REESE' LIBRARY 
 
 ITNrVERSlTY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
•^<w 
 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF 
 
PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE MORAL SELF 
 
 BY 
 
 B. BOSANOUET 
 
 ILoittion 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1897 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
30 
 
 y /3 // 
 
^1 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It seems clear that a work is needed which should 
 treat of modern psychological conceptions in their 
 bearing upon ethical problems. No doubt, psycho- 
 logy is still full of controversy, and fundamental 
 questions are sub jiidice. But it would be an 
 exaggeration to assert that no dominant tendency 
 is now discernible in the best psychological thought. 
 The doctrine of Apperception, and such an idea as 
 that of " vital series," which is implied though not 
 insisted on in the present work, are far enough 
 advanced to throw a wholly new light upon the 
 nature of Will, considered as the man in relation to 
 action. When I say " a new light," I mean a light 
 which is new as compared with the popular philo- 
 sophy of the last generation. For that the most 
 recent psychology is definitely corroborating the 
 notions of Hellenic as of modern idealism, constitutes 
 its absorbing interest, and its claim on the ethical 
 student. Besides Mr. F. H. Bradley, my debt to 
 whom need not be further insisted on, I have found 
 the groundwork of my psychological ideas in the 
 writings of Professor William James, Mr. Stout, and 
 
VI PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF 
 
 Mlinsterberg. Professor Sully's Human Mind has 
 also been of great service to me, and constitutes, if 
 I may venture to express an opinion, a striking 
 advance upon his earlier writings. 
 
 My principal acknowledgments are due, how- 
 ever, to my wife, whose assistance in reducing my 
 lecture-notes to readable form renders her share in 
 the work about equal to my own. -' ' ;, ^ • - '^ ' ^^^ , 
 
 I am aware that these lectures are brief, and 
 even curt. But I believe that they will give a useful 
 clue to students who desire to approach moral 
 philosophy with some genuine ideas on the nature 
 and working of mind. 
 
 I have added at the end of the book a biblio- 
 graphical note, for beginners, and the questions 
 which were set week by week to the students attend- 
 ing the lectures. They serve to insist upon the 
 main points of importance. 
 
 B. BOSANQUET. 
 
 London, March 1897. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Psychological Point of View . . . i 
 
 LECTURE II 
 General Nature of Psychical Events . .11 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 Cognition — The Growth of Consciousness . . 22 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 The Organisation of Intelligence . . -34 
 
 LECTURE V 
 Self-Consciousness 47 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 Feeling 58 
 
viii PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF 
 
 LECTURE VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Volition 7o 
 
 LECTURE VIII 
 
 Volition {continued') . . . • • .82 
 
 LECTURE IX 
 Reasonable Action 99 
 
 LECTURE X 
 Body and Soul 114 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW 
 
 I. In explaining the subject with which we are deahng 
 we may begin by contrasting such a term as the 
 " province " of a science with its " point of view." 
 Botany, for instance, has a " province," or a denota- 
 tion ; that is, a distinguishable class of material 
 objects with which alone it deals, — there is no 
 botany of rocks or gases, but only of plants. Botany, 
 indeed, has a " point of view " as well as a province, 
 as we see when we compare it with medicine, which 
 deals with plants in so far as they have a specific 
 action on the body ; the point of view is a different 
 one. But it remains true that the " point of view " 
 of the science is limited by its " province," and vice 
 versa, in much the same way as in logic we say that 
 connotation is limited by denotation. Every natural 
 science is thus restricted to a certain range of objects 
 In Psychology the case is different. The limit is 
 one of '' point of view " only, and no special province 
 can be marked off. Some writers {e.g. Mr. Sully in 
 TJie Human Mind) attempt to limit the science by 
 saying that it deals with internal as opposed to 
 external experience ; but as Mr. Ward points out 
 
2 PSVCIIOLOGV OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 {Eficy. Brit., Ninth ed., vol. xx. p. 37), the distinction 
 is either inaccurate or inapplicable. It is generally 
 used as meaning " in the mind " opposed to " in 
 space," with a more or less vague implication that 
 the contents of the mind are ideas, and similar 
 impalpable entities, while the contents of space 
 are solid things ; but the antithesis is an unmeaning 
 one, owing to the ambiguity of the word " in " in its 
 double application to consciousness and space. The 
 conception of being " in " space is a familiar one ; 
 what is meant by being " in " a mind or " in " con- 
 sciousness we shall consider directly. Sometimes 
 the distinction is merely used to indicate what takes 
 place within the limits of the body as opposed to 
 what takes place without those limits ; but in this 
 sense it does not distinguish the province of Psycho- 
 logy from what falls outside Psychology, since Psy- 
 chology deals with all perceptions whether of internal 
 or external events. 
 
 In the same way the distinction between "mental" 
 and " material " fails to help us in marking off our 
 province (see Mr. Ward, I.e. p. 38), unless we explain 
 it as a mere difference in the point of view we take. 
 Unless, that is, we say that a material object when 
 considered as presented in experience is mental, and 
 so belongs to Psychology, and when not considered 
 as presented does not. 
 
 Thus we find that we must come to a distinction 
 by the point of view from which Psychology works, 
 and not by the province with which it deals. Then 
 the question arises — Can we say that Pyschology 
 takes a subjective point of view, and all other sciences 
 an objective one ? Here again we must answer in 
 the negative. If we are distinguishing, say, logically 
 
I THE PSYCHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW 3 
 
 or ethically between our presentations, then some of 
 them will be more subjective, and others more objec- 
 tive ; but for Psychology there is no such distinction. 
 Nor is the science specially uncertam because it deals 
 with mental facts ; as objects of observation and 
 inference they are just as good as any other facts, 
 and as a science Psychology must take itself to be 
 objective, i.e. to be such as any rational being would 
 construct with the same data. This suggests the 
 distinction which has been made by Mr. Herbei4 
 Spencer, and adopted by Hoffding (translation, p. 24), 
 between Subjective and Objective Psychology. Ac- 
 cording to this distinction, Objective Psychology 
 includes " physiological and sociological data," while 
 Subjective Psychology deals with the " natures of 
 particular modes of consciousness, as ascertained by 
 introspection." But, if we regard them from the 
 point of view of throwing light on mind, all our 
 facts, whether we borrow them from physiology and 
 sociology, or whether we glean them from intro- 
 spection, are equally objective. It is only when 
 they are considered for their value from a philo- 
 sophical point of view that the former constitute par 
 excellence objective mind. 
 
 Mr. Ward himself (/.t\) suggests as a distinction 
 that Psychology takes an individualistic point of 
 view, while other sciences take one that is universal- 
 istic. This seems to mean that the psychologist 
 deals solely with facts of presentation to particular 
 minds^ while the student of natural science neglects 
 this characteristic, and thinks of his objects quite 
 apart from their relation to particular minds. If we 
 accept this we must be careful that it does not tic 
 us down to any assumption about the individual 
 
4 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 mind being there to begin with, or remaining limited 
 to any particular source of self-feeling or content, as, 
 e.g., the body. We must leave ourselves quite free 
 to study the growth of mind in its earlier stages, 
 and all possible sources from which it may derive 
 its content. 
 
 Keeping in mind the necessity of this freedom 
 we may try two other definitions. James, in his 
 Text-book of Psychology, adopts one given by Ladd : 
 " Psychology is the description and explanation of 
 states of consciousness as such." Here w^e are met 
 by the difficulty that consciousness is as yet a 
 disputed term, that there is no agreement among 
 psychologists as to what facts are included in it, or 
 whether or not it covers the whole of psychical or 
 mental life. 
 
 The second definition is one given by Bradley 
 {Mind, O.S., xii. 354). Psychology "has to do 
 with psychical occurrences and their laws," i.e. with 
 the facts experienced within a single soul, considered 
 merely as events which happen. " Experience " and 
 " soul " are here used as very wide terms, which do 
 not commit us at starting to any assumptions about 
 consciousness or self- consciousness, or about the 
 " subject " and similar conceptions. Experience 
 cannot be defined in any way, for it is all inclusive, 
 and leaves nothing by which it can be limited ; we 
 can only, as it w^ere, point it out, or indicate it. 
 
 2. Psychical events, then, or the facts experienced 
 within a soul, together with their laws or ways of 
 happening, form the subject-matter of Psychology. 
 What do we mean by " in a soul ? " Bearing in 
 mind what we have said about the point of view, we 
 
I THE PSYCHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW 5 
 
 may reply, " everything that goes to make up its 
 world." Here we have to recall the distinction made 
 in introducing the lectures on logic {Essentials of 
 Logic, p. 7) ; the distinction between the psycho- 
 logical and logical modes of regarding the contents 
 of the mind. The formed world — e.g. as it exists for 
 me in space, or, again, your mind to me^is more than 
 an event in my mind ; but it is an event in my 
 mind, and it is only from this latter point of view 
 that Psychology considers it. What viorc it may be 
 is a question for other sciences. To use an 
 illustration, we may say that the psychologist is 
 merely a looker-on, an observer ; and that to him 
 your mind, with its contents or object, is like a 
 microscope with its object to one who looks at it 
 from the outside. Yon are interested in the object 
 for its own sake, but he does not want to know 
 about this primarily ; he is interested in finding out 
 by what machinery it was focussed and illuminated, 
 what caused it to be thus before you, and what will 
 cause it to disappear again and bring something else 
 in its place. In this sense there is no object in your 
 world which is not in your soul, and Psychology 
 only considers it as in your soul. 
 
 The sciences, indeed, which deal with the organ- 
 ised reality, although clearly differentiated from Psy- 
 chology, may themselves afford material for psy- 
 chological treatment. Esthetics, e.g., treats of mental 
 contents from the point of view of their capacity for 
 yielding aesthetic pleasure or emotion, and the mind 
 that is trained to ?esthetic enjoyment may afford 
 very different material for psychological study from 
 the mind that is not so trained. 
 
 Logic, again, has an entirely different sphere from 
 
6 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 Psychology in that it deals with mental events as 
 material for the construction of reality ; and its 
 principles are not psychological laws, but principles 
 by which reality is constructed. But all the same, a 
 mind which is swayed by a logical principle, whether 
 consciously or unconsciously, will differ psychologically 
 from one which is not, or from itself when not under 
 the influence of the principle ; the mental contents 
 will be differently organised in the two cases, and 
 will thus afford different material for the psy- 
 chologist. 
 
 3. It will help us here if we mention, merely in 
 general, what Aristotle had to say about the nature 
 of the soul. It will show, that is, how the problem 
 presented itself to a great man approaching it while 
 it was comparatively fresh and free from preconcep- 
 tions about immortality, free-will, and muscular con- 
 traction. We may notice : — 
 
 {a.) It presents itself to him as a matter of 
 gradation. It is difficult to say where the soul 
 begins ; there is vegetative mind or life, sensitive 
 mind, rational and volitional mind. In proportion 
 as the order of Nature takes on a certain individual 
 and apparently purposive form, the problem of mind 
 begins and it continues upwards into consciousness. 
 Here we can see no apparent dread of materialism, 
 or at any rate of continuity with the unconscious ; 
 and it is very hard to find out what was thought 
 by Plato and Aristotle of the relation of the Soul 
 to consciousness. They think more of order and 
 the appearance of purpose than of mere conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 (/5.) The definition is more like that of a problem 
 
I THE PSYCHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW 7 
 
 or a postulate than of a thing. Mind, he tells us, 
 begins with " The simplest mode of self-realisation 
 of an organic body." This leaves room for other 
 modes of mind above, and growing out of, the 
 simplest, and does not tie us down to any mode of 
 subject or substance ; we might paraphrase it by 
 saying that " mind is the way in which the unity 
 of an organic body displays itself." He afterwards 
 distinguishes to the best of his power the different 
 phases of the psychical, as we also must endeavour 
 to do, and in so doing he connects infant Psychology 
 with that of animals. 
 
 The point is, that stating the problem in this 
 large way enables us to approach it quite differently 
 from the way in which a ready-made dogmatiser 
 approaches it. We are led to look at the mind, 
 prima facie ^ as beginning a long way down, and as 
 a sort of struggle towards unity. I do not say 
 that this view could be true, e.g., in metaphysics ; 
 but it is very convenient to be allowed to take it 
 in Psychology. We grant readily that we cannot 
 explain mind as a co-operation of bodily parts — of 
 monads or the like ; nevertheless, it does seem to 
 be a co-operation of elements in experience, elements 
 which are not merely drawn from our own body, 
 but which all ultimately appear to have definite 
 connections in the environment which we construct. 
 
 4. The soul, then, for us is simply our immediate 
 experience, which we take as belonging to a thing 
 that has past and future, in a way just analogous to 
 that in which we construct anything in space and 
 give it identity. We trace our soul backward, and 
 construct it from our given experience. The word 
 
8 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 " immediate " perhaps needs explanation here ; it is 
 used to exclude the real world which is the content 
 of experience. If this was included, as we saw, the 
 soul would be everything. But though the soul is 
 not in the full sense everything which it knows, yet 
 it is different because of wha^/it knows ; the content, 
 or world of realities, of C(^Vse affects the immediate 
 experience, giving it colo^ir and definite filling. 
 
 / 
 5. The abstract ego is a different conception 
 from that of the soul, and we need not really 
 trouble ourselves with it in Psychology. It repre- 
 sents the argument that the subject which knows 
 must be other than the object which is known, and 
 that it must be identical throughout. As to the 
 prima facie truth of this we may note what actually 
 takes place in our ordinary conceptions of the self, 
 which seem to Involve a constant transposition of 
 content between the self and not-self. (See Ward, 
 Eficy. Brit., Ninth ed., vol. xx. p. 39). At one time the 
 self is identified with the body, and at another it is 
 distinguished from it, while there is always a tendency 
 to describe certain phases or regions of consciousness 
 as the real or true self, as opposed to others with 
 which we are less inclined to identify ourselves. 
 But the point is that the self, in Psychology, seems 
 always to be identified with some positive content, 
 and not always with the same. Whether or not 
 there is a positive identical nucleus of presentation 
 is still a question for discussion. But what we 
 would suggest is that the abstract ego is merely a 
 way of describing one characteristic of the concrete 
 self, and does not really help to explain it. At all 
 events, it could be of no use to us in Psychology 
 
UNI 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW \ p 
 
 unless it declared itself in some way by affecting 
 the sequence and connections of our presentations, 
 and this seems only possible through some positive 
 content ; a mere abstract point would not impose 
 any special direction or grouping upon our presen- 
 tations. And if it merely represents the general 
 character of these presentations themselves — their 
 tendency, for instance, to reproduce one another in 
 certain ways — we want only this character itself in 
 so far as it works, and need not trouble ourselves 
 with any theory about its origin. 
 
 Conclusion. — This, then, is the picture of a soul 
 which I have tried to suggest ; not a ready-made 
 machine working on certain material, but a growth 
 of material more like a process of crystallisation, 
 the material moulding itself according to its own 
 affinities and cohesions. The nervous system may 
 indeed be regarded from one point of view as 
 a pre-existing machine ; but not psychically, for 
 it constitutes no special part of our presenta- 
 tions. Given this view we may ask, looking at 
 the general purpose of our lectures, " Ought a 
 spiritual philosophy to be content with such a view 
 as this ? " This, of course, is only an objection 
 which might be urged, not one which should be, for 
 Philosophy has no right to dictate to Psychology. 
 But our answer would be " Yes ; it is just a spiritual 
 philosophy which ca?i be content with it." If you 
 think the whole universe is mechanical or brute 
 matter, then we can understand your trying to keep 
 a little mystic shrine within the individual soul, 
 which may be sacred from intrusion and different 
 from everything else — a monad without windows. 
 But if you arc accustomed to take the whole as 
 
10 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. i 
 
 Spiritual, and to find that the more you look at it 
 as a whole the more spiritual it is, then you do not 
 need to play these little tricks in order to get a last 
 refuge for freedom by shutting out the universe. 
 
 It has always been the most spiritual philosophy 
 that has been most audacious in simply taking the 
 soul as an operation or appearance within the 
 universe, incapable of being cut off from other 
 operations and appearances, and demanding to be 
 investigated quite impartially with reference to the 
 origin and connection of its elements. There is 
 nothing to be afraid of in finding that the operative 
 content, the actual being of the soul, comes from the 
 environment. How else, indeed, should we have a 
 real communion with other souls ? 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 GENERAL NATURE OF PSYCHICAL EVENTS 
 
 I. Before going on to consider the general nature 
 of psychical events it will be well to say a word 
 about the attitude we should take in interpreting 
 what different psychologists may have said. In all 
 such interpretations there are two pitfalls to avoid. 
 In the first place we must be careful not to force 
 every difference of expression between one writer 
 and another into a difference of principle. For 
 instance, Locke's use of the term idea for any 
 presentation is probably peculiar to himself, but 
 when we understand the sense in which he applied 
 it we find that it covers no difference of principle. 
 On the other hand, we must not allow ourselves to 
 deny that there are differences of principle, on the 
 ground that the different terms employed must have 
 referred to experience which is the same for those 
 who use them. The only safe rule in critical history 
 is to study our writers as a whole, and see what 
 they really wished to maintain; what the whole drift 
 of their language supports. There is, of course, such 
 a thing as confusion of thought ; where the writer 
 himself has not been clear as to what was involved 
 in his statements. We may perhaps find an instance 
 
12 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 of this in Mill's theory of inference from particulars to 
 particulars. 
 
 2. The history of modern Psychology may be 
 said to begin with Hobbes, and is at first mainly 
 concerned with the doctrine of Association. (See 
 Croom Robertson's article in the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica on " Association "). This doctrine was 
 taken up by Locke and Hume, but is said to have 
 been first thoroughly applied to the whole of mind 
 by Hartley. For our present purpose we may 
 consider it as it developed in the hands of Locke 
 and Hume. 
 
 They were the authors of the " Psychological 
 Philosophy " which has so frequently been criticised. 
 The necessary effect of narrowing down all Phil- 
 osophy into Psychology is to cut away the material 
 of Psychology itself. The method employed is to 
 begin by laying it down that the validity of ideas 
 depends upon their mode of origin, and not upon 
 self-evidence ; and then to proceed by inquiring 
 into this mode of origin in the history of the 
 individual mind. Thus the problem which presents 
 itself to them is that of putting together the mind 
 and the world out of mere psychical events, out of 
 irreducible facts or data. By refusing to take more 
 than what is given, they are tied down to the 
 consideration of events in the soul, and this leads 
 to subjective idealism, because all ideas may be 
 regarded as events in the soul, and any question as 
 to what validity they have as making up a world 
 belongs to a different enquiry altogether. Moreover 
 the followers of this method are prevented even from 
 stating the full nature of the events in question ; for 
 
II GENERAL NATURE OF PSYCHICAL EVENTS 13 
 
 these events have an aspect which affects their 
 nature as events, although it is not their nature as 
 events, and is therefore disregarded by the psycho- 
 logical philosopher. 
 
 When, therefore, he begins the study of this 
 mental history, the psychological philosopher is 
 first struck by those fairly discriminated presenta- 
 tions which occupy the focus of attention in the 
 mature intelligence. He sets to work to classify 
 these as Locke does ; and he classifies them under 
 the most obvious heads of distinct sources of 
 sensation (especially the five senses), and obvious 
 modes of reflection. Locke,^ indeed, is aware that 
 sensations are altered by the judgment, but he does 
 not press this idea so far as to recognise the close 
 interconnection of all mental elements. On the 
 whole it seems fair to say that he, and still more 
 Hume, takes as a type of the mind the very brightest 
 centre of the focus of attention, disregarding all the 
 mass of presentations which, as we are now taught, 
 make up the soul. But the focus, of course, may 
 change very sharply. If, e.g.^ we take our memory 
 of the leading presentations during a whole day, 
 without forcing or cross-questioning ourselves, it 
 may be like a string of beads without any apparent 
 connection — cabs, streets, persons, work, eating, the 
 newspaper — a mere set of lantern slides ; indeed, as 
 we remember them they will not even be dissoh'ing 
 views. 
 
 Now this was naturally how Locke and Hume 
 tended to look at the train of ideas. From their 
 point of view there was nothing to be gained by 
 more subtle and complete investigation. Their 
 
 ^ Essay, lik. ii. ch. ix. sect. S. 
 
14 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 interest was to know, in the first place, whether our 
 more important ideas either of sound and colour or 
 of space, or again of substance and causation or of 
 the self, were irreducible data ; and, secondly, how 
 they came to cohere or to be associated together. 
 They rummaged about in experience and found 
 what they looked for — the most striking events in 
 the soul ; and having found them they were soon, 
 and rightly, satisfied that the history of the individual 
 soul is a history of events, which, as events, as 
 irreducible data, gave no purchase for stepping 
 across to anything from them. Nor would a deeper 
 investigation, if conducted from the same standpoint, 
 have directly influenced their views ; although in- 
 directly it would have done so, and in the long 
 run it did greatly help to alter the views of their 
 successors. For Hume, then, the mind was like a 
 string of beads without the string, or a peal of bells, 
 and this is what we mean when we speak of 
 Atomism. (Atomism is merely the Greek form for 
 individualism, only it happens that atom has come 
 to mean a thing and individual a person). There 
 appear to be two stages of Atomism ; the first, in 
 which it is a sheer fiction and is now a thing of the 
 past, the second, in which it involves a psychological 
 confusion which we must consider more in detail. 
 
 (i.) As a statement of Hume's theory of simple 
 sensations and ideas as units of the mind we may 
 quote the following passage (pp. 320, 321, Black's 
 edition, vol. i.). 
 
 " It is evident that the identity which we attribute 
 to the human mind, however perfect wc may imagine 
 it to be, is not able to run the several perceptions 
 into one and make them lose their characters of 
 
II GENERAL NATURE OF PSYCHICAL EVENTS 15 
 
 distinction and difference, which are essential to 
 them. It is still true that every distinct perception 
 which enters into the composition of the mind is a 
 distinct existence, and is different and distinguishable 
 and separable from every other perception, either 
 contemporary or successive." 
 
 And again, " What we call mind is nothing but a 
 heap or collection of different perceptions united 
 together by certain relations, and supposed, though 
 falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and 
 identity." 
 
 This kind of description is a sheer fiction if it 
 implies that discriminated sensations and ideas are 
 a primitive constant and the only contents of the 
 mind. Probably this is what it did, on the whole, 
 imply in Locke, making due allowance for the 
 passage above quoted,^ where he says that sensa- 
 tions are modified by the judgment. Really this 
 passage only serves to emphasise the doctrine, which 
 we can trace henceforward in all the British psycho- 
 logists down to Bain inclusive. 
 
 To bring out what is implied in the doctrine, 
 take as an instance the sort of vision an artist has 
 of clearly discriminated colour patches ; these are 
 sensations perhaps most nearly approximating to 
 Hume's distinct perceptions. Can we think that a 
 baby, near the commencement of its psychological 
 experience, has anything like these clearly defined 
 sensations ; or must we not rather regard them as 
 the result of a long process of education in dis- 
 crimination ? What is really meant by the single 
 sensation which we find alluded to in psychological 
 manuals ? Is it a primary and fixed constituent 
 
 ^ /sssaj', Bk. ii. ch. ix. sccl. S. 
 
i6 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 in all perception ; or is it, as experienced by an 
 adult, a result of discrimination which normally 
 disappears in perception ? In other words, is 
 mental growth a process of compounding units 
 distinctly given, or is it rather a process of dis- 
 crimination within a mass which cannot and does 
 not change its character all at once (as the focus of 
 attention may do from moment to moment) because 
 it is not all attended to in the same measure at once. 
 It is important for the student to note carefully 
 the line taken by psychological text-books about 
 this. To note, that is, whether they represent mind 
 as compounded out of given units by a process of 
 association, or as growing by differentiation of a 
 continuous tissue or texture. It is interesting in this 
 respect to compare Sully's earlier and later books 
 {^Outlines of Psychology and The Human Mind), and 
 to note also how far the structure of his book tells 
 the same tale with its doctrines. James, in the 
 preface to his text-book, explains that he prefers to 
 proceed " from the more concrete mental aspects 
 with which we are best acquainted to the so-called 
 elements which we naturally come to know later by 
 way of abstraction. The opposite order of ' building 
 up ' the mind out of its ' units of composition ' has 
 the merit of expository elegance, and gives a neatly 
 subdivided table of contents ; but it often purchases 
 these advantages at the cost of reality and truth . . . 
 we really gain a more living understanding of the 
 mind by keeping our attention as long as possible 
 upon our entire conscious states as they are concretely 
 given to us, than by the post-mortem study of their 
 comminuted ' elements.' This last is the study of 
 artificial abstractions, not of natural things." 
 
II GENERAL NATURE OF PSYCHICAL EVENTS 17 
 
 Ward's account of the psychical continuum {Ency. 
 Brit., Ninth ed., vol. xx. p. 45) is quite clear, and should 
 be carefully read. " We are led," he tells us, " alike 
 by particular facts and general considerations to the 
 conception o{-A.totuin objectiviun or objective continuum 
 which is gradually differentiated, thereby becoming 
 what we call distinct presentations, just as with mental 
 growth some particular presentation, clear as a whole, 
 as Leibnitz would say, becomes a complex of dis- 
 tinguishable parts. Of the very beginning of this 
 continuum we can say nothing : absolute beginnings 
 are beyond the pale of science. Actual presentation 
 consists in this continuum being differentiated, and 
 every differentiation constitutes a new presentation." 
 The Atomism which denies a psychical continuum in 
 this sense is a fallacy very like (and contemporary 
 with) the fallacy of the social contract in its crudest 
 form ; it antedates the independent existence of the 
 individual. 
 
 We have said that, indirectly, better observation 
 on psychological ground has done much to rectify 
 this fallacy. We may mention two points with 
 reference to which this is specially noticeable : {a) 
 less conscious or sub-conscious presentations ; {U) one 
 special portion of these — organic sensations. 
 
 id) With regard to sub-conscious presentations in 
 general, it was probably Herbart who first drew 
 attention to them. By employing the conception of 
 the " threshold of consciousness," and thinking of 
 presentations as rising above or falling below this 
 threshold according as they are more or less clearly 
 present, we avoid the mistake of confining our 
 theoretical considerations to that part of conscious- 
 ness which we are most definitely attending to. We 
 
 c 
 
i8 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 may illustrate this from the focus of vision. When 
 we fix our eyes upon any object so that it is clearly 
 discriminated— that forms, as it were, the centre of 
 our vision, but does not cover the whole field — there 
 is much that is not attended to, that is out of focus, 
 and therefore indistinct. In the same way the 
 presentations which occupy the focus of attention at 
 any moment are really the smallest part of what 
 the mind has present to it ; there is a field which is 
 occupied by presentations which are not in focus, 
 and therefore not discriminated, and the whole state 
 of consciousness takes its colouring very much from 
 these. This sub-conscious mass changes very slowly, 
 and in every person probably has certain permanent 
 and many habitual elements, and in this way goes 
 far to bind consciousness together as one whole. It 
 is interesting to connect this theory of sub-conscious- 
 ness with the question of Feeling and the elements 
 of thought and reason which are implicit in it, and 
 which enable it to serve as a real principle. (See 
 Hegel, Hist, of P kilos. (E. Tr.), iii. 400.) 
 
 {b) The so-called organic sensations consist of all 
 the obscure sensations that go to make up our bodily 
 comfort or discomfort ; the total result is sometimes 
 called the Coenesthesis or " common feeling." This 
 does not seem to be noticed by Locke or Hume, but 
 it is noticed in Bain. It forms a very important 
 factor in the psychical continuum, for though it is 
 not usually in the focus of attention, it is always in 
 the margin, and forms the background of our whole 
 conscious life. While it persists, our sense of our 
 identity remains unshaken, whatever vicissitudes we 
 may undergo ; while to grave changes in it are 
 probably due such pathological phenomena as the 
 
II GENERAL NATURE OF PSYCHICAL EVENTS 19 
 
 " duplication of the ego," or the hallucination of 
 poisoning which is apt to accompany the onset of 
 lunacy. 
 
 To omit these elements as absolute facts of 
 psychological observation was sheer omission of 
 psychical material on the part of the older psycho- 
 logists. By taking this material in, our view of the 
 mind is made much more concrete. The simile of 
 a series, or collection, or train of ideas now yields to 
 that of mass and wave (the base of the wave contain- 
 ing the marginal, its crest the focal elements), of 
 which all the parts react on each other. 
 
 (ii.) But even when we have accepted the psychical 
 continuum and the psychical mass or wave, there is 
 still the question as to how we should regard its 
 continuity. After all is said, it remains true that 
 each pulse of mind, each advance of the wave, in 
 one sense each presentation, is an event which never 
 recurs. We need, therefore, some account of the 
 nature of the continuity or identity of this con- 
 tinuum ; and it is quite possible for the essential 
 faults of Atomism to continue along with the recogni- 
 tion of a mass or wave of presentations as a psychical 
 fact. We may, that is, continue to confuse the 
 events with their reference or meaning. 
 
 A very fair test as to whether psychologists make 
 this confusion is their statement of the Law of 
 Association (here we are anticipating). What is it 
 that Association marries ? events in the soul or 
 generalised contents ? Take Bain's statement {^Mental 
 or Moral Science^ p. 85) — "Actions, Sensations, and 
 States of Feeling, occurring together in close succes- 
 sion, tend to grow together or cohere in such a way 
 that when any one of them is afterwards presented 
 
20 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 to the mind, the others are apt to be brought up in 
 idea." Clearly what we have here is a resurrection 
 of mere events. (For a further criticism of this view 
 see Ward, Ency. Brit., Ninth ed., vol. xx. p. 60.) 
 
 A further test of the presence of this confusion is 
 the use of the " Law of Obliviscence " as a normal 
 part of the Associative process. If A suggests d, it 
 is said, it does so because it suggests a, which was 
 formerly presented as abed, and so is connected 
 with d\ but because only d is now suggested, it is 
 necessary to account for the disappearance of abc 
 by the law of obliviscence, by the action of which 
 they are so attenuated as to become invisible links. 
 Tn other words, on this theory, in order to get from 
 the A which suggests to the d which is suggested, we 
 must, it is said, go round through the details of a 
 former presentation. But since these details do not 
 appear in consciousness, it is obvious that we cannot 
 verify them, and the question is whether we really 
 go through them at all. I pass a particular house, 
 and it recalls to me a friend who used to live there. 
 Must I on principle, suppose that my mind has gone 
 round — unconsciously — through the details of some 
 former event in which he and the house were con- 
 nected — say a call which I made there on the 2nd 
 of May ; or may I not suppose simply that a 
 general connection has been formed by which one 
 part of the content directly reinstates the other ? 
 As an instance of the misleading influence of this 
 theory, we may notice its application (first by a 
 clergyman named Gay, and afterwards by Hartley 
 and others) to the problem of means and ends. 
 The miser, it is said, begins by desiring money — like 
 other people — for what it will get ; it is at first only 
 
II GENERAL NATURE OF PSYCHICAL EVENTS 21 
 
 a means to other ends. By what process does he 
 come to make the money the one end of his exist- 
 ence to the exclusion of all others ? The Associa- 
 tionists explain that it is because the feelings 
 formerly connected with the ends have become 
 gradually associated with the means so closely that 
 finally they become transferred to it. (See Bradley's 
 Ethical Studies^ p. 60.) 
 
 With this ordinary law of Association we may 
 now compare Bradley's statement {Mind, O.S., xii. 
 358). "Every mental element when present tends 
 to reinstate those elements with which it has been 
 presented." An "element" here means any dis- 
 tinguishable aspect of the matter or content, and not 
 any particular event in the soul. We need not here 
 go further into this question, which has been raised 
 in this lecture merely to explain Atomism. But we 
 must bear in mind that we shall always have Atomism 
 in principle, until the content of the soul connects 
 itself together, and in order to do this it must go 
 beyond events to meanings. So long as the work 
 of connection is thrown upon " attention," or " the sub- 
 ject," and so long as events are connected instead of 
 contents, we continue to have psychological confusion. 
 
 What is really wanted to complete the idea of 
 the psychical continuum is a true account of identity. 
 This must just reverse Hume's doctrine {I.e.) that 
 identity is added to the string of perceptions by the 
 observer, who thus comes to regard the mind as identi- 
 cal with itself Identity must really bclo7ig to the 
 perceptions, and unite them together. The question 
 is, whether we take identity to consist in the exclusion 
 of difference ; if we do, we have Atomism, and can get 
 no further than A is A. We shall return to this later. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 COGNITION THE GROWTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 In this lecture we have to consider what Cognition 
 is from the point of view of Psychology ; in other 
 words, we have to consider the development of a 
 world as it takes place de facto. The question of 
 the validity of the cognition does not primarily 
 concern us. In our next lecture we shall consider 
 more in detail the processes by which Cognition 
 develops. 
 
 Our criticism of the doctrine of Association may 
 be supplemented by contrasting the term itself with 
 such terms as " community," " corporation," or 
 " unity." It implies that the view taken is of in- 
 dependent units, which are the same in the combina- 
 tion as out of it, and are tied or linked as such by 
 Association ; and historically it really originated in 
 such a view. The general truth implied in it is, 
 that phases of the soul, such as presentations, can 
 be traced in time, and that a sort of causation, or at 
 least a natural sequence, can be observed in them ; 
 the real principle being, however, not a linking of 
 units, but organisation by identities of content 
 
 Our starting-point, then, must be different from 
 that assumed by the doctrine of Association strictly 
 
 J 
 
LECT.iii COGNITION— GROWTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 23 
 
 taken. It must be a continuous presentation, to be 
 described either as feeling, or, as others would say, 
 as having the three aspects of feeling, conation, and 
 sensation (or cognition). The conception is that of 
 a direct experience which is a multiplicity of deter- 
 minations, but does not distinguish them ; a state 
 prior to consciousness, and also continuing as one 
 side of consciousness. The question is important as 
 an attempt to get something which embraces our 
 whole psychosis as a single experience — as ourself 
 Then, if we call it Feeling, it is not feeling in the 
 sense of mere Pleasure or Pain. But there is not a 
 very great practical difference between the two views, 
 for there must be movement and variety in feeling, 
 and it becomes merely a question of how we 
 ought to describe their presence in a very simple 
 state of soul. For instance, there would be change 
 in feeling as the presentations changed, but not at 
 first a feeling of succession ; that needs some one (or 
 more) group of presentations which is felt as per- 
 sistent against the rest. Thus movement would be 
 there, but how would it be presented ? We have to 
 imagine a more or less vaguely felt continuum, 
 gradually differentiating itself into qualitatively 
 distinct sensations, and then developing into the 
 consciousness which is so varied as to have the 
 appearance of being made up of many different 
 elements and aspects. In its earlier stages this 
 vague continuum might be like our dream-world, 
 through which ghosts of presentations are constantly 
 gliding without any attempt on our part to organise 
 them, or mould them into the solidity of reality. 
 Hence the saying that there is no surprise in 
 dreams ; every wave of presentation just is, and 
 
24 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 we accept it without speculation as to its source or 
 reason. 
 
 The problem for Psychology is to get from this 
 vague continuum, or dream-world, to our waking 
 world, as organised in Space and Time, and as con- 
 trasted with our mere ideas — the world to which, 
 in our Cognition, Perception is especially relative. 
 
 We are capable of Perception in the most general 
 sense when we have erected a persistent group within 
 our presentations into a " real object," i.e. into some- 
 thing which is a presentation, but is more than a 
 mere presentation, and which therefore exercises 
 constraint on the course of psychical events. Ob- 
 jects in space are the simplest instance. With 
 them there arises the distinction between signs and 
 objects ; mere ideas are signs. 
 
 In order to get to this stage from the mere mass 
 of feeling which is the undeveloped soul, the chief 
 matter of principle is to obtain the distinction between 
 changes in the presentation mass which are due to 
 its previous course, and changes which maintain 
 themselves against its course, or which seem to 
 interfere with it, to collide with or guide it. This 
 is the germ of the distinction between mere idea 
 and reality, and it is only with reality that we get 
 to Cognition. To work out the development would 
 involve an account of a very long stage of evolution ; 
 but there is no doubt that the force at work is that 
 of interference — as a rule, of disappointment. 
 
 In order to account for the development we have 
 to assume — 
 
 (i.) That the total presentation has recurring 
 elements. 
 
 (ii.) That a presented element tends to reproduce 
 
Ill COGNITION — GROWTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 25 
 
 the elements with which it has been presented (a 
 form of the laws of Association) in such a way 
 that there is a tendency to form groups. 
 
 (iii.) That there are movements in the organism 
 which are brought about by, and themselves bring 
 about, changes in the presentation mass, and that 
 these changes are pleasant or painful. 
 
 Then the general type of process would be : 
 change in the presentation mass, say an indication 
 of food within reach, followed by a movement which 
 is felt, and is such as has previously brought about 
 another change in the presentation mass, say contact 
 with the food. If the movement always succeeded 
 in bringing about this second change, it is difficult 
 to see how progress should take place. But if we 
 suppose the movement (which is felt) to fail, then 
 it would result in two contradictory presentations 
 tied together.. The change in the presentation would 
 be forced to analyse itself, to break up into con- 
 flicting elements. The movement would in part 
 produce the same feeling as before by its effect on 
 the outside of the organism (we leave out for the 
 present inotoi" feelings, if there are any), and this 
 would reproduce by association the feeling of contact 
 with food and consequent pleasure ; but the fact of 
 failure would actually produce a different feeling, 
 possibly contact with some substance that caused 
 pain. The two elements would struggle, there would 
 be tension and pain, and finally the objective one, 
 as we call it — the one corresponding to the physical 
 fact — would drive the other, or merely mental element, 
 out. 
 
 At first this is all nothing more than a succession 
 of psychical modifications. Strictl}' speaking, we 
 
 ^ OF TIM 
 
 <^ 01 
 
26 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 cannot say that it is expectation and disappoint- 
 ment, because the suggestion of contact with food 
 simply came as a fact of presentation, and we must 
 not assume that at first the soul treats it as an 
 expectation — i.e. as something which promised or re- 
 ferred to a future fact of a different order from itself 
 
 But after experience of the conflict then the 
 suggestion of pleasure would tend to become a mere 
 expectation ; that is to say, when the feeling of the 
 movement was again suggested it would bring the 
 collision of feelings along with it ; the suggestion of 
 the food would be there, but accompanied by a 
 suggestion of possible failure, and this must ulti- 
 mately lead to the required distinction when, after 
 the movement, the presentation either occurs or 
 does not occur. 
 
 The conflict would then give rise to a distinction 
 between the continuous psychical course and the 
 grouped and recurring presentations that have power 
 to constrain or disappoint it. The conflicting sug- 
 gestions of pleasant and painful contact necessarily 
 come to be distinguished from the unambiguous 
 presentations which the reality will give ; and finally, 
 a psychical suggestion would come to be regarded as 
 a mere separable sign of the constraining presentation, 
 — a sign, that is, which might be experienced apart 
 from the presentation, but is no longer a single fact 
 in its own right. 
 
 Perception would then become possible. Its 
 essence would not be the mere blending of a 
 psychical suggestion with a presentation having 
 points of identity with it — not merely a feeling of 
 food reinforced by contact with real food and so 
 maintaining itself ; it would be the blending of ideal 
 
Ill COGNITION GROWTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 27 
 
 elements by identity with tlie objective presentation 
 after the two have passed through a thorough 
 opposition to each other, and the sign is distin- 
 guished from the thing signified. This is what I 
 wanted, or This is my food. F is/i Then at last 
 the blending through identity of points in the 
 content means a judgment. 
 
 Perception of Space {Inner and Outer). — Our 
 explanation of the Perception of Space, and of how 
 it has been developed, will depend again upon 
 whether we accept or reject psychological Atomism. 
 To the Associationist, Space can be constructed by 
 the linking together of sensations which originally 
 formed one or more Time series, and then by 
 occurring simultaneously became associated into the 
 perception of Space. This, however, really amounts 
 to saying that sense of Space is at bottom the sense 
 of Time ; and that is quite contrary to the facts of 
 experience. (See Ward, Ency. Brit., Ninth ed., vol. 
 XX. p. 53.) 
 
 On the other hand we make the problem even 
 harder than it is by treating elementary presentations 
 as if they had to be either inward or outward in the 
 developed sense. This is a distinction which only 
 appears later ; for we cannot have Imier except in 
 contrast with Outer. Thus the problem is not in 
 any case one of changing inner presentations — i.e. 
 mental changes, knozun as such — into outer ones ; but 
 of differentiating a given world, a world which would 
 not present itself as changes in a mind, as a time- 
 series^ but simply as a given mass. 
 
 Ward and James express this non-inwardness 
 which precedes the development of full spatial 
 character, by saying that " extensity," as the mere 
 
28 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 possibility of differentiation, is primitive. James, 
 indeed, seems to say that all sensations are extended 
 in three dimensions — i.e. that they all contain the 
 element of voluminousness, which is the original 
 sensation of space ; a view which seems incompre- 
 hensible, e.g.^ about sound. Nor does it seem likely 
 that his belief in an original third dimension of space, 
 which is perceived wtmediately^ can be justified. But 
 there is no doubt that, whether we accept the term 
 " extensity " or not, sensations of touch and sight 
 must have from the beginning a kind of more and 
 less which is other than ///tensity ; that is, they must 
 have spatial character, parts outside one another, 
 and capable of being recognised as outside one 
 another in the developed consciousness. 
 
 When we have assumed spatial quality as belong- 
 ing to certain of our presented groups, then recog- 
 nisable feelings of movement and contact help us to 
 give definition to the size and relative position of 
 those groups. All localisation must have its origin 
 in reference to the body, and the first question which 
 arises is the question as to how sensations are 
 localised by the subject in different parts of the 
 body. The process can only be explained by as- 
 suming some difference in the sensations themselves, 
 or their accompaniments, which enables us after 
 experience to assign them to some definite position 
 in space. The sensation must contain or be accom- 
 panied by some sign indicating the locality at which 
 the stimulus is felt. One suggestion has been that 
 every nerve conveys in addition to the sensation an 
 " extra-impression," which serves as this local sign, 
 and indicates to what position the stimulus which 
 gives rise to the sensation is to be referred. Lotze, 
 
Ill COGNITION GROWTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 29 
 
 in discussing the nature of this extra-impression, 
 suggests that no stimulus, not even the prick of a 
 pin, is really confined in its effect to a mathematical 
 point, but that owing to the continuity of the skin 
 there are accompanying displacements, each in its 
 turn giving rise to its special subordinate sensation 
 which accompanies the main sensation in conscious- 
 ness. This would fulfil the requirement " that all the 
 spatial relations of the stimulus acting on us should be 
 replaced by" (or translated into) " a system of gradu- 
 ated qualitative tokens," or local signs. (Lotze, Meta- 
 physics, Bk. iii. ch. iv. ; see also Ward, Ency. Brit., Ninth 
 ed., vol. XX. p. 54).^ When we have succeeded in 
 developing this system of local signs — when, that is, 
 experience has enabled us to differentiate them out of 
 the original vague continuum — then we are able to refer 
 things to their places in connection with our bodies. 
 
 Another question arises as to the perception of 
 distance. Is it only obtained by association with touch 
 and movement, or is it a true optical sensation ? 
 James seems to maintain that it is seen immediately, 
 and is not merely constructed from our experience. 
 But strictly speaking it is not visible; in the line of 
 vision point covers point, and it is only as plane 
 surfaces emerge that there is anything to be seen. 
 It is our interpretation of the relations between these 
 plane surfaces, as given in their sizes and colouring, 
 and combined with our experience of movements, 
 which enables us to construct a third dimension, i.e. 
 to see distance. But James's conception of measure- 
 ment by tilings which we identify seems very true as 
 an account of the development of the perception. 
 
 ^ For a criticism of Lotze's view, see Kiilpe's Outlines of Psychology 
 (E. Tr.), sect. 61. 
 
30 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 Touch and movement are necessary to give us the 
 first idea of the third dimension, but the presentational 
 groups would help to develop it. Here we see 
 how much depends on the identification of presenta- 
 tional groups. Spatial reality is the system of groups 
 which we connect with our bodies. 
 
 So also in Time ; the essence of the perception 
 depends on the formation within the psychical 
 continuum of groups that have phases. But in 
 order that succession may give rise to the idea of 
 succession, there must be something which is recog- 
 nised as interesting and persistent throughout the 
 successive phases. It seems natural to suppose that 
 the interest in succession (such as expectation, or the 
 contrast of the actual present and the unreal future, 
 and memory as introducing expectation) would exist 
 long before what we mean by Time arose — that is, 
 before any idea of comparative duration arose. 
 Tenses have been said to arise out of moods. 
 
 Probably at first. Time would be merely a system 
 of occasions or signals for action, which would thus be 
 much like any instinctive action, and it might have 
 very little to do with sense of duration. Birds will 
 go to roost in an eclipse, accepting the darkness as 
 a signal, without regard to the time at which it 
 occurs, i.e. to the duration of the day. But this 
 naturally develops into a process of holding together 
 the phases of tivo groups, which may of course be 
 one's bodily feelings and another group, and noting 
 how far they coincide. Failure to coincide would be 
 especially noticeable ; " mid-day sun and no food ! " 
 and the fear that the light would go before food was 
 obtained would give rise to interest in succession. 
 James's idea of measurement by things perhaps 
 
Ill COGNITION GROWTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 31 
 
 applies in Time also. It seems doubtful whether we 
 begin measurement by accurate phases of the body 
 group ; though we might begin with hunger. The 
 phases of those objects which demand customary 
 action would develop the idea of comparative dura- 
 tion by the attention directed upon them. If we 
 take for instance the distinction between winter and 
 summer nights, the difference of length could suggest 
 itself very slowly. An animal might by instinct 
 avoid a long chase on a winter's day, and try it on a 
 summer's day ; but when a creature came to re- 
 member and notice that it could go very much 
 further by daylight in summer than in winter, then 
 we have the germ of a comparison of duration. 
 
 The essential for any idea of succession at all is, 
 that several phases of some rhythm should be held 
 together in memory against some constant element ; 
 and this is the germ of comparing two sets of phases 
 together by asking how many of the one rhythm go 
 to one of the other ? It is impossible to compare 
 directly the phases of the same succession. There 
 is no attempt at accurate judgment until we come to 
 simple pJiysical theory, such as is involved in the 
 water-clock or the sand-glass ; there is, indeed, no 
 need to ask whether the days are equal, so long 
 as sunrise, noon, and sunset adequately dictate our 
 movements. 
 
 With regard to our construction of the temporal 
 series. Ward suggests that it is effected, or at least 
 facilitated by the " movements of attention." The 
 adjustments of expectation, etc., may be remembered, 
 and so help us to throw a series into order when we 
 look back upon it ; but unless there were also some 
 reason for the order the tendency would probably 
 
32 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 not be very strong. The judging of sJiort intervals, 
 again, has to do with the rhythm of respiration, etc., 
 but this is not the principal source of division used 
 for practical purposes. That is always axiomatic, 
 resting on the assumed constancy of some natural 
 process, as in the examples above referred to. (Cf. 
 author's Knozvledge and Reality, p. 329). 
 
 Physical Reality implies both Space and Time ; 
 Space as relation to the body group, and Time as 
 the idea of persistence apart from our psychical 
 course. It has been shown above how we endow 
 things with separate existence in order to explain 
 contradictions, due to change of phases contradicting 
 the suggestions of our psychical course. 
 
 Consciousness. — Consciousness as opposed to 
 unconsciousness is taken to cover all soul-life ; but 
 in this sense it must not be identified with conscious- 
 ness /<2r excellence — the state of mind which definitely 
 has an object before it, and seems to have little or 
 no content for the subject ; the state of mind, that 
 is, which regards the objective world as a given 
 something which is not itself This is the position 
 of common sense, and it is continued by abstraction 
 in the physical sciences, which, as we saw, take no 
 notice of being in the soid at all, but treat the process 
 of knowledge as a mere analysis of something given 
 outside the self. No doubt consciousness may be 
 bound to become j-^^consciousness as soon as we 
 reflect upon it, but the position of common-sense 
 is that it does not reflect. 
 
 Is not the body the self in early soul-life ? Not 
 exactly so ; there is more and less in the nucleus 
 of the Self from the first ; and the body is gradually 
 passed over into the objective world. This process 
 
Ill COGNITION — GROWTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 33 
 
 really leads up to a reaction. Common-sense ends 
 by passing everything over into the " other," e.g. 
 when we discover that sensation is not at the nerve- 
 tips, we begin to treat nerves as outside mind ; but 
 this " other " is being organised, and really is the 
 organised content of the soul ; although wc, in our 
 common-sense stage, have forgotten that it is so, 
 and have set it over against the bare abstract Self, 
 thus preparing for another stage. 
 
 D 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 I. The central point of our last lecture was the 
 development of cognition as it takes place in the 
 formation of groups within the psychical continuum. 
 In this lecture we shall consider the names given 
 to different aspects of the processes by which these 
 groups are formed and react upon one another in 
 such a way as to develop thought. We shall find 
 that these processes fall under two main heads, 
 Blending and Reproduction. The aspects known 
 as Assimilation, Discrimination, and Apperception 
 belong chiefly to Blending ; while Association be- 
 longs to Reproduction. (The subject of attention is 
 too wide to be dealt with here. It may be regarded 
 either as a general name for the laws according to 
 which presentation takes place, or in a more special 
 sense for volition.) 
 
 2. Assimilation and Discrimination are generally 
 treated as correlative processes, both employed in 
 the " elaboration of mind " (see Sully, Human Mind, 
 chap, vii.), but of an opposite tendency. The fact is, 
 that apart from the theory of identity (see Lecture 
 II.), their relation is very hard to state. Generally 
 
LECT. IV THE ORGANISATION OF INTELLIGENCE 35 
 
 Speaking, they are regarded as alternating, first a 
 little of one and then a little of the other ; and 
 according as psychologists have a preference for one 
 or the other, that one is represented as being of 
 primary importance, and preceding the other. (See 
 Sully, /.<;.) We seem to get nearer the truth if we 
 regard them both as different aspects of one and the 
 same process. Certainly we can hardly describe the 
 one without implying the other. 
 
 (a) Assimilation is elementary recognition (see Ward, 
 Ency. Brit., Ninth ed., vol. xx.), the mere perceiving 
 as like; that is to say, it is recognition unaccompanied 
 by any process of localisation, or of conscious com- 
 parison. In this sense it is recognition in its earlier 
 stages, or the germ of recognition.^ The process is 
 something like this : a change in the presentation 
 continuum such as has taken place before, recurs ; in 
 recurring, it coalesces with the residuum of its former 
 occurrence, and it thus appears as familiar ; i.e, it 
 is recognised as a previous experience, even though 
 the circumstances of its former occurrence cannot be 
 reproduced. 
 
 Why does the recurrence of a change make it 
 seem familiar ? The mere reinforcement by the 
 residuum of a previous change may make the im- 
 pression stronger or clearer than it would otherwise 
 have been, but there seems to be no reason why it 
 should give rise to a feeling of familiarity, the 
 consciousness that it has been there before. This 
 
 ^ I do not feel sure whether the note of faniiharity, of " I have seen 
 that before," which marks assimilation par excellence, is present in all 
 perception in an apprecial)le degree, except where there is distinct un- 
 familiarity. In returning to one's own house or room it is certainly 
 there. But the interest of a positive percei)tion — the " wliat is it?" — 
 often dwarfs the "seen before." 
 
36 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 must probably be due to a suggestion of difference. 
 The change itself has occurred before, but under 
 different circumstances, and therefore with different 
 psychical accompaniments. As the new content 
 blends with the residuum of the old, two different 
 contexts, the present and the past, are brought 
 together, and we are aware — more or less con- 
 sciously — of the same content in different settings. 
 This is what constitutes familiarity. The process is 
 thus a twofold one ; the blending of new and old 
 brings to light, or at any rate suggests, difference, and 
 at the same time the element of identity is rein- 
 forced. For instance, I am looking for a street, but 
 have forgotten its name. Suddenly I come upon it 
 and recognise it ; i.e. in the first place I notice the 
 name ; I pick it out from amongst all the others 
 because it is emphasised by blending with the sub- 
 conscious residuum. But this by itself is not enough. 
 I might notice it because it was written in larger 
 letters, and so emphasised above the others ; and mere 
 noticing is not recognition. But as I notice the 
 name it also faintly suggests the past context in 
 which it was presented, and which differed in some 
 respects from the present ; thus a difference, a vague 
 vista of continuity reaching beyond the given context, 
 is suggested, and the feeling of familiarity appears ; 
 the feeling of, as it were, comparing the presentation 
 with itself and finding it the same. 
 
 Strictly speaking, to assimilate would more 
 naturally mean to make like, than to recognise as 
 being like. Wundt brings this out clearly by 
 insisting on the way in which we are apt to transfer 
 the different context of our present perception to the 
 .previous one to which it is assimilated, or vice 
 
IV THE ORGANISATION OF INTELLIGENCE 37 
 
 versa, of the previous perception to the present one. 
 This may be done to a degree which actually 
 amounts to illusion ; our preconceived idea actually 
 modifies the presentation as we receive it. He gives 
 as an instance the illusion produced by the rough 
 daubs of the scene-painter, which are supplemented 
 by, or assimilated to, our former experience of land- 
 scapes, and so endowed with the qualities of reality. 
 It is, no doubt, a question how far there is an illusion 
 by means of the transference of differences, and how 
 far the presentation does actually undergo change. 
 
 Why do the groups of presentations within the 
 psychical continuum form as they do ? Why, that 
 is, do not colours group with colours, smells with 
 smells, and touches with touches ; instead of feel and 
 colour and smell combining together in one group as 
 one thing ? One reason, no doubt, is that Association 
 does not take place — as it has so often been said 
 to do — by similarity. (See Ward, Ency. Brit., Ninth 
 ed., vol. XX., p. 56.) 
 
 But the chief reason is, that the groups, in the 
 first place, are given in this way, and in the second, 
 act {i.e. are interesting for us) in these combinations. 
 Sensations of the same sense, such as two colours or 
 two sounds, tend to exclude each other. It is sensa- 
 tions of difTerent senses that can most naturally be 
 presented together, and when the group has been 
 formed the one sensation becomes a sign of the 
 others. Groups which constantly cohere in this way 
 come to be assimilated (recognised) as wholes which 
 affect us, and are therefore discriminated from the 
 background because of their importance for life, 
 before their elements are separately assimilated and 
 recognised as qualities. In science, that is when we 
 
38 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 begin to reflect upon them, we do arrange our sensa- 
 tions in qualitative series ; we disengage them, that 
 is, from the groups in which they are originally 
 given, and re-group them according to their kind. 
 
 (/3) This leads us to Discrimination. Here we 
 may note some points in James's chapter on Dis- 
 crimination {Text-book, p. 244). In the first place 
 the elements to be discriminated must, as he says, be 
 different if we are to know them as different. But 
 difference does not of itself make discrimination. 
 Two different elements may be presented without 
 the difference being noticed ; this corresponds to an 
 unassimilated presentation. As James points out, 
 impressions, to be discriminated, must be experienced 
 separately by the mind. But here we must be care- 
 ful to define what we mean by separately ; an isolated 
 impression is never experienced. The point is, that 
 any element, before it can be discriminated, must be 
 presented in different surroundings or in a different 
 context. Further, the elements to be discriminated 
 must have a common basis. Take as an instance 
 " goodness " and " two o'clock." Each is itself, the 
 two are quite different, but there is neither assimila- 
 tion nor discrimination between them ; there is no 
 psychical relation at all. We cannot have dis- 
 crimination, i.e. felt or perceived difference, without a 
 fight on the basis of identity, without having the 
 same content in different contexts (see last lecture), 
 and this begins with assimilation. The very sense 
 of familiarity has the germ of difference in it, of 
 persistence through two contexts. 
 
 Using a formula, we may say, A is given in two 
 contexts, AB and AC ; when it is presented again 
 it suggests both B and C, which must conflict until 
 
IV THE ORGANISATION OF INTELLIGENCE 39 
 
 they find a modus vivendi. This modus vivendi is a 
 relation of difference. " When a red ivory ball, seen 
 for the first time, has been withdrawn, it will leave a 
 mental representation of itself, in which all that it 
 simultaneously gave us will indistinguishably co-exist. 
 Let a white ball succeed to it ; now, and not before, 
 will an attribute detach itself, and the colour, by force 
 of contrast, be shaken out into the foreground. Let 
 the white ball be replaced by an ^^^, and this new 
 difference will bring the form into notice from 
 its previous slumber, and thus, that which began by 
 being simply an object cut out from the surrounding 
 scene becomes for us first a red object, then a red 
 round object, and so on " (Martineau in James, /.r.). 
 Or we may take as another instance a tree as it 
 appears with its leaves off, and again with its leaves 
 on ; here what is needed to make us recognise it as 
 the same tree under different conditions is the relation 
 of time-difference, with all that it involves. But quite 
 at first no definite relation is perceived ; there is simply 
 a feeling of familiarity, of persistence ; a feeling, that 
 is, of a former context accompanying assimilation. 
 
 3. Apperception. — James deals with this term in 
 a short section in his chapter on Perception, and 
 explains that he has not used it because of the very 
 different meanings which have at various times 
 attached to it. It is a word with an eventful history, 
 and played a great part in Kant's system. We 
 may perhaps say that what it meant for Kant was 
 the modification produced in the matter of perception 
 owing to the nature of the perceiving mind. This 
 is an attempt to do what has since been done more 
 fully — to insist, that is, upon the activity of the mind 
 
40 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 in perception, and to explain the nature of that 
 activity. In this explanation the chief danger to 
 be avoided is that of representing Apperception as 
 some kind of innate faculty, in a sense approaching 
 that of the old faculty-Psychology. For its modern 
 or Herbartian meaning we may take Mr. Stout's 
 definition of Apperception as " the process by which 
 a mental system appropriates a new element, or 
 otherwise receives a fresh determination." It is one 
 case of blending, sometimes leading to the repro- 
 duction of a former context ; but the term has 
 special reference to the modifications which are 
 produced in the new element by its incorporation 
 with the old. In this respect it is not unlike 
 Wundt's assimilation. It is important to remark 
 that the old element itself may, or indeed imtst^ be 
 modified in the process. ~ We cannot treat the old 
 elements, the " apperceiving mass," as being entirely 
 active, while the new element is entirely passive, 
 and merely allows itself to be appropriated without 
 exercising any influence on its appropriator. On 
 this point James quotes from Steinthal as follows : 
 " Although the a priori moment commonly shows 
 itself to be the more powerful, Apperceptiofi-pro- 
 cesses can perfectly well occur in which the new 
 observation transforms or enriches the apperceiving 
 groups of ideas. A child who hitherto has seen 
 none but four-cornered tables apperceives a round 
 one as a table, but by this the apperceiving mass 
 (' table ') is enriched. To his previous knowledge 
 of tables comes this new feature, that they need not 
 be four-cornered, but may be round." In this way 
 the doctrine connects with that of Connotation and 
 Denotation, illustrating the defectiveness of the view 
 
r. 
 
 T7 ^ 
 
 IV THE ORGANISATION OF INTELLIGENCE ^41 
 
 according to which they vary inversely ; by adding 
 to the kinds of things <2^^'noted by a term, the child 
 adds also to the qualities connoted by it. 
 
 This influence of the mind upon perception, which 
 constitutes what is known as apperception, is capable 
 of infinite illustration. The child who called a fern 
 a " pot of green feathers " interpreted the novel 
 object by an acquired disposition ; he saw what he 
 had seen before, not what the country child would sec. 
 The different perceptions which different people will 
 have of the same object can only be explained by 
 the contents of their minds, which have interpreted 
 the perception differently in each case. " On a 
 particular occasion during the recent visit of the 
 Empress of Germany to London it became the duty 
 of the reporters of the public journals to describe 
 Her Imperial Majesty's dress. T/ie Times stated 
 that the Empress was in * gold brocade,' while 
 according to the Daily' Nezvs she wore a 'sumptuous 
 white silk dress.' The Standard, however, took 
 another view — ' The Empress wore something which 
 we trust it is not vulgar to call light mauve.' On 
 the other hand, the Daily Chronicle was hardly in 
 accord with any of the others — ' To us it seemed 
 almost a sea-green, and yet there was now a cream 
 and now an ivory sheen to it' " (Quoted from Globe, 
 in Rooper on " Object-teaching.") It is the old truth, 
 that " the eye can only see what it brings with it 
 the power of seeing," expanded into a whole theory 
 of mind. It may be illustrated in a wider way from 
 the varying conceptions of history ; our " histories " 
 are the offspring of our current interests. 
 
 The psychical elements which form the contents 
 of the mind are so grouped and interconnected as 
 
42 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 to constitute what are technically known as Ap- 
 percipient masses or systems. M. Paulhan (Stout's 
 Psychology) compares this mental grouping to the 
 organisation within a commonwealth. Some of the 
 systems may be very simple, while others are very 
 complex ; the simpler ones will be generally sub- 
 ordinate to the complex ones, and throughout there 
 will be more or less interaction. Systems may 
 compete with each other, they may also co-operate. 
 They will compete when, and in so far as, they 
 tend to exclude each other from contact with a 
 given presentation ; difficulties in classifying any 
 new object or " specimen " will be due to this rivalry 
 between appercipient systems, or indecision as to 
 which of two interests we will sacrifice. On the 
 other hand they will co-operate in so far as they 
 excite each other by some coherence between them. 
 A system is strengthened in competition by the 
 number of co-operating systems which are excited, 
 so to say, on its side. By their adherence it gains in 
 weight and interest, and gradually drives its rival 
 from the field. Appercipient masses are the ideas 
 which are more or less dominant pro tern., and they 
 will vary in prominence according to the interest 
 before the mind, whether this interest be internally or 
 externally originated. They " rise to the occasion." 
 
 Generic ideas are in this sense appercipient 
 masses. By blending they reinforce that element 
 of the presentation which has a common content 
 with them, and the other elements which they do 
 not share are thrust out of sight, unless some other 
 appercipient mass is awakened to receive them. 
 
 As an instance of the way in which the dominant 
 mass determines what content shall hold the field. 
 
IV THE ORGANISATION OF INTELLIGENCE 43 
 
 we may note the effect of context in determining 
 the interpretation we put upon words. The word 
 " secular " has two meanings ; and if it stands in 
 isolation, there is no way of deciding what meaning 
 is to be attached to it ; probably the most common 
 one will be suggested. But in reading the line 
 " Through all the secular to be," the force of the 
 context is so strong as not only to determine the 
 meaning, but in some cases as to exclude even the 
 suggestion of the alternative. The same is true 
 of all words in so far as they are found in a living 
 context, and not in the isolation of the spelling- 
 book. 
 
 Not only may the systems of appercipient masses 
 be compared to organisations of persons ; they actu- 
 ally constitute their common mind and will. To 
 say that certain persons have common interests 
 means that in this or that respect their minds are 
 similarly or correlatively organised, that they will 
 react in the same or correlative ways upon given 
 presentations. It is this identity of mental organisa- 
 tion which is the psychological justification for the 
 doctrine of the General Will. 
 
 Passing from Apperception we come to Associa- 
 tion. In philosophical interest it is subordinate to 
 apperception, which is almost equivalent to the 
 organised working of the mind, and this carries us 
 to the higher stages of conscious life ; but as the 
 macJimcry of the mind Association is fundamental. 
 The doctrine really dates from Plato {Phaedo, 73 sq.). 
 His point is to bring the whole process of knowledge 
 under the law of reproduction, in order to establish 
 his difdfjLV7]at<i ; it is the recovery by Association of 
 mental possessions which we have lost. For him 
 
44 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 the process of reproduction is the same as that of 
 knowledge. All given presentations act by sug- 
 gestion, and therefore come under the general head 
 of reproduction. In Phaedo, y6, he clearly indicates 
 cases of association by contiguity and resemblance. 
 " For we saw that this was possible : that when per- 
 ceiving something, whether by sight or hearing or 
 any other kind of sense, one may, from this percep- 
 tion, get a suggestion of something else which one 
 had forgotten, to which the first mentioned was 
 contiguous, though unlike, or to which it was like." 
 
 Aristotle, again, suggests as the laws of Associa- 
 tion — Resemblance, Contrast, Co-existence, and 
 Succession, or, combining the last two, Contiguity. 
 
 Contrast is now admitted to be a case of con- 
 tiguity, and similarity remains as the great recent 
 crux (see Bradley, Logic, and Ward, /.r.). It is a 
 difficulty of principle. Similarity only exists when 
 two ideas are before the mind, and therefore it 
 cannot be used to reproduce one of those two. 
 Moreover, it is only needed as an explanation if we 
 regard images as simple ; if we admit that they are 
 all complex, it can be reduced to contiguity (see 
 Lecture IL). The given elements abc reproduce 
 their former context by contiguity, and that former 
 context persists and is compared with the given 
 object. Take the case of the portrait, which Plato 
 uses ; the portrait consists of elements abcde, the 
 idea of the actual person consists of elements abcfg. 
 The identical abc suggests fg, with which it is con- 
 tiguous in the other context, and then the portrait 
 is compared with the idea of the actual person. 
 
 James points out {Text-Book, p. 270) that there 
 is no tendency to this recall by similarity amongst 
 
IV THE ORGANISATION OF INTELLIGENCE 45 
 
 simple ideas ; it is only where complex ideas have 
 an identical element that we find it. In what he 
 calls " focalised recall," the active element, after 
 awakening its new set of associates, contimics per- 
 sistently active along with them ; that is, it is an 
 element identical in the two ideas. 
 
 Contiguity. — It is no doubt an improvement to 
 reduce association to contiguity, as Ward and James 
 have done ; but the question of the elements betwecit 
 zvhicJi the contiguity or connection operates still 
 remains. The principle that Association marries 
 only universals has been discussed in dealing with 
 Psychological Atomism. When the identical element 
 in operation has a number of associates, what deter- 
 mines which will be recalled? (See James, p. 264 ; 
 Bradley, Logic.) It resolves itself into a question 
 of apperception ; those associates which are in con- 
 nection with the dominant appercipient system will 
 be introduced, while others will be neglected. 
 
 The nature of identity is at the root of the 
 question. We might represent it by a forked line 
 Y ; two lines having an identical part Certainly it is 
 not singularity (see Ward, Lc, p. 81), for this excludes 
 difference. The way in which the whole question 
 of Atomism is here involved may be brought out by 
 asking ourselves in what our ideal of knowledge 
 consists. Is it "A is A," the mere repetition of the 
 same concept ? or is it " man is animal," the con- 
 nection of two concepts by an element common to 
 both? 
 
 The distinction has been drawn between material 
 and individual identity, but perhaps it is not an 
 ultimate one. Individual identity is one of content, 
 in which we may treat a new beginning as consti- 
 
46 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. iv 
 
 tuting an essential difference or not, according to 
 its laws of change. If interruption in time is to be 
 regarded as fatal to individual identity, what becomes 
 of the identity of my mind, with its periodical 
 lapses ? or, again, of the House of Commons as an 
 element in the British Constitution ? 
 
 To sum up : All cognition is Identity asserting 
 itself. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 I . Its Relation to Consciousness. — Regarded as 
 phases in the development of mind, consciousness 
 and self- consciousness are not strictly successive, 
 although of course the higher tends to become 
 predominant in the later stages of development. 
 According to our view of self-consciousness, a savage 
 must have his form of it (perhaps even the higher 
 animals have something corresponding to it) in his 
 feelings of success or of being equal to what has to 
 be done. In quite an elementary stage of develop- 
 ment we have the feeling of what is expected of us, 
 or necessary, in order that the world may recognise 
 us ; the feeling that finds expression, e.g., in saying 
 " (^a me connait " instead of " I know it." 
 
 2. Its Relation to Cognition. — Consciousness, on 
 the whole, we have classed mainly under cognition ; 
 it is necessarily a more one-sided state of mind than 
 self-consciousness. As its type we took the Judg- 
 ment of Perception ; or, on a large scale. Natural 
 Science. The attitude of consciousness is : I k}ioiv 
 this object, which is given, which is simply con- 
 trasted with nic\ The subject in this state of mind 
 
48 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 is very abstract, or indeed practically disappears ; 
 the self is felt rather than reflected on. 
 
 Self- consciousness has, of course, its cognitive 
 side, but it can hardly be included under cognition. 
 In explaining the origin even of consciousness, we 
 had to take action into account, and this is still more 
 the case with self-consciousness. When reflection is 
 attracted to the self, which is more or less of a unity, 
 the will cannot be disregarded, though in cognition 
 we may perhaps abstract from it. As Science 
 corresponds to Consciousness, so Philosophy corre- 
 sponds to Self-consciousness ; as compared with the 
 abstract sciences it is a return to the concrete, and 
 in it again we come nearer to the element of Will. 
 It expresses the attitude of the self to experience, 
 and in this sense experimental science has some 
 affinity to it 
 
 3. TJie Element of Will. — The general nature of 
 self- consciousness is that it recognises itself as an 
 object, which passes into recognising the object as 
 itself. Consciousness keeps the two, the self and 
 the object, distinct and apart (see James's Analysis 
 of tJie Self). In producing this recognition the 
 element of self-assertion is plainly operative. We 
 may recall the effect ascribed to disappointment in 
 generating consciousness ; successful self-assertion 
 against the object tends to produce the feeling that 
 its independence or resistance is a sham, that it is 
 not really alien. Indeed, as Hegel points out, we 
 do not really believe that the objects of the external 
 world exist in their own right, since we go so far 
 as to eat and drink them. We have a parallel to 
 this in Cognition when we discover that science, 
 
V SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 49 
 
 " the reality of things," is, in fact, a system of 
 thoughts. Then " otherness " takes a last refuge 
 in the " Thing in itself," which is a mere thought ; 
 " we lift the curtain which hides the last recess, and 
 find that there is nothing to be seen, unless, indeed, 
 we go behind the curtain ourselves, both for the 
 purpose of seeing and in order that there may be 
 something to see" (Hegel, PJienom. p. 126). Then 
 at last we recognise that all along this process has 
 in some sense or another been within the self; that 
 the object is not alien, but is always passing over 
 into the self 
 
 4. The Recognition of Persons. — Hegel illustrates 
 the transition from Consciousness to Self-conscious- 
 ness by a social evolution — that from slavery to 
 civilised equality in a commonwealth. The important 
 element to him is the element of recognition of 
 another's personality, or of our own personality by 
 another ; and this in its lowest form exists as the 
 result of a struggle, such as the struggle between 
 slave and master. (Compare also the struggle 
 between Beatrice and Benedick.) The slave, though 
 in one sense a mere thing, is capable of recognition, 
 and has accepted the position of subservience in 
 such a way that he reflects his master's will or self- 
 assertion, and thereby makes it aware of itself 
 Then by a long process of evolution this inequality 
 is stripped off, until in a civilised commonwealth 
 we have the reciprocal recognition of free individuals, 
 in whom the same self- consciousness responds to 
 itself, and constitutes a system of rights and duties 
 and aims which is the positive substance of self- 
 consciousness. If we compare self-consciousness in 
 
 E 
 
50 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 the bad sense, we find that the term is used when 
 the self is indeed aware of itself but cannot count 
 upon a positive place, upon that definite recognition 
 which constitutes its reality. It is the form of 
 self- consciousness without an adequate content. 
 Speaking generally, it is only in the medium of 
 recognition that a realised self- consciousness can 
 exist ; outside of this medium we get either the 
 hero or the lunatic. This is important for the 
 theory of rights. 
 
 In recent Psychology this view is represented by 
 the account of the self as a person (Ward, /.<"., p. 84), or 
 of the social self (James). It may be questioned how 
 far the conflict with other selves, and recognition by 
 them, are necessary to the psychological development 
 of self-consciousness. All that seems necessary in 
 theory is collision against our object, with enough 
 impression on it to mark it as " mine." Is the body^ 
 as the source of pleasure and pain, sufficient for the 
 purpose ? It is extraordinary how much it takes 
 to start self-consciousness, especially in the absence 
 of looking-glasses ; ^ in the early part of a healthy 
 life it hardly occurs to us that we have an appearance 
 at all ; and we shall find that it is usually the 
 estimate of others, or our estimate of them, that 
 suggests it. A tiger, or even a savage, can only feel 
 the effect of its own appearance from seeing its 
 fellows. Language, self-decoration, sexual selection, 
 the family, everything which helps to fix the atten- 
 tion on those persistent presentation groups which 
 are in definite relation with the self, must help. To 
 
 ^ Cf. " Cas. Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face? 
 Di'iit. No, Cassius ; for the eye sees not itself, 
 But by reflection, by some other things." 
 
V SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 51 
 
 sum up : Self- consciousness, as lue experience it, is 
 for the most part social. 
 
 5. The Meanings of Self. — James makes a useful 
 distinction between " I " and " me " ; the self as 
 knower and the self as known. The known self or 
 me he distinguishes again into the material inc, the 
 social me, and the spiritual me. These are not so 
 much phases as different aspects of the developed 
 self, an analysis of what can be called " mine " into 
 divisions which correspond roughly to (i.) property 
 or products, (ii.) reputation, (iii.) mind. All that is 
 in any sense mine goes to make up the me, and 
 from the first more is mine than my own body. 
 Perhaps also less. According to James our social 
 selves are other people's ideas of us ; but to this we 
 should add that they are other people's ideas of us 
 as reflected into our oivn ideas. These analyses are 
 very important for questions of altruism and egoism, 
 and we shall have more to say of them. But if we 
 compare pp. 184, 194, 195, we shall find that James 
 does not make full use of his analyses. He comes 
 to use the expressions "bodily self-seeking" and 
 " egoism " quite uncritically, in the vulgar sense ; 
 forgetting, e.g., that the material or bodily me, as he 
 has described it, would include quite impersonal 
 results, such as an artist's pictures. 
 
 Ward's analysis is perhaps more difficult. He 
 distinguishes the Bodily Self the Inner Self and the 
 Self as Person. These arc more like phases than 
 elements, and we may note that he uses the 
 expression " first of all " in speaking of the Bodily 
 Self. But from the first the core of experiences 
 identified with feeling probably includes more than 
 
52 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 the body group ; it includes whatever has not been 
 separated by special division, such as experiences of 
 the home and family, and there seems no reason to 
 think that these would be sifted out as we go back 
 to more primitive stages where discrimination is less. 
 Of course we must not think of an accurate percep- 
 tion of our bodies at an early stage : that develops 
 with the spatial discrimination of objects in general. 
 
 The Inner Self (see also Sully) ^ seems to be 
 the mind considered as a thing inside the body, like 
 the ghost or soul which the savage believes in, and 
 located perhaps in the breast, where emotion seems 
 to be felt. There is a difficulty in distinguishing 
 between content and locality. The Homeric Greek 
 says, " I too have a mind fashioned in my breast, in 
 no way defective." He identifies the seat of mind 
 with that of emotional disturbance, but the content 
 of his self — his body and arms and ancestry and 
 actions — is not confined to this mind-thing. Here 
 we have the germ of the distinction between the 
 Psychological and Logical point of view. The 
 savage Jias his mind ; it is not his whole world, but 
 a thing, a part of himself, just as he has eyes and 
 ears and feet, and a certain character or fame. 
 
 True Self-consciousness begins with the Self as a 
 Person^ as we have explained it above. It is 
 characterised, as Ward says, by the not-self reacting 
 upon the self; ix. by reciprocal recognition in which 
 the not-self becomes a second self with a correspond- 
 ing appercipient group. A person is a subject of 
 rights and duties, and is aware of his own qualities 
 as conditioning his own rights and duties : " I am a 
 workman or teacher," etc. 
 
 ^ HiDiian Mind, i, 477- 
 
V SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 53 
 
 Altruism and the Self. — If we look at what Sully 
 says of the reflected self in children we find that, as 
 also in James, the contrast of extra-regarding impulses 
 and self-love seems inconsistent with our conception 
 of the self, and very confusing. The writers seem to 
 oscillate between the " mind-thing " inside the body 
 and the content of the mind, which includes, e.g.^ our 
 family. We must ask to wJiat self are the extra- 
 regarding impulses external ? According to our 
 answer to this we get exactly opposite views of their 
 nature. 
 
 The general form of Self-consciousness is Reflection 
 or " Internal Perception," and this corresponds to 
 James's Spiritual Self. It is expressed as " This is 
 my thought, or will, or feeling," of which the central 
 core is " This Is my idea of myself," and " I am I " ; 
 thus it is always empirical. 
 
 This implies the distinction between the self 
 which knows and the self which is known ; James's 
 distinction between " I " and " me." There are three 
 matters in which his account — which is very good — 
 needs emphasising. 
 
 (i.) The Self as Me ( = all that is mine) includes 
 the object and relative not-me as well as the subject. 
 It is the whole of my mental contents ; for of course 
 the matters about which I habitually think modify 
 my individuality and fall within my mind. It is 
 Important to distinguish my self as = " mine," includ- 
 ing my past self and the self which I repudiate, from 
 self as the momentary subject in knowledge or action. 
 There seems to be a tendency in Ward to cut down 
 the self towards the subject; and James's classification 
 is not quite distinct, e.g.^ as to the line between the 
 material self and the social self. My family is In 
 
54 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 the former, and I as reflected in the minds of my 
 family am in the latter. But what he aims at is 
 including in the self all that in any way belongs to 
 me, is " mine." 
 
 (ii.) Within the me or mine, the relative " not-me " 
 and the " I " have to a great extent interchangeable 
 contents. What is mine is a fluctuating material 
 (James). Our current course of ideas, e.g., may jar 
 with some distinct line of thought which we wish to 
 pursue ; then we fight against it, and it thereby 
 becomes a relative " not-me " within the " mine," just 
 as much as the noise of a barrel-ors^an. Ap;ain, 
 we may stand aside from our past self, and pass 
 judgment upon it (Ward) : " I was not my self when 
 I did that." Even the elements in our present 
 emotional state we may set over against us as objects, 
 and say they are wrong, they ought to be otherwise ; 
 that is, there is some group of contents, some feeling 
 and idea, which becomes one with our innermost core, 
 and reacts against the elements of our present 
 emotional state. Then this group of contents is the 
 " I," and the present emotional state, though within 
 the " me," is relatively to it the " not-me." 
 
 This is not so hard as it seems ; it is simply the 
 way in which we handle our experience. There is 
 no doubt that within our whole mental content there is 
 a continual fluctuation between the "I" and "me" and 
 " not-me." We really can take the self to be almost 
 anything in our experience, and in the same way we 
 can regard anything in our experience as our not- 
 self; we are somewhat differently identified with 
 every change of attention. For instance, I may feel 
 myself an extension lecturer, and as such criticise 
 the regular University teachers, or vice versa. Or 
 
V SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 55 
 
 again, I may contrast my holiday life and town life ; 
 when I am in the one, I criticise the other ; or to 
 take an example of the same thinc^ within a smaller 
 circuit, I may criticise my self as I tliink I am at the 
 moment, e.g. as I am in my holiday life. By 
 analysing what I feel my self to be, I drag it out to 
 be looked at, and in so doing pass over as much of 
 the self as I can, from the subject into the object ; 
 the " I " passes into the " me " and the " not-me." 
 
 (iii.) In Psyschology, then, the " I " is not the pure 
 or abstract ego ; that is a mere abstraction of the 
 attribute of knowing. The "I" in Psychology is always 
 accompanied by content, and this content is not 
 permanent or unchangeable, or essentially attached 
 to the self. 
 
 6. This brings us to the question of Personal 
 Identity (see James, pp. 201 sq.). In discussing it 
 the principle to follow is, that it is of the same nature 
 as the identity of any other thing ; i.e. that it does 
 not exclude change, and can only be stated relatively 
 to some purpose. 
 
 For practical purposes, e.g. in law, we go in the 
 main by bodily identity ; but this is at once sub- 
 jected to reservations, and bodily identity is only 
 regarded as a sigji of personal identity, not as con- 
 stituting it. There is a difficulty in speaking of the 
 " same mind," since the mind does not seem to have 
 continuous existence. Great psychological interest 
 attaches to those qualities which bind experiences 
 together into a single experience, in spite of changes 
 and interruptions ; the basis consists of bodily feeling, 
 and — as James points out — a mass of identical 
 elements which, though they alter, do not as a rule 
 
56 rSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 all alter at once. But identity does not depend 
 upon the individual's sense of unity in his experience 
 or memory, for this may be false ; it is not memory, 
 but only the facts as truly remembered that seem to 
 make actual identity. The abstract " I " or supposed 
 pure ego will not help us, for identity must be a 
 content, something that we take to be essential ; a 
 pure form can have neither identity nor change. 
 James deals v^^ith limiting cases in his account of 
 morbid egos. The basis of self-feeling (bodily 
 sensations, etc.) being cut in two, reproduction cannot 
 produce it as a single experience ; a brings up bcd^ 
 and y5 brings up efg^ but a and yS with their 
 respective associations exclude each other. 
 
 Practically, our result is that the question cannot 
 be answered in general ; there is no essential in- 
 dividual, and no essence apart from a teleological 
 point of view. We must define our question by a 
 statement of purpose : Is this man still the same in 
 intellect^ in character^ in his legal obligations^ or in 
 nationality ? — then we can find a definite answer. 
 The practical fact that removes any grave difficulty 
 is, that though we may say that a man ceases to be 
 himself, we have as a rule no reason to raise the 
 question as to whether he can become some one 
 else who already exists. Our system of responsibility 
 would be seriously shaken if bodily identity were 
 no longer a sufficient guide ; if, that is, I could enter 
 your body to do something wrong, and then return, 
 as has been suggested in cases of hypnotism. 
 
 7. Feeling in Self. — All the elements of the " I," 
 the " me," and the relative " not-me," are always held 
 together by feelings of which the nucleus is probably 
 
V SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 57 
 
 the somatic consciousness with its pleasure and pain. 
 This feeling is qualified by everything which falls 
 into the background of consciousness. Our clothing, 
 the habitual surroundings of our room, warmth and 
 cold, habits and recollections, — myriads of things like 
 these keep up a habitual feeling of one's particular 
 life. This is always present more or less in all that 
 we do or think, and it is what, empirically speaking, 
 maintains our sense of continuity. We all know how 
 in some mode of life which we take up intermittently 
 a special continuity forms itself: we fall into the 
 ways of the place or people, and feel as if we had 
 never been away. This comes from the innumerable 
 details which modify the background of feeling, and 
 so reinstate the particular self that belongs to the 
 life there. How far we might be broken up by an 
 absolute change and clean cut from the past is not 
 often tried, but we get an approach to it in some 
 cases of so-called " double personality," or even of 
 " conversion." 
 
 Analogous to this, but more reflective, is self- 
 feeling in the sense of a special emotion such as pride 
 or vanity. This supervenes upon the whole structure 
 of personality, instead of forniing the base of it, but 
 there is no doubt that it acts to some extent in the 
 same way as bodily and general feeling in strengthen- 
 ing the feeling of continuous personality. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 FEELING 
 
 Feeling has many kindred terms in our vocabulary, 
 such as passion, affection, emotion, and sensation. 
 Sensation, however, has now acquired a somewhat 
 different meaning, in which it is generally used ; and 
 all originally indicated more of passivity or receptive- 
 ness. We may see what a curious change has taken 
 place in the usage of the terms by comparing 
 passionate or affectionate with passive or affected in 
 the sense of being easily affected by pity or the 
 weather or the like. " Passionate " or " in a passion ' 
 we should now consider to be a very active state. 
 " Feeling," though originally about equivalent to 
 " passion," has retained its passive sense ; irdQo^ is 
 Greek for " passion or feeling " ; TVaayeiv or pati 
 means to suffer, to have something happen to you. 
 Emotion, again, seems to indicate a condition of 
 activity as the result of being acted upon, i.e. of 
 passivity (cf French s^emouvoir). 
 
 Seitsation seems to be meant for an active form, 
 although it is not a true derivative from any verb. 
 It Jias even been used popularly of states that belong 
 to feeling in the narrowest sense, i.e. of pleasure and 
 pain ; and it still has a peculiar use for a shocking 
 
LECT. VI FEELING 59 
 
 or striking emotion, as when we speak of a sensation 
 novel or a sensation in court. But on the whole it 
 is now used, especially in Psychology, to indicate 
 something belonging to cognition ; a mental element 
 referred to one or other of the definite five senses 
 (probably from analogy with the word sense). Then, 
 again, feeling is used for one special kind of sensation, 
 toucJi, and sometimes also for other sensations which 
 are not easily classified, e.g. for warmth and cold, for 
 the sensation experienced during the motions of the 
 limbs, and for the organic sensations. This is per- 
 haps due to a tendency to regard the less definite 
 contents as " feeling," this being the more general 
 term. 
 
 It will help us to understand the use of these 
 terms if we say a few words as to their history. 
 The connection of Feeling, in the sense of emotion, 
 with passiveness probably came from the idea of 
 Reason as being the essential activity of mind, for 
 this led to the emotional states being regarded as 
 forced upon the mind from without and, as it were, 
 upsetting it ; they were always looked upon as given, 
 not inferred or made. 
 
 It was this comparison and contrast between 
 " feelings " and intelligence which struck Descartes 
 and his school, by whom they were treated as 
 " confused modes of thought." One characteristic 
 of the so-called feelings is certainly brought out by 
 this way of describing them, i.c. that they are 
 distinguishable amongst each other b}- reason of a 
 content or object. If, for instance, we consider the 
 difference between Anger and Fear, we find it to 
 consist in our relation towards a certain evil. Per- 
 haps, also, it is true that during an emotion the 
 
6o PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 content is not usually clear ; a man could not or 
 would not analyse his emotion while undergoing it ; 
 and then in a sense it is obscure. But there is 
 always something more than the content and its 
 obscurity to be taken account of; the theory failed 
 to explain the peculiar nature of feeling, its aspect 
 as to pleasure and pain. 
 
 In modern times Kant was the first to definitely 
 place this " feeling of pleasure and pain " on an 
 independent basis as a third capacity of the soul, 
 neither cognitive nor appetitive {Kritik derr. Verinnft^ 
 p. 1 6). This is the current view of to-day, and we 
 shall return to it directly ; the difficulty of the 
 transition to it is that our " feelings " are not exactly 
 modification or species of " feeling " itself in the 
 strict sense. 
 
 Just at Kant's time there was an outburst of a 
 view contrary to his, which was partly owing to his 
 " agnostic " tendency. Jacobi, for instance, following 
 Rousseau, was impressed by the apparent reality 
 and depth of Feeling (as when we speak of religious 
 or poetic feeling), and regarded it as an organ of 
 spiritual truth ; thus placing it above reflective know- 
 ledge, and not belozv, as Descartes had done. This 
 is an important contribution to the conception of 
 Feeling ; it lays stress on its directness or immediate- 
 ness, through which it seems to give us a contact 
 with reality that nothing else does, and at the same 
 time it agrees with the older view in insisting on 
 content, i.e. that something positive (I do not say 
 definite) seems to be brought home to us in Feeling. 
 It is, indeed, somewhat of a paradox ; you have a 
 grasp of something, but cannot say of what. Some- 
 times Jacobi called this faculty Reason, but for him 
 
VI FEELING 6i 
 
 it was always direct and unreflective, and superior 
 to reflection. It is important to note that great 
 attention was being paid to aesthetic philosophy at 
 this time. 
 
 Now of course the great idealists could not let 
 Feeling stand above Reason — no systematic philoso- 
 pher could ; nevertheless this view, vehemently as it 
 was attacked by Hegel, did affect his own theory. 
 He insists, that is, on the directness and reality of 
 Feeling ; all content has to pass through the form 
 of Feeling, and in that sense it might be said that 
 Feeling is the one revelation of reality. But then 
 it is only the beginning or germ, it is wJiat yoic are 
 psychically, not zvJiat you know ; its contents are 
 dragged out one by one and made objective and 
 systematic, and without this process of interpretation 
 it gives no definite results. Hence in using it as 
 evidence of anything we are interpreting it, putting 
 a meaning into it. It is, of course, a form of 
 experience which must not be neglected ; but 
 whether we give it the name of Feeling or not, is 
 a merely verbal matter. Whatever we may call 
 it, this " immediate " phase of mind is the germ both 
 of intellect and of will. 
 
 The modern view (say that of Ward) on the 
 whole goes back to that of Kant. Feeling, according 
 to this view, is the pure feeling of pleasure or pain ; 
 it cannot be identified with either cognition or 
 volition, and does not, as such, include any " matter" 
 or " content." Upon the relation of these aspects 
 to the whole psychosis or mental state, the student 
 should read Ward's article carefully {I.e., p. 44) ; we 
 have not three kinds of state, but three characters 
 or features, in the whole mental state at any moment. 
 
62 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 It follows from this that what we popularly call a 
 feeling or emotion — such as hope, anger, etc. — is 
 really made up of (i.) pure Feeling, i.e. a degree of 
 pleasure or pain, and (ii.) elements of presentation, 
 of sensation or cognition, which are accompanied by 
 this pure Feeling. 
 
 Pure Feeling, then, in this limited sense has no 
 quality. The quality or character of what is 
 generally called a feeling or emotion comes from 
 the sensations or cognitions that go with it. For 
 instance, in a burning pain or a gnawing pain, the 
 qualities of burning or gnawing are sensations ; the 
 pain is distinct from them, and is said to be 
 separable and slower in arising. The only charac- 
 teristics belonging to pain and pleasure as such are 
 intensity and rhythm ; so that a throbbing pain 
 may perhaps take the quality of throbbing from the 
 rhythm of the pain itself. This agreeable or dis- 
 agreeable accompaniment of a sensation is called its 
 " tone," and it seems probable that all sensations 
 have in some degree this tone, although it is often 
 hardly perceptible. 
 
 This account, taken in connection with the fact 
 that there is no sign of a separate set of nerve-centres 
 for the emotions or for pleasure and pain, seems 
 to go a long way towards settling the question 
 whether pure Feeling is an object of cognition, i.e. 
 whether it is a presentation. 
 
 If the question were : " Are warmth and cold, or 
 sweetness and bitterness, or joy and fear presenta- 
 tions ? " the answer must be yes ; and it is difficult 
 to see how we can exclude from the answer their 
 respective accompaniments of pleasure and pain, for 
 these certainly do make a difference to them. But 
 
VI FEELING 63 
 
 if wc ask : " Is the pleasure in sweetness or joy a 
 separable clement, like taste or form or colour, so 
 that it can be perceived by itself as a positive 
 object ? " the answer must probably be no. At any 
 rate it is clear what is meant ; if I say " it is hot," or 
 " it is red," I convey a perception to the hearer ; but 
 if I say " it is pleasant," I convey no perception of a 
 special content. Perhaps the same may be said of 
 such qualities as beautiful or ugly, cheerful or sombre ; 
 at any rate the abstraction seems to give rise to a 
 difficulty in such cases. The prevalent opinion 
 seems to be that the positive characters are perceived 
 and not the feeling, but that the two are confused. 
 It will be enough here just to state the counter 
 question as to whether this is a fair account of all 
 the predicates which imply agreeable and disagree- 
 able feelings, whether they do not really objectify 
 pleasure and pain in their connection with presentative 
 elements. We certainly cannot have a pure Feeling, 
 i.e. pleasure or pain, without qualities — so much 
 seems clear. Feeling in this sense is nothing which 
 constitutes a separate object by itself. 
 
 The next question which arises is that of the 
 conditions of pleasure and pain. 
 
 It is natural for the theory of Evolution to 
 take the view that pleasure goes with benefit to the 
 organism, and pain with injury, for otherwise how 
 could creatures have lived ? The difficulty arises 
 when we consider the obvious exceptions to this rule ; 
 Lotze, for instance, takes the case of a sweet poison, 
 and points out \.\\dit feeling only reports the immediate 
 and local effect, and neglects consequences. 
 
 We need, then, to ask in what form benefit 
 accompanies pleasure. Ward distinguishes between 
 
64 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 (i.) the Intensity and (ii.) the Quality of sensations ; 
 and holds the view that (i.) Sensation as such is 
 pleasant, while its intensity can be adequately met by 
 attention, (ii.) that pleasant quality accompanies an 
 expanding field of consciousness, and painful quality 
 its contraction. 
 
 With regard to (ii.) we may raise the question of 
 the relativity of pain and pleasure. Does pleasure 
 essentially require the sense of conquering something 
 that opposes it, so that it consists in the sense of 
 victory ? If so, then contraction should certainly be 
 painful, but it is not clear that it always is so, as, for 
 instance, in going to sleep. Bradley suggests that it 
 is not contraction as such, but discord, which is pain- 
 ful ; we do not feel that we lose unless there are some 
 elements left to remind us of what we lose. 
 
 We may perhaps reduce the whole account to (i.), 
 and say that Presentation is in itself pleasant when 
 there is no discord. Then we shall regard pleasure 
 as not essentially relative, i.e. as not essentially 
 consisting in the removal of pain. Plato seems to 
 have been right in admitting that there are relative 
 pleasures, while asserting that there are also pure 
 pleasures (such as the pleasures of smell, or aesthetic 
 and intellectual pleasures). The question may also 
 take a form in which it is the root of modern pessi- 
 mism : Is pain the positive feeling, and pleasure only 
 negative, i.e. a release from pain ? Schopenhauer took 
 the view that this was so. The theory finds support 
 in certain examples in which the same actual states 
 — say of an illness — may be painful at one time and 
 pleasant at another — painful after health, pleasant 
 after worse illness ; but these cases may be quite 
 well explained without making all pleasure purely 
 
VI FEELING 65 
 
 relative. Plato's instances mentioned above retain 
 their weight ; there are pleasures which have no 
 pain preceding them. 
 
 We may say, then, that Pleasure seems to accom- 
 pany all presentation which is not discordant, while 
 pain accompanies discord. This really covers what 
 the old view meant by connecting pleasure with activity 
 (J.e. not motion but simply mental being), but differs 
 seriously from the view that pain checks activity. 
 We might rather say that pleasure is a stable con- 
 dition, a condition of equilibrium, while pain is an 
 unstable condition seeking to regain equilibrium.^ 
 
 We have said that most sensations, if not all, have 
 their tone, i.e. their pleasurable or painful accom- 
 paniment. The same is true of probably every idea, 
 or interpretation of direct presentation ; and the most 
 marked type of these ideas with their pleasurable or 
 painful accompaniments we call emotions. James 
 describes these in his text-book, but they are really 
 individual in their nature, and a mere description is 
 not of much value. Their distinctive quality, that by 
 which they differ, is all presentative ; the pure feeling, 
 or pleasure and pain, by which they are accom- 
 panied, is not to be got at by analysis, and must 
 be taken as being one throughout all of them. 
 
 The presentative elements in emotion may be 
 said on the whole to be of two kinds, ideal content 
 and bodily sensation (or bodily resonance). James's 
 view is that there is, indeed, nothing else in the 
 emotion ; and there is, as we have said, no sign of a 
 separate emotional centre. In fear, e.g., the ideal 
 content is an evil menacing the self (in one sense 
 
 ^ Cf. Bradley in Mind, Jan. 1SS8, ])j). 1-36, and Leslie Stephen, 
 Science of Ethics, p. 51. 
 
 F 
 
66 rSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 or another of the self) ; the bodily resonance comes 
 from a number of typical movements which have 
 their own appropriate sensations, and which all com- 
 bine in .qualifying the painful feeling and together 
 make up the peculiar recognisable psychosis, or 
 state of mind, which we call fear. (The origin of 
 these movements is historically interesting, but not 
 of much philosophical value.) This view leads to 
 three results about ideal feelings or emotions. 
 
 (i.) In general ihcy can be analysed only in respect 
 of their presentative elements (this recalls the point 
 of view from which they are regarded as " confused 
 ideas "). 
 
 (ii.) It has a particular bearing upon Esthetic 
 Emotions. What we call the expression of an 
 emotion is really a modification of it, because it 
 changes the external presentative elements contained 
 in it. This modification may change the emotion 
 in very important ways, and may even affect the 
 ideal content itself. For the aesthetic emotions 
 especially this view is fundamental ; for we may 
 fairly say of them that they have to become such 
 as can be embodied in an individual object, and 
 this can only be by undergoing modification in their 
 expression. 
 
 (iii.) TJie Moral Emotions. — In the ideal pre- 
 sentative element of an emotion — what we call its 
 occasion or content — the central point is its relation 
 to the self, and if we start from psychical individual- 
 ism we tend to confuse emotions which are really 
 quite opposite. We may illustrate this by the 
 moral emotion of sympathy, for which the view is 
 very important. 
 
 (a) Sympathy may be an emotion arising from the 
 
VI FEELING 67 
 
 contagion of feeling. I see you suffering pain, and 
 I both feel a sympathetic pain and more or less 
 reflect upon what such a pain would be to me, to 
 my sensitive self The content of the emotion is 
 then my sensitive self related to a pain like yours, 
 and this pain is the object of the emotion just as 
 the threatened evil is the object of fear. This is 
 the elementary form of sympathy ; it is to feel with 
 another in the sense of feeling the same as he feels, 
 i.e. if he is pained I am pained, but not necessarily 
 because he is anything to me. It is " with him," 
 but not " for him." No doubt this form of the 
 emotion rests upon the fact of a common nature, 
 but it does not involve the recognition of it, and 
 for Ethics this is all-important. 
 
 (/3) Sympathy, on the other -hand, may be the 
 direct consequence of a wide self, of a recognition 
 of unity between ourselves and others, or even 
 between ourselves and nature. More truly wc 
 should say it is due to the absence of a discrimina- 
 tion between us and others, for we must here deny 
 the starting-point of individualism entirely. Our 
 connection with others is, so to speak, in the Self, 
 and not in the Not-self ; and from this point of 
 view the whole content of the feeling of sympath}- 
 is quite different. It does not come round through 
 the sensitive self at all. To a parent the care of 
 the child's body is as direct an object as the 
 care of his own. It is not that he is uneasy because 
 he feels the same pain that the child feels, but 
 that the idea of the child's pain is at once the 
 idea of an evil attacking himself 
 
 To take a purely imaginary instance, let us 
 suppose that there is a newspaper attack 011 our 
 
68 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 particular University Extension centre. Putting 
 aside the direct personal irritation caused in each 
 of us separately by the attack, how should we feel 
 it sympathetically ? 
 
 (i.) We should feel it in the first place by mere 
 contagion ; that is, we should, as sensitive individuals, 
 tend to feel the same that the other members of the 
 centre are feeling/ The external signs of their 
 vexation would make us realise more vividly the 
 idea of the attack, and would suggest vexation to 
 ourselves. This feeling in each of us would be ivith 
 the others, but not necessarily for them ; it would be 
 a repetition of their feeling in us, and not a new 
 feeling in which they were regarded as persons to be 
 considered. This form of " sympathy " is purely 
 selfish, and is not the most original or natural form. 
 
 (ii.) We ougJit also to feel what is quite different, 
 that the attack was an injury to an embodied pur- 
 pose which is an element of our own ideal selves, 
 and in respect of which we are all so far one. Then 
 the regret or resentment of each one of us would be 
 direct, and would be directly for all, because of the 
 evil threatening the ideal self, which includes the 
 other persons in so far as they are concerned in the 
 organisation. There need not be any sympathy in 
 the sense of intensifying one's own personal vexation 
 by attending to the personal vexation of the others ; 
 the pain would accompany a discord, not in the 
 private sensitive self, but in the larger ideal self 
 
 When we come to speak of Altruism and Egoism 
 
 these distinctions are important. Take as another 
 
 instance the sympathy between members of a family. 
 
 If any one injures or insults your wife or child, the 
 
 ^ Cf. Ward, I.e., on Egoistic and Social feelings. 
 
VI FEELING 69 
 
 content of your emotion is not the idea of a painful 
 state in your private self like that which has been 
 caused in your wife or child, but the idea of an evil 
 directly attacking one element of your ideal and 
 wider self, with its consequent pain and resentment. 
 There is no going round through your own private 
 pain except in so far as it is necessary in order to 
 understand what has happened ; but that is only a 
 question as to how you form the idea of the injury, 
 not as to why you resent it. We find similar 
 instances of sympathetic feeling in such organisations 
 as the Church or Trade Unions, in so far as they form 
 an element common to the selves of the individuals 
 comprised in them. 
 
LECTURE VII 
 
 VOLITION 
 
 I. Ideomotor Action. — There is oiie theory according 
 to which all Volition is treated as a modifica- 
 tion, or particular application, of what is known 
 as " ideomotor action " (see James's chapter on 
 Will). As it is useful to master a distinct view, 
 even if it strikes us at first as paradoxical, we will 
 discuss this first ; other views can then be presented 
 by contrast with it or in modification of it. 
 
 Every one agrees that in Volition there is present 
 an idea, which first goes beyond fact and is then 
 followed by fact in conformity with it. We might 
 almost say that the idea is at first " conflicting with 
 fact," but that this would not include certain cases 
 of continued action or position. For instance, in 
 the volition of the soldier who stands still to be shot 
 at, the idea (that of continuing to stand) goes beyond 
 the present, but does not conflict with it. 
 
 In many forms of action there is nothing psychical 
 involved but this idea, which goes beyond fact ; in 
 hypnotic suggestion, e.g., where the idea fills the mind 
 to the exclusion of everything else ; or in action 
 consequent upon " fixed ideas," or in any form of 
 conscious associative suggestion, as when I go to a 
 
LECT. VII VOLITION 
 
 71 
 
 bookshelf for a book which I want, see another and 
 am prompted by the idea of its contents to take it 
 down and begin reading it, to the entire exclusion 
 of the first. Carpenter in his Mental PJiysiology^ 
 chap, vi., even includes in such ideomotor action 
 tmrecognised cases of volition, such as take place in 
 the use of the divining-rod ; but he describes them 
 as " reflex actions of the cerebrum," and does not 
 regard them as instances of Will at all. Imitative 
 movements may also be regarded, at any rate in 
 many cases, as instances of ideomotor action ; and 
 these to a great extent fall into the category of 
 actions which are ordinarily called voluntary.^ In 
 the lower ideomotor actions (such as hypnotic action) 
 the subject is unaware that the action proceeds from 
 the idea ; but at a rather higher level — that, e.g., of 
 fixed ideas — he is aware of it. 
 
 These are all more or less abnormal cases, but it 
 is possible to take Ideomotor action as the typical 
 case of Will, and to lay down the principle that 
 every idea which can suggest action tends to pass 
 into action ; i.e. that it passes into action if not 
 checked by some counteracting idea or by pain. In 
 Ideomotor action of this kind we are fully aware 
 that the idea is fulfilling itself. Then, as James says, 
 the W^ill consists only in attention to the idea ; it 
 passes into action without further interference on 
 our part. Indeed, the idea, according to this view, 
 simply is the sign of a nascent action which may be 
 checked or may proceed to completion. Or we may 
 stop short of the principle that consciousness is in 
 this way itself motor, and merely extend tlio principle 
 of Association and say that it exists between ideas 
 
 ^ See Sully, lluiuaii Mind, vol. ii. pp. 214, 244, ami Ward, /.(•. p. 43. 
 
72 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 and the physical states which accompany them ; 
 then it will be possible for an idea to call up an 
 appropriate action as the means to realise itself, just 
 as an idea may call up another idea. 
 
 As examples of how Volition is treated on this 
 view, we may take : — 
 
 (i.) Internal Volition. — This is the simplest case, 
 as it dispenses with the question of muscular con- 
 tractions. Take as a special instance that of a 
 lecturer haunted by the idea of treating the subject 
 of Volition in a lecture — the abstract idea of preparing 
 a certain subject for an occasion. All sorts of dis- 
 tractions tend to come up in his mind, business 
 matters, amusements, etc. ; but the idea of a certain 
 definite treatment of Volition persists and holds 
 its own against distractions, and develops into 
 subdivisions and reflections, until at last it has 
 become a mental fact conforming to the abstract 
 idea with which he started. In other words, the 
 idea has produced a mental reality corresponding to 
 its content : expressed formally, a has passed into 
 A. Of course such a mental operation as this is 
 much helped in practice by making notes, etc., and 
 here we pass into muscular contraction, but this is 
 not essential to the volition. Think for instance of 
 what takes place when you do a bit of mental 
 arithmetic. You start, say, with an abstract idea 
 of the cost of building a house ; certain data are 
 given to work from, these suggest their combinations 
 in your mind, and at last the result, a definite figure, 
 becomes a mental fact ; you started from a and attain 
 A. In short, the theory is summed up in the words: 
 it is will when an idea produces facts conformable to it,^ 
 
 ^ Bradley, I.e. 
 
VII VOLITION 73 
 
 and in this way modern Psychology is taking us 
 right back to Socrates. 
 
 (ii.) In External Volition the elements, for normal 
 cases, are just the same. There is first the anticipa- 
 tion of a movement or external effect^ or it may be of 
 both — e.g. the thought of starting to come down to 
 the lecture-hall {ti) ; and secondly, the perception of 
 the motion as actually taking place (A). The first 
 element is simply a reproduced idea due to previous 
 experience of the second, and there seems no reason 
 to suppose that motor impulses, as such, are felt at all. 
 What happens is that some stimulus or perception — 
 e.g. of the time — suggests the idea of motion, and 
 the idea of motion then passes into its reality. 
 
 The question naturally arises as to how on this 
 view we are to distinguish Volition from Expectation. 
 In Expectation we have the same two elements, the 
 anticipation followed by the result, but they are not 
 connected in the same way. That is to say, in 
 Expectation there is some connection, other than the 
 anticipatory idea, which we know to be the operative 
 link bringing about the result. There is present to 
 the mind a and A, but there is also the knowledge 
 that if the cause of A is to be represented another 
 element must be taken into account ; the process is 
 b and A. When we expect the clock to strike, the 
 sound, as it occurs, is immediately referred to an 
 external cause {b). But when we do think our idea 
 is connected with the result, then Will is present, 
 even though the connection may really be altogether 
 different. Noma in Scott's Pirate wills that iicr 
 song shall stop the storm, and the storm stops ; just 
 as the spiritualist wills the table to cross the room 
 to him, and the table comes. If the}- had only 
 
 ( 
 
 UlS)i\ 
 
74 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 expected the iCsult, they would have attributed it to 
 some external cause (^). 
 
 Is there something more than the persistent idea 
 itself required to constitute volition ? There is no 
 doubt that we are accustomed to think of an act of 
 will as involving something like a fiat^ or effort ; but 
 we can more easily consider the nature of this in 
 connection with the idea of activity, and after dealing 
 with attention. 
 
 The question has been raised as to the origin of 
 Will — whether, e.g., it has been developed from reflex 
 action. It would perhaps be better to say that all 
 action is a modified reflex, in the sense that it is 
 sensation plus motion ; but it does not seem likely 
 that fixed reflexes pass into volition, while instances 
 are common of actions originally "voluntary "becoming 
 through habit reflex, or " secondarily automatic." ^ 
 
 2. According to the view we have been consider- 
 ing Will depends upon Attention to an idea ; and 
 that brings us to the question, what is Attention 9"^ 
 
 At first sight the matter seems so simple as to 
 call for no explanation ; we all know what we mean 
 by attending to anything. But the governing diffi- 
 culty here, as in the question of Free-will and all 
 kindred questions of activity, is to explain the 
 relevancy of the attention. " / am actively attend- 
 ing," you say ; yes, but in attending you are selecting, 
 and why, or how, do you select one thing rather than 
 another to which to attend ? To refer to activity, 
 choice, or even muscular preparation, does not help 
 
 ^ Cf. Ward, p. 43, and Sully, Hit /nan Mind, vol. ii. pp. 191, 192. 
 ^ Cf. James, pp. 221, 222; Ward, I.e. p. 41, col. 2; Bradley, 
 "Activity of Attention," Mind, 1886, p. 341. 
 
VII VOLITION 75 
 
 us at this point ; it is only giving another name to 
 the same fact. It is tension of the ear, you say, 
 which enables me to attend to, or hear, the note ; 
 but tension to wJiicJi note ? Unless you can show 
 how and why one element in particular attracts or 
 fixes your will or attention at a particular moment, 
 it seems to become a matter of chance ; and if chance, 
 there is no selection or volition. James introduces 
 the conception of Free-will to solve the difficulty 
 (p. 237). "No object can catcJi our attention" he 
 says, " except by the neural machinery. But the 
 amount of the attention which an object receives after 
 it has caught our mental eye is another question. 
 It often takes effort to keep the mind upon it. We 
 feel that we can make more or less of the effort as 
 we choose. If this feeling be not deceptive, if our 
 effort be a spiritual force, and an indeterminate one, 
 then, of course, it contributes co-equally with the 
 cerebral conditions to the result." 
 
 But to the psychologist this explanation is not 
 satisfactory (as indeed James seems to allow) ; it is 
 at best a mere miraculous loading of the scales, and 
 if so why should it not load them in the wrong 
 direction ? It would be as if we cherished a capri- 
 cious demon somewhere in our nervous system, who 
 would now and again put his hand on the balance of 
 motives without any special relevance or reason. It 
 is this same want of relevance which was the radical 
 flaw in the Faculty doctrine. We can see this by 
 contrasting it with our idea of the self as constituted 
 by appercipient masses, which enables us to say 
 wJiat gives its force to each element attended to, 
 while the idea of Faculties breaks up the mental 
 system into disconnected parts. 
 
76 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 Attention, then, if it is to be relevant to the con- 
 tents of consciousness, must be an effect of the 
 Interest, or given Intensity, attaching to those con- 
 trasts. Of these two aspects we must note that as 
 the appercipient masses develop. Interest tends to gain 
 in effectiveness — i.e. to attract more attention — while 
 Intensity tends to lose. We attend to sensations less 
 because they are loud or vivid, and more because 
 they are connected with many thoughts and ex- 
 periences, so that the small and scarcely perceptible 
 scratches of a familiar handwriting may for a time 
 entirely exclude all the bustle of daily life around us. 
 It is true that a loud report like that of firearms 
 usually engages the attention, but that may be due 
 as much to the idea of danger as to the intensity of 
 the noise; moreover, as James points out, all voluntary 
 attention is derivative, in the sense that in what we 
 feel to be voluntary attention a perception is not 
 forced upon us from without, but a dominant idea 
 within forces upon us some perception connected 
 with it. Much of our passive attention also has a 
 transferred or acquired interest ; the postman's knock 
 catches the ear quicker than another because of the 
 letter he brings ; as in volition we are aware of the 
 operative idea first going beyond the present and 
 then realized, a and then A. Put into general terms, 
 Attention = the working of Interest in selecting pre- 
 sentations, and Interest = the relation of presentations 
 to the system of appercipient masses, with their 
 concomitant feelings. 
 
 3. We may now return to the question of the so- 
 called Fiat of Will, or the consciousness of activity 
 in volition. The core of it would seem, at first sight. 
 
VII VOLITION 
 
 77 
 
 to be the feeling of the motor impulse ; but it is very 
 doubtful whether this, as a special feeling, exists. 
 That is to say, the difference in feeling of lifting a 
 light weight and lifting a heavy weight seems upon 
 analysis to be merely a difference in the sensations 
 coming i?i from the muscles, and not to imply any 
 feeling emanating from the centre. We feel ourselves 
 active, as we explained above, when the idea a 
 persists, and a change in the not-Self bringing with 
 it A is referred to its persistence. Where this refer- 
 ence is not made, as in the use of the divining-rod, 
 etc., we protest that we are not active. In cases of 
 deliberative action at a high level of consciousness, 
 the self or personality participates ; ^ i£. one of the 
 ideas which are striving for predominance reinforces 
 itself by the whole mass of our positive personality — 
 purposes, associations, and feelings. As a rule the 
 idea thus reinforced wins, and the self prevails 
 against that which ipso facto becomes the not-self 
 This is really the answer to Sully's objection that 
 " Ideomotor action — that is, the tendency to carry 
 out an action merely because this is vividly suggested 
 — is obviously not only useless but likely to be 
 positively injurious." - Of course, if the action is 
 vividly suggested only because all other considera- 
 tions, e.g. of consequences, are excluded, the tendency 
 is likely to be injurious ; but if the *' me " is taken 
 into account — if, that is, the suggestion is vivid because 
 reinforced by the whole moral self — that is the best 
 security we can have of its sanity. 
 
 This is, in its general outlines, the theory of 
 Volition as explained by analogy to Ideomotor 
 
 1 Cf. Miinsterljcrg, Die Willetishandlun!^^ pp. 147, 148. 
 2 Sully, Iluiiian Mind, vol. ii. p. 244. 
 
78 rSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 action such as we have in Fixed Ideas, Hypnotic 
 Suggestion, or Imitation. It is a theory which is 
 easily understood, and has much experience in its 
 favour ; and it is completely opposed to the theory 
 which represents the will as the last appetite before 
 action. On the other hand we must note that 
 some psychologists prefer to draw a sharp distinction 
 between ideomotor action and volition, on the ground 
 that the former does not necessarily involve a choice 
 between conflicting alternatives.^ 
 
 4. The further question which arises is twofold : 
 Is Desire necessary to Will ? and Does Pleasure 
 really constitute the object of Desire ? 
 
 (i.) Is Desire necessary to Will? — Desire seems 
 upon analysis to involve three elements. If we 
 delay the satisfaction of a normal appetite, say of 
 hunger, then we get a fair instance of desire. Pure 
 appetite may have no distinct object before it, in 
 which case it is hardly desire ; instinct goes straight 
 to the movement without the intervention of ideas. 
 But where there is delay to satisfy hunger we get 
 the idea of eating, which is felt as pleasant, over 
 against a iral absence of food, which is painful, the 
 whole complex state being pleasant or painful ac- 
 cording to circumstances. The prospect of further 
 delay may cause the pain to predominate, while the 
 announcement of dinner may change the whole state 
 to one of pleasure. 
 
 Thus there is no desire without the element of 
 " uneasiness," due to the absence of the thing desired. 
 Is this element discoverable in all cases of Will ? 
 The chief use of such questions is to make us realise 
 
 ^ Cf. Stout, Psychology, vol, i. p. 131. 
 
VII VOLITION 79 
 
 their meaning ; the answer depends very much upon 
 what we include in the term Will. There are certain 
 kinds of Ideomotor action in which we believe we 
 are not active; i.e. hypnotic suggestions and imitative 
 movements and fixed ideas must in some cases be 
 excluded from Will. Fixed ideas, for instance, even 
 if conscious, may lead to actions which our self 
 would repudiate if fully aware of them ; our person- 
 ality seems not fully awake, and we do not have a 
 fair chance of controlling them. Many, again, would 
 say that they cannot understand Voluntary action 
 apart from the effect of Pleasure at least, if not of 
 Pleasure and Pain. It is clear, then, that the answer 
 to the question whether Will involves Desire must 
 depend upon what kinds of action we regard as 
 voluntary. But before going on to consider the 
 object of Desire we may point out that in some 
 cases where volition is most deliberate, the element: 
 of desire seems most conspicuously absent. When, 
 for instance, we approach a very important decision, 
 such as changing our residence or profession, or 
 taking a particular line in any kind of policy, for 
 which we have weeks or months in which to prepare, 
 in such cases as these we can hardly be said to 
 verify Desire. Our decision is more like a necessity 
 gradually revealing itself. Even if we have intervals 
 of pain or uneasiness with reference to the prospect, 
 it is very doubtful whether they determine the 
 decision ; it is more like a process by which a 
 certain prospective course exhibits itself as the only 
 solution of a certain problem, and so becomes more 
 and more dominant in the mind. Everything brings 
 us back to that particular course, or, as wc say, 
 everything points that way. The fact is that 
 
8o PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 volition of this type tends to approximate to the 
 mere choice of means, and this, it may be said, is 
 not voHtion at all. But when the so-called means 
 actually qualify the end {e.g. the end of organising 
 your life in accordance with certain standards), then 
 it really is volition. Suppose that you have to 
 decide between going into Parliament and going 
 into the Church ; both may be pleasant to you, and 
 both afford opportunities of usefulness, and you will 
 probably decide according to which seems most 
 likely to be useful, taking into consideration your 
 own particular powers. The actual feeling accom- 
 panying the decision, or act of will, might be more 
 like that of being absorbed in an idea than like 
 that of giving effect to desire ; it would be a sort 
 of necessity, following from the circumstances, and 
 taking shape in your decision. Or, to take another 
 instance, suppose I am asked why I support or 
 oppose the Poor Law Clauses of the Parish Councils 
 Bill. I may answer that I desire them, or am 
 averse to them ; but the fundamental answer would 
 seem to be : " Because they agree with. Or are con- 
 trary to, all my ideas on the subject." In the 
 first case there is simply desire or aversion ; in the 
 second there is the conception of a system of ideas 
 working themselves out into a consistent whole.^ 
 
 (ii.) Is Pleasure the necessary object of Desire ? — 
 This brings us to the Psychology of Hedonism, and 
 here we must note that the doctrine of Hedonism 
 does not necessarily depend upon the old Psychology, 
 which maintained that pleasure is the only thing 
 desired. It may be simply an opinion, serving as 
 the basis of an ethical system, about the value of 
 
 ^ Cf. Mackenzie, p. 74. 
 
VII VOLITION 8i 
 
 Pleasure ; the opinion that it is desirable^ not the 
 demonstration that Pleasure is the exclusive object 
 of desire. The latter view seems to depend upon a 
 certain confusion between a present feeling of pleasure 
 and the thought of future pleasure/ Both may 
 determine action, but are not therefore the sole 
 objects of Desire. To take a simple instance, the 
 pleasure of satisfaction presupposes the desire of 
 some definite object ; it cannot be achieved unless 
 this object has first been desired. In thirst it is 
 not Pleasure which is desired, but water, otherwise 
 drinking could give no pleasure. When Pleasure 
 does become the object of desire we have the volup- 
 tuary ; and he knows that he can only attain his 
 object indirectly, by stimulating desires for definite 
 things. Pleasure, we must remember, is an abstrac- 
 tion, and only to be found in the concrete complexity 
 of mental life. Even ^we go so far as to say that 
 it is an aspect or element in everything we aim at, 
 still that does not make it the 07dy thing we aim at. 
 
 ^ Cf. Ward, Eiicy. BriL, Ninth ed., vol. xx. pp. 74, 75. 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 
 VOLITION {continued) 
 
 I. Before passing from the theory of VoHtion it will 
 be well to say something more about the connection 
 of will with reflex action. The subject is one of 
 those which lie on the border line of Psychology and 
 Physiology, and besides being extremely interesting 
 in itself it contributes a certain clearness to the 
 whole modern view of the will. 
 
 The origin of the will out of simpler forms of 
 action is discussed by James (pp. 92-101), by Ward 
 {I.e. pp. 42, 43), and by Sully, {Psychology, p. 595 ; 
 Human Mind, vol. ii. pp. 182, 192). The physio- 
 logist's view of the question may be found in the 
 Ency. Brit., article on " Physiology," Ninth ed., vol. 
 xix. (pp. 28, 29) ; and Herbert Spencer, who has 
 contributed much to the importance of the subject, 
 deals with it in the chapters on reflex action and 
 the will in vol. i. of his Psychology. 
 
 The general idea of reflex movement, or reflex 
 action, seems to be that it is any movement started 
 by what is called the incoming stimulus ; a stimulus, 
 that is, entering by way of a nerve such as can carry 
 what will be a sensation (an " afferent " nerve) up to 
 the central nervous organs. In a more special or 
 
LECT. VIII VOLITION 83 
 
 Strict sense it also means some rather definite move- 
 ment corresponding mechanically to some rather 
 definite stimulus. For instances we may begin with 
 the simplest kind, i.e. unconscious actions. The 
 physiologists seem to be uncertain whether to regard 
 reflex movements as limited to those which have 
 psychological accompaniments — i.e. conscious move- 
 ments, or as including unconscious movements ; and 
 Herbert Spencer, though he begins by including the 
 psychological accompaniment, often assumes that 
 the reflex movement is unconscious. But we may 
 take as an instance of unconscious reflex movement 
 such a thing as the contraction of the pupil of the 
 eye when a light falls upon it ; we are conscious 
 of the light, but not of the contraction unless it is 
 specially pointed out. The focussing of the lens of 
 the eye in looking at near or distant objects, and 
 the beating of the heart, with all the unconscious 
 functions carried on by the nervous system, are also 
 given as instances — although the beating of the heart 
 in its normal rhythm seems hardly to be regulated 
 (it is, of course, disturbed) by an incoming stimulus 
 from an afferent nerve. The action of a carnivorous 
 plant in grasping its prey would seem to be a good 
 instance, but is excluded by physiologists on the 
 ground that reflex movement as they understand it 
 belongs only to organisms having a definite machinery 
 of action — a nervous system on the one hand, and a 
 muscular system on the other. 
 
 Next in the scale we have what are called sensori- 
 motor reflex movements ; movements, that is, in 
 which there is an impression of sense, and then 
 motion stimulated by that impression or sensation. 
 These are described as conscious, but involuntary or 
 
84 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 semi-voluntary. Such are the closing of the eye 
 when an object injurious to it approaches, the 
 involuntary withdrawal of the hand from a hot or 
 painful object, and the flow of tears when something 
 gets into the eye. 
 
 With movements of this level we must compare 
 certain very important movements which are not 
 reflex in the stricter sense ; these are random move- 
 ments, such as we see in children, and expressive 
 movements. Random movements may perhaps be 
 reflex in the wider sense, but they are not definite 
 movements co-ordinated to any purpose, or belonging 
 to a definite stimulus ; they are simply the sort of 
 movement made by an infant when, e.g., a bright 
 light falls upon its eye. Expressive movements, 
 such as the facial movements on tasting something 
 sour, are of the same general kind. 
 
 In all these sensori-motor reflex actions we have 
 the stimulus which is felt or perceived, but we have 
 no idea of the movement to be executed before it 
 has taken place ; the idea comes only after the 
 movement. On about the same actual level (not the 
 same level of origin) we have again what are called 
 the secondary reflex movements, or secondary auto- 
 matic movements. The classical instance of these is 
 that of the movements of the fingers of the skilled 
 performer on the piano, movements which were once 
 willed slowly and deliberately, but which have now 
 become habitual or automatic. Our whole life is 
 full of movements of this kind, all the co-ordinated 
 movements made unconsciously by a grown-up 
 person, which a child takes so long to learn to 
 make. In these, as in the sensori-motor actions, 
 there is no idea of the movement to be executed 
 
VIII VOLITION 85 
 
 before it is carried out, although there is a stimulus 
 which is felt or perceived. 
 
 Where, in all this, arc we to look for the genesis 
 of the will ? in other words, for the beginning either 
 of ideomotor action, or of action impelled by desire ? 
 It seems natural to look for it in the simplest form 
 of reflex action, the unconscious movement which 
 follows directly upon the unconscious stimulus, and 
 this is the view apparently taken by Herbert Spencer. 
 Ward, on the other hand, combats it, and there 
 certainly are great difficulties in it, since our natural 
 experience is all in the direction of voluntary action 
 becoming reflex, not of reflex action becoming 
 voluntary. Munsterberg, e.g., maintains very strongly 
 that we have no experience at all of a simple reflex 
 action becoming volitional, whereas we have abun- 
 dant evidence of the reverse. 
 
 The two extreme views are, on the one hand that 
 all movement is reflex (see James, p. loi), and on 
 the other hand that all movements, even involuntary 
 reflex actions, have been originally volitional. As 
 between the two we may perhaps say that though 
 the will is akin to reflex action in its more general 
 meaning of an incoming stimulus which discharges 
 itself in a movement, yet there are certain fixed 
 reflex movements which do not tend to pass into 
 volition. Instead, therefore, of looking for the origin 
 of the will in the simplest of all reflex movements, 
 such as the beating of the heart, we must (as Ward 
 says) look for it in the random or expressive move- 
 ments. These we may perhaps call consequential, 
 meaning that they are the mere result of some 
 stimulus, and have not been selected with a view to 
 any purposive effect. But they are modifiable, and 
 
S6 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 in them we soon get what we call subjective selection 
 by help of ideas and feelings. That is, we get to 
 know by experience what effect one of these move- 
 ments will produce ; the stimulus brings up the idea, 
 the idea brings up the action, and it comes under the 
 head of what we have described as voluntary action. 
 Professor Bain has taken the view that the will 
 originates from what he calls spontaneous action or 
 discharges. Whether or not there are such spontane- 
 ous discharges seems matter of controversy ; but the 
 tendency is to limit the number of such hypotheses, 
 and we seem to meet all requirements by construing 
 reflex action in the wider sense suggested ; that is, as 
 including non-purposive action which has not become 
 mechanical, and is capable of modification — random 
 and expressive action. 
 
 2. T/ie higher and lower limits of morality. — In 
 order to have morality we must have the finite self; 
 it is the finite self which distinguishes morality. In 
 other words, the self must have begun to be aware 
 of itself, and it must not yet have lost itself in 
 knowing a higher self. When the higher limit is 
 transcended, then morality is absorbed in a greater 
 self. 
 
 (i.) About the lower limit Miinsterberg has written 
 an interesting work,^ in which he takes an ultra- 
 Kantian view. External conduct, he says, is no safe 
 test of the existence of morality, and by judging 
 from external conduct we have presupposed morality 
 in the strict sense where it has not really existed. 
 Individuals may, for instance, act so as to conduce to 
 the good of the community, but that does not prove 
 
 ^ Ursprung d. Sittlichheit. 
 
VIII VOLITION 87 
 
 morality ; you must know from what motive they 
 act, and for the motive to be really moral he 
 demands that a rule should be obeyed for its own 
 sake, and in face of inclination. From this it \ 
 follows that the habit of moral action can only arise 
 by the association of rewards and punishments used 
 as training, by social discipline. Without this there 
 is no morality at all, for mere affection, or affectionate 
 regard for the good of the community, does not, on 
 his view, suffice to constitute morality. 
 
 Thus we have two questions arising : — 
 
 (a) Is Society necessary to the genesis of a moral 
 self? (/8) By what means does it, whether necessary 
 or not, aid this genesis ? 
 
 (<x) We have already, in the lecture on Self- 
 consciousness, spoken of the first question : Is 
 Society necessary ? It seems to be conceivably 
 possible that the mere contrast of success and 
 failure within the individual might suffice to initiate 
 something like a moral judgment — the judgment of 
 approval, without a reflection of the self in society ; 
 and when we have got that, it can hardly be denied 
 that we have got something like a germ of the 
 moral consciousness. 
 
 (/3) But then we have to ask in what way society 
 aids this genesis of the moral self. No doubt the 
 reflection of the self in the actions of other similar 
 bodies does much to promote the reflection of it in 
 the individual mind ; and, historically speaking, no 
 doubt the human individual does not originate in 
 isolation, but reflects some sort of community, so 
 that from the first the self goes beyond the bodily 
 unit. And without allowing that the consciousness 
 of a clash between personal inclination and the rule 
 
S8 rSVCIIOLOGV OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 is essential in all cases to moral action, or that 
 society acts chiefly on the self by pains and pleasures, 
 rewards and punishments, there is no doubt that the 
 experience of approval and disapproval expressed 
 by other selves will be a very effective way of 
 drawing attention to j-^-^- approval or disapproval. 
 It is this feeling of self-assertion, in which the self 
 is approved of, which seems to constitute the essential 
 element in the moral consciousness ; and this would 
 begin practically with a society in which action was 
 directed to the common welfare, for not only does 
 such action constitute a great part of the self- 
 assertion which meets with self-approbation, but that 
 approbation is also intensified by its reflection in 
 other minds. 
 
 ^ In recognising the beginnings of moral conscious- 
 ness wherever there is definite approval of the self 
 on the ground of a relation to a common good (such 
 as might arise from family or tribal affections), we 
 make the lower limit of morality rather less definite 
 than that drawn by Munsterberg. But his warning 
 is a useful one, inasmuch as we do find in many 
 accounts of animals what looks like self-sacrificing 
 action for the benefit of others ; and unless we are 
 prepared to admit these within the sphere of morality, 
 we must insist on the presence of some idea of 
 purpose or object by which the momentary self is 
 tested and approved of, or the reverse. 
 
 (ii.) The question of the higher limit of morality 
 hardly belongs to psychology, except in so far as 
 morality hinges upon the consciousness of the 
 self as a variable element. Where the religious 
 consciousness emerges, and in so far as the religious 
 attitude is maintained, the finite self is really 
 
VIII VOLITION 
 
 absorbed ; and then the opposition or struggle char- 
 acteristic of morality ceases to exist as a recognised 
 and fundamental opposition. 
 
 3. We have spoken of the self as the supreme 
 will and intelligence, and we have now to try how 
 far the idea of a willing self can be blended into a 
 whole with the intelligent self. Summarising the 
 view taken in the last lecture, we may regard the 
 self as an organised fabric, or organism, of which 
 the material is ideas taken in the widest sense and 
 carrying with them an accompaniment of feeling, i.e. 
 of immediate experience, including pleasure and 
 pain. If we examine what this self is, or what 
 there is in it, it seems to be really the whole world 
 as it is within the experience of the self — within, i.e.^ 
 the single experience not merely as a train of 
 images in the mind, but as consisting of ideas 
 referred to reality. How can ideas, in this way 
 judged to be real, and taken as true, include pur- 
 poses ? We can understand that they should include 
 facts, but in what sense can they include purposes ? 
 
 (i.) About facts as constituting the self, there is 
 not much more to be said. We have seen that the 
 search for an innermost self, a sacred holy of holies 
 in one's self which never changes and is never 
 obtruded upon, is hopeless. If we approach it in a 
 plain, practical way, we can draw no hard and fast 
 lines between elements in experience which belong 
 to the self, and those which do not. As James 
 points out, the loss of a man's friend, or house, or 
 profession, the loss of anything with which he is 
 identified, is undoubtedly a diminution of the self, 
 since it makes him other than he was, and less than 
 
90 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 he was. In the same way, we must, to a certain 
 extent, deem it true that a man's Hfe consists in the 
 abundance of the things which he possesses, as — for 
 good or evil — they make him different. 
 
 (ii.) But if the self consists of those ideas of 
 experience which are held to be facts, how can they 
 include purposes, since an idea which represents a 
 fact would seem to be without the ideal element, or 
 element of difference from reality, which is required 
 to make a purpose ? How, that is, can such an 
 idea suggest action ? The answer would seem to 
 be, because they are, or in so far as they are, only 
 conditionally true. All our ideas are more or less 
 selective ; they do not include the whole possible truth 
 of reality, but only bits and extracts of it. Hence, 
 speaking technically and strictly, every idea is referred 
 to reality, not absolutely, but only conditionally ; in 
 other words, certain reservations have to be made, 
 apart from which it would not be really true. We 
 may apply this to a real purpose, or a purpose that 
 is at the same time a fact, in this way : your idea, 
 say of the house in which you live, is your normal 
 idea of it which goes on from day to day and week 
 to week, as it exists and is used ; so if any accident 
 happens to any part of it, if rain comes in at the 
 roof, at once your permanent idea of the house 
 differs from given reality ; the reality has got some- 
 thing in it which your normal idea has not. Your 
 idea can tJien only be true if it is conditional, and 
 it would be expressed as " the house will be all 
 right ivJien the roof is mended " ; that is to say, it 
 will again conform to the normal and persistent idea 
 of it, what it does for you and its use in your life. 
 In the same way, the idea of a friend includes the 
 
VIII VOLITION 91 
 
 rendering of service, and becomes conditional as 
 soon as the necessity for service has arisen and not 
 yet been met. We say " he will be just what I 
 think him if he does so and so " ; that is, our idea 
 of him is for the moment discrepant from the actual 
 reality ; there is something which the persistent idea 
 requires which does not yet exist in the reality. It 
 is thus that ideals are related to ideas in pure logic 
 or pure psychology, and we may of course apply it 
 to much larger subjects. We may say that, e.g., the 
 life of the people would be what it should be if so 
 and so were done ; we assert something that, as it 
 were, exists in reality but for an obstruction, but 
 for some element in which reality deviates for the 
 moment from our normal idea of what the reality 
 really is, or means to be. 
 
 This view of the nature of ideals is important as 
 requiring us — quite rightly — when we speak of an 
 ideal, to state the actual reality upon which it is 
 based, and the definite condition which separates 
 our idea from the reality ; to state, that is, what 
 it is which exists, and what we mean to do to bring 
 it into harmony with its normal or persistent function 
 or purpose. This has taken us somewhat beyond 
 Psychology, but it illustrates what we have been 
 trying to suggest, that the self which really exists 
 is at once a moral and an intelligent self, a fabric 
 of ideas accompanied with their affections of pleasure 
 and pain, and having this tendency to assert them- 
 selves ill so far as they become partly discrepant 
 from reality. 
 
 We now have to approach the question whether 
 this self, with its content of ideas and ideals, is ex- 
 clusively and essentially social. Take for instance 
 
92 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 the idea of truth or of beauty ; can we show that 
 they are deducible without curtailment from the idea 
 of the common or social good ? The answer seems 
 to turn on what we mean by social, and the best 
 way to treat it will be to examine a certain form of 
 what is meant by social, and then return to this 
 contrast of social with non-social. 
 
 4. The relation of the social purpose to any 
 other purpose is sometimes identified with that of 
 altruism to egoism,^ and we may examine this latter 
 distinction first as a contrast to the view we have 
 been taking. This is a distinction founded on our 
 mere bodily separateness ; I am the self connected 
 with my body, and others are the selves connected 
 with other bodies. On this view society becomes 
 " self and others " ; but, as Mr. Sidgwick has 
 maintained, it is clear that from this point of view 
 no one self can have prerogative over the others, 
 so that in fact society comes to consist entirely of 
 " others." This is purely psychological individualism, 
 starting from the separate body as the separate self ; 
 and there are several ways in which we may attempt 
 to arrive at morality based on such individualism. 
 
 (i.) We may hold with Professor Bain {Emotions 
 and Will, p. 436 sq}) that, speaking generally, all will 
 is selfish because it aims at a state of one's self; 
 and that the character of a rational being is " to 
 desire everything exactly according to its pleasure 
 value." 
 
 (ii.) Or we may take what seems a more natural 
 though perhaps less consistent view, and say that 
 the natural will with which we start is egoistic, 
 
 ^ For a discussion of this see Mackenzie, MaJitial of Ethics, ch. 9. 
 
VIII VOLITION 93 
 
 looking at everything from the point of view of 
 its own particular interests ; but that morality is 
 altruistic, and aims at the welfare of others. Re- 
 flection shows a man that from a generalised point 
 of view his own particular acts or purposes are of no 
 more importance than those of other people, and 
 thus we get to Bentham's rule, that one is to count 
 for one, and no one for more than one. For all 
 practical matters, including legislation, this is a good 
 sound rule. 
 
 (iii.) Again, we may follow Herbert Spencer and 
 " conciliate " egoism and altruism. It is obvious 
 that de facto either of them is a means to the other, 
 or that either of them requires the other as a means 
 to it ; and so it would seem to matter little really 
 which we pursue, since to pursue it wisely we shall 
 have to pursue the other as well. This involves the 
 great practical truth that we cannot get our own 
 ends satisfactorily if we neglect other people, nor be 
 of much good to others if we neglect ourselves. But 
 can we get any further so long as we retain this 
 basis of self and others? The mere fact of their 
 being others does not seem to have any special kind 
 of purpose in it, nor the fact of a mere number of 
 persons to open up any moral end. It is parallel to 
 the logical question of the relation between connota- 
 tion and denotation ; we may try to distinguish the 
 denotation, but it is not really possible to think of 
 the individual thing with no connotation. 
 
 The real question must be, zvJiat sort of thing is 
 it that these others are ? zuhat is it that we want 
 the number of? Taking this as the governing con- 
 sideration we may now leave the conception that 
 society consists of self and others, and try to get 
 
94 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 at the thing from a different way of looking at the 
 matter. The claim of society upon us does not 
 seem to be founded on the fact that it is a plurality 
 of bodily selves — or, if you like, of intelligences — 
 but rather in the particular nature that their co- 
 operation reveals ; and, psychologically speaking, it 
 seems plain that we always act from the content 
 of the self, which must consist of definite or positive 
 ideas or ideals. It is not that other selves are 
 merely instruments to the realisation of our ideals, 
 / /but that we recognise the moral self to be the 
 i realisation of a certain nature which is the outcome 
 ' of those selves working together in society. In 
 other words, when we deal with other people, how- 
 ever much we think we are being altruistic, our 
 relation to them — of benevolence, justice, etc. — is 
 founded upon some more positive point of view than 
 that of mere otherness ; it is based, for instance, 
 upon their humanity or citizenship, their capacity 
 for education or for religion. We always consider 
 what nature the individuals concerned are capable 
 of developing, and this constitutes {e.g.) our standard 
 in dealing with animals and children. We regulate 
 our treatment of them in accordance with the nature 
 or capabilities we find in them. 
 
 5. Having decided, then, to regard the self as a 
 positive content to be realised, a certain set of ideas, 
 let us now look at the system of ideas and ask 
 whether — excluding the bad self — there are non- 
 social elements in the legitimate moral self We 
 will take it as mere matter of fact, a question of 
 the moral consciousness. It is clear, in the first 
 place, that there is no intelligible principle by which 
 
VIII VOLITION 95 
 
 egoism equals the bad and altruism equals the good ; 
 but it might quite well be the case that all content 
 which can be systematised within the self is, as a 
 matter of fact, social. People with a profound faith 
 in all good things can always affirm that this is 
 so by bringing in " the long run." Is devotion to 
 metaphysics, e.g., only justifiable on the ground of 
 the welfare of society ? if so, it may be said, " No 
 doubt it is not immediately conducive to the welfare 
 of society, but ' in the long run ' it will prove to be 
 so " — which is polite, if nothing else. But there are 
 more difficult cases than this. You may find a man 
 self-condemned before his own tribunal, because his 
 intellectual being is in disorder and he is not trying 
 to right it, as much as he would be if his social life 
 were in disorder. Must such a man prove that 
 systematising his intellectual being is conducive to 
 social welfare, before it is right for him to make 
 that his principal object in life ? Must he show that 
 his intellectual completeness is a social ideal, and 
 can this be shown ? 
 
 There is one way of disposing of this question 
 without throwing any light upon it, and that is by 
 widening the meaning of the "social self" to include 
 the harmonious adjustment and development of the 
 co-operative selves. In this way we may get in 
 whatever can be shown to be requisite to the entire 
 system of ideas, but it involves an evasion of the 
 question " Is it strictly social ? " 
 
 Another way of regarding it (which I prefer) is to 
 say that all the great contents of developed human 
 self — truth, beauty, religion, and social morality — 
 are all of them but modes of expression of the ideal 
 self In any given social organisation the number 
 
96 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 and nature of the entities composing it seem to a 
 certain extent accidental and arbitrary ; and clearly 
 the given society or organisation is open to criticism. 
 It is not ultimate, and we criticise it in respect of 
 its power to find a complete harmony for the co- 
 operating selves. It is interesting to note that in Plato's 
 Republic the idtimate compass of life is the Good, 
 Truth, and Beauty of the Universe ; in other words, 
 the greatest possibilities of human nature. It would 
 be almost intolerable to have one's moral self given 
 up to a little Greek community of ten or twenty 
 thousand men, and to have all one's prospects 
 depending upon the systematisation of one's will in 
 accordance with the momentary end of that com- 
 munity ; and accordingly Plato brings in this great 
 doctrine of metaphysics, which has the effect of 
 acting as a criticism. This is the final form of his 
 ideal, and in it we have a certain grasp of something 
 beyond the mere social organisation. 
 
 It may be suggested, therefore, that social duty 
 — the duty which arises out of the relations of 
 persons — is rather one expression of the universal self 
 than its ultimate constitutive element; i.e. that the rela- 
 tions with a number of persons are one consequence 
 of the nature of the self,- one form of its universality. 
 
 6. Does this destroy self-sacrifice ? If in getting 
 rid of altruism we destroy the distinction between 
 selfishness and self-sacrifice, there is, of course, a loss 
 to moral philosophy. We must account for " unself- 
 ishness" in some way, and we may perhaps apply these 
 terms to the different ways in which the systematisa- 
 tion of the self may be carried out, or again not 
 carried out. Let us try four correlative terms : — 
 
VIII VOLITION 97 
 
 (i.) Self-assertion and selfishness as the good and 
 bad terms of one order ; (ii.) self-sacrifice and self- 
 destruction or abandonment as good and bad terms 
 of the other order. 
 
 (i.) By self-assertion one would mean the attempt 
 to be true to yourself in the fullest sense ; that is, to 
 make as complete a system as possible of the ideas 
 and purposes of the self It would be the attempt 
 at a certain kind of perfection ; not the individual 
 perfection of the saint cut loose from the world, but 
 a perfection including very likely work for others. 
 Selfishness would be the same sort of thing caricatured. 
 It would be an attempt at a kind of system, but 
 narrowed rather than enlarged ; there would always 
 be a certain indifference to the purposes in them- 
 selves, a tendency to take up a purpose or drop it 
 according as it showed a tendency to private satis- 
 faction or the reverse. But on the whole it would 
 tend to an apparent removal of discord in the self, 
 by narrowing instead of by enlarging. 
 
 (ii.) Self- sacrifice, again, as we actually find it, 
 would mean the realisation, or attempt at realisation, 
 of some special and important element which under 
 the particular conditions is incompatible w^ith the 
 system and balance of the self as a w^hole. It would 
 not include the whole content of the self, but would 
 be the choice of what seemed all -important in a 
 sense, and that again might perfectly well be some 
 great work " for others." On the other hand it 
 might just as well involve the abandonment of all 
 work for others ; but it would still be self-sacrifice if 
 it was a fair surrender of self — of the idea of perfec- 
 tion or completeness of the whole self-system — in 
 order to realise something which seemed to be 
 
 II 
 
98 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. viii 
 
 supremely important. The complete antithesis of 
 self-sacrifice is self-destruction or self- abandonment^ 
 where some wretched creature loses himself for 
 something that does no good to any one, for some 
 end that is thoroughly trivial, some freak or fancy. 
 It differs from selfishness in that it is passionate, 
 while selfishness is cool. 
 
 What we understand, then, by selfishness and self- 
 sacrifice does not draw its meaning from the anti- 
 thesis of self and others, but from the different ways of 
 using the contents which constitute our self, and all 
 of which practically extend beyond our mere bodily 
 self Even in the search for private pleasure we use 
 contents that go beyond the bodily self, since we 
 are obliged to act for the welfare of others ; so that 
 even in the pursuit of mere pleasure we get beyond 
 the distinction of egoism and altruism. 
 
LECTURE IX 
 
 REASONABLE ACTION 
 
 The difficult question of " reasonable action," as 
 the phrase goes, receives considerable attention in 
 Mr. Sidgwick's Method of Ethics^ and he has also 
 written an interesting article in Mind (N. S. vol. ii. 
 No. 6) on " Unreasonable Action." We will con- 
 sider some of the difficulties which have to be met. 
 
 I. Taking first the psychological meaning of the 
 phrase, we get something of a contradiction. The 
 earliest distinct meaning of the term " to reason " 
 is that of computation or calculation. Our word 
 " reason " corresponds with the Latin ratio and the 
 Greek \6yo(;, and in its simplest sense that means 
 what we call ratio, or sometimes proportion. Reason 
 in this sense, then, means the putting together of 
 ratios, or the comparison of numerical relations in 
 one sense or another, in order to elicit the conclusion, 
 the result or answer. 
 
 In very early language, as we have pointed out, 
 there were words indicating knowledge which seem 
 capable of being applied to almost any content of 
 the mind ; the attempt to distinguish accurately, e.^\ 
 to distinguish " reason," came later. One of the 
 
100 PSYCPIOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 most definite, and at the same time most difficult, of 
 these early meanings is this of computation or cal- 
 culation. We find it, e.g., in Plato, and there is 
 evidence of it in the relation of the words " ratio " 
 and " reason." In a slightly enlarged sense we may 
 take it as the intellectual perception of relations.^ 
 But how can it, in this sense, either mark a distinc- 
 tion between desirable and undesirable objects of 
 action ; or, on the other hand, be in itself an impulse 
 to action ? Taking as the simplest type of this 
 kind of reason the judgment " two and two make 
 four," it is not clear how it can be connected with, 
 or influence, the impulses to action. 
 
 There is a famous saying of Aristotle that " in- 
 telligence by itself is not a motive power," in which 
 the term used for intelligence is that which Plato 
 applies to the mathematical reason, the perception 
 of relations. It expresses the difficulty that at first 
 sight the idea of reasonable action is a contradiction. 
 We cannot see how the two terms hang together, 
 nor what is meant by calling an action reasonable. 
 For instance, does the fact that more calculation is 
 involved in the framing of any idea make it a more 
 reasonable object of moral action ? 
 
 2. Passing on from this elementary meaning, we 
 may consider a few explanations of the term. 
 
 (<x) Means known. — One way is to say that action 
 becomes reasonable when the means to a given end 
 are properly calculated. The great typical theory 
 which reduces moral reasonableness to this is that 
 of Hedonism, according to which the end is fixed 
 and constant (the amount of pleasure), and moral 
 
 ^ Cf. Hobbes's Co?npuiatioti or Logic. 
 
IX REASONABLE ACTION 
 
 lOI 
 
 deliberation is the calculation of means to attain that 
 end. The same meaning can be ascribed, whatever 
 the end, provided that the end is assumed to be 
 given ; and thus we might explain " reasonable 
 action " to mean " action calculated so as to be suit- 
 able to the accepted end." This does not necessarily 
 involve the admission that amount of pleasure is the 
 sole and universal end of action ; but there is still 
 the difficulty that mere conduciveness to a given end 
 does not seem to express the full sense in which we 
 use the words " reasonable action," for, as Sidgwick , 
 is constantly insisting, they come to mean almost 
 the same as right action. 
 
 There is one way of explaining the ordinary 
 usage which may carry us a little further. If we 
 take as the end something very abstract, such as 
 goodness, perfection, or happiness, then its concrete 
 realisation is really made what it is by the means 
 we adopt to it. If, e.g., you say your object is to be 
 good and to live a good life, then I ask you what 
 you mean by a good life ; and the concrete way of 
 living which you point out as a means to good life 
 in your sense really qualifies the whole thing, and is 
 the first distinct statement which gives me a definite 
 idea of what you mean by good life. When the 
 end is very abstract, then the means, taken in a 
 wider sense, is really the beginning of definiteness ; 
 so that even when we start from the simple idea of cal-^ 
 culating the means to a given end, we find the reason- ' 
 ing will affect our concrete notion of the end itself. 
 
 Here we get a point of ethical — perhaps also of 
 psychological — interest. The means which we adopt 
 to any purpose are, ethically speaking, much the 
 same as consequences. They are something that 
 
102 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 has to be taken into the bargain, the price wc pay 
 for the action ; and we cannot really know what is 
 the cost of the purpose as a whole until we know 
 what means we are prepared to take in order to 
 carry it out. Until we see how the whole thing 
 looks, as set out in that way, we do not know what 
 the ethical cost really is, and how it is naorally 
 related to our scheme of life. Here, then, we get 
 beyond the mere calculation of the means to the 
 end, and a further meaning is suggested. 
 
 (yS) End fully and clearly conceived. — Reasonable 
 action may perhaps mean that the end of our action 
 is clearly and completely conceived, is set before us 
 in all its causes and all its effects. Such action is 
 deliberative as opposed to impulsive, and we should 
 certainly be apt to say that a man is acting reason- 
 ably when he acts deliberately, with full considera- 
 tion of the means to what he wants to bring about 
 and of the consequences of what he wants to bring 
 about. On the other hand, the object or purpose, 
 though quite plainly and completely conceived, may 
 be unreasonable in the general sense we are now 
 considering. If, e.g.^ you deliberately set yourself 
 to overreach another person, to get more than your 
 share, you might quite naturally be said to be an 
 unreasonable man, to be acting unreasonably. Or 
 if, again, a judge has decided against me in the 
 discharge of his duty, I should be said to act un- 
 reasonably if I tried, however deliberately, to revenge 
 myself on him. 
 
 We may get this kind of unreasonableness either 
 from passion or ignorance ; probably in all cases 
 there is a certain amount of ignorance involved, and 
 so far we may say the action is not clearly and 
 
IX REASONABLE ACTION 103 
 
 completely conceived. But leaving out the great 
 moral purposes of life — i.e. not saying that indiffer- 
 ence to them constitutes intellectual ignorance — we 
 know that there are people who pursue quite relent- 
 lessly a bad or selfish purpose, which is conceived 
 with perfect clearness ; and even these would prob- 
 ably be said to be acting unreasonably. Apart 
 from these it is probable that most revengeful 
 people, the people with a grievance, have a good 
 deal of intellectual darkness in their minds as well 
 as of passion ; they are generally imbued with what 
 we may call fictitious motives. 
 
 (7) Reasonable^ then^ may —fair, impartial. — We 
 find a further contrast for reasonable action in 
 this fact, that a man who is quite deliberate and 
 clear in his ideas may yet be pronounced unreason- 
 able, unfair, unjust, selfish, partial, prejudiced by 
 passion, because he is trying to overreach some one. 
 This brings us nearer to the sense in which wc 
 commonly use the word unreasonable in moral 
 matters. It means that in some way a man has 
 let his passion have too free a sway ; or that he 
 claims too much to himself; and in opposition to 
 this, reasonable action would be described by such 
 words as impartial, unbiassed, disinterested. 
 
 (S) Reason v. Feeling. — Under this head we get 
 two meanings for " reasonable action." (i.) It may 
 imply the collision between Reason and Feeling, 
 and then unreasonable means self-indulgent, self- 
 absorbed, letting personal desires get the mastery. 
 We constantly think of Reason as opposed to Desire, 
 and in this sense we think of it rather as negative 
 than positive ; wc must all tend to feel that to the 
 commonplace moralist the function of the Reason is 
 
I04 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 to point out to us from day to day what not to do. 
 Plato, in his Republic^ when he is describing the 
 two elements in the will of man, says that there is 
 the appetite making you desire to drink, and some- 
 thing else which prevents you, and that something 
 else is finally the Reason (which he is speaking of 
 as the " calculating " faculty). This becomes intelli- 
 gible only in connection with the positive content 
 of the Reason, which we shall try to exhibit in its 
 true character ; and this appears in the Republic in 
 the sixth and seventh books. But in all common 
 life and commonplace morality the positive character 
 and content of the Reason is apt to be left in the 
 background. Reason appears chiefly as something 
 which commands, and commands by way of pro- 
 hibition ; it checks and " inhibits," as the physiologists 
 say. We cannot accept the suggestion that the 
 mark of reasonable action is either the absence of 
 Feeling or opposition to Feeling. (Kant had, at 
 one period, some idea of this kind, and within recent 
 years it has been revived by Munsterberg.^) It is 
 quite true, as we have seen, that action may start 
 through pure ideas, without desire, but on the other 
 hand it does not follow that ideomotor action is 
 reasonable action. There is ideomotor action in the 
 case of a man who is practically a monomaniac, and 
 in whom a dominant idea upsets his normal ideas. 
 (ii.) Obedience to a Maxim or Truism. — We get 
 \l the second form of this idea of reasonableness in the 
 suggestion that it may consist in obedience to this 
 or that abstract maxim which approves itself to the 
 intellect by a sort of simplicity. It seems natural 
 to us, a priori as people say, convincing in some 
 
 ^ Ursprung d. Sittlichheit, p. 27. 
 
IX REASONABLE ACTION 105 
 
 form. The English philosopher Clarke thought 
 that we could somehow account for reasonableness 
 of action by comparing the conceptions of moral 
 relations to the perception of intellectual relations ; 
 that in some way we can see the rightness of moral 
 relations as we see that two and two make four, or 
 as we see the more beautiful and complex relations 
 in higher mathematical ideas. But he also formulates 
 two moral laws which seem to be taken as certain 
 because they are so simple that they commend 
 themselves as truisms to the intellect. Sidgwick 
 approves these laws, and it would perhaps be fair to 
 say that what positive doctrine there is in Methods 
 of Ethics is equivalent to them.^ They are called 
 the laws of Equity and Benevolence, and they are 
 derived from the principle we have already dealt 
 with, that we must, theoretically, suppose one person 
 to be as good or as important as another, if there 
 is no reason for making any difference between 
 them. 
 
 The Law of Benevolence runs : " What I 
 account reasonable for me to do for myself, I 
 account equally reasonable for me to do for others." 
 In plain English : " What is good for me is good 
 for others." And the Law of Equity is just the 
 converse : " What it is reasonable in other people 
 to do for me, it is also reasonable that I should do 
 for them." Of course, as Sidgwick points out, these 
 axioms involve an assumption, which they merely 
 apply ; the assumption that there is something that 
 is " reasonable " for me to do for myself 
 
 Given this assumption that there is something 
 " reasonable " for me, then the axiom that it is equally 
 
 ^ Cf. Methods of Ethics, pp. 360 S(f. 
 
io6 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 reasonable for others is natural enough ; it finds a 
 common expression in the proverb, " What is sauce 
 for the goose is sauce for the gander." Assuming 
 that A's happiness is worth seeking, then B's happi- 
 ness is worth seeking also in so far as it is not 
 different from A's ; i.e. in so far as B corresponds to 
 the general type of A. The real value of the 
 axioms lies in the qualities taken as the base of their 
 application. By taking the distinctively human 
 qualities we get a wide humanitarian principle ; if 
 we were to include the accidents of birth or learning, 
 rank or position, we should not get the same result 
 
 The abstract idea of " reasonable," then, really 
 indicates that there must be a concrete purpose to 
 which the term moral reasonableness, strictly speaking, 
 applies. The claim is relative to particular standards, 
 and we are in the habit of assuming for general 
 purposes a sort of general average standard ; in this 
 way we get the idea that the reasonable is mediocre, 
 the average, or the "golden mean." We get, in fact, 
 a nesrative idea of it, to which is due the remarkable 
 and somewhat melancholy fact that when we call 
 upon people to " be reasonable," we are generally 
 urging them not to do something. When we urge 
 any one to do something arduous, to break through a 
 commonplace tendency, to make a generous exertion, 
 we do not say " Do be reasonable " ; but rather when 
 we want him to come down to some sort of average 
 standard. 
 
 But this negative or abstract idea, so far as it is 
 right, can only rest on a positive or concrete idea. 
 As stated in these simple truisms, the " reasonable " 
 seems to be just a very brief and unimportant out- 
 line abstracted out of a real organised purpose of life. 
 
IX REASONABLE ACTION 107 
 
 It is from the great practical purposes of life that it 
 must be derived. 
 
 This brings us to the final suggestion. Reason- 
 able action is not (a) opposed to ignorance of means 
 chiefly, nor yet (/3) to ignorance of the end chiefly. 
 Nor is it opposed chiefly (7) to the unjust, nor (8) to 
 action impelled by feeling, or contradicting one of the 
 obvious truisms of general application. Yet it has a 
 certain relation to all of this, and may be summed 
 up as action directed to a positive object having the 
 character of rationality. 
 
 (e) Reasonableness as a quality of a concrete 
 purpose, then, is the final suggestion. We have seen 
 that the view of Reason as calculation suggests a 
 positive end ; that what we took to be a simple 
 isolated purpose becomes, when we have calculated 
 and estimated all the means and all the consequences, 
 no longer an isolated object, but a scheme of life. 
 In a similar way an abstract axiom or truism demands 
 explanation and filling in ; it appears that what is 
 satisfactory for A would not be suitable for B, and 
 thus the positive nature of A and B has to be taken 
 into consideration. 
 
 And so we arrive at the notion of a systematic 
 purpose in life, in which the contents of the self can 
 be organised. Such a purpose, if it is rational, must 
 have the two great characteristics of self- consistency 
 and consistency witJi the ivJiole of experience ; that is, 
 as we said in the last lecture, it must be so far one 
 with reality that the conditions distinguishing it 
 from the actual reality are assignable and can be 
 explained, while they also point in the direction of a 
 more harmonious reality. It is very important to a 
 true ideal or purpose that it should be understood as 
 
io8 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 the whole systematised self or experience, not merely 
 the unreal element. Our ideal of society, e.g., is not 
 confined to the future, nor to the points at which our 
 opinions become discrepant from reality ; it is the 
 normal view of social facts, past, present, and future, 
 as we understand them. The unrealised element is 
 a mere rounding off, or completion of the whole. A 
 certain modification from the actual fact may be 
 necessary to a practical ideal, but it is all, so to say, 
 in one piece ; we have not a given fact on one side, 
 and an idea of something future on the other. The 
 discrepancy in your ideal from reality depends for 
 justification on your right understanding of the given 
 fact as it is. It is a mistake, therefore, to say that 
 the ideal is confined to the future. Just as Natural 
 Science has to do with what happened in the past or 
 at any time, so a right moral ideal has to do with 
 giving true value to elements in the past or present. 
 To understand how this really applies to Psycho- 
 logy, we may consider what is involved in an 
 analysis of life. Professor Bonamy Price, when 
 analysing the working processes of a great London 
 bank, spoke of laying it on the dissection table ; and 
 our procedure should be something like this when 
 we are considering what human lives are really like. 
 For instance, we may analyse a moral life with a 
 view of bringing out its parallelism with the theo- 
 retical structure of the intelligence ; and we may 
 consider how its purposes are combined together, and 
 co-ordinated with each other or subordinated to some 
 one purpose, noting how the system fails in some 
 parts and is more systematically combined in others. 
 And we may ask how the object of the will can be 
 said to have the characteristic of rationality, and 
 
IX REASONABLE ACTION 
 
 109 
 
 find that, as with other organic structures, it Hes in 
 its capabiHty of evading discord, of receiving new 
 experience without creating discord.^ 
 
 3. There arc two final characteristics of moral 
 action to be noted ; i.e. Effort and Self-judgment. 
 How far are these essential to moral action ? 
 
 Effort. — (i.) Professor James deals with effort in the 
 Text-book, pp. 443 sq. He calls attention to the 
 fact that the sensual man never ventures to speak of 
 his conduct as a victory over his ideals, whereas a 
 man who has made an effort to do right speaks of 
 a victory over his passions. Common language 
 recognises effort in the one case and yielding in 
 the other. This effort, James says, is the effort of 
 attention to an idea, and he illustrates it by the 
 elementary case of keeping the right name of the 
 action proposed before the mind. If the man who 
 was tempted to drink, instead of saying " this is to 
 keep me warm," or calling it " hospitality," were to 
 keep before his mind that it is " drinking," it would 
 be moral effort.' 
 
 It is perhaps a fair description of effort, then, to 
 say that it is the process by which an idea establishes 
 itself which has to call for numerous reinforcements. 
 On the whole, and generally speaking, the temptation 
 is given ; it is intense in its character, and because it 
 is a temptation to something unworthy it is partial 
 and narrow. On the other hand the right, the idea 
 which is good, has to conquer by going through a 
 
 ^ Cf. James, Text-book of Psychology , p. 430. We have to bear in 
 mind that the mere fact of an action being initiated by ideas does not 
 prove its reasonableness. It is the nature of ideas which matters. 
 
 "^ Cf. also Sidgwick in Mind, loc. cit., where he enlarges upon 
 the effects of self-deception. 
 
no PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 process. It has to call up reinforcements through all 
 the various complicated relations of the content of 
 the self, and this may partly explain why we speak 
 of effort when we do right and of yielding when we 
 do wrong. It is difficult to reverse the application 
 of the terms, because the right will always be 
 connected with the larger purpose ; but in certain 
 complicated states of mind something like it may 
 occur. If, e.g,^ a lawful and intense affection (say 
 filial affection) is competing with an attractive and 
 not very creditable scheme of life (say some ambition), 
 then there may be present the peculiar sense of 
 effort, of the idea reinforcing itself in trying to do 
 wrong, and a sense of yielding in giving way to the 
 right and natural affection/ (See also Sully's Human 
 Mind, ii. 288.) 
 
 Is the sense of Effort necessary to Morality ? — 
 We may perhaps say that the form of effort is in 
 some degree a sine qua 7ion, because the wider 
 purpose in asserting itself will always demand a 
 certain " reinforcement." But that is one side of 
 the truth only, and morality is not to be judged by 
 the intensity of the sense of effort. The will is real, 
 and realised, in habits and institutions ; and the sense 
 of self-affirmation which arises from the agreement 
 of the will with its outer and realised self, is one of 
 the most important factors in the guidance of the 
 moral will. If all morality were effort, we should be 
 in an unhappy state where there was no realisation 
 and no sense of affirmation in the existing social , 
 world. Those people who think it their duty to be 
 always in a state of moral excitement, fighting against 
 
 ^ Of course there is a still wider purpose in alliance with the natural 
 affection, but the latter may be the most prominent. 
 
IX REASONABLE ACTION iii 
 
 themselves with an intense and arduous moral effort, 
 are probably wrong. If not, the formation of good 
 habits would be sheer waste ; but the formation of 
 good habits is an important factor in the realisation 
 of the wider purposes. It is rather the width of the 
 effort after right, and its bona fides, not \hQ feeling of 
 its intensity, which is the essential point in the moral 
 state. 
 
 (ii.) Finally, we have to say a few words on the 
 nature and necessity of moral self-judgment. 
 
 {a) There is one kind of moral judgment of 
 which the predicate is a positive idea of a course of 
 action, and the subject is " What I ought to do." 
 Here we have a real perception or inference. It is 
 concrete, it applies to the circumstances of the 
 moment, and it is constructive ; that is, it depends 
 on successfully understanding how what is actually 
 given may be made to conform to its idea. To 
 suppose that the moral choice is always between two 
 ready-made courses is a great mistake ; we are like 
 scientific men with new facts before them, and our 
 duty is to be equal to the situation. TJiis judgment is 
 essential to morality and is the very process of morality. 
 
 (/3) A second kind of moral judgment is one of 
 which the predicate is " good " or " bad," and the 
 subject an act or person. " A. B. is good (or bad)." 
 *' That action was good (or bad)." The very words 
 good and bad are an embodiment of this moral 
 judgment, and show that it is used ; but yet we have 
 the current prohibitions, " Judge not," " Don't impute 
 motives." We are urged to judge the act and not 
 the agent, but we cannot really separate the act 
 from the moral agent. What we probably do in 
 commonplace moral judgment is to refer the act by 
 
112 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 its common accepted name to a sort of fictitious 
 unreal agent'; we assume a sort of normal, average 
 person, and so get a working morality. " Stealing is 
 wrong," i.e. normally, for a normal agent. In such a 
 judgment we do not take into account the individual 
 circumstances of any actual moral case ; we are 
 judging abstractly, hypothetically, assigning the act 
 to an assumed agent. 
 
 To get deeper we must judge the motive, and the 
 motive may be described as that part of the action 
 which attracted the agent at the price of the means 
 and foreseen consequences. We must not leave out 
 these, but must apply to the agent the fact that the 
 motive was able to attract him at the price of its 
 consequences ; and an object attractive in this way 
 is an embodiment of character. If we knew it fully 
 — which we never could — we could judge categorically 
 of the character displayed in the act. As it is, we 
 judge hypothetically of the motive ; we say, " If it 
 was as it seems to be, then it was a bad action," but 
 we do not profess to know what is the state of the 
 individual character. 
 
 Also, we do pass moral judgments on people. 
 We class them as good or bad with a pretence of 
 categorical judgment, i.e. judgment without an " ifr 
 This is really a judgment relative to our current 
 standpoint, and seems to be based on a general 
 impression of the limits of a man's character as 
 compared with his opportunities. If such a judg- 
 ment were complete, and based on the knowledge it 
 really requires, it would be categorical ; but then it 
 would pass beyond mere morality. All we can do 
 is to try roughly to understand how much a man 
 had given to him, and what he did with it ; where 
 
IX REASONABLE ACTION 113 
 
 he started, and how far he got. Then we have to 
 make allowances for what we don't know, and we 
 find ultimately that we cannot pass any categorical 
 judgment at all ; we do not know the conditions 
 with sufficient accuracy to say he was " good " 
 or " bad." 
 
 All general moral judgment, then, except the 
 judgment on things to be done, is hypothetical, and 
 useful only as a sort of first approximation to actual 
 circumstances. We do not venture to say that 
 every one who steals is a bad man ; but we do say 
 that there are strong presumptions against him, and 
 it is useful to have a current sense or judgment of 
 the kind, to keep us straight. But the only really 
 categorical, concrete, moral judgment is that which 
 determines what the course of action is, by adopting 
 which we can be equal to the occasion ; and the 
 predicate of this judgment is a course of action, and 
 not a moral term of approval or reproach. 
 
 Finally, that which constitutes the measure of 
 morality seems to be the actual identification of the 
 private self with the universal self, the actual sur- 
 render of the will to the greater will of the system 
 to which we belong. We cannot judge by the feeling 
 of being good or bad ; that is absolutely deceptive. 
 The best people often have a feeling of being bad, 
 and Emerson writes of a lady who told him that 
 " the sense of being perfectly dressed affects the 
 mind with an inward comfort which religion is 
 unable to bestow." Effort and judgment, again, 
 though implied in morality, are not measures of it ; 
 they arc only indispensable conditions. 
 
LECTURE X 
 
 BODY AND SOUL 
 
 I. The general problem of the relation between Body 
 and Soul has been an interesting case of progressive 
 analysis. It begins with the simple view of the 
 phenomena which precludes mechanical explanation, 
 and may be called the magical view ; and then by 
 an analysis, which seems very modest, we are driven 
 back into explaining part after part of this series of 
 phenomena into mechanical action, or some sort of 
 regular intelligible action. And when finally the 
 magical element has been driven back into a dark 
 corner, we ask ourselves whether the spiritual or 
 profound principle for which we are searching, the 
 larger view of phenomena, may not really apply to 
 the whole of them taken as a system, and not, by 
 preference, to the unexplained or mysterious element. 
 The suggestion arises that mystery is not essential to 
 a spiritual view of things, and that what is more or 
 higher is so from some kind of value attaching to its 
 arrangement in a system. 
 
 We will begin our study of the problem by a 
 general sketch of the stages we have personally gone 
 through in our education {not of the history of 
 philosophy). Probably most of us have at one time 
 
LECT. X BODY AND SOUL 115 
 
 thought that mind is a tiling, which thinks and seems 
 to move the body — with which it is co-extensive — 
 without any assignable mechanism. As we begin to 
 be educated we find out, e.g., that the mind is not 
 present at the tips of the fingers where we seem to 
 feel ; that the actual skin and flesh is not sensitive, 
 but only the nerve, upon pressure of which feeling 
 follows. A further stage of the same discovery is 
 when we learn that if a nerve is cut anywhere 
 between finger and brain there will not be any 
 sensation in the finger ; so that really the feeling at 
 the finger tips is, to a certain extent, not a mistake, 
 but an illusion. It is analogous, as Lotze says, 
 to the sort of effect we may get by feeling a 
 thing with a walking-stick ; we seem to feel at the 
 other end of the stick that it is smooth, or soft, or 
 gritty. Aristotle was aware of this, though he did 
 not know that the nerves were the means of sensation ; 
 he knew that we could feel through a film round the 
 flesh very much as if the sensitive part itself was 
 touched. 
 
 Then we must all remember when we found out 
 — what Mill points out — that the will is not magical, 
 that, e.g., a numbed arm will not move. That is, the 
 sequence of movement upon will is not infallible, is 
 not magical, but depends upon a certain mechanism 
 which may go wrong ; we do not know whether it 
 will really act except by trying. Experience of this 
 kind, however we come by it, whether by observation, 
 or reading, or hearsay, makes us withdraw the 
 magical notion of the will from the outlying parts of 
 the body ; until, in popular culture, we get a sort of 
 idea of the soul as a little creature sitting in the 
 brain. As Lotze suggests, we think of it as like a 
 
Ii6 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 player on a keyed instrument receiving telephonic 
 messages from the nerves into the central organs of 
 the brain, and sending down motor messages in 
 return. This is the modern development of Descartes's 
 idea that the soul resides in the pineal gland, the 
 only portion of the brain that happens not to be 
 doubled. 
 
 This idea of Lotze's, then, is really the up-to- 
 date form of the commonplace distinction of Soul 
 and Body as two things, as we shape it by our 
 popular culture and knowledge of physiology. 
 Though magic has given way to the idea of 
 mechanism so far as the body is concerned, still in 
 the great popular view the soul remains as ^ magical 
 source of action, a substance or thing which is not 
 the body, and which acts upon the body. We find 
 a similar view in the less profound parts of Plato, 
 those parts where he is inclined to regard the soul 
 as a separate creature, acting upon the body and sur- 
 viving it (though he probably did not even know that 
 the work of thought goes on by means of the brain). 
 
 We may indicate what is technically important 
 in such a view as follows, using Greek letters to 
 denote states of consciousness, or psychological 
 events, and English letters to denote states of body, 
 or physical and material events. According to it 
 we get a series, say of action following upon an 
 incoming stimulus, like A, yS, C ; in which A is the 
 shock transmitted by a mechanical state of the body, 
 y8 the pure soul state witJiout any state of the body 
 corresponding to it, and C the state of the body 
 involved in the motor impulse sent out. 
 
 Then analysis pushes further to a point hardly 
 reached until we study psychology. The change of 
 
X BODY AND SOUL 117 
 
 bodily states from A to C is alleged to be con- 
 tinuous, and though we can neither prove nor 
 disprove it, there is no reason to doubt that it is 
 so. So we get the series A, B, C, where A is the 
 incoming shock, B the state of the central organs, 
 and C the motor impulse. But if A and B are 
 enough to account for C, what need is there for 
 the soul ? Even though we grant that A, B, C is 
 accompanied by a, /3, 7, that is quite different from 
 saying that the true course of sequence is A yS C. 
 
 Lotze is very interesting on this point, just 
 because he is making the transition himself. He 
 cannot quite abandon the idea of a soul-thing, acting 
 out of itself, but he is prepared to admit that action 
 of the soul is excited by some change in the bodily 
 state. When we have got as far as this, when we 
 have a continuous system of bodily changes without 
 any interruption from psychical changes, we have 
 got rid of the magical in principle. The soul ceases 
 to be a series of inexplicable reactions, and we come 
 back to the conception of Plato and Aristotle at 
 their best — the conception that the spiritual view 
 is that which regards experience as a mechanically 
 intelligible whole. 
 
 2. (i.) Tilings interacting. — Taking this more in 
 detail, we get first the possible view of Body and 
 Soul as two things interacting ; the view we have 
 been describing. It is the view which we naturally 
 take when we first begin to reflect, and seem to feel 
 the soul as a state of mind which moves the body ; 
 and we find it in the common language even of 
 philosophers. In James's Text-book (p. 5) he says 
 that all mental states are followed by bodily activity 
 
ii8 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 of some sort ; and Granger in his Psychology (p. 15) 
 insists that a state of mind may be excited by a 
 state of body. If we take this view seriously, we 
 get — as we have seen — the sequence A, /S, C, in 
 which A is physical, /3 psychical, C physical ; and 
 many difficult questions arise, such as whether the 
 seat of the soul in the body is apart from the 
 nervous system, or whether " the soul " can exercise 
 mechanical force, or how it affects the nervous 
 centres. Lotze discusses these questions, and 
 Bradley considers them fair questions for discussion. 
 Hegel, on the other hand, rejects them as meaning- 
 less ; for him the soul cannot be thus separated from 
 the body and considered as acting upon it. 
 
 We may at any rate get rid of the elementary 
 difficulty by rejecting the formula A, y5, C. No 
 psychologist will seriously maintain it, for it ex- 
 presses the confusion of psychological and physio- 
 logical consequence. In other words, it expresses 
 the view that the soul is separated from the body, 
 and is acting upon it from the outside. 
 
 Our formula, then, must be in one sense or 
 another the two series running side by side, A, B, C, 
 ttj y3) 7 ; ^^^d the question before us is, how to 
 interpret them. 
 
 (ii.) Bare Concomitance. — The first and simplest 
 explanation of, or way of looking at, the two series, 
 is that of bare concomitance ; the suggestion, that 
 is, that they accompany each other, but that we can 
 say no more about their relation ; that they run on 
 side by side, neither affecting the other. The view 
 is an interesting one, but not really an explanation 
 at all ; it simply says that we must treat the two 
 series as disconnected, because we do not know how 
 
X BODY AND SOUL 119 
 
 to connect them. And in psychology no doubt we 
 are obliged to treat the mental series as on the 
 whole complete in itself; we must try to show that 
 in some sense it hangs together, without being ex- 
 plained by states of brain, and so on. 
 
 If we do try for an explanation we are forced to 
 one of two extremes. We must either say that 
 Soul and Body are really independent, and Will a 
 sort of junction between them, so giving up all 
 chance of explanation ; or we must say that they 
 are aspects or manifestations of the same underlying 
 unity. But an explanation that is not more definite 
 than this is really no explanation at all ; it is simply 
 a rule of method that for the present we are unable 
 to say anything about the connection, and that we 
 must therefore treat each series as if it were dis- 
 connected. 
 
 (iii.) But it is difficult to repose in an attitude like 
 that. Man naturally presses on to some explanation, 
 and so we get the next theory, the theory that the 
 soul is an effect and not a cause. The results of 
 such a theory are somewhat repellent, but it is 
 becoming dominant, and must be faced. Briefly 
 stated it is, that the course of mental events has no 
 causative influence of its own at all, but is a series of 
 separate effects produced by the accompanying physical 
 events. 
 
 If cither series is to be the effect of the other it 
 seems clear it must be the mental scries, if only 
 because the bodily series seems to be continuous 
 while the mental series does not. Then, taking this 
 view of consciousness as a mere accompaniment of 
 bodily events, let us look again at our series A, B, C, 
 a, /3, 7. A, a state of the body, is now the cause of 
 
I20 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 B, another state of the body, and also of a, its 
 accompanying mental event ; B again is the cause 
 of C, and of fi. On the other hand, a is not the 
 cause of ^, and has no connection with it ; yS is not 
 the cause of 7, and much less is a the cause of A, 
 or j3 in any sense the cause of B. The series of 
 consciousness has no effect on the bodily series. 
 
 This is the view with v\^hich modern psychology 
 is coquetting, and for many reasons it is difficult to 
 take another ; but if frankly stated and worked out 
 it carries us a long way. For instance, in this view 
 pleasure and pain, considered as feelings, would have 
 no effect whatever on actions ; they could not, as 
 part of the mental series. Indeed, as a somewhat 
 rash writer has amusingly said, it would appear as 
 if the whole of life might go on the same if conscious- 
 ness were not present, the determining feature being 
 natural selection.^ The organism would be a 
 machine which would produce those movements 
 necessary for the preservation of the race, and 
 consciousness would make no difference. A clear 
 instance of this extreme theory is Munsterberg's 
 view that, except in certain complicated instances, 
 my idea of the movement I am about to make is 
 not in any degree a cause of that movement. A 
 certain stimulus calls up a movement because natural 
 selection has picked it out as desirable ; and the 
 idea is prior, only because less time intervenes 
 between the stimulus and the idea which it suggests, 
 than between the stimulus and that perception of 
 the movement which is subsequent to its being 
 carried out. Thus the whole conception of our 
 previous idea of the movement being the cause 
 
 ^ Fawcett, Riddle of the Universe. 
 
X BODY AND SOUL 121 
 
 would be an illusion ; and even in the complicated 
 cases where Miinsterberg admits a certain influence, 
 it is only the bodily side of the idea which has that 
 influence. 
 
 Of course this view rests to a great extent on the 
 assumption of the conservation of energy, or the 
 persistence of force, the assumption on which we 
 conduct physical science in the present day. In the 
 physical series. A, B, C, the circuit of mechanical 
 motion is complete, and there seems to be no room 
 for any generation of movement outside it, or any 
 loss inside. Nothing but motion, according to the 
 ordinary idea, can be the equivalent of energy ; and 
 the assumption is that the energy is all accounted 
 for by this continuous cycle of movements, the 
 one of which excites the other in a never-ending 
 series. 
 
 The very clearness of this view leads to certain 
 difficulties.^ The series a, yS, 7, are represented as (i.) 
 effects, or at least events, having no causes ; for the 
 mechanical cause A is on this hypothesis fully 
 accounted for in the mechanical effect B, so that no 
 causal action remains to account for a and /3 ; and 
 (ii.) causes, or at least events, without effects. This 
 is obvious from the statement, and both are difficult 
 to believe. 
 
 And finally there is one more point, upon which 
 we would not lay too much stress. Of course 
 the bodily states, as well as the mental states, are 
 all of them objects of experience, of perceiving ; and 
 more particularly our whole idea of nature as a 
 system of mechanical causes is only an abstraction 
 out of the whole of our knowledge. In short, we 
 
 ^ Sec Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. J27. 
 
 ^^esE L'B^^^ 
 
122 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 have to take into consideration the effects of sub- 
 jective idealism. But this argument does not help 
 us in detail, for this reason. If we have once under- 
 taken the task of classifying our experience, and 
 arranging the parts in a reasonable system according 
 to their nature, we have no right at every moment 
 to say, " After all it is only my own experience, only 
 an ideal construction." Such an attitude does not 
 enable us to change the nature of the facts from 
 what they present themselves as being in our ex- 
 perience ; it only prevents us in general from think- 
 ing that the mechanical system of nature {e.g. as a 
 system of atoms) is an ultimate fact. 
 
 (iv.) Another view which may be suggested is 
 that which speaks of the soul as an ideal aspect of the 
 body, or the ideality of the body ; and this seems to 
 contain an attempt in the right direction. The only 
 way of avoiding the difficulty of making conscious- 
 ness entirely an effect, is to refuse to make the 
 abstraction between the bodily and the mental series. 
 In philosophy it is generally an abstraction of some 
 kind that leads us to ultimate difficulties ; we 
 separate two things, set them over against each 
 other, and then try to reduce each of them to the 
 other, and this is perhaps what we have been trying 
 to do here. The mental fact does not exist by 
 itself, and it is not proved that it can ; and though 
 from the point of view of the onlooker bodily facts 
 do seem to exist without mental facts, yet the law 
 of causation forbids us to admit that they are the 
 same when they exist separately as when accom- 
 panied by mental facts. This cuts both ways. It 
 may be said to show that mind depends upon the 
 existence of body, and so far as our experience goes, 
 
X BODY AND SOUL 123 
 
 and under present conditions, it does seem to show 
 something of the sort. But on the other hand it 
 shows that we need not raise the question whether 
 pure thought, or pure feehng, can work upon the 
 body, for within our experience there is no pure 
 thought or pure feehng — i.c. no thought or feehng 
 which is devoid of a physical accompaniment. 
 Mental effect is both bodily and mental, and the 
 moment we split it up into a bodily and mental 
 series — except for the convenience of our science — 
 we get away from the facts. Thus it is quite 
 possible that an idea, or a feeling of pleasantness, 
 may cause a movement of the body through its 
 corresponding bodily state, and then theorists of the 
 the one side or the other may say, " But the bodily 
 state is only an accident of the mental event," or 
 " the mental is only an accident of the bodily event." 
 To this we reply : " How do you know this } " All 
 that we know is that the thing is given as one with 
 two sides, and there is no reason to make difficulties 
 by an abstraction which does not heed the facts. 
 We may find another instance of the factitious 
 difficulty in the conceptions of contiguity and 
 similarity, when the question is asked whether con- 
 tiguity is a bodily or mental principle. Or, again, 
 in the question whether a theory of pleasure and pain 
 deals with a bodily or mental principle. We must 
 refuse to make the abstraction, and then the question 
 falls to the ground. No doubt the bad form of the 
 doctrine of association has been largely generated 
 by the attempt to make it merely a bodily principle ; 
 the object being to enable us to regard the mind as 
 something like a rack full of photographs, out of 
 which one is taken when a particular image recurs. 
 
124 PSVCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 And it is convenient to say with James and others 
 that the paths of association are the paths of the 
 brain, as possibly they are. But after all the 
 machinery is unknown to us ; the psychical com- 
 bination is what we know, and we must simply 
 examine the psychical action and assume that the 
 machinery of the body is in some way adapted to 
 carry out the psychical modes of combination. 
 
 Then it is natural to ask what is added by the 
 view that the soul is the ideality of the body, to the 
 view which simply accepts two aspects, two con- 
 current series ? The answer is, that it calls attention 
 to the individual organised nature of the soul. When 
 we are told about a bodily series of events accom- 
 panied by a mental series, we tend to feel as if the 
 soul had been broken up into a set of detached 
 incidents, without combination. We have to 
 remember that after all, the soul, the contents of the 
 soul as we know it, form an individual system full of 
 character and personality ; that it is quite as 
 characteristically individual and belonging to itself as 
 the body is, and certainly at a higher level ; and that 
 while its constituent elements include of course the 
 qualities of the body, they include also a whole world 
 of other qualities and relations. Thus we get quite 
 a different estimate of the importance of the soul if 
 we regard it from this point of view, from what we 
 do if we allow ourselves to regard it as simply a set 
 of events accompanying certain changes of the body. 
 The question of value is really distinct from that of 
 the nature of the causal connection between mind and 
 body ; and it is difficult to see why some of our 
 best writers are so sensitive to admitting that, from 
 a historical standpoint, the soul or mind is conditioned 
 
X BODY AND SOUL 125 
 
 by the causation or machinery of the sequence of 
 bodily states. The important point is, what the 
 thing actually is ; i.e. what is its nature, and in what 
 does its organisation consist. We are quite accus- 
 tomed to find that the things we value most have 
 been able to develop through a system of mechanical 
 causation. 
 
 The only theoretical difficulty that threatens the 
 spiritual character of our world arises when we 
 separate the two elements, body and soul, and then 
 try to reduce either of the unrealities to the other. 
 If we think that because the soul is conditional upon 
 the processes of a bodily organism, therefore it is 
 nothing more than the processes of bodily organisa- 
 tion, then we have made for ourselves an unnecessary 
 and serious difficulty. In a work of art we know 
 that it is mechanically conditioned in every part, but 
 we do not think that makes any difference to its 
 value ; in other words, we suppose that the causes 
 which gave it value are capable of expressing them- 
 selves through the mechanical processes which produce 
 the work. And in the same way we have to suppose, 
 not that the spiritual element begins at a given point 
 in nature, but that the whole process of nature is 
 capable of being instrumental to the development of 
 that which is of spiritual value. 
 
 (v.) There are two great subjects which we shall be 
 expected to mention, but on which there is little to 
 say in this connection. The first, the question of 
 Free-will, does not really arise at all. No one main- 
 tains that we ourselves made our positive qualities. 
 Our language, our ancestors, our religion, our leading 
 ideas, the country we live in, arc given to us, not 
 made by us. But the machinery by which life is 
 
126 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. 
 
 carried on does not affect our free-will at all, except 
 of course in so far as it limits or determines our 
 power of being influenced by similar experience to 
 other people's. In the sense that we all have 
 positive advantages and disadvantages, for which we 
 cannot account, as compared with other people, no 
 doubt our relative freedom and capacity is determined. 
 But admitting that each of us is a positive system, 
 with certain definite qualities which he did not himself 
 create, then the mere mode in which the machinery 
 of the organic system determines those positive 
 qualities is of no possible importance, and cannot 
 affect any serious question. Mere absence of reason- 
 able determination would only mean that we could 
 not account for anything, that it was all simply 
 mysterious and magical. 
 
 (vi.) The second question, that of the existence of 
 disembodied souls, is a mere question of fact. We 
 have no ground to suppose that a disembodied con- 
 dition of the soul would be any gain in spirituality ; 
 prima facie it might just as well be a loss. Speaking 
 generally, we need very much to get a thorough grasp 
 of the conception that the spiritual is always the 
 more, and not the less ; to make an abstraction by 
 cutting off some element of our world is not advan- 
 cing to what is more spiritual, but is probably retreating 
 to what is less spiritual. Of course it is quite true 
 that a higher totality has extraordinary capacities 
 for transfiguring and transforming another element 
 until we may not recognise it again. This is always 
 the way in works of art; we can hardly understand 
 how little details which seem to have no value or 
 life when seen alone, become so unutterably full of 
 meaning when we see them in their place. But 
 
X BODY AND SOUL 127 
 
 though they seem changed, and are no longer trivial, 
 the principle remains that the spiritual view, or the 
 spiritual being, is always that which has more in it, 
 and never that which has less ; it docs not omit, it 
 includes and transforms. The spiritual view of life, 
 for instance, does not omit the affections, but trans- 
 forms them ; it takes them up into the whole of life. 
 
 To whatever tenuity, then, we may reduce our 
 matter^ the partial, or narrow, or abstract view of 
 what is best in life, will always be the material and 
 not the spiritual view. Experience, indeed, rather 
 suggests that what we understand by the spiritual 
 could not exist except by some sort of contrast, such 
 as we have in the material ; it always seems to reveal 
 itself through symbols, or in some mode of appear- 
 ance which rather points to it than actually is it, and 
 in the attempt to dispense with the material world 
 there is great risk of turning the spiritual into the 
 material. This of course is what every spiritualist 
 or ghost-seer does : he finds his spirit creature in 
 a very feeble and attenuated sort of bodily existence. 
 
 In completing the science of the realised moral 
 self, what Hegel has called the Science of Objective 
 Mind ^ — mind, that is, as incorporated in law, 
 morality, and the ways of social and political living — 
 we should proceed by taking up from Lecture IX. 
 the conception of a purpose or action having the 
 character of reasonableness. This character of 
 reasonableness we should analyse and expand, until 
 we had exhibited the moral self as a content at once 
 real and rational, affirmed by the will, which finds in 
 it the true self, or satisfactory life. But such an 
 
 ^ See Wallace's translation of Hegel's Philosophy of Mi n J : Dyde's 
 translation of Hegel's Philosophy of Rij^hf. 
 
128 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF lect. x 
 
 investigation, though it would be dealing with the 
 true and essential nature of mind in a far higher 
 degree than inquiries, e.g., as to the relation of body 
 and soul, would go beyond the limits which our 
 definition in Lecture I. assigned to Psychological 
 Science. We should be dealing with the significance 
 of psychical occurrences rather than with their laws 
 and causes. And we therefore end at this point, 
 remembering that our work has only been an intro- 
 duction to the Science of Mind in the largest and 
 truest sense. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 All students should master Mr. Ward's article in E?tcydo- 
 pcedia Brita7i7iica (Ninth ed. vol. xx.), "Psychology." The 
 number can be obtained separatelyfor 7s. 6d. Mr. Ward's articles 
 in Mijid (N.S., 5 and 7), and Mr. Bradley's on " Conscious- 
 ness and Experience" (in Mind^ N.S., 6), should also be studied, 
 together with the chapter on Association of Ideas in Mr. 
 Bradley's Pri?iciples of Logic. In lieu of, or in addition to, the 
 above, students may read Mr. Sully's Human Mind (2 vols.), 
 Mr. Stout's Analytic Psychology (2 vols.), Prof. Wm. James' or 
 Prof. Dewey's Text-books of Psychology.^ or Prof. Hoffding's 
 Outlines of Psychology. It is strongly urged that the student 
 should, if possible, become possessed of one of these works — by 
 preference that of Mr. Ward — and not merely borrow it from a 
 library. The book should then be thoroughly studied, and any 
 further reading should be undertaken with a view to points 
 which may have proved interesting or difficult in this study. 
 Miinsterberg's Die Willenshandlung (only 163 pp.) will be 
 found striking and suggestive. 
 
QUESTIONS 
 
 1. In what sense is it true that Psychology treats of all that 
 
 is in the Soul ? 
 
 2. State and explain Aristotle's definition of " Psyche." 
 
 3. What is meant by "atomism" in Psychology? 
 
 4. Have we experience of a simple sensation ? 
 
 5. Criticise the term Association in its psychological usage. 
 
 6. What is strictly the meaning of Consciousness ? 
 
 7. Explain the nature of Apperception. 
 
 8. What difficulty is sometimes held to attach to Association 
 
 by Similarity ? Explain by means of an example. 
 
 9. What is involved in " Self-assertion " ? 
 
 10. What are the principal elements in the conception of 
 
 personal identity ? 
 
 11. In what principal senses is the term Feeling used by 
 
 Psychologists ? 
 
 12. Discuss the view that pleasure and pain can never be 
 
 objects for consciousness. 
 
 13. What is meant by a faculty? Would it be correct to call 
 
 Attention a faculty ? 
 
 14. Discuss the view that pleasure is the sole motive of action, 
 
 explaining how such an idea arises. 
 
 15. Illustrate the connection of Will and Intelligence in the 
 
 developed moral self. 
 
 16. Compare the conceptions of "Altruism" and "Self- 
 
 sacrifice." 
 
132 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL SELF 
 
 17. What is the apparent contradiction in the idea of " reason- 
 
 able action " ? 
 
 18. Discuss the connection and relative importance of moral 
 
 purpose and moral judgment. 
 
 19. What views of the relation of body and soul may we 
 
 venture to set aside as erroneous ? 
 
 20. In what senses could Free-will be at stake in the problem 
 
 of Body and Soul ? 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh. 
 
111- 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
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