and ideas, and the phrenological
doctrine of sentiments and faculties having their
organs in cerebral configurations.
107. Although it is to Experience that Knowledge
must be referred, the Experience which has within it
the means of continuous evolution owes this to Lan-
guage, a faculty no brute has acquired. By it ex-
periences are registered, generalised, compared, and
condensed in formulas which serve for intellectual
money. By it the personal relations are raised into
impersonal conceptions : the moral life becomes the
140 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
social life. The canimal, as I formerly said, lias
sympathy and is moved by sympathetic impulses,
but these are never altruistic ; the ends consciously
sought are never remote ends. Our moral life is feel-
ing for others, working for others, quite irrespective
of any personal good beyond the satisfaction of this
social impulse. Enlightened by the intuition of our
common weakness, we share ideally the universal
sorrows. Enjoyment, more and more expanded with
the possibilities of interchange, becomes another name
for communion.
108. By gaining some insight into the operation
of the social factor through the instrumentality of
Language we are enabled to state approximately what
mental phenomena can not be found in animals. But,
owing to the interfusion of this with the other factors,
and the modifications of Feelings which result, the
mere abstracting of the social medium does not leave
us standing face to face with the animal Feeling. If
it enables us to affirm what feelings the animals cannot
have, it does not enable us to understand how far
those which they have resemble our own ; and this
inability is very sensible in the case of emotions of
the complex order. " All animals feel wonder,'^ says
Mr. Darwin, " and many exhibit curiosity. '' How far
the feelings so named are like our own is not clear.
We observe the attention of animals fixed on certain
events, and we observe them agitated by certain
impressions. Brehm and Mr. Darwin record how
" monkeys, moved by their dread of snakes, could not
resist lifting up the lid of the box in which the snakes
were, and peeping at their enemies." This is so like
the action of children, and monkeys have organ-
1
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 141
isms so like tliose of children, that we must infer
a certain community in their mental states. Again,
that animals reason — that is to say, combine expe-
riences, form judgments, inferences — is now seldom
disputed by competent observers. "It is a significant
fact that the more the habits of any particular animal
are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to
reason and the less to unlearnt instincts." Eeugger
gives two good illustrations : When first he offered
his monkeys eggs, they smashed them, and thus lost
much of the contents ; afterwards, they gently hit
one end against some hard body, and picked off the
bits of shell with their fingers. Lumps of sugar
were often given them wrapped up in paper ; and he
sometimes put a live wasp in the paper, so that hastily
unfolding it, they got stung ; after this had once hap-
pened, they always first held the packet to their ears
to detect any movement within. In these examples
there is the manifest result of experience ; but many
of the lower animals — say, reptiles and fishes — would
continue all their lives unmodified by such loss of
food and such pain in its acquisition. I have seen a
monkey to whom a nut was given, failing to crack it
with his teeth, return it to the giver. If this was not
reasoning, one knows not what deserves the name.
Yet, although the logical process in this case is iden-
tical with the logical process manifest in the highest
reaches of reason, it is distinguishable as the Logic of
Feeling, not the Logic of Signs. In comparing the
possibilities of the ape with those of mankind, we
must remember that in the idea "ape " are to be in-
cluded all the circumstances of ape-life, under which
we may be as calmly assured as Sydney Smith said
142 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
he was, tliat tlie blue-faced baboon will never become
our rival in Philosopby, Science, and the Arts. The
vision of man's achievement, say, in the explora-
tion and theory of the heavens, in the conception of
chemical proportions, in the interpretation of ancient
records and strict calculation of remote phenomena,
and in the wondrous ideal web of religion and poetry
that has wrought into one grand emotional force the
ages past, present, and to come — all this, side by side
with the image of the highest baboon-life, presents
an incongruity preposterous enough to justify the
scorn with which comprehensive minds have turned
away from the hypothesis which seeks for an explana-
tion of human Intellect in the functions of the or-
ganism common to man and animals, without the
addition of some other agency.
109. It is this other agency which the psychologist
has to detect. Mr. Darwin, resuming his remarks,
says : "It has, I think, now been shown that man
and the higher animals have some few instincts in
common. All have the same senses, intuitions, and
sensations " — (for same read similar) — " similar pas-
sions, affections, emotions, even the more complex
ones : they feel wonder and curiosity ; they possess
the same faculties of imitation, attention, memory,
imagination, and reason, though in very different
degrees. Nevertheless, many authors have insisted
that man is separated through his mental faculties
by an impassable barrier from all the lower animals "
(p. 48).
With these authors I agree. I hold, indeed, that
the mental /acuities of man are developed out of
Tuental functions which animals share with man ; but
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 143
these faculties, when developed, constitute as broad a
line of demarcation, a barrier as impassable, as that
between the vertebrate and invertebrate structure.
The moral and higher intellectual faculties of man can
no more be explained by reference to the animal func-
tions alone than the flight of birds can be explained
by the creeping of reptiles, though both are reducible
to mechanical and physiological principles. Just as
birds have wings, man has Language. The wings
give the bird its peculiar aptitude for aerial locomo-
tion. Language enables man's intelligence and pas-
sions to acquire their peculiar characters of Intellect
and Sentiment. And Language is a social product
of a quite peculiar kind. It does not depend on the
structure of the vocal organs alone, for some birds
can articulate and imitate even our words ; but no
bird uses such articulations as expressions of ideas.
It does not depend on the existence of a society,
for bees and ants live in societies ; and many animals
live together in groups. In the so-called animal
societies, there is apparently nothing beyond an
afifgregation of individuals, with some division of
employments ; there is no subordination nor co-ordina-
tio!i — only co-operation ; no powers invested in indi-
viduals and classes ; no command and obedience ; no
relinquishment of personal claims ; above all, they
have developed nothing like the Family as the social
unit, and Tradition as the social experience. " The
mental powers in some early progenitor of man must,"
Mr. Darwin remarks, " have been more highly de-
veloped than in any existing ape, before even the
most imperfect form of speech could have come into
use ; but we may confidently believe that the con-
144 PEOBLEMS OP LIFE AND MIND.
tinued use and advancement of this power would
have reacted on the mind by enabling it and encour-
aging it to carry on long trains of thought." Yet
why should the ape desire to carry on long trains of
thouglit ? Here lies the problem. As a matter of
organisation, the man happens to have a development
of the articulating faculty which is denied to the ape,
who has less than the magpie or parrot, though he is
more intelligent. And as a matter of function merely,
the articulation of the savage is equal to that of the
philosopher; yet the savage has by no means so great
an intellectual and moral superiority over the ape as
the highly cultured modern has over the savage. It
is in the action and reaction of the social medium on
the organism that we must seek the causes of this
superiority.
THE MORAL SENSE.
110. AAHiat is conspicuous in the case of Intellect
may also be discerned in Conscience. Both are social
products. The hereditary transmission of organised
tendencies, together with the distinction between
functions and faculties, enables us to reconcile the
h priori intuitional with the experiential theory.
If we admit the intelligence of animals to be a rudi-
mentary intellect, we may admit the emotions of
animals to be a rudimentary moral sense. In
the self-repressing effort induced by the sexual and
parental instincts in birds and intelligent mammals,'
and in their capability of attachment apart from the
direct physical link, we may recognise the same germs
as those which in man the social life has developed
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 145
into devoted aflfection, passionate sympathy, and self-
denying forethought.
111. We train our domestic animals, as we train
our children, to do this and avoid that, by expressions
of approbation and disapprobation, which represent
caresses and blows ; and so far we find them im-
pressible and educable by the moral instrumentality
which, in its gradual action on men, has incorporated
itself as custom, law, and public opinion. But if we
take the term Moral Sense to mean the power of dis-
cerning right and wrong, this is as impossible to an
animal as the power of discerning arithmetical pro-
portions, though here, too, the animal may show a
rudimentary power in the regulation of its action by
feelings of difference, "as if" it counted. Even in
man this moral sense cannot properly be said to be
connate otherwise than as a musical sense is connate :
it no more brings with it conceptions of what is right,
ivha.t wrong, than the musical aptitude brings with it
a symphony of Beethoven. What it carries are cer-
tain organised predispositions that spontaneously or
docilely issue in the beneficent forms of action which
the experience of society has classed as right. But
in the less endowed specimens of our race, even within
the reach of culture, the response to the moral de-
mands of society, whether in the shape of doctrine or
of institutions, is little more than the conflict of op-
posing appetites, the check imposed by egoistic dread-
on egoistic desire. It is a great progress beyond this
brute dread of the stick when the love of approbation
attains the ideal force which renders social rule or
custom and the respect of fellow-men an habitually
felt restraint and guidance. Even within this limit
VOL. in. K
146 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
we see the human sentience attaining a mark utterly
beyond the reach of our most intelligent inarticulate
companion, the dog. But the moral dispositions of
men have manifold roots, and a great deal of " right"
action is sure to be done by very simple beings from
healthy imjxilse, under the guidance of fact, without
the idea of an uplifted rod ; just as all over the world
men have fed themselves on life-sustaining aliment
and not on poison, and have devised suitable imple-
ments of labour. And it is to this primitive feeling
and gradual varied discernment of what is congruous
with well-being, what in the ancient phrase is " ac-
cording to nature," that we must refer the beginning
of those social rules to which approbation and disap-
probation, law and its sanctions, are limbs or appen-
dices. It is true that, from the first, superstition
mingles its monstrous misguidance with the trust-
worthy teachings of perception and practice, and the
growing mental and active range gives room not only
for the expansion of real and ideal good, but also for
the perversions of vanity, the love of domination, and
all forms of selfish greed ; so that the social rule or
public opinion of every age, and even in the most
civilised communities, has given its potent smile and
frown to orders of action so mixed that what some-
where or at some time has been enforced as " right,"
lias elsewhere or at another time been held abhorrent.
And this observation leads us to the striking anti-
thesis presented in the progress of mankind ; namely,
that the Moral Sense, which, in the first instance, was
moulded under the influence of an external approba-
tion and disapprobation, comes at last, in the select
members of a given generation, to incorporate itself as
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 147
protest and resistance, as the renunciation of imme-
diate sympathy for the sake of a foreseen general
good, as moral defiance of material force, and every
form of martyrdom.
111*. It is at this point that we may fitly look
backward and see liow short a way the consideration
of animal life alone will take us in the appreciation of
the moral life of mankind, which is wrought out of
innumerable closely interwoven threads of feeling and
knowing. Nevertheless, such reduction of the sym-
pathetic or moral life to its primary manifestations is
not merely useful, it is indispensable to a true analy-
sis and natural history of morals. Without it a wise
estimate of the parts played by impulse, cognition,
and habit, in determining human conduct, is hardly
possible. In the pointer dog we observe the efiiect of
trained impulse ; a native tendency restrained and
fashioned to a specific variety of action by external
influence or the presentation of motive. The same
order of elements developed under human conditions
issues in a Regulative Intuition — a Moral Sense which
is a discrimination of right conduct associated with a
more or less direct disj^osition to accordant practice.
The proportions in which conscious judgment and
immediate impulse are thus combined vary so widely
in the long result of inheritance and training that we
have, on the one side, an immediate outleap of heroic
generosity or self- condemnatory justice as a sort of
moral reflex, and on the other a dire struggle between
discerned duty, or the altruistic estimate of conse-
quences, and the strong promptings of egoistic desire.
It is only by duly estimating this necessary co-opera-
tion of the impulsive and the perceptive, the emotional
148 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
and tlie intellectual in the develoj^ment of morality,
that we can understand the aberrations of human
teaching and practice, or the reactions of beneficent
sympathy which in the history of communities are
seen to defy and correct them.
112. The abstractions Eight and Wrong become, in
the course of social education, a centre round which
emotions immediately group themselves, as quickly
as steel filings round a magnet : they are the signal
for an attitude of preparation without any conception
of specific acts to which they summon. And, again,
in a lower order of minds, they never acquire any
efficient significance other than " what is approved
and what disapproved," " what is punished and what
rewarded." Hence we see the members even of
civilised communities determined by what is called
religious or moral teaching as variously as the habits
of difierent orders of animals are determined. " If,"
says Mr. Darwin, " to take an extreme case, men were
reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-
bees, there could hardly be a doubt that our unmarried
females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred
duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive
to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think
of interfering" (p. 73). To make the comparison
luminous, we must shade our eyes from the impossi-
bility of human organisms being subjected to precisely
the same conditions as hive-bees. And we need not
look beyond the human sphere to see the preposterous
and maleficent courses which may be taught and
practised under the form of Eight, either as an ex-
pression of Divine Will, or as a means of securing
some ultimate deliverance from evil. But dominating
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 149
all other influences lias been the Social Sanction,
the approbation or disapprobation through which the
opinion of society penetrates the life of its members,
from the hearth to the court of justice, from the game
of chance with which they amuse their idleness to
the field of battle where they face death. A glance
at any social state will show the triumph of this force
when it comes into collision even with consecrated
beliefs, spiritual terrors, and care for the loving and
beloved. Take the case of duelling. A man might
see clearly enough that the practice was, in point of
utility, absurd, was attended with cruel consequences,
and was a direct violation of his religious principles ;
but the immediate terror of social contempt for what
was branded as cowardice overpowered the fear of
death and of the Divine wrath, the pleadings of the
family and the thunders of the Church. The one
power that has succeeded in suppressing it is the
reversal of the social disapprobation. " If the force
of custom simple and separate be great," says Bacon,
"the force of custom copulate, and conjoined, and
collegiate is far greater ; for then example teacheth,
company comforteth, emulation quickeneth, glory
raiseth."
Here we see the differences that may be covered
by an identity of names, though the identity may
be significant of a true kindred. We may say that
we educate our dogs in a medium of approbation and
disapprobation, and we may give the same name to
that blending of coercion and sympathy which has
educated man to produce poems that thrill the life of
successive ages, and science that embraces more and
150 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
more of the invisible and brings it within the range
of demonstration.
The progressive changes underlying the term
" moral " may be illustrated by the conception of
Remorse. A dog running away and hiding himself
after a conscious misdemeanour, and not to be brought
back by coaxing, having more fear of the stick than
belief in forgiveness, is not a very inadequate com-
parison for that stage of human remorse which con-
sists in the misdoer's mere terror of the vengeance
he has incurred from supernal powers. To the moral
sense in this lower stage there is but a faint and
confused impression of what constitutes the wrong of
wrongdoing ; forgiveness is contemplated as a heal-
all. But in a mind where the educated tracing of
hurtful consequences to others is associated with a
sympathetic imagination of their sujffering, Remorse
has no relation to an external source of punishment
for the wrong committed : it is the agonised sense,
the contrite contemplation, of the wound inflicted on
another. Wordsworth has depicted a remorse of this
kind —
" Feebly must they have felt
Who, in old time, attired with snakes and whips
The vengeful Furies. Beautiful regards
Were turned on me — the face of her I loved j
The wife and mother, pitifully fixing
Tender reproaches, insupportable ! "
The sanction which was once the outside whip has
become the inward sympathetic pang.
113. But in the intermediate stages also, which
are more comparable to the manifestations of animals,
at the same time that the dread is directed to an
THE STUDY OP PSYCHOLOGY. 151
external vengeance of gods or men, we see the moral
education of our race proceeding, in the more and
more rational classification of actions as right or
wrong, towards the final identification of the Divine
Will with the highest ascertainable duty to mankind,
and in the continual elevation of public opinion
towards the highest mark of Feeling informed by
Knowledge.
The diff'erent strands of human experience which
combine to create moral sentiment act in various
proportion on individual minds, and hence it happens
that some formulas of ideal motive which have an
intense reality for one mind have little force for
another, though the moral level may be in both
cases equally high. Kant's fine phrase — "Man re-
fuses to violate in his own person the dignity of
humanity " — may represent an abiding efficient re-
sponse in the consciousness of a given person, the
moral keynote, as we may say, to which his other
sentiments are adjusted. His discernment and choice
of the Right are braced by an intense scorn of the
Wrong, which he habitually represents to himself
in its wider relations.
114. Thus while man, in his moral beginnings, has
a marked kinship with the animals, whose life, like
his ow^n, is regulated by desires and intelligence, he
stands apart in the attainment of moral conceptions
and of organised ethical tendencies, which are correctly
callod moral intuitions. These latter form a justi-
fication for the a 'priori intuitional doctrine ; but its
explanation lies in the principles of experience. We
have intuitions of Right and Wrong in so far as we
have intuitions of certain consequences ; but these
152 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
must have been learned in our own experience or
transmitted from the experience of others. Some
writers who are disposed to exaggerate the action of
Heredity believe that certain specific experiences of
social utility in the race become organised in descen-
dants, and are thus transmitted as instincts. With
the demonstrated wonders of heredity before us, it is
rash to fix limits to the specific determinations it
may include ; but the evidence in this direction is
obscured by the indubitable transmission through
language and other social institutions.
HISTORY.
114*. We need not prolong this survey of the
difi'erences between Animal and Human Psychology :
its outcome is, that although the observation of ani-
mals may yield us valuable material, it must be used
with great circumspection, and only as suggestion for
experimental analysis, never as premisses for conclu-
sions reaching beyond. The objective data of Psycho-
logy are furnished by Zoology and History ; the laws
by Physiology and Sociology. Observation will not
suffice. Introspection will not suffice. Analysis and
Verification by Synthesis are necessary. Experiment is
necessary. Disease has been happily termed an " Ex-
periment instituted by Nature," since the disturbance
of one organ by exaggerating or diminishing its action
renders more conspicuous the part that organ plays
in the general activity. We may also term History
an experiment instituted by Society, since it presents
conspicuous variations of mental reactions under
varying social conditions, and exhibits on a large
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 153
scale the evoliitiou of sentience and conceptions from
germs of emotional and intellectual experiences.
History unrolls the palimpsest of mental evolution.
Under the conspicuous characters of Science and Con-
science may be read the fainter characters of more
primitive states ; under Sentiments, the primitive
Affections ; under Morality, the social needs transform-
ing primitive personal desires into impersonal aims, so
that the stranger is no longer an enemy {hostis), but
a fellow-worker and fellow-sufferer. History shows
how individual experiences become general possessions,
and individual labours become wealth ; how facts be-
come Science, and industries Commerce. The shift-
ing panorama of History presents a continuous
evolution, a fuller and more luminous tradition, an
iutenser consciousness of a wider life.
115. Because Psychology is interpreted through
Sociology, and Experience acquires its development
mainly through social influences, we must always
take History into account. It shares with Society
the distinctive character of progress. It is for ever
germinating, for ever evolving. The physiologist re-
cognises the same organs and functions in the savage
and the civilized, in Greek, Hindoo, old German,
or modern European ; but not the same thoughts and
sentiments. The brain of a cultivated Englishman
of our day, compared with the brain of a Greek of
the age of Pericles, would not present any appreciable
diflferences, yet the differences between the moral and
intellectual activities of the two would be many and
vast. These are not to be assigned to the organism
and its functions. The co-ordination of sensory pro-
cesses in the brain of the Greek was doubtless as
154 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
perfect as that in the brain of the Englishman ; but
the quahty of the moral feelings and the range of
conceptions, so far as we could test them objectively,
would be very different. The Englishman has been
nourished on the products of the centuries ; his feel-
ings and thoughts have taken form under conditions
unknown to the Greek, so that what would have
delighted the one is anguish to the other. The sight
of a w^ounded foreigner, which agitates the English-
man, and prompts him by its very imagination to
undertake hardships and danger in the effort to relieve
the sufferer, would have excited no more emotion in a
Greek than the sight of an injured dog. A proposi-
tion to send money, food, clothing, and medical aid
to the relief of the wounded Cretans would have
made the Agora ring with shouts of derisive laughter.
And a treatise on algebra which is mastered by a
schoolboy would have been like a wizard's scroll to
Pythagoras or Hipparchus. Aristotle, with all his
knowledge and aptitudes, would be as a child in
Liebig's laboratory. So great has been the evolu-
tion of moral sentiments and scientific conceptions.
Thus, while the laws of the sentient functions must
be studied in Physiology, the laws of the sentient
faculties, especially the moral and intellectual facul-
ties, must be studied in History. The true logic of
Science is only made apparent in the history of
Science. If we follow the development of thought
on the large scale of Plistory, we see how the mind
acquires new powers and possibilities with new con-
ceptions. We see also how it passes from particular
concrete facts to general facts and abstractions ; we
see it dcscendino: from the heip^hts of abstraction to
THE STUDY OP PSYCHOLOGY. 155
the discovery of particulars. In otlier words, we ob-
serve a natural mode of mental operation, to which we
affix the term Induction, and another mode to which
we affix the term Deduction. These formulated, we
have entered on the eternal possession of two logical
laws. Had we not the historical evidence assuring
us that these laws were unsuspected for thousands
of years, although, of course, in operation from the
earliest ages, we should imagine them to have been
familiar to every reflecting mind. And so with other
mental laws. History discloses how the mind passes
from wonderment at the miraculous to the discern-
ment of order, from sorcery to science (a passage
formulated by Comte as the law of the three stages),
how the mind begins with a vague conception of
universal Animism, or the presence of a separate Will
in each object, with consequent belief in the capri-
ciousness of events, leaving the imagination free to
picture the past and the future in any combinations
it pleases ; how this belief gradually becomes troubled
by doubts, as experience presses on man the convic-
tion that events are causally and not casually deter-
mined, till at length the law of Causality is conceived,
and the order of events is recognised as inexorable.
Henceforth familiarity with exact descriptions and
demonstrations creates a habit of mind which renders
miracles inconceivable, and caprice in the succession
of events absurd. All our experiences and all our
explanations are now dominated by a steady faith in
a fixed order, and our efforts are directed towards the
ascertainment of what that order is. To the mind thus
organised, the fluctuating belief in accident and caprice,
which our ancestors held, is as the babble of infants.
156 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
Not only in Science is the marcli of mind thus
conspicuously illustrated : a similar evolution may be
traced in Art. New sensibilities are developed, and
Nature is full of new symbols. There are harmonies,
both rhythmic and moral, in the poetry of Goethe
and Wordsworth w^hich would have been discords
and dark riddles to Sophocles or to Dante. A fugue
by Bach, or a symphony by Beethoven, would have
been little better than a noisy chaos to Pericles. In
the developments of Industry and the Mechanical
Arts, the mind has acquired not only new powers, but
the equivalents of new senses.
If it is evident that the individual mind has been
in constant evolution, still more evident is the fact
that the general mind, or what we call the " culture
of the age," is an historical growth. " Before our
eyes a world of reason is slowly constituting itself
in the history of culture ; and we who live now enter
upon the inheritance which past ages have laid up
for us. There is, however, a fundamental difference
between the way in which these results look to us
now and the way in which they originally organised
themselves. The child who begins to learn a language
finds the members of it all, as it were, upon one level :
adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and verbs confront
him with the same authority and rank. This appear-
ance is deceptive ; it may easily suggest that the
words are not members in an organism in and out of
which they have developed. We can go back to a
point when there was little or no distinction between
elements ; when language was narrower in its range,
and not, as now, developed, into an endless host of
THE STUDY OP PSYCHOLOGY. 157
points. The same allusion lias to be overcome in the
case of thought." ^^
116. Thus the psychologist must include Psy-
chogeny in his investigations, as the physiologist in-
cludes Embryogeny. History shows how the human
mind, which, at the dawn of civilisation, was a lyre of
three chords, became in the progress of civilisation a
lyre of seven chords ; and by consequence the pre-
tension of the Introspective Method is inadmissible
as regards the genesis of mind. But we need not
therefore accept Mr. Green's verdict that " the obser-
vation by the mind of its own genesis is the crown-
ing absurdity of speculation ; for there is nothing to
observe unless the observer puts his own developed
consciousness in the place of the undeveloped con-
sciousness he is observing." t The difficulty here
suggested applies only to the Introspective Method.
Objective analysis will enable the psychologist to
observe the evolutions of mind, as it enables the
physiologist to observe the evolutions of the embryo.
The one carries with him the standard of a developed
consciousness, to which all the observed stages tend,
as the other carries with him the standard of an adult
organism, to which all the prior stages tend. Objec-
tive analysis further furnishes us with an answer to the
difficulty which many regard as insuperable, namely,
that mind cannot be explained as a function of the
material organism, because "to go beyond the intelli-
gence to explain the intelligence is to cut away the
ground on which we ourselves are standing." To this
* Wallace : The Logic of Hegel, 1874, p. Ixxxiv.
+ Green : Introduction to Hume, § 9, as cited by Caird, op. cit.
158 PROBLEMS OP LIFE AND MIND.
the answer is : that the mind can be exphiined as
a function of the material organism is- proved by the
fact that it is so exphiined ; and the objection urged
against such explanation would equally apply to all
theories of cosmical phenomena, since we can only
know these through subjective states, only express
them in terms of Feeling. We observe Life as a
function of the organism, varying with all the varia-
tions of the organism ; and, having this clear concep-
tion of the function, we are at ease respecting any of
its unknown quantities. So with mind. We observe
it as a function, and we observe its variations under
varying social conditions. Having thus a clear con-
ception of the organism and of social influences, we
have all the requisite data for an explanation of its
development, in the only sense according to which
explanation is accessible to us.
CHAPTER IX.
THE GENERAL MIND.
117. The remarks which closed the preceding chapter
prepare the consideration of a factor, which, although
always implied in theoretic discussion of psycholo-
gical questions, is rarely conceived with distinctness.
I allude to the experience of the race in its influence
on the experience of the individual ; that is to say,
the direction impressed by the General Mind on the
feelings and opinions of particular minds. This in-
fluence is implied in the familiar use of such terms as
the Mind, Common Sense, Collective Consciousness,
Thouglit {Das DenJcen), Reason, Spirit of the Age,
&c. Obviously these terms indicate something over
and above the individual mind, transcending its limi-
tations and correcting its infirmities. Obviously also
the existence of such a factor calls upon something
beyond Introspection, since we cannot pretend by
Introspection to a direct observation of phenomena
which lie outside our individual experience.
The object of search is the human mind, not a mind.
Psychology has to explain not my thought nor yours,
not my modes of reaction nor yours, except in so far
as these are exemplifications of the normal reactions
of an ideal mind. Science formulates general laws
and abstract conceptions ; not particular facts and
160 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
idiosyncras ies. From the fleeting changes of the
individual it extricates a group of characters which
these changes have in common ; from the multitu-
dinous diversities of individual organisms it extri-
cates a group of characters common to all. It finds
the sentient organism reacting differently in infancy,
in maturity, and in old age ; differently from year
to year, day to day, hour to hour. But amid these
changes there are characters which do not change ;
and the total of these is condensed in the abstract
conception. Mind.
118. The combination of the individual and the
general leads to this result. While the mental func-
tions are functions of the individual organism, the
product, Mind, is more than an individual product.
Like its great instrument. Language, it is at once
individual and social. Each man speaks in virtue of
the functions of vocal expression, but also in virtue of
the social need of communication. The words spoken
are not his creation, yet he, too, must appropriate
them by what may be called a creative process before
he can understand them. What his tribe speaks he
repeats ; but he does not simply echo their words, he
rethinks them. In the same way he adopts their
experiences when he assimilates them to his own. He
only feels their emotions when his soul is moved like
theirs ; he cannot think their thoughts so long as his
experiences refuse to be condensed in their symbols.
But because he has a similar vocal function, and a
similar verbal store, he can reproduce and understand
their novel combinations of speech ; and because he
has similar experiences he can understand their novel
combinations of thought, adopting both into his own
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 161
and getting liis range of fellowship enlarged. Besides
the circle of sensations, appetites, and volitions directly-
related to his personal needs, each man has a wider
circle of sentiments and ideas connecting his personal
needs with the needs of his fellow-men, and embracing
past and future. These constitute a large part of his
system of tli ought.
119. Language belongs essentially to the community
by whom and for whom it is called into existence. In
like manner Thought belongs essentially to Humanity.
As every spoken word presupposes an intelligent
hearer, so every conception implies an impersonal
Reason representing relations that are essentially im-
personal. A solitary man would feel, and think, and
will ; but he would no more fashion his feelings,
thoughts, and volitions into conceptions which are
the formulas of his knowledge than he would articu-
late them in words.
Further, the experiences of each individual come
and go ; they correct, enlarge, destroy one another,
leaving behind them a certain residual store, which,
condensed in intuiti'ons and formulated in principles,
direct and modify all future experiences. The sum
of these is designated as the individual mind, A
similar process evolves the General Mind — the resi-
dual store of experiences common to all. By means
of Language the individual shares in the general fund,
which thus becomes for him an impersonal objective
influence. To it each appeals. We all assimilate
some of its material, and help to increase its store.
Not only do we find ourselves confronting Nature,
to whose order we must conform, but confronting
Society, whose laws we must obey. We have to
VOL. in. L
162 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
learn what Nature is and does, what our fellow- men
think and will, and unless we learn aright and act in
conformity, we are inexorably punished.
120. While calling attention to the General Mind,
it may not be superfluous to warn some readers
ao-ainst a metaphysical fallacy. The abstraction Mind,
once extricated from the concrete facts of Sentience,
is by logical necessity immaterial, simple, one ; for it
is a symbol like Virtue, Cause, Number, &c. As a
symbol, it has concrete realities for its significates;
but this does not suffice for those who, having per-
sonified the abstraction, accept it as a res completa,
which may be studied apart from its significates.
Not only has this mistake been committed with
respect to the individual mind — which has in con-
sequence been studied apart from the organism — but
also, though less frequently, with regard to the
General Mind, which has been detached from the
individuals, not merely as an abstraction, but as a
res completa; and thus the World-process has been
assigned to a Soul of the World.
We have not here to discuss such metaphysical
questions. For our present purpose, it is enough to
recognise that there are men, and there is Humanity:
there are minds, and besides the individual minds
there is the Human Mind. With the individual
point of view we must always combine the general.
Thus, we may note the deficiencies and peculiarities
of various minds, and such observations may greatly
facilitate our analysis ; but they are noted as excep-
tions, they are excluded from the General Mind ; just
as errors, though logically arrived at, are excluded
from Logic. If we rise from particular facts to
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 1G3
general facts, when once the generalities have been
reached, we apply them to all particulars, to note in
how far they accord with the generalities. Only
when this application is congruous, and the new par-
ticular is brought under the general head, do we con-
sider it explained. If the new fact is inconsistent
with general experience, we seek its conditions in
some exceptional details. For example, the general
fact that mutton is excellent food for man causes us
unhesitatingly to conclude that the first hungry man
we have to feed may safely be fed with mutton ; but
it sometimes occurs that the hungry man is one to
whom mutton is a poison. We must not ignore or
reject such experiences ; we must seek the points of
difference in the organic conditions ; and these, when
found, will form a new generality. Thus also with
mental differences. We feel in ourselves and ob-
serve in others certain sequences of sensation and
thought, which we detach as uniformities (laws)
of Sensibility and Logic. Extending our researches
over various races and epochs, we come upon seeming
contradictions to these uniformities. We then con-
clude that men do not always feel alike under like
external circumstances.* They may be deficient in
* " La lecture des ouvrages ecrits k Fetranger sur les maladies ner-
veuses m'a souvent fait songer k certaines 6tudes de pathologie com-
parative, qui s'appliqueraient a rechercher curieusement les alterations
que les types uiorbides de cette classe peuvent eprouver, sans rien
perdre cependant de leur autonomie, suivantles climats, les nationalites,
les races, &c. Le plus souvent on n'aurait k relever, dans une etude de
ce genre, que des nuances delicates ; mais la deviation peut aller parfois
jusqu'sL s'accuser par des modifications plus ou moins profondes, alors
mSnie qu'il s'agit seulement de pays limitrophes et places sous des lati-
tudes tres-comparables. Ainsi — pour ne citer qu'un exemple que j'avais
encore tout dernierement sous les yeux, et c'est 1^ un sujet que je me
reserve de developper quelque jour, — la nevrose hysterique, eu Angle-
164 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
certain sensibilities, so that they will react differently
under stimuli. They may be deficient in certain ex-
periences, so that they are unaffected by what pro-
foundly agitates others. Noting these exceptions, we
seek their conditions, and these when found are
erected into new uniformities. And out of all the
uniformities there is formed a conception of the
Human Mind.
121. Our search for the conditions, whether general
or special, is biological or sociological. And, since men
differ more in their social relations than in their physi-
ological relations, it is in the former that we should
first seek the explanation of intellectual and moral
differences not obviously assignable to differences of
structure. It is here also we must seek for many
uniformities. Men living always in groups co-operate
like the organs in an organism. Their actions have
a common impulse and a common end. Their desires
and opinions bear the common stamp of an imper-
sonal direction. Much of their life is common to all.
The roads, market-places and temples, are for each
and all. The experiences, the dogmas, and the
doctrines are for each and all. Customs arise, and
are formulated in laws, the restraint of all. The
customs, born of the circumstances, immanent in the
terre, difFfere assur^ment de ce qxi'elle est en France, par des traits symp-
tomatiques souvent tres-accentues. L'heinianesthesie totale, entre
autres particularites dignes d'etre relevees, et aussi le grand mal hystero-
6pileptique, ces phenomenes qui dans I'espfece sont, on pent le dire,
vulgaires chez nous, ne s'observent que trfes-rarement de I'autre cote du
d6troit, tandis que les contractures permanentes des membres et bien
d'autres symptomes du mSnie ordre, designds quelquefois par nos voisins
sous le nom A' hysteric locale, y sont au contraire chose commune." —
Charcot : Preface to the translation of EosenthaVs Diseases of the
Nervous System.
THE STUDY OP PSYCHOLOGY. 165
social conditions, are consciously extricated and pre-
scribed as the rules of life ; each new generation is
born in this social medium, and has to adapt itself to
the established forms. Society, though constituted
by individuals, has a powerful reaction on every
individual. " In the infancy of nations," said Mon-
tesquieu, "man forms the state ; in their maturity the
state forms the man." It is thus also with the collec-
tive Experience of the race fashioning the Experience
of the individual. It makes a man accept what he
cannot understand, and obey what he does not believe.
His thoughts are only partly his own ; they are also
the thoughts of others. His actions are guided by
the will of others ; even in rebellion he has them in
his mind. His standard is outside. That is true
which all men affirm, and no experience contradicts :
consensus gentium. If a man cannot see this truth, he
is pronounced to be an anomaly or a madman. If he
does not feel what all feel, he is thrown out of account,
except in the reckoning of abnormities.
122. Individual experiences being limited and
individual spontaneity feeble, we are strengthened
and enriched by assimilating the experiences of others.
A nation, a tribe, a sect is the medium of the indi-
vidual mind, as a sea, a river, or a pond is the medium
of a fish : through this it touches the outlying world,
and is touched by it ; but the direct motions of its
activity are within this circle. The nation affects the
sect, the sect the individual. Not that the individual
is passive, he is only directed ; he, too, reacts on the
sect and nation, helping to create the social life of
which he partakes. The laws of Human Nature con-
stitute a Social Mechanism analogous to that indi-
166 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
vidual Mechanism -whicli is modified by Experience.
Civilisation is the accumulation of experiences ; and
since it is this accumulated wealth which is the tradi-
tion of the race, we may say with Comte that the
Past more and more dominates the Present, precisely
as in the individual case it is the registered experi-
ences w^hich more and more determine the feelings
and opinions.
123. Human Knowledge is pre-eminently distin-
guished from Animal Knowledge by this collective
experience. I have never in my own person experi-
enced the effects of a poison, but I have made the
experience of others my own, have taken it up into
my system of knowledge, and I act upon it with con-
fidence. I have never seen the Ganges, nor measured
the earth's diameter ; but these enter into my world
of experience, and regulate my conduct, with the
same certainty as my direct experience of the Trent
or the acreage of my property. What I have
directly experienced by sensible contact forms but a
small part of my mental wealth ; and even that part
has been largely determined by the experience of
others. The consolidations of convergent thought in
Social Forms, scientific theories, works of Art, and,
above all, Language, are incessantly acting on me.
Ideas are forces : the existence of one determines our
reception of others. Each novel impression has to be
assimilated by the existing mass of residual impres-
sions ; each new conclusion has to be affiliated on the
old, dovetailed into the rest, made congruent with the
system of thought. In the great total of collective
Experience, — as in that of the individual, — absurd
perversions and wild fancies take their place beside
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 167
exact correspondences of feeling and fact, and truths
that are unshakable ; it is a shifting mass of truth
and error, for ever becoming more and more sifted
and organised into permanent structures of germina-
ting fertility or of fossilised barrenness. Our mental
furniture shows the htic a hrac of prejudice beside
the fashion of the hour ; our oj)inions are made up of
shadowy associations, imperfect memories, echoes of
other men's voices, mingling with the reactions of our
own sensibility. Thus it is that a mass of incoherent
and unreasoned premisses are brought to bear on the
evidence for any new opinion, as for any novel fact :
this is the unrecognised standard by which the con-
clusion is determined. The most rational of men
mingles with premisses logically assignable obscure
premisses of which he can give no account. It is only
in the exact sciences that conclusions are clearly
reasoned out. The student comes to Mathematics
unperverted, in so far as he brings with him no un-
mathematical preconceptions liable to disturb the
demonstrations. Each step in advance is seen to be
merely the writing out of what has been already
demonstrated or intuited, added to the novel data
which may also be intuited or demonstrated ; there is
neither vagueness nor oscillation in the premisses,
there can, therefore, be none in the conclusion. Not so
in the Moral Sciences or in the judgment of ordinary
affairs. Here the evidence is complicated, uncertain ;
the premisses lie partly amid obscure experiences of
the past, and partly in judgments taken up by hear-
say or precipitation, and fixed in tendencies by long
familiarity. So that the inquirer, who has in all
sincerity examined the evidence proffered for the new
168 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
opinion, seeking far and wide for the data, has, in
fact, been throughout interpreting this evidence by
the standard of his formed conviction. If he began
his search with a belief in the miraculous, he readily
assimilated all the details which confirmed that belief,
rejecting the rest as incongruous with his knowledge.
If he bes^an with a conviction that miracles are in-
credible, no amount of evidence will shake him; he
will simply regard the evidence as imperfect. A deep
longing for some direct proof of existence after death
has made hundreds of people accept the grossest im-
postures of "Spiritualism," impostures which contra-
dicted the most massive experiences of the race, and
which had nothing to support them save this emotional
credulity acting where direct knowledge was wholly
absent. Because men did not know how the appear-
ances were produced, — the means of knowledge being
carefully withheld, — they willingly accepted the ex-
planation which suited their preconceptions, disregard-
ing the incongruous and often degrading circumstances
which would otherwise have repelled their belief.
And that this is so may be readily proved. For in
the absence of all positive knowledge how the tables
were moved, or the lights and flowers were produced,
there could be no ground for concluding that these
eff'ects were produced by spirits. What data have we
for supposing that spirits are thus occupied ? All
would reject the hypothesis that the agent was an
invisible dragon, not because they know more about
spirits than about dragons, but because the idea of
the dragon is incongruous with their preconception
and with their desire.
124. Conceptions once assimilated by the General
THE STUDY Or PSYCHOLOGY. 169
Mind become " necessities of thought " for the indivi-
dual, just as Eailways, once established, become neces-
sities of transport. The rules of Arithmetic were late
in mental evolution, and are still inconceivable by the
bulk of mankind ; but having been formulated and
incorporated in the General Mind, they are easily
learned by infants, and by philosophers declared to be
" necessities of thought." The doctrine of evolution
is becoming such a " necessity of thought ; " only a
few years ago some of its present advocates were
among its bitter opponents. The idea of Progress was
no more suspected by our ancestors than the exist-
ence of Magnetism. From the speculations of the few
it has passed into the commonplaces of the many.
That conceptions once incorporated in the General
Mind become forces which coerce the individual is
conspicuous in the terrible effects due to the idea of
" saving souls." This monstrous fiction of speculative
logic scattered the amassed wealth of Grecian and
Moorish culture, repressed for centuries the search
after truth, made Doubt a sin, and placed the inves-
tigation of Nature on a par with magical incantation.
Nor did it end here. It embittered and embitters in
many ways the lives of those whom it professed to
save, and did its best to make Hell a reality in this
world for those who ventured to doubt its reality in
another. Happily the power of conceptions is not
limited to disastrous errors, but extends to beneficent
truths. If irrational conceptions have made man
miserable and kept him ignorant, rational conceptions
have made him less miserable and more wise. Our
pressing need to understand the facts of this universe
in which we live has forced us to encourage the pur-
170 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
suit of truth. New and larger conceptions of man's
nature and destiny have been evolved. These, slowly
altering the structure of the General Mind, alter the
Social Forms which express it, and both react on the
individual.
Parenthetically, let us note the vast change in the
conceptions of the world and of man which have issued
from the discoveries of Copernicus and Cuvier, by sub-
stituting Evolution for Creation. And to the study
of the History of the World has succeeded the History
of Mind. Every little detail which tells of the mental
condition of ancestral races is now of priceless value.
Formerly men dug up ruined cities and opened ancient
tombs in the search for golden ornaments or works of
art. Now they dig with greater eagerness for flints
and the rude implements of prehistoric races, because
these throw light on the evolution of Mind.
CHAPTER X.
THE MENTAL FORMS.
125. The recognition of Collective Experience com-
bining with inherited tendencies in the formation of
Experience for the individual, will perhaps be inter-
preted by Kant's admirers as an illustration of his
doctrine of Mental Forms, or a priori constituents of
the mind. Kant taught that all knowledge arises in
individual experience, but not all out of it. There are
other factors, and these are transcendental and a
priori; not drawn from experience, since they are its
necessary conditions, and therefore precede it ; not
dependent on the organism, nor reducible to sensible
terms, but constituents of mind before mind comes
in contact with Nature ; and it is this contact of
mind with Nature which is experience.
Kant's primary purpose was not to expound a
psychological doctrine, but a metaphysical theory of
knowledge. He wished to fix the limitations of in-
quiry by assigning the limits of possible knowledge.
So little psychological investigation does he attempt,
and that little so imperfectly, that even when dealing
with the sensible data, it is not to Feeling as such, nor
to its evolution, that he refers, but simply to its rela-
tion to Knowing. He starts with the developed pro-
ducts, and never pauses to investigate their produc-
tion — physiological or psychological. He takes the
172 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
mind of the adult and cultivated classes. Therein
he recognises certain modes of acting which deter-
mine the possible actions, as the anatomist recog-
nises certain forms of structure which determine
bodily functions. These Forms of Intuition and
these Rules of Reasoning shape our experiences and
determine our knowledge as inexorable conditions :
we can no more think in contradiction to them than
a solution can crystallise into angles that are round.
126. Here, as in so many cases, we see the conse-
quence of operating on abstractions without a clear
and abiding sense of the concretes they symbolise.
Mind apart from Nature is one of these ; Experience
is another. The first is a metempirical figment when
it is not a logical abstraction. The second, when
reduced to its concretes, is the total of certain classes
of phenomena manifested by a living organism : it
involves, therefore, on the one hand, a sentient mechan-
ism having certain modes of reaction, and, on the other,
an external medium having certain modes of stimula-
tion. The experiences of this organism are the modifi-
cations it undergoes. These are o^eneralised in the ab-
stract term Experience. That all phenomena have their
conditions is a truism ; but the conditions are really im-
manent in, and only theoretically prior to, the results.
There are not conditions existing apart, and results
called into existence by them ; but the conditions,
ideally separated as components, find their expression
in the resultant. "We may ideally separate the or-
ganism and its inherited modes of reaction from one
and all of the particular stimulations on which it
reacts, and in this sense regard the reacting organism
as a condition of the reaction, and the reaction as a
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 173
condition of the resulting sensation or movement.
We know what we are doing by such distinctions.
But to suppose that the experiences which are results
of stimulation and reaction have any other compo-
nents than these is a grave error ; and to detacli
Experience from the Organism is merely an artifice
of exposition ; while to detach from the Organism its
modes of reaction, erecting these into Mental Forms
which have no physical basis, is what science cannot
accept, even as an artifice.
127. No physiologist will deny that the organism
has an inherited structure which causes it to react
in particular ways, and that this structure has been
determined by ancestral modifications ; that is to say,
ancestral modes of reaction help to fashion the indi-
vidual modes of reaction, and the stored-up wealth of
collective experience enriches the experience of suc-
ceeding generations. It is in so far the condition of
possible experience for the individual that without it
his reactions would have been diflferent. Kant first
separates Experience from the concrete facts of which
it is the abstract expression, detaches it fr^m the
organism and the modes of reaction which belong to
the inherited structure, and then argues that without
the modes of reaction such as Space and Time repre-
sent, no experience is possible. Findiug that these
general Forms of Sensibility cannot be given in in-
dividual sensations which presuppose them, he argues
that they cannot belong to the sensations, nor to the
sentient mechanism, er^o they must be a 'priori con-
stituents of Mind.
128. This doctrine has exercised a strange fascina-
tion over men's minds, and I cannot let it pass unchal-
174 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
lenged. The psychologist is as well entitled to pos-
tulate Laws of Thought — or Mental Forms — as the
Physicist to postulate Laws of Motion and Laws of
Nature. But both should know what it is they are
postulating, and why they do it. So little do the
generality of men know this, that they interpret these
abstract expressions as the conditions and determi-
nants of the concrete phenomena from which the
expressions are abstracted. On this interpretation
Laws pre-exist ; the movements and other phenomena
issue from them. There are thus not only the move-
ments, but Laws of Motion superadded to all the
conditions of movement. Thus crudely stated, the
fallacy is obvious. From the infinitely varying con-
ditions we extricate certain constants, and to these we
affix a mathematical expression. The parabola de-
scribed in the course of a cannon-ball, the eclipse
of the planetary orbit, the curve of a wave, &c., are
mathematical expressions : it is absurd to personify
these as motor agencies. In like manner, from the
varieties of Feeling we extricate certain constant
appearances which we call Laws of Sensibility, Forms
of Thought, Logical Eules. These we describe and
classify, as we describe and classify the planes of
cleavage of crystals. But to suppose that these laws
have an a 'priori independence, and render our feel-
ings and knowledge possible, is equivalent to the
supposition of planes of cleavage floating about in the
Cosmos, and when descending upon certain solutions
fashioning them into crystals.
] 29. It has been thought a great achievement of
Kant to have separated the Form of Knowledge from
the Matter of Knowledge, and to have made the first
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 175
tbe a priori condition of both Knowledge and Ex-
perience. I see nothing in it but the common error
of confounding logical with real distinctions, and the
revival of the Aristotelian doctrine of Form and Mat-
ter which the advance of science had pushed aside.
To me it is significant that Kant nowhere raises the
question whether animals have likewise these Mental
Forms as a priori conditions of their experiences and
cognitions. If he denied the existence of these forms,
he must have implicitly denied that animals had
experiences of space and time relations. This being
too absurd a notion for us to attribute to him, we
have no alternative but to assume that he endowed
animals with the forms. On this supposition we
should have to inquire whether he held that animals
had minds independent of their organisms, or minds
that were but the activity of the organisms? On
the latter alternative his notion of the universality
of these forms receives a rude shock ; for if the in-
tuitions of space and time are the activities of the
organism, they must differ in animals and men in
accordance with differences of structure. Hence w^hile
animals of a much simpler structure than ours would
only intuite space of two dimensions, a structure
more complex than ours w^ould intuite a space of
four, five, or n dimensions — a conclusion which the
Imaginary Geometry of Lobatschewsky, Eiemann,
and Helmlioltz show^s to be acceptable.
But Kant carefully avoids risking his position by
a reference to organic structure. He eliminates all
concrete conditions. He will not even admit ances-
tral influences. His forms are pure abstractions, and
he declines to predicate anything of them except their
176 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
^-priority and universality. He finds tlie forms as
facts, and rejects all attempts to reduce them to their
factors. It was open to him to regard Mind as a
function of the organism, and the Mental Forms as
the peculiar modes of reaction organised in ancestral
modifications. He rejects this. He will not even
admit innate ideas.*
130. Observation has shown that we do not bring
on our entrance into the world definite intuitions of
space, nor do our first sensible impressions call forth
such intuitions ; they are slowly formed. To answer
this by saying that we bring with us the abstract
form of Space, which renders possible the evolution of
concrete space experiences, is to place the general
conception before the particulars it generalises. Ap-
plied to our motor-intuitions the fallacy is obvious.
No one, seeino- that we do not at birth brino[ definite
intuitions directing the movements of our limbs, will
assert that we bring with us a Form of movement
which is anything more than an abstract expression
for all the motor conditions actually present in the
organism. The theory of Experience demands that a
mechanism be ready to respond to stimuli ; and the
theory of the Mechanism demands that an experience
* Yet much of hia argumentation implies something very like it.
For a striking example, consider his explanation of the cries and struggles
of the new-born infant. These, he says, are expressions not of pain
but of rage — " rage because the infant wishes to move, yet feels its inca-
pacity as a restriction wkerehi/ it is deprived of its freedom" {Anthropo-
logie, p. 323, note). Hegel transcends this. He sees in the infant's
squalls and struggles "the revelation of man's higher nature." By
euch activity the infant manifests himself as " penetrated by the con-
viction of his right to claim the satisfaction of his needs from the outer
world, and that the independence of this outer world vanishes in the pre-
sence of mail, sinks into servile insignificance. Hence the impetuous,
imperious tone" {Encyklopcedie, W. vii. 93).
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 177
of some kind should have come into being with the
stimulation. Unless we brought with us a mechanism
so constituted as to be capable of space-feelings, no
contact with external objects would excite them.
But it is a mistake to detach this capability, personify
it, and call it the Pure Form of space-feelings, ante-
rior to and independent of the stimuli and the me-
chanism which condition such feelinns.
131. In conclusion, we may adopt Kant's phrase
that " all Knowledge has its rise in Experience, but
not all out of Experience," if we abstract Experience
from the sentient mechanism with its inherited modes
of reaction, or if we consider only that to be Experi-
ence wliich the individual himself has sensibly reacted
on. The last chapter showed how it is the great
human privilege to assimilate the experiences of
others. Our feelings are products of our personal
stimulations, and of the residua of ancestral stimula-
tions. Our knowledge is the product of our own
experiences, and of the stored-up experiences of our
fellows. The individual savai^e has no knowledge of
the Law of Causality ; there can be no capability of
conceiving it until experiences have evolved it, and it
has taken its place in the collective thought of the
race. The sava«je cannot be made to think that there
can be no variation in an event when there is no
variation in its conditions. The necessity of causal
sequence is inconceivable to him, because his expe-
riences seem to contradict it. But that which he can-
not be made to think becomes in time so oro;anised
in the General Mind as an axiom which it is impos-
. sible to doubt, that philosophers are found who pro-
claim it a fundamental and cl priori Law of the Mind..
VOL. III. M
CHAPTER XL
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS.
132. Understanding that Method demands the co-
operation of Introspection with Observation for the
collection and collation of data, we have further to
specify the range and the limitation proper to the
artifice of Analysis. Taking our stand on the posi-
tion that whatever is knowable must lie within the
range of Experience, we regard every expression which
cannot be reduced to lower terms as an ultimate of
Speculation ; and this even should there be a suspicion
that possibly at some future day it may also be re-
ducible to lower terms. Force is an ultimate. Sen-
sibility is an ultimate. We cannot reduce either of
these to lower terms : we can only say they are what
they signify. But Experience is not an ultimate, for
it can — ideally — be analysed into components. Nor is
Consciousness an ultimate, if understood as a special
Mode of Sensibility.
The psychologist therefore will no more ask, What
is Sensibility ? than the physicist asks, What is Elec-
tricity? Describing what Electricity doeSf the phy-
sicist tells us what it is: its manifestations he can
classify and formulate in laws. The psychologist
must be equally reserved. Recording the focts, he
will seek their ascertainable conditions by observation
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 179
and experiment, but not seek these " in the field be-
hind phenomena." To get at the conditions he must
employ the artifice of analysis, he must do as the
child spontaneously does with every object which
comes within its grasp, namely, endeavour to pull it
to pieces "to see what it is made of." But this pro-
cedure needs correction. The mind is not made oi
separable pieces. Each piece has significance only in
its relation to the others.
133. Even in physical research the analysis which
decomposes a total into several components must
alw\ays be followed by a synthesis w^hich reconstructs
the whole, and thus, restoring all the suppressed con-
ditions, reuniting what provisionally was separated,
views the parts in the light reflected from the whole.
No fact is explained by the enumeration or exhibition
of its factors as isolated elements ; only by these in
their combination and mutual dependence. Comte
was guilty of an oversight when he defined the
chemist's problem to be that of " determining the
properties of compounds by the properties of their
components," for this is impossible. The properties
of water could never be determined by enumerating
the projDcrties of oxygen and hydrogen ; no salt is
discernible in its acid, nor in its base. The properties
of compounds must be observed in the reactions ot
the compounds. We may resolve these compounds
into their components, but these are then new totals,
and have forfeited all their qualities as components,
the oxygen being no longer watery. Only by recon-
structing these, restoring the elements w^hich analysis
has dissipated, can we get the water. We have taken
it to pieces, but unless we know all the pieces, and
180 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
the way these are arranged, we cannot see the whole
in the parts.
Still greater is the difficulty in psychological , re-
search. Here observation is always that of resultants,
never of components. Real analysis, such as that of
the chemist, is impossible. The components have no
observable existence : they are only inferred. I mean,
that a feeling cannot be taken to pieces like a salt,
these pieces separately studied, first isolated, next in
combination. All the stages of a process must -be
completed before the feeling emerges. In no one stage'
is it a feeling. The separation, therefore, of the stages,
the analysis of the feeling into its elements, is ideal
only. Moreover, each of these ideal elements has a
history. The elements of an inorganic object, the
moments of a dynamic process, are unchangeable —
that is to say, the oxygen torn from rust, from water,
or from an animal tissue, reappears with unaltered and
unalterable characters after every fresh combination.
Not so the elements of a feeling ; the very tissues
which are its physical basis are in incessant change.
134. Organic functions, we must often insist, are
unlike the functions of machines, which result from
combinations of elements that have no natural and
indestructible connection. The orscanism is evolved :
one part emerges from another, all parts are interde-
pendent. The functions of the organism are merely
specialisations of the properties coffimotn to all its
parts. Hence it is that Sensibility and its Modes,
being among the many specialisations of vitality, can-
not be likened to steam, or any other external motor ;
nor can Experience be likened to any complex of parts
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 181
put together : it is no mosaic of different elements ; it
is a living, developing, manifold unity.
But, recognising this, we are still compelled to treat
it as if the parts were separable. Thus it is we speak
of impressions as if they were events apart from sen-
sations, and sensations as if they had an isolated
existence apart from the sensorial disturbances called
emotions and cognitions. An impression may be con-
sidered apart as one stage in a complex process ; a
sensation as another stage ; a perception as a third.
But in reality, to understand an impression as a psy-
chical phenomenon, it must be seen in its relations
to an ultimate sensorial reaction. Nor can any sen-
sation come into existence without involvinsj the
fundai^ental functions we analytically ascribe to
Thought. Hence the radical confusion of the doctrine
that Thought is transformed Sensation ; which is the
analogue of the still deeper and more widely spread
confusion that Sensation is the transubstantiation of
a physical movement.
135. Had the Sensational School paid more atten-
tion to Biology, it might have rectified its hypothesis
so far as to present all mental phenomena in the light
of Modes of a common Sensibility. It would then
have welcomed tlie aid of Analysis, but recognised its
artifice. It would not have overlooked the relation
of organ to organism, of part to the whole ; nor have
fallen into the error of treating the organism as a
mosaic, or assemblage of organs, built up bit by bit,
acting bit by bit ; an error the consequence of which
is seen in the conception of the JMiud as an assemblage
of impressions, a mosaic of experiences. Biology tells
182 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
US that tte oreranism, tliou^^h differentiated into orfjans,
always is a total Avliicli acts through its parts : each
oro-an derives its si<2;nificance from its connections with
the others ; none has a function irrespective of the rest.
And so of mind. The notion of a tabula rasa, on
which the Senses inscribe their impressions, is un-
hiological. A percipient organism must exist before
impressions can become perceptions. In Condillac's
celebrated illustration of the statue which would per-
ceive the odour of a rose (he says it would he this
odour) there is the suppressed premiss of an organism
adapted to the perception. In the absence of such a
percipient factor, the statue can no more lawfully be
imagined as smelling the rose than it could be ima-
gined as digesting beef.
136. The reader will doubtless be so little disposed
to question these remarks that he may complain of
their being urged upon him. Yet, however cordially
he may assent to them, he will, on inquiry, find that
no error is more common than that which they sig-
nalise. Facts are constantly confounded with one or
more of their isolated factors, effects assigned to one
out of a group of conditions, premisses suppressed and
never restored, and organs credited with the perform-
ance of actions in -which they only j^lay a subordinate
part. In subsequent pages we shall frequently have
to point this out.
When once we have made clear to ourselves the
nature of the aid derived from Analysis, we may employ
the artifice in confidence. Ideally we decompose the
organism into its organs, the mind into its functions
and faculties ; and these again we decompose into their
components : physical, physiological, psychological.
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 183
"We study the stimuli, tlie meclianisra, and tlie ex-
perience ; that is, the external medium in its action
on the organism, the reaction of the organism, and
the feeling which is the subjective asj^ect of that
reaction. The organism, although a system of forces
having its motor within (§ 77), is in connection with
external forces, and is primarily set in action by them.
For example, the motion of the air disturbs the equi-
librium of the auditory apparatus which has its own
special mode of reaction, and this in turn disturbs
the general centre or Sensorium. These three ideally
separable stages of one neural process may be studied
separately, although all three are necessary elements,
any one of which varying will cause a corresponding
variation in the final result. AVithout the pulses of
air, no sound ; without the apparatus disturbed, no
Bound ; without the Sensorium, no sound.
137. Strictly speaking, the foregoing statement is
true only of the original and normal production of
Sensations. It needs qualification when we take into
account the subsequent reactions of the already modi-
fied Sensorium. Here we find Experience as a factor.
By it sensations may be reproduced mthout the co-
operation of some of the original conditions of pro-
duction. We have, then, " subjective sensations "
due to other stimuli than those of the sense-organ,
revivals of residua left by the action of the sense-
organ.
137*. But not now to dwell on this point, let us
note the scientific advantage of studying the physical
stage of the process, the data of which are measurable
and admit of easy demonstration. The psychological
stage has no such advantages, but, as has been said.
184 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
compensates exactness by certainty ; if we can never
know a feeling quantitatively, we know it qualita-
tively with unrivalled certainty. By this exactness
on the one hand, and this certainty on the other, it
has been found possible to introduce quantitative
relations between stimuli and sensations, and a new
branch of science, called Psychophysics, has arisen.
With regard to the intermediate or physiological
stage, there is at present no such exactness, no such
certainty. What takes place in the nervous system
under stimulation and reaction is neither demonstrable
to Sense nor discernible by Intuition ; it is, and will
long remain, mere guesswork. This may seem a hard
sentence to those who have been relying on the
hypothesis of vibrations, wave-movements, chemical
or electrical processes, cell-functions, seats of sensa-
tion, seats of emotion, seats of volition, and seats of
thought. But it is a sentence which will be confirmed
by every one who has seriously investigated the
evidence of such hypotheses. All that has gained
currency on this subject the student will do well to
accept as provisional imagery which may assist ex-
position, not as data from which conclusions may be
drawn. The hypotheses are not terms of knowledge,
but terms to fill our gaps in knowledge. The mathe-
matical precision of Optics and Acoustics is confined
to the physical stages of the seeing and hearing pro-
cesses ; where the physical passes into the physio-
logical the process escapes observation. Between
the physical and the psychological moments we know
there intervenes a neural moment, a change in the
sensory tract ; but what that change is we do not
know. We know, however, that it is not a process
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 185
wliich can be identified with tlie physical process :
its movements cannot be the same as the movements
of the external stimulus. The physicist splits a beam
of light by a prism and measures the different wave-
lengths of its constituent colours ; each of these wave-
lengths represents different degrees of stimulation.
Hence the conclusion that each colour is the product
of each wave-length. We learn that the effect of 450
billions of impacts in a second is the sensation of red;
of 589 billions, tlie sensation of green ; of 790 billions,
the sensation of violet. This seems quite satisfactory
until we learn that althounjli such vibrations orimn-
ate such sensations, it is through some intermediate
agency which does not vibrate in these ways, but
which is capable of effecting the sensations by vibra-
tions that are demonstrably different. And in two
examples this is conspicuous. First, in the fact that
violet, which has 790 billions, according to the scale
of the spectrum, is producible also by the blending of
red and blue, that is, of 450 and 589 billions ; and
white, which contains all the colours of the spectrum,
is producible by combinations of greenish blue with
scarlet red, or of greenish yellow with violet, or of
yellow with ultramarine. Note especially that the
wdiites thus variously produced are indistinguishable
as feelings, but are physically distinguishable by their
different reactions — the photographic plate on which
falls a white light composed of red and greenish blue
yields a black reaction, whereas under the yellowish-
green and violet combination it is very bright.
Objects illuminated by these different whites take on
very unlike colours. The second example to which
allusion was made is the fact of subjective colours.
186 PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND.
138. Further, a sensation does not accurately cor-
respond with the physical stimulus except through
the j)hysiological intermediates, for the colour of an
object is found to vary with the portion of the retina
on which it falls : the geranium flower, which is scarlet
at the central portion, is at the periphery indistinguish-
able from its green leaves. As with colour so with
form ; a subjective transformation takes place. The
optical image of a house, formed on a camera obscura
or on the retina, is not the mental image : the optical
image is excessively minute, is inverted, and has
only two dimensions, whereas the mental image is
large, erect, and has three dimensions.
We thus see that savants who rely on the physical
analysis without adding the analysis demanded by
Psychology fall into the opposite error of that fallen
into by Goethe, when, relying exclusively on the psy-
chological, he combated Newton's physical hypothesis.
Both analyses are required. And let us remember
that in the attempt to connect these two through
the molecular changes in the nervous system we are
thrown upon what is very imperfectly known. Be-
tween the structure of the eye or ear and the sensa-
tion of sight or sound there is a demonstrable con-
nection, every minute variation in structure being
accompanied by some variation in feeling : the one
is, therefore, rightly regarded as a function of the
other. Between these organs and the central nervous
system there is likewise a demonstrable connection,
any interruption of which brings an interruption in
the functional operation. So far Physiology reaches ;
but there its grasp relaxes. Between the structure of
the brain, or any other portion of the central system,
THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 187
and the sensations, perceptions, ideas wliicli are its
activities, no such connection is discernible. I mean,
that we know of no variation in cerebral structure
which uniformly corresponds with a variation in
feeling. Possibly, at some future day, there may be
discovered precise relations between central structure
and mental functions, analogous to those now known
between the structure of the eye and the function of
vision. But that day seems distant. All that Phy-
siology can at present assure us of is, that Mind is a
function of the organism ; consequently that certain
changes in the organism correspond with changes in
the mental states.
139. Herein lies the necessity of a constant study
of the organism as a directly available object of obser-
vation and experiment. In proportion as this study
becomes minute and exact, the facts discerned by Intro-
spection become intelligible and explicable. Not only
so, but with this knowledge we acquire the power of
intervention. To know that the integrity of the eye's
structure is essential to normal vision, and that certain
defects in crystalline lens, vitreous humour, optic tract
or brain, bring with them defects in vision, puts us
on the track of a remedy for such defects, which we
correct by glasses of a particular curvature or drugs
of a particular efficacy. ^^
140. Analysis, then, is a potent and indispensable
instrument ; but its right use must be understood.
AVe laugh at the man mentioned by Hierocles who
presented a brick as a specimen of his house ; but
* The use of proper spectacles has also been the remedy of obscure
nervous disorders never before suspected to have any relation to visual
defects.
188 PROBLEMS OP LIFE AND MIND.
our lau2:liter does not drive us from the same naivete
in taking a part for the whole, isolating an organ from
the organism, and the organism from its medium.
Having once accepted such errors, we need not be
surprised if they are extended, and if particular cells
in the brain are made the seats of thought. In read-
ing certain physiological statements respecting the
localisation of mental functions, I have asked myself
whether this premature physiological topography will
not, by-^nd-by, localise the seat of Life in the heart,
Sensibility in the pericardium, and Motility in its
muscular tissue ? *
One final remark. Psychological Analysis has for
object not only the adult mind with its acquired apti-
tudes, but also the stages of evolution through which
that mind has passed. These two points of view are
sometimes confused ; and these well-marked differ-
ences in the phenomena are sought to be obliterated
by showing how they emerged from a common ground.
An illustration will make this plain. To the physio-
logist no two functions have better marked distinc-
tions than Breathing and Swimming ; nothing but
* As a specimen of the purely fanciful hypotheses, consider this pro-
pounded by Jager in his Handbxich der Zoologie, 1877, ii. 339: '-The
cells of the cerebral cortex are the seats of Sensation, because they are
many ; but the seat of Consciousness is the neuroglia, because that lies
between the cells, and is one undifferentiated substance !" As another
specimen of the purely fanciful, with a strange confusion of physio-
logical and psychological terms, consider this proposition laid down
in the Rapport sur le Concours de 1868, presented to the Academy of
Medicine : " Nous admettons trois grands centres superposes Fun k
I'autre, places suivant une progression d6croissante. Audessus de tout,
le Moi; puis au dessous, les Instincts avec les facultes du second ordre;
ensuite la Moelle." Psychologists reading such passages may be excused
if they turn away with impatience from the aid offered them by
physiologists.
THE STUDY OP PSYCHOLOGY. ^ 189
confusion could result from speaking of the one in
terms of the other. To the morphologist who is^not,
dealing with the established functions, but with their
evolution, it is of great interest to trace in the Crus-
tacea the modification of the respiratory organs into
swimming organs, and to show how in the Infusoria
the same organs are employed for both functions.
In like manner, it is a gross confusion to speak of
Sensation and Thought, Instinct and Intelligence,
Voluntary and Involuntary actions, as if these terms
did not rej)reseut phenomena markedly distinct ; but
from the standpoint of genesis it is needful to show
that all are Modes of Sensibility, and therefore all
fundamentally the same.
THE END.
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