I
3
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY
AND
SCIENTIFIC METHODS
EDITED BY
FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE
VOLUME II
JANUARY-DECEMBER, 19O5
NEW YORK
THE SCIENCE PRESS
19O5
I
1
PRF68 OP
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
LANCASTER, PA.
.
VOL. II. No. 1. JANUARY 5, 1905
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE IDEA OF POSSIBILITY
idea of possibility has a variety of usages which, are, how-.
-*- ever, mainly two, as follows: First, it sometimes alleges a
peculiar predicate of reality, a quality through which the not yet
existent may become so, and moreover become so indeterminately.
' This or that may happen ; either is possible ' ; and it is implied that
the realization of the particular alternative is not necessitated.
Secondly, it expresses 'a certain combination of ignorance and
assurance' with respect to the conditionate order of events. 'Such
and such is possible since if definite conditions were realized it
would follow as a consequence.' Whether these conditions are or
will be facts we do not know.
In answer to the question, What does possibility fundamentally
mean? these two interpretations are sharply distinguished and
opposed to each other. Possibility, according to the first theory,
is real, even though a particular possibility is not now an existing
fact. Its true field is generally regarded as that of intelligent
action, rarely as the whole sphere of change. The other uses of
the term are held to be subordinate, and to lack a genuine applica-
tion to reality; thus the completely conditioned is, strictly speaking,
either actual or necessary according as it has or has not yet come
to pass. The principal objections to this first theory are: (1)
that it apparently turns intelligent progress into pure chance;
(2) that it collects wholly heterogeneous facts under a single term;
j(3) that it does not explain how a proper usage could become so
perverted as to lose its original significance. Nevertheless it pre-
vails both as an unreasoned conviction of popular thought and as a
feature of theological systems, especially of scholasticism. Whether
it has an adequate logical and psychological basis remains to be
seen.
The second interpretation is less spontaneous and more elaborate.
Possibility, it declares, is a subjective matter which has no direct
metaphysical significance whatever. It is a 'spurious' concept; or,
as one writer puts it, the predicate is 'not found as such outside
6 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
our reflection.' This theory in its most finished form goes on to
say, that in our dealings with hypothetical events we often lack
complete insight into their conditions, where yet we find ourselves
confronted with practical necessities or moved by habits of adapta-
tion. In such cases we do not remain quiescent, but assume an
attitude of greater or less confidence in the matter, the different
degrees of alleged 'possibility' corresponding to the extent of our
knowledge and ignorance. Being unable to justify a given judg-
ment completely, we nevertheless attach to it a certain value which
varies in different cases.
The basis of this interpretation is obviously psychological. In
many, perhaps in most, instances when we use the idea of possibility,
we are thinking of something which we do not surely know. That
the accused is possibly innocent, that it may rain to-morrow, that
the righteous may win immortality, these are matters which to a
great extent lie beyond the range of our vision, and we are conscious
of our present mental helplessness. "We are also conscious that the
mere admission of ignorance is unsatisfactory, and hence we make
a kind of elementary volition or tentative acceptance, and declare
that these things may be. Furthermore, there is in many cases the
observable assurance, not only that the fact escapes us, but that it
is in its own field necessarily settled. The bright planet in the
evening sky may be Venus or Jupiter, but it is definitely one, and
the 'possibility' that it may be either is purely subjective; this we
do know. Therefore, from this point of view, possibility means
what we find in our minds when we talk about possible things ; and
hence the term is readily defined through the very evident psychical
characters which reveal themselves under introspective scrutiny,
namely the characters of doubt, ignorance, and the habit of accept-
ing, more or less fully, that which we can not or do not prove.
To this view we may raise several objections. In the first place
the alleged system of elements 1 is unclear and inadequate: unclear
because both 'ignorance' and 'assurance' contain difficulties pres-
ently to be specified; and inadequate because the combination of
their proper meanings does not square with the peculiar idea of
possibility. On these points the following criticism may be made:
*To state the 'meaning' of an idea is either (i) to point out the objects
to which the idea refers, the thing meant or meaning in extension, or (ii) to
enumerate the mental elements into which the idea may be analyzed, and of
which the essential ones constitute the ' intension.' These two processes mutu-
ally imply each other, since, on the one hand, the indication of an rfbject does
not present it to our intelligence as meaning anything unless it is perceived to
be the realization of those ideal elements into which the idea may be resolved,
and, on the other hand, to speak in abstractions is not to enlighten unless those
abstractions somehow direct us to the concrete thing meant.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 7
The term 'ignorance' is ambiguous. Does it mean: (i) the fact
of ignorance, the simple lack of apprehension; or (ii) the conscious-
ness of ignorance, a positive 'I don't know'; or (iii) a subconscious
dissatisfaction or feeling of helplessness, which does not rise above
the 'threshold,' but colors the whole mental state? If the first, it
is sufficient to remark that the fact of ignorance is not a mental fact,
but the absence of one, and hence that it can not be regarded as an
element of an idea. By loose usage of speech one might indeed
say that the idea of possibility means ignorance in the sense that
it arises therefrom ; but this would not be the proper ' meaning, ' and
furthermore it would raise the question whether we predicate pos-
sibility because of ignorance, or are ignorant, in some cases at least,
because possibility is real. Secondly, if the consciousness of
ignorance is supposed to be a constituent of the idea of possibility,
we observe that it is never present as such in that idea. The transi-
tion from 'It may be' to 'I don't know' is a distinct mental step.
This fact, however, does not show that ignorance is not elementary,
for the process of analysis often introduces a change of form into
its products. It is, therefore, plausible that the idea in question
contains some subconscious factor, some vague sense of ineptness,
which may be precipitated by reflection as the consciousness of
ignorance; and if this were true the above supposition would be
justified. But is it true? In the assertion, 'It is possible for me
to raise the window,' is there uncertainty about the matter? No
consciousness of doubt comes to light; in fact I am quite sure that
I shall not do so. To retort that I may be mistaken, is to miss the
point, for, as has already been explained, the fact of ignorance is
not a mental element. If there is a subconscious factor it remains
concealed so persistently as to raise a suspicion as to its identity;
or if it does emerge it appears as an inference rather than as the
conscious expression of a vaguely felt incapacity. Hence in many
cases, I am inclined to believe, the mind does not naturally tolerate
the suggestion of ignorance as constituent, at least fundamentally,
of the idea of possibility.
Equally unclear is the term 'assurance.' In this connection it
can mean only (i) intellectual certainty, or (ii) an attitude pri-
marily volitional but varying in strength with the extent of one's
information as to its object, a disposition to act or to ignore. Neither
meaning is finally satisfactory, however. It hardly needs to be
pointed out that when we allege possibility we are not ordinarily
certain of anything except that possibility itself. ' Our friend may
recover from his illness. ' Of what are we here assured ? Not that
a definite fact exists, but rather that it is possible. We know, it is
true, that he has a sound constitution, and is under expert medical
8 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
care ; and when we affirm his chance of recovery we do so on these
grounds. But the idea of the possibility, as it appears in the partic-
ular proposition 'he may recover,' is not our certainty of these facts
(and ignorance of others). Long practice has taught us to proceed
from what we know and do not know to the affirmation of possibility,
but this affirmation is more than a summarized restatement of such
premises. It is indeed, and oftentimes primarily, a volitional atti-
tude, and hence ' assurance, ' in the second sense noted above, is not
improperly regarded as a factor of the idea. This very assertion,
however, implies that it can be translated into intellectual terms,
since, strictly speaking, an element of an idea can only be ideal.
What, then, in our 'assurance' do we actually cognize? Is it not
our ability or willingness to treat the supposition as real ? To illus-
trate: 'I can walk or ride down town to-day.' Here there is un-
doubtedly assurance, but it is a consciousness of power. 'The man
with whom I have an appointment may be late.' Again we have
a degree of assurance, but what we actually know is that we can
entertain the idea of his lateness unobstructed. This is not to say
that the idea of possibility is a distinct cognition of treating a
hypothetical fact as though it were real, but rather that 'assurance'
is shown by examination to consist of, or to contain, a dim con-
sciousness of self-potency of some sort. If so, the idea of pos-
sibility deserves a further analysis before it is condemned as
fictitious.
The assumption of the ignorance-theory, namely that all usages
of the idea are logically homogeneous, is also questionable. For
the idea has a complex history, its applications range over many
fields ; and, granted that a thread of common meaning runs through-
out, it is yet supposable that the logical force may vary, so that the
possibility which we predicate of the weather to-morrow may not
be identical with that which marks a future deed of our own. If
this were true it would be necessary to discover, first, the primary
and fundamental usage, and, second, the principal variations there-
from, with their causes.
Finally, with respect to the conclusion that the idea is meta-
physically unsound, we must feel astonishment that the impostor
has flourished so vigorously in the development of thought. The
presumption would naturally be that it corresponds directly to
something real ; and our brief examination of the element of ' assur-
ance' inclines us in the same direction.
To summarize briefly: The theory states (1) that possibility
always means the same thing; (2) that this meaning is a blending
of ignorance and assurance concerning facts; (3) that it represents
no genuine character of reality. We have found the first and third
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 9
of these propositions doubtful, and the second only partially true,
since one of the alleged elements is not surely indispensable and
the other appears remarkably like a cognition of possibility in a
particular field, namely the self.
In attempting to solve the problem of the meaning of possibility
a preliminary question to be answered is this : In what field of reality
should we look for its fundamental type, i. e., for the things, facts,
events, originally called possible.
On this point there is reason for believing the region to be that
of personal activity. In the first place, the most important pos-
sibilities of life are obviously those which belong to our own powers ;
and in the second place, those which inhere in the powers of other
beings like us. This thought, familiarized by such proverbs as 'A
man is master of his own fortunes,' has come to be a fundamental
rule of conduct. Elementary in child-training because correlative
with the lesson of obedience, it gathers weight throughout the whole
period of education. Probably the same is also true phylogenet-
ically, with the additional consideration that primitive man, regard-
ing all nature as animate in manlike fashion, must needs reckon
outer possibilities as belonging to capricious divinities and demons.
This opinion is further supported by the etymology of the words
'possible' and 'may,' for the root meanings, signifying 'power' and
'make,' certainly seem to indicate definitely the type of experience
which called for the terms ; that is, unless these words have strangely
changed their import they show that the 'possible' originally meant
what a living being might do. Since the only alternative is the
improbable supposition that these conceptions arose in connection
with impersonal objects, we may fairly conclude that the first-hand
experience which served as a basis for the idea or to which it was an
adaptation was a self-experience.
If we have thus ascertained correctly the original 'extension' of
the idea of possibility our problem becomes, What is its 'intension'?
that is, "What is one's mental content when he thinks of a thing-he-
may-do ?
The main outlines of meaning stand in fairly clear light. 2 They
are: (1) the image of the deed, as performed by the thinker, and
referred to the future; (2) the relating of this imaged performance
to the present situation as it appears in consciousness in the form
2 We must not allow ourselves to be misled by the fact that in actual think-
ing our ideas appear as mere fragments of imagery, of a ' symbolic ' character.
These scraps serve their purpose, but when a meaning is in doubt they give
way to a precise, systematic arrangement of mental elements. Hence a
' logical ' idea is a hypothetical mental state, which may be artificially produced
and analyzed by deliberate introspection ; its ' meaning ' is the result of such
analysis.
10 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of v (3) motor sensations. There is, in short, a synthesis of the
proposal with a present awareness of activity. For example, when
I say 'I can go for a walk,' I depict myself as on my way, and
make therewith a slight, instantly inhibited muscular effort.
Where the synthesis is interrupted by force of experience the project
is pronounced impossible.
These are the principal analytic elements in the idea. It is
unquestionable that nothing can be called possible unless it can be
imagined in some form or other. Less obvious is the relating of this
image to the present potency. It may indeed seem that the first
imagination is sufficient; certainly it is often hard to detect any-
thing else, so rapid is the procedure of thought. But a more
deliberate inspection reveals in such experiences a further factor, a
consciousness of doing something; and in many instances the in-
cipient act is evident, even though it is immediately stifled. This
suggestion of movement is the feature which distinguishes the idea
of a possible deed from a mere image. Doubtless it is ordinarily
subconscious, yet a painstaking scrutiny discovers it. Consider,
as a simple illustration, the possibility of closing the door. What
I find in my own mind is a visual image of the operation, connected
with a faint intimation of contracting muscles. In this case the
relation appears to be temporal a sequence within a span of ap-
prehension which constitutes a single idea. Such an interval, brief
as it is, may nevertheless contain a disrupting element. Thus if
I ask, 'la it possible to see the other side of the moon?' I have
a vague image of the farther surface, and an automatic adjustment
of my visual organs as when I use a telescope. I can not connect
these details, however, for the 'edge' of the disk stands in the way,
and I have learned that this edge is always the same. Experience
has therefore given it a negative significance sufficient to destroy
the whole. My effort to see is frustrated and I answer, 'Impos-
sible.' The project was killed for want of a potestas which is not
mine.
It is by no means surprising that in most instances some of these
elements practically elude observation. It is interesting to notice,
however, that whereas inveterate habit tends to sink the criterion
to a subconscious level, while on the other hand the novelty of the
special proposal gives it greater prominence in consciousness, yet
if the matter be doubtful there is invariably a resort to experimental
activity. It is as though the self proceeded on the well-known prin-
ciple that you can't tell whether a thing is possible until you ac-
tually try.
Psychologically, then, the predicate 'possible' as applied to our
own deeds means a fluent imaginary transition between what is pro-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 11
posed and our present condition. Hence the mainspring of the
idea is the consciousness of beginning an operation which reaches
beyond the present instant; i. e., the cognition of self-activity is
logically prior to the idea of possibility.
It remains to consider how this meaning might have been ex-
tended to other situations, and in the course of time altered. Prob-
ably several influences contributed to the result. In the first place,
assuming that the idea appeared at a time when all natural objects
were regarded as animate and all events as purposive, we can under-
stand how the predicate 'possible' would be woven into the texture
of all experience. Secondly, an event to which the predicate is
attached becomes in consciousness a nucleus of associations, impor-
tant among which is the feeling of doubt or of ignorance. The gen-
eral principle of redintegration would lead us to expect that sub-
sequent events which appeared doubtful would promptly be
categorized as 'possible.' Hence a wider meaning of possibility
would be the harmonious relation of any imaged content to a point
of reference in reality. This last, indeed, often seems to be a mere
suggestion of reality-in-general, so that any supposition not self-
contradictory naturally possesses the predicate; and thus we get
abstract logical possibility, i. e., conceivability, or systematic imag-
ination without inner contradiction. In brief, a kind of mental con-
tent originally derived from self-experience and modified according
to familiar principles of association, comes to have the vague char-
acter of consistency with reality, and is summed up in the term
possibility.
The connotation of personal effort is not completely lost, how-
ever, when the object of the idea is no longer regarded as animate.
Perhaps in a majority of actual cases the 'possibility,' whatever it
is, stands in close relation to our life, so that in considering it we
are necessarily considering our own attitude toward it. This atti-
tude is not a pure intellectual vision, but a practical attempt to deal
with a new situation; it is volitional in character, and as such it
involves motor adjustments the perception of which is a constituent
of the whole idea. Furthermore, it is at least sometimes true that
the absence of contradiction in an idea is felt as the ability to think
persistently or progressively, so that here again is a personal char-
acteristic. Altogether, I am inclined to believe that the element of
perceived self-activity is generally essential to the idea of possibility.
We come finally to the metaphysical question, ' Is possibility real ? '
Two points are to be noted. First, in so far as the idea includes the
personal feature just considered it refers to a real fact. The pro-
posal regarded as future event, or the conception taken abstractly,
is unreal; but each, in its relation to the self and this relation is
12 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
more or less indispensable involves a reference to a genuine item
of reality. In some sense, therefore, possibility is real. Secondly,
the problem of 'alternative possibles' is left open. Analysis of the
idea of possibility does not inform us whether the execution is de-
termined or undetermined. So, having marched up to the edge of
a familiar battle-field, we may reasonably halt.
BERNARD C. EWER.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
BIOMETRY
T~T is the history of all sciences that have been developed to any
*- extent, that they pass from a period of superficial observations
and speculations, through one of more careful investigation, to one
in which all observations are recorded by means of numbers, and
the speculations are based upon mathematical formulae. In other
words, while the expression, 'an exact science,' is, in a way,
tautological, still it may fittingly be used to express the goal toward
which all sciences are pushing ; and their progress in that direction
may be judged by the extent to which their students express their
ideas in quantitative terms.
It is, at present, difficult to conceive of the science of astronomy,
for example, apart from formulae and figures. Physics and chem-
istry have passed from the purely qualitatively observational stage
to the realms of calculus and algebra. And in the study of the
evolution of living beings, it is a hopeful sign that its workers are
no longer content to say that a given species varies in a certain
way, but tell us how much it varies in that way. It is no longer
sufficient to say that offspring, as a rule, are like the parents; but
we must know how much like their parents they are. Natural
selection seems to be a very important factor in evolution ; but just
how real a factor is it ?
Large masses of individuals under certain conditions must be
carefully measured, and their measurements plotted and compared
with those of masses from other conditions. The numerous laws
of variation which have been proposed need careful and accurate
testing with the rule and balance, on populations from the field and
the breeding room. ''Whatever views we hold on selection, inherit-
ance or fertility, we must ultimately turn to the mathematics of
large numbers, to the theory of mass-phenomena, to interpret safely
our observations. As we can not follow the growth of nations
without statistics of birth, death, duration of life, marriage and
fertility, so it is impossible to follow the changes of any type of life
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 13
without its vital statistics." 1 It is with these vital statistics that the
relatively new phase of investigation known as 'biometry' deals.
It is the study to which Darwin looked forward when he said, 2
* ' The chief point, which I am, and have been for years, very anxious
about, is to ascertain whether the young of our domestic breeds
differ as much from each other as do their parents, and 7 have no
faith in anything short of actual measurements and the Rule of
Three." (The latter italics are mine.) Let us, then, consider,
briefly, some of the work which has already been done along this,
line and the methods employed.
It seems to be generally true in physical as well as mental char-
acters that mediocrity is the rule. If a group of individuals, taken
at random from a given species, be arranged in subgroups on the
basis of the varying magnitude of a certain character, it will usually
be found that a great majority of these individuals fall in the
classes but little removed from the middle value, while the extreme
classes, i. e., those having a value much greater or smaller than the
middle value, contain but few individuals. When data of this
sort are plotted in the manner which I will now describe we get the
so-called curve of frequencies.
The various classes are arranged in their order of magnitude.
Perpendiculars are erected on a horizontal line as a base. The
lengths of these perpendiculars are proportional to the number of
individuals in each of the classes, starting at the left with the classi
having the smallest magnitude of the character in question. The
spaces between the perpendiculars should be equal, as should also the
range of magnitude of each of the various classes. Now, when the
tops of these perpendiculars are joined by a flowing line, we find we
have a curve high in the middle (representing the large number
of mediocre individuals) and tapering off at each end. For most
measurements it will be found to be practically symmetrical about
the class containing the largest number of individuals the most
'fashionable' class, hence called the mode. This class closely corre-
sponds to the average, or mean value of the character, and the
curve itself may be represented by the formula,
*2
n 2^2
y = - -= e Za
<7T/2;r
which is the formula of the 'Normal Curve of Error,' first deduced
by Gauss at the beginning of the last century. We may conceive
that the reason so many biological measures conform to this 'law
of probability' or 'error' is that among the countless agencies at work
1 Biometrica, I., p. 3.
Life, II., p. 51.
14 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
influencing the growth of a character there are as many favoring
it as opposing it, and these, working in all possible combinations,
give rise to a curve typical of such chance combinations. However,
whatever the reason, the fact remains that this formula, or a modi-
fication of it, can be used to represent accurately the data at hand ;
and if this were all, it would still be of immense value. Let us see
some of the things it tells us.
In the first place, it is important to determine the modes of the
characters of various species at a given place and time, and compare
them with similar modes observed at other places and times, in order
to discover just how much evolution, if any, is going on and in what
direction the species is moving.
We also have, in the shape of the curve, a measure of the vari-
ability of the organ, and can compare it with the variability of other
organs, e. g., to discover if secondary sexual characters are really
extremely variable. When plotted on the same scale, the more
variable character will give a low flat curve, while the less variable
one will give a curve with short range, one in which most of the
individuals are grouped in, or near, the modal class. The range is
itself a- measure of variability, but a very poor one. A much better
one is the a of the formula given above. It is the square root of
the average of the squared departures from the mean in both direc-
tions ; and is called the standard deviation.
But, although many measurements conform closely to this sym-
metrical unimodal type of curve, there are many interesting depart-
ures. The curves are often ' skew, ' i. e., there is a tendency to produce
more individuals on one side of the mode than on the other. The
chances are not equal that the favorable agencies will exactly coun-
terbalance the unfavorable. Here we would expect a gradual shift-
ing of the mode the evolution of a species in course of time ; but,
probably, time alone will tell what skewness actually does mean. It
is sometimes so great e. g., in the case of the number of petals in
buttercups that there are absolutely no individuals on one side of
the mode.
Again, the curve may have more than one mode. There are
clearly two or more centers of stability. Does it mean that the spe-
cies is splitting up? An interesting fact in this connection is that
in the majority of cases where dimorphism has been investigated,
the two halves are skew toward each other. There is need here for
much further work.
But probably the most fruitful field of biometry is that of cor-
relation. Davenport 3 defines correlated variation as 'such a rela-
tion between the magnitudes of two or more characters that any
* ' Statistical Methods,' 2 Ed., p. 42.
15
abmodality of the one is accompanied by a corresponding abmodality
of the other or others. ' He further states, that ' ' the principles upon
which the measure of correlated variation rests are these. When we
take individuals at random we find that the mean magnitude of any
character is equal to the mean magnitude of this character in the
whole population. Deviation from the mean of the whole popula-
tion in any lot of individuals implies a selection. If we select indi-
viduals on the basis of one character (A, called the subject), we
select also any closely correlated character (B, called the relative)
e. g., leg-length and stature. If perfectly correlated the index of
admodolity* of any class of B will be as great as that of the cor-
responding class of A, or
Index abmodality of relative class _ 1
Index abmodality of subject class ~~
"If there is no correlation, then whatever the value of the index
of abmodality of the subject, that of the relative will be zero" (since
the relative class is, in this case, random sampling) "and the co-
efficient of correlation will be
Index of abmodality of relative class _ o _
Index of abmodality of subject class m ~
"The coefficient of correlation is represented in formulas by the
letter r. We can not find the degree of correlation between two
organs by measuring a single pair only; it is the correlation 'in the
long run ' which we must consider. Hence we must deal with masses
and with averages."
This method is applicable not only to the study of the correlation
of various characters physical, physiological and psychological as
they occur in the same individual, but it has been widely used in the
study of heredity as a measure of the likeness of offspring to an-
cestry, or the likeness between co-parentals. It furnishes a measure
of the strength of assortative mating, for it tells us exactly how
much more like its mate one of the pair tends to be than a random
sample from the population. It has proved useful in medicine, also,
e. g., in investigating the relation between vaccination and immunity
or recovery. There are many other ways in which it has, in the
short past, been a valuable aid to research, and we confidently believe
that the end is not yet.
Unfortunately, most of us, like the immortal Darwin, are 'muzzy
... on proportion and chance.' It is extremely difficult to apply
X
4 Index of abmodality = -
16 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the formulae which the mathematicians have worked out, and still
harder to understand them. But, undoubtedly, the reward is rich.
It is not only that we thereby secure accurate data upon important
questions. It is, furthermore, not a ' mere formal clothing of biolog-
ical conceptions with mathematical symbols.' Such analysis tends
to crystallize our notions and makes our conceptions more definite;
it will open up new lines of thought, and carry us toward the ulti-
mate goal of a complete understanding of the mechanics of evolution.
As in all valuable lines of thought the pitfalls are many, but progress
is certain. ' ' Ignoramus ; in hoc signo laboremus ! ' '
FRANK E. LUTZ.
STATION FOB EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION,
COLD SPRING HARBOR, LONG ISLAND.
DISCUSSION
THE APPLICATION OF CALCULUS TO MENTAL
PHENOMENA
~TN one of Dr. Montague's recent publications on time perception
*- it was pointed out that we can get a very simple expression
for the 'specious present,' which was found to be -T-, if we de-
note by o the objective and by s the subjective elements of a
psychosis. The second derivative would determine the time flow.
Without considering the important philosophical results of the
theory we shall make the following observations about the method.
The author considers the ratio of the increments Ao and As,
J
which occur in the time Atf, and the fraction -r- is supposed to
ZJS
approach or attain the limit -5-. It will be of some interest to
see what suppositions this statement involves. First of all it is
Ao
clear that we have to consider the limit of -r- , because o is not
As
At
an explicit function of s. Though we know little or nothing about
the sufficient conditions of differentiability, we can in this case
readily indicate the following necessary conditions: (1) o and s
must be continuous; (2) both must have a differential quotient with
regard to t\ (3) both differential quotients must be continuous;
ds
(4) -- must not be zero in the whole time interval under consid-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 17
eration. It is hard to make those assumptions, when we know'
nothing about the character of the functions dealt with, especially
since s is apparently discontinuous in many points and can not be
submitted to the well-known tests.
It is evident that the author had in mind to measure a time
period by its relation to a standard change and so to get rid of
duration, but he did not see that the conditions of the problem
became so much more complicated by the implicit relation of o and 5.
All these tacit presuppositions would have become clear if the author
had assumed that o is an explicit function of s, but such a relation,
of which we can get no idea, would never have been granted. The
establishing of the indirect relation between o and s by introducing
them as functions of time hides the difficulty but does not remove it.
An example will show to what kind of conclusions we come, if
we accept the author's view. T- varies with time and we may
pick out two moments for which this ratio has the same value, as
it is always possible because -r is continuous and -=- changes sign.
ClS (I S
The conditions of Rolle's theorem are fulfilled, since continuity of
-j- and existence of the second derivative are supposed by the au-
thor, and therefore the second derivative vanishes at least once.
The vanishing of -^ is characteristic for the state of ennui and the
first conditions are approximately fulfilled if one sits in a quiet
room and recalls something. It follows that one must be bored
before one can recall anything. Psychological laws of this kind
can be deduced easily by every mathematician.
There is not the least doubt that the whole theory of functions
could be applied to a psychology of this kind, but the question
remains, whether the conclusions logically deduced from our system
admit of a verification by experiment. If we consider it an impor-
tant feature of experimental psychology, that to every implication
of our system corresponds an empirical fact and if possible vice
versa, we must renounce speculations about functions of which we
know nothing.
Now supposing for a moment that there are no gaps and errors
in the author's proof, could we deduce anything from his laws?
Of course not. The function is totally unknown and we must
measure empirically the value of -p. It would be important to
know the derivative if we could construct the function or if we
could verify it in some other way, but as we can not we must con-
18 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
elude that the use of symbols of which the applicability is uncertain
and the meaning too general is of little help in psychology.
Finally it may be mentioned that the interesting attempt to
measure a time period by the ratio of a change occurring in it to a
standard change also occurring in it fails, because this ratio is a
number which becomes a time only when multiplied by a time unit.
For such a standard we choose a certain amount of change in o, to
which we refer as a standard, for instance the movement of a pendu-
lum. One of the principal features of a standard is constancy, and
measurement is impossible without it. We have therefore either
a measurement which varies with time or our whole speculations
about the specious present break down, because the differential
quotient of a constant vanishes everywhere.
F. M. URBAN.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Some Peculiarities of Fluctuating and of Inaudible Sounds. KNIGHT
DUNLAP. Psychological Review, Vol. XL, pp. 308-318.
The Effect of Stimuli upon the Traube-Hering Waves. C. E. GALLO-
WAY. American Journal of Psychology, Vol. XV., pp. 499-512.
The Effect of Closing the Eyes upon the Fluctuations of the Attention.
BERTHA KILLEN. American Journal of Psychology, Vol. XV., pp.
512-514.
The last t\vo of these articles can not well be discussed apart from a
series of experiments that have been carried on under the general super-
vision of the reviewer, and it may therefore be well to take advantage of
this opportunity to summarize the earlier results and the general theory
which lead to the experiments and which they confirm and support.
This theory, first proposed by Dr. Slaughter in 1901, is, in outline,
that the attention waves are related with two physiological rhythms, the
rhythm of respiration and the rhythm of blood pressure or change in
arterial volume variously known as the Traube-Hering or Sigmund Mayer
waves. The evidence was direct. The stimulus appeared during the
expansion of the blood-vessels and disappeared during their contraction.
The correlation was confirmed by Bonser in ignorance of Dr. Slaughter's
results, with the difference that he asserts that disappearance corresponds
to expansion, appearance to contraction in volume. Study of his curves,
however, indicates that usually the coincidence is not so direct, that
the contraction usually begins during the period of appearance, and lasts
well over into the time of disappearance. Further evidence is needed
on this point, but it seems probable that the results are not so divergent
as the verbal formulations would indicate.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 19
Two facts have developed with reference to the influence of stimula-
tions upon the attention waves. These were first formulated by Taylor.
The length of the attention wave is affected, usually lengthened, and
the ratio between the times of appearance and disappearance is altered.
The first suggested at once the similar phenomena in pulse and respira-
tion, and seemed at first sight to support Slaughter's theory. Mr.
Galloway's experiments sought to determine whether stimuli did actually
have an influence upon the length of the Traube-Hering waves. His
results were that the stimuli used, both pleasant and unpleasant, strong
and weak, had the effect of lengthening the waves in every instance for
the individuals experimented upon. This is confirmatory of the theory
so far as it goes, but it is still necessary to study the influence of the
stimuli upon the attention and vaso-motor waves simultaneously.
Another bit of evidence of the same tenor is offered by Mr. Galloway's
work in the fact that attention and vaso-motor waves have the same daily
rhythm of changes in length. In addition it was found that the average
length of the two waves was very nearly identical for three subjects, in
spite of the fact that they were taken several months apart; for a fourth,
the attention waves were approximately double the vaso-motor; and the
fifth observer was of the respiratory type his attention waves corre-
sponded to the respiratory rhythm.
If we bring together the evidence so far accumulated as to the relation
of attention and vaso-motor waves we find that they occur simultaneously,
that both are influenced by stimuli and usually in the same direction, and
that the lengths of the two waves are approximately identical for a given
individual at the corresponding time of day.
The second influence of stimuli is touched upon in Miss Killen's
paper. Mr. Taylor found that any stimulus tends to increase or decrease
the ratio of appearance to disappearance. The result was confirmed in
part by Heymans, in that electrical stimulation inhibited weak tones, and
in a measure by the work of Wiersma and the reviewer on the attention
wave in fatigue in so far as we may regard the ratio between periods of
visibility and invisibility as an indication of the functional capacity of
cortical cells.
Miss Killen reinvestigated a result, first obtained by Miinsterberg and
recently cited by Pace as an obstacle to a central explanation of the fluc-
tuations that closing the eyes at intervals during attention to minimal
stimuli would make continuous what previously had been an intermittent
sensation. Her investigations indicate that the result obtained by
Miinsterberg is not universal, but holds only for one type of individual
under special conditions. What does happen is that the time of visibility
is lengthened or diminished according to personal peculiarity in one
person it was increased, in another diminished and in a third was dimin-
ished during one part of the experiment and increased during another.
Whether it is increased or diminished depends upon whether the
stimulus from closing the eyes exercises reinforcing or inhibiting influ-
ence upon the cortical cells involved. The only case in which the fluc-
tuations would disappear would be when the stimulus was near the limen
20 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of fluctuation, and the observer one for whom closing the eyes was a rein-
forcement. This condition was obtained but once in the entire set of
experiments. Miss Killen concludes, then, that the Miinsterberg phe-
nomenon can be more easily explained from the central than from the
peripheral theory.
Two facts that must have an important bearing upon any theory of
attention waves result from the investigation of Dr. Dunlap.
1. Interruption of a minimal sound during the period of disappearance
was in more than half the cases correctly noticed by the observer. The
sounds were given by tuning-fork and telephone, and could be easily in-
terrupted by the experimenter. The experiments were extended to show
that sounds which were inaudible when continuous could be heard at
their beginning or cessation. It is noteworthy that the cessation at-
tracted attention more often than the beginning. The author does not
attempt any theory, but lets the facts stand for what they are worth. To
the reviewer, however, they seem to make strongly for a central theory.
Certainly if the peripheral connections were entirely broken there could
be no consciousness of the interruption. The fact also suggests an ex-
planation of Pace's observation that when a weak visual stimulus was
interrupted during the period of invisibility an after-image could still
be seen.
2. In direct contradiction to both Dr. Heinrich and Professor Titch-
ener it was found that minimal pure tones fluctuated. Both tuning-forks
and the singing flame were used as sources of sound, and each of five
observers clearly noticed the fluctuations.
W. B. PlLLSBUBY.
UNIVEBSITY OF MICHIGAN.
Die Farbenempfindung der Netzhautperipherie Ijei Dunkeladaptation
und Tconstanter subjectiver HelligTceit. WILHELM PETERS. Archiv
filr die Gesamte Psychologic, III., 4, 1904, S. 354-387.
This investigation is concerned with a determination of the relative
sensitivity of the different regions of the retina to brightness and to
saturation. Peters worked in the dark-room of the psychological labo-
ratory at Leipzig, with a modified form of the Hellpach perimeter. His
four stimuli red, yellow, green and blue were, like Hellpach's, built up
by means of light transmitted through appropriate color filters.
The most prominent feature of Peters's results is their extreme irregu-
larity. The author feels justified, however, in interpreting them to mean
that the retinal surface is to be regarded as a tripartite structure, con-
taining a semiperipheral zone upon which color-stimuli appear in lesser
saturation than upon more central and more peripheral regions. This
interposed zone of minimal saturation is said (8. 380) to extend in the
great majority of cases, from 35 to 55, but his tables (8. 370f. ; 374-8)
indicate that its position and extension are wholly fortuitous. Thus it
may extend from 15 to 45, from 15 to 55, from 15 to 25, from
25 to 35, from 25 to 75, or from 45 to 65. On one half-meridian
it occurred twice, at 15 and again at 65 ; while in numerous instances it
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 21
did not have the breadth of extension claimed for it. Thus it occurred
once, only at the point 55 ; twice, only at 25 ; seven times, only at 35 ;
five times, only at 45 ; and in one third of his explorations it did not
occur at all.
A similar irregularity characterizes Peters's determinations of bright-
ness sensitivity. He attempts to express these results in a series of
general laws (S. 369), but here again his statement of the case is at
variance with his data. For instance, he assures us that with maximal
luminosity of stimulus, red and yellow decrease, while green and blue
increase in brightness, upon the paracentral regions. But of the two
sets of curves upon which the former assertion is based, one (Fig. 9)
shows a wholly different relation. Then too, we are told that after red
and yellow have reached their minimum, there occurs a distinct increase
of brightness upon more peripheral regions. But his curves contain
no justification for such a statement. In short, it is impossible to find
a general characterization for the results of this investigation excepting
in terms of their irregularity and inconclusiveness.
What Peters has done is briefly this : He has explored the retina under
varying conditions of fatigue. The initial stimulus of each series was
applied to a rested region of the periphery. Subsequent stimulations were
repeated without sufficient intervals of pause to allow the retina to re-
cover from the effects of its previous stimulations. So that with the
progressive advance of each series towards the fovea, fatigue phenomena
occurred in increasing degree. In Peters's results the presence of fatigue
is manifested not only by the diminution of saturation and of brightness,
but by the appearance of the complementary color tone as well. Thus, he
reports that upon regions where a moderate green stimulus normally excites
the sensation of yellow, it appeared in various tones of blue; he found
that red and yellow also appeared blue while blue appeared yellow. The
results yielded by this method are necessarily irregular because the degree
of fatigue induced was not constant throughout. Certain of these re-
sults the complementary phenomena he dismisses with the nai've re-
mark that he is not interested in discovering whether they are due to
contrast or to fatigue (S. 360) ; the remainder are made to do service
as a measure of the relative sensitivity of the various regions of the non-
fatigued retina. The net result of the whole investigation is a demon-
stration of the fact that with different degrees of retinal fatigue, fatigue
phenomena occur in different degree.
A chief difference between the methods employed by Peters and by
Hellpach consists in the different direction of progressive exploration in
the two cases. Peters began his series at the periphery and worked in a
centripetal direction, while Hellpach, in his final determinations, pro-
ceeded peripheralward from an intermediate region. It was inevitable,
then, that the latter should find his zone of complementary colors at the
periphery, and that the former should find his zone of complementariness
and diminished sensitivity upon a more central region.
The paper under review is after all an improvement upon the previous
investigations carried on in the same laboratory by Kirschmann and by
22 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Hellpach, in that Peters recognizes the significance of luminosity of
stimulus. It is to be hoped that he will repeat his determinations, em-
ploying a method which provides for uniformity of adaptation and for
equality of color-value of stimuli. Moreover, it is to be mentioned that
no investigation of this topic is complete which refuses to take into
account the fact that certain colors do not change in tone in passing
across the retina. J. W. BAIRD.
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
A Factor in Mental Development. MARGARET FLOY WASHBURN. Philo-
sophical Review, November, 1904.
" When we trace the development of mental life upward from the
lowest forms of the animal kingdom, we are led to believe that the
process has been marked chiefly by progress in two respects: first,
advance in the power to discriminte among stimuli, and second, the
rise, somewhere in the course of development, of the power to form
' free ideas ' ... It is the aim of the present paper to indicate how both
these great gains of psychic evolution have been dependent in part at
least upon one factor: the organism's growing power to react to stimuli
not in immediate contact with the body."
In support of the first part of her thesis the author points to the
fact that " stimuli such as light or sound, which can not directly and
instantaneously affect the organism's life, are those which have given
rise to the greatest number of qualitatively distinguishable sensations.
The reason is that, since it is unnecessary for the organism to make
. . . instant response to such stimuli, it is at liberty to spend its
psychic energies on qualitative analysis. Time can be taken to find
out what the stimuli are, because it is not so desperately necessary to
discover where they are and act accordingly. . . . On the other hand,
the two classes of sensations that illustrate clearly how qualitative dis-
crimination may be swamped through the immediate need for local dis-
crimination are touch sensations and, preeminently, sensations of pain.
Here the stimulus ... is where it may injure, or actually is injuring.
Immediate motor response ... is demanded; there is no time for quali-
tative investigation. To say that the contact senses have fewer qualities
than sight and hearing because the variety of stimuli for sight and
hearing is greater, is obviously to beg the question completely. There
is as much variety in the chemical constitution of bodies as there is in
the ether or air disturbances which they send to us."
In support of the second part of her thesis Professor Washburn urges
that stimuli, which by reason of their immediate bearing upon the
welfare of the organism are at once transformed into motor reactions,
do not have time to make a very deep impress upon the brain. " But
when the creature has developed a capacity to be affected by light and
sound . . . then the current of energy sent by the stimulus into the
nervous substance is not at once drained off, but may linger sufficiently
long to produce whatever alteration, whatever impress upon sensory
centers, is needful to insure their subsequent functioning as the basis
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 23
of a free image. Delayed reaction ... is then the source of the image-
forming power."
The general conception of the ultimate cognitive value of ideas as
varying inversely with their immediate motor utility is of course by no
means new, but the peculiar merit of this admirable paper seems to the
present writer to lie in the fact that its author recognizes not merely the
truth of the conception but also its vital importance for the under-
standing of mental evolution. The primary desideratum of any evolu-
tionary theory is a principle which will allow for a perfectly continuous
development of a series of fundamentally different species. Professor
Washburn's theory meets this demand. For if we assume that every
stimulus expends its energy partly in a motor discharge and partly in
modifying a sensory center, we can at once recognize the possibility of
two fundamentally different types of organism, in one of which the
motor predominates over the sensory result of the stimulus, while in
the other the sensory predominates over the motor. As the organism
became more and more perfectly adjusted to its environment, its stimuli
would be less needed for motor reactions, and would thus become more
and more free to expend themselves in modifying the sensory centers,
until a critical point would be reached in which the energy of the
stimulus devoted to sensory modification would just equal the energy
devoted to motor discharge. Organisms below this critical point would
only possess ' intelligence ' or the capacity to profit by past experience,
but organisms which had passed beyond the critical point would possess
* reason ' or the power to form free ideas depictive of the future. The
difference of the two types of organism would be momentous and yet
the evolution of one from the other would be continuous, for it would
not directly involve any new factor, but only a change of emphasis in
factors already present. W. P. MONTAGUE.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
The Soul A Study of Past and Present Beliefs. L. D. ARNETT. The
American Journal of Psychology, 1904, XV., pp. 121-200; 347-382.
This investigation was undertaken by the author, he says, to supply
a lack of knowledge on his own part, and for the benefit of others similarly
situated. In working toward this result it aims so to present the views
of psychologists and of theologians that ' some definite understanding of
the use of the term may at least be suggested.'
Primitive ideas of the soul are first considered. The study begins
with an effort to get at the conditions that have given rise to this idea
and the explanations offered to account for it. The word ' soul ' as
used by various peoples is dwelt upon. The soul has usually been asso-
ciated with some animate form, with the bird, butterfly, mouse, serpent,
lizard, fish and other animals. Again it is identified with shadows, with
portraits, and with one's image reflected in water or in a mirror. It
is most frequently regarded as shadow, breath and wind, then as life,
heart, echo, etc. Earely is the soul believed to be a material object.
Sometimes the individual is thought to have a plurality of souls. The
24 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Boul is located in the heart, in the brain, in the navel, in the blood,
in the bones and in the breath. Mostly all tribes atttribute souls to ani-
mals; some to plants.
The conclusion of this section is that the primitive idea of the soul
can be classed neither as psychological nor as philosophical. ' It is con-
nected more or less with superstitious beliefs.' For the savage the soul
probably means life but not mind.
In tracing the ideas of the soul in the Greek philosophers ' a general
tendency toward idealism ' is seen which reaches its culmination in Plato.
Next are considered theories of the soul classified as theological,
philosophical and psychological. While these are to be distinguished they
are by no means separable. The first considers the soul in its relation
to a ' personal God ' the view of the church. Here ' modern thought
tends toward an ethical interpretation of the soul.' The second views
the soul in its relation to a world soul, or to the universe, or to the being
of the world. The soul for the philosopher is similar in essence to the
absolute being. As the conception of the absolute develops in the evo-
lution of new sciences, so will our knowledge of the soul increase. ' The
term soul is too large for any one science, each contributes its part to
our knowledge of it.' The third or psychological theory defines the soul
on a basis of mental phenomena. Here we have the genetic point of
view. We have the biological soul, the phyletic soul, the individual
inherited soul, the soul of personal consciousness, equaling ' the sum total
of conscious reactions,' and the soul of attention representing a cross-
section of consciousness. Under the conception of the evolution of soul-
life we pass 'from subjective to objective psychology, from feelings to
intellect.' Thus the soul may be described, but not defined.
In the above threefold classification, in less than fifty pages, the
whole gamut of philosophers has been ranged through down to and in-
cluding those whom we know viva voce.
A questionnaire shows that the soul to the great majority is a theo-
logical concept, to a few it is psychological, and to a very few philosophical.
The present theological soul is largely the equivalent of ' the totality of
a man's life.' 'Recent psychology presents a hostile attitude toward
the idea' of a soul. The church, influencing thousands, is a much
greater ' factor in molding ideas in regard to the soul ' than psychology
which reaches the few. For the average man the substance of the soul
is found in the feelings. Theories of the self as presented by James,
Marshall, Howison, Schiller, Bradley and Royce follow, showing a
preference for self, due to its definiteness, over the word soul. The self
is more the objective consciousness, while soul is both subjective and
objective. The ideas of a soul and of an immortal being persist con-
temporaneously.
" Our study of the subject leads to the following definitions : for
educated thoughtful people the soul probably represents an ethical ideal,
in a general way this may be embodied in certain principles, while the
majority of Christian people refer to an undefinable mass of feelings."
YALE UNIVERSITY. HERBERT MARTIN.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 25
Truth and Imagination in Religion. RALPH BARTON PERRY. Interna-
tional Journal of Ethics, October, 1904, pp. 64-82.
Modern interest in the psychology of religion is beginning to bear
fruit, not only in that special field, but also in that of the philosophy of
religion. It is true that these psychological results are sometimes sub-
stituted for a critical examination of the worth of religious beliefs, but
it is also true that they serve to call attention to the nature of these
beliefs themselves and thus to indicate the true starting-point for a
philosophy of religion. There is a growing recognition of the very ap-
parent principle that an understanding of the religious demands must
precede a discussion of the grounds of belief in the possibility of their
satisfaction, and that proofs of the existence of God presuppose a knowl-
edge of what religion means by the term. This we find emphasized in the
recent book of Professor Knox, in the theological chapters of Professor
Fullerton's ' Metaphysics,' and this article of Dr. Perry, the aim of which
is to call attention to the distinction between the imaginative elements
in religion and those which claim objective validity.
Religion is essentially the sense of a practical situation and, as such,
its judgments are practical, having reference to the adjustment of action
to meet the conditions of this situation. Hence the religious attitude
may remain unchanged in spite of change in scientific conceptions. The
religious conception of God refers to the attitude toward man of his
residual or total environment, and his religion involves an idea of his own
best interests, of this disposition of reality toward him, and of the best
means of adjustment in view of these facts. Theoretical truth has
significance for religion only in so far as it bears on one of these elements.
However science may come to think of the world and however much our
conduct may be altered to suit this new conception, it will still remain true
that some adjustment to this total environment will be necessary. The
system of practical judgments expressing this adjustment will constitute
the body of religious truth.
But religion, as concerned with life, is concrete, hence the function
of the religious imagination in presenting truth in poetic form. The
test of such imaginative forms is not that of objective accuracy and
definiteness, but of fitness for the conveyance of practical truth for pre-
senting the religious reality in life. The content of these ideas will be
the attitude of reality toward us, the significance which it has both in
nature and in history. So, too, our sense of this attitude toward us
will naturally call forth the expression of our own emotion in prayer and
worship. How much of the content of religious ideas is imagination
must, of course, be determined by reference to their intended use in any
individual case, the basis of distinction being whether they influence the
nature of the adjustment or affect only the vitality of the truth. What-
ever determines our expectancies is meant for truth. What is poetry to
one is deepest reality for another, the firm beliefs of the savage becoming
the poetry of the later age, and the poetry of the religious genius being
embodied in the creed of his prosaic followers. So with the idea of
26 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
personality, in that religion is always our response to the conceived
attitude of reality to us, there is always a basis for the characterization
of God as personal, but the degree to which this term implies human
attributes is a matter of individual intention. Every religion holds more
beliefs than it attempts to justify and rests in last resort upon individual
experience.
NORMAN WILDE.
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE MONIST. October, 1904. Vol. XIV., No. 5. The Origin of
Species by Mutation (pp. 641-671): J. ARTHUR HARRIS. -An elaborate
survey of the comparative evidence for the inadequacy of the selective
theory of the origin of species. Importance is attached to the alleged
fact that variation by selection is purely linear or quantitative, increasing
or diminishing given characters, rather than providing new ones. The
varieties thus derived differ from true species in always tending to
revert, on the removal of the selective agencies. The Christ of Prim-
itive Christian Faith in the Light of Religio-Historical Criticism (pp.
672-710) : OTTO PFLEIDERER. - In the preceding number of The Monist
the author showed the parallelism of the stories of Christ's conception,
birth and life to similar stories in pagan religion. In the present article
he treats in the same way the Christian dogmas of Atonement, Sacra-
mental Purification and Resurrection. The most striking, though by
no means the only parallel to this trio of myths, is to be found in the
Egyptian story of Osiris and Horus. Paul Ree, An Obituary Tribute
(pp. 711-732) : HENRY HOOPER. -A most interesting account of Dr. Ree's
philosophical system, especially the parts of it dealing with the origin of
conscience in the race and the individual, and with the controversy of
realism and idealism. Dr. Ree seems to have been more nearly in sym-
pathy with Hume and with Schopenhauer than with any other philos-
ophers. The 'Holy Edict' of K'ang-Hi (pp. 733-746): EDITOR. -The
sixteen sacred maxims of K'ang-Hi are here given in English and
Chinese, together with the amplifications of them by his son Yung Chin,
and explanatory and critical comments by the author. Criticisms and
Discussions: 'Humanism' (pp. 747-752): A. W. MOORE. -A brief sym-
pathetic exposition and criticism of Mr. Schiller's book. The Religious
Experience (pp. 752-766): RALPH BARTON PERRY. -"My religion is my
sense of the disposition of the universe to myself." Definition of Relig-
ion (pp. 766-770): P. C.-"The characteristic feature of religion is
conviction, and its contents a world conception which serves for the
regulation of conduct." The Basle Congress for the History of Religion.
The Free-Thought Congress at Rome. The Congress of Arts and
Science at St. Louis (pp. 770-783) : P. C. Paul Ree Obituary. Mrs.
Annie Besant and the Theosophical Society. Book Reviews: Hugo De
Vries, Die Mutationstheories: P. C. Chilperic Edwards, The Hamarubai
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 27
Code and the Sinaitic Legislation: ANON. Iriving King, The Psychology
of Child Development: ANON. Edward L. Thorndike, Educational Psy-
chology: ANON. Hiram Vrooman, The Federation of Religions: ANON.
Orlando J. Smith, Balance, The Fundamental Verity: ANON.
MIND. October, 1904. N. S., No. 52. Humanism and Truth (pp.
457-475) : WILLIAM JAMES. - The author, after showing that many of the
criticisms of humanism are irrelevant, proceeds to an exposition and
defence of the movement. The results are recapitulated at the end of
the article under seven heads, constituting a brief and acceptable credo
of humanism. Mind and Body in Recent Psychology (pp. 476-508) :
A. E. TAYLOR. - The author criticises the parallelistic views of Stout,
Ebbinghaus and Miinsterberg, and tries to show that the mechanical is not
opposed to the teleological but is a lower or limiting type of it, developed
from it as habit is developed from volition. Meinong's Theory of Com-
plexes and Assumptions (pp. 509-524): B. RUSSELL. -Five theories of
knowledge which bear on the question whether what is asserted in a
judgment especially in a false judgment exists in any way beyond the
judgment. The author believes that the relation asserted in a true judg-
ment unquestionably transcends that judgment, but hesitates to agree
with Mr. G. E. Moore in holding to the real objective existence of what
is asserted by false judgments. In defence of Humanism (pp. 525-542) :
F. C. S. SCHILLER. - The author discusses Mr. Bradley's article on Truth
and Practice which appeared in the preceding number of Mind. He
complains that Mr. Bradley's criticism of humanism is irrelevant and full
of misunderstandings. Fresh Light on Molyneux' Problem (pp. 543-
554) : T. K. ABBOTT. - The author discusses various cases in which people
formerly blind have on gaining their sight been able to distinguish be-
tween figures by the new sense. The case of Dr. Ramsay's patient, Carruth,
is most fully treated, and the author feels that this case, particularly,
justifies the belief that visual and tactual perceptions of figures have
resemblance that is intrinsic and prior to all association. Critical
Notices. A. E. Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics: J. S. MACKENZIE.
Herbert Spencer, An Autobiography: F. C. S. SCHILLER. E. A. Kirk-
patrick, Fundamentals of Child Study: J. EDGAR. New Books. Phi-
losophical Periodicals. Notes and Correspondence (Letters by Norman
Smith, A. Sidgwick and H. Rashdall).
REVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE. November, 1904. La Notion de
Hazard chez Cournot (pp. 497-515) : G. TARDE. - Cournot in the Essai
sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances defined a fortuitous event as the
result of the combination of several independent causal series. But such
independence is a matter of degree always, never complete; often it is a
close dependence. Aristote et Platon suivant Zeller (pp. 516-534) : J.
BULLIOT. - Zeller's treatment, following a Hegelian model as it does,
arbitrarily discriminates various aspects of the Socratic, Platonic and
Aristotelian systems, considering that as essential which fits best the
Hegelian scheme. In particular, Socrates' use of concepts is wrongly
28 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
interpreted as idealistic (a suivre). La Theorie Physique, son 06 jet et
sa Structure (pp. 535-562): P. DUHEM. - Primary qualities or properties
are not essentially irreducible but only as yet unreduced. Elements are
provisional. A mathematical account of facts is inadequate, indeed, an
infinity of accounts pertains to a single situation ; each is useful according
to the accuracy needed in the result. None is ever entirely useless how-
ever. We must not overlook the significance of the approximate. 71*
Congres International de Philosophic (pp. 563-630) : E. P. and J. B. III e
Congres International d'Histoire des Sciences (pp. 631-636) : F. M.
Congres de la British Association for the Advancement of Science (pp.
637-669) : N. VASCHIDE. Sommaire des Kevues. Bulletin de I'Enseigne-
ment philosophique. Cours de M. Levy-BruhL Cours de M. Peillaube.
Bolzmann, L. Vorlesungen uber die Prinzipe der Mechanik. Leipzig:
Earth. 1904. 8vo. 9 m.
Busse, L. Die Weltanschauung en der grossen Philosophen der Neuzeit.
Leipzig : B. G. Teubner. 1904. iv -f- 164 pp. 8vo. 1.25 m.
Cave, R. K. The Platonic Conception of Immortality and its Connec-
tion with the Theory of the Ideas. Cambridge TJniv. Press. 1904.
8vo. 5s.
Cohen, H. Ethik des Beinen Willens. Berlin : Cassirer. 1904. 17.50 m.
Duckworth, W. L. H. Morphology and Anthropology. Cambridge Univ.
Press. 1904. 8vo. 5s.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE American Philosophical Association and the American Psycho-
logical Association met at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadel-
phia, December 28-30, in affiliation with the American Society of Nat-
uralists and other societies meeting with the American Association for
the Advancement of Science. Addresses were made by the retiring presi-
dents, Professor Ladd addressing the Philosophical Association on ' The
Mission of Philosophy,' and Professor James, the Psychological Associa-
tion on ' The Nature of Activity.' Both associations joined in a smoker
at the Colonnade Hotel on the evening of December 29. Officers for the
ensuing year were elected as follows : For the Philosophical Association
President, Professor John Dewey, of Columbia University; Vice-presi-
dent, Professor J. A. Leighton, of Hobart College; Secretary-Treasurer,
Professor J. G. Hibben, of Princeton University; new members of the
Executive Committee, Professor H. N. Gardiner, of Smith College, and
Dr. R. B. Perry, of Harvard University. For the Psychological Asso-
ciation: President, Professor Mary Whiton Calkins, of Wellesley Col-
lege; Secretary-Treasurer, Mr. W. H. Davis, of Lehigh University; new
members of the Council, Professor G. M. Stratton, of Johns Hopkins
University, and Professor Lightner Witmer, of the University of Penn-
sylvania. A detailed report of the meetings will be published in subse-
quent numbers of the JOURNAL.
VOL. II. No. 2. JANUARY 19, 1905
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS
1 EXPERIENCE in its immediacy seems perfectly fluent. The
- ^ active sense of living which we all enjoy, before reflection
shatters our instinctive world for us, is self-luminous and suggests
no paradoxes. Its difficulties are disappointments and uncertain-
ties. They are not intellectual contradictions.
When the reflective intellect gets at work, however, it discovers
incomprehensibilities in the flowing process. Distinguishing its ele-
ments and parts, it gives them separate names, and what it thus
disjoins it can not easily put together. Pyrrhonism accepts the irra-
tionality and revels in its dialectic elaboration. Other philosophies
try, some by ignoring, some by resisting, and some by turning the
dialectic procedure against itself, negating its first negations, to re-
store the fluent sense of life again, and let redemption take the place
of innocence. The perfection with which any philosophy may do
this is the measure of its human success and of its importance in
philosophic history. In a recent article in this JOURNAL, 'A World
of Pure Experience, ' I tried my own hand sketehily at the problem,
resisting certain first steps of dialectics by insisting in a general way
that the immediately experienced conjunctive relations are as real
as anything else. 1 If my sketch is not to appear too naif, I must
come closer to details, and in the present article I propose to do so.
I
'Pure experience' is the name which I gave to the original flux
of life before reflexion has categorized it. Only new-born babes,
and persons in semicoma from sleep, drugs, illnesses or blows can
have an experience pure in the literal sense of a that which is not
yet any definite what, tho ' ready to be all sorts of whats ; full both of
oneness and of manyness, but in respects that don 't appear ; changing
throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases interpenetrate, and no
points, either of distinction or of identity, can be caught. Pure ex-
1 JouENAL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS, Vol. I.,
No. 20, p. 566.
29
30 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
perience in this state is but another name for feeling or. sensation.
But the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with
emphases, and these to become identified and fixed and abstracted;
so that experience now flows as if shot through with adjectives and
nouns and prepositions and conjunctions. Its purity is only a rela-
tive term, meaning the proportional amount of sensation which it
still embodies.
Far back as we go, the flux, both as a whole and in its parts, is
that of things conjunct and separated. The great continua of time,
space and the self envelope everything, betwixt them, and flow to-
gether, without interfering. The things that they envelope come as
separate in some ways and as continuous in others. Some sensations
coalesce with some ideas, and others are irreconcilable. Qualities
compenetrate one space, or exclude each other from it. They cling
together persistently in groups that move as units, or else they sepa-
rate. Their changes are abrupt or. discontinuous; and their kinds
resemble or differ ; and, as they do so, fall into either even or irreg-
ular series.
In all this the continuities and the discontinuities are absolutely
coordinate matters of immediate feeling. The conjunctions are as
primordial elements of 'fact' as are the distinctions and disjunctions.
In the same act by which I feel that this passing minute is a new
pulse of my life, I feel that the old life continues into it, and the
feeling of continuance in no wise jars upon the simultaneous feeling
of a novelty. They, too, compenetrate harmoniously. Prepositions,
copulas, and conjunctions, 'is,' 'isn't,' 'then,' 'before,' 'in,' 'on,'
'beside,' 'between,' 'next,' 'like,' 'unlike,' 'as,' 'but,' flower out of
the stream of pure experience, the stream of concretes or the sensa-
tional stream, as naturally as nouns and adjectives do, and they
melt into it again as fluidly when we apply them to a new portion
of the stream.
II
If now we ask why we must thus translate experience from a
more concrete or pure into a more intellectualized form, filling it with
ever more abounding verbalized distinctions, Rationalism and
Empiricism give different replies.
The rationalistic answer is that the theoretic life is absolute and
its interests imperative, that to understand is simply the duty of man,
and that who questions this need not be argued with, for by the fact
of arguing he gives away his case.
The pragmatic answer is that the environment kills as well as
sustains us, and that the tendency of raw experience to extinguish
the experient himself is lessened just in the degree in which the ele-
ments in it that have a practical bearing upon life are analyzed out
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 31
of the continuum and verbally fixed and coupled together, so that we
may know what is in the wind for us and get ready to react in time.
Had pure experience, the pragmatist says, been always perfectly
healthy, there would never have arisen the necessity of isolating
or verbalizing any of its terms. We should just have experienced
inarticulately and unintellectually enjoyed. This leaning on 're-
action' in the pragmatist account implies that, whenever we intel-
lectualize a relatively pure experience, we ought to do so for the
sake of redescending to the purer or more concrete level again ; and
that if an intellect stays aloft among its abstract terms and general-
ized relations, and does not reinsert itself with its conclusions into
some particular point of the immmediate stream of life, it fails to
finish out its function and leaves its normal race unrun.
Most rationalists nowadays will agree that pragmatism gives a
true enough account of the way in which our intellect arose at first,
but they will deny these latter implications. The case, they will
say, resembles that of sexual love. Originating in the animal need
of getting another generation born, this passion has developed sec-
ondarily such imperious spiritual needs that, if you ask why another
generation ought to be born at all, the answer is : ' Chieflly that love
may go on.' Just so with our intellect: it originated as a practical
means of serving life ; but it has developed incidentally the function
of understanding absolute truth; and life itself now seems to be
given chiefly as a means by which that function may be prosecuted.
But truth and the understanding of it lie among the abstracts and
universals, so the intellect now carries on its higher business wholly
in this region, without any need of redescending into pure experi-
ence again.
If the contrasted tendencies which I thus designate as pragma-
tistic and rationalistic are not recognized by the reader, perhaps an
example will make them more concrete. Mr. Bradley, for instance,
is an ultra-rationalist. He admits that our intellect is primarily
practical, but says that, for philosophers, the practical need is simply
Truth. 2 Truth, moreover, must be assumed 'consistent.' Imme-
diate experience has to be broken into subjects and qualities, terms
and relations, to be understood as truth at all. Yet when so broken
it is less consistent than ever. Taken raw, it is all undistinguished.
Intellectualized, it is all distinction without oneness. 'Such an ar-
rangement may work, but the theoretic problem is not solved' (p.
23). The question is 'how the diversity can exist in harmony with
the oneness' (p. 118). To go back to pure experience is unavailing.
'Mere feeling gives no answer to our riddle' (p. 104). Even if
your intuition is a fact, it is not an understanding. ' It is a mere
2 ' Appearance and Reality,' pp. 152-3.
32 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
experience, and furnishes no consistent view' (pp. 108-9). The ex-
perience offered as facts or truths 'I find that my intellect rejects
because they contradict themselves. They offer a complex of diversi-
ties conjoined in a way which it feels is not its way and which it
can not repeat as its own. . . . For to be satisfied, my intellect must
understand, and it can not understand by taking a congeries in the
lump' (p. 570). So Mr. Bradley, in the sole interests of 'under-
standing' (as he conceives that function), turns his back on finite
experience forever. Truth must lie in the opposite direction, the
direction of the Absolute; and this kind of rationalism and prag-
matism walk thenceforward upon opposite paths. For the one, those
intellectual products are most true which, turning their face towards
the Absolute, come nearest to symbolizing its ways of uniting the
many and the one. For the other those are most true which most
successfully dip back into the finite stream of feeling and grow most
easily confluent with some particular wave or wavelet. Such con-
fluence not only proves the intellectual operation to have been true
(as an addition may 'prove' that a subtraction is already rightly
performed) but it constitutes, according to pragmatism, all that we
mean by calling it true. Only in so far as they lead us, successfully
or unsuccessfully, back into sensible experience again, are our ab-
stracts and universals true or false at all. 3
Ill
In Section VI of my recent article, 'A "World of Pure Experi-
ence,' I adopted in a general way the common-sense belief that one
and the same world is cognized by our different minds; but I left
undiscussed the dialectical arguments which maintain that this is
logically absurd. The usual reason given for its being absurd is
that it assumes one object (to wit, the world) to stand in two rela-
tions at once; to my mind, namely, and again to yours; whereas a
term taken in a second relation can not logically be the same term
which it was at first.
I have heard this reason urged so often in discussing with abso-
lutists, and it would destroy my radical empiricism so utterly, if it
were valid, that I am bound to give it an attentive ear, and seriously
to search its strength.
For instance, let the matter in dispute be a term M, asserted to
be on the one hand related to L and on the other to -N; and let the
two cases of relation be symbolized by L M and M N respect-
ively. When, now, I assume that the experience may immediately
come and be given in the shape L M N, with no trace of
Compare Professor MacLennan's admirable Auseinandersetgung with Mr.
Bradley, in this JOURNAL, Vol. I., No. 15, p. 403 ff., especially pp. 405-^407.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 33
doubling or internal fission in the M, I am told that this is all a pop-
ular delusion ; that L M N means two entitatively different
experiences, L M and M N namely ; and that although the
Absolute may, and indeed must, from its superior point of view,
read its own kind of unity into M'& two editions, yet as elements in
finite experience the two M's lie irretrievably asunder, and the
world is broken and unbridged between them.
In arguing this dialectic thesis, one must avoid slipping from
the logical into the physical point of view. It would be easy, in
taking a concrete example to fix one's ideas by, to choose one in
which the letter M should stand for a collective noun of some sort,
which noun, being related to L by one of its parts and to N by an-
other, would inwardly be two things when it stood outwardly in
both relations. Thus, one might say : ' David Hume, who weighed
so many stone by his body, influences posterity by his doctrine.'
The body and the doctrine are two things, between which our finite
minds can discover no real sameness, though the same name covers
both of them. And then, one might continue: 'Only an Absolute
is capable of uniting such a non-identity.' We must, I say, avoid
this sort of example, for the dialectic insight, if true at all, must
apply to terms and relations universally. It must be true of ab-
stract units as well as of nouns collective ; and if we prove it by con-
crete examples we must take the simplest, so as to avoid irrelevant
material suggestions.
Taken thus in all its generality ', the absolutist contention seems
to use as its major, premise Hume's notion 'that all our distinct
perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never per-
ceives any real connexion among distinct existences.' Undoubtedly,
since we use two phrases in talking first about 'M's relation to L'
and then about 'M 's relation to N/ we must be having, or must have
had, two distinct perceptions; and the rest would then seem to fol-
low duly. But the starting-point of the reasoning here seems to
be the fact of the two phrases; and this suggests that the argument
may be merely verbal. Can it be that the whole dialectic consists
in attributing to the experience talked-about a constitution similar
to that of the language in which we describe it? Must we assert
the objective doubleness of the M merely because we have to name
it twice over when we name its two relations ?
Candidly, I can think of no other reason than this for the dialectic
conclusion ; 4 for, if we think, not of our words, but of any simple con-
crete matter which they may be held to signify, the experience itself
* Technically it seems classable as a fallacy ' of composition.' A duality,
predicable of the two wholes, L M and M N, is forthwith predicated of
one of their parts, M.
34 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
belies the paradox asserted. We use indeed two separate concepts ia
analyzing our object, but we know them all the while to be but sub-
stitutional, and that the M in L M and the M in M N mean
(i. e., are capable of leading to and terminating in) one self -same
piece, M, of sensible experience. This persistent identity of certain
units (or emphases, or points, or objects, or members call them
what you will) of the experience-continuum, is just one of those
conjunctive features of it, on which radical empiricism insists so
emphatically. 5 For samenesses are parts of experience 's indefeasible
structure. When I hear a bell-stroke and, as life flows on, its after
image dies away, I still hark back to it as 'that same bell-stroke.'
When I see a thing M, with L to the left of it and N to the right of
it, I see it as one M; and if you tell me I have had to 'take' it twice,
I reply that if I 'took' it a thousand times I should still see it as a
unit. 6 Its unity is aboriginal, just as, in my successive takings of
it, the multiplicity is aboriginal. It comes unbroken as that M, as
a singular which I encounter; they come broken, as those takings,
as my plurality of operations. The unity and the separateness are
strictly coordinate. I do not easily fathom why my opponents
should find the separateness so much more easily understandable
that they must needs infect the whole of finite experience with it,
and relegate the unity (now taken as a bare postulate and no longer
as a thing positively perceivable) to the region of the Absolute's
mysteries. I do not easily fathom this, I say, for the said opponents
are above mere verbal quibbling; yet all that I can catch in their
talk is the substitution of what is true of certain words for what is
true of what they signify. They stay with the words, not return-
ing to the stream of life whence all the meaning of them came, and
which is always ready to reabsorb them.
IV
For aught this argument proves, then, we may continue to be-
lieve that one thing can be known by many knowers. But the denial
of one thing in many relations is but one application of a still pro-
founder dialectic difficulty. Man can't be good, said the sophists,
for man is man and good is good; and Hegel and Herbart in their
day, more recently H. Spir, and most recently and elaborately of all,
Mr. Bradley, inform us that a term can logically only be a puncti-
6 See above, p. 534 ff.
6 1 may perhaps refer here to my ' Principles of Psychology,' Vol. I., pp.
459 ff . It really seems ' weird ' to have to argue ( as I am forced now to do )
for the notion that it is one sheet of paper (with its two surfaces and all that
lies between) which is both under my pen and on the table^the 'claim' that
it is two sheets seems so brazen. Yet I sometimes suspect the absolutists of
sincerity !
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 35
form unit, and that even single conjunctive relations between things,
such as experience seems to yield, are rationally impossible.
Of course, if true, this cuts off radical empiricism without even
a shilling. Radical empiricism takes conjunctive relations at their
face value, holding them to be as real as the terms united by them. 7
The world it represents as a collection, some parts of which are con-
junctively and others disjunctively related. Two parts, themselves
disjoined, may nevertheless hang together by an intermediary with
which they are severally connected, and the whole world eventually
may hang together similarly, inasmuch as some path of conjunctive
transition by which to pass from one of its parts to another may
always be discernable. Such determinately various hanging-together
may be called concatenated union, to distinguish it from the ' through-
and-through' type of union, 'each in all and all in each' (union of
total conflux, as one might call it) which monistic systems 'hold to
obtain when things are taken in their, absolute reality. In a con-
catenated world a partial conflux often is experienced. Our con-
cepts and our sensations are confluent ; successive states of the same
ego, and feelings of the same body are confluent. Where the experi-
ence is not of conflux, it may be of conterminousness [things with
but one thing between] ; or of contiguousness [nothing between] ;
or of likeness ; or of nearness ; or of simultaneousness ; or of in-ness ;
or of on-ness ; or. of f or-ness ; or of simple with-ness ; or even of mere
and-ness, which last relation would make of however disjointed a
world otherwise, at any rate for that occasion a universe 'of dis-
course.' Now Mr. Bradley tells us that none of these relations, as
we actually experience them, can be real. 8 My next duty, accord-
ingly, must be to rescue radical empiricism from Mr. Bradley.
Fortunately, as it seems to me, his general contention, that the very
notion of relation is unthinkable clearly, has been successfully met
by many critics. 9
7 See above, pp. 534, 540.
8 Here again the reader must beware of slipping from logical into phe-
nomenal considerations. It may well be that we attribute a certain relation
falsely, because the circumstances of the case, being complex, have deceived
us. At a railway station we may take our own train, and not the one that
fills our window, to be moving. We here put motion in the wrong place in
the world, but in its original place the motion is a part of reality. What
Mr. Bradley means is nothing like this, but rather that motion is nowhere
real, and that, even in their aboriginal and empirically incorrigible seats, rela-
tions are impossible of comprehension.
8 Particularly so by Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, in his ' Man and the
Cosmos,' and by L. T. Eobbhouse, in Chapter XII. (the Validity of Judgment)
of his 'Theory of Knowledge.' Other fatal reviews (in my opinion) are
Hodder's, in the Psychological Review, L, 307; Stout's in the Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society, 1901-2, p. 1; and MacLennan's in this JOUKNAL, No.
15, 403.
36 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
It is a burden to the flesh, and an injustice both to readers and
to the previous writers, to repeat good arguments already printed.
So, in noticing Mr. Bradley, I will confine myself to the interests of
radical empiricism solely.
V
The first duty of radical empiricism, taking given conjunctions
at their face-value, is to class some of them as more intimate and
some as more external. When two terms are similar, their very
natures enter into the relation. Being what they are, no matter
where or when, the likeness never can be denied, if asserted. It
continues predicable as long as the terms continue. Other relations,
the where and the when, for example, seem adventitious. The sheet
of paper may be 'off' or. 'on' the table, for example; and in either
case the relation only involves the outside of its terms. Having an
outside, both of them, they contribute by it to the relation. It is
external : the term 's inner nature is irrelevant to it. Any book, any
table, may fall into the relation, which is created pro hac vice, not
by their existence, but by their casual situation. It is just because
so many of the conjunctions of experience seem so external that a
philosophy of pure experience must tend to pluralism in its ontology.
So far as things have space-relations, for example, we are free to
imagine them with different origins even. If they could get to be,
and get into space at all, then they may have done so separately.
Once there, however, they are additives to one another, and, with
no prejudice to their natures, all sorts of space-relations may super-
vene between them. The question of how things could uberhaupt
come to be is wholly different from the question what their relations,
once the being accomplished, may consist in.
Mr. Bradley now affirms that such external relations as we here
talk of must hold of different subjects from those of which the
absence of relations could a moment previously have been asserted.
Not only is the situation different when the book is on the table, but
the book itself is different as a book, from what it was when it was
off the table. 10 He admits that "such external relations seem pos-
sible and even existing. . . . That you do not alter what you compare
"Once more, don't slip from logical into physical situations. Of course,
if the table be wet, it will moisten the book, or if it be slight enough and the
book heavy enough, the book will break it down. But such collateral phe-
nomena are not the point at issue. The point is whether the successive rela-
tions 'on' and ' not-on ' can rationally (not physically) hold of the same
constant terms, abstractly taken. Professor A. E. Taylor drops from logical
into material considerations when he instances color-contrast as a proof that A,
' as contra-distinguished from B, is not the same thing as mere A not in any
way affected ' (' Elements of Metaphysics,' 1903, p. 145). Note the substitution
for ' related ' of the word ' affected,' which begs the whole question.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 37
or rearrange in space seems to Common Sense quite obvious, and
that on the other side there are as obvious difficulties does not occur
to Common Sense at all. And I will begin by pointing out these
difficulties. . . . There is a relation in the result, and this relation,
we hear, is to make no difference in its terms. But, if so, to what
does it make a difference? [Doesn't it make a difference to us on-
lookers, at least?] and what is the meaning and sense of qualifying
the terms by it? [Surely the meaning is to tell the truth about
them* 1 ] If in short, it is external to the terms, how can it possibly
be true of them? [7s it the 'intimacy' suggested by the little word
'of,' here, which I have underscored, that is the root of Mr. Brad-
ley's trouble?] ... If the terms from their inner nature do not
enter into the relation, then, so far as they are concerned, they seem
related for no reason at all. . . . Things are spatially related, first in
one way, and then become related in another way, and yet in no
way themselves are altered; for the relations, it is said, are but
external. But I reply that, if so, I can not understand the leaving
by the terms of one set of relations and their adoption of another
fresh set. The process and its result to the terms, if they contribute
nothing to it [Surely they contribute to it all there is 'of it!] seem
irrational throughout. [// irrational here means simply 'non-
rational,' or non-deducible from the essence of either term singly,
it is no reproach; if it means 'contradicting' such essence, Mr.
Bradley should show wherein and how.] But, if they contribute
anything, they must surely be affected internally. [Why so, if
they contribute only their surface? In such relations as 'on,' 'a
foot away,' 'between,' 'next,' etc., only surfaces are in question.]
... If the terms contribute anything whatever, then the terms are
affected [altered?] by the arrangement. . . . That for. working pur-
poses we treat, and do well to treat, some relations as external
merely I do not deny, and that of course is not the question at issue
here. That question is ... whether in the end and in principle a
mere external relation is possible and forced on us by the facts." 12
Mr. Bradley next reverts to the antinomies of space, which, ac-
cording to him, prove it to be unreal, although it appears as so
prolific a medium of external relations; and he then concludes that
"Irrationality and externality can not be the last truth about things.
Somewhere there must be a reason why this and that appear together.
And this reason and reality must reside in the whole from which
terms and relations are abstractions, a whole in which their internal
11 But " is there any sense," asks Mr. Bradley peevishly, on p. 579, " and if
so, what sense in truth that is only outside and ' about ' things ?" Surely
such a question may be left unanswered.
12 ' Appearance and Keality,' 2d edition, pp. 575-6.
38 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
connection must lie, and out of which from the background appear
those fresh results which never could have come from the premises"
(p. 577). And he adds that "Where the whole is different, the
terms that qualify and contribute to it must so far be different. . . .
They are altered so far only [How far? farther than externally,
yet not through and through?} but still they are altered. ... I
must insist that in each case the terms are qualified by their whole
[Qualified how? Do their external relations, changed as these are
in the new whole, fail to qualify them 'far' enough?], and that in
the second case there is a whole which differs both logically and
psychologically from the first whole ; and I urge that in contributing
to the change the terms so far are altered" (p. 579).
Not merely the relations, then, but the terms are altered: und
zwar l so far. ' But just h ow far is the whole problem ; and ' through-
and-through' would seem (in spite of Mr. Bradley 's somewhat un-
decided utterances 13 ) to be the full Bradleyan answer. The 'whole'
which he here treats as primary and determinative of each part's
manner of 'contributing,' simply must, when it alters, alter in its
entirety. There must be total conflux of its parts, each into and
through each other. The 'must' appears here as a Machtspruch,
as an ipse dixit of Mr. Bradley 's absolutistically tempered 'under-
standing,' for he candidly confesses that how the parts do- differ
as they contribute to different wholes, is unknown to him (p. 578).
Although. I have every wish to comprehend the authority by which
Mr. Bradley's understanding speaks, his words leave me wholly
unconverted. 'External relations' stand with their withers all
unwrung, and remain, for aught he proves to the contrary, not only
practically workable, but also perfectly intelligible factors in reality.
13 1 say ' undecided,' because, apart from the ' so far,' which sounds ter-
ribly half-hearted, there are passages in these very pages in which Mr. Bradley
admits the pluralistic thesis. Read, for example, what he says, on p. 578, of
a billiard ball keeping its ' character ' unchanged, though, in its change of
place, its ' existence ' gets altered ; or what he says, on p. 579, of the possibility
that an abstract quality A, B, or C, in a thing, ' may throughout remain un-
changed' although the thing be altered; or his admission that in red-hairedness,
both as analyzed out of a man and when given with the rest of him, there may
be 'no change' (p. 580) : Why does he immediately add that for the pluralist
to plead the non-mutation of such abstractions would be an ignoratio elenchiT
It is impossible to admit it to be such. The entire etenchus and inquest is just
as to whether parts which you can abstract from existing wholes can contribute
to other wholes by a change of arrangement without change of nature. If they
can thus mould the wholes into new gestaltqualitdten, then it follows that
the same elements are logically able to exist in different wholes [whether
physically able would depend on additional hypotheses] ; that through-and-
through change is not a dialectic necessity; that monism is only an hypothesis;
and that an additively constituted universe is rationally thinkable. All the
theses of radical empiricism, in short, follow.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 39
VI
Mr. Bradley 's understanding shows the most extraordinary
power of perceiving separations and the most extraordinary im-
potence in comprehending conjunctions. One would naturally say
'neither or both,' but not so Mr. Bradley. When a common man
analyzes certain ivhats from out the stream of experience he under-
stands their distinctness as thus isolated. But this does not prevent
him from equally well understanding their combination with each
other as originally experienced in the concrete, or their confluence
with new sensible experiences in which they recur as 'the same.'
Returning into the stream of sensible presentation, nouns and adjec-
tives and thats and abstracts grow confluent again, and the word 'is'
names all these experiences of conjunction. Mr. Bradley under-
stands the isolation of the abstracts, but to understand the combina-
tion is to him impossible. 14 "To understand a complex AB," he
says, "I must begin with A or B. And beginning, say with A, if
I then merely find B, I have either lost A, or I have got beside A,
[the word 'beside' seems here vital] something else, and in neither
case have I understood. 15 For my intellect can not simply unite a
diversity, nor has it in itself any form or way of togetherness, and
you gain nothing if, beside A and B, you offer me their conjunction
in fact. For to my intellect that is no more than another external
element. And 'facts,' once for all, are for. my intellect not true
unless they satisfy it. ... The intellect has in its nature no principle
of mere togetherness" (pp. 570, 572).
Of course Mr. Bradley has a right to define 'intellect' as the
power by which we perceive separations but not unions, provided
he give due notice to the reader. But why then claim that such a
maimed and amputated power must reign supreme in philosophy?
It is true that he elsewhere (p. 568) attributes to the intellect a
proprius motus of transition, but says that when he looks for these
transitions in the detail of living experience, he 'is unable to verify
such a solution' (p. 569).
14 So far as I catch his state of mind, it is somewhat like this : ' Book,'
' table,' ' on ' how does the existence of these three abstract elements result in
this book being livingly on this table. Why isn't the table on the book? Or
why dosn't the ' on ' connect itself with another book, or something that is
not a table? Mustn't something in each of the three elements already
determine the two others to it, so that they do not settle elsewhere or float
vaguely? Mustn't the whole fact be prefigured in each part, and exist de jure
before it can exist de facto f But, if so, in what can the jural existence consist,
if not in a spiritual miniature of the whole fact's constitution actuating every
partial factor as its purpose? But is this anything but the old metaphysical
fallacy of looking behind a fact in esse for the ground of the fact, and finding
it in the shape of the very same fact in posse. Somewhere we must leave off
with a constitution behind which there is nothing.
18 Apply this to the case of ' book-on-table ' ! W. J.
40 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Yet he never explains what the intellectual transitions would
be like in case we had them. He only defines them negatively they
are not spatial, temporal, predicative, or causal; or qualitatively or
otherwise serial ; or in any way relational as we naively trace rela-
tions, for relations separate terms, and need themselves to be hitched
on ad infinitum. The nearest approach he makes to describing a
truly intellectual transition is where he speaks of A and B as being
'united, each from its own nature, in a whole which is the nature
of both alike' (p. 570). But this (which, pace Mr. Bradley, seems
exquisitely analogous to 'taking' a congeries in a 'lump/ if not to
'swamping') suggests nothing but that conflux which pure experi-
ence so abundantly offers, as when 'space,' 'white' and 'sweet' are
confluent in a 'lump of sugar,' or kinesthetic, dermal and optical
sensations confluent in 'my hand.' 16 All that I can verify in the
transitions which Mr. Bradley 's intellect desiderates as its proprius
motus is a reminiscence of these and other sensible conjunctions
(especially space-conjunctions), but a reminiscence so vague that its
originals are not recognized. Bradley in short repeats the fable of
the dog, the bone, and its image in the water. With a world of par-
ticulars, given in loveliest union, in conjunction definitely various,
and variously definite, the 'how' of which you 'understand' as soon
as you see the fact of them, 17 for there is no how except the consti-
tution of the fact as given; with all this given him, I say, in pure
experience, he asks for some ineffable union in the abstract instead,
which, if he gained it, would only be a duplicate of what he has
already in his full possession. Surely be abuses the privilege which
society grants to all us philosophers, of being puzzle-headed.
Polemic writing like this is odious; but with absolutism in
possession in so many quarters, omission to defend my radical em-
piricism against its best known champion, would count as either
superficiality or inability. I have to conclude that its dialectic has
not invalidated in the least degree the usual conjunctions by which
the world, as experienced, hangs so variously together. In par-
ticular it leaves my empirical theory of knowledge 18 intact, and lets
us continue to believe with common sense that one object may be
known, if we have any ground for thinking that it is known, to
many knowers.
18 How meaningless is the contention that in such wholes (or in 'book-on-
table,' ' watch-in-pocket,' etc. ) the relation is an additional entity bet ween the
terms, needing itself to be related! Both Bradley (A. and R., pp. 32-3) and
Royce ('The World and the Individual,' I., 128) lovingly repeat this piece of
profundity.
17 The ' why ' and the ' whence ' are entirely other questions, not under dis-
cussion, as I understand Mr. Bradley. Not how experience gets itself born,
but how it can be what it is after it is born, is the puzzle.
"Above, p. 538.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 41
In another article I shall return to this last supposition, which
seems to me to offer other difficulties much harder for a philosophy
of pure experience to deal with than any of absolutism's dialectic
objections.
WILLIAM JAMES.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
SOCIETIES
THE FOURTH MEETING OF THE AMERICAN
PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
rriHE American Philosophical Association held its fourth meeting
**- at the University of Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Thursday
and Friday, December 28-30, 1904. There were morning and after-
noon sessions on Wednesday and Thursday and a morning session
on Friday. The session on Tuesday afternoon was commemorative
of Immanuel Kant, the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psy-
chology assisting. Professor. Addison W. Moore, was expected to
read a paper on 'Pure and Practical Reason in Locke,' in commem-
oration of the bicentenary of the death of John Locke, but, unfor-
tunately, he was unable to attend the meeting. On Thursday morn-
ing the association united with the American Psychological Associa-
tion in a joint session, Professor William James presiding. The
president of the association, Professor George Trumbull Ladd, read
his address on Thursday evening, in Price Hall, on 'The Mission of
Philosophy. ' The address was followed by a smoker at the Colon-
nade Hotel, in which the members of the American Psychological
Association joined. The annual dinner of the American Society of
Naturalists and affiliated societies was held at the Hotel Walton
on Wednesday evening and was largely attended by members of
the association. At the business meeting on Thursday afternoon
the following officers were elected : President, Professor John Dewey ;
Vice-President, Professor J. A. Leighton ; Secretary-Treasurer, Pro-
fessor J. G. Hibben ; new members of the Executive Committee, Pro-
fessor H. N. Gardiner and Dr. R. B. Perry. The other members
of the Executive Committee are Professors James H. Tufts and H.
Heath Bawden, and the retiring members Professors William A.
Hammond and F. J. E. Woodbridge. The next meeting of the
association will be held in Emerson Hall, Harvard University, in
acceptance of the invitation of the Harvard department of philos-
ophy, presented to the association by Professor Miinsterberg.
The sessions were well attended, but there was not as much dis-
cussion as at other meetings. The following papers were read:
42 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Knowledge as the Subject of Epistemology : WALTER T. MARVIN.
The subject of epistemology is knowledge completely rationalized,
which is never a concrete psychosis, but which does exist as an ele-
ment in some psychoses. A complete list of concrete instances of
cognition would include psychoses all the way from dawning intelli-
gence to reasoning. In the higher instances, analysis would reveal
three distinct elements: first, a non-rational element, an element of
invention or discovery; secondly, a rational, a reflective, a cautious
or conservative element, an awareness of the judgment involved and
an inhibitant of any tendency to go beyond the warranted ; thirdly,
an awareness that our knowledge is about to result in conduct.
The first and third of these elements are non-rational. This leaves
the second element alone a truly rational element. Its office is to
narrow down the field of risk in both the foregoing elements. It
can help us to discovery only by preventing us from going far
afield, by keeping our hypotheses within the limits that promise
success. It can verify our hypotheses by ascertaining whether
or not they have worked. A study of this rational element shows
that it is engaged only with present data. It is the struggle of the
mind towards complete rationality that alone may be called valid
or invalid, and that forms the true subject of epistemological study.
The Something in Thought Besides Idea: EDWARD S. STEELE.
The most obtrusive symbol of thought is that of image, or pic-
ture, i. e., of idea; but a second more fundamental symbol is that
afforded by language, in which thought appears as discourse. Both
of these points of view must be harmonized in any adequate theory.
The common logic seems to cover both, but difficulties arise in its
psychological application. By Locke ideas are placed outside of
perception as its objects. Hume abolishes the perception and leaves
only the ideas, thus excluding the logical function. Reid restores
ideas to their place inside the act of predication, both elsewhere and
in sense perception, and thus practically makes the judgment the
universal norm of thought. A predication contains ideas and some-
thing extra-ideal the latter the goal of the paper. Dr. James
recognizes under the term, 'psychic fringe,' an extra-ideal element
in consciousness corresponding, in part at least, to the logical ele-
ment. The extra-ideal factor, according to this paper, consists in
what is known as 'logical form.' Logical form is exhibited in
certain uniformities of thought which run crosswise both of objective
content and of psychological distinctions such as intuition and reflec-
tion. It is no physical determination, but part of the meaning of
the thought, yet no part of the objective content; therefore de-
scribable as a subjective content, if thereby we understand a mean-
ing merely for the thought process. The copula is the pivot of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 43
logical form ; no isolated item, but of a closed system of logical
schematism. Logical content is merely of functional value and its
ontological application is purely illusive.
The Growth of Concepts: GEORGE R. MONTGOMERY.
Concepts do not spring into consciousness through experience,
nor. are they fixed in their meaning. They are to be regarded as
variables, functions one of another, in the sense in which calculus
uses the word function. In calculus a number is not a magnitude
but expresses a relation ; therefore calculus is best fitted to represent
the real characteristics of concepts, that is, the transitive states as
well as the substantive. A concept is not a simple affair but a
larger or smaller, portion of the analytic-synthetic process which
constitutes experience. The 'fringe' includes the parts into which
the concept is analyzed and the whole a part of whose analysis the
concept is. The epistemological unit is not, therefore, the sensation,
nor the term or the proposition with the copula, but the analytic-
synthetic triad ; and the proposition with the copula is merely one leg
of the analysis. A judgment like 'John struck James' or 'it rains'
is an ordinary concept, and is thus to be regarded in grammar and
logic.
Truth and Practice: A. E. TAYLOR.
The Metaphysical Status of Universals: WILMON H. SHELDON.
Whatever is concrete has a positive metaphysical reality, though
perhaps not the highest degree of reality. The universal is sup-
posed by many to be essentially not concrete and therefore to have
a lower metaphysical status than concrete individual facts or events.
This supposition rests on a misapprehension of the nature of a uni-
versal. It should be defined not as a permanent entity incapable of
complete realization in experience and indifferent thereto, but as a
particular image or response plus a fringe, a suggestion of further,
possible similar images or responses, which the former, having been
associated with similars, gradually acquires. The suggestion is due
not to our mind, but to the nature of the particular content; it is
a concrete fringe of the image or response. Thus a universal is
quite concrete, and is as real as any individual fact or event.
Kant's Doctrine of the Basis of Mathematics: JOSIAH ROYCE.
The certainty of mathematical science depends, according to
Kant, entirely upon the necessity which our forms of perception
possess, which forms are for us absolutely predetermined by our
constitution. The mathematicians since the time of Kant have
tended more and more to follow the very direction which he would
have warned them not to follow. Namely, they have on the whole
increasingly forsaken the method of trusting to perceptual con-
44 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
struction as a means of mathematical demonstration. Geometry
without diagrams is now the order of the day amongst the most
vigorous students of the bases of geometry. A Kantian form of
intuition, if you can prove its existence in our own nature, has abso-
lutely no interest as the foundation of any mathematical science, ex-
cept in so far as it may suggest to some mathematician the particular
ideal topics upon which he finds it convenient to build up a mathe-
matical theory. On the other hand, the immortal soul of the Kantian
doctrine of the forms of intuition remains this, that thinking itself
is a kind of experience, that true thinking is synthetic as well as
analytic, is engaged in construction of a peculiar kind, and not in
mere barren analyses such as the statements that all rational animals
are rational. Kant was right in saying that the novelties of mathe-
matical science are due to the observation of the results of construct-
ive processes. Kant's theory of the basis of mathematics has thus
been in one respect wholly abandoned, and properly so, by the
modern logic of mathematics. In another respect, precisely in so
far as Kant declared that constructive synthesis and observation of
its ideal results are both necessary for mathematics, Kant was un-
questionably right. And, as nobody before him had so clearly seen
this fact, and as the progress of mathematical logic since his time
has been so profoundly influenced by his criticisms, we owe to him
an enormous advance in our reflective insight in this field.
Kant's Attitude towards Idealism and Realism: EDWARD F.
BUCHNER.
This paper discussed not the logical implication of Kant's system
but his own notions of what idealism and realism taught in the
eighteenth century. It sketched the successive interpretations of
the 'Critique of Pure Reason,' from that of Garve, in 1782, to that
of Schopenhauer. It gave a chronological list of passages from
Kant's books and fragments under these headings: his conception
of idealism and realism; his classification of idealists and realists;
his own impressions of what he taught ; his rejoinders to critics ; his
refutations of idealism. Much may thus be learned of his great
motives. The conclusions reached were: (1) Kant's criticism of
the extant forms of idealism and realism is due to ambiguity in his
use of the terms 'external,' 'outside us,' 'experience,' etc. (2) Kant
argues against Berkeleian idealism, first, from his doctrine of things-
in-themselves, later, from the existence of things in space. His
doctrine of noumena is vital in his system. (3) In 1787 and later,
Kant's thinking shifted to psychological grounds, proceeding con-
tradictorily to the Deduction and the Paralogisms. (4) Kant's
real and apparent inconsistencies may be reconciled by noting that,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 45
while as to experience and knowledge he taught a new idealism, as
to faith he taught a new realism. Criticism thus was an articulation
of ideal-realism and real idealism.
The Present Significance of Kant's Ethics: WILLIAM CALDWELL.
This significance is due, of course, to Kant's spiritual philosophy
of human nature. This spiritual philosophy is implied in all
present and recent attempts to treat the moral judgment as one of
valuation. It is also implied in recent epistemological assumptions
about personality, and it constitutes a basis for the theory of
sovereignty or autonomy implied in the ethics of social democracy.
Neo-Hegelian criticism of Kant's moral standard has overlooked the
two more socialized expressions given to it by Kant. The independ-
ence of ethics both of metaphysics and of naturalism is an important
part of Kant's teaching the fact that ethics is more calculated to
give to, than to take from metaphysics) the latter thing having been
tried unsuccessfully by the English neo-Hegelians until the recent
criticisms of Bradley and Taylor. Again, Kant's emphasis on the
standard as the law of personal dealing in a social realm frees us
from many of the difficulties of the much-vaunted ideological moral
philosophy of the present, casuistry and indifferentism or indeter-
minateness being the faults of the latter. Kant's version of the
standard is also the one that is most consonant with a true theory
of moral progress.
The Significant and the Non-essential in the ^Esthetics of Kant:
JAMES H. TUFTS.
Regarding as non-essential the arrangement under the categories,
and the machinery of the separate faculties with their supposed
interaction, we may single out as the more essential elements of
Kant's thought the following: (1) The social reference implied in
the aesthetic judgment. The aesthetic may be said to 'find me' more
deeply and broadly than the agreeable. (2) The emphasis upon
the freedom and the enlarging quality of the aesthetic consciousness.
The aesthetic is thus distinguished both from the routine of habit
and from the abstract concepts of scientific interest. (3) The
recognition of the negative or tensional factor in the consciousness
of the sublime. (4) The treatment of the aesthetic as an organic
part of life and philosophy. It is fatal to the aesthetic to be ab-
stracted from full experience, and conversely, philosophy, in seeking
a point of view for considering life as a whole, can not ignore the
aesthetic phases of consciousness as above indicated.
The Ifluence of Kant on Theology: GEORGE W. KNOX.
The influence of Kant on theology has been in three principal
lines. First, certain theologians accepted the arguments of the
46 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
'Critique of the Pure Reason' and the conclusion that God is there-
fore unknowable. None the less they attempted a theology by
exalting faith in revelation through the church and the Holy
Scriptures, thus maintaining that that which is unknowable by rea-
son may be accepted by faith. The second movement followed the
lines laid down by Schleiermacher on the one side and Hegel on
the other. Accepting the position of Kant as destructive of the old
conception of God, they attempt to find him immanent in the world
of feeling and of reason. Under the influence of Hegel theology
was reconstructed, the central point being given to the doctrine of
the Trinity, though this was stated in forms scarcely in accordance
with the tradition of the church. The theology, however, suffered
the fate of the philosophy and has now few representatives. The
third movement may be called neo-Kantian, and it is often desig-
nated by the name Ritschl. Ritschl, however, obtained his epistemol-
ogy through Lotze, though in his later period he made a renewed
study of Kant, not perhaps altogether to the advantage of his
system. This school holds theology to be a practical science, its
relationship to metaphysics being only the relationship which all
sciences must hold to it, and its material being given in the facts
of the religious experience of mankind.
Kant and Aquinas (by title) : BROTHER CHRYSOSTOM.
Five such centuries as separated Kant from Aquinas must have
entailed a marked difference in point of view Yet it is surprising
how many points of contact may be found between the Angel of the
Schools and the Philosopher of Koenigsberg. In the thirteenth cen-
tury there were extremes to reconcile: in the world of action, we
find the spiritual and the temporal; in the world of thought,
nominalism and realism; in the theological world, Gentilism and
Christianity. Thus the young Aquinas was forced to go back of
differences to a common ground if he would construct a really
effective synthetic philosophy. In the days of Kant, the conflict
was supposed to be between dogmatism and skepticism, and Kant,
too, went back to the parting of the ways to get the principles of
his analytic philosophy. But his excessive distrust of the principle
of authority, the solitary life which he led, and the mental rigidity
which marks him off from even such mathematicians as Descartes
and Spinoza, prevented him from giving his system a solid founda-
tion in the real order. On the other hand, to exceptional natural
gifts Aquinas joined the advantages of travel and of special instruc-
tion under one of the most learned men of the day; for Albertus
Magnus united theory and practice, speculation and experiment.
To the precision of the logician he added the skill of the poet and
was therefore the possessor of sympathy and insight. A detailed
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 47
comparison of the limitations of our cognitive powers as viewed
by both Kant and Aquinas brings out many more points of contact,
and is a suggestive and profitable study.
The five papers following were read at the joint session with
the American Psychological Association.
Wundtian Feeling: Analysis and the Genetic Significance of Feel-
ing: MARGARET FLOY WASHBURN.
The elaborate analysis of feelings which forms the most im-
portant part of Wundt's revised system of psychology is incom-
patible with his doctrine that feeling is purely subjective and based
on the reaction of a simple apperception center. In particular, every
attempt to explain the relation between a feeling quality and its
components, or complex feeling and their partial feelings, results
in referring the complexity to the sensational basis of the feeling.
Analysis and subjectivity are incompatible notions. The chief
source of perplexity in the problem of feeling lies in the failure to
recognize intermediate stages between feeling and sensation; proc-
esses which, while they ordinarily go unanalyzed because there is
no need for analyzing them, may with practiced introspection be
recognized as complexes of organic sensation. To this class belong
strain and relaxation, excitement and depression. Subjective is
that which resists analysis, qualitative and local; objective, that
which allows it. Only pleasantness and unpleasantness are ulti-
mately subjective in this sense.
The Mutual Isolation of Minds: DICKINSON S. MILLER.
Consciousness as distinct from its contents resolves itself into a
relation of coexperience or empirical conjunction between contents.
Contents not bearing this relation to each other are isolated in an
ultimate sense. A group of coexperienced contents which as a
whole is isolated is what we call a state or field of consciousness.
To it every other state or field is, in Clifford's term, ejective. The
disjunction of experiences is absolute and admits of no degrees.
The same may be said of their conjunction. A consciousness
foreign to my own is for me a ' thing-in-itself . ' To say that we
can know nothing of things-in-themselves is to say that we can
know nothing of our neighbor's mind. To say that one content can
be in two fields at once, or that a field may be a part of a larger
field without consciousness of the fact is to contradict oneself. The
absolute discontinuity between fields of consciousness must be recog-
nized by such doctrines of panpsychism as would transfer the con-
tinuities of the physical world of science to a world of sentiency.
The category of ejectivity or disjunction is of peculiar interest for
the theory of knowledge. It is the fixed indisposition to contemplate
48 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the content of a conceived foreign field as part of my own conceived
field.
The Nature of Consciousness: FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE.
Consciousness can not be defined in isolation, but only as it is
given with a variety of contents as different as ideas and things,
as an instance of that type of existence which may be described as
the existence of different things together. Space, time and species
are other instances of the same type, and afford such striking
parallels to consciousness that consciousness may be defined as of
the same general nature, namely, as a form of continuum or connec-
tion between objects. Such a definition reduces the problem of the
relation of consciousness to other things to the problem of the rela-
tion of a continuum to the things contained. The distinctive feat-
ure of the connection of objects in consciousness is that in such
connection they become representative of each other, and thus make
knowledge possible. It is to be noted that both the actual contents
and limitations of knowledge are determined solely by the relation
of objects to each other. Knowledge is palpably realistic. The
most crucial instance of this realism is the discovery that conscious-
ness has antecedent conditions of existence. These conditions ap-
pear to be events of the world which is eventually in consciousness,
so that consciousness may be regarded as a special form of con-
tinuum or connection in which the events of the world may exist.
A Suggestive Case of Nerve Anastomosis: GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.
This particular case of nerve anastomosis was performed by Dr.
Harvey Gushing, of Baltimore, in the spring of 1902. It consisted
of uniting the distal end of the facial nerve with the central end
of the accessory nerve of the shoulder. Through persistent efforts
at voluntary control during 287 days, at the end of this period the
action of the individual groups of muscles of the face had completely
returned and could be effected without associated movements of the
shoulder or contraction in other facial muscles, and emotional ex-
pression had considerably improved, although not to the same
extent. An analysis of the phenomena seems to show that, under
the stimulus of will, the cortical center of the accessory nerve had
assumed new and more complicated functions. Such astonishing,
results from persistent volitional efforts seem to add their testimony
to scores of other facts in discrediting both the idealistic and the
psycho-physical parallelistic theories of the relations of body and
mind.
The System of Values: HUGO MUNSTERBERG.
The aim is to classify our absolute values, those experiences, that
is, which we appreciate for their own sake, and secondly to examine
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 49
whether one common principle controls the whole system. If we
seek absolute values, we must take the standpoint of immediate
experience and not the standpoint of causal science, which is itself
the product of valuation, inasmuch as it has transformed reality in
the service of certain valuable logical purposes. We find values in
four spheres : firstly, in related experiences ; secondly, in isolated ex-
periences ; thirdly, in the changes of experience ; and fourthly, in the
supplementations of experience. Each time we have to separate
the given and the created values. In the related experiences we
find the value of validity, to which we submit ; it is given as existen-
tial knowledge and created as scientific knowledge. In isolated ex-
periences we find the value of perfection, which we enjoy ; it is given
in harmony and created in beauty of art. In the changes of experi-
ences we find the value of achievement, which we approve; it is
given as development and created as civilization. In the supple-
ments to experience we find the value of completeness, in which we
believe; it is given as religious conviction and created as philosoph-
ical conviction. There is one category common to all these classes
of values: the category of identity. As the same simple principle
of attraction controls the changes of the physical world from the
falling apple to the moving star, the same simple principle of iden-
tity determines value in the world of subjects from the beauty of
a circle or the truth of arithmetic to the highest morality and phi-
losophy and religion.
Consciousness in the Brutes: GEORGE V. N. DEARBORN.
The presumption that the nervous system is the physical basis of
consciousness is unwarranted (as was Descartes 's location of the soul
in the pineal gland) because the metabolism of the nervous system
is inadequate to the empirical nature of the mental process. On the
other hand the unique complexity of the structure and the metabol-
ism of protoplasm in general corresponds more nearly to the in-
tensity and the extensity of empirical consciousness. The nearly
perfect analogy between the anatomy and the physiology of man
and those of the most complex brutes amounts to a demonstration
of the latter 's consciousness, while the principle of continuity war-
rants a belief that all animals are conscious, the simplest experi-
encing little but sensation and 'will,' while cognition develops prob-
ably with the comprehending functions of the nervous system.
The Psychological Self and the Actual Personality: J. A. LEIGHTON.
There is a deeper and more fundamental method of considering
the actual self than any afforded by psychology. Structural psy-
chology must, in its analytic procedure, treat consciousness as a
complex of static, given elements so that it could never lay hold on
the actual, living self which is immediately experienced as a moving
50 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
and dynamic unity. The actual self remains always the limiting
presupposition of structural analysis. Functional psychology en-
deavors to do justice to the prospective, teleological character of the
self-unity. But it has tended to rest satisfied with biological cate-
gories and has not seen that its genetic account of self-activity as
end-seeking involves a philosophy, i. e., a theory of the relation of
self to environment. The actual personality realizes itself as a
rational," teleological activity only in and through culture-systems in
morals, science, religion, etc. The real self finds itself through
active attitudes in relation to the totality of the culture-life. This
life is historical, social, spiritual. It is created, embodied and trans-
formed in and by personalities. The transcendent presupposition,
then, of the entire culture-life is the reality of ultimate self-active,
spiritual unities which come to expression in empirical individuals.
If we ask, not what is the presupposition of exact science, but what
is the presupposition of human culture, we are led back to a hyper-
empirical principle in personality, and so, widening the transcen-
dental inquiry, we shall arrive, not at a Bewusstsein uberhaupt as
the ultimate condition of science, but at a transcendent principle
of personality as the condition of civilization.
The Relational Theory of Consciousness: W. P. MONTAGUE.
The new movement in favor of a relational theory of conscious-
ness is to be welcomed in the interest of a scientific psychology. It
is however seriously hampered by a failure on the part of most of
its advocates to realize the incompatibility of any form of idealism
with the view that consciousness is a relation between its objects,
and not something in which they inhere. Things must be before
they can be related, hence if consciousness is a relation no object
can depend for its existence upon the fact that it is perceived. In
short the realistic theory of the world is a necessary implication of
the relational theory of consciousness; while, conversely, if we fol-
low common sense in admitting the objective reality of both pri-
mary and secondary qualities, there will be no temptation to treat
consciousness as anything other than a special relation between an
organism and its environment. Realism and the relational view of
consciousness are strictly correlative. They are different aspects of
the same truth, and can not be defended or understood apart from
one another.
An Interpretation of Aristotle, De anima III., 7, 431 a 16-b 1 : WM.
ROMAINE NEWBOLD.
Chapters four to eight of this book are occupied by the Theory
of Reason. This paragraph is not, as is commonly supposed, a
digression, repeating the theory already given of the simultaneous
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 51
perception of disparate sense presentations. It is essentially an
application of that theory to the simultaneous apprehension of the
intuition of Reason and some other, content. In it Aristotle makes
four points: (1) The intuition of Reason always occurs in conjunc-
tion with a representation of phantasy. (2) The mental content
whereby we apprehend that in which the representations differ
itself contains the intuitions or concepts of both. (3) The manner
in which the two intuitions and (4) the representation and its
intuition are simultaneously apprehended, is proved by proportions.
These proportions should be interpreted in accordance with the
principle upon which convertibility rests. The latter was certainly
known to Aristotle ; it was probably the discovery of Eudoxus.
Primary and Secondary Phases of Causality. Natural Science
Founded on the Latter and Theology on the Former: WILLIAM
T. HAERIS.
In our common thinking we are apt to suppose that a chain of
secondary causality can be thought by itself without the need of a
first cause; but this view does not bear examination, for any link
which originated causality would in so far have to be a first or
primordial cause not deriving that causality from beyond, but,
through its own energy, generating a transmitting cause. It fol-
lows that all secondary causes belong to the pole of the effect. An
infinite effect presupposes an infinite cause which originates an
infinite causal influence transmitted to this infinite sphere of effect.
Suppose that the infinite chain of secondary causes does not demand
as its logical condition a first cause which originates its causal energy
and is not dependent itself upon a chain of causality. In that case
there is no causality to transmit. No link originates any causality
to transmit, and causality according to this view comes from no other
source. This is the annihilation of all causality because there is no
origination, and consequently there can be no transference, of
causality. Science, as well as philosophy, with this becomes an
illusion, and things and events also become illusions because they
only seem to arise through a transforming causal influence in the
world.
The Agnosticism of Herbert Spencer (by title) : GABEIEL CAMPBELL.
Herbert Spencer was by heredity a nonconformist, his father
even dissenting from the dissenters, the son displaying an impulsive
antipathy to authority, political as well as religious, expressions of
adoration never finding in him any echoes. Bodily infirmity pre-
vented his attending school and devoting himself to books; he was
thus debarred from becoming a scholar, in philosophy or an expert
in science. Mentally a castle-builder, with the ambition of a re-
52 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
former, his copious writings are sagely devised, but impracticable.
He early championed evolutionism, aiming to displace a sovereign
ruler who is creative or, self-revealing. Characterizing the absolute
reality as unknowable, he passes mechanically from the biological to
the psychological. The emotive life is developed from the corporeal ;
intuitions fail to give men absolute ideals; irreversible law excludes
freedom of will. In his theory of education he ignores the study
of humanity in its higher ranges, the classic development of lan-
guage, art, ethics and religion. His absolute morality would be
intermediary between empiricism and idealism, but does not bring
man into free affiliation with a divine (Kantian) kingdom of right-
eousness. In religion Spencer recognizes rather the utilitarian
animal than the immortal; the savage state seems more suggestive
than Christianity. While he finds religion indispensable and based
on our. consciousness of the infinite and eternal source of all energy,
his theistic ideas are incoherent, God unknowable; Spencer does not
find our highest and best intellection developed in terms of the abso-
lutely real.
Deism in America: I. WOODBRIDGE RILEY.
Confining itself to the rise of deism in Yale College, the paper
discusses the deistic influences in the writings of Bishop Berkeley,
Dr. Samuel Johnson, Rector Clapp and President Stiles. The lat-
ter 's reading of Shaftsbury, Leland, Middleton, Hume and Lord
Kames is shown to have incited Stiles 's remarkable appeal for free-
dom of thought, now first given in its entirety from hitherto un-
published documents.
Philosophy and Immortality: FRANK S. HOFFMANN.
The doctrine of human immortality is now seriously questioned.
Being a future event it can never be more than probable. Even if
it could be shown that some men have survived death, that would
not prove that all will. A study of the origin and nature of man,
developing into a being capable of knowing himself and investigating
the ultimate ground of things, creates a probability in favor of his
endless life. The argument against this view derived from the
known interdependence of mind and brain is nullified by accepting
the transmission theory of James as more likely than the production
theory of Duhring, or the combination theory of Clifford. The
probability of human immortality is further increased when we
consider the plan or purpose that the universe manifests. If to the
two great facts of the material universe, the indestructibility of
matter and the conservation of physical energy, we add the con-
servation of personality, the harmony of the system of things as a
whole is put upon solid ground. Grant the absolute goqdness of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 53
God, and the endless life of man seems to follow as a necessary cor-
ollary. It would be unworthy of God to annihilate man almost as
he begins the use of his higher powers. Life and immortality are
brought to light just in proportion as man comes to realize his own
dignity and to put a correct estimate upon his own worth.
Gambling as Play: Its Nature and the Moral Character of It:
HERBERT G. LORD.
This discussion originated in the attempt to define precisely
what constitutes gambling. The objective mark is found to lie
not in the presence of chance nor even in an excess of it, since this
is characteristic of many other of the transactions of life; but in
that the stake is provided by the contestants, and what one gains
others lose. So in all gambling it is, and is meant to be. The sub-
jective mark lies in the invariable presence of two impulses, the
strife and the gain impulses. Other elements might or might not
be present ; these always are, though in varying degrees of intensity.
This definition made, several different types of gambling were found,
only two of which were distinguished from each other: gambling
as play, and gambling as business. No well-grounded basis for
condemnation of the former was found, when conducted under
proper conditions and with a right mental attitude. It may,
perhaps, even be both a healthful recreation and a method of gaining
control of very insistent impulses.
Remarks on Ethical Method: HENRY W. WRIGHT.
The concept of evolution when applied to morality promises to
be helpful in reconciling the conflicting claims of Hedonism and
Intuitionism. From the evolutionary view-point, moral develop-
ment appears as a process of organization governed by the laws of
differentiation and integration. Thus, on the one hand, moral
development has underlying unity despite its continuous change.
We find a characteristic manifestation of this unity in purposive
or voluntary activity, an activity which pervades the whole sphere
of morality and is a mark of its real identity. Furthermore,
purposive activity embraces elements of cognition, feeling and effort,
and is itself an organizing agency inasmuch as it adjusts new
objects to the systematic totality of individual life. But, on the
other hand, moral development presents continuous difference
within its essential unity. These changes, which the unitary prin-
ciple undergoes, are largely determined by the nature of the evolu-
tion, as the process whereby a specific material (*'. e., primitive con-
duct) is organized. Hence we expect to find in morality different
forms of purposive activity which are recognized as necessary stages
or moments in moral development. Such are the common ad-
54 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
mitted virtues. We may distinguish three forms of purposive
activity which are necessary stages in moral development. These
forms of action are directed to the pursuit of (1) the single object
of impulse, (2) total individual interest, and (3) social welfare.
In (2) the virtues of Temperance and Prudence are involved; in (3)
those of Justice and Benevolence.
Stages of the Discussion of Evolutionary Ethics: THEODORE DE
LAGUNA.
During the last half-century the leading issues of this discussion
have changed repeatedly. Until comparatively recently the bearing
upon ethics of the theory of organic evolution received most atten-
tion; but since social evolution has been shown to be essentially
peculiar in its laws and factors, the importance of biological con-
ceptions and analogies in the consideration of moral facts has be-
come evident. In the earlier (biological) period of the discussion,
three stages can be distinguished. The first is that of ethics versus
evolution; an incompatibility asserted both by opponents of evolu-
tion and by moral sceptics. The second is that of the imitational
ethics criticized by Huxley; according to which the laws of organic
evolution are a standard for moral conduct. The third is that
of the systems of Spencer, Stephen and their allies, who explain
morality as essentially a biological variation which more effectually
secures the ends of previously existing functions. More recently
a tendency has become marked to concentrate attention even within
the field of social evolution upon the specifically ethical rather
than upon ethiconomic factors. Questions of method are now
paramount. Those who deny the applicability of the genetic method
to ethics sometimes confuse present with earlier stages; sometimes
ignore the light which, when the past is interpreted in terms of the
present, may thereby shine on the present itself.
Is There a Distinct Logic of Historical Construction f PERCY
HUGHES.
No concept of historical construction is in common acceptance;
and that of action is proposed. The constructive historian presents
a synthesis of many actions in the one they constitute, which syn-
thesis, in turn, is at the same time a means of added activity in the
parts. Hence in historical, as contrasted with mechanical causation,
the parts explain the whole only by presupposing it, that is, as parts
of it. For history seeks appreciation, not control. To recognize
this concept is to see in the teaching of history primarily the pres-
entation of those greater agencies in which each man has a part,
as nature, the nation, civilization, or humanity; and to extend the
scope of historical construction, so that man's place in other than
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 55
merely social movements can be recognized; while such lines of
development as the economic, the social, the political, which at
present lack definition, will be defined in terms of their direction,
and will be compared, not as now in terms of causation, but through
evaluation.
Methods of Studying the History of Philosophy (by title) : J. MAC-
BRIDE STERRETT.
Definition and function of philosophy in contrast with, and
fulfillment of, that of science. Relation of the history of philosophy
to philosophy. Organic view the work of the same mind through
the ages on the problem of the constitutive principle of all experience.
The value of the study depends upon the method employed, as well
as upon one's conception of the nature and function of philosophy.
Two opposing dicta (1) Each system refutes the preceding one
so that there is no result. (2) No system of philosophy has ever
been refuted. The organic view holds the latter doctrine. One
system annuls another only by fulfilling it and reducing it to an
organic factor of a more concrete view. Methods': (1) The "bio-
graphical method The personality of the thinker is of no philo-
sophical interest. (2) The merely historical or learned method
Plato taught this, Aristotle taught that. (3) The merely sceptical
method. (4) The eclectic method A thesaurus of doctrines. (5)
The tendenz method Lewes rather than Hegel for illustration. (6)
The modern historical method Put yourself in the environment
with Plato. (7) The critical method the dialectic of development.
(8) The philosophical method Hegel as type in contrast with Lewes.
The living organic view vs. the mortuary one a sequence of funerals
of systems with cosmic suicide of thought at its close.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE color-equations worked out in my Experimental Psychology were
made with the Wundt papers supplied by E. Zimmermann. The series
consisted of twelve colors, besides black and white. I chose these coated
papers, in preference to the Hering tissue papers, because I had found
in practice that they were much more durable.
I had no reason, at the time, to suppose that this set of papers would
be changed. A consignment received from Zimmermann last spring
consisted, however, partly of the original coated papers and partly of
Hering tissue papers. A mixed series of this sort is, of course, very un-
satisfactory for laboratory work. Herr Zimmermann has given me no
explanation of the change. Since it is possible that similar mixed series
may be sent to other psychologists, it seems worth while to say that my
56 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
equations hold, not for the new, but only for the original Zimmermann
papers.
I have recently seen samples of a new set of coated papers, which
Rothe is selling in place of the Hering tissue papers. There are twelve
colors, with a black and a baryta white, and they appear to form a very
even set. Whether the Hering velvet black can still be obtained I do
not know; it is a black that one would be sorry to lose, although it fades
so quickly that one can hardly employ it in ordinary laboratory practice.
I have advised the C. H. Stoelting Company of Chicago (successor to
the Chicago Laboratory Supply and Scale Company) to import these new
Hering papers. Samples can be obtained now, and the papers will prob-
ably be on sale in a few weeks.
E. B. TlTCHENER.
COENELL UNIVEBSITY.
THE Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology held its first
annual meeting on December 27-29, 1904. A session of the Society was
held at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., on December 27 with
the following program : ' The Poggendorff Illusion,' W. M. STEELE ;
'Influence of Secondary Stimuli in certain Complex Perceptions,' HAY-
WOOD J. PEARCE ; ' Some Oddities of Sensory Discrimination and Mem-
ory,' G. M. STRATTON ; * The Meaning of Analysis in Psychology,' EDWARD
A. PACE ; ' The Introspective Method,' J. W. BAIRD ; * A Comparative Study
of Religious Systems,' D. B. PURINTON ; ' Philosophy as Developed accord-
ing to the Tendencies of the American Mind,' GEORGE L. RAYMOND;
Address by the President, J. MARK BALDWIN. The session then adjourned
to Philadelphia, where it held a joint meeting with the American Philo-
sophical Association in commemoration of the centenary of the death
of Immanuel Kant.
As already announced in this JOURNAL, the Fifth International Con-
gress of Psychology will meet at Rome, April 26-30, 1905. Professor
Luigi Luciani, as honorary president, Professor Giuseppe Sergi, as presi-
dent, Professor Augusto Tamburini, as general secretary, Professor Sante
De Sanctis, as vice-secretary general, Dr. G. C. Ferrari, as assistant secre-
tary, and Dr. Giovanni Luccio, as treasurer, constitute the executive com-
mittee of the congress. The sectional presidents are as follows: experi-
mental psychology, Professor G. Fano ; introspective psychology, Professor
R. Ardigo ; pathological psychology, Professor E. Morselli ; criminal, peda-
gogical and social psychology, Professor C. Lombroso. American psy-
chologists are represented on the International Committee by Professors
Baldwin, Hall, James, Ladd, Miinsterberg and Titchener. For informa-
tion relative to the organization and work of the congress, Professor Sante
De Sanctis should be addressed at Institute fisiologico, 92 Via Depretis,
Rome. Members of the International Committee may also be addressed
and are authorized to receive applications for membership in the congress.
AT the recent Philadelphia meeting of the American Society of Nat-
uralists, Professor William James, of Harvard University, was elected
president.
VOL. IJ. No. 3. FEBKUABY 2, 1905
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
r I THE thirteenth annual meeting of the American Psychological
-*- Association was held at the University of Pennsylvania, Phila-
delphia, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, December 28, 29
and 30, 1904, in affiliation with the American Association for the
Advancement of Science and the American Society of Naturalists.
President "William James was in the chair at the various sessions.
On the morning of Thursday, the 29th, the association met in joint
session with the American Philosophical Association; and in the
evening of that day the two societies held a smoker at the Colonnade
Hotel. The meeting adjourned on Friday afternoon after a vote
of thanks for the courtesy and hospitality shown by the representa-
tives of the University of Pennsylvania, At the regular business
meeting held on December 29, the following was transacted. Election
of officers for 1905 : President, Professor Mary Whiton Calkins, Wel-
lesley College ; Secretary and Treasurer, Mr. William Harper Davis,
Lehigh University ; Members of the Council to serve for three years,
Professor Lightner Witmer, University of Pennsylvania, and Pro-
fessor George M. Stratton, Johns Hopkins University. The follow-
ing new members were elected: Dr. J. W. Baird, Johns Hopkins
University; Professor I. Madison Bentley, Cornell University; Mr.
Frank G. Bruner, Columbia University; Mr. C. T. Burnett, Bowdoin
College ; Mr. G. Cutler Fracker, Columbia University ; Mr. V. A. C.
Henmon, Columbia University; Dr. Edwin B. Holt, Harvard Uni-
versity ; Professor Herbert G. Lord, Columbia University ; Professor
David R. Major, Ohio State University; Dr. W. P. Montague, Co-
lumbia University; Professor George R. Montgomery, Carleton
College ; Dr. Kathleen Carter Moore, 206 North 33d Street, Phila-
delphia; Professor Colin A. Scott, Boston Normal School; Mr.
Luther A. Weigle, Yale University; Dr. William Morton Wheeler,
American Museum of Natural History, New York City; Professor
57
58 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
F. J. E. "Woodbridge, Columbia University; Dr. Robert M. Yerkes,
Harvard University.
Upon recommendation of the Council, Article IV. of the Constitu-
tion was amended to read as follows: Annual Subscription The
annual subscription shall be one dollar in advance.
Upon recommendation of the Council it was voted that two
dollars of the annual subscription of each member for the year 1905
be remitted.
The Council reported an invitation from Harvard University
to hold the next annual meeting in Cambridge to signalize the open-
ing of Emerson Hall. Upon recommendation of the Council it was
voted that this invitation be accepted, power being given to the
Council to arrange otherwise in case circumstances might arise to
make a change of plan desirable.
The report of the Committee on Bibliography which was pre-
sented at the annual meeting in St. Louis, in December, 1903, and
laid upon the table, was taken up, discussed and referred back to
the committee for a further report at the annual meeting of 1905.
A vote of thanks to the retiring Secretary was moved and
adopted.
REPORT OF THE TREASURER FOR 1904.
Dr.
To balance at last meeting $2,013.02
Dues of members 423.
$2,436.02
Cr.
By expenditures for
Printing $ 25.30
Postage 20.50
Stationery 3.70
Clerical Assistance 35.
Telegram .25
Exchange 1.20
85.95
$2,350.07
Accumulated interest on deposits, approximate 320.
$2,670.07
LIVINGSTON FARRAND,
Secretary and Treasurer.
ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS
The Experience of Activity. President's Address: WILLIAM JAMES.
As contrasted with inactivity, we have activity whenever we ex-
perience anything to happen. The word is here synonymous with
process or event. Where a process has a direction and tendency,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 59
overcomes resistances, etc., we have activity in the completest sense.
The notions of agent, effort, passivity, etc., arise in such experiences.
The nature of activity is wholly given in the experience of it, just
as every other elementary nature is similarly given. An activity-
series is denned by its whence and whither. But activity-situation
is a segment in a longer experience chain; and the more previous
activity that gave the push, and the remoter goal that names the
whither, are often substituted, as denning a more real activity for
the activity at first supposed. Our conscious activity-experiences
are moreover proved to depend on neural activities of which we are
unconscious; and these, since their failure will arrest the others,
are in turn considered more real. Thus our immediate feeling of
an activity going on may be deceptive as to whose and what the
activity really is, and we have to define and locate it elsewhere than
where it first appeared. But in its new situation, it preserves the
old nature, for the word activity can have no other meaning than
what experience gives. We place all sorts of other things (as
motions, sizes, colors, etc.) wrongly, but our need of translocating
them does not expel their natures from the real world ; and similarly
an activity, to whatever more real source imputed, must either re-
main in the world as the same kind of thing we were originally
talking about, or else be talked about under some other name. The
fact that activity-experiences of our own may involve or be involved
in more real activities, has led some writers to draw a sharp opposi-
tion between activity as humanly felt, and activity as an objective
fact. They have different natures altogether, we are told, felt activity
being an inert resultant and illusion, real activity being an efficacious
force. But empiricism should reject this search for a trans-
empirical ' activity-in-itself . ' Who so feels himself sustaining a
tendency against a resistance knows the what of activity through
and through, and from within. There are other whats in the world,
but of other 'activity' we have no right to speak. That activity,
moreover, when once rightly located, possesses all the efficaciousness
that can anywhere positively be supposed. A tendency successfully
sustained against resistance is the original of what we mean by
efficacy. Other idea of efficacy than that, we have none. To seek
deeper than all experiences for what makes experience really so is
thus a fallacy. The problems of activity are practical, not meta-
physical. Which activities, and whose, are the more real activities
in the actual world? these are the important questions, leading, on
the one hand, to a forecast of remoter outcomes, and on the other,
to a more exact study of the relations of our naif human experi-
ences of activity to the short-span activities, whether neural or
conscious, for which they seem to be substitutes.
60 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Unperceivable States of Consciousness: A. H. PIERCE.
Tiie doctrine of unperceivable sensations and sensation-differ-
ences has drawn its vitality for the most part from an argument
which makes use of the axiom, if two things are equal to a third
thing, they are equal to each other. Stumpf and Stout may be
taken as representative advocates of this argument. In experi-
menting with slightly differing sensations, it frequently happens
that two qualities or two intensities seem equal to a third whose
stimulus lies midway between those of the other two, while the two
sensations themselves are clearly distinguishable. This could not
happen, the argument claims, unless the three sensations were ac-
tually different, for otherwise the above axiom of equality would be
violated. Against this argument it may be urged that whenever
the equality-axiom is employed outside of mathematics, its correct
statement should be, two things equal to a third under certain con-
ditions are equal to each other provided that the same conditions
still prevail. It is this continuance of underlying conditions that
we are unable to guarantee when the comparison of sensations is
in question. Indeed it seems not unlikely that the cerebral excita-
tions caused by two closely similar stimuli exert upon each other
a modifying influence, which is wanting when the difference between
the stimuli is increased. Though lacking positive knowledge in the
matter, should we not hesitate to base an argument upon the
equality-axiom? For it is quite possible that the two sensations
are compared with a third, under conditions that do not hold good
when the two are compared with each other.
A Field for the Study of Temperament: DICKINSON S. MILLER.
The temperament of authors as traced, not through biographical
gossip, but in their writings, proves a fruitful field for study. This
is illustrated by the case of two contrasted types of temperament,
the classic and the romantic. Five different bases of distinction
and consequent definitions have been proposed by literary critics.
If we combine these, we see the two types well marked and com-
plete, and looking closer, the psychological basis of the difference.
The romantic temperament is marked by an excitable energy that
enjoys its excitement; the classic by evenly inhibited energies.
Another illustration is found in two curiously contrasted individ-
uals, both of the romantic type, who have evinced an antipathy for
each other: Carlyle and Mr. Swinburne. Carlyle's imaginations are
characterized by a passion for sensation of the kinesthetic order that
accompanies the overcoming of resistance ; Mr. Swinburne 's by a
passion for sensation of a diffused dermal and organic type, such as
accompanies exultant movement through unresisting or but slightly
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 61
resisting media. This divergence goes far to explain the difference
of their attitude toward the concrete and the abstract, toward pleas-
ure, and toward liberty.
Examinations, Grades and Credits: J. McKEEN CATTELL.
This paper is published in full in the February number of the
Popular Science Monthly.
Perception of Children: WILL S. MONROE.
Tests of Growth of Mental Efficiency in Children (by title) : E. A.
KIRKPATRICK.
The six hundred children of the Model and Practice schools are
tested every year. The report was upon a perception-motor test
of making one hundred marks in fifty squares in which the figures
1, 2 and 3 indicated the number to be made in each square. Very
backward children are quickly discovered by the test in the lower
grades and there is some reason to believe that the test is valuable
as a means of measuring the mental efficiency of younger children
at least. Improvement is shown by years and by grades, especially
in the lower grades. The effects of the test seem to carry over long
intervals, as most of the younger children at least are better in the
second and third test given after six months or a year than children
of corresponding ages who are taking their first test. Improvement
with special practice is very marked, as was shown by a series of
experiments on normal students, a girl of seven and a boy of five,
the gain after ten trials being 18 per cent., 20 per cent, and 25 per
cent., respectively. By practicing four times a day, for a week, the
time of the little girl of seven was reduced from 64 to 43 seconds
(41 is the average for girls of 14). Two weeks more brought it
down to 35, and two weeks more to 30. The daily record was more
variable than for adults, indicating that the elements of desire, and
the power of self-direction, are important and variable factors in
experiments upon children. It also appears that, in the case of
children at least, errors are more likely to vary inversely than
directly with increase in speed. Further tests will be made to de-
termine the relation of this test, and improvement with practice in
it, to other tests and to general mental efficiency.
Mental and Moral Effects Following the Removal of Adenoids:
EDWARD A. HUNTINGTON.
Three cases were presented which had been prepared in con-
nection Avith his Psychological Clinic conducted by Professor Witmer
at the University of Pennsylvania. These cases were offered as a
contribution to the clinical psychology of mental and moral retarda-
62 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tion and deficiency. In all the cases, there was a history of mental
and moral retardation, and in two cases this was associated with
marked physical degeneracy. Naso-pharyngeal adenoids and hyper-
trophied tonsils were present in each case. The surgical removal of
growths and hypertrophic tissues, followed by appropriate school
training, resulted in mental and moral improvement. The most
striking case was a boy whose mental status was that of a middle-
grade imbecile, upon entering Special School No. 3, of which Mr.
Huntington is principal. His pedagogical history showed that for
three years in which he had been a pupil in the first grade of an
elementary school, four different teachers had attempted his in-
struction and discipline, and each had failed in turn. He was
finally expelled and sent to the Special School. Here he was ac-
corded medical treatment, and adequate school training. One year
after the removal of the growth, the child was promoted into the
work of the second year, and it now seems safe to predict that his
future progress will be steady and reasonably rapid.
Emotion and Motor-Sensations in Art: COLIN A. SCOTT.
The fact that the space of consciousness is limited results in a
part only of any whole reaction coming to consciousness at any one
time. Every reaction is primarily adaptive, but situations occur
in which the stimulus arising directly from the reaction is not
sufficient to fill the span of consciousness and maintain the scene
of a full and abounding life. Lack of interest, pain or ennui results.
At this point, however, play or art may save the situation and fill
the remainder of the space of consciousness with either perceptional
or ideational elements, which do not increase or aid in the adaptive
reaction. These form the esthetic or play component. The esthetic
reaction is thus never pure, but is always the by-product of some
actual adaptive reaction reduced to a minimum. The exploitation
of a figure by the movement of the eyes in painting is a part of the
adaptive component, and in itself not esthetic. The physical move-
ments in dancing are the reduced minimum of the adaptive move-
ments of walking or running. The sensations of sitting in one's
seat and looking at the stage in a theatre represent the adaptive
In all such cases, the remainder of the span of consciousness is
filled with what is distinctly felt as not aiding or hindering any
adaptive reaction. The picture must have no grapes for the birds
to pick. Although the drama may stimulate feelings of fear, these
must not lead the audience to save themselves by flight. The adap-
tive component in each- case thus acts as an inhibitive agent. This
inhibition, however, is confined to action on the environment. Ac-
tion on one's own body and ideas representing the body are fully
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 63
exploited in the esthetic reaction. In this direction, motor elements
are stimulated and not inhibited. Since the elements of the esthetic
reaction are motor states felt to be internal, a reverberation of part
evolutionary instincts comes to be an important and characteristic
feature. The breadth of these leads to extension in the form of
esthetic logic, representing the trend of the emotion, which is ulti-
mately governed by climax or success.
Knee-jerks without Stimulation of the Patellar Tendon: EDWIN
B. TWITMYER.
In normal individuals in whom the knee-jerk is readily obtain-
able, a movement of the opposite limb can usually be observed when
only one tendon is tapped. This phenomenon can be satisfactorily
explained only as a reflex action. The possibility of eliciting this
response when the opposite tendon is struck raised the question
whether or not knee-jerks could be elicited without the usiial tap
on either tendon, i. e. } by the activity of some other stimulus. The
results of an extended series of experiments upon six subjects were
reported. Knee-jerks without taps on the tendons were obtained
from all the subjects after a large number of preliminary experi-
ments had been performed, in which a bell was struck 150 a before
the blow fell on the tendons. These responses were not the result
of voluntary effort on the part of the subject. Attempts to inhibit
these kicks were wholly unsuccessful. The movement displayed
the characteristic jerky or explosive appearance of the true knee-
jerk. The relation between the extent of the kicks of the right and
left legs corresponds with the results obtained when the tendons
were struck. The relations between the extent of the initial kick
out of the legs and the first secondary swing remain constant for
each subject, whether the movement follows the blows on the tendons
or whether it follows the sound of the bell alone. Preliminary ex-
periments with both the tap of the bell and the blow on the tendons
were necessary before kicks could be obtained; with the bell alone,
the number varied from 150 to 230 trials. With an increase in the
number of experiments performed, the regularity of response with
the bell alone was greatly increased. The movement in question
can be explained only in terms of reflex action. The afferent ex-
citation must reach the cord at the level of the medulla, and then
passes down to the second and third lumbar segment, in which the
cell bodies of the afferent conduction paths are located. The re-
peated association of the functioning of the motor cells of the lumbar
segment of the cord upon which the kick immediately depends, with
the excitation of centers in the nuclei of the medulla connected with
the auditory conduction path, has resulted in the development of
64 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
an unusual reflex arc. The results of the experiment furnish addi-
tional grounds for accepting the view of Erb and his followers as
to the nature of the patellar tendon phenomena. No difference
whatever is apparent in the character and extent of the movements
with and without the blows on the tendons. The two movements
differ only in the origin of the excitation and the spinal centers
involved.
The Analysis of Reaction Movements: CHARLES H. JUDD.
This paper reported a qualitative, rather than quantitative study
of reactions. By means of a suitable apparatus graphic records
were secured of all phases of reaction movements. It was found
that no reactor lifts his finger from the key in a simple movement.
Sometimes the reaction proper comes at the end of a gradual upward
or downward movement. Sometimes sudden movements or rhyth-
mical series of movements precede the reaction movement. Some-
times, as Mr. G. W. Smith has already shown, the reactor makes a
sudden downward movement before raising the finger. Many of
these preliminary phases of reaction can be related to conscious
processes, not merely, or chiefly, because they give rise to muscle
sensations, but because they express the motor organization in
the central nervous system which furnishes the physiological basis
for the processes of attention and rising expectation. These proc-
esses of attention and expectation are not forms or phases of con-
sciousness depending upon any sensation factors. Nor do they
depend on revived content factors. They belong to the conative
side of mental life, and are easily understood when it is shown, as
in the results reported in this investigation, that there is a fact of
nervous expressive activity paralleling each of the manifold varia-
tions of attention and expectation arising in reactions.
Some Experiments on Lifted Weights Looking Toward a Restate-
ment of the Psycho-Physical Problem: LIGHTNER WITMER.
Standard weight 100 grams, comparison weights 100, 102, 104,
106 and 108 grams. Time of stimulation 1 second, 2 seconds in-
terval between the periods of stimulation, no greater interval be-
tween two pairs of weights lifted than between the lift of each
weight of a pair. Thus there was no chronological grouping. It
took six seconds to lift each pair of weights, and to give a judgment
as to whether the second weight was heavier or lighter than the first.
A series, usually of 40 judgments, followed consecutively. The
pairs of weights upon which judgment was given were 100:100,
108 :100, 100 :102, 100 :104, 100 :106, 102 :100, 104 :100, 106 :100. The
subjects were compelled to express a judgment even when the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 65
judgment was a mere guess. Equality judgments were not allowed.
In case the judgment was a mere guess the subject added 'D' meaning
doubt. If his judgment was accompanied by a measurable degree
of confidence he added 'A, B, or C.' The following table sum-
marizes the results.
H or L Confidence. Doubt.
Cases. Cases. Right. Cases. Right.
100:100 65 59 61 4] 71
100:102 67 62.5 66 37.5 70
104 77 66 80 34 75
106 86 69.5 86 30.5 85
Average 77 66 77 34 77
102:100 50 63 58 37 36
104: 56 62 66 38 41
106: 64 67 74 33 43
108: 66 65.5 69 34.5 53
Average 57 64 66 36 40
Each value in the table is the average result of 200 experiments
each upon three different subjects. The table shows opposite each
pair the percentage of the heavier or lighter cases from 600 experi-
ments, also the percentage of cases given with confidence and with
doubt, the percentage of confident cases that were right cases, and
the percentage of doubtful cases that were right cases. Thus with
the weights 102, 104 and 106 in the second position in a pair, 77
per cent, of the cases were right, 66 per cent, of all the cases were
confident judgments, and 34 per cent, were doubtful judgments.
Of the confident judgments 77 per cent, were right, while of the
doubtful judgments the same number, 77 per cent., were right.
With these comparison weights in the first position, but 57 per cent,
of the cases were lighter or right cases. Of these cases 64 per cent,
were confident judgments of which 66 per cent, were right. 36
per cent, were doubtful of which only 40 per cent, were right.
The Order of Tone Sensations: HUGO MUNSTERBERG.
It seems improbable that a final theory will recognize six light
sensations only, but demand ten thousand tone sensations; while to
the nai've consciousness, the manifoldness of the visual and of the
acoustical fields seems more or less comparable. This striking dif-
ference in the theoretical construction is the result of the historical
fact that the visual theory has been developed without any reference
to anatomical observations, while the theory of hearing has been
brought from the beginning under, anatomical categories. If we
take introspection as our starting point we must consider as quali-
tative elements those characteristics of the sound which indicate to
us the differences of the various sonorous objects. If I hear one
66 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sound, I am interested to know merely whether it is sung or played
on a piano, comes from violin or trumpet or bell or whistle. Like a
color, such an element can change in intensity and can mix with
toneless sounds, the noises. But each sound, just like a color, can
change in a distance series where every position has meaning only
with reference to another member of the series. The drawing has two
such dimensions, right-left and up-down; the violin sonata has also
two such dimensions, the time-dimension and the pitch-dimension.
As the painting combines a number of colors, each one distributed
in both dimensions; so the orchestra combines the variety of timbre
elements, each varying in time and pitch. The ten thousand strings
of the basilar membrane which give the change of pitch, correspond
then to the ten thousand or more rods and cones which the light
may successively stimulate in going up and down. The objective
combination of tones in the simple timbre corresponds to the ob-
jective combination of colors in the white light, and the apparent
subjective discrimination of overtones is not a real resolution of the
clang into elements. The relation between the two tones of an octave
or a fifth would then no more be compared with relations between
colors, but with relations between the parts of a circle or an ellipse,
while the harmony of different instruments would correspond to the
harmony of different colors.
Combination Tones: F. M. URBAN.
In a clang composed of two tones, one can observe tones the
pitches of which are in certain simple relations to the vibration
number of the fundamental tones. One tone, which is called sum-
mation tone, corresponds to the sum of the vibrations; besides this
there exists a tone with the pitch of the difference of the vibrations
which forms with the other elements of the clang difference tones of
higher order. Difference and summation tones are called combina-
tional tones; the name of Tartini's or Sorge's tones is less fitting
as these acousticians observed only difference tones of first order,
the summation tones being observed first by Helmholtz. A merely
physical explanation is sufficient for those combinational tones which
can be observed in the air outside the ear. This is always possible
for the summation tones although they are so faint that some ob-
servers have not noticed them but for the difference tones it is only
possible when they are produced in the same enclosed space. Ac-
cording to this criterion we distinguish subjective and objective dif-
ference tones. Helmholtz has adopted the theory that the subjective
difference tones have their origin in the ear and that they must arise
whenever the vibrations are so large that the second power of the
displacement can not be neglected besides the first. The mathe-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 67
matical theory shows further that an elastic body can perform such
a movement only if it has a form unsymmetrical to the direction of
the vibration ; the tympanum is considered to fulfill this requirement.
This theory explains only difference tones of the first order but not
those of higher order. The requirement of the vibration to have a
certain magnitude is only partially justified, as difference tones can
be heard most distinctly when the intensity of the fundamental tones
does not exceed a certain limit, and is certainly not fulfilled for dif-
ference tones of higher order, the intensity of which decreases
rapidly. The anatomical relation to the tympanum does not agree
with the fact that difference tones can be heard after operative de-
struction of the tympanum and the ossicles. The insufficiency of
Helmholtz's explanation is no proof against the resonance hypoth-
esis, but first of all a new theory of hearing would have to consider
the problem of difference tones.
The Sense of Hearing in Frogs: ROBERT M. YERKES.
(1) The green frog seldom gives a locomotor reaction in response
to sounds, and thus far no characteristic auditory reflexes have been
discovered. (2) That the animal hears is clear from the fact that
croaking ceases when an auditory stimulus is suddenly given. (3)
Experiments show that the reflex reaction to other stimuli, tactual
for example, is modified by sounds. When the two stimuli occur
simultaneously the reaction to the tactual stimulus is reinforced by
the auditory; when the auditory stimulus precedes the tactual (this
is possible because the auditory alone never causes a reaction) by
more than three tenths of a second, the tactual reaction is partially
inhibited. (4) The auditory stimulus modifies the tactual reaction
whether the frog be in air or in water, but the influence is lessened
as the animal is more and more deeply submerged. (5) Thus far
experiments indicate that the range of hearing extends from fifty
vibrations per second to at least 10,000. (6) Apparently, hearing
is of less importance in the frog than vision. Sounds may serve as
warnings of danger, but they do not bring about locomotor or flight
reactions as do visual stimuli. (7) The tympanum is much larger
in the male than in the female, and as might be expected there is
some evidence that sounds produce more marked effects on the males
than on the females.
Some Sex Differences: R. S. WOODWORTH and FRANK G. BRUNER.
In connection with the anthropometric work of the Department
of Anthropology at the St. Louis Exposition, men and women of sev-
eral races were subjected to sense, motor and mental tests. In the
motor tests men surpassed women, though the difference in quickness
68 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
and in accuracy of movement was much less than in strength. In
color perception, on the contrary, women surpassed, and this differ-
ence, like that in movement, held good in nearly every race and
group examined. In visual acuity there was no uniform sex differ-
ence, for while white men saw better than white women, in most
other groups the women surpassed. In a 'form test,' which consisted
in fitting variously shaped blocks into corresponding holes, and
which has proved to be more a test of intelligence than of percep-
tion of form, American men and women were about on an equality,
whereas in the more primitive peoples the males were distinctly
superior to the females.
Motor Correlations: R. S. WOODWORTH and H. D. MABSH.
American adults were tested in strength of grip, speed of tapping
and accuracy of hand movement. A high degree of correlation
(Pearson coefficient =0.5-|- to 0.82) obtained between the right
and left hands of a person in the same test; but a low correlation
(0.08 to 0.34) appeared between the different tests of the same hand.
In other words, a person's efficiency with one hand in any motor
function is a fair index of how well he can do with the other hand ;
but a person's efficiency in one motor function is scarcely any index
of his efficiency in others. The use of the single term, ' motor ability
of an individual,' to cover all sorts of motor functions, is therefore
misleading.
Abstracts of the papers read by Margaret Floy Washburn on
'Wundtian Feeling Analysis and the Genetic Significance of Feel-
ing'; Dickinson S. Miller, on 'The Mutual Isolation of Minds';
Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, on 'The Nature of Consciousness';
George Trumbull Ladd, on 'A Suggestive Case of Nerve Anasto-
mosis'; and Hugo Miinsterberg, on 'The System of Values,' have
already appeared in the preceding number of this JOURNAL (Vol. II.,
No. 2, pp. 47-49).
The Time of Perception as a Measure of Difference in Sensations:
VIVIAN A. C. HENMON.
Differences in sensations are equal if they are discriminated with
equal ease. A measure of the time necessary to perceive differences
in sensations is therefore a measure of the differences themselves. In
this way it is possible to discover with what differences for conscious-
ness either relatively or absolutely equal objective differences in
quality or. intensity are correlated. Experiments on qualitative dif-
ferences in color, equal intermediate steps between orange and red,
show that with the equal decrease in differences between two pairs
of stimuli goes a markedly greater increase in the differences in the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 69
time of perception. The curve of increase agrees very well with
that obtained by the usual psycho-physical methods. Experiments
on the time of perceiving differences in lengths of lines, in which
field Weber's law holds within certain limits, show on the applica-
tion of Fechner's formula of difference that the differences in the
times of perception increase inversely as the logarithms of the quo-
tients of the magnitudes of the stimuli. Individual differences in
sensibility and sense deficiencies can be determined by this method.
If, for instance, a person be color-blind it will take him a longer
time to distinguish the reds and greens than the blues and the yel-
lows. To measure this cards were prepared on one set of which
blues and yellows in various shades and tints were mounted, on the
other reds and greens, and the time of distribution taken. The per-
son of normal color-vision takes no longer to distribute the reds and
greens than the blues and yellows, one deficient in color-sense takes
much longer and thus discloses his defect.
Additional Experiments on the Photography of the Eye: G. M.
STRATTON.
The experiments here reported were made with the eye viewing a
great variety of figures, and the eye's action was mechanically re-
corded by photographing the movements of a beam of light reflected
from the cornea. In addition to the fact that our. enjoyment of
linear gracefulness can not be attributed to any ease or grace in the
eye's own motion a result already reported in the Wundt Fest-
schriftthe present experiments indicate: (1) That the Wundt-
Lamansky law of eye-movements is by no means a universally valid
formula. While horizontal movements are frequently along lines
that are approximately straight, yet vertical movements are much
less commonly straight. Diagonal movements frequently approxi-
mate the Wundt-Lamansky description, but straight diagonals are
by no means rare. (2) The linear, illusions of Miiller-Lyer, Zollner
and Poggendorff frequently occur with exactly such eye-movements
as have been supposed to be their cause. But the illusions also occur
in. the absence of such movements, and indeed when the very op-
posite kind of movement is being performed. Therefore any special
form of eye-movement is evidently not a necessary condition of the
rise of these illusions. ( 3 ) In viewing symmetrical figures, the eye 's
movements are usually unsymmetrical, at least when such figures are
most enjoyed. The more symmetrical movements were called out
when the observer was in doubt whether the figure was exactly sym-
metrical. Our enjoyment of symmetry accordingly can not be
explained by the balance or pleasure in the eye movements which
symmetry invites.
70 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Intermittence of Vision: EDWIN B. HOLT.
The periodically spaced bandings observable on the after-image
streak produced by a luminous image travelling on the retina can
not be explained by the theory of retinal undulations advanced by
Professor Augnste Charpentier. Professor Charpentier 's observa-
tion, on which he bases his theory, that these bands become narrower,
and lie nearer together as the image moves more rapidly, is incorrect.
The bands follow precisely the opposite law. Neither are these
bands due, as has often been said, to the same mechanism as the
recurring after-images seen after a momentary exposure of the eye
to a stimulus that is not moving ; for if they were they would neces-
sarily travel after the moving stimulus, keeping at constant dis-
tances behind it. Whereas the bands do not move at all, although
the system of bands, as a whole, moves because the rear band is
always disappearing, while a new band is being deposited on the
front of the system by the moving stimulus. The bands are due to
some intermittence of the visual mechanism, whereby the nervous
process set up by the moving stimulus is periodically inhibited, so
that the stimulus instead of leaving behind it in consciousness a
continuous after-image streak, leaves a discontinuous succession of
after-images each one of which is of approximately its own size and
shape. These several images behave like ordinary after-images : for
an instant after their generation they become larger than the retinal
image of the object should seem to warrant, and then grow gradually
smaller in all dimensions and feebler in intensity, until they fade
away. There is no reason for supposing this intermittence to be a
function of the retina. Like the many other cases of periodic sen-
sory inhibition it is more probably due to some process in the central
nervous centers.
The' Effect of Eccentric Visual Stimulation on Fixation: RAYMOND
DODGE.
Replying to certain criticisms of his method of photographic
registration of the eye movements, Mr. Dodge described the records
of a photographic ophthalmometer. Besides constituting data of
the most accurate sort for determining the shape of the cornea, these
records indicated the importance of certain precautions in the pho-
tographic registration of the eye movements by means of the corneal
reflection. Since at the extreme periphery the cornea is quite irreg-
ular, altogether the most favorable position for the corneal reflection
is the optical axis of the cornea or points symmetrically disposed
about it. A source of error which menaces alike all exact studies of
the eye movements and many apparently unrelated fields of optics
is given in the minute but almost continuous involuntary movements
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 71
of the eyes during so-called fixation. Photographic registration of
these errors of fixation shows that, notwithstanding the most elab-
orate precautions, movements of the head had not been entirely elim-
inated. Besides the actual displacement of the eyes with the head,
the recorded errors showed distinct coordinate compensatory eye
movements, more or less exaggerated by the mechanical interference
with the head movements. Abstracting from the influence of the
head movements there remain marked irregularities in fixation. In
one subject involuntary eye movements of unusual amplitude were
found in the place of a hitherto undiagnosed astigmatism. The best
known effects of eccentric stimulation constitute further disturb-
ances of fixation. Notwithstanding the conviction, based on intro-
spective data, that an eccentric point of interest may be maintained
without occasioning actual eye movement, photographic registration
showed in every case distinct and characteristic eye movements. Even
when not attended to, eccentric stimuli increase the general instability
of fixation whenever they notably diminish the clearness of the fixa-
tion mark. They may on the other hand serve a very different func-
tion. In certain definite relations to the point of fixation they
reduce the amplitude of the involuntary eye movements. For all
three subjects studied a dot was the most unsatisfactory fixation
mark, permitting eye movements of the greatest amplitude with the
conviction of accurate fixation. Equally unanimous was the effect
of eccentric stimuli in the form of radiating lines. A line dim-
inished the amplitude of transverse involuntary eye movement. The
fixation of a line as a whole was less irregular than the attempt to
fixate a definite point on the line. The results unequivocally con-
demn the usual point-like fixation mark, whenever even approximate
fixation is required. They also furnish the clearest evidence that
normal fixation is not a simple mechanical fact but a relatively com-
plex functional process dependent primarily on the clearness of the
visual image.
The Fixation of Points in the Visual Field: CLOYD N. MCALLISTER.
This paper was a report on work done for the purpose of de-
termining the behavior of the eye while fixating points. The ob-
server was required to fixate a simple point for a short time, then
move the eyes to the right through an angle of about 10 degrees,
to another simple point or to a point from which lines were drawn.
Several movements from the simple point to the point on the right
and back to the simple point again were recorded for each observer.
The records were made with an Edison kinetoscope camera, at the
rate of nine exposures per second. During any period of 'fixation'
there was a rapid change of position of the eye over a considerable
72 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
area about the point. The point to be fixated seldom if ever fell
upon the exact fovea centralls. In moving from one point of fixa-
tion to the other, when both points were simple, the distances were
not well taken at first and a corrective movement was required;
such a movement was not required after the second or third ex-
cursion. "When the point on the right was surrounded by lines, the
fixation was changed in character, the estimation of the distance
between the points very uncertain, the direction of the movements
between the points disturbed. When a horizontal line cut by three
perpendicular lines was fixated at the points of intersection the char-
acter of the fixation periods did not differ apparently from the
fixation of a simple point, the distance from one intersection to
another was correctly taken after two or three trials, and the eye
followed the horizontal line very closely in making the movements.
The two eyes do not move with perfect symmetry. During any
period of fixation the small eye movements, which apparently are
muscular tremors, may be in opposite directions, or the lines show-
ing the paths of the movements may be at any angle. The lack of
coordination of the movements of the two eyes is emphasized by one
record which showed that the right eye had moved through an arc
of about 10 degrees to the second fixation point, while the left eye
was still at the first point.
The Fixation Pauses of the Eye in Reading: WALTER F. DEARBORN.
Photographs made With a modification of the Dodge photographic
apparatus of the movement of the eye of different individuals and
of the same individual in different readings of the same page show
considerable variation in the number, duration, and relative position
within the line of fixation pauses, and in the character of the con-
necting movements. The differences between children and adults
were found to be in the general unsteadiness of fixation, and inac-
curacy of movement of the former. In the speed of movement, and
in the number of fixations they did not differ materially from adults.
It appears probable from various irregularities and movements of
the eyes even in the case of adults, that fixation is not always a
matter of a distinct resting or pause even with several millimeters
or letters of the line, but that in successive fixations of the same
object any one of the several retinal points lying close to the fovea
will satisfy equally well the requirements of what is objectively the
same fixation, and that there are also movements of the eyes within
these limits which do not denote changes in objective fixation.
Secondly, there are more or less distinct pauses or breaks in the
movement of the eye which are probably periods of significant
stimulation ; and, finally, a shifting of the position of the eye due to-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 73
various causes shows that our conception of what we mean in gen-
eral by fixation will need to be modified.
Psychology of Esthetics: Experimental Prospecting in the Field
of the Comic: LILLIAN J. MARTIN.
This investigation was undertaken for the purpose of becoming
directly and personally acquainted with some of the problems in-
volved in that which is termed ' the comic, ' and to ascertain by actual
trial the possibility of applying satisfactorily certain well know
psychological methods to the solution of such problems. The
experimental results show: 1, that the comic impression from a
picture decreases in the same experiment from moment to mo-
ment and in successive experiments from day to day, and that the
rapidity with which this occurs depends partly at least upon the
complexity of the details; 2, interspersing new pictures between the
old, forced or spontaneous laughter, drinking coffee, good physical
condition and high spirits, a non-rigid holding of the body and a
longer period between the exposures of a given set of pictures, help
the comic effect; 3, that time differences may exist when two pictures
are successively examined and compared, that is, differences growing
out of the fact that one picture is seen before the other; also time
influences, that is, differences arising from the unequal loss or gain
of fun in the norm and the comparison at the same sitting and suc-
cessive sittings; 4, that space differences which depend on whether
a picture is at a reagent's right or left also exist when two pictures
are compared; 5, that a sad or comic fore-picture affects the comic
impression received from a given picture; 6, that the direction of
the judgments of the degree of funniness and of the tendency to
smile and laugh take a similar course; 7, that the presence of a
smiling or doleful face in a picture increases its funniness; 8, that
increasing the size of a picture and moving it help its funniness; 9,
that the method of gradual variations is peculiarly adapted to
investigating the particular degree of exaggeration which is most
comic; 10, looking at comic and other pictures and listening to
jokes increase both the rapidity of the breathing and of the pulse.
The Synthetic Factor in Tactual Space Perception: THOMAS H.
HAINES.
An investigation in tactual localization by "Weber's second
method is reported. The observers were six with normal vision, and
seven blind. The object of the experiments was to show the func-
tion of the visual image in tactual localization. This is shown by
a comparison of average errors on 24 points on the volar surface
of the forearm for the normals and for the blind, and for the normal
74 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
with natural attention, and the same with a special effort at visual-
ization. It is assumed in common with a goodly number of psy-
chologists that the visual factor will show itself in the better local-
ization (smaller error) on the sides of the arm. This effect is
manifest in only four of the six normal observers, and in some of
these the excess error in the middle is so small as to be attributable
to accidental causes. One of the blind observers gives the same
result. The normal observers with special effort at visualization
also reverse themselves, and give the smallest average error in the
middle. The blind observers with the exception of the two, give
the smallest error on the radial (far) side of the arm. The direc-
tion of error is predominantly peripheral and radial for the blind,
\vhile it varies greatly in the normal, and some of them show dif-
ferent tendencies on different parts of the arm. This coordination
of least error on radial side and dominance of radial errors seems
to indicate, in a preliminary way, the typical reaction of the blind
where the visual image is surely excluded. This is probably due
to the greater tactual functional significance of -the radial side of
the arm. Local signs and inner tactual sensations are thus better
coordinated. The introduction of the visual image evens all parts
up to this. But the importance of the visual image has been over-
estimated. It does not have the influence in better localization which
has been attributed to it. Introspections of both the blind and
seeing observers indicate that the inner tactual sensations of the
touching and the touched member play a much more considerable
part than has been attributed to them. But the question as to what
that part is, an important question not only in tactual space per-
ception but also in individual psychology, is not answered here. The
function of this paper was rather to get the question definitely
raised.
The Plot Interest: WILLARD C. GORE.
Recent discussions of philosophic method, particularly those in-
volving the so-called pragmatic method, have incidentally brought
to light wide differences in standpoint, so temperamental, so in-
dividual, as to arouse a psychological interest. Philosophy in the
making is clearly psychical. It was not the object of this paper
to discuss these individual differences in philosophy, but to raise
the more general and preliminary problem as to what is the psychical
character, the 'mental pattern' of the philosophic interest. For
the purpose of raising and to some extent defining this problem
the following hypothesis was stated: The type of interest known
as philosophic assimilates to that fundamental and familiar type of
interest known as plot interest. Philosophic interest and plot in-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 75
terest are related as species and genus. Within the plot interest two
types of interest are discriminated. (1) Interest in following, or
rather inactively pursuing the course of the plot; interest in a con-
flict, in suspense, in whatever challenges speculation ; in a word, the
esthetic interest. (2) Interest in constructing, in weaving the plot;
in working it out to a consistent whole; in a word, the artistic
interest. These two types are normally alternating and correlative.
The isolation of either gives rise respectively to estheticism and to
formalism. The esthetic and artistic types of interest prefigure the
two limits within which philosophic activity falls; namely, the
speculative and the systematizing limits. The speculative, Platon-
izing interest in philosophy corresponds to the esthetic interest in
plot. The systematizing, organizing Aristotelian interest in philos-
ophy corresponds to the artist's interest in plot. The two interests
in philosophy are normally correlative and alternating, within the
experience of the individual. The isolation of either gives rise re-
spectively to some form of Neo-Platonism or mysticism, on the one
hand, and to some form of scholasticism on the other. The affinity
of the philosophic interest for the plot interest rests upon the in-
herent nature of all thinking to be dramatic, in the sense of being
the reflection, the rehearsal, of situations involving conflict and
readjustment.
Recent Theories of Genius: I. WOODBRIDGE RILEY.
The literature of genius during the last two years presents two
tendencies: Negative against the Lombrosian or pathological school:
positive toward the explanation of genius as a superb synthesis of
normal functioning. There is also a popular attempt to make
genius a manifestation of the unconscious. The results of these
investigations are apparently contradictory. (1) The pathological
school (Lombroso, Nordau, Nisbet) makes genius a neurosis of an
epileptoid nature, and like insanity a phase of a morbid suscepti-
bility ; its opponents say there is here no necessary lack of balance in
the cerebro-spinal system (Stanley Hall, Moebius, Flechsig). (2)
The physiological school conceives a genius as a higher faculty de-
pending upon a given physical endowment (Allara, Reuda), others
say there are certain mysteries of endowment not open to analysis
(Jastrow, Nazzari). (3) The social school considers the great man
the essence, the index, or the initiator of social progress (Seailles,
Joly, Baldwin), against this some hold that the causes of production
of great men lie in a sphere wholly inaccessible to the social philos-
opher (James, Spiller). (4) The subliminal school postulates an
extra, subconscious personality with superior memory, imagination
and inductive powers (Von Hartmann) ; on the contrary others
76 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
assert that such a consciousness is not an inner light, not a peculiar
supernormal activity (Fullerton, Jastrow). But the subliminal
considered as the minimal consciousness offers the best explanation
of the apparent neuropathic or psychopathic characteristics of
genius. Recent experiments in the discrimination of auditory and
visual stimuli just above the threshold of consciousness might ex-
plain, for example, hyperesthesias of genius.
The Three Types of Religious Consciousness: F. C. DOAN.
Recent investigations of religious consciousness have exhibited
two rather different methods of approach to the field at large. The
most popular of these is of course the questionaire method. There
begins to recommend itself, however, another method of approach,
namely, that which proposes to exhibit the motives underlying com-
paratively large religio-social groups. This method insists that the
data supplied by the large sect, church, tribe, race and world move-
ments are the really significant depasits of spiritual purpose. Both
these methods are essentially pragmatic. Reality is held to be
religiously significant only in those spots where it has been mellowed
by the persistent rappings of spiritual impulses. On the basis of
the second of these methods we may say there are three types of
normal religious consciousness: the rational, the emotional, and the
active or pragmatic. The first of these seeks to fill in the gaps of
an otherwise self-contradictory reality with the solid masonry of an
unyielding dialectic. The emotional or mystic temperament floats
over these gaps by sheer force of good feeling. The pragmatic type
avoids the gaps altogether and follows the well-beaten paths of its
practical experience of the ultimate. It experiments with its gods.
In some cases it retains an assortment of gods each a specialist in
his proper field. Sometimes it adopts a surreptitiously deified man
of the tribe; sometimes it accepts a becoming god whose affinity is
moral rather than ontological. The history of religions is really a
record of the almost uninterrupted triumph of the practical over the
speculative and emotional in the religious consciousness of the race.
Moreover, the religious culture of to-day is more intensely practical
than ever before in the history of the race. The paper closed with
(1) a classification of great religious movements according to these
three types and (2) some suggestions as to the probable physiology
of the types.
An Historic Note on Hypnotism: BROTHER CHRYSOSTOM.
A. So far as the present writer knows the word hypnotic occurs
for the first time in English in a curious passage to be found in a
book of the seventeenth century. It is entitled 'A Ternary of
Paradoxes : The Magnetic Cure of "Wounds ; The Nativity of Tartar
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 77
in Wine; The Image of God in Man. Written originally by Joh.
Bapt. Van Helmont, and Translated, Illustrated, and Ampliated
by Walter Charleton, Doctor in Physick, and Physician to the late
King. London. Printed by James Flesher for William Lee,
dwelling in Fleetstreet, at the sign of the Turkshead, 1650.' This
is the second impression. The passage in question occurs in ^f 154
of the tract on the 'Magnetic Cure of Wounds' and reads: "To this
series belongs the subductive virtues of Cathartic or Purgative, the
somniferous faculty of Hypnotick or dormitive medicaments, etc."
I have been unable to find a copy of the Latin original of Van
Helmont, and, therefore, I do not know whether the term was coined
by Dr. Charleton. B. In Harper's 'Metaphysics of the School,' Vol.
III., Pt. I., pp. 350, 351, and footnote, occurs in interesting applica-
tion of Baron von Reichenbach 's theory of the od to the question of
indistancy, with corollaries referring to the 'evil eye,' animal
magnetism, hypnotism, etc. As a relaxation one may then take
up Gautier's 'La Jettatura,' which is capitally written. C. The
relation of Hypnotism to fundamental principles of philosophy and
theology is probably best treated by the Dominican professor
Coconnier in his thoughtful book, ' L 'hypnotisme frano.'
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Balance : The Fundamental Verity. ORLANDO J. SMITH. Boston, Hough-
ton, Mifflin and Company, 1904. Pp. 279.
The author has adopted the plan followed by Descartes in publishing
his Meditations and, having sent advance copies of this work to various
scholars, has incorporated their criticisms in his book, together with
his own final rejoinder. The result is that the appendix, in which these
criticisms are reproduced, although it contains twenty-eight separate
recapitulations of the author's argument by as many reviewers, is never-
theless very interesting reading by reason of the variety of Weltanschau-
ungen thus placed side by side, the contrasted habits of mind displayed
by the critics, and the dialectic stimulus given to the reader.
In the original essay, which makes up about half of the book, the
author seeks to establish the real harmony of science and religion by
showing that they rest upon an identical law. Starting with the general
aspects of nature, he reduces causation, gravitation, evolution, the in-
destructibility of matter, the persistence of force, the eternity of motion
and the uniformity of nature to the one law : to every action there is an
equal and opposite reaction. The highest generalization of science is,
accordingly, ' that Balance rules the world.' Chemical activity, man's
relation to nature, history, economics, ethics and logic are then briefly
reviewed, and this same law is pointed out in each. Passing to religion,
78 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the author finds its essence to consist in three beliefs : that the soul is
accountable for its actions ; that the soul survives the death of the body ;
and that there is a supreme power that rights things. These in turn
can be reduced to the declaration ' that right rules the world.' But since
this belief is included in the generalization already derived from science
that balance rules the world religion, or at least natural religion, and
science are seen to be in perfect harmony.
The three essential beliefs of religion are chosen upon the principle
that the conception of religion must be made up of points in which be-
lievers agree ; but, says the author, one 'philosophical creed maintains,
perhaps unconsciously, at all events in logical effect, that wrong rules the
world. This position, which is that of materialism, is due to the denial
of the second fundamental belief, that the soul survives the death of the
body. Hence the closing chapter of the first essay is devoted to main-
taining the immortality of the soul. Aside, however, from the fact that
without this belief the doctrine of balance itself could not be upheld, the
argument is rested upon the theory that soul is a self -existing, uncreated
and indestructible entity, for which the reader is referred to a previous
volume entitled ' Eternalism.'
The criticism on the ground of a lack of logical precision in the use
of conceptions, especially of the dominant conception ' Balance,' as well
as the commendations for rhetorical skill, which different writers of the
appendix express, is to the mind of the present reviewer pertinent. But
the crucial point of the book is the conception of religion. The author
apparently does not realize that religion is a function of human life,
not a set of doctrines, no matter how simple and widespread. The
essence of religion is worship, communion, obedience. Most assuredly
do these functions involve the belief in certain objective realities of a
transcendent order and in the possibility of certain normal relations to
those realities. Assuredly, too, these beliefs may be made special objects
of discussion. But such a discussion can not successfully separate itself
from the functions of the soul in which those realities are experienced
and in which the actuality of those possibilities is grasped. The harmony
of science and religion must be shown by defining the relation between
the religious and the scientific functions of the soul and not by inserting
the artificial middle term of a ' natural ' religion. One might as well
try to show the mutual dependence of branches and roots and the conse-
quent unity of air and earth by ignoring the living relation of the two
in the tree's life and inserting props between the branches and the roots.
The emphasis upon a sense of accountability as essential to religious
sentiment is a true insight, but this insight is blurred by identifying that
sense with a recognition of the law of cause and effect. In the final para-
graph of the appendix, too, the author is close to a principle that would
bring out the functional harmony of science and religion, when he
demands in religion a lofty courage and sublime faith as the condition of
its life, and points out that similar qualities are the source of the funda-
mental affirmations of science; but the significance of this principle is
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 79
overlooked in the desire to bring all truth under the head of a single
proposition, viz., ' that Balance rules the world.'
EUGENE W. LYMAN.
CONGREGATIONAL COLLEGE OF CANADA, MONTREAL.
Moderne Oeschichtswissenschaft. Fiinf Vortrdge. KARL LAMPRECHT.
Freiburg im Breisgau, H. Heyfelder, 1905. Pp. 130.
Of these five lectures the first was delivered at the St. Louis congress,
the rest at Columbia University the fall of 1904. An English translation
is to appear soon.
The first lecture declares that it is the emphasis on ' social psychology '
that marks historical science to-day; and discusses, also, the relations of
history to other sciences. The second outlines five great epochs of
German history: Symbolism, Typism, Conventionalism, Individualism
and Subjectivism. The third and fourth discuss the general character
of periods of transition from one such epoch to another. The fifth as-
serts the necessity of referring national to universal history; and assigns
art and the activity of the imagination generally as the most appropriate
field of historical investigation.
The law that applies to all transition periods is the goal Professor
Lampricht here seeks. He only approximates it; but, in so doing, ap-
proaches, he says, a result that a psychologist could have foreseen. In-
deed, it seems that when special characteristics are cleared away, the
general law, this hardly won ' result,' would amount to little, if any, more
than the statement that men in masses, as well as separately, attain new
characteristics through receiving new incitations and becoming more
susceptible thereto. Would not the historian feel quite justified in
assuming the truth of this law, even at the beginning of his investiga-
tions? The author seems to regard the magnificent discovery of certain
aspects of the unitary development of German life, which he has else-
where so beautifully presented, as altogether subsidiary to the discovery
therein of a law apparently as trite as this.
It is surprising to find in these lectures, which are largely methodo-
logical, no reference to that view of historical science as a science of
individuals, which Professors Rickert and Bernheim, among many others,
have so clearly established ; especially when we recall that ' social psy-
chology,' Professor Lamprecht's special field, implies a recognition of
that individuality in societies as a whole for which those logicians have
contended. He speaks of the soul, the 'psyche' of the nation con-
tinually; he describes the nation as an organism; and in his large work
these terms are justified, in large measure, by the concrete individuality
of these things as there described. But here the author retains these
terms without that justification. The 'psyche' here is nothing but
certain elementary characteristics supposed to pertain to the majority
of the nation at a given time. Hence the laws governing this ' soul '
of the nation very naturally conform to those of the psychology of indi-
viduals. They are those laws ; and the term ' social ' psychology here
refers to the social aspect of individual minds, not to the ' psyche ' of the
nation.
80 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Wherever Professor Lamprecht verges on a logical or an ontological
question a deep-seated confusion seems to come to light, and to mar the
usual charm and force of his sentences. In his war against the ' great-
man ' theory of history, e. g. (p. 118), he maintains that the genius is
not qualitatively distinct from other men; this is his fundamental argu-
ment. Yet he proceeds beautifully to describe the qualitative distinctions
of two types of genius, and their effects. Again, the dominating force
in the soul of a nation, we are told, is an illusion; it does not exist (p.
95). Yet throughout these lectures this dominating force, this ' Domi-
nante,' is treated as a definite thing that explains events. Such occupa-
tion of two opposed positions is frequent.
These lectures are exceedingly attractive and make one long to learn
more of the author's ' Deutsche Geschichte,' the volumes of which are
slowly appearing. But I can not think they are a safe guide in, or even
a suggestive contribution to, the discussion of the many logical prob-
lems presented by the modern science of history.
PERCY HUGHES.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
Scepticism. A. K. ROGERS. The Philosophical Review, November, 1904.
Pp. 627-641.
Does scepticism by appeal to the fact of error the fact that the best-
grounded beliefs may eventually turn out false make a final and satis-
factory philosophy impossible?
The fact of doubt presupposes the validity of thought, i. e., there are
valid grounds for the doubt. A completely consistent scepticism is there-
fore impossible if thinking is to continue. Scepticism ' is a personal
confession that in the face of a certain problem or group of problems,
I feel myself baffled and ready to quit.' Another man may feel the
opposite about the same problems. Huxley was a sceptic in philosophy
and religion (things of secondary interest to him), but not in science,
which was his chosen field of work. Since all beliefs are liable to be
changed and outgrown, scepticism doubts the validity of any belief and
asks for the criterion of a valid belief, and if any one is better than any
other.
Now, ' logical certainty belongs only to the abstract statement of the
conditions of belief and not to any single concrete belief about the actual
nature of things.' Beliefs, as to both their content and their logical
consistency, go back finally to one's personal assurance and satisfaction.
We believe things because our practical nature demands it ; and logical
consistency is only a peculiar intellectual satisfaction which has final
force to the one believing. Yet mere personal assurance is no valid
ground of belief. Back of this there must be the logically consistent
view of all the data concerned. This intellectually honest and self -con-
sistent view based upon all the known facts constitutes the valid ground
of belief. Such a belief is true.
Further experience may reveal new data which will necessitate a
change in the belief. This new belief will be true with reference to all
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 81
the facts both old and new; but the truth of the old belief is not de-
stroyed, but taken up into the new.
" If an opinion seems consistent to any man, it is actually consistent
on the basis merely of the data which enter consciously into the forming
of that opinion ; and it justly claims the universality of any judgment.
Any man whatsoever, seeing no more and no different facts, would arrive
at the same conclusion. Moreover, so far as it goes, the basis on which
the judgment is formed represents reality. Nothing whatever that is
ever taken for a fact is wholly unreal. The interpretation may be
wrong. But some modicum of reality does underlie it, which a complete
knowledge would have to take into account. Every conviction of truth,
then, rests upon reality, and would be justified were there no other facts
which it leaves out of account."
While scepticism as a final attitude in philosophy is impossible, yet
each generation, and in a sense each individual, must work out for itself
the solution of the philosophical problem.
H. G. CAMPBELL.
MORNINGSIDE COLLEGE.
Ethical Subjectivism. T. DE LAGUNA. Philosophical Review, November,
1904, pp. 642-659.
The doctrine that conduct which the individual believes to be right is
right has generally been objected to on three accounts : because it fails to
satisfy the intellectual need of a standard for moral values, because it
fails to satisfy the practical need of social conservatism, and because it
seems to exclude knowledge or wisdom from the moral ideal. In respect
to the last objection, however, it seems that as a matter of fact we do not
hold the moral agent responsible for the unexpected consequences of his
acts, unless the limitations of his knowledge can be traced to an unwilling-
ness to acquire knowledge and use it, and we have gradually purged the
moral ideal of all that is external to the volitional disposition of the agent,
as, for instance, of strength, beauty, and in casu, knowledge.
The subjectivist view is sometimes misunderstood. It does not mean
that subsequent enlightenment may not determine the individual to act
differently under similar circumstances, though the former act be recog-
nized as eternally right; it does not mean that the good man is not in
duty bound to seek increase of knowledge; and it does not mean that the
good-will is simply the will to be good, without having any particular
object characteristic of it.
Ethical subjectivism emphasizes the prospective judgment, it makes
the judgment upon the contemplated act the archetype of all moral judg-
ment. Without self -judgment there can have been no true morality, for
the judgment upon another that does not apply (hypothetically) to the
self, is a mere expression of gratification or anger. Moral worth is meas-
ured by the satisfaction of a self-conscious person as a harmonious totality.
And, although in general moral conduct is accompanied by a conscious-
ness of its moral value, even impulsive acts may be an indirect index of
a good or bad will, and hence receive moral censure or blame. In fact,
82 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
conduct which is accompanied by the belief in its rectitude may, never-
theless, be misdirected by some previous fault, and may, therefore, quite
in the spirit of ethical subjectivism, be censured. But, since human life
must be lived forward, this good is nevertheless the highest ideal toward
which a man can strive.
If it is objected that ethical subjectivism leads to a chaos of individual
caprices it may be urged that moral values, like other values, tend within
each social group to uniformity, that his social relations force upon the
individual a criticism of his conduct from other view-points than his own,
and, finally, that moral ideals are a social inheritance, imitatively ac-
cepted by the individual, in acting upon which their immaturities tend to
be corrected by experienced failures of adjustment. The willingness to
be good is not divorced from practical wisdom, but is the condition for its
acquirement, in that action upon moral ideals already possessed is the
way to a deeper appreciation of the moral requirements of the social
situation.
DAVID F. SWENSON.
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
EEVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. October, 1904. Le parallelisme psy-
chophysique et ses consequences (ler article) (pp. 329-352) : A. GODFER-
NEAUX. - Parallelism leads to the doctrines of automatism and of the
epiphenomenal nature of consciousness. Interaction and freedom imply
nothing transcending experience; they can be wholly defined in psycho-
physiological terms. De la nature du sentiment amoureux (pp. 353-378) :
S. JANKELEVITCH. - We must distinguish the value of an emotion from its
origin. Because true romantic love is as rare as genius does not prove it
abnormal. The element of individual choice, which gives it its worth, is
genetically inexplicable ; so, too, is mystic and platonic love. Psychologic
des Examens (pp. 379-399): L. DUGAS. -All the classic objections to ex-
aminations can be removed by simplification and reduction of ex-
aminations and careful consideration of the questions. Analyses et
Comptes Rendus: Sturt, Personal Idealism: F. RAUH. F. Le Dantec,
Les Lois Naturelles: A. LALANDE. P. Regnaud, L'Origine des Idees
eclairee par la Science du Langage : A. L. F. Thilly, The Process of In-
ductive Inference: A. L. A. Rava, La Classificazione delle Scienze e le
Disciplini Sociali: E. GOBLOT. G. St. Paul, Le Langage interieur et les
Paraphasies: J. R. DE FUBSAC. E. Faguet, En lisant Nietzsche: P. LAS-
SERE. V. de Swarte, Descartes, Directeur spirituel: L. DUGAS. C. Wad-
dington, La Philosophic ancienne et la Critique historique: A. P. A.
Lang, M. de Biran und die neure Philosophic: A. P. Buchenau und
Cassirer, Leibnitz Hauptsahriften zur Grundlegung der Philosophic : A. P.
F. J. E. Woodbridge, The Philosophy of Hobbes: A. P. E. Caird, The
Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers: CH. HUIT. Revue des
periodiques etrangers. Livres deposes.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 83
KEVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. November, 1904. Pathologic de la
Croyance (pp. 412-458) : C. Bos. - Examining the stages of belief from
hallucination to doubt we find that belief is an affair of will, of action.
The real depends on what my will is interested in acting upon. What is
a pathological state in one environment may be normal in another.
L'Evolution du Reve pendant le Reveil (pp. 459-481) : FOUCAULT. - The
reconstruction of a dream in waking memory is due to an unconscious
logic, putting the incoherent dream-episodes into the form of a continuous
and logical temporal development. Le Parallelisme psychophysique et
ses consequences (fin) (pp. 482-504) : A. GODFERNAUX. - The more is known
about the action of mind, the more material must be the terms in which
we describe it. Thus consciousness can be no agent, that is, it becomes
purely epiphenomenal. Le IP Congres International de Philosophic (pp.
505-519) : E. BLUM. - A resume of the papers and discussions of the Con-
gress at Geneva, September 4-8, 1904. Analyses et Comptes Rendus: P.
D. C. de la Saussaye, Manuel d'Histore des Religions : A. KEY. L'Abbe L.
Laberthonniere, Le Realisme chretien et I'ldealisme grec: L. ARREAT. W.
R. Paterson, L'eternel Conftit: L. ARREAT. Kant, Die Religion inner-
halb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft: J. SECOND. Th. Ruyssen, Essai
sur I' Evolution psychologique du Jugement: TH. RIBOT. R. de Gourmont,
Physique de I' Amour: G. DANVILLE. Dr. Roux, L'Instinct d' Amour: H.
D. Camus et Pagniez, Isolement et Psychotherapie : CH. BLONDEL. G.
Palante, Combat pour I'Individu: J. DE GAULTIER. G. de Greef, La Soci-
ologie economique : A. LANDRY. Revue des periodiques etrangers. Limes
deposes.
Bauch, Bruno. Luther und Kant. Berlin : Reuther & Reichard. 1904.
8vo. 4 m.
Brunetiere, P. Sur les chemins de la croyance. Premiere etape. L'utili-
sation du Positivisme. Paris: Perrin et Cie. 1905. 312 pp. 3.50 fr.
Gaultier, J. de. Nietzsche et la reforme philosophe. 3.50 fr.
Goldscheid, R. Grundlinien zu einer Kritik der Willensfreiheit. Wien :
Braunmiiller. 1904. 8vo. 4 kr.
Gottschalk, H. Weltwesen und Wahrheitswille. Stuttgart: Strecker &
Schroeder. 1904. 8vo. 8 m.
Grotenfelt, A. Geschichtliche Wertmassstdbe in der Geschichtsphilos-
ophie. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. 1904. 8vo.
Hellpach, W. Grundlinien einer Psychologic d. Hysterie. Leipzig:
Engelmann. 1904. 502 pp. 8vo. 9 m.
Herrmann, W. Ethik. 3 Aufl. Tiibingen: Mohr. 1904. 8vo. 3.60 m.
Huber, A. Die Hemnisse der Willensfreiheit. Munster : v. W. Schoningh.
1904. 8vo. 4 m.
Jeans, J. H. The Dynamical Theory of Gases. Cambridge Univ. Press.
1904. 15s.
Joel, K. Nietzsche und die Romantik. Jena : Diederichs. 1904. 7 m.
84 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Kierkegaard (Soren) und sein Verhdltniss zu ' ihr.' Verdeutscht von R.
Meyer. Stuttgart: Juncker. 1904. 8vo. 3 m.
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1904. 10 s.
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NOTES AND NEWS
PRESIDENT ELIOT, of Harvard University, has been elected a corre-
sponding member of the Academy of Moral and Poltical Sciences of the
Institute of France.
IT is said that Harvard University and the University of Berlin have
practically arranged a method by which a temporary exchange of pro-
fessors will occur.
VOL. II. No. 4. FEBRUARY 16, 1905
i
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
IN the program of the philosophical department of Harvard Uni-
versity, 1904-1905, it is announced that one of the philosophical
professors will develop a theory of pluralism on the basis of
experience, and that in the next term his colleague will develop a
speculative theory of the absolute; and it is remarked that 'the stu-
dent will have the opportunity of comparing two different views
regarding fundamental problems: radical empiricism and abso-
lutism. '
It is not very often that philosophical differences are announced
so openly and in so true a spirit of free discussion. As I had myself
discussed the fundamental problems in a little book, 'Philosophical
Problems' (Danish edition, 1902; German edition, 1903), and as I,
during my visit to Harvard in October, 1904, was very much inter-
ested in the discussion which was about to take place in American
philosophy, Professor William James proposed that I should give a
lecture for his students, in which I should describe my position on
this question. The present paper gives the essential content of my
lecture, but I have also found a place here for some parts of a paper
which I read for the Philosophical Club at Wellesley College.
I
The importance of pluralism, i. e., of the tendency to accentuate
the multiplicity and the difference of phenomena, depends on its
power to raise problems. Both thought and sensations suppose
difference, contrast, variation. Already Thomas Hobbes saw that,
when he said that to have always one single sensation would be the
same as to have no sensation at all. The psychology of our time
has, generally speaking, confirmed this view. Fechner's law on
the relation between physical impression and psychical sensation
points in this direction. And our thought starts with greatest
energy when two judgments contradict one another, i. e., when a
problem arises.
I believe there is special reason for accentuating this point in the
actual state of philosophy. There seems to be too much metaphysics
85
86 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in the air, and it is important not to forget what we have learnt
from positivism and criticism. The old English school had the
mission to keep the attention of philosophers on experience, and
it started the great movement against dogmatism in the last three
centuries. It is no accident that the greatest setter of problems,
David Hume, belonged to this school. In evolutionism this school
has said its last word the widening of the concept of experience
to connote not only the experience of the single individual, but the
organized experience of the whole species. We may hope that a new,
refreshing start will be made.
Pluralism makes the world new for us and necessitates a revision
of our categories, our principles and our methods. A dogmatic
sleep is too tempting for the human mind. We are inclined to
suppose that we can develop or perhaps already have developed
thoughts in which all existence can be expressed. But, as a Danish
thinker, Soren Kierkegaard, has said, we live forward, but we under-
stand backward. Understanding comes after experience. Only
when life is closed can it be thoroughly understood. This is our
tragieo-comical situation. Even a divine thinker could only under-
stand the world when the life of the world was finished.
II
But pluralism as such brings no understanding, no intelligence.
To understand is to connect one fact with other facts, to find a
uniting principle. Multiplicity as such would only make descrip-
tion and classification possible, and even this only under the condi-
tion that the manifold phenomena were not only different, but also
similar. The only meaning of 'understanding' which a consistent
pluralism can acknowledge is understanding as mere recognition,
not as explanation.
Very often we must for a long time be contented with stating a
single, isolated fact. But then this fact raises a problem even by
its isolation. We have an interesting example in the botany of our
time. The Dutch botanist, Hugo de Vries, maintains that new
types can arise suddenly. Great variations not small, as Darwin
thought are, according to de Vries, the condition of evolution
through the struggle for life. But, if this is so, it ought to be the
task of natural science to explain how this arising of a new type was
possible, to find the hidden conditions for that which was for our
observation a sudden appearance, to discover a continuity between it
and other appearances.
Now, it is a fact that we in many cases have found such connec-
tion or continuity in nature. It is the ideal of knowledge to find
it in all domains of observation. Our mind can only understand
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 87
by synthesis, and the principle of continuity is therefore the pre-
supposition, the working hypothesis, of all science. But we must
also acknowledge continuity as a characteristic of reality. We have
no right to suppose that the fact that we can not understand phe-
nomena, if we can find no connection or continuity, should be with-
out ground in reality itself. If we will build our philosophy on
experience, we ought to give full importance to connection, unity
and continuity, as well as to difference and multiplicity. Experi-
ence shows us both, and pluralism can, therefore, not be the sole
or the last word of the philosopher. And there is an inner con-
nection between continuity and multiplicity. All qualities, powers
and characters which we ascribe to the single elements or beings
which pluralism acknowledges are only known through the connec-
tion of these elements or beings with a whole order of things. We
can, for example, only ascribe energy to a being because we experi-
ence that it actually does a certain work, that alterations in it or
out of it have their cause in it. If it were absolutely isolated, we
could not ascribe any predicate to it, we could not know it at all.
Perhaps it is impossible to develop a metaphysical theory which
shall give both facts their full right. But this ought not to lead us
to forget the urgency of the problem.
Ill
I, for my part, call myself a monist, because connection and con-
tinuity seem to me to be more important facts than multiplicity; it
is, as I have shown, only through their connection one with another
and with us, that things can be understood. Every difference and
multiplicity supposes a deeper continuity, which it is our task to
discover. But I see the great hindrances for an absolute monism,
and I therefore call myself a critical monist, the word 'critical'
being taken in the same significance as when Kant called his philos-
ophy critical philosophy. A perfect and universal synthesis is for
us always an ideal which has to struggle for existence. Every to-
tality we find in nature has always a history; it has developed
through interaction of elements and supposes differences in the
nature and the tendencies of the different elements. As a critical
monist I say : If we can not carry out our monistic ideal, the reason
could be that reality (world, existence) is not completed, is not
finished, is yet in full development. Only if we could think this
development completed in any time, would the world be quite intel-
ligible. It is the reality of time which makes the world irrational
for us. There is at least one thing which is not completed: our
thinking, our knowledge ; and this is also an element in reality ! It
is the wonderful contradiction of the great rationalistic systems
88 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Plato's, Spinoza's and Hegel's that they can not explain the
striving and struggling thought whose work these systems them-
selves are.
The incompleteness of thought, the necessity of always renewed
striving after truth, has, perhaps, its cause in this, that new ele-
ments may arise in the world. It would, then, not only be we who
discover something new, but it would be the world itself, which was
new and had to bring its new element into harmony with the older.
And there would then be an inner connection between our strug-
gling thought and the essence of reality. This is my metaphysics,
if: I have one.
The problem also of mind and matter is perhaps conditioned by
the incompleteness of our knowledge. There is no necessity for a
choice between spiritualism and materialism, if mind and matter
are not contradictorily opposed one to the other. This contradictory
opposition is often quite dogmatically assumed. Existence may,
as Spinoza taught, have more forms, qualities or attributes than
our experience can show us. Critical monism, which maintains a
uniting principle without dogmatizing, points to the possibility that
we have not all conditions given for solving the problem.
IV
That an absolute systematization of our knowledge is not pos-
sible is no evil. The history of philosophy shows us, according to
that treatment of this science which of late years is more and more
general, that systems have more energy, depth and freedom in their
first stage, in statu nascenti. The history of philosophy is more
and more the history of the starting, of the impulses of thought and
of the leading experiences of great thinkers, not only the description
of the completed systems. And even in its completed form a sys-
tem is only a means to understand ourselves and the world. It is
an essay which will try the strength and importance of certain ideas
or certain experiences. The great systems are projections, electric
search-lights, with whose help we try to explore the dark.
But the thought with whose help we find our way through the
world is itself only a part of the world, and we do not know how
important a part of the world it is. Can the whole content of the
world be translated into thought? Can we, as speculative and
metaphysical idealism would do, conceive the world in its innermost
ground as an expression of thought? To me it is evident that all
such idealism is founded on an analogy which can not be verified.
The thinking, psychical being, which we only know in our own per-
sonal experience and as a part of the world, is, in speculative and
metaphysical idealism, conceived as an expression of the essence of
the world considered as a whole. The analogy which is here ap-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 89
plied is different from the analogies which we make use of in scientific
experience. We use analogy scientifically when we apply it to throw
light on one domain of experience with the help of another domain
of experience. Here a verification is possible through the conse-
quences to which the analogy leads us; we can see if these conse-
quences agree with our progressing experience. But when we main-
tain an analogy between a part of existence and existence considered
as a whole, no verification is possible. Analogy transcends here
very soon the limits of science, and has only poetical value, if it
has any value at all. It may be sublime poetry, if the metaphysi-
cian is a man of genius poetry of a more intellectual, though less
emotional character than the poetry of the great religions, which also
are founded on analogy.
I correct myself : we ought not to say 'only poetry.' Our deepest
life-experiences can only be expressed in poetical form. There is a
life-poetry which is a very serious thing, the most concentrated
expression of the experiences which can be made of the value of life
and of life's endeavors.
V
Our thought is both larger and smaller than reality. It contains
forms and possibilities which never are fully realized. It develops
hypotheses between which we have to choose, as only one of them
can be true. This is necessary. In order to reach the aim of knowl-
edge we must try several means, survey the possible ways. The
progress of knowledge consists, from this point of view, in the
reduction of these possibilities, perhaps in the exclusion of all ex-
cept one. Existence or reality is in every single case one single
definite thing, is one in opposition to our many possibilities. As
Schiller says, Eng ist die Welt, und das Gehirn ist weit.
But from another point of view the world is richer than our
thought. It contains the possibility of experiences which have not
yet been made. New discoveries and experiences lead again and
again the thought on new ways. Thought is, as already said, only
a part of the world, and there are always more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Here, then, we
must say the reverse of Schiller, Weit ist die Welt, und das Gehirn
ist eng.
This incommensurability, or this (in a mathematical sense) irra-
tional relation, between thought and reality will always be experi-
enced anew. Our intellectual labor will always have to progress
on the one side in simplicity and concentration, and on the other side
in complexity and extension.
90 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
VI
My sympathy is more on the side of positivism and empiricism
than on the side of speculation; and in methodological in a certain
degree also in metaphysical respects I have a sympathy with
pluralism.
I will now say a few words on the way in which my thoughts
have developed in this direction.
' In my youth the influence of the Danish philosopher and re-
ligious thinker, Soren Kierkegaard, was decisive for me. He waged
a passionate war against speculation, with strong accentuation of
the conditions of thought and of the value of the single, real, per-
sonal life. Later on the study of Comte and of the old English
school gave me a new start in the direction of a philosophy of experi-
ence. And my own more independent studies have maintained me
on this way. In this last respect three points have been of special
importance for me.
My psychological studies led me to accentuate the differences
between individuals in respect of the relations between psychical
elements. Even if these elements could be said to be 'the same'
in all individuals (which only to a certain degree is true), the
manner in which they are combined, the 'timbre,' will be dif-
ferent. The general psychological laws manifest themselves in
many different forms in the individual cases. There is here a mul-
tiplicity which no analysis can exhaust. In my 'Philosophy of
Beligion' I have more specially pointed out the great importance of
individual and historical differences, and I have described the most
important types of religious life. We still miss a comparative
human psychology. The study of individual differences is only in
its beginning. In America good work has been done in the domain
of the psychology of religion by Starbuck, Coe, Leuba and, most of
all, by William James.
Also my ethical studies have led me in this direction. The prob-
lems of scientific ethics are of two sorts. The first task is to find
and establish the ethical principles, the standard we are to use in
valuing human actions and institutions. Already, here in the start-
ing-point, in the fundamental point of view, great personal and
historical differences make a scientific foundation of ethics appear
as a great problem. And even if this first difficulty is conquered,
a second problem arises: how are the principles to be applied in the
special cases? Human individuals have different powers and dis-
positions and start under very different social and historical condi-
tions. They can, therefore, neither qualitatively nor quantitatively
have the same tasks and the same duties. How can we be sure that
the right sort of work is chosen? And how can we be sure that
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 91
sufficient work is done, that the quantum satis of human will (to
use the words of Henrik Ibsen's 'Brand') has been applied? Also
here new experiences are still possible. The new experiences raise
new problems, and also our old problems can only be solved through
always progressing experience.
The third point belongs to the theory of knowledge. I saw what
others had seen before me that Kant has not solved Hume's prob-
lem, and that this problem is still standing. It is a necessity for
our thought to apply the law of causality; but this does not justify
the assertion that this law is universal and metaphysically necessary.
We may construct the concept of an ideal, complete and perfect
experience, and for this experience the law of causality would have
universal validity. But the experience which we really have is
limited and imperfect. New elements and events are still ex-
perienced, and the great question is, if they can be connected with
our other experience in a rational way. This contrast between
ideal and real experience and consequently the importance of
Hume's problem w r as undervalued by Kant's speculative followers.
At the end of the nineteenth century the problem was taken up, not
only by philosophers, but also by men of science. It is now more
and more admitted that the importance of scientific and philo-
sophical principles consists in this, that they lead us in our striving
after understanding. Their truth is their validity, and their
validity is experienced in their power of leading us in our intel-
lectual work. A principle is true if it can be applied, if we can
work with it, i. e., gain understanding with the help of it. Truth
is a dynamic concept; it manifests itself in the working of our
thought. And it is a symbolic concept, because it only presupposes
an analogy, not an identity between thoughts and events. This
holds of the truth of our sense-qualities; they have objective value
as symbols, but can not be proved to be images of things. It holds,
too, of the truth of our formal-logical principles, of the principle of
causality, etc. We can not compare our sensations and our prin-
ciples with an absolute order of things. Surely we have no right
to regard it as a pure accident that just these special sensations and
thoughts make it possible to gain a progressing knowledge of the
events in the world; but neither have we the right to regard them
as direct revelations.
VII
Where we can not apply the principles of our thought we end
with a problem. And, so far as pluralism can and must be main-
tained, so far as the events and elements remain isolated and uncon-
nected, so far we have unsolved problems before us. But pluralism
would lead us to false supposition if its meaning were that the value
92 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of a phenomenon is diminished when it can be understood, i. e.,
brought in rational connection with other phenomena. Isolation
may be a cause of evil as well as of good. If we specially consider
personal beings we must admit that every personality is a little
world with its inner order, its law of development and of interaction
of psychical elements. No character without an inner continuity!
And this little world can not maintain its value without standing in
interactions with other personal beings as elements in a social
totality. Our ethical endeavor is to produce greater continuity in
the inner world of personality and in the greater world of society,
as our intellectual endeavor is to find a still greater continuity in
the world at large.
And here lies for me the greatest importance of irrationalism or
pluralism, so far as we must acknowledge it. The world is not com-
plete, not harmonious, not rational; therefore there is a work to be
done. A little American girl who had been told that God created the
world once for all, asked her mother: 'But in what business is he
then now?' This was a quite philosophical question. There is per-
haps a great work going on in the world at large, through which it is
developed to greater rationality and harmony. But for us it is of
the greatest importance, that there is a work to be done by us, that
our own work in thought and will is a reality, a real factor in a
great process of evolution. Both the problem of knowledge and the
ethical problem have then a natural and important place in phi-
losophy.
HARALD HOFFDING.
THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN.
O YNTAX has passed, they tell us on every hand, out of the logical
*-' into the psychological stage. Why not psychical stage? The
logical sting is in the tail of the word. Ratiocination returns to
plague us after all. And what is the whole movement, psychical or
psychological, but a reversion to Apollonios Dyskolos with his defini-
tion of the moods as ^o^txat dtadlffEtst If the moods are 4 >tJ x t]Lai
diaftiasis, why is not every utterance modal? Why does not every
utterance denote a state of the soul ? A universal psychology would
be a universal syntax. But language is largely used in determining
psychological processes and there is ever before the student the
danger of the dreaded circle. The circle is explicable, but inevitable
for all that. Small comfort to him who perishes in the snow of
metaphysics. Apollonios Dyskolos, I repeat, the most considerable
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 93
of Greek syntacticians, was a psychologist, and your mere gram-
marian is apt to consider him supersubtle. Take his theory of the
senses. According to him, the sense of sight is the king sense. The
verbs of sight are active and so take the accusative. Sight is under
the control of the will. You can shut your eyes. You can not so
effectually stop your. ears. The other senses are passive and so take
the genitive. And yet they are not purely passive. Greek has an-
other construction for the purely passive, and we must recognize a
certain going forth of these senses towards the object, a certain reci-
procity, as we might say. Clearly so in the three lower senses;
touch, taste and smell are reciprocal. We have then two classes
sharply distinguished : sight, on the one hand ; touch, taste and smell,
on the other. Between the two lies hearing with its active and its
passive constructions accusative and genitive. The same principle
has a wider application, thinks Apollonios: $pav } passionate love,
takes the passive construction, like touch, taste, smell ; ydetv, appro-
priating love, selective love, takes the active construction. In Latin,
amare and diligere may be psychologically distinct, but they are not
syntactically distinct. And somehow "Epw$ avixars fid^av seems to be
specifically Greek; whereas mille modis, Amor, ignorandu's, procul
abhibendu's atqiie abstandu's, even if translated from the Greek,
is Roman to the core. We are not so badly off in English. 'To
love' is ydt'iv; 'to be in love with,' 'to be enamored of is Ipav.
I have often wished that some modern psychologist would study
Apollonios and not leave him wholly to the mercy of grammarians
as crabbed as he and not so penetrating. Meanwhile, such interpre-
tations of syntactical phenomena as those just cited, have a special
interest for those whose great desire is to understand the Greek
mind, to take the Greek point of view. I, for one, am less concerned
about the scientific resolution of a mixed case into its elements than
about the composite photograph that the mixed case made on the
Greek sensorium ; and though Greek syntax fell early into the hands
of the philosophical schools, notably the Stoic school, and was
put under the harrows of system-mongers, still much of what we
call philosophy consists in getting out of language what was origin- r
ally put into it, and when we examine grammatical nomenclature
we find reflexes of national conception. But genitive and dative
as mixed cases and very difficult problems I pass over. There is,
however, a case, or case function, if you choose, common to human
speech, that holds in itself the Greek theory of the universe; and
that is the accusative. The Greek grammarian calls the fourth case
fj alTtarixT) itTajffts. ahia came to mean cause, whatever cause means.
The word has a bad connotation. Language is pessimistic. We car*
not help that. The most common Greek demonstrative has a tone of
94 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
reproach. There are more bad smells than good in the world.
Object and object are one. So ahia means in the first line ' blame. '
air la ilofigvou, says Plato, ahtaa&at is 'to blame,' 'to accuse.' This
ahia is the word from which Greek grammarians got the name
The Romans took the bad end of ahia, and translated
accusativus hopeless stupidity, from which grammar did
not emerge until 1836, when Trendelenburg showed that ahtartxi)
KTwam means casus effectivus, or causativus. This gives us the
Greek conception of the case, or at all events one Greek con-
ception, and that is something. Linguistically, we may refuse to
give the accusative this metaphysical definition, as the case of the
object effected. The accusative is merely one pole, the other, being
the nominative, what we call the verb being the current between the
two. But if we are to have a definition, we must admit that the
characteristic construction of the case is that of the object effected.
The object affected appears in Greek now as an accusative, now as a
dative, now as a genitive. The object effected refuses to give its
glory to another and the object affected can be subsumed under the
object effected. To slay a man is to bring about manslaughter.
Linguistically, it is a mere matter of apposition or attribution
whether you call the accusative an inner or an outer object. 1 Psy-
chologically it is the object effected that dominates. And that is
a matter of significance for the Greek conception of the world with-
out. The consciousness of the not-me comes from the forthputting
of energy, from the object created. The world is first Wille and
then Vorstellung. The nominative is, as has just been said, one
pole, the accusative the other. Only the personal has the nom-
inative, only the personal has will. Neuters (non-personals) have
no nominative, except by courtesy, itanjp and /?'"?/> are nominatives.
1 The term inner object has been used for many years by the makers of
Latin and Greek grammars, but as it may not fit into the nomenclature of
modern psychology, I subjoin a note from my Latin grammar (3d edition,
329): "The Accusative is the object reached by the verb. This object is
either in apposition to the result of the action of the verb, and then it is called
the inner object, or object effected (e, g., strike a blow, strike a coin) ; or it is
in attribution to the result of the action, and then it is said to be the outer
object, or object affected (e. g., strike a man)." Compare also Amer. Jour, of
Ph\lology, II., 89 : " When Byron says, ' I want a hero,' ' hero ' would be called
in grammatical parlance an outer object; but he says in the next breath, ' an
uncommon want,' which is an inner object. There is no grammatical differ-
ence between the two expressions. The ' uncommon want ' is a ' hero-want ' so
to speak." " It seems better < therefore > to take the inner object as the funda-
mental meaning because this is the universal complement, which can not be
said of the outer object." The Accusative was recognized as the case of die
reine Wirkung as long ago as 1829 by Bernhardy, in his ' Griechische Syntax.'
It was really a rediscovery.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 95
'the thing begotten,' is the result of the action of narrjp and
(theToxet?), and rlxvov is an accusative, to begin with. <J, ^ xai$
there you have personality.
The preference thus given to creative energy, to will, is shown
very distinctly in another syntactical phenomenon. The infinitive
originally, as it seems, a dative, a for-which case, a case of sympathy,
fell into the Malebolge of the deorganized. It became practically a
neuter, an accusative neuter. As such it became the object I hate
the word it became the resultant of verbs of creation, verbs of
will and endeavor. As such, it had its three tenses, present, aorist,
perfect; or, as I should prefer to call them in order to avoid con-
fusion with .the indicative tenses, paratatic (durative), apobatic,
syntelic (Amer. Jour, of Philology, XXIII., 106). The result is
necessarily subsequent. There is no need of a future. And the
negative is the negative of the will, A"?'- Then came Vorstellung,
then came verbs of saying and thinking, then came an alien negative,
a negative that does not belong to the infinitive originally, the nega-
tive ou ; then came the future infinitive, never necessary when there
was a shadow of will, when there was a hope, a promise. But there
is a set of verbs that will not desert the old plane of will, the verbs
of Belief, the verbs of Asseveration ; and so through all the ages Belief
has the negative appropriate to will. The Oath that compels Belief
has the negative appropriate to will. They allow the future infini-
tive, but they still have vy. The Grecian is shocked when Theokritos,
Herondas, Babrius, treat an oath as if it were simple 'say so.' The
Greeks say as plainly as they can say, 'You are responsible for your
belief as you are bound by your oath. '
If it were not for the Greek negative the consciousness of this
will basis might have been lost. We owe much to the Geist der
stets verneint. And so the intrusion of one negative into the
sphere of the other is an illuminating process. For ou, the proclitic
negative one can not deny the proclitic movement, however modern
the nomenclature <>u, which I am fain to call the masculine negative,
invaded the sphere of vy, invaded the realm of will. We find in
the early language ou with the subjunctive, a mood of will, ou with
the optative, a mood of wish. But these were mere raids, they were
not conquests. But the Vorstellung did win at one point, estab-
lished itself on one Gibraltar, but not alone. The particle av intro-
duced the notion of limitation. Pure will is free. Pure wish is free.
The shadow of chance crossed will and wish. Will was sicklied o'er
by thought, by calculation, but it never lost its negative of will by
taking av. But wish did. We have oux av with the optative. This
troubled wish becomes what the grammarians call potential. We
are in the realm of Vorstellung, with its negative ou. In late Greek
96 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
fiij began to oust <w in turn. 'Les races se f eminisent, ' says Comte.
Reverting to the infinitive, especially worthy of note is the
behavior of what we call consecutive sentences. In our earlier record
there is no mere consecutive relation in Greek, nothing but finality
(Amer. Jour of Philology, VII., 164). Language is teleolog-
ical. The infinitive denotes purpose. There is no sequence but
a designed sequence. A consequence involves a purpose somewhere,
a will somewhere. If not a purpose, it is a quasi-purpose. The
quasi-purpose is introduced by a comparative particle (<u<rre). We
call such a sentence a consecutive sentence and distinguish between
tendency and result, tendency with the infinitive, result with the
finite verb. We distinguish between the animus of the lawgiver
and the tendency of the law. But the tendency is a will all the
same. The constitution of things, we say; God's will, the supreme
maker's will, said the old thinkers whose thought is crystallized in
language. Tendency takes the negative of will, w; what I have
called the feminine negative. 'The lady doth protest too much,
methinks.' Result takes the objective negative, the masculine neg-
ative, man resting satisfied with the fait accompli. Practically
indistinguishable, some grammarians have said; fundamentally dis-
tinguishable as Witte and Vorstellung.
One jotting more. Years and years ago I noticed for myself
what was not then, even if it be now, a commonplace of Greek syn-
tax, that the Greek from the earliest record known to us makes a
sharp syntactical difference between actual perception and intel-
lectual perception; what the German grammarians call sinnliche
und geistige Wahmehmung. Actual perception (sensation)
takes the participle; intellectual perception proper, ideation,
takes the finite construction on, and that is its favorite con-
struction. True, intellectual perception may take the participle,
but only in a figure. The future participle has to do with intel-
lectual perception, naturally. The aorist participle is seldom used
with verbs of actual perception, naturally. We see things in process
(present participle), in a completed state (perfect participle),
seldom flashing into existence, seldom at the moment of culmination
(aorist participle) the poet's eye oftener than the plain man's.
Hearing, actual hearing, must have the present. The roll of
thunder is not as the flash of lightning. The distinction is sharp.
It is easily perceived. The schoolboy must learn it. But how
did the language, how did those who used the language come to
make it? Ask yourself the difference between 'I heard her sing'
and 'I heard her singing.' Formulate the difference. It is much
more subtle. The Germans can make nothing of it. Those who
use the language for the most part do not try. In the Greek the
97
problem is easier. The participle as an adjective adheres to the
noun, not so closely as the adjective, but still adheres. It is the
surface that you perceive. Intellectual perception detaches the
skin, as I have called it, and makes it something apart, and the ort
that does this is not the outer object, as might seem at first. It is
the inner object (American Journal of Philology, XIV., 374).
Inner object again, result of action, result of will. Greek syntax
is all in favor of will as the prius. Wille is first, then Vorstellung^
BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE.
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
DISCUSSION
IMAGE OR SENSATION
"OROFESSOR MEAD'S discussion of Image or Sensation 1 con-
-*- tains so much with which I am in cordial agreement that it
may seem idle or captious to raise a point of difference. But Pro-
fessor Mead seems to have taken as functional a definition of the-
image which on the face of it I had supposed to be plainly structural..
This leads Mr. Mead to ascribe to me the assumption that 'the image-
is to be found on the response side of the coordination,' whereas I
am unable to see that the image as structurally defined (or func-
tionally either, for that matter), is any more on the side of response
than on the side of stimulus.
The definition reads, "The image is the content abstracted from
past experiences in the form in which these are usually brought to
consciousness to serve as means of dealing with problematic features
located by sensations." 2
Mr. Mead referring to this definition and commenting says:
"The image, functionally defined, is then a content which in terms;
of past experience has served as a solution of the problem set in the
form of the sensation. Except that this statement implies that the
image is but one of the solutions involved in past experience in the
presence of such problems as those implied in the sensations, it would
correspond to the functional definition which Professor Dewey gives
for the 'response.' " 3
Now the point of the definition, as I had supposed, was precisely
that the image is not an application of past experience as a solution
JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS,
Vol. 1, No. 22, p. 604.
3 Ibid., Vol. 1, No. 16, p. 434. Quoted by Prof. Mead, 1. c., p. 605.
8 1. c., p. 605.
98 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of a problem ; is not a solution at all ; nor a ' response ' ; if anything,
the inhibition of a 'response'; but that the image is an abstraction
of the sense content of an application, solution or 'response.' In
other words, it would border on the psychologist's fallacy to assume
that past experiences which arise in the presence of problematic
occasions and which are instrumental in reaching a solution are
images. They are rather, I should say, what we call them, ideas,
plans, standards, ideals, methods, considerations, memories, dramatic
situations, etc., as the case may be.
The image is the arrest of the usual flow of the consciousness of
such mental processes as these for the sake of giving attention to
the content, to the sensuous, qualitative aspect, apart from the
reference, the meaning, or the affective value of the process. The
image is essentially a structural category. Yet, as I endeavored to
point out in the previous discussion, it is under most conditions im-
possible to abstract completely the sense content of ideational proc-
esses from reference, from 'response.' The very act itself of
making the abstraction is an ideational act. The persistence of the
reference, the meaning, provides a setting for the content abstracted,
keeps it from becoming sensational, so that the image, or image-
timbre, may be viewed as the joint product of the act of abstracting
the content and the ideational setting which persists.
It is possible that Mr. Mead was misled by my definition of sen-
sation which, as he pointed out, 'also suggests its functional value.'
I am glad, in this connection, to express my very great indebtedness,
indirect and intangible, as well as direct, to Professor Dewey's fun-
damental contribution to functional psychology, the article on the
* Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology. '* The point I was interested in
calling to attention was the overlapping, if not complete coincidence,
of both the structural and functional definitions of sensation, using
the word definition in a somewhat broad sense. It seemed to be a
matter of interest, that an analytic psychologist, bent on tracking
the processes of consciousness to their ultimate elements, should
succeed in producing by the abstracting methods of his analysis,
especially when extended into laboratory procedure, so large a crop
of the same sort of mental realities as the vicissitudes of life bring
to consciousness as problematic elements in experience. But, you
say, there is a difference between producing a sensation in the cul-
ture media of a laboratory and giving the same a functional inter-
pretationthe difference between a terminus ad quem and a terminus
a quo. Granted, but the functional interpretation, if I understood
its aim aright, is a statement in terms of both antecedents and con-
4 Psychological Review, Vol. III.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 99
sequents. In the case of sensation the structural analysis is a dis-
tinct ally of the functional interpretation.
Is this true of the image? Is the structural definition also a
functional one ?
The image, however, structurally conceived is not a picture of
still life. Movement, change, are its familiar characteristics. This
is another way of saying that it is always a stimulus to further ac-
tivity and experience. Thus an image which at the start was plainly
a structural affair, born of the interest in setting apart the content
of some ideational process, may end in calling into play a memory
or a response which is relevant to the needs of present or future
action ; or, again, it may not, so far as we can discover.
For example, I may set out with an attempt to investigate what
sort of imagery I use in my idea of a triangle, noting whether it
be verbal or visual, etc.; presently the visual image of the musical
instrument known as a triangle drifts into consciousness ; then images
of other instruments; finally it occurs to me that I must purchase
this afternoon a ticket to the next concert or. it will be too late. ' If
it hadn't been for Berkeley,' I may remark, 'I should never have
thought of it. ' Query : Was not the imagery in this case functional
only in an accidental and non-psychological sense?
Or, again, a problematic situation may arise which does not yield
to the usual modes of response. For example, on arriving at the
box-office I learn that only undesirable seats are to be had not a
very serious matter under most circumstances; but circumstances
can be imagined under which it would be a very serious and puzzling
matter. In such a case, fixing upon the structural aspect of past
experiences that come surging up in anticipation of future action
serves to inhibit otherwise disastrous responses, and at the same
time intensifies the stimulus to further revelations of the conditions
of action and methods of response. There goes along with this the
possibility, which is the penalty of the play of imagery, that the
associations aroused may be tangential and so non-functional, merely
useless experimenting, 'random movements.'
Experience thus tends to become structural at critical points,
giving rise to the image as well as to the sensation. The structural
and functional aspects of the image are much further apart in the
case of the image than in the case of the sensation. The image is of
functional value indirectly when functional at all. Its essentially
structural character, however, may be said to be the premium which
is placed upon the indirectness of whatever functional value it may
have. To be structural is, so to speak, the poetic license of the
image. Professor James has referred to a type of mind which gets
its best thinking done in the interstices of mind- wandering. It is a
100 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
question whether, all thinking is not characterized more or less by
the presence of a structural surd.
As to which sort of structure, sensation or image, is more fre-
quent and prominent, especially on occasions that are not critical,
would probably depend largely on individual differences, as yet
not analyzed very far. Some types of mind seem to take more nat-
urally to that form of experience known as sensational. Other types
seem to cultivate more naturally play of imagery. More character-
istic forms of imagery, that is, forms freer from the fringe of con-
ceptual and affective processes, are those abstracted and made fa-
miliar by the psychological interest stimulated so widely in recent
years by the questionnaire methods and data of Galton and others.
It is doubtful whether, the tendency of ideational processes to
take on the form of dramatic incidents and situations has been given
sufficient attention in analytic psychology. Professor Cooley has
discussed the matter in a most interesting and suggestive way from
a genetic standpoint. After describing an instance of a child's
imaginary playmate he goes on to say that ' ' The main point to note
here is that these conversations are not occasional and temporary
effusions of the imagination, but are the na'ive expression of a social-
ization of the mind that is to be permanent and to underlie all later
thinking; . . . speaking broadly, it is true of adults as of children,
that the mind lives in a perpetual conversation. It is one of those
things that we seldom notice just because they are so familiar and
involuntary; but we can perceive it if we try to. If one suddenly
stops and takes note of his thoughts at some time when his mind has
been running free, as when he is busy with some simple mechanical
work, he will be likely to find them taking the form of vague conver-
sations. ' ' And if he goes still further, I would add, and selects out
the sense content of those vague conversations, he will be likely to
find them taking a still more structural form, that of the image.
' Image ' may be a very convenient term to apply to a wide range
of mental processes, but there is a question as to whether it has not
been given too broad an application. In some forms of edu-
cational psychology the 'image' often referred to as actually
existing in the mind of the child is, I should say, distinctly hypo-
thetical. It is the sort of consciousness the child would have if he
could and did abstract the sense content of his experience on the
occasion in question. But the chances are that he did not and prob-
ably could not do so. This is not denying the great value which
the hypothetical ' image ' may have as an instrument of investigation
and interpretation when its hypothetical character is clearly recog-
' C. H. Cooley, ' Human Nature and the Social Order,' pp. 53-54.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 101
nized; a value analogous, if the comparison be not too far fetched,
to the imaginary quantity in mathematics.
WILLARD C. GORE.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Bemerkungen zur Psychologic der Gefiihlselemente und Gefuhlsver-
bindungen. M. GEIGER. Archiv fur Gesamte Psychologic. IV.
Band, 1 u. 2, Heft. V., 1904, S. 233-288.
Geiger has here made the rather original attempt to harmonize the
opposing theories of Lipps and Wundt, by outlining an elaborate scheme
for a logical and at the same time for a phenomenalistic classification of
the feelings. This can be done, the author insists, solely on the condition
that one first shall have in mind a clear-cut and workable concept of a
feeling element. After this is accomplished, the various relations of
feelings and their numerous forms of combination will order themselves
necessarily.
He divides his treatment into two parts. Part I. is devoted to a
consideration of the concept of feeling elements, of the relations of the
feelings as distinguished from the combination of feelings, and of the
principle for the investigations of partial feelings which can, as psychic
phenomena, be differentiated from the Totalgefiihl of the momentary
experience in question. Part II. is a systematic account of the kinds
of relations of feelings. Affective feelings of a contrasted nature, as
pleasant-unpleasant feelings have peculiar forms of relation, as likewise
have tension-relief feelings. Again, logical feelings of opposing kinds,
or of different kinds, lend themselves to the same mode of treatment. So,
again, one can consider the kinds of relations of affective to logical feel-
ings in the same manner. This scheme carried out in detail will exhaust
all possible forms of relations or combinations of feeling. From a
psychological point of view Geiger attempts to establish a theory that
feelings deserve a treatment perfectly analogous to that of sensations.
The psychology of feeling has not advanced rapidly simply because
this phase of mental life has been treated almost exclusively from the
point of view of ethics and esthetics. The experimental task here is
more difficult than is the case with sensations, but it does not, in reality,
differ in kind. In the moment of their being, feelings are unanalyzable
into sensations. But since they can not be analyzed as subjective
erlebniss, some mode of conceiving them as objective content of conscious-
ness must be devised. The method is entirely similar to that employed
in the investigation of sensation complexes. Sensation is as much an
abstraction as feeling can be. Any single feeling which by reflection I
am able to distinguish, is but a Merkmal of this ' einheitlischer
Gefuhlserlebnisses.' What we at any moment abstract is the single
feeling from the total feeling. Lust and Unlust are only characteristics
102 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
(Merkmale) of the single feeling experience of the moment. But also
Lust and Unlust have relation to the objective phase of our consciousness,
to sensations and ideas unrelated to the elements of the Totalgefuhl,
or the peculiar disposition of the moment. The feeling of admiration,
for example, is no feeling element. It is made up of pleasure and
tension which are related to an object. This is hence a Gefuhlsverbind-
ung, a case where two feelings make one, yet are feelings which at an-
other time, separated, can relate themselves to an object. The feeling
of depression in deep blue, being, as a constituent of a given condition,
unanalysable further, is a feeling element. Here the feeling is pure
even though related to an object. The feeling of excitement Geiger, con-
trary to some other psychologists, insists is no elementary feeling, be-
cause it is never free from a Lust-Unlust moment. This illustrates his
distinction between an element and a Merkmal.
Again the case is similar to that of sensations, where also the Merkmale
are related to the object through the intermediation of elements. Red
is a sensational element. It is immediately connected with the object.
The rose is red. But the red is saturated, not the rose. So the feeling
in the inclination to drink a glass of water is a feeling of objective neces-
sity. The necessity phase of the experience, not the doing, is subjective
here. Hence the feeling element is rather the whole feeling of subjective
necessity. There subjectivity alone is not a feeling element, any more
than saturation is a sensational element in the above example, for it is
not independent of the act. Isolatedness marks the feeling element,
hence the whole feeling of subjective necessity is the element.
Clearly, according to Geiger, Wundt's dimensions are merely dis-
tinctions or determinations of groups of feeling elements. Wundt's
classification is, however, purely phenomenalistic, grounded neither upon
the dependence of feeling upon the expression to the outer world, nor
upon the consideration of the value of feeling in mental life.
Lipps has approached the question from the opposite side. Starting
theoretically from the significance of feeling in mental life he seeks to
determine systematically the significance of our emotional experiences.
Hence he does not consider feeling elements. All feelings for him are
unique. They do not have a subjective and an objective side.
For Lipps there can be no adequate description of feelings. Yet the
psychologist demands some one thing common to all, and the concept of a
feeling element is his first duty. In the first place, an element can have
general characters. We attribute to sensation the attribute of intensity,
quality, feeling-tone, etc. We arrange them in classes, as for example,
auditory and visual. Again, the visual sensations have certain dimen-
sions, such as saturation, brightness, and color-tone. Color-tone can
again be subjected to classification. In a similar manner we can speak
of the attributes of feeling elements. They too have intensity, quality,
duration, etc. Again, for example, the quality of the feeling element has
such dimensions as intensity, determination of direction, and feeling-
character. Intensity is a continuous dimension; determination of direc-
tion, from positive through indifferent to negative, is continuous also.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 103
Approbation or pleasure is positive, inhibition feeling is negative; and
feeling of indifference, not lack of feeling, is a positive feeling of equal-
ness or nonchalance. Thus also the feeling-characters in the same
Gefuhlsgrundlage are strictly dimensional. The feelings of pleasant-
ness, approbation, and of the beautiful have the same Gefuhlsgrundlage.
The same fact is true in the case of the feelings of inhibition, necessity
and reality. Sensations, however, have different dimensions for the dis-
tinct classes. The dimensions of feelings are the same in all
Gefuhlsgrundlage. Just as a tone sensation has its individuality or
uniqueness from the peculiarity of the instrument, so all feelings have
their peculiar feeling-characters. This feeling-character, in its turn,
has its four dimensions, viz., feeling-modulation (Gefuhlsmodulation),
feeling complexion (Gefiihlsfarbung), feeling accentuation (Gefiihls-
betonung), and feeling shade (Gefuhlsnuance). 'The feeling of active
effort is an example of the first. It is no pure feeling, but a feeling com-
posed of a modulating and a modulated element. The modulated, the
subjective phase of such an experience, is the truer constituent, the
essential element. Examples of Gefiihlsfarbung would be desire, longing,
wishing, etc. They are really fused feelings. The common feeling char-
acter here is striving. This is a discrete dimension. The feelings of
reality and possibility again have the same dimension characters.
Feelings of accentuation include such pleasures as hearing high and
low tones. They are all complex feelings made up of breadth, depth and
richness. All feelings of richness, then, would fall into this dimensional
division.
The feelings of shade would include chiefly those little feelings of
sensory pleasure, such as that of eating fruit or drinking wine, where
we have no means otherwise of expressing these differences in our ex-
periences. In the modulation-feeling, the modulating phase or element
appears as a dimension determining the modulated; in each of the others,
the dimension is characteristic of all the feeling elements.
Thus all feelings must first be distinguished according to the founda-
tion feeling (Gefuhlsgrundlage). Next, these general feelings order
themselves according to their intensity, objective direction and feeling
character; and, finally, the feeling character according to modulation,
color-tone, accentuation and shade. Suppose I am looking intently
at an object: first the feeling must be classified as one in the general
Gefuhlsgrundlage of tension relaxation. Here the intensity, not con-
stant, is in one continuous dimension. Its determination of direction is
clearly a positive tension, and its feeling character is effort, striving,
(a) And still further, the feeling of modulation is, how I direct my at-
tention to the object, not vice versa. (6) The feeling of accentuation is
concerned with how I estimate the feeling of strife which relates itself
to the objective being striven for. (c) The complexion of the feeling
would certainly pertain to the resoluteness of the striving, and the shade
of the feeling would be every sign of the striving or effort which is deter-
mined by the individual peculiarity of the object in question.
The author next outlines three moments when the solution of these
104 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
feeling elements can be accomplished, two immediately, and one medi-
ately: first, when the dominating element of the feeling mood comes out,
and can be apperceived from the background of the total feeling; second,
when the special feeling frees itself sufficiently to attach itself or refer
to an object; and third, when by introspective analysis it is possible to
call up later elements similar to those in the present feeling.
The next task now is to classify the possible relations and combina-
tions of feelings. This implies that two or more feelings must be in
consciousness simultaneously. Combinations of feelings refer to the
existing associations of feelings with the forms of expression. These
the author does not consider, but limits himself to the relations of
feelings, i. e., to the simultaneous total feelings within the whole feeling
of the moment. As a phenomenon the feeling is elementary, but
theoretically it has three constituents: two conscious partial feelings
and a total feeling which is not a sum but a feeling of a higher unity.
Thus if one were to study the feeling of pleasant surprise, he should
consider the constituents, pleasure, inhibition and tension. The con-
nection is complicated. We have hence relations of different orders:
the relation of pleasure to tension, or the relation of pleasure to surprise,
which is itself a single total feeling including within it other relations
of feelings; or still again, surprise may be considered as a Gefiihlsgrund-
lage with an inhibition feeling as the dominating partial feeling. Here
the feeling of joyful surprise, where surprise itself is a feeling of rela-
tion of two or more elemental feelings, would be a Gefuhlsverbindung of
the third order, very complex.
Here again the author limits his investigation to outlining and
illustrating by examples relations of feelings of the first order. He ac-
cepts Wundt's theory, in part, of the ' gradation of elements,' and of the
' gross value of the whole ' ; i. e., that always one partial feeling dominates,
more or less modifiable by the other partial feelings, and that the total
feeling is never merely the sum of the partial feelings. He considers the
task here a purely morphological one of the examination and division
of psychical objects.
The feelings next are classified under the general divisions of affective
and logical feelings; the former being so named because of their rela-
tion to affection in general; the latter referring exclusively to such
states as the feeling of reality, possibility, necessity, similarity, etc.
The remainder of this very interesting article is concerned with the many
possibilities of the relations of these two kinds of feeling. The relations
of opposite affective feelings may result in the fusion of two partial
feelings whereby a new feeling is the result, such, for example, as the
feeling of pity; or there may be an interweaving (Gefilhlsverflechtung)
of the two, such as eating poor food to satisfy hunger; or where both
partial feelings are preserved (Gefuhlsverwebung), as in the case of a
feeling of being melancholy; or still again where the total feeling can not
exist until one partial feeling completely overcomes the other (Gefilhls-
verdrdngung). Again the possible relations of affective feelings of dis-
tinctly different feeling characters may be included under the following
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 105
distinct heads, viz., condensation of feeling (Gefuhlsverdichtung), in
the feeling of surprise; penetration of two partial feelings (Gefuhls-
durchdringiing) in the feeling of power; coordination of feeling, as ex-
citement and pleasure in bright red color; or in the great predominance
of one partial resulting in a very strong total feeling (Gefuhlsiiberhdh-
ung), as in the case of fear; or lastly in the close combination of two
partials (Gefuhlsverkniipfung) as seen above in the feeling of pleasant
surprise.
The relations of logical feelings must also be classified. The opposi-
tion of feelings or inclinations (Gefuhlsentgegensetsung) is a relation
of feelings. It is not a state of mind to do this and do that at the same
time; but a new feeling, composed, as are all the above, of related partial
feelings, but in itself, in its unity as a feeling, presenting its own char-
acter as a Gefuhlsverbindung of a decided kind. The feelings of simi-
larity, possibility, probability and oppositeness exhaust all the rela-
tions of opposite logical feelings. There are perhaps few or no rela-
tions of absolutely distinct logical feelings. Perhaps the relation of the
feeling of possibility to the feeling of similarity might have the relation
of Gefuhlsnebeneinanderstellung.
The only other possible relations of feelings are those of logical to
affective feelings. These must either relate to the same object, or have
the same conditions of origin, or one feeling must have the other for its
object. In the case of the feeling of doubt, the conditions are the same
for the logical feeling and for the affective feeling of unpleasantness.
Here the affective may influence the logical. In the case of the pure
feeling of certainty, the logical feeling may become the condition for
the resulting pleasant feeling of security. This would be a logisch-
affective Gefuhlsdurchdringung. Again there can be a real feeling of
pleasant possibility. The feelings must be related, as there could' be no
pleasure in pure possibility as such.
This stage marks the limits of the present inquiry. The next task,
the author thinks, is to pursue the same method of classification in
regard to the more complex relations of feelings and to all the kinds of
the above defined combinations of feelings.
This article raises one point of greatest psychological interest and
importance. Is the psychologist forced to make use of two fundamental
and ultimate elements, sensation element and feeling element? Can
all psychic states, the feeling phases as well as the sensation characters,
be satisfactorily described in our phenomenalistic account, if we have
as a presupposition two independent disparate elements? Is there any
meaning in calling the subjective phase of experience, phenomenon?
Yet, if not, have we at all considered that which does really seem to
belong to every psychic state which we can ever attempt to examine?
Geiger himself declares that the subjective feeling is the 'truer con-
stituent.' Professor James in his analysis of attention finds the in-
evitable resultant, the ' feeling of effort,' the ' feeling as if I did it,'
always present, but also always unaccounted for by any physiological
reference. Also in the phenomenon of memory, the ' feeling that it is
106 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
mine ' of the memory image, has apparently no physiological correlate ;
while in the psychology of will, the 'fiat' remains unexplained. Here
this kind of psychology, for him, must ' throw up the sponge.' For this
kind of phenomena Wundt must construct his feeling element, and finds
the explanation through his apperception principle. Many other psy-
chologists can not feel satisfied in a description and explanation where
no one common element is accepted as a basis. For Professor Miinster-
berg all psychological material must be reduced to some form of sensa-
tion complex, if our explanation and description shall be thoroughgoing
and strictly phenomenalistic. Hence for him, feelings, only in so far
as they can be conceived as objects, and to just such an extent, can be
considered in a scientific treatment. To Professor James this is all that
is possible, but still not sufficient. To Wundt, the psychological field
is apparently conceived as more inclusive than Professor Munsterberg's
limitations allow; and hence the need of a new and similarly ultimate
element of description for this included field.
The above article would indicate that Geiger is disposed to take much
the same position I understand to be Wundt's. The psychology of feeling
thus seems to involve important epistemological presuppositions, as well
as difficult puzzles of psychological method and classification.
CHAS. HUGHES JOHNSTON.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
L'amnesie et la dissociation des soureuirs par I'emoiion. DR. PIERRE
JANET, Journal de Psychologic normale et pathologique, September-
. October, 1904, I., No. 5. Pp. 417-453.
Irene, a neurasthenic child of a neurasthenic mother and of a degraded
drunkard, became hysterical after the death of her mother. During the
sixty -days preceding her mother's death, Irene endured very unusual
fatigue and frequent scenes of the most painful character with her
father.
The essential features of her disease seem to be hypermnesia during
attacks of somnambulism, occurring several times a day, and lasting sev-
eral hours, and retrograde amnesia during the rest of the time. Hyper-
mnesia and amnesia bear upon the same events, i. e., upon the death of her
mother and the events of the two and a half months preceding and of the
three months following. During the attacks of somnambulism she is on
her bed gesticulating, shrieking and speaking with more or less coherence :
" One does not know how hard it is to be without a mother. ... Is
it not better that I, too, should die, mother dear? You said we would
die together. . . . There is a thing one can not pardon him for [the
father], he was drunk the day of mother's death. . . . No, it was too
horrid; he threw up on the bed . . . etc." She mentions in this way,
and often with minute particulars, the events she can not recall in her
more normal state. The same memories also appear in the form of
hallucinations and impulses which interrupt suddenly and only for an
instant the stream of her ordinary consciousness.
Neither the hypermnesia nor the amnesia is sharply limited.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 107
The fact upon which Janet desires to call attention is that the mental
contents during the attacks are precisely those which are forgotten the rest
of the time. A close dependency seems, therefore, to exist between the
hypermnesia and the amnesia. The author had already made a similar
observation in the case of Mme. D., and he had then produced a decrease
of the amnesia in proportion as he succeeded in breaking up the fixed
idea.
In the case of Irene, the reversed experiment was tried: the removal
of the amnesia in the hope of causing the disappearance of the automatic
memories in somnambulism. His plan was to reintroduce the lost ideas
in the ordinary life by means of suggestions made during hypnosis. But,
to his surprise, the hynotic sleep did not bring back the lost memories.
It was not the same state of consciousness as somnambulism. He had,
therefore, to pass through the preliminary step of educating the hypnotic
memory, a long and tedious process involving, (1) the direction of the
thoughts of the subject to the events one would like him to remember,
and (2) helping him to make efforts of attention, inspire him with hopes
of success, etc., i. e., increasing the psychological tension. This second
part of the process is considered, as the readers of the works of Janet
know, as most important in the treatment of neurasthenic persons.
If he chose to have the remembrances pass through an intermediary step
instead of attempting from the first to reawaken the dormant memories
in the ordinary state itself, it is because it was easier for him to direct
and hold the attention of the patient when she was hypnotized.
The lost past came back bit by bit and, with some exceptions, accord-
ing to the law of Ribot : the older memories first. But it should not be
thought that a thing once remembered in hypnosis was never again for-
gotten in that state. On the contrary, if several days elapsed between
the treatments, she usually suffered a loss. Moreover, emotional dis-
turbances brought about a return to her old condition. This happened,
for instance, at the death of her godson, at that of her father, etc.
The fact most worthy of attention is that the hypermnesia and the
amnesia disappeared and reappeared synchronously. Janet concludes from
this observation, and from at least four others which he mentions, that
' the disorder has two faces, (1) incapacity on the part of the patient to
recall at will certain past experiences, (2) automatic and irresistible
reproduction of these same experiences which assume an exaggerated and
independent development.' This syndrome constitutes one of the forms
which hysteria may assume under the influence of violent emotion.
Such are, in the main, the facts. In the two concluding sections of
the paper, Janet takes up once more the problems upon which he has
already thrown much light in his anterior publications the relation of
memory to the larger whole we call the self and to the ' tension psycho-
logique.'
We may be allowed to dwell at greater length upon the explanation
of the problem presented by Irene than is customary in the summary
of an article, for we have here an application of a theory which, by the
definiteness and thoroughness it assumes in the hands of our author,
marks a step in advance in our understanding of psychic life.
108 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Irene's trouble is not one of memory only. It is just as much a
disease of the will. She might have lost a part of her past and yet
behave normally, but she does not. She can not perform the actions
called for by her circumstances, she treats the world as if it was not real.
" I feel as if I was not alive," she says. " I walk without purpose ; I do
everything mechanically. You ask me why I do not do anything; I do
not know. I can not any more be useful to any one; I do not take in-
terest in anything,- etc." As a matter of fact she did not do any of the
pressing actions called for by the death of her mother.
The remembrances, however, exist potentially and they may be actual-
ized, but not voluntarily, neither can they be voluntarily inhibited. That
is to say, the self can not appropriate them, can not make them part of its
conscious life. If they reappear, it is automatically and outside the
field of the subject's ordinary self -consciousness.
When the amnesia disappears, Irene regains the power of reacting
properly to the calls of the world. She is again active, resumes her trade,
arranges her life, etc., and remark worthy of note although she now
remembers the gruesome tragedy through which she has passed, she has
a feeling of wellbeing unknown to her before.
Amnesia and aboulia go hand in hand. The memory-loss of which
Irene suffers is of the things which should call forth the very actions she
is now unable to perform, and so Janet ventures the statement that the
difficulty, or the impossibility, on the part of the patient to recall at will
certain events is due to her inability to perform the action which would
be called for by these events. This relation between action and memory
accounts, according to our author, for the often-observed fact called
retrograde amnesia. The more recent events are those most liable to
disappear from memory because " recent memories are those closer to the
present reality, they have a more direct and definite part in the present
deeds, they have not yet lost in retrogression their high degree of psy-
chological tension."
The trouble from which Irene suffers may then be said to be a general
decrease in ' psychological tension,' from which arises first the deteriora-
tion, or the loss, of the psychic functions which are highest in the hier-
archical scale, ^. e., first and chiefly what our author calls the ' fonction
du reel' and voluntary activity, especially when directed towards new
adaptations. 1
We have in the theory here referred to of the distinguished professor
of the College de France an understanding of the relation of the various
psychic functions nearer the truth than are the intellectual and the affec-
tive theories which, until recently, ruled in psychiatry as well as in normal
psychology. It surpasses, moreover, in breadth and in definiteness of
conception the voluntaristic theories with which I am acquainted.
JAMES H. LEUBA.
BBYN MAWB COLLEGE.
1 See for an exposition of the hierarchy of the psychic functions, Les
Obsessions et la Psychasthenie, pp. 474 and ff.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 109
Untersuchungen uber den galvanischen Lichtreflex. BUMKE. Zeitschrift
fur Psychologic und Physiologic der Sinnesorgane. 1904, Bd. 36,
S. 294-299.
Weak galvanic currents of 1/50 of a millampere, passing through the
eye-ball, have long been known to produce a faint sensation of light:
and the writer has previously shown that slightly stronger currents have
in addition a pupillomotor effect. In order to study this effect the au-
thor applies one electrode to the temple (or for the consensual reaction
directly over the eye), the other to the sternum or the palm of the hand;
and observes the pupil through the Zehender-Westien binocular magnifier.
There were examined 29 healthy and 87 unhealthy persons. On the
average a current of 2.4 milliamperes on closure at the anode will cause
both pupils to contract 1 to 2 mm. (in diameter?). The strength needed
for this varies with the individual from 0.7 to 5.0 milliamperes. The
contraction is like that caused by a faint light stimulus, and like this is
followed by a slight expansion. Breaking the current at the cathode
is the next most efficient stimulus after making it at the anode. The
sensation of light appears to precede the pupillary reflex. In some indi-
viduals the consensual reaction is slightly later than the direct, but
in rather more individuals no such difference could be detected. Fatigue
lowers the threshold for the electrically stimulated light sensation and
raises that for the pupillary reflex : " that is, an individual who to-day
has the sensation from a current of 0.1 and the iris reflex from one of
0.2 milliampere, will, after going without sleep for a night, perceive
light from a current of 0.08 and give the pupillomotor reflex only for one
of 3.2 milliamperes." The reason for this is not clear. " We must be
contented to record that the same factors which impair the subcortical
paths of conduction, are in same way able to enhance the irritability
of the cortical centers."
EDWIN B. HOLT.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE MONIST. January, 1905. Vol. XV., No. 1. The Principles
of Mathematical Physics (pp. 1-24) : HENRI POINCARE. - The author men-
tions six fundamental postulates on which physical science is based.
They are: (1) Conservation of energy; (2) Degradation of energy; (3)
Equality of action and reaction; (4) Relativity making impossible the
detection of absolute motion; (5) Conservation of mass; (6) Least action.
The body of the article consists in a criticism of these postulates, with
a view to the possibility of their revision, in the light of recent scientific
discoveries. Meaning of the Epithet Nazorean (Nazarene) (pp. 25-^5) :
WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH. - The author cites numerous passages to prove
that the epithet Nazarene is not derived from a supposed village called
Nazareth, the existence of which is very doubtful, but from the Old-
Semitic stem meaning ' preserve.' The Passing of Scientific Materialism
110 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
(pp. 46-86) : C. L. HERRICK. - An interesting and elaborate criticism of
Atomism and Plenism, and a plea for the abandonment of both of these
forms of Materialism in favor of the theory of Energism. Did the Monks
preserve the Latin Classics? (pp. 87-108) : WILLIAM BIRNEY. - The author
argues that the monks, prior to the twelfth century, had no interest in
the classics and did not preserve them; that the volumes found in the
monasteries are fewer than is commonly supposed, and usually came there
by gifts and bequests of lay scholars. Icelandic Literature (pp. 109-114) :
A. H. GUNLOGSEN. - An account of the different races Tartar, Scandi-
navian, Teuton, Celt who have in varying degrees built up the Icelandic
nation and its literature. The Christian Doctrine of Resurrection (pp.
115-119) : EDITOR. - An expression of cordial approval for Canon Henson's
recent rejection of the literal interpretation of the Resurrection. An
Ancient Moslem Account of Christianity (pp. 120-123) : A. J. EDMUNDS.
- The account is probably based on Apocryphal sources. Infinitude as a
Philosophical Problem Comments upon Professor Keyser's View (pp.
124-129) : EDITOR. - Admitting that Keyser is right in holding as against
Russell and Royce that the existence of a concrete infinite can not be
proved, we may still believe in infinitude as a real aspect of every process.
Literary Correspondence. France (pp. 130-142) : LUCIEN ARREAT. Criti-
cisms and Discussions: An International Auxiliary Language: Louis
COUTURAT. A Reply: EDITOR. Suggestions Concerning Pasigraphy:
WALTER T. SWINGLE. The Power of Political Institutions as a Factor in
the Determination of the World Language : CHARLES W. SUPER. Clarence
L. Herrick Obituary, Book Reviews : William Rainey Harper, Religion
and the Higher Life. Herbert Nichols, A Treatise on Cosmology. Paul
Haupt, Kohelet oder Weltschmerz in der Bibel. Alfred Leicht, Lazarus,
der Begriinder der Volkerpsychologie. Wilhelm Wundt, Volkerpsy-
chologie. A. Silberstein, Leibnizens Apriorismus im Verhdltnis zu seiner
Metaphysic.
ARCHIV FUR GESCHICHTE DER PfflLOSOPHIE. Bd. XL,
Heft 1, November, 1904. Zur Textgeschichte und Textkritik der dltesten
Lebensbeschreibung Benedikt Despinozas (pp. 1-34) : S. v. DUNION-
BORKOWSKI. -A discussion as to the appearance of successive editions
of Lucas's life of Spinoza, with textual revision. Karl Steffensen und
seine Geschichtsphilosophie (pp. 35-64) : H. RENNER. - Steffensen com-
bined the theories of Kant with those of Schelling. In his logic of
history he anticipated the most recent discussions. Ideas are purposes
and powers stronger than our thoughts, molding them in the course of
history. He anticipated Nietzsche's doctrine of the ' Ubermensch,' but
with a nobler form of it. History, he said, is the field of the accidental.
Die Atomistik und Faraday's Begriff der Materie (pp. 65-112) : O. BUCK.
-Faraday insisted that science is concerned with facts; philosophy with
theories. The atom, he held, is a theory and not a fact; useful but not
real. He emphasized the fundamental character of the concept force
in Physics. The atom, implying an absolute or infinite harness or
resistance, negates thereby the continuity of thought. Faraday's theory
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 111
approached that of Boskowitch. Matter, he said, is continuous ; the lines
of force lie around a center which is the substance, and form through
the union of such centers a continuous mass with the several properties
of matter (Schussfolgt). Jahresbericlit; Eine indische Asthetik (pp.
113-134) : A. DYROFF. - This is a notice of H. Jacobi's translation of
' Anandavardhana's Dhvanyaloka ' (Die Prinzipien der Poetik). This
Hindoo treatment is comparable to that of Aristotle; yet there is every
reason to suppose that it was achieved under the influence of Indian
thought alone. Die Neueste Erscheinungen. Eingegangene Biicher.
KEVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. December, 1904. L'Immoralite de
I' Art (pp. 553-582) : F. PAULHAN. - Morality is perfect systematization of
all our activities : art is partial systematization of our activities, caring
not if it defeats many practical aims. It does not transform the world,
but turns from it to an imagined world, thus getting a fictitious and
unhealthy satisfaction which paralyzes practical activity. La, Vie sociale
(pp. 583-601) : J. DELVAILLE. - The extreme complexity of society makes
the organism- theory inadequate; it develops spasmodically, returning
often to earlier stages. Social development starts from within, from
exceptional individuals, as well as from the influence of environment
and from that of scientific progress. It can be studied only from the
historic point of view. Des Mystiques en dehors de I'Extase (pp. 602-
625) : B. DE MONTMORAND. - The emotions of mystics, oscillating between
extreme joy and pain, imperfectly verify the James-Lange theory.
Ecstatic joy is often accompanied by the physiological signs of grief.
La Philosophic et la Psychologie au Congres de Cambridge (pp. 626-629) :
N. VASCHIDE. Le Congres International d'Histoire des Religions (pp.
630-637) : F. PICAVET. Revue generate : La Memoire affective (pp. 639-
654) : L. DUGAS. Analyses et Comptes Rendus : J. Dewey, Studies in
Logical Theory : T. RIBOT. E. Schrader, Zur Grundlegung der Psychologie
des Urtheils: G. H. LUQUET. Revue des Periodiques etrangers. Livres
deposes. Table des Matieres du Tome LVIII.
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. January, 1905. La Raison pure
pratique doit-elle etre critiquee? (pp. 1-33) : A. FOUILLE. - Kant questions
the 'theoretical use of the reason but not the practical use. He dogmat-
ically assumes the validity of universal moral law. It is however as much
open to doubt as the metaphysic against which Kant argued. De la
Methode dans les Recherches des Lois de I'Ethique (pp. 3445) : G.
SPILLER. - Theories in Ethics should be experimentally verified as in other
sciences. We should experiment with non-resistance, severity, etc., to
test their ethical value. Introspective analysis of the dictates of con-
science shows them to be based on a complex of motives such as prudence,
love of peace, egoism, etc. Other epochs and races, too, must be studied.
Essais d'Esthetique empirique: I'Individu devant I'CEuvre d'Art (pp. 46-
60) : VERNON LEE. - Observations of the writer's pupils on the attitude of
the individual to masterpieces of sculpture or painting, followed by the
writer's more technical description. Revue generate: Le Conflit de la
112 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Sociologie et de la Morale philosophique (pp. 61-85) : G. RICHARD.
Analyses et Comptes Rendus: A. Binet, L'Annee Psychologique : B.
BOURDON. E. Lauvriere, E. Poe, Vie et son (Euvre: L. ARREAT.
Vigouroux et Juguelier, La Contagion mentalefN. VASCHIDE. L. March-
and, Le Gout : N. VASCHIDE. Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius :
L. ARREAT. Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex: B. O.
Dittrich, Grundzilge des Sprachpsychologie : B. J. Mourly-Vold, Ueber
' Hallucinationen' etc. : N. VASCHIDE. G. Simmel, Kant : J. SECOND. Ob-
servations et Documents. Revue des Periodiques etrangers. Livres
deposes.
De Gaultier, Jules. Nietzsche et la reforme philosophique. Paris:
Societe du Mercure de France. 1904. 12mo. Pp. 312.
Gomperz, Theodor. Essays und Erinnerungen. Stuttgart and Leipzig:
Deutsche Verlag-Anstalt, 1905. 8vo. Pp. x + 243. 7 M.
Gottschalle, H. Weltwesen und Wahrheitwille. Ein Zwiegesprach mit
dem Leben. Stuttgart: Strieker und Schroder. 1905. 8vo. Pp.
viii + 464. 8 M.
Heymans, G. Einfiirhrung in die Metaphysik. Leipzig: J. A. Barth.
1905. 8vo. Pp. viii + 348. 9.40 M.
Howison, G. H. The Limits of Evolution. Second edition, revised and
enlarged. New York : The Macmillan Co. 1905. 8vo. Pp. Iviii -f-
450.
Kleinpeter, H. Die Erkentnistheorie der Naturforschung der Gegen-
wart. Unter Zugrundelegung der Anschanungen von Mach, Stallo,
Clifford, Kirschoff, Hertz, Pearson, und Ostwald. Leipzig: J. A.
Barth. 1905. 8vo. Pp. xii + 156. 3.80 M.
Stein, Ludwig. Der soziale Optisimus. Jena: Hermann Costenoble.
1905. 8vo. Pp. vi + 266. 5 M.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE section of anthropology and psychology of the New York Acad-
emy of Sciences met in conjunction with the New York section of the
American Psychological Association at the American Museum of Natural
History, New York City, on Monday afternoon and evening, January 30,
1905. The following papers were read : ' Color Preferences/ R. S.
Woodworth and Frank Bruner ; ' The Relation of Intensity of Sensation
to Attention,' M. Tsukahara ; ' Ideas and Temperaments,' Dickinson S.
Miller ; ' Organic Levels in the Evolution of the Nervous System,' Robert
MacDougall ; ' Note on Number Habit,' Robert MacDougal ; ' Relational
Theories of Consciousness,' W. P. Montague; 'Radical Empiricism and
Wundt's Philosophy,' Charles H. Judd.
MR. THOMAS CASE, Waynflete professor of moral and metaphysical
philosophy, Oxford, and fellow of Magdalen, has been elected president
of Corpus Christi College, in succession to the late Dr. Fowler.
VOL. II. No. 5. MARCH 2, 1905
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM
HHHE fact that the January number of Mind contains two articles
-*- that continue the humanistic (or pragmatistic) controversy,
and one that deeply connects with it, makes it more evident than
ever that humanism is a ferment that has 'come to stay.' It is not
a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is
rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things
appear as from a new center, of interest or point of sight. Some
writers are strongly conscious of the shifting, others half uncon-
scious, even though their own vision may have undergone much
change. The result is no small confusion in debate, the half-con-
scious humanists often taking part against the radical ones, as if they
wished to count upon the other side. 1
If humanism really be the name for such a shifting of perspec-
tive, it is obvious that the whole scene of the philosophic stage will
change in some degree if humanism prevails. The emphasis of
things, their foreground and background distribution, their sizes and
values, will not keep just the same. 2 If such pervasive consequences
be involved in humanism, it is clear that no pains which philosophers
may take, first in defining it, and then in furthering, checking, or
steering its progress, will be thrown away. fc
It suffers badly at present from incomplete definition. Its most
1 Professor Baldwin, for example. His address 'Selective Thinking' (Psy-
chological Review, January, 1898, reprinted in his volume, 'Development and
Evolution ' ) seems to me an unusually well written pragmatic manifesto.
Nevertheless in 'The Limits of Pragmatism' (ibid., January, 1904), he (much
less clearly) joins in the attack.
2 The ethical changes, it seems to me, are beautifully made evident in Pro-
fessor Dewey's series of articles, which will never get the attention they deserve
till they are printed in a book. I mean : ' The Significance of Emotions,' Psy-
chological Review, Vol. II., 13; 'The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,' ibid.,
III., 357; 'Psychology and Social Practice,' ibid., VII., 105; 'Interpretation of
Savage Mind,' ibid., IX., 217; 'Green's Theory of the Moral Motive/ Philosoph-
ical Review, Vol. I., 593; ' Self-realization as the Moral Ideal,' ibid., II., 652;
'The Psychology of Effort,' ibid., VI.. 43; 'The Evolutionary Method as Ap-
plied to Morality/ ibid., XI., 107, 353; 'Evolution and Ethics/ Monist, Vol.
VIII.. 321 ; to mention only a few.
113
114 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
systematic advocates, Schiller and Dewey, have published fragment-
ary programs only; and its bearing on many vital philosophic prob-
lems has not been traced except by adversaries who, scenting heresies
in advance, have showered blows on doctrines subjectivism and
scepticism, for example that no good humanist has entertained.
By their still greater, reticences, the anti-humanists have, in turn,
perplexed the humanists. Much of the controversy has involved
the word ' truth. ' It is always good in debate to know your adver-
sary 's point of view authentically. But the critics of humanism
never define exactly what the word 'truth' signifies when they use it
themselves. The humanists have to construct its meaning; and the
result has doubtless been much beating of the air. Add to all this
great individual differences in both camps, and it becomes clear that
nothing is so urgently needed, at the stage which things have reached
at present, as a sharper definition by each side of its central point
of view.
Whoever will contribute any touch of sharpness will help us to
make sure of what's what and who is who. Any one can contribute
such a definition, and, without it, no one knows exactly where he
stands. If I offer my own provisional definition of humanism now
and here, others may improve it, some adversary may be led to define
his own creed more sharply by the contrast, and a certain quickening
of the crystallization of general opinion may result.
The essential service of humanism, as I conceive the situation, is
to have seen that though one part of our experience may lean upon
another part to make it what it is in any one of several aspects in
which it may be considered, experience as a whole is self-containing
and leans on nothing.
Such a formula needs abundant explication to make it unambig-
uous. It seems, at first sight, to confine itself to denying theism and
pantheism. But, in fact, it need not deny either; everything would
depend on the exegesis; and if the formula ever became canonical,
it would certainly develop both right-wing and left-wing interpreters.
I myself read humanism theistically and pluralistically. If there
be a 6k)d, he is no absolute All-Experiencer, but simply the experi-
encer of widest finite conscious span. Read thus, humanism is for.
me a religion susceptible of reasoned defense, though I am well
aware how many minds there are to whom it can appeal religiously
only when it has been monistically translated. Ethically the plural-
istic form of it takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any
other philosophy I know of it being essentially a social philosophy,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 115
a philosophy of 'co,' in which conjunctions do the work. But my
primary reason for advocating it in philosophical journals is its
matchless intellectual economy. It gets rid, not only of the stand-
ing 'problems' that monism engenders ('problem of evil,' 'problem
of freedom,' and the like), but of other metaphysical mysteries and
paradoxes as well.
It gets rid, for example, of the whole agnostic controversy, by
refusing to entertain the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality at all.
It gets rid of any need for an Absolute of the Bradleyan type
(avowedly sterile for intellectual purposes) by insisting that the
conjunctive relations found within experience are faultlessly real.
It gets rid of the need of an Absolute of the Roycean type (similarly
sterile) by its pragmatic treatment of the problem of knowledge,
a treatment of which I have already given a version in two very
inadequate articles in this JOURNAL for last year. 3 As the views of
knowledge, reality and truth imputed to humanism have been those
so far most fiercely attacked, it is in regard to these ideas that a
sharpening of focus seems most urgently required. I proceed there-
fore to bring the views which / impute to humanism in these respects
into focus as briefly as I can.
II
If the central humanistic insight, which I have already printed
in italics, be accepted, it will follow that, if there be any such thing
at all as knowing, the knower and the object known must both be
portions of experience. One part of experience must, therefore,
either
(1) Know another part of experience in other words, parts
must, as Professor Woodbridge says, 4 represent one another instead
of representing realities outside of 'consciousness' this case is that
of conceptual knowledge ; or else
(2) They must simply exist as so many ultimate thats or facts
of being, in the first instance ; and then, as a secondary complication,
and without doubling up its entitative singleness, any one and the
same that must figure both as a thing known and as a knowledge
of the thing, by reason of two divergent kinds of context into which,
in the general course of experience, it gets woven. 8
This second case is that of sense-perception. There is a stage of
thought that goes beyond common sense, and of it I shall say more
* ' Does Consciousness Exist ? ' and ' A World of Pure Experience/ Vol.
L, 447. 533, 561.
4 In Science, November 4, 1904, p. 599.
"This statement is probably excessively obscure to any one who has not
read my two articles above referred to, especially the first one, ' Does Conscious-
ness Exist 1 '
116 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
presently; but the common-sense stage is a perfectly definite halt-
ing-place of thought, primarily for purposes of action ; and, so long
as we are on the common-sense stage of thought, object and subject
fuse in the fact of 'presentation' or sense-perception the pen and
hand which I now see writing, for example, are the physical realities
which those words designate. In this case there is no self-trans-
cendency implied in the knowing. Humanism, here, is only a more
comminuted Identitatsphilosophie,
In case (1), on the contrary, the representative experience does
transcend itself in knowing the other experience that is its object.
No one can talk of the knowledge of the one by the other without
seeing them as numerically distinct entities, of which the one lies
beyond the other and away from it, along some direction and with
some interval, that can be definitely named. But, if the talker be a
humanist, he must also see this distance-interval concretely and
pragmatically, and confess it to consist of other intervening experi-
encesof possible ones, at all events, if not of actual. To call my
present idea of my dog, for example, cognitive of the real dog means
that, as the actual tissue of experience is constituted, the idea is
capable of leading into a chain of other experiences on my part
that go from next to next and terminate at last in vivid sense-
perceptions of a jumping, barking, hairy body. Those are the
real dog, the dog's full presence, for my common-sense. If the sup-
posed talker is a profound philosopher, although they may not be
the real dog for him, they mean the real dog, that real dog for him
being a lot of atoms, say, or of mind-stuff, that lie where the sense-
perceptions lie in his experience as well as in my own.
Ill
The philosopher here stands for the stage of thought that goes
beyond the stage of common-sense ; and the difference is simply that
he 'interpolates' and 'extrapolates,' where common-sense does not.
For common-sense, two men see the same identical real dog. Philos-
ophy, noting actual differences in their perceptions, points out the
duality of these latter, and interpolates something between them as
a more real terminus first, organs, viscera, etc.; next, cells; then,
ultimate atoms; lastly, mind-stuff perhaps. The original sense-
termini of the two men, instead of coalescing with each other and
with the real dog-object, as at first supposed, are thus held by philos-
ophers to be separated by invisible realities with which, at most,
they are conterminous.
Abolish, now, one of the percipients, and the interpolation changes
into 'extrapolation.' The sense-terminus of the remaining per-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 117
cipient is regarded by the philosopher as not quite reaching reality.
He has only carried the procession of experiences, the philosopher
thinks, to a definite, because practical, halting-place somewhere on
the way towards an absolute truth that lies beyond.
The humanist sees all the time, however, that there is none but a
pragmatic transcendency even about the more absolute realities thus
conjectured or believed in. They keep to the original common-
sense schematism and simply carry it a little farther out. They
transcend sense-perception in no other sense than that in which this
latter transends conception. The viscera and cells are only percepts
following in order upon the hairy body. The atoms again, though
we may never attain to human means of perceiving them, are still
defined perceptually. The mind-stuff itself is conceived of as a
kind of experience ; and it is possible to frame the hypothesis (such
hypotheses can by no logic be excluded from philosophy) of two
knowers of a piece of mind-stuff and the mind-stuff itself becoming
'confluent' at the moment at which our imperfect knowing might
pass into knowing of a completed type. Even so do we habitually
represent our two perceptions and the real dog as confluent, though
only provisionally, and for the common-sense stage of thought. If
my pen be inwardly made of mind-stuff, there is no confluence now
between that mind-stuff and my visual perception of the pen. But
conceivably there might come to be ; for, in the case of my hand, the
visual sensations and the inward feelings of the hand, its mind-stuff,
so to speak, are even now as confluent as any two things can be.
There is, thus, no breach in humanistic epistemology. Whether
knowledge be taken as ideally perfect, or only as sufficiently true for
practice, it is hung on one continuous scheme. Reality, howsoever
remote, is always defined as a terminus within the general possibili-
ties of experience ; and what knows it is defined as an experience
that 'represents' it, in the sense of being substitutable for it in our
thinking because it leads to the same associates, or in the sense of
'pointing to it' through a chain of other experiences that either
intervene or may intervene.
Absolute reality here functions for philosophy just as sensation
functions for common-sense. Both are to be conceived as experiental
termini, actual or possible, sensation being only the terminus at
which the practical man habitually stops. These termini, for the
practical and the theoretical stages of thought respectively, are
self-supporting. They are not 'true of anything else, they simply
are, are real. They 'lean on nothing,' as my italicized formula
said. Rather does the whole fabric of experience lean on them,
just as the whole fabric of the solar system, including many relative
positions, leans, for its absolute position in space, on any one of
118 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
its constituent stars. Here, again, one gets a new Identitdtsphilos-
ophie in pluralistic form.
IV
If I have succeeded in making this at all clear (though I fear
that brevity and abstractness between them may have made me fail),
the reader will see that the 'truth' of our mental operations must
always be an intra-experiential affair. A conception is reckoned true
by common sense when it can be made to lead to a sensation. The
sensation is held to be provisionally true by the philosopher just
in so far as it covers (abuts at, or includes the place of) a still
more absolutely real experience, in the possibility of which to some
remoter experient the philosopher finds reason to believe.
Meanwhile what actually does count for true to any individual
trower, whether he be philosopher or common man, is always a result
of his apperceptions. If a novel experience, conceptual or per-
ceptual, contradict too emphatically our preexistent system of
beliefs, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is treated as false.
Only when the older and the newer experiences are congruous
enough to mutually apperceive and modify each other, does what
we treat as an advance in truth result. Having written of this
point in an article in reply to Mr. Joseph's criticism of my human-
ism in the January Mind, which article I hope may itself appear
in Mind ere long, I will say no more about truth here, but refer the
reader to that review. In any case, it is certain that truth consists in
no relation between our experiences and something archetypal or
transexperiential. Should we ever reach absolutely terminal experi-
ences, experiences in which we all agreed, which were superseded by
no revised continuations, these would not be true, they would simply
be, and be indeed the angles, corners, and linchpins of all reality,
on which the truth of everything else would be stayed. Only such
other things as led to these by satisfactory conjunctions would be
true. Satisfactory connection of some sort with such termini is all
that the word ' truth ' means. On the common-sense stage of thought
sense-presentations serve as such termini. Our ideas and concepts
and scientific theories pass for true only so far as they harmoniously
lead back to the world of sense.
I hope that many humanists will endorse this attempt of mine
to trace the more essential features of that way of viewing things.
I feel almost certain that Messrs. Dewey and Schiller will do so.
If the attackers will also take some slight account of it, it may be
that discussion will be a little less wide of the mark than it has
hitherto been.
WILLIAM JAMES.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 119
THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 1
r I ^HE motives which influence one interested in definitions to at-
4- tempt a definition of consciousness are at present so obvious
that I shall not stop to discuss them. I should like, however, by
way of introduction, to indicate the point of departure from which
the definition should, in my opinion, be attempted.
Locke and Kant conceived consciousness to be a kind of re-
ceptacle or receptivity set over against the things which were to
give it a content. Huxley in his essay on 'Sensation and the
Sensiferous Organs' appears to have a similar conception. Indeed,
it is mainly after this manner that consciousness has been conceived
and discussed in modern theories. Yet it seems to be quite impos-
sible to find out anything verifiable about consciousness from the
point of view of this conception, because we are not able to produce
an instance of the distinction between consciousness and other things
which it involves. Consciousness is never discovered as one thing
set over against other things which are not already its content.
Consequently it seems futile to suppose that it is, and then proceed
to build up a theory about it. As it is found to exist only when
it has a content, I shall take my point of departure from that fact,
and speak of the type of existence involved as 'objects in conscious-
ness.'
No doubt this type of existence has had a history. It may have
been much simpler than it is at present. But what it was like in its
simpler form is so clearly an inference from what it is in its de-
veloped form, that I can not regard the inference as the proper point
of departure for a definition of the type of existence on which the
inference depends. I therefore dismiss consideration of the condi-
tions out of which our conscious experience may have developed.
I take objects in consciousness or consciousness of objects as just
that kind of existence which each one can identify and analyze for
himself as readily as he would analyze a plant or a rock.
The objects of consciousness may be as varied and as variable
as you please. They may be men and trees, reds and what we call
mere ideas, present facts and remembered happenings, reasonings
and discussions, pains, pleasures, emotions and volitions; they may
even constitute what we call the self: but all, without exception,
stand out as the objects of which there is consciousness, but never
as the consciousness itself. Just as objects in the light are not
the light, so objects in consciousness are not the consciousness. There
is thus a distinction between consciousness and its objects. The
1 Read before the American Philosophical Association, December 29, 1904.
120 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
distinction has often been denied on the ground that we can not
distinguish in a given perception between object and perceiving.
Perhaps we can not, but we do distinguish between different per-
ceptions. It is this fact, that different perceptions or objects exist
together and are yet distinguished as different, which constitutes a
recognizable and definable distinction between consciousness and its
objects. It is the distinction involved in the existence of different
things together.
Such a type of existence is very common. The three most
noticeable instances of it, other than consciousness, are things in
space, events in time, and individuals in species. Space is distin-
guished from the things in it, not by taking these things in isolation,
but by taking them together as different things in space. The same
is true of time and species. We have, in these instances, a distinc-
tion like that between consciousness and its objects. Consciousness
should, therefore, be defined as the same general type of existence
as space, time or species. Its nature is akin to theirs.
Some suggestive conclusions may be drawn from this fact which
throw a clarifying light on several controverted questions. The
relation of the world of which there is consciousness to consciousness
involves the same kind of problems as the relation of objects in space
to space, or the events in time to time. We do not ask if space and
time affect their objects causally. We should not raise the ques-
tion of the causal efficiency of consciousness. We do not ask how
things get into space, so we should not ask 'how objects get into con-
sciousness; if we thereby imply, in any way, the previous separate
existence of the two. Just as it is possible to find out about things
much that is interesting which does not depend on the fact that
they are in space, so also it is possible to find out much that is
interesting about objects which does not depend on the fact that they
are in consciousness. And just as we may have a body of knowledge
built up from the fact that things are in space, so we may have a
body of knowledge built up from the fact that objects are in con-
sciousness. Finally one who has recognized that in consciousness
we have simply an instance of the existence of different things
together, will not engage in the controversies which are suggested
by such terms as 'automatism,' ' interactionism, ' 'parallelism,'
'agnosticism' and their kindred. Indeed, he will have to renounce
many so-called metaphysical pleasures.
The type of existence to which consciousness belongs makes it
evident at once that there is little propriety in speaking of objects
as 'states of consciousness.' So to characterize them involves a
deal of speculation which has ultimately to reckon with the dif-
ference between consciousness and its objects, and account for it.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 121
I am, by no means, immediately aware of objects as states of con-
sciousness any more than I am aware of things as states of space.
Thus the axiom of Locke that 'the mind in all its thoughts and
reasonings hath no other immediate object but its own ideas,' an
axiom which has been the central principle of most modern philos-
ophy through Hegel and since, has at best only a highly speculative
warrant.
When things exist together, that which constitutes their being
together is some sort of continuum. Consciousness may be defined,
therefore, as a kind of continuum of objects. From this definition
an important aspect of consciousness can be deduced, namely,
the isolation of any individual consciousness. Two continuums
of the same kind can not be parts of each other. They stand over
against each other as closed systems, so to speak. The spaces and
times of our dreams are not interchangeable with those of our
waking moments. Two species are not interchangeable. Two
consciousnesses also are not interchangeable. They refuse to be sys-
tematized or even grouped together under a common continuum of
the same sort. "We can not relate them to each other, therefore, in
the ways we relate different objects to each other. We can relate
them only indirectly, never directly. Another's consciousness is
never given as a part of mine or related to mine in anything like
the way his body is related to my body. I get into relations with
his consciousness indirectly by means of his body. While his body
may be in my consciousness, his consciousness never is, but is in-
ferred by me to be in his body. The necessity of thus indirectly
relating different consciousnesses to each other, or, what is the same
thing, of relating the objects of one consciousness to a second con-
sciousness is the foundation on which most theories of perception are
based. The expectation of ever getting rid of this indirection by
means of such a theory seems to me, therefore, to be without justifi-
cation. If this is true, all speculation about the nature of conscious-
ness which is based on theories of perception is in great danger of
arriving at no verifiable results.
Besides the type of isolation just noted, consciousness has other
characters, such as infinity, which are common to all continuums.
I pass these by, for the present, in order to note the distinctive char-
acter of that form of continuity or connection which we have when
objects are in consciousness. In this form, they become grouped
and systematized in a manner quite different from their grouping in
any other form. They become representative of each other. Note
that it is of each other that they become representative, but not of
anything else. They are not ideas which represent things, or phe-
nomena which represent noumena, or things in the body which repre-
122 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sent things outside, or states of consciousness which represent an
external world. It is each other 'that they represent, as bread repre-
sents nourishment. Because of such representation, all our knowl-
edge is built up ; and I am not acquainted with any body of verifi-
able and generally accepted knowledge which is built up in any
other way. All science deals solely with the systematization of
this representative value of the things with which it is concerned.
The peculiar way in which consciousness connects the objects
in it is, thus, the way of knowledge actual or possible. Objects are
connected in consciousness in such a w y ay that they become known.
It is important to note that, while this is so, the knowledge is wholly
determined in its content by the relations of the objects in con-
sciousness to one another, not by the relation of consciousness to
the objects. This latter may be the relation which makes the knowl-
edge possible, but it is not the relation which determines what the
knowledge is. In other words, we know what our objects are and
what we may expect from them, not at all by considering their
relation to consciousness, but to one another. The relation to con-
sciousness is the same with each one of them, expressed by the
preposition in, and is, therefore, not a distinguishing relation.
Whatever we find out about the relation of objects is found out
from them and from no other source. Their esse is not percipi.
We may, if we will, identify their perceived existence with their
percipi, but this identification would have no distinguishing signifi-
cance. What they are as perceived existences, what relations still
subsist between them, the laws of their occurrence, all such things
are to be found out by considering them themselves, and in no other
way. The fact, therefore, that knowledge of what objects are de-
pends on the fact that they are in consciousness, in no way deter-
mines the nature of objects. We may say, consequently, that the
peculiar form of connection or continuity which consciousness con-
stitutes between objects does not affect their nature, but simply
makes them known or knowable, and known with all their variety
of distinctions from a thing to a thought.
That form of connection or continuum which we call conscious-
ness is thus distinguished by the fact that it makes knowledge pos-
sible, and this knowledge, so far as its content is concerned, and
that is so far as it is knowledge of anything, is determined not by
consciousness, but by something else. The limits of knowledge
would thus appear beyond our power to determine. Of course we
can say, in a general way, that where we have no objects there we
can have no knowledge, but that does not mean very much. We
constantly find out new and surprising things about our objects, and
to this sort of discovery it is impossible to set a limit. Just as con-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 123
sciousness in no way determines what we discover, it determines
in no way the limits of what we can discover. There is thus no such
thing in the realm of knowledge as an impossibility which con-
sciousness determines. Impossibilities, inconsistencies, contradic-
tions, absurdities, just as much as concrete information, are deter-
mined not by the fact that we are conscious of objects, but by the
fact that objects are what we know. It is meaningless, therefore, to
state that matter can not think because that is unthinkable, unless
we mean that we have actually discovered in the nature of matter
something which we know must exclude thought. It is quite mean-
ingless to urge that life could arise only from life, if our urging of
this is supported by an appeal to mere thinkableness. Whether life
can arise from anything else than life can never be determined by
any 'must' or 'must not,' but only when we actually find out whether
it can. In general, just because consciousness is the determining
factor in the existence of knowledge, there is< no reason to conclude
that it is in any way a determining factor in the content or limita-
tions of knowledge. The necessity we are under to know something
never determines in any way the character of what we know.
Knowledge may be a synthesis or a construction, but what it syn-
thesizes or constructs, together with the principles and laws of the
synthesis or construction is discovered to depend not on the fact
of consciousness as such. Clearly this seems very much like saying
that in knowledge we have revealed in a very real way that which
is itself independent of consciousness and knowledge. Just because
we find the content and limits of our knowledge never taking their
coloring from the fact that we can or must know, we seem warranted
in concluding that consciousness and knowledge do actually disclose
to us that which is in no way dependent on consciousness or knowl-
edge for its existence or character. Knowledge is, thus, palpably
realistic.
The most crucial instance of this realism is doubtless the
discovery which we make from a study of objects in conscious-
ness, namely, that consciousness itself is a dependent existence, that
it does not exist under certain conditions, but under these conditions
disappears and becomes impossible. Of course it is not necessary to
detail the steps in this discovery. It is sufficient to point out that
it is made as all other discoveries are made. I learn that there has
got to be a certain kind of organism in order to have consciousness,
just as I learn that there must be eyes in order to see, or moisture
in order to have things wet. There is nothing unique regarding this
discovery about consciousness. We make it by observation, experi-
ment and inference, just as we make other discoveries.
If consciousness begins to exist not only at some point in the
124 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
individual's life, but also at different points in his life, and is,
thus, an interrupted existence, it appears to be quite impossible to
regard it as a possession of the individual, something in him pos-
sibly, situated in his head perhaps, and affected by outer or other
things. An individual may be affected, and, as a result, be con-
scious; but that this result should come about by operations upon
his consciousness which, admittedly, does not yet exist, would seem
to be a most untenable position. The notion that an individual
becomes conscious because he already has a consciousness subject
to operations upon it, appears to involve the existence of conscious-
ness prior to these operations and independent of them, possibly
independent of the individual himself. No satisfactory evidence
for such an existence has been produced.
1 find myself in hearty agreement with many recent discussions
of consciousness, especially with that of Professor James, which aim
to take consciousness out of the realm of terms and put it in the
realm of relations. But there are some points of disagreement
which I should like to note. These recent views aim to define con-
sciousness as, in some way, a function within experience whereby
experience itself becomes differentiated into the objective and the
subjective, into the physical and the psychical, into the objects
of the outer world and the events of a personal biography. That
such a differentiation arises in the course of experience is, I sup-
pose, beyond question. But I have been unable to discover that the
differentiation throws light on the nature of consciousness. The
differentiation simply divides the field of consciousness into two
parts, but does not isolate a separate field in which alone con-
sciousness is found. Physical objects just as much as personal his-
tories may be objects in consciousness. Both are known; and to
know the physical world does not convert it into autobiography.
The element of experience which in one connection figures as a thing,
appears to me never to figure in another as an idea; and no matter
in what direction it figures, it is an element of which we are con-
scious so long as it remains an element of experience. The dif-
ferentiation in question thus appears simply to reveal between our
objects one of the distinctions of which we are conscious. 2 Further'
more, the term 'experience' which occurs so frequently in recent
discussions, appears to me so shot through with the implications of
consciousness, that it obscures the problem at issue. Objects, when
in consciousness, may be regarded as elements of experience, but
this experience, like consciousness, has discoverable conditions of
2 In other words, it appears to me impossible to define consciousness by
means of the distinction between ' the physical ' and ' the psychical.'
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 125
existence and can hardly be regarded as the fabric out of which
it is itself composed.
The conclusions I should like to draw from the preceding con-
siderations are more negative than positive. That is, I should lay
greater stress on what consciousness does not appear to be, than
on my positively characterizing, as a continuum, that type of con-
nection which it constitutes between objects. The facts at our com-
mand do not warrant us in concluding that consciousness is a kind
of receptacle, situated where you will, into which things somehow
get in the form of ideas or mental states. Things, or a part of
them, may be in consciousness, but they are in it as things are in
space. From such a parallel we are to find the clue to the interpre-
tation of the preposition in. We have no right to conclude that
consciousness constitutes a series of existences parallel to other
existences, no right to conclude that the objects in consciousness
are ideas of things outside, and no right to conclude that the objects
in consciousness are states of consciousness. But we do, apparently,
have abundant right to conclude that, when consciousness exists,
a world hitherto unknown has become known. This does not mean
that the world hitherto unknown has been transformed into ideas,
but that this world has been illuminated, as it were, by consciousness,
that it has been connected up in a new way. The fact that we
should be able to discover the conditions of such a connection is very
strong evidence for the position I have taken, for this fact dis-
closes the very simple truth that the conditions under which a world
becomes known are, themselves, conditions which form a part of
the events of that world. For clarifying this general position and
to emphasize the fact that consciousness is only a form of connection
of objects, a relation between them, I find the conception of a con-
tinuum useful and suggestive. It is useful because it correlates
consciousness with facts of a similar general nature. It is sug-
gestive because a study of the nature of continuity may lead to an
important understanding of the principles of connection which unite
the things of the world.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL : TAURELLUS
TN 1606 Nicolaus Taurellus, sometimes styled 'the first philos-
-*- opher of Germany,' 1 died of the plague at Altdorf. For more
than thirty years he had preached a reformed philosophy with all
1 ' Nicolaus Taurellus, der erste deutsche Philosoph. Aus der Quellen
dargestellt von Dr. F. X. Schmid aus Schwarzenburg,' Neue Ausgabe, Erlangen,
1864, pp. x + 80.
126 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the fervor with which his fellow Protestants were preaching their
Eeformed Theology, but he had found few to listen and apparently
none to believe. His own attempts at philosophical construction
had earned him but contempt and professional ostracism; they had
not, even in that age of controversy, been honored with the public
criticism to which in his youth he had looked forward. 2 A genera-
tion after his death he seems to have been either forgotten or delib-
erately ignored, and in the second third of the eighteenth century,
when the followers of Leibnitz endeavored to revive the memory of
the man whom their master had termed ' The Scaliger of Germany, '
they found that his numerous works had become so rare as to be in
some cases unobtainable.
Copies of two of these works have recently come into my hands,
and one at least possesses no little interest for the curious.
Taurellus's first book, 'Philosophise Triumphus,' was printed in
1573, when the author was but twenty-six years of age. Its leading
thought, that Truth is one, whether in philosophy or in theology,
had occurred to him some seven years before. He was then a student
at Tubingen, taking part in the seminar conducted by one of the
most eminent Aristotelians of the day, Jacob Scheck. 3 The copy in
my possession is probably of an earlier, issue than that described by
Schmid, in that the date given by him, 'Anno 1573, Mense Sep-
tembri, ' is not found on the title page. But its peculiar interest lies
in the fact that it was Taurellus's gift to Scheck, a visible link, as it
were, between the old order and the new. The inner side of the
cover bears in a clear, bold hand the words :
Clarissimo medicinae
Doctori, nee non Philo-
sophise professori celeber-
rimo D. Jacobo Schec-
kio domino suo et
praeceptori colendissimo
Basilea D. misit
Author
2 ' Philosophia Triumphus,' Prsef ., p. 8. " Haec me sane moverunt ut
Philosophiam suis repurgare conatus sim erroribus, quod si non ita feliciter
successit, tamen aequi bonique consules, amice lector, occasionem forsitan offer-
rent aliqui plenius ut ipsa demonstretur. Ter sunt a me multo correcta labore,
nee adeo tamen arrident ut ipse mihi videar satis fecisse. Ni sperassem
aliquot esse futuros qui se nobis sint opposituri, quorum materiam arguments
suppeditabunt, semel atque iterum eadem redidissem longe perfectiora." (Here
and elsewhere I have modernized spelling and punctuation and have written out
contractions in full.)
*'Brucker,' ed. Ha, Vol. IV., p. 295, '(Schegkius) Germanorum Peripateti-
corum princeps sua setate habitus est.'
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 127
The book contains also three brief notes, written in a most minute
and much-abbreviated script, of a type common in the first half of
the sixteenth century, probably the hand of Scheck (b. 1511, d.
1587). The first is on the margin of page 8 of the Epistola Dedi-
catoria, where Taurellus states his main thesis and relates the cir-
cumstances under which it was suggested to him:
(p. 7) "Cum Tubingge ante septennium Philosophise studiis in-
cumberem, disputationibus (ut moris est) exercebar quae turn tem-
poris isthic maxime profecto vigebant. lis ego si quisquam alius
summopere delectabar; unum displicuit (quaa data fuit haec medi-
tandi nobis occasio) quod, cum (et vere, quidem) philosophica Theo-
logicis adjungerentur, hae voces hie inde volitarent : Philosophice dis-
putamus, non Theologice; disserimus Astr.onomice, non Physice.
Primum enim considerare coepi duplexne posset unius esse rei veri-
tas," etc. The underline is in ink, and on the margin one reads,
"Multa sunt in schola philosophice admittenda quae in Theologia
repulsari patimur."
In the Section, 'De Viribus Humanse Mentis' Taurellus endeavors
to reconcile the facts of heredity with theology's claim that the soul
is given of God. The blood supplies the matter, the 'spirits' supply
the form or life, the life is inseparable from the soul; hence "simul
animam ex innata seminis utriusque vi assiduaque spirituum vitalium
infusione fieri judicamus. Haec autem generatio animalis est, non
naturalis, nee corpoream aut naturalem ideo animam esse consequitur
quod a semine ipsam oriri statuamus, cum sanguinis atque spirituum
substantia diversa sit, ut quae ab utroque pr.ocedunt vere separari
possint." Upon this the same hand notes: "Vult igitur doctissimus
hie vir animam spissari e materia. Et siquis objiciat animam esse
incorpoream, respondit earn non fieri naturaliter sed modo quodam
inferiore quern nominare possis animalem. Et non dicit quale sit,
cuilibet mediocriter ingenioso cogitandum relinquens. "
On the inner, side of the cover at the end of the book, Scheck, if
Scheck it be, has expressed in one brief sentence his position as
against that of his sometime pupil: "Veritas una est, verum non
unus seientise modus."
In his later years Taurellus was wont to amuse himself and his
friends by embodying in Latin verse the prudential and moral reflec-
tions suggested by commonplace incidents. In 1595 he published a
little volume containing one hundred and thirty-two 'Emblemata
Physico-Ethica, ' eighty-one of which were illustrated by rude wood-
cuts. As no printer, would undertake the publication of the book,
some of his friends paid a part of the cost, each selecting the poem
that pleased his fancy and paying for the wood-cut that accompanied
it. Most of these cuts bear the names and many the arms of the
128 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
friends that had severally subscribed for them. Of this first edition
but few copies were printed. Another, containing one hundred and
sixteen cuts, appeared in 1602, and yet another in 1617.
My copy is of the first edition and is also a presentation copy
from Taurellus. On the reverse of the title six lines of MS. had
been thoroughly blotted out. Careful erasure brought the greater
part of the inscription to light:
(Nobilissimo et eru)dito v(ir)o D.
Jacobo Pomero senatori Noric.
prudentissimo ( )
doio suo et r(ectori)
Clar(issimo)
dd(edit A)u(thor).
To Jacobus Pomerus the thirtieth emblem is dedicated. 'Pomerus'
is probably the Latinized form of Baumgartner, a family that long
took a leading part in the affairs of Niirnberg. Of this Jacob Poemer.
or Baumgartner I have not been able to learn more than is given
by Jocher ('Gelehrten-Lexicon,' ed. 1747) in the brief biography of
his son Albert Poemer (b. 1597). Jacob was 'Rathsherr' in Niirn-
berg and 'scholarcha' at Altdorf, i. e., Kector of the Academy, after-
wards the University, of Altdorf, in which Taurellus was Professor
of Medicine from 1580 until his death.
WILLIAM ROMAINE NEWBOLD.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
DISCUSSION
'PURE EXPERIENCE' AND THE EXTERNAL WORLD
r I TEAT knowledge as a self-transcendent function, or as a refer-
-J- ence to a reality beyond itself, can be reduced to terms of
immediate experience is a conviction that has animated many a
writer on philosophical topics. It is the source of Hume's protest
against the complacent pretensions of rationalism, it is responsible
for the 'permanent possibilities of sensation' advocated by John
Stuart Mill, it motivates the opposition of neo-Kantianism against
the claims of an experience-transcending function such as the trans-
cendental ego, and it lies at the basis of phenomenalistic doctrines
such as those of Karl Pearson and Ernst Mach. In the 'radical
empiricism' of Professor James appears the latest instance of this
theory, in revised and corrected form. Nearly every shade of doc-
trine, from common-sense dualism to absolute idealism, involves this
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 129
objective reference and is thus rendered ungeniessbar to the thor-
oughgoing empiricist; and so it is proposed to construct the world
out of 'pure experience/ thus virtually eliminating this objection-
able feature of external reference.
In this paper it is not proposed to determine whether the concept
of pure experience has any validity whatever, or, more specifically,
whether on the basis of epistemology we are entitled to postulate
pure experience ; the purpose is the more limited one of advancing
certain reasons why the attempt to reduce everything to this one
category must be considered futile. These reasons reduce down to
what the writer considers to be the main difficulty of the position,
viz., its solipsistic tendency. I shall confine myself to the position
as stated by James in recent numbers of this JOURNAL (I., Nos. 18,
20, 21).
What is pure experience? If this question, says James, means
to inquire what sort of general 'stuff' constitutes experience, it rests
upon a misapprehension. " It is made of that, of just what appears,
of space, of intensity, of flatness, brownness, heaviness, or what not ' '
(p. 487). "The instant field of the present is at all times what I
call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either
object or subject as yet. For the time being it is plain, unqualified
actuality or existence, a simple that" (p. 485). Whether such a bit
of pure experience shall be classified as a subjective state or as a
physical object depends entirely upon the context in which it is
taken. Thus the perception or image of a tree that has been blown
down, if taken as coming in at the end of a series of volitions, emo-
tions, recollections, fancies, etc., is classified as a subjective state;
if taken as a member of the series in which wind, rain, thunder, etc.
all reducible to pure experience form a part, a series which if
continued would involve the gradual disintegration of the uprooted
tree, then it is classified as a physical object. Subjective state and
physical object, then, are but classificatory terms, symbolizing the
fact that there exist series or lines of continuously joined experiences
which intersect each other at various points.
The first difficulty which I wish to urge is that the theory makes
no provision for the knowing of this second or 'objective' series.
How can we become aware of its existence, without introducing an
element essentially alien to pure experience ? To recur to the former
illustration, we may have seen the tree before the storm, we may
see it as it lies prostrate, and we may visit it from time to time while
the process of decay is going on. But however often we may cross
the objective line, the intersections lie upon the subjective line as
well, and that they simultaneously form part of a second line could
not, it would seem, ever occur to us, because this second line is not
130 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
given completely. To argue that these fragmentary parts of the
second line betray their peculiar affinities or relationships in the fact
that they have laws or modes of behavior of their own, would be-
token a misconception of the point at issue. We can not appeal to
their orderliness or to their 'objective' characteristics of whatever
sort ; for the images or ideas in which such qualities are known are
not primarily representations of other realities, but are themselves
bits of pure experience, and so must be assigned to the 'subjective'
order. If I leave my room when the fire is burning brightly in the
grate, and return to find it burning low, the thought of a series of
continuous perceptions uniting the two perceptions of the fire simply
comes in at the end as an additional item of pure experience, and
in no wise connects the two perceptions in question, separated as
they are by an interval of time and by a stretch of more or less ir-
relevant intervening experiences. On the basis of this theory there
seems to be no room for any other interpretation. 'Pure' experi-
ence and undefiled might reasonably be expected to keep itself un-
spotted from the vulgar assumption of an external world.
That this criticism would apply to the account given by an atom-
istic psychology would probably be pretty generally admitted, but in
this case it would no doubt be maintained that the conception of
experience as continuous and the recognition of 'feelings of relation'
make all the difference in the world. "With regard to the matter in
hand, it appears to me that these addenda and corrections make no
difference whatever. Unless the factor of objective reference is in-
troduced de novo, the philosophy of pure experience must inevitably
end in solipsism. That this implication is not realized is due to the
fact that the theory plays fast and loose with the concept of objective
reference. On the one hand it is insisted that experience never
transcends that which is present to consciousness. The 'pointing'
of thought to realities not present is reduced to a 'procession of
mental associates and motor consequences'; it simply indicates that
if both the present conscious content and the subsequent states were
visible to an outside observer it would be seen that the present con-
tent will, as a matter of fact, lead continuously to a 'remoter state
of mind, which either acts upon the reality or resembles it. ' On the
other hand, however, the feelings of relation are put to uses which
virtually enable the individual to transcend the immediate present.
The feelings of relation are represented as running out into the
fringe, as leading us on, as 'pointing' in a given direction, much as
a compass points to the north, yet never gets out of the box that
encloses it. The thought thus never transcends itself, yet it feels
the 'pull' of the enf ringing setting, and it follows on, in this direc-
tion or that, as a blind man responds to the pull on the string by his
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 131
dog. In this ingenious representation the spatial metaphor, of a
relation reaching out, pointing towards, leading on, becomes, by the
irrepressible suggestion which it conveys of a beyond, a workable
substitute for, or rather a disguised form of, the objective reference
which was rejected at the outset. The feelings of relation, which
are given in the specious present only in connection with their terms,
are by an unwarrantable process made to connect the specious pres-
ent as a whole with other contents not present to consciousness. The
living unity of experience, upon which James insists so effectively
as against atomistic psychology, is broken up into abstract parts, and
the feelings of relation, the existence of which depends upon the
existence of their terms, are represented as detached from these
terms. So long as a relation is given with its terms the whole is a
matter of the immediately present, and there is no suggestion of a
beyond. It is only when these feelings are brought in as apart from
their terms that the quasi-r.eference is made to seem possible. This
isolation of the feelings is accomplished by representing the unitary
conscious state, which cognizes the relation and its terms in one
indivisible act, as made up of three successive and hence isolable
states, one of which is the feeling of relation. To illustrate, in the
'Principles of Psychology,' the chapter on the 'Stream of Thought'
maintains that the experience of 'thunder-breaking-in-upon-silence'
presents the two terms, thunder and silence, together with the rela-
tion of contrast, to one indivisible pulse of consciousness, or single
segment of the mental stream. But in the chapter on 'Discrimina-
tion, ' ^experiences of this sort, stated in generalized form, are said
to present "first ( m,' then 'difference,' then ' n-different-from-m.'
The several thoughts, however, to which these three several objects
are revealed, are three ordinary 'segments' of the mental 'stream.' ' n
Previous experience no doubt does affect subsequent experience, but
unless this modification takes the form of relations cognized, however
dimly, as relations, we are shut in to solipsism beyond all hope of
deliverance. That they can be so cognized, detached from their
terms, may be deemed possible from the standpoint of atomism, but
is not possible from the standpoint of a psychology like that of
James.
In the second place, does James succeed in providing a numer-
ically identical world for the various percipients? The temptation
to make an advance on his 'exposed flank' in his discussion of the
' conterminousness of different minds' (p. 564) is too strong to be
resisted. Unless each percipient is to dwell in a world apart, there
must be points in his experience which are not simply precisely
similar to, but numerically identical with, corresponding points in
1 Compare, ' Principles of Psychology,' L, 240, and I., 498.
132 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the experience of other percipients. We are told that "if one and
the same experience can figure twice, once in a mental and once in
a physical context, one does not see why it might not figure thrice,
or four times, or any number of times, by running into as many
different mental contexts, just as the same point, lying at their inter-
section, can be continued into many different lines" (p. 566). But
in the 'Principles of Psychology' (Vol. I., pp. 229-237) it is shown
that no state of consciousness can be exactly duplicated within the
experience of an individual, and it would appear that essentially the
same proof will apply in comparing the experience of different indi-
viduals. In order to make out numerical identity, as regards the
experience of different individuals, it is necessary to establish precise
similarity somewhere; whereupon 'pragmatic' principles will war-
rant us in proclaiming them so far forth one and the same. That
the perceptions of physical objects by different individuals are neces-
sarily different seems to be admitted by James, but he contends that
in the perceptions of space there may be numerical identity. This
seems a hard doctrine. Is it not true that the perceptions of space
are, psychologically considered, every bit as different as are percep-
tions of objects? The space-relations which appear in visual per-
ception are not apprehended from the point of view of some 'abso-
lute' or arbitrarily chosen point, as in geometry, but depend always
upon the position of the eye. So long as the several subjects are
not in precisely the same position, all the corresponding relations in
the spatial perceptions of two observers viewing the same expanse
must differ from each other. Besides, the space we see is not merely
empty space, but always involves a colored background, and hence it
seems to follow that, if the perceptions of different observers of an
object can not be precisely similar, the same must hold true of spatial
perceptions. It may be true that the perceptions of different ob-
servers can have corresponding elements which are indiscernible,
even though it be impossible that any two perceptions as wholes
should be precisely similar.. But if so, it must not be overlooked that
these corresponding elements are obtained by abstraction. As ele-
ments in concrete wholes they can not be identical, unless the wholes
are identical. With all deference I may venture to suggest that the
error of Kant in the 'Transcendental Esthetic' is repeated here,
viz., the substitution of geometrical for. psychological space. It
seems pertinent also to ask whether an identity which is confined
to the most barren element in experience, and so does not apply to
the qualitative content which essentially constitutes all that is of
value in life, is much of a contribution to the task of uniting in
thought the aggregate of individuals in one common world.
Lastly, there remains the question as to the kind of reality as-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 133
cribed to those parts of the 'objective' series which are not experi-
enced by any finite individual. Are they simply 'possible experi-
ences,' in Kant's phrase, or are they actually realized in some con-
nected experience? If the former is meant, all the objections
brought against Kant's 'mogliche Erfahrung' and Mill's 'permanent
possibilities of experience' would seem to be applicable; if the latter
is intended, we have a partial inclusion within an experience of a
higher order, the difficulties of which view seem fully as great as
those which may be urged against the complete inclusion of absolute
idealism. The essential feature of this difficulty has just been dis-
cussed. It asserts that ' a term taken in another relation must needs
be an intrinsically different one, ' as James himself phrases it. This
assertion concerns the inmost nature of conscious existence and can
not be brushed aside so easily as James seems to do. The extent to
which the inclusion occurs or, if this language seem objectionable,
the extent to which there is numerical identity of elements is quite
immaterial, the real difficulty being the question how such an iden-
tity is possible at all. To conclude, the philosophy of pure experi-
ence does not account for our awareness of a world beyond our indi-
vidual experience ; and it also fails to show how there can be a world
that is common to a multiplicity of individuals. It is much to be
desired that the more detailed presentation of James's doctrines in
his long-awaited work on metaphysics will soon be forthcoming.
B. H. BODE.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Psychology: An introductory study of the structure and function of
human consciousness. JAMES ROWLAND ANGELL. New York, Henry
Holt & Co., 1904. Pp. 402.
Text-books in psychology may be divided roughly into three classes.
The first consists of superficial systems of definition and classification
which give the reader the false impression that he knows the subject.
The books of the second class consist of original sketches on selected
processes, or new theories, which leave the reader fascinated with the
material, but without power of orientation in the subject as a whole.
The books of the third class consist of systematic and well-balanced ele-
mentary statements of the facts, but so condensed that the reader must
either have the guidance of a teacher or have access to treatises and
original sources. The book before us is of this last class. That makes
it preeminently a text-book to be used by a teacher in class work, and it
is from this point of view that the present reviewer will consider it.
The author regards psychology as descriptive and explanatory. " The
psychologist's explanations consist chiefly in showing how complex
134 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
psychical conditions are made up of simpler ones, how the various
psychical groups which he has analyzed grow and develop, and finally how
these various conscious processes are connected with physiological ac-
tivities, and with objects or events in the social and physical world con-
stituting the environment." Thus he adopts the biological point of view
and regards consciousness, not as a metaphysical entity to be investigated
apart from things, but as one of the manifestations of organic life, a
part of the psychophysical organism. The most characteristic feature
of the treatment is the thoroughgoing maintenance of the functional point
of view.
The author is neither iconoclastic nor polemic, but proceeds in a plain
and straightforward manner to outline the facts from the adopted point
of view. He does not fall into the trap of making too positive statements
in the interest of clearness, but shows a remarkably apt grace in making
guarded statements on disputed points. Although the treatment is
systematic, there is but little evidence of a ' system ' of psychology. His
natural-science method and point of view forbid this. The book reflects
a characteristic individual attitude, but the mature reader loses sight of
that and finds himself reviewing a connected series of tangible and
verifiable facts.
This book might well be called experimental psychology, yet there is
no conspicuous injection of directions for experiment and arrays of
specific records. General conclusions are given in the spirit of the ex-
perimental psychologist. It might be called physiological, yet only two
chapters are devoted to the review of physiological data. But the ex-
planation never leaves the physiological factor out of account. It does not
profess to be ' educational ' psychology, yet the mode of treatment and
the choice of illustrations make the text replete with suggestive hints in
regard to the development of the mind. The factors of evolution and
development are always in the foreground showing the history and mode
of functional adaptation. It is not philosophical, being specifically
limited, yet the choice of terms, the guarding of generalizations, the
incidental laying bare of psychological grounds for philosophical infer-
ence, and the prevailing tone make one feel that the book lays a good
foundation for a genuine interest in philosophy and constitutes a good
propaedeutic for it. The same is true with reference to the logical,
ethical and esthetical aspects.
The style is rather guarded than brilliant. Where there are abund-
ant data, e. g,, on the senses, the digest style is rigid; bnt in other parts
it is lighter, though always technical. The most original discussion is on
the subject of reasoning, where, of course, the functional theory appears
to the greatest advantage. The book is not divided into the three tradi-
tional divisions, yet the familiar names are used and a more logical
development of the subject is obtained by a parallel treatment of the
cognitive, affective and conative factors.
The book has the essentials of a good text-book. It reflects the genius
of the teacher and the investigator. And for the general scientific reader
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 135
who occasionally wants to read the ' latest and best ' in general psychology,
this is now the book.
0. E. SEASHORE.
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA.
The Ethics of Naturalism. W. K. SORLEY. Second edition, revised.
Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood and Sons, 1904. Pp. 338.
The chief changes and additions which have been made in this new
edition of a familiar work are indicated by the author in his preface:
" A more positive definition of Naturalism has been given in Chapter I. ;
a great part of Chapter IV. has been rewritten, chiefly on account of the
fresh light thrown upon Shaftesbury's philosophy by the publication of
his 'Philosophical Regimen' in 1900; Chapter V. [Nature as the Moral
Standard] appears now for the first time; a section on the factors of
moral development has been added to Chapter VI.; a few pages on the
psychology of pleasure and pain in Chapter VIII. have been rewritten;
short discussions of some recent contributions to evolutionist ethics have
been added to Chapter IX. ; and the concluding chapter has been rewritten
and considerably shortened. Apart from these modifications, and from
frequent minor changes in expression, the argument of the whole book
remains unaltered both as a whole and in detail."
That argument has lost none of its value in the twenty years that have
elapsed since its first presentation. It remains now, as then, one of the
clearest and most connected criticisms of the varied tendency in ethics
known as Naturalism, a term which describes all systems which imply
that ' the completest account of the world as a whole is the description of
it in physical terms.' It is true that this term as thus defined seems
hardly applicable to the moral-sense writers or even to Mill, but the
author has well traced the course of development by which the more
typical contemporary systems have arisen from their more ambiguous
forerunners. And it is a special advantage of the book that it does thus
criticize the whole development from a single point of view. The defect
of the work is that of its virtue it perhaps does less than justice to the
value of the evolutionary movement, judging it, as it does, exclusively
from the aspect of principle. It is surely an overstatement to say ' that
the theory of evolution however great its achievements in the realm of
natural science is almost resultless in ethics.' Perhaps a more accept-
able conclusion and one more expressive of the author's position is that
" the further we go in examining any naturalistic theory, the clearer does
it become that it can make no nearer approach to a solution of the ethical
question than to point out what courses of action are likely to be the
pleasantest, or what tendencies to action the strongest; and this it can
only do within very narrow limits both of time and of accuracy. As to
what things are good it can say nothing without a previous assumption
identifying good with some such notion as pleasant or powerful. The
doctrine of evolution itself, which has given new vogue to naturalism both
in morality and in philosophy generally, only widens our view of the
old landscape. By its aid we can not pass from ' is ' to ' ought,' or from
136 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
efficient to final cause, any more than we can get beyond the realm of
space by means of the microscope or the telescope."
NORMAN WILDE.
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA.
En lisant Nietzsche. EMILE FAGUET. Paris: Societe franchise d'im-
primerie et de librairie, 1904. Pp. 362.
M. Faguet's book is not a very systematic exposition of Nietzsche's
ideas, the materials being selected rather by personal liking than scien-
tifically. Though the book contains only quotations and little critique,
it may have value in propagating the knowledge of the German philos-
opher in France.
According to Faguet the genesis of the system of Nietzsche's philos-
ophy begins with the discovery of the ' Greeks before Socrates.' He agrees
on this point with Oehler, who made a special investigation of the rela-
tion of Nietzsche to the first Greek philosophers. These philosophers re-
semble the German very often not only in ideas, but also in style.
The greater part of the book contains what Faguet calls l the critique
of the obstacles ' ; by which he denotes religion, science, rationalism and,
above all, morality. The second part contains the positive side of
Nietzsche's philosophy and an exposition of his ethics. Some points are
treated very fully, for instance the rehabilitation of egoism and the
necessary duality of morals; of others he gives only a hasty description,
as in the case of the problem of values, which is not worked out suffi-
ciently. The author thinks that the numerous contradictions in
Nietzsche's philosophy might be resolved in the way indicated by Fouillee.
The last pages give a brief estimation of Nietzsche. Faguet does not
consider him an original philosopher, nor would he adhere to him. He
restricts Nietzsche's influence to offering some half-true ideas which,
slightly modified, might serve as suggestions for the solution of current
ethical problems.
M. L. CAMUS.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
Immediate Memory in School-Children. W. H. WINCH. British Journal
of Psychology, June, 1904, Vol. I., pp. 127-134.
Uber einige Grundfragen der Psychologic der TTbungsphanomene im
Bereiche des Ged'dchtnisses, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Psychologic der
formalen Geistesbildung. ERNEST EBERT and E. MEUMANN. Archiv
fur die gesamte Psychologic, November. 1904, Bd. 4, pp. 1-232.
Each of these articles seeks to overthrow the doctrine that pure re-
tentiveness of memory is incapable of improvement by practice. The
English author definitely takes his start from the well-known negative
dictum of James (Psychology, I., 663) ; while the Germans, although
using the same method as James, are apparently ignorant of his experi-
ments and of the later work of various writers on related questions.
In Winch's experiments, school-children were made to memorize lists
of 12 consonants, which were exposed to their view for 25 seconds, and
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 137
which they were to reproduce immediately afterward. Ten such lists
were learned on one day, ten more a week later, and ten more three weeks
after the first. Improvement from week to week was shown by most
of the children, and this result the author believes to indicate an increase
in the pure retentiveness of memory. But it is clear that other factors
mentioned by James, such as better methods of learning, and better
adaptation to the conditions of the test, might have produced the improve-
ment observed. The influence of these factors is not simply a possibility ;
it becomes a certainty in view of many published experimental results.
To prove his point, the author must show a residuum of improvement
after the elimination of all such factors; as he fails to do this, it can
not be said that his result perceptibly weakens the conclusion of James.
More serious is the attack on the doctrine contained in the elaborate
paper of Ekert and Meumann. They trained memory of one sort, and
tested various other sorts before and after this training. The training
consisted in memorizing nonsense syllables, while the tests included the
learning of letters, numbers, words, vocabularies, prose, poetry and visual
signs. Both the immediate retention and the retention for twenty-four
hours were tested. These tests were applied before the training with
nonsense syllables, in the middle and at the end of that training, and
again some months after that training had ceased. The result was an
improvement ranging from moderate to very great, in all those sorts of
memory. The gain persisted and on the whole was even increased,
during the months succeeding the training.
One great merit of this paper is that it points out, though it does not
evaluate, some of the factors contributing to the improvement. Dif-
ferent methods of learning were compared, and some found much more
efficient than others. For instance, such a little thing as rhythmically
grouping nonsense syllables was a great help in learning them, and this
device was actually adopted by the subjects in the course of their training.
Other causes of improvement were increasing directness of method
(avoidance of mnemonic associations, which were found to hinder rather
than help), increasing interest and better emotional tone, closer attention
in a word, better adaptation to the peculiar conditions of memory
experiments. Now in so far as the conditions of the tests in other sorts
of memory were the same as in learning nonsense syllables, adaptation
to the latter would bring about greater skill in the others too. In fact,
the improvement in other sorts of memory was roughly proportional to
their similarity to the process of learning nonsense syllables : most gain
was made in learning letters and numbers, and comparatively little in
learning prose and poetry. From this the authors conclude that the
improvement is not due to the training of one universal function of
memory; the one-sided training of one special memory function brings
about, in their view, a concomitant training (Mitiibung) of other special
memory functions in amounts proportional to their similarity to the
function trained. But they are not willing to admit, what seems quite
possible on the basis of their results, that the ' Mitiibung ' consists en-
138 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tirely in the acquisition of better methods of learning, and in habituation
to the conditions of the tests.
Still another reservation must be made. One methodological diffi-
culty in all studies of the ' transfer ' of training is to make the prelimi-
nary and final tests thorough enough to give a real measure of the sub-
ject's ability, without making them so extensive as to afford special
training within the tests themselves. The authors have not escaped
this difficulty, since the records of their tests show improvement within
the tests themselves. The passages assigned for the test in learning
prose were from a translation of Locke, in an archaic style, and were
so long as to occupy an hour in the learning. This amount of practice
is enough to develop considerable skill in handling this particular sort
of matter; and the remarks of the subjects show that they did develop
specialized methods adapted to this test. The authors admit the reality
of this factor in the gross result, but presume it to be of minor impor-
tance.
How much ' general ' or ' transferred ' training of memory is left after
deducting the effects of better methods of learning, better adaptation to
the conditions of the tests, and special practice within the tests them-
selves ? The authors have no means of telling how much, nor even if
there is any. The doctrine of the untrainability of pure memory re-
mains as little disproven by the work of Ebert and Meumann as by that
of Winch.
R. S. WOODWOBTH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. January, 1905, Vol. XIV.,
No. 1. The Relation of Esthetics to Psychology and Philosophy (pp. 1-
20) : HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL. - Psychologically, Beauty is to be re-
garded as the real, or permanent in Pleasure. Philosophically, the Beau-
tiful may be regarded as the Real in the realm of Impression, the Good
as the Real in the realm of Expression, while the True is the Real in
realms exclusive of Impression and Expression. Wundtian Feeling An-
alysis and the Genetic Significance of Feeling (pp. 21-29) : MARGARET
FLOY WASHBURN. - The chief source of perplexity in the problem of feel-
ing lies in the failure to recognize intermediate stages between feeling
and sensation, which may be regarded as complexes of organic sensation.
To this class belong the Wundtian dimensions of strain-relaxation and
excitement-depression. The subjective is that which resists analysis, and
in this sense only pleasantness and unpleasantness are subjective. A.
Neglected Point in Hume's Philosophy (pp. 30-39) : W. P. MONTAGUE. -
Hume was so imbued with the Cartesian and Lockean conception of ob-
jects of knowledge as states of the knowing subject, that he failed to
perceive that such an idealism was rendered meaningless by his own
theory of the composite nature of the self. He continued to regard ob-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 139
jects as subjective states, although denying the existence of a subject.
Natural Selection and Self -Conscious Development (pp. 40-56) : H. W.
WRIGHT. -When we reach, in the course of evolution, the plane of self-
consciousness, the struggle for existence between individuals is trans-
formed into a struggle for realization between ideals. Natural selection
now operates to preserve and fulfill ideals of truth and righteousness, and
becomes relatively indifferent to the maintenance of life and health.
Reviews of Books : A. E. Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics : J. E. CREIGH-
TON. A. Db'ring, Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie : W. A. HEIDEL.
F. Raub, L 'experience morale, and L. Levy-Bruhl, La morale et la science
des moeurs : HENRY BARKER. - Summaries of Articles. Notices of New
Books. Notes.
REVUE METAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE. November, 1904.
Numero exceptionnel. Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique (pp. 895-
908) : H. BERGSON. - Parallelism is a quite metaphysical doctrine and in-
volves a subtle shifting from the idealistic to the realistic metaphysics
and vice versa. The brain, as the peculiar organ which determines con-
scious states, is treated in isolation from the external world. This is an
idealistic construction. But it can not, on the other hand, be regarded
as one conscious complex among others, as idealism would hold, unless it
be treated as a thing determining this conscious complex, which again is
realistic. Sur la Notion de Correspondance dans V Analyse mathematique
(pp. 909-920) : P. BOUTROUX. - Correspondence is a very general notion,
not confined to quantity. It is indefinable, derived from immediate in-
tuition. The definition of cardinal number as the common property of
classes which have unique and reciprocal correspondence member for
member, is circular; since classes correspond only because they have the
same number of members. Correspondence means sameness of struc-
ture and is exactly the same notion as law. This definition of corre-
spondence as observed sameness of structure is in the spirit of that school
of mathematicians who prefer real advance in our knowledge of the world
to the mere exercise of elegant fancy and the construction of all sorts of
ingenious possible systems. Sur la Structure logique du Reve (pp. 921-
934) : H. DELA CROIX. - Dream-perceptions are illusory because in sleep
the customary reactions and readjustments are suspended. Their struc-
ture is explained by a central underlying motif or theme, not clearly
present to the dreamer's consciousness, about which the dream-perceptions
cluster and in the light of which they are interpreted. Definition phys-
ique de la Force (pp. 935-948) : LE COL. HARTMANN. - Force is not to be
defined metaphysically as an occult cause nor yet abstractly as m a, but
as the perceived cause of a body's motion, m v. To distinguish this defi-
nition from the usual one, m a, it is called action. Mechanical force,
m a, is then the rate at which the action m v changes its speed in a given
direction. The fundamental notion of mechanics thus becomes directly
intuitable, not a pure concept such as m a. Moreover, what is really
conserved is not m v* but m v. Action may thus replace energy. Fichte
contre Schelling (pp. 949-976) : X. LEON. - After 1801, Fichte was mainly
140 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
concerned to deny plagiarism from Schelling and to show the sufficiency
of his own earlier subjective period. The accusation by Schelling of
formality and abstractness was Fichte's own best defense. The absolute
Ego is not a matter of direct experience but a formal presupposition
known only by its activities. Sur la Position du Probleme du Libre
arbitre (pp. 977-1006) : F. KAUH. The problem of free will should be
solved in a 'positive' manner. We can not assume or deny absolute
determinism a priori. We must study the problem in experience, inde-
pendent of metaphysical doctrines. Experience and practice show the
validity of the feeling of both power and will. lime Congres de Philos-
ophie-Geneve. Comptes Rendus critiques: Philosophic generale (pp.
1007-1037) : E. CHARTIER. Resume of papers and discussions. Logique
et Philosophic des Sciences (pp. 1037-1080) : L. COUTURAT ET F. KAUH.
Psychologic (pp. 1080-1087) : F. RAUH. Morale et Sociologie (pp. 1088-
1113) : A. BEBTHOD ET E. HALEVY. Histoire de Philosophic (pp. 1113-
1116) : A. DARLU. Table des Auteurs. Table des Articles. Table des
Supplement. Supplement: Livres Nouveaux. Revues et Periodiques.
La Philosophic dans les Universites. Souscription au Monument de Ch.
Benouvier.
Cartelliere, A. Ueber Wesen und Gliederung der Geschichtswissenschaft.
Leipzig: Dyk. 1905. 8vo. Pp. 32.
De Vries, Hugo. Species and Varieties, their Origin by Mutation. Lec-
tures delivered at the University of California. Edited by Daniel
Trembly MacDougal. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Com-
pany. 1905. 8vo. Pp. xviii -f 847.
Moore, Deranus A. Laboratory Directions for Beginners in Bacteriol-
ogy. New York: Ginn and Co. 1905. 12mo. Pp. xxiii + 151. $1.00.
Reinke, J. Philosophic der Botaink. Leipzig : Earth. 1905. 8vo. 4 m.
Righi, A. Modern Theory of Physical Phenomena. London : Macmillan.
1905. 12mo. 5 s. net.
Rudert, T. Skizze eines Moralsystems als praktische Grundlage der
kiinftigen Weltreligion. Leipzig: Knaur. 1905. 8vo. Pp. 41.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE Henry E. Johnston scholarship at the Johns Hopkins University
has been awarded to I. Woodbridge Riley, A.B., Ph.D. (Yale). Dr. Riley
will devote his time to research in the history of philosophical movements
in America,
UNDER the arrangement recently made between Harvard and Berlin
universities to exchange professors, Professor Francis G. Peabody has
been selected from Harvard, and Professor Friedrich Paulsen from Beriln.
PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAMES, of Harvard University, has been appointed
acting professor of philosophy at Leland Stanford University for 1905-06.
He will, however, remain at Harvard for the first half of the year, going
to Leland Stanford in January to organize the department there. He
will return to Harvard for 1906-07.
VOL. II. No. 6. MAKCH 16, 1905
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY AND CRITERIA OF THE
PSYCHIC 1
IN the brief discussion of criteria of consciousness which follows it
has been my purpose to distinguish between the philosophical and
the naturalistic attitudes toward such criteria, to arrange systemat-
ically those criteria which are already in use, and to call attention
to certain aspects of the values of various signs or tests of mental
life. I have nothing new in either material or method to contribute
to the subject, but I do wish to emphasize the importance in com-
parative psychology of the use of all available signs or criteria of
mind rather than the selection of any one as the sufficient and final
proof of consciousness. Whatever justification this discussion may
need will have to be found, therefore, in the fact that it brings
together a number of well-known facts which seldom are considered
collectively in their relations to the study of psychic processes.
Quite apart from philosophical arguments concerning the nature
of consciousness, and the epistemological or logical implications of
the concept, the natural scientist is able to search out and make
use of certain signs of mental life which he recognizes as criteria of
consciousness. The logician in his attitude toward these criteria is
chiefly concerned with their relations to the large number of concepts
which constitute for him a self-consistent system; he is interested
in what is necessarily true on the basis of certain assumptions. The
naturalist is concerned with the practical validity of his inferences;
he deals with a narrower range of relationships than the logician.
The logician studies the necessary forms of criteria; the naturalist
notes whether certain signs, which he has discovered by observation,
serve as satisfactory guides for action. One asks 'must it be true'?
the other asks, 'does it work'? Let me illustrate my meaning
by reference to the positions taken by two well-known thinkers.
Miinsterberg, 2 with his avowed purpose to satisfy the demands of
a logical system, holds that 'acknowledgment' is our only criterion
of consciousness in the brutes. By this he means that only those
1 Criteria is used here in the sense of signs or tests, rather than proofs-
2 ' Grundziige der Psychologic,' Bd. I., S. 98-99.
141
142 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
animals are conscious which we treat as conscious beings. Loeb, 3
from an entirely different position, which I should call the natural-
istic in contrast with the philosophical position of Miinsterberg,
asserts that evidence of ability to profit by experience is the criterion
of associative memory, which in turn is the criterion of consciousness.
The logician and the naturalist do not necessarily disagree in
their definition of consciousness; for both it may be the subjective,
individual fact, which can be known directly only by the individual
whose experience it helps to constitute, and who, in turn, is con-
stituted an individual by the totality of states which are spoken
of severally as states of consciousness. For the natural scientist
this subjective fact is material of science because it can be studied
in its relations to the facts of anatomy, physiology, anthropology.
Human purposes well may be material of science, albeit we know
only our own directly; and in precisely similar fashion the mental
life of an insect, a fish or a monkey may be studied indirectly. In
all these cases we have to depend upon inferences. We carefully
note the order of physical (more exactly physiological) and psychic
events in the individual, and then, on the basis of similarity of the
physical order in another individual, we infer similar psychic
processes. Certainty of the truth of these inferences there is none,
nor can there be ; but neither is there certainty of the truth of any of
our inferences concerning the states of consciousness of our fellow
beings. I infer that you are conscious; can I ever, be more than
practically certain of it? Here, if anywhere, we see the striking
difference between logical and practical certainty. The former
is that which satisfies the rational mechanism; the latter is that
which suffices for the guidance of action. A moment 's consideration,
and we are convinced that inference plays a far more important
role in human life than is usually suspected. In all things we make
use of signs. Inference is the framework of science. Take from
the natural scientist all that he does not know directly, all that he
accepts with no more than practical certainty, and he is left with
a colorless consciousness which can not even be described as self-
consciousness. The criteria or signs upon which our scientific in-
ferences rest are selected according to their serviceableness ; they
survive, as the pragmatist would say, because inferences based upon
them are satisfactory determinants of action.
Wherever inference is necessary in thought it is desirable to
study its basis; nowhere is this more important than in connection
with consciousness. It is therefore worth our while to examine
carefully the group of signs which have been selected by psycholo-
gists and physiologists as criteria of consciousness in order to learn
1 ' Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology,' p. 218.
whatever we may concerning their values. It should be noted at
once that all of the criteria proposed apply as well to human con-
sciousness as to that of the brute, for too often we think that
whereas we know human consciousness fairly well that of lower
animals is quite beyond the limits of our knowledge. Now, as a
matter of fact we know both by inference; hence, the only dif-
ference in our knowledge of the two is due to the somewhat greater
perfection of our ability to apply our criteria in case of man. That
you are a human being is no more proof that your consciousness is the
same as that of your companion than is the fact that you have eyes
similar to his proof that you see colors as he does. Consciousness
must always be indirectly known, except in introspection; conse-
quently our knowledge of the mental life of animals must vary, for
all practical purposes, with our knowledge of their anatomy,
physiology, habits, instincts and reactions.
Roughly, the signs of the psychic, which seem to me worthy of
constant use, may be classified as the structural and the functional.
From structure we infer the possibility of certain modes of be-
havior; and behavior is accepted as evidence of certain structural
conditions. Both serve as signs of consciousness. In all cases in
which mental life is in question, man serves as the basis of com-
parison.
I present the following six criteria in what seems to me in
general the order of increasing importance. The functional signs
are of greater value as a rule than the structural ; and within each
of the categories the particular sign is usually of more value than
the general. In certain cases, however, it might be maintained that
neural specialization is of greater importance than modifiability.*
I. Structural Criteria.
1. General form of organism. (Organization.)
2. Nervous system. (Neural-organization.)
3. Specialization in the nervous system. (Neural-specialization.)
II. Functional Criteria.
1. General form of reaction. (Discrimination.)
2. Modifiability of reaction. (Docility.) 4
3. Variableness of reaction. (Initiative.)
In parentheses I have suggested single words for the designation
of these criteria. The terms 'discrimination,' 'docility' and 'initia-
tive' have been taken from Royce's 5 excellent discussion of the
* Modifiability, as here used, includes the several types of learning which
are usually distinguished as unconscious (?) adaptation, associative learning,
imitative learning and rational learning.
5 ' Outlines of Psychology,' pp. 20-57.
144 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
physical signs of mind in his text-book of psychology. Inasmuch as
we speak of these criteria as physical signs of mind, it has seemed
to me preferable to use language which was free from implication
of the psychic; for this reason I use modifiability and variableness
rather than docility and initiative.
Suppose, now, for the purpose of defining our criteria in more
practical detail, we attempt to apply them to some organism of
simple development say, the sea anemone. (1) The general organ-
ization of the animal is so strikingly different from our own and
from that of any other organism which we acknowledge as intel-
ligently or rationally conscious that we are unable to give positive
value to this test. It is true, however, that although similarity of
form is presumptive evidence of similarity of function and of
psychic processes, structural difference does not necessarily involve
psychic difference. (2) No more satisfactory basis of inference is
furnished by the neural organization of the sea anemone, for the
nervous system is not sufficiently similar in form to those of un-
doubtedly conscious animals to warrant inference. (3) And finally,
on the structural side, of neural specialization there is far too little
to justify inference of more than mere sentiency. It must then
be admitted that the structural criteria do not furnish a basis for
the inference of anything except the lowest grade of consciousness.
Passing now to the functional criteria : ( 1 ) We find, as the neural
specialization would lead us to expect, a number of differentiated
reactions. Sensory discrimination appears as an important fea-
ture of the life of the organism. In fact there is evidence of both
of Royce's discriminative signs: 'feeling' (liking and disliking),
and different types of sensory disturbance, for the animal reacts
differently to difference in quality of stimulation, as well as to
difference in intensity. There is in this a slight sign of adaptation
which may or may not prove to be in some degree intelligent. (2)
But thus far there have been no careful studies of the modifiability
of the reactions of the sea anemone. As a matter of fact, the ob-
servations of the animal under natural conditions have furnished no
evidence of any form of ability to profit by experience ; yet it would
be foolish to conclude that the animal can not learn, for a systematic
study of the subject in all probability will demonstrate the existence
of modifiability of the associative type. (3) With variableness the
case is similar, for too little work has been done to enable one to say
much with assurance. So far as observed, the animal's reactions
are uniform, there is no indication of sudden, apparently spon-
taneous, adaptation to the demands of situations. In other words,
there is no sign of mental initiative.
As a result of this application of our criteria we should have to
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 145
say that the sea anemone probably possesses consciousness of the
sensory-discriminative grade, but that there are no signs of either
intelligent or rational consciousness.
This distinction which I have thus made of three grades or
levels of consciousness the discriminative, the intelligent and the
rational leads us directly to the consideration of the relative values
of the three functional criteria, for it will be noticed at once that
each of the three criteria corresponds to one of the grades of con-
sciousness. 6
By a number of investigators ability to profit by experience has
been used as the all-sufficient criterion of mental processes. That
the use of this criterion alone is undesirable, or even absurd, needs
no further proof than that some form of modifiability or ability to
learn is a characteristic of protoplasm. The more highly organized,
the less stable the organic substance, the more readily it is modified
by environing conditions it would seem. Hence, unless one is ready
to start with the assumption that consciousness itself is a property
or accompaniment of protoplasm (in which event there is no need
of criteria of the sort we are discussing) this criterion is valueless
when used alone. The fact that the crayfish needs a hundred or
more experiences for the learning of a type of reaction that the frog
would learn with twenty experiences, the dog with five, say, and the
human subject with perhaps a single experience, is indicative of the
fundamental difficulty in the use of this sign. Animals differ in
rapidity of learning, but it has not been shown that any organism
exists whose reactions can not be modified in adjustment to environ-
mental conditions. We find marked differences in permanency of
modifications among organisms, as well as in rapidity of adjustment.
Moreover, several kinds of modifiability may be distinguished. But
this involves us in a difficulty, for although one might naturally
expect that animals differ merely in degree of docility, many students
of the subject see fit to maintain that there are differences in kind
as well as in degree.
Loeb, for example, accepts associative memory as the criterion of
consciousness, and then adds, quite safely, "The criteria for the ex-
istence of associative memory must form the basis of a future com-
parative psychology. It will require more observations than we
have made at present to give absolutely unequivocal criteria." So
far we can agree and in part sympathize with him, but he goes on
to commit himself to what we may call the assumption of a critical
point "For the present we can say that if an animal can learn, that
8 The three grades of consciousness here mentioned correspond very closely,
I believe, to Morgan's sentiency, effective consciousness, and self-consciousness.
See Morgan's ' Animal Behavior,' pp. 42 ff.
146
is, if it can be trained to react in a desired way upon certain stimuli
(signs), it must possess associative memory." 7 To say that animals
exist which can not be trained to react in a desired way upon certain
stimuli implies that modifiability is not a characteristic of proto-
plasm. If protoplasm is not always modifiable, which I do not
grant, there must be a critical point in organic development at which
Loeb 's ' ability to learn ' becomes possible. Now it is this assumption
that some animals can not learn that appears unwarrantable. In
the first place experience teaches us that animals do learn, and we
therefore treat them as if they could until we are convinced that
they can not (this is the purely practical aspect of the situation).
No organism, I believe, has thus far been proved incapable of profit-
ing by experience. The burden of proof rests with those who as-
sume that only certain animals can learn, for it would be far more
reasonable to ask for a demonstration of the inability of some one
organism to profit by experience than to demand that the docility of
all animals be proved. But of far greater importance for. the sup-
port of our contention are the positive facts. Omitting mention of
the well-known facts of modifiability in more complex organisms,
we may refer at once to the evidences of modifiability in unicellular
organisms.
Jennings, in a series of investigations remarkable alike for. their
admirable scientific character, their value and interest, has shown
that the behavior of certain of the unicellular organisms is complex
and modifiable. Stentor, for example, exhibits several forms of
reaction, and also adaptation to conditions. 8 Further evidences of
what Jennings himself considers incipient intelligence in lower or-
ganisms are presented in his recent volume of studies. 9 In this
volume he writes, "Memory has as its basis the general phenomenon
that a stimulus' received or a reaction performed leaves a trace on
the organism, or. modifies its conditions in such a way that it later
reacts differently to the same stimulus. This basis of memory is,
of course, clearly present in Stentor" (p. 126). And again, "This
[referring to a series of reactions in Stentor} is clearly the method
of trial and error passing into the method of intelligence, but the
intelligence lasts for only very short periods. To really modify the
life of the organisms in any permanent way, as happens in higher
animals, the method of reacting discovered to be successful by the
method of trial and error should persist for. a long time. Apparently
this is not the case for unicellular organisms, but further work is
needed on this point" (p. 251).
7 ' Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology,' p. 218.
"Jennings, 'American Journal of Physiology,' 1902, VIII., pp. 42 ff.
9 Jennings, ' Contributions to the Study of the Behavior of Lower Organ-
isms,' published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, pp. 112, 126, 251.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 147
It is furthest from my purpose to argue in opposition to Loeb
that there are no crises in organic development ; on the contrary, I
should admit that it is practically certain that sudden changes do
occur, that Nature does make leaps, that gradual development in one
direction suddenly makes possible some apparently new process of
change. But mere ability to learn, as defined by Loeb, what is called
modifiability in this paper, is not, so far as I can determine, some-
thing which appears suddenly as a mark of a critical point in organic
development. I wish to maintain that Loeb makes a mistake in his
choice of a criterion, that he should lay stress upon the manner of
learning instead of upon the mere fact of learning. Associative
memory is a particular kind of modifiability ; hence, although it im-
plies modifiability, modifiability of reaction does not necessarily
imply associative learning. If this be true we should study the way
in which animals learn, determine the various modes of profiting by
experience, classify them, and thus ascertain not merely which ani-
mals learn or even which learn associatively, but also precisely how
they learn.
On the basis of the studies of animal behavior which are now on
record we may safely say that mere ability to learn is common to
all animals, and that it is indicative of a low grade of consciousness ;
ability to learn associatively, on the other, hand, is restricted to cer-
tain animal phyla and is a sign of a higher grade of consciousness.
This is in disagreement with Loeb, for he holds, first, that associative
memory is the criterion of consciousness, and, second, that ability to
learn is the criterion of associative memory. In contrast with this
I wish to defend the view that ability to learn is a criterion of con-
sciousness, and that the different kinds of learning (associative, imi-
tative, rational) which we distinguish are criteria of different grades
of consciousness. There is no one criterion of the psychic which can
be accepted as a sign of all forms and conditions of consciousness.
Each grade of mental development has its own appropriate signs or
criteria: discrimination indicates a less complex form of psychic
processes than associative learning, and this in turn is a sign of a
lower grade than that which is indicated by inventiveness or initia-
tive or variableness of reaction. If a single criterion is imperatively
demanded we might agree to accept rapidity of learning as a measure
of the complexity of the psychic.
With these few thoughts concerning the theoretical aspects of the
problem of criteria clearly in mind, let us examine for a moment the
practical application of ability to learn as a criterion. Bethe, as well
as Loeb, selected this as the one available and sufficient criterion,
and, fortunately for our purposes, he has through his experimental
148 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
work furnished us with results of its application that may now be
taken as indications of its serviceableness.
After a study of the crab, in the course of which it was shown
that five or even more experiences ( !) did not enable the animal to
learn to avoid a dangerous object, Bethe concluded that the animal
does not possess psychic processes. 10 In similar fashion he made
experiments with ants and bees which convinced him that these ani-
mals are merely reflex machines, incapable of profiting by experi-
ence, and therefore lacking psychic processes. 11
Even if experiments since made by other investigators 12 had not
proved the falsity of Bethe 's conclusions, his attitude toward the
subject would still be curiously contradictory from the naturalistic
as well as from the logical standpoint, for the animal which did not
learn with five experiences might give very definite signs of conscious-
ness if it were given ten trials. Who is to fix the number of chances
that the poor brute is to have to demonstrate its psychic processes?
These few instances of the working of the Bethe-Loeb criterion
clearly indicate its fundamental weakness. It is absurd to say that
it is of more value for. us to discover that an animal does not per-
ceptibly profit by a few experiences and from this conclude that it
has no psychic life, than to discover by a thorough study of its be-
havior how its reactions are modified by often-repeated experiences,
in other words, in what manner and with what degree of rapidity
it is able to profit by experience. Surely it is of vastly more impor-
tance for us to know how an animal learns than simply that it learns.
It is not enough to rest with pointing out the weaknesses of the
criterion which has been most used. We must now ask ourselves
what criteria and what method of application seem likely to yield the
most valuable results for comparative psychology. To this question
I should return the answer that is suggested by the classification of
criteria that is presented at the beginning of this paper. In the
study of the mental life of an animal no one of the six criteria, or
however many there may be, should be used to the neglect of the
others. In certain cases it may be best to apply each in turn, as
was attempted in case of the sea anemone ; in others it may be neces-
sary to use only variableness, or modifiability and variableness.
Each criterion has its own particular value, yet all are signs of
psychic processes. It should be clearly understood that I do not in
the least wish to suggest that these six criteria are the only ones pos-
10 Bethe, 'Arch. f. mikr. Anat.,' 1898, LI., S. 447.
11 ' Arch. f. d. ges. Physiol.,' 1898, LXX., S. 85.
"Yerkes, 'Biological Bulletin,' 1902, III., p. 241. Yerkes and Huggins,
' Harvard Psychological Studies,' 1903, I., p. 565. Fielde, ' Proc. Acad. Nat-
Science of Phila.,' 1901, p. 529.
PSYCHOLOOY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 149
sible ; on the contrary, there are probably much better ones still ua-
thought of, which it is our task to discover and apply.
Undue emphasis of the structural criteria is unsafe and un-
profitable, for it is likely to lead us to deny consciousness to animals
which, although strikingly different in most ways from us, exhibit
such complex forms of behavior, such complex modes of discrimina-
tion, adaptation, and communication that we can scarcely conceive
of them as unconscious. Who shall say that the ant or bee has not
a highly complex mental life? Certainly those who know them
most intimately incline to ascribe to them psychic processes. All
we can safely say then is, that the careful, systematic application
of all available criteria, with good judgment and reasonable em-
phasis, may be expected to yield us the best available basis of infer-
ence from the physical to the psychic.
The problems of comparative psychology now appear to center
about the course of the development of reactions, and the relations
of the various types of activity. The genetic formula for reactions
is the kind of description that makes strong appeal to all natural
scientists. Too many of them, it must be admitted, seem to think
it the only form of description possible. The evolution of activity
is the all-engrossing subject. Action systems are rapidly being
worked out for various animals, and the forms, relations and modi-
fications of reactions are being studied with a minuteness that prom-
ises soon to put us in a position to trace with profit the course of the
development of activity in the race as well as in the individual.
Meanwhile our criteria of consciousness are increasing in num-
ber, and our ability to use them is becoming greater by reason of
increased knowledge of the facts of animal behavior. Perhaps when
we succeed in ridding ourselves of certain prejudices that physical
science fosters we shall agree with those who know the ant and
bee most intimately. For may we not reasonably believe on the
basis of just such signs as we have been discussing, that the ant with
its complex organization, however different from ours, its highly
developed and complexly differentiated nervous system, its manifold
forms of sensory discrimination, its docility, and its extremely
varied social life, possesses a form of consciousness which is com-
parable in complexity of aspect and change with the human ?
ROBERT M. YERKES.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
150 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
INFERRED CONSCIOUS STATES AND THE EQUALITY
AXIOM
/CONSCIOUSNESS is one of the topics just now at the forefront
^-^ of discussion. Many motives are contributing to this, and
psychologists and philosophers seem to be participating about equally
in the interest aroused. Any inquiry is timely, therefore, I suppose,
which offers its mite to the larger current of general discussion.
If the question were proposed whether it is justifiable to assume
the existence of certain states of consciousness in spite of the fact
that they elude the sharpest scrutiny of introspective experts, and
if the advocates for and against were asked to stand forth for com-
parison of numbers, I suspect that the upholders of the affirmative
would be surprisingly in evidence. Common sense, to be sure,
favors the view that what we find in consciousness is the correct
measure of what is really there. But logic sometimes prevails over
the dictates of common sense, as indeed it seems often to have done
in the case of this belief in unperceivable states of consciousness.
It is not my purpose here to defend this doctrine. Nor is it my
intention to attempt any wholesale demonstration of its invalidity.
I shall attempt merely to suggest certain reflections upon what I
may, for convenience, name the Stump f -Stout argument reflections
which, to my mind, discredit this argument and thus remove one of
the strongest props to a belief in the existence of conscious states
which are not merely undiscovered, but also forever undiscoverable.
First, let me remind you of the argument referred to. It is to
be found, in substantially the same form, in Stumpf's 'Tonpsychol-
ogie' and Stout's 'Manual.' It is noteworthy, too, that Professor
Stratton has recently reaffirmed the same position. 1 No injustice
is done to the argument, I think, if it be stated in the following way :
Suppose an instrument, capable of giving a continuous sound-stim-
ulus of increasing vibration-rate. And suppose that the instrument
be for the moment so adjusted as to give three successive sensations,
S lf 8 2 and S 3 , these sensations to be so related that, while 8^ is indis-
tinguishable from $ 2 , and 8 2 , in turn, indistinguishable from S 3 , S t
and S 3 , the extremes of the trio, may be clearly distinguished from
each other. So far we have only the statement of an experimentally
observable fact. But now comes the argument: since 8^ the first
sensation, and 8 3 , the third sensation, are perceived as different, it
1 Stumpf, ' Tonpsychologie,' I., pp. 33-34 and 352.
Stout, 'Manual of Psychology,' II., 1, 3, and II., 7, 2.
Stratton, 'Experimental Psychology,' Chap. V.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 151
must be true that S 2 , though apparently identical with both S t and
S 3 , is in reality different from them. For otherwise we should be
confronted by the anomalous spectacle of two things unequal to each
other and yet both equal to a third. The observed difference be-
tween $j and S 3 would be impossible, argues Stout, were not the
change in the physical conditions accompanied throughout its entire
course by a change in the sensation, and that, too, even though the
change in the sensation be imperceptible. For (to slightly adapt
Stout's language to the illustration that we are employing), 'if the
pitch-sensation S t is regarded as identical with the pitch-sensation
$ 2 , merely because the one note is indistinguishable from the other,
and if in like manner S 2 is regarded as identical with $ 3 , then S t
must be identical with $ 3 , and it would be impossible that any per-
ceptible difference should ever arise.' Stout's argument is virtually
a direct restatement of Stumpf 's words.
The point of the argument is quite unmistakable. There is no
obscurity about its meaning. While the physical sound-stimulus has
been changing from the point corresponding to S^ to the point cor-
responding to $ 2 , the sensation has been changing in appropriately
parallel fashion. But this latter change has been unperceived.
Indeed, says Stumpf, even with the highest possible degree of atten-
tive scrutiny, it may remain unperceivable. And yet, notwithstand-
ing the lack of direct observational evidence to the contrary, the in-
ference is forced upon us, we are told, that actual differences in the
sensations do exist.
This set of considerations is meant, of course, to extend to all
departments of sense, and to apply alike to changing qualities and
changing intensities.
Now, it is evident that this entire Stumpf-Stout argument for
unperceivable states of consciousness rests upon the axiom that two
things equal to a third are equal to each other; or rather, perhaps,
upon a transformed statement of this, viz., that two things found
unequal to each other can not actually be both equal to a third.
And it seems to be a fair question to raise, whether we have any
warrant for applying to the processes of consciousness an axiom
primarily intended for use in mathematical thinking. But, before
attempting to discuss this point, several preliminary comments sug-
gest themselves.
In the first place, there is at least one experience similar in gen-
eral character to that above related, where we seem to find no cause
for stumbling in the fact that the axiom of equality does not apply.
Two distances upon the surface of the hand are made equal to a
third distance upon a neighboring area. Nevertheless, the two dis-
tances when compared with each other do not seem equal. But what
152 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ground have we for expecting any other result ? The matter is not
one for a priori treatment, but for observation. Because the two
cutaneous extents, though perceptually equal to the standard, are
not equal to each other, shall we argue that the supposed equality
to the standard is illusory, the actual, rationally demonstrable rela-
tion being rather that of inequality? Such reasoning would cer-
tainly be parallel to that above set forth in respect to the changes in
sensation. Again, if the Stumpf-Stout argument is to hold in the
realm of sensation-differences, should it not hold with equal force
in the region below the stimulus threshold? Stout, in fact, main-
tains that it probably does so hold. But what degree of stimulus-
intensity produces the first actual, though imperceptible, sensation?
Does a sensation spring into existence as soon as any stimulus what-
ever reaches the sense organ? How is one to know? And how
many such sensation-qualities and sensation-intensities may there
be before something becomes discernible in consciousness? "When
we engage in these familiar speculations, we seem once more to catch
the roar of Leibniz's waves upon the shore and to hear the feeding
of Fechner 's caterpillars in the forest.
Still further, and this time within the special region covered by
the argument. An obvious corollary of the Stumpf-Stout doctrine
is that the sensation on the conscious side is just as continuous as
the sense stimulus on the physical side. The S 2 of the original illus-
tration is not the only imperceptibly different sensation lying be-
tween the distinguishable 8^ and $ 3 . Consider the fact that the most
practiced observers are unable to distinguish two sounds whose ob-
jective vibration-rates are respectively about 12,000 and 16,000. On
the basis of the argument under consideration, these sensations must
in reality be different. Yes, more than that. The note produced
by 12,001 vibrations must be different from that given by 12,000,
that produced by 12,002 vibrations different from that given by
12,001, and so on, making in all 4,000 unnoticed and unnoticeable
sensations between, these limits. But this is not all. Why suppose
the changes in the physical stimulus to occur by steps of one vibra-
tion? Let the rate of change be by half- vibrations, quarter- vibra-
tions, in fact by any fractional vibration-rate that the best conceivable
instrument can produce. The number of sensations on the side of
consciousness must keep pace with the fineness of difference that the
stimulus is capable of exhibiting. The number of unperceivable
sensations, therefore, that may find lodgment in our consciousness is
practically limitless. Let the increase in any stimulus intensity be
continuous and the sensation-changes are no less continuous. Only,
our apprehension of these changes is so faulty that when we come
to reflect upon the matter we seem to have a discrete series. Stout,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 153
indeed, argues that, if the series were really thus discrete, 'the sensa-
tion ought to vary by leaps and bounds at certain fixed points'
leaps and bounds, I suppose, that would be apprehended as such.
Now, of course, when we experience a series of intensities that pro-
ceed by steps of just observable difference, an outside observer who
could watch the physical changes and the accompanying series of
just observably different sensations would see the latter as discrete,
as separated by gaps which on the physical side were filled. But to
us who experience the series the perception of a just observable dif-
ference can hardly appear to be a leap over a gap.
But I suppose such hackneyed considerations as these have little
weight in the face of the supposed logic of the situation. They may
serve, however, in some fashion, to make clear the implications of
the doctrine here in question. I must now try to show that the
equality axiom is not to be employed in support of this doctrine
except under qualifications which rob it of its power. Stated in
formal fashion, the Stumpf-Stout argument reduces to this hypo-
thetical syllogism :
If sensations S 1 and $ 3 are each equal to S 2 , S^ must equal $ 3 .
(For two things equal to a third are equal to each other).
But, Si does not equal $ 3 .
Therefore S-^ and $ 3 are not equal to S 2 .
But does the equality axiom, valid as it is in the sphere of mathe-
matics, hold likewise in the realm of consciousness?
Obviously we should not be too ready to transplant an axiom
from the home of its birth to alien territory. We should at least
examine its right to survive, with unimpaired strength, in its new
surroundings. And we may at once be made suspicious of any un-
critical transplantation w r hen we reflect that the meaning of equality
for the mental life is, in its first intent at least, felt equality, whereas
in mathematics we mean by equality a relation which holds good in
utter disregard of subjective apprehensions of it.
But, however this may be, if the axiom in question is to retain
its validity anywhere outside of mathematics, care should be taken
to state the respect in which the equality is to be regarded, and the
conditions under which the equality is known to obtain. The first
requirement presents no difficulty when psychical states are in ques-
tion, for the circumstances under, which any comparison of such
states is made are usually clear enough to obviate any confusion.
The second requirement is the one that gives trouble. And yet it
must certainly be met whenever the relation of equality is in ques-
tion. For there is no a priori guarantee that an equality holding
under one set of conditions will continue to hold when these condi-
154 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tions have been changed. The equality between an American dollar
and a particular number of German marks is maintained only when
the conditions of the market are maintained also. All this is, of
course, plain enough. But may it not be just here that grounds are
to be found for criticizing the importation into psychology, without
discussion, of a mathematical axiom. Completely stated the equality
axiom should run : Two tilings equal to a third under certain condi-
tions are equal to each other, PROVIDED THAT THE SAME CONDITIONS
STILL PREVAIL. In mathematics the same conditions so obviously do
prevail that they may be disregarded there in the statement of the
axiom. 2X2 and 12/3 are both equal to 4, and invariably equal to
each other, because the numerical conditions under which these rela-
tionships hold are unchangeable. But when sensations or other
conscious states are to be compared, it can by no means be assumed
that their underlying conditions remain unaltered.
Take the familiar illustration once more. Who can assert that
the cerebral conditions under which 8^ and S 2 are given and com-
pared are identical with those under which S t and S 3 are given and
compared? But until we know this and know it quite positively,
we are not justified in making application of the axiom. It may
well be that the physical stimuli of S t and S 2 are so little different
that the cerebral states produced by them are the same. That
nerve tissue offers resistance which some intensities and intensity-
differences are unable to overcome seems to be an assumption not
without warrant. Or, the very fact that the cerebral processes
corresponding to S l are still in a state of partial excitement when
the physical stimulus for the production of S 2 is given, may bring
it about that this latter stimulus is unable, through inhibition or
other causes, to produce the full cerebral and conscious effect that
it would produce if given entirely alone. S^ and S 3 , on the con-
trary, may well be occasioned by physical stimuli sufficiently differ-
ent to produce distinct cerebral commotions and, consequently, dis-
tinguishable conscious states. These are all trite observations. Of
course our inability to make any exact statements about the condi-
tions that prevail while sense stimulations are moving towards and
reaching their, cortical termini, places us often in embarrassment,
and makes our suppositions too tentative for secure thinking. But,
as the case stands here, are not the chances greater that we are in
the presence of a brain fact rather than in the presence of a mystery
of consciousness? And in our temporary uncertainty are we not
doing better to place our hypotheses in a region where there is some
hope of further enlightenment rather than in a region where the
very circumstances of the case cut us off forever from the chances
of investigation ?
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 155
An illustration will serve best to sum up these considerations
about the axiom. Let A, B and C be horizontal lines so drawn
that A and C shall be the usual forms of the Miiller-Lyer figure, with
out-turned and in-turned arrows respectively, while B is a plain
line. Let the adjustment of length be such that A and C are both
perceived equal to B. But now strip A and C of their Miiller-Lyer
arrows and place them respectively between long and short parallel
lines. A and C will no longer appear equal. That is, two lines
perceived as equal to a third under certain conditions do not appear
equal to each other under certain other conditions.
Now if this illustration fairly represents and it seems to me
that it does the state of the case when qualities and intensities are
to be compared, is there any possible reason for being overwhelmed
with surprise at finding ^ x and S 3 equal to $ 2 and yet not equal to
each other? And, furthermore, is there any compulsory power
that the equality axiom can wield over our thought in this instance,
forcing us to conclude, as do Stumpf and Stout and the rest, that
the reality is quite other than what our best endeavor can reveal?
Rather, indeed, it seems to me, so confident ought we to be of the
inapplicability of an unqualified statement of this axiom that we
may feel assured that we are nearer the realities when we take our
sensations to be what we find them to be, than we are when we take
them to be Avhat a dubious argument asserts that they must be.
A word in conclusion. It may be that unperceivable mental
states exist. At any rate I do not wish here to deny them. But
of two things I do feel fairly confident. First, it is my steadfast
belief that if such states do exist they can be properly inferred only
when some influence upon perceived conscious states is distinctly
discernible. And, secondly, however the general fact may stand,
I am entirely convinced that we are not under obligation to assume
such states in order to avoid coming into contradiction with the
equality axiom. And to set forth this last conclusion, together with
the few reflections upon which it rests, is here my sole purpose.
A. H. PIERCE.
SMITH COLLEGE.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Der Sociale Optimismus. LUDWIG STEIN. Jena, Hermann Costenoble,
1905, pp. 267.
This book, as we are informed in the preface, is a collection of essays
which have appeared from time to time in the course of the last few years
in periodicals and daily papers. There are twelve, as follows: (1)
Social Optimism, (2) Social Ideas and Ideals, (3) Methods of Social
156 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Restraint, (4) The Philosophy of the 'Middle Line' and the Parallelo-
gram of Social Forces, (5) Menger's Popular Lahor-State and Legal-
Socialism, (6) Legal-Socialism and the Political Parties, (7) Social-
Politics, (8) The Victory of Epistemological Pessimism, (9) Sociology
on a Monistic Basis, (10) Mechanical and Organic Theories of the State,
(11) Energetic Optimism, (12) The Fore-Shadowing of Optimism.
' Social Optimism ' is the fourth of a series of recent publications
hy the author treating related topics. It emphasizes the social rather
than the individual nature of optimism, and seeks to correlate material
rather than to construct a system. Optimism has produced no such
closed and firmly welded system as that of pessimism in the works of
Schopenhauer and Hartmann. The purpose of the author is to present
the problem of optimism in its various phases, and by a critical examina-
tion to distinctly differentiate similar and opposing views. Over four
hundred different authors are quoted or referred to in the twelve essays.
The philosophical point of departure of ' Social Optimism ' is the
1 energic ' world-view of Mach and Ostwald. " The attempt is made
not only to establish ' Energic Monism,' theoretically, but also to answer
its critics; announcing it as being of so transcendent a nature as to be
subservient to no political party, nation, cult, or philosophy. Seen in
the perspective of universal history, sub specie ceternitaiis, all of our
political and religious oppositions, all importunate war cries and em-
phases of the important destiny of our day, shrivel to insignificance and
nothingness. Starting with experience, with its eyes fixed upon social
facts, having traced these to their psychological origins, ' Social Opti-
mism ' will illumine the way of humanity to social cosmos."
The essence of the optimistic creed is given in a quotation from the
concluding words of Gustav Schmoller's recent work entitled ' An Outline
of the Principles of Political Economy,' and reads : " The time will come
when every good and normally developed man will know a suitable trade,
and the attainment of individuality, self-esteem and the power of self-
assertion will be coupled with righteousness and the highest public spirit.
It is to be hoped that the journey is not so long as that which brought
man from the condition of brute, physical strength to that of his present
cultural state." As might be surmised from the number and diverse in-
terests of the authors quoted, the essays are an invoice of the scientific,
religious and philosophical concepts which have dominated the world-
movements of the past. Running through the opposing and parallel
opinions of the modern thinkers Dr. Stein finds the thread of monism;
and between the idealism of Cohen and the materialism of Haeckel he
finds room for what he regards as the more scientific concept of energic
monism. Fichte is the real founder of this new dynamism. ' Social
Optimism' and ' Energic Monism,' then, are resultant concepts of this
inductive study, and not, as one might hope, the corner-stones of a newly
completed structure. Their content, scientific, religious and philo-
sophical, remains to be more clearly defined in terms of a new civilization
which shall embody their inherent prophecy.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 157
As a review of the trend of more recent thought the essays are both
stimulating and instructive. The style is lucid and virile. While ' Prag-
matism' and ' Instrumentalism ' are nowhere mentioned by the author,
they would, doubtless, both be included in the concept ' Energic Monism.'
ALBAN DAVID SORENSEN.
COLBY COLLEGE.
The Vivisection Problem. (A Reply.) ALBERT LEFFINGWELL, M.D.
International Journal of Ethics, January, 1905, pp. 221-231.
The matter of the controversy over vivisection is continually at the
focus of public attention, and this alone would sufficiently account for a
great deal of its puerile treatment. No other current question affords a
more vivid illustration of the oscillations of thought. The almost exact
balance maintained between approbation on the ground of utility and
disapprobation on the ground of cruelty, producing much fluctuation of
individual conviction, still keeps the public about evenly divided.
This article is written in reply to one entitled, ' Is Vivisection Justi-
fiable ? ' by C. S. Myers, of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, pub-
lished in the same journal, April, 1904.
Mr. Myers, who poses as an unprejudiced arbitrator having general
acquaintance with the principles of ethics and psychology, registers an
almost unqualified endorsement of the practice. He classifies the oppo-
nents of vivisection on moral grounds according to three standpoints, viz.,
the ' religious,' the ' common-sense ' and the ' naturalistic.' The first con-
siders that animals are placed in the world by the Divine Will and that
man is their natural protector; it is an abuse of superior intelligence for
man to inflict pain on them for any purpose whatever. Tha ' common-
sense ' antagonist, while opposing extreme cruelty, sanctions the infliction
of a certain amount of pain upon animals, providing man's gain thereby
is sufficiently great. The third standpoint, the ' naturalistic,' condemns
vivisection not so much on account of the pain endured by the animals,
as on account of the reflex effect which cruelty has upon man.
The arguments which Mr. Myers adduces in refutation of these re-
spective positions are: that those who argue from the 'religious' stand-
point are inconsistent when they sanction the slaughtering of cattle and
the poisoning of vermin for the sake of increasing human comfort; that
the 'common-sense' antagonist is ignorant of the great utility of vivi-
section; and that the 'naturalistic' view does not take into account the
truth of 'multiple-personality' which means that, while a vivisector
may be humane on all other points, sympathy would be positively detri-
mental to success at the operating-table.
This author cites the ' psychologist's fallacy ' in refuting the charge
of 'the sentimentalist' that vivisection involves the infliction of agony,
saying that the cries and writhing of the animal-subjects are no criterion
of true 'mental pain.' Besides, dogs have been observed to wag their
tails and lick the hands of the operator, which evinces their indifference
to the experiment.
He further considers it needless to discuss the utility of vivisection,
158 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
productive as it has been of such magnificent results in the study of
microorganisms and the discovery of antitoxins. Typhoid and Mediter-
ranean fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis in cattle and snake-bite have been
sucessfully combated with remedies perfected through vivisectional
experiments.
Dr. Leffingwell, himself a physician, is inclined to view the matter in
another light. While laying no especial claim to knowledge of the prin-
ciples of ethics and psychology, he doubts whether natural laws are to be
discovered and human welfare promoted at the expense of animal agony.
The question of degree of pain is one of some importance to him. He
says, " The impeachment of unlimited vivisection rests wholly upon the
conviction that in some of its phases it is productive of agony." The
recognition of the value and moral legitimacy of definitely restricted
vivisection should not blind one to the fact that, beyond certain limits,
it becomes grossly immoral. " That vivisected animals sometimes suffer,
is a charge that rests wholly upon the evidence of men who are neither
' sentimentalists ' nor ' laymen,' but members of the medical profession.
Speaking before the British Medical Association at its annual meeting
in 1899, the President of one of the sections, Dr. George Wilson, LL.D.,
made this remarkable charge : ' I have not allied myself to the anti-vivi-
sectionists, but I accuse my profession of misleading the public as to the
cruelties and horrors which are perpetrated on animal life. . . . Whether
so-called toxins are injected under the skin, into the peritoneum, into the
cranium, under the dura-mater, into the pleural cavity, into the veins,
eyes, or other organs and all these methods are ruthlessly practiced
there is long-drawn-out agony. The animal so innocently operated on
may have to live days, weeks or months, with no anesthetic to assuage
its sufferings, and nothing but death to relieve.'"
Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, LL.D., for many years a professor in Harvard
Medical School, says : " The ground for public supervision is that vivisec-
tion, immeasurably beyond any other pursuit, involves the infliction of
torture to little or no purpose."
Dr. Leffingwell tends to believe, in spite of the psychologist's fallacy,
that Mr. Myers's citation of dogs having been observed to wag their tails
and lick the hands of the operator, betokens, not a happy animal indiffer-
ence to fate, but rather a mute, instinctive and vain appeal for sympathy.
Concerning the utility of vivisection, Dr. Leffingwell is by no means
so sure as Mr. Myers. " Where are the proofs that the mortality from
typhoid fever in any country has been reduced by the general use of the
'appropriate anti-toxin?' Where are we to look for similar evidence
regarding mortality from Mediterranean or yellow fever? Has the mor-
tality from snake-bite ' been diminished in any appreciable degree by the
employment of a remedy regarding whose use we are assured there is
hardly a failure on record ? ' If so where are the statistics ? There are
none. It is a claim of the laboratory."
Professor Hodge, of Clarke University, declared that "God clearly
gives to man every sanction to cause any amount of physical pain which
he may find expedient to unravel His laws." Dr. Leffingwell, lacking the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 159
necessary general acquaintance with the principles of ethics, can not ac-
cept this enunciation of the vivisector's creed, and marvels that God
should hide facts and give torture the right to find them.
" What may we hope to accomplish in the reform of vivisection as it
exists to-day? ... It seems to us that, first of all, there must be the grad-
ual creation of public sentiment which shall be eager, not so much to
approve all vivisection, or to disapprove it all, as to know with certainty
the facts. Take, for example, the question of vivisection in institutions
of learning. To what extent is it carried on, merely to demonstrate what
every student knows in advance? . . . The removal of the secrecy that so
generally enshrouds vivisection is the first and most important step
toward any true reform. [My italics.]
"And finally there must come the regulation of vivisection by law.
. . . The law ought to bring upon official records the number of experi-
ments performed, the objects which were in view, the results which were
attained, the species of animal upon which the investigations were made,
the anesthetics which were administered, and everything that pertains to
the prevention of pain." [My italics.]
This is a quite voluminous notice of Dr. Leffingwell's eleven-page
article to take in this JOURNAL. I believe, however, that it is justified.
Further, I would suggest that that article be copied verbatim by all
magazines interested in the promotion of humanitarian principles. A
more philosophic treatment of what has unfortunately become a very
much confused subject, it has not been my fortune to discover; a more
concise indication of the ends toward which reform should bend its ener-
gies has not yet appeared in print. I conceive that Dr. Leffingwell's re-
ply, in the thoughts of all right-minded persons, will consign such ethical
sophistries as are contained in Mr. Myers's paper to the limbo of eternal
scorn. Vivisection, as a problem calling for immediate solution, does
not demand ' a general knowledge of the principles of ethics and psychol-
ogy ' ; it calls for a pragmatic acceptance of our direct intimations of its
evils. " No one," says Goethe, " knows what he is doing while he acts
aright, but of what is wrong we are always conscious." Those who, in
this connection, subordinate the practical impulse toward the alleviation
of animal woes to the logical demonstration of its validity, would do well
to read Aristotle on the golden mean. Publicity and restriction, not
total condemnation, is the key-note of Dr. Leffingwell's appeal, an appeal
to which every one should lend support. PHILIP HYATT TARR.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
The Soul A Study of Past and Present .Beliefs. L. D. ARNETT. Ameri-
can Journal of Psychology, April and July, 1904. Pp. 121-200, 347-
382.
Ninety-one out of the one hundred and fourteen pages occupied by
this study contain little more than the notes of a student summarizing
his reading as he peruses the literature of the subject. The last twenty-
three pages report the result of a questionnaire-study on the same topic.
The author states that he does not pretend to settle any disputed point
160 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
as to the nature of the soul, and that his intention has been merely to
gather together information of which he felt the need. Had this work
been offered as a finished history of the ideas that have been held con-
cerning the soul, a long series of criticism would have to be made. In
the present case, however, one may only thank the author for his pains-
taking and praiseworthy study. Its scope may be gathered from the
following outline.
Mr. Arnett begins with the ideas of the soul entertained by non-
civilized peoples (pp. 122-153). He deals with the influence of dreams,
the various forms ascribed to the soul (birds, butterfly, mouse, serpent,
lizard, etc.; the shadow, reflection; spirits, ghosts, etc.); the number of
souls; its localization (in the blood, the bones, the breath, etc.). The
different words used for soul by civilized and non-civilized peoples are
given and, to some extent, discussed from the standpoint of philology.
The second part is a summary of the philosophical views (pp. 153-
200 and 347-359). It begins with those of the Greek thinkers (pp. 153-
164). The others are classified under three heads. (1) Theological ideas
of the soul (neo-platonic doctrines, the Church Fathers, the scholastic
philosophers and the opinions of the Church of to-day. Pp. 164-185).
(2) Philosophical ideas (the views of those philosophers who have been
relatively independent of religious beliefs. Pp. 185-200). (3) Psy-
chological theories (the opinions of Descartes, Locke, Hume, J. S. Mill,
Herbart, and of a few of our contemporaries. Pp. 347-359).
On pages 357 and 358 the author sketches, by way of conclusion, what
appears to him to be the five successive steps in the genetic history of the
soul :
1. The biological soul the soul made coextensive with life itself.
Extinct species represent the loss of so much of the psyche.
2. The phyletic, or race soul: the species regarded as a type of soul.
Every animal is regarded as possessing a specific type of soul, that be-
longing to his species. The phyletic soul represents a differentiation of
the biological soul.
3. The individual soul, i. e., the type represented in the writings of
Royce, Schiller, etc. It is a special form of the phyletic soul and is the
result of heredity.
4. Personal consciousness our individual experience.
5. Attention, i. e., a cross-section of the present moment. It is the
unity of apperception.
The study of the present ideas of the soul based upon the answers
to a set of questions does not yield any very definite result. It is, how-
ever, interesting and valuable in that it gives precision and factual sup-
port to certain opinions.
The preponderant influence of religious teaching upon our ideas of
the soul, and the difficulty with which psychological conclusions affect
those beliefs have attracted the author's attention. Something in some
way corresponding to the traditional notion of the soul seems to persist
even in the consciousness of those who, under the influence of psychology,
have theoretically discarded the ' soul.' JAMES H. LEUBA.
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 161
Ueber Fixation im D'dmmerungssehen. RICHARD SIMON. Zeitschr. fur
Psych, u. Physiol d. Sinncsorgane. Bd. 36, 1904. S. 186-193.
The author finds that each eye has a definite, habitual way of fixing
peripherally a small point in a black field, which is so faintly illuminated
as to be invisible on the fovea, although visible on the surrounding region.
Thus in one subject the left eye regularly fixed the stimulus by means of
a point directly over the fovea, while the right eye received the stimula-
tion on a point above and to the temporal side of the fovea. When the
eyes came to these positions involuntarily there was no ' feeling of fixa-
tion ' ; but it was possible voluntarily to fix the faint stimulus in several
peripheral positions, and in that case also there was no more ' feeling of
fixation ' than there is ' when the unadapted eye sees an object in indirect
vision.' The degree of adaptation of the eye affects the position of fixa-
tion which it automatically assumes; the unadapted eye comes to lie so
that the faint stimulus falls several degrees away from the fovea, but
with increasing adaptation this point approaches the fovea. Intensity
of stimulus (always below the foveal threshold) has the same effect as
adaptation.
The f oveally invisible dot can not be fixed perfectly. " True
nystagmus is not present; but a certain quivering of the object fixed
easily happens, and this in all probability depends on slight involuntary
eye movements, to be explained because it is much harder to maintain
perfect fixation on parafoveal points of the retina than on the fovea."
Such hyperphorias of the eyes when the field is dimly illuminated con-
siderably interfere with the stereoscopic vision that Nagel has shown
to be possible for the adapted eyes, and with illuminations under the
foveal threshold.
EDWIN B. HOLT.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
Zur Kenntnis des zentralen SehaTctes. SIGMUND EXNER. Zeitschrift fur
Psychologic und Physiologic der Sinnesorgane, Bd. 36, 1904. S.
194-212.
' The occasion for this is offered by the new and valuable discoveries
of Hitzig, and a related series of experimental results recently obtained
by Shinkichi Imamura.' If in the dog all the visual fibres that go to the
occipital lobe of one side are destroyed, there results a double homonymous
hemiamblyopia of the same side of the visual field; this may be demon-
strated by the ' sausage perimeter,' in which the animal standing before
a row of sausages consents to eat all that he sees. Almost the same
visual disturbance is brought about by extirpating a portion of the cortex
in the motor (frontal) region. Now E. Hitzig found in 1900 that when
a dog had recovered from the hemiamblyopia due to the occipital opera-
tion, the frontal operation would produce no renewal of the amblyopia;
and conversely, if most of the motor region was first removed, and, after
the animal had recovered, a part of the occipital, the amblyopia would not
reappear. ' The extirpation of the motor cortical area had apparently
made the animal immune to any hemiamblyopia that might be expected
162 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
from a lesion of the visual lobes of the same side.' But if the first opera-
tion was in the occipital lobe of one side and the second in the same
region of the other side, the hemiamblyopia of the first operation would
be reestablished by the second. H. Munk contested Hitzig's results, but
Imamura has now confirmed them.
Exner proposes, in explanation of these phenomena, that, after ex-
tirpation of the fibres to the occipital lobe, fibres of the corpus. callosum
supply the requisite afferent currents from the other side of the brain.
This would particularly well explain the return of amblyopia after opera-
tion of the second occipital lobe. The suggestion is in so far confirmed
that Imamura found that if, after an animal had recovered from an
operation on one visual lobe, he then severed the callosal fibres, the
amblyopia returned and was now permanent. But Exner's explanation
seems not to account for the fact that, after recovery from operation of
the motor or visual region, an operation of the other of those regions
(on the same side) brought no return of the disturbance to vision. The
paper includes minor details, specially regarding alternating hemi-
amblyopia, and an instructive discussion of the physiology of conscious-
ness this last quite in the vein of the venerable author's ' Entwurf.'
EDWIN B. HOLT.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. January, 1905,
Vol. 16, No. 1. The Psychology of Dreams (pp. 1-34) : J. R. JEWELL. -
A questionnaire study based on replies from 800 normal-school students
and some dream diaries, in which the replies and the literature on dreams
are well used. Sixteen deductions are given ; one is indicative : ' There is
no mode of functioning of the mind in the waking state that may not
take place during sleep.' Psychology of ^Esthetics (pp. 35-118) : L. J.
MARTIN. - This article is a report of some ' experimental prospecting in
the field of the comic.' Ingenious modifications of some of the well-
known psycho-physical methods are used to secure effects of comic pic-
tures on five or six observers. A questionary was also used with these
same observers and a report of their choice of historical theories of the
comic is given. Primitive Hearing and Hearing-words (pp. 119-130) :
A. F. CHAMBERLIN. - A brief statement of the acuteness of hearing among
primitive peoples, and of the words used in various languages to describe
the phenomena of hearing. Memory of a Complex Skillful Act (pp.
131-133): E. J. SWIFT. -After two years of intermission two subjects
take up a former practice exercise to determine the efficiency of skill
after the long rest. The results show no appreciable loss of skill and
the subjects report only a temporary fatigue as interfering with the ex-
ecution of the series of ball-tossing. Literature. Notes.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 163
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL KEVTEW. January, 1905, N.S., Vol. XII.,
No. 1. The Experience of Activity (pp. 1-17) : WILLIAM JAMES. - Presi-
dent's address before the American Psychological Association, Phila-
delphia Meeting, December, 1904. An abstract of the address appears in
Vol. II., No. 3, of this JOURNAL, on page 58. The Relation of Perceptive
and Revived Mental Material as Shown by the Subjective Control of
Visual After-images (pp. 18-40): TH. H. HAINES and J. C. WILLIAMS. -
This article adduces experimental evidence of the interference of the
memory image or voluntarily aroused subjective color impression with the
after-image. The explanation of the phenomena is sought in the efferent
fibers of the optic nerve. The Effect of Verbal Suggestion upon the
Estimation of Linear Magnitudes (pp. 4149) : JOSEPH E. BRAND. - Cer-
tain purely arbitrary suggestions of possible errors of estimation appear
in general to have a positive influence upon the subject's estimation of
magnitude. Experiments on the Unreflective Ideas of Men and Women
(pp. 50-66) : GENEVIEVE SAVAGE MANCHESTER. - The author has repeated
the earlier study of Professor Jastrow of the ' Surface ' or unreflective
ideas of men and women students, as preliminary to a study of the mental
differences of the sexes.
KEVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE. December, 1904. L Atmosphere
metaphysique des Sciences naturelles, I, (pp. 693-711) : P. VIGNON. - A
scientific philosophy is analytic monism (mechanism) or synthetic
monism (pantheism) or theism. The first can not explain correctness of
thought, the second neglects the diverse scientific methods and individual
differences. The third is the presupposition of all science which implies
an original productive force. La Theorie Physique, II. : La Structure de
la Theorie Physique (pp. 712-737) : P. DUHEM. - A physical experiment
is not only observation but interpretation, resulting in an abstract sym-
bolic judgment. Only symbolism renders possible the use of instruments.
Testimony in non-scientific matters is surer and simpler than, but not so
detailed or precise as that in scientific subjects. Les Notions infini et de
parfait (pp. 738-757) : CH. HUIT. - Up to and including Aristotle these
notions were distinct; in Plotinus they were identified, though the
infinite was also used to signify the negative property of unlimitedness
(a suivre). Revue critique de Sociologie (pp. 758-764): G. DE PASCAL. -
Sociology as at present understood is too wide, has not defined its object
and method clearly. Its terminology also is obscure and somewhat
pedantic. A propos d'un Livre recent (pp. 765-770) : J. GRASSET. - A
recent anonymous book, Les Conflits de la Science et des I dees modernes,
defends religion without hostility to science. Science is non-moral and
can not defend or refute religion, which states the ideal. Discussion sur
I' Abstraction (pp. 771-784) : V. BERNIES ET J. GARDAIR. Analyses et
Comptes Eendus : C. Labeyrie, Dogme et Metaphysique : A. B. J. Serre,
Ernest Hello: L'Homme, le Penseur, I'Ecrivain: T. DE VISAN. L. Roure,
Hippolyte Taine: E. NUSBAUMER. Etudes sur la Philosophie morale au
XIX* siecle: F. M. W. R. Paterson, L' Eternal Conflit (tr. de I' anglais) :
F. M. L'Annee sociologique : G. P. A. Castelein, Droit Naturel: G. DE
164 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PASCAL. L. de Contenson, Syndicate-Mutualites-Retraites : G. P. J. E.
Fidao, Le Droit des Humbles, Etudes de Politique sociale: G. DE PASCAL.
G. Lechalas, Introduction a la Geometric generale: S. J. DELAPORTES.
Cours de M. Bergson au College de France. Cours de M. Sertillanges.
L'Enseignement de la Philosophie dans les Universites. Nominations
dans I'Universite. Necrologie.
EEVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE. January, 1905. La Pensee philos-
ophique et la Pensee mathemaiique, /. (pp. 5-24) : X. MOISANT. - Present
emulation of mathematics by philosophy is vicious. Mathematics is due
to the work of the imagination upon selected representations and is di-
vorced from the reality which philosophy studies. Mathematics, describ-
ing in static terms, can not lay hold of the real which is changing,
dynamic. Again, it describes in detail, by parts, while philosophy looks
not for analysis so much as for synthesis, for a view of the whole system
of reality. La Theorie physique : La Loi physique (pp. 25-43) : P.
DUHEM. - Physical laws are relations between symbols, whose meaning
depends on one's accepting a whole group of theories. They are neither
true nor false, but are approximations, provisory, relative to our point
of view. This is due to their symbolic character. Un Chapitre de I'His-
toire de la Metaphysique: les notions d'infini et de parfait (suite et fin)
(pp. 44-66) : CH. HUIT. - The lesson of the development of these ideas
from Jewish theology and the medieval church to the present is that they
belong together. The perfect is the only true infinite. The mathematical
infinite is only the indefinite. God contains the fusion of the two ideas.
Revue critique: Doctrines et opinions relatives a la Philosophie biologique,
I. (pp. 67-93) : P. VIGNON. - A summary account of recent biological-
philosophical literature. Discussion sur I' Abstraction (pp. 94-98) : CTE.
DE VORGES. Sommaire des Eevues. Analyses et Comptes Rendus: A.
Reville, Histoire du Dogme de la Divinite de Jesus-Christ : J. V. BAINVEL.
G. H. Luquet, Aristote et I'Universite de Paris pendant le XIHe Siecle:
CH. HUIT. J. Payot, La Croyance, sa Nature, son Mecanisme, son Educa-
tion: C. LABEYRIE. L' Education de la Democratic, Enseignement et
Democratie, L'Education fondee sur la Science: T. DE VISAN. G. Noble-
maire, Concordat ou Separation: R. DUVAL. A. Dufourcq, La Pensee
chretiennen. Textes et Etudes. Les Saints. Saint Irene: P. DUHEM.
Mgr. Le Camus, Fausse Exegese, manuvaise Theologie: A. B. Bulletin
de I' Enseignement philosophique. L'Enseignement philosophique au Col-
lege de France. Necrologie.
JOURNAL DE PSYCHOLOGIE, NORMALS ET PATHOLO-
GIQUE. January-February, 1905, Vol. 2, No. 1. Aphasie motrice a
repetition chez une morphinomane (pp. 1-15) : ROY ET JAQUELIER. - A
woman of sixty-one years, who had been addicted to the morphine habit
for twenty-eight years, was found to suffer both loss of speech and ability
to write even her own name from a copy. No lesion of any kind was
found. After two months' treatment the defects both disappeared en-
tirely. The authors claim this the first case of its kind on record. Psy-
chologie comparee de quelques manifestations matrices, communement
designees sous le nom de ' tics ' (pp. 16-41) : ANDRE LALANDE. - The au-
thor makes a plea for more exact definition. Of the phenomenon desig-
nated by the name ' tic,' such normal habits as tapping one's finger when
in deep thought, as well as the automatic rhythmical movements of idiots,
should be excluded from the content of the term. From a psycholog-
ical point of view, ' tic ' can apply only to the reflex bulbar manifestations
in psychasthenia. Notes and Discussions. Documents et remarques sur
la conscience des mots dans la langage (pp. 3741) : ANDRE LALANDE. -
" Language is then not formed of the words in the consciousness of those
who employ it any more than a melody is formed of the notes first thought
out individually, which compose it." Revue des periodique: psychologie
normale (pp. 42-75); psychologie pathologique (76-96).
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PHYSIOLOGIE
DER SINNESORGANE. October, 1904, Band 36, Heft 4. Ein Bei-
trag uber die sogenannten Vergleichungen iibermerMicher Empfindungs-
unterschiede (pp. 241-268) : Jos. FROBES, S. J. - Experiments on lifted
weights by method of constant stimuli to analyze factors which influence
estimates. Results and introspective notes show that absolute impres-
sion of variable stimulus largely determines judgment. Untersuchungen
uber die akustische UnterschiedsempfindlichJceit und die Gultigkeit des
Weber-Fechnerschen Gesetzes bei normalen Zustdnden, Psychosen und
functionellen Neurosen (pp. 269-293) : G. A. HOEFFER. - The discrimina-
tiveness for differences in sound intensities is approximately constant
for both normal and abnormal persons. In only two out of twenty pa-
tients suffering with various forms of mental disease was the absolute
sensible discrimination subnormal. Untersuchungen uber den galvan-
iscTien Lichtreflex (pp. 294-295) : DR. BUMKE. - Investigation of the rela-
tion between the optical and pupillimotor effect of the galvanic stimulus.
Experiments on fatigued eyes show that the light sensitivity in the state
of exhaustion is increased while the reflex sensitivity is decreased very
markedly. Literaturbericht.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PHYSIOLOGIE
DER SINNESORGANE. December, 1904, Band 36, Heft 5 u. 6.
Eine Enquete uber Depersonalisation und ' Fausse Reconnaissance '
(pp. 321-343): G. HEYMANS. - Result of this questionnaire study
seems to justify the conclusion that there are two types, in one of
which these phenomena occur markedly more often, in the other as
markedly less often than the average. The first type is characterized
by strong emotional temperament, uneven temper, tendency to spas-
modic effort and little aptitude for mathematics; the other evenness of
temper, regularity and little aptitude for languages. Explanation of
phenomena is to be sought in temporary relaxation of attention. Ein
Beitrag uber die sogenannten Vergleichungen uber merklicher Empfind-
ungsuntershiede. Zweiter Teil (pp. 344-380) : Jos. FROBES, S. J. - A re-
petition of Ament's experiments on light intensities. The surprising re-
sult was obtained for high intensities that the variable stimulus B,
166 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
adjusted between A and C, far exceeded the arithmetical mean. This is
attributed to the fact that the judgment is determined largely by the
brightest disk which tends to claim the attention. Uber die Methode der
Kunstphilosophie (pp. 381-416): KONRAD LANGE. -A criticism of the
logical method of Tolstoi, Laurila and Volkert and their emphasis upon
the ethical in art. The experimental method is insufficient. The his-
torical method, with emphasis upon the evolutionary point of view, is
advocated. Uber Assoziationsreakiionen, die auf optische Reizworte er-
folgen (pp. 417-430) : HENRY J. WYATT. - General tendency to form asso-
ciations with words of the same class shown. In three observers the con-
stant tendency was to make the associations with words of different class;
in the remaining five as uniformly with words of same class. Uber
monokulares korperliches Sehen nebst Beschreibung eines als monokulares
Stereoskopbenutzten Stroboskopes (pp. 431439) : M. STRAUB. - It is main-
tained that there is no real difference between monocular and binocular
perception of depth, hence the importance of a study of monocular stereo-
scopy for the theory of vision. Both depend on the parallax. Zwei
akustische Demonstrationen (pp. 440445) : A. SAMOJLOFF. - (1) A strobo-
scopic analyzer to demonstrate overtones. (2) The violin as an acoustic
instrument demonstrated by placing a small mirror on the bridge and its
reflection thrown on a screen. Literaturbericht.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PHILOSOPHIE UND PHILOSOPHISCHE
KRITIK November, 1904. Band 125, Heft 1. Zu Kuno Fischers 80.
Geburtstage (p. 1) : R. FALCKENBERG. Die Psychologic des Joh. Bapt. van
Helmont in ihren Grundlagen (pp. 2-15) : F. STRUNZ. - This experimental
scientist maintained that knowledge of one's own soul precedes and is
more sure than that of bodies. He distinguishes the insight, will and
love of the spirit from that of the sensible soul in that the former per-
ceives and acts and feels without sense or bodily exercise. Die Idealitdt
der dsthetischen Gefiihle (pp. 15-33) : ANNA TUMARKIN. - By ideality those
following Schiller have meant serenity; it should mean separation from
practical life. Esthetic feeling is not serene. Esthetic sensibility is
cultivated only through loss of practical power. Bericht iiber die Er-
scheinungen der Franzosischen philosophischen Litteratur der Jahre 1900
bis 1901 (pp. 33-47) : E. DUTOIT. - Special attention is paid to Couturat's
' La logique de Leibnitz/ and Renouvier's ' Les dilemnes de la meta-
'physique pure.' Ethik des Mitleids (pp. 47-53) : H. SCHMIDKUNZ. Sitt-
lichkeit und Kultur (pp. 53-68) : B. BAUCH. - The moral worth of the
good will must be transferred to the struggle of mankind with itself
towards the ideal virtue, though that struggle does not necessarily imply
exercise of the good will, for in it alone can the good will find exercise.
The teleological judgment of conduct concerns culture and not morality
proper. Recensionen (pp. 69-107). J. Bergmann, Untersuchungen iiber
Hauptpunkte der Philosophie: WALTER. E. Wentscher, Das Kausal-
problem in Lotzes Philosophie : R. FALCKENBERG. O. Kraus, Zur Theorie
des Wertes: H. SCHWARTZ. G. Wobbermin, Theologie u. Metaphysik:
T. ELSENHAUS. H. Vaihinger, Nietzsche als Philosoph: P. SCHWARTZ-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 167
KOPF. Th. Lipps, Vom Fuhlen Wollen und Denken: v. ASTER. E.
Marcus, Hants Revolutionsprinzip : O. SCHONDORFER. L. W. Stern, Zur
Psychologic der Aussage: O. KOWALEWSKI. Fr. Jodl, Lehrbuch der Psy-
chologie: ZIEHEN. F. Paulsen, Philosophic, militans: E. PFENNIGSDORF.
Ossip-Lourie, La philosophie russe contemporaine : W. v. TSCHISCH. W.
Hellpach, Die Grenzwissenschaften der Psychologic: M. ISSERLLN.
Notices. New Books.
ANNALEN DER NATURPHILOSOPHIE. November, 1904. Band
4, Heft 1. Zur Theorie der Wissenschaft (pp. 1-28) : W. OSTWALD. -
From a survey of the sciences, which are grouped under the divisions of
Mathematics, Energetics and Biology, it is found that the development of
each science is the formation and interrelation of concepts through cer-
tain abstractions from experience, the relations being either rules or
laws. The next step in scientific development is to make the process of
discovery itself systematic. Ueber das Studium der Sprachkurven (pp.
28-47) : E. W. SCRIPTURE. - Emphasis is laid on the great possibilities in
scientific discovery as well as in matters of more general interest that lie
in the acoustographic instruments. Four fundamental principles of a
theory of the voice are advanced. A method is given for detecting the
melody in the smallest intervals of speech. Neo-Vitalismus in der mod-
ernen Biologic (pp. 47-102) : W. BIEGANSKI. - The course of both the
mechanical and the vitalistic ideas in biology is traced from the days
of Greek science to the present, leading to the complete dominion of the
mechanical (about 1842) and the vitalistic reaction brought about by
Lange and Schopenhauer. Vitalism rests on an idealistic epistemology ;
mechanism on an empirical. Modern vitalism does not differ funda-
mentally from the old. Mechanism is true as a method, not as an episte-
mological theory. Aus dem kristallographisch-chemischen Grenzgeltiet
(pp. 102-115) : v. GOLDSCHMIDT. - Illustrations of the method of determin-
ing the form of crystal formation through examining the work of acids
and solvents on crystalline spheres. Das Duale System der Harmonie
(pp. 116-136) : A. v. OETTINGEN. - The distinction between acoustic and
musical consonance is made, and a technical discussion with Stumpf on
the subject, follows. The dual system is distinct from Helmholtz's ex-
planation of harmony. Neue Bucher: Reviews by W. O., including the
following: K. Heim, Psychologismus oder Antipsychologismus. A.
Hb'fler, Abhandlungen zur Didaktik und Philosophie der Naturwissen-
schaft, II. , Zur Gegenwdrtigen Philosophie. P. H. Siewers, Mechanismus
und Organismus. H. de Vries, Befruchtung und Bastardierung. A.
Stohr, Zur Philosophie des Uratomes und des Energetischen Weltbildes.
H. Friedmann, Die Konvergenz der Organismen. L. Volkmann, Grenzen
der Kiinste. L. Volkmann, Naturprodukt und Kunstwerk. G. Fischer,
Die Theorie der direkten Anpassung und ihre Bedeutung fur das An-
passungs- und Descendenzproblem. M. Verworn, Naturwissenschaft und
Weltanschauung.
Falkenberg, R. Geschichte der neueren Philosophie von Nikolaus von
Kues bis zur Gegenivart. Fiinfte verbesserte und erganzte Auflage.
Leipzig: Veit & Comp. 1905. 8vo. Pp. 11, 609. 8 M.
168 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Heckel, Ernst. The Wonders of Life. New York : Harper Bros. 1905.
8vo. Pp. 11, 485. $1.50.
Hughes, Percy. The Concept Action in History and in the Natural
Sciences. Columbia University contributions to Philosophy, Psychol-
ogy and Education. New York. Macmillan Co. 1905. 8vo. Pp.
108. $1.00.
Stern, B. Positivische Begriindung des Philosophischen. Berlin : Wal-
ther. 1905. Pp. 98.
Swoboda, H. Studien zur Grundlegung der Psychologic. Leipzig und
Wien : Franz Deuticke. 1905. 8vo. Pp. 11, 116. 2.50 M.
Troeltsch, E. Psychologic und ErTcenntnistheorie in der Religiouswissen-
schaft. Tiibingen : Mohr. 1905. 8vo. 1.20 M.
Wolf, A. The Existential Import of Categorical Predication. Cam-
bridge : University Press. 1905. 8vo. 4 s. net.
University of California Publications. Philosophy. Studies in Philos-
ophy prepared in commemoration of the seventieth birthday of Pro-
fessor George Holmes Howison. Contributions by E. B. McGilvary,
S. E. Mezes, G. M. Stratton, C. H. Rieber, C. M. Bakewell, E. N.
Henderson, J. D. Burks, A. O. Lovejoy, H. W. Stuart, T. de Lopez
de Laguna, K. Dunlap, H. A. Overstreet. Berkely: The University
Press. 1904. Large 8vo. Pp. 262.
NOTES AND NEWS
To perpetuate the memory of C. L. Herrick in the scientific world and
among the friends of Denison University, and as a tribute of gratitude
for his services, the Denison Scientific Association has appointed a com-
mittee to secure a fund to be known as ' The C. L. Herrick Memorial
Fund.' The first purpose of the committee is to secure for Denison
University Dr. Herrick's scientific library, which his family is obliged
to dispose of. It is hoped, however, that only a portion of the fund will
be used in procuring the library and that an adequate principal may be
set aside, the income of which will be available in maintaining the serials
represented in the library and in otherwise fostering the interests of
science. A friend of the institution has promised to duplicate all sub-
scriptions made for this purpose before July first next. Subscriptions
may be sent to Professor Frank Carney, Denison, Ohio.
M. HENRI BERGSON has been appointed professor of modern philosophy
in the College de France, to succeed the late Gabriel Tarde.
MARCH 30, 1905 VOL. II. No. 7.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
RADICAL EMPIRICISM AND WUNDT'S PHILOSOPHY
one who has been, even in a modest way, a student of Wundt's
-*- philosophical writings, it is a matter of no small surprise that
current American discussions such as those which have been con-
ducted by Dewey, James and others, have so largely ignored the
Wundtian philosophy. Many of the positions which Wundt clearly
defined in his 'System der Philosophic,' and in his later articles in
the 'Studien' are identical with the positions now defended by our
American empiricists. Furthermore, there are certain phases of
Wundt's discussions which one may unhesitatingly say are clear
critical treatments of problems which have not yet been finally dis-
posed of by American empiricism. It will not be unprofitable to
call attention to some of the similarities and some of the differences
between Wundt's philosophy and current American thinking, espe-
cially that phase of American thinking which is represented by
James's recent articles.
The most obvious agreement with which we have to deal is found
in the definitions given to reality. Thus Wundt says in his ' System '
(p. 92), "There is no subject and no object whatever outside of our
abstracting and analyzing thought. Reality is at once subject and
object, thinker and thought. " Indeed it is ' unmittelbare Erfahrung'
or immediate experience which constitutes the whole of reality.
Everywhere in his writings Wundt strives to make clear the neces-
sity of adopting this definition of reality. He finds, as does James,
that such a view of reality 'presents so many points of difference,
both from the common sense and from the idealism that have made
our philosophical language, that it is almost as difficult to state it
as it is to think it out clearly.' 1 In passage after passage Wundt
pauses to say that his view of reality completely changes the whole
character of the discussion of philosophical and psychological prob-
lems. Thus with reference to the problem of the relation of body
and mind he writes in the 'Outlines of Psychology,' 2 "So long as
1 James, THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC
METHODS, Vol. I., No. 21, p. 570.
2 Second English edition, p. 358. .
169
170 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
body and mind are both regarded as substances, this relation (i. e.,
the relation between them) must remain an enigma in whatever way
the two concepts of substance may be defined." If, however, we
adopt the attitude towards reality which is fundamental to the whole
system of Wundtian philosophy, we shall not define mind and body
as substances. We shall find that body is one of the logical con-
structs derived by the internal working over of immediate experi-
ence, and mind likewise is nothing but a name for the unity of real
relations. Both mind and matter are included in the reality of
immediate experience. "There is only one experience, which, how-
ever, as soon as it becomes the subject of scientific analysis, is in some
of its components open to two different kinds of scientific treat-
ment. . . ." 3 The one treatment yields the concept body, the other
treatment yields the concept mind.
I need not quote from James's articles, which are so fresh in all
our minds, to show that the definition of reality as given by the
radical empiricist and the definition as given by Wundt have much
in common. Both definitions cut away from the traditions of on-
tology and give us a distinctly epistemological and psychological
starting-point for metaphysics. Both are empirical in the same
meaning of that term.
Going beyond the general definition of reality, one can find many
special positions in the writings of Wundt and James which are
strikingly alike. I shall not refer for the moment to these likenesses,
for, after all, the routes by which the two writers reach their special
conclusions are different, and the difference in method is the most
obvious fact to the reader.
James adopts, as we all know, the pragmatic method of explaining
how the particular realities of common life issue from the primary
reality of pure experience. A given phase or bit of pure experience
finds its corroboration or terminus in some second phase or bit of
experience. When the second bit of pure experience fulfills the first,
there comes the sense of satisfaction and the realization of certainty,
which is our justification for objectifying experiences. Every first
bit of experience is, furthermore, directed towards the future, as well
as corroborated by the past. "It is 'of the future in so far as the
future, when it comes, will have to continue it." 4 This kind of
reference to a future makes it necessary for James to say, "The
beyond must of course always in our philosophy be itself of an ex-
perimental nature." 5
A philosophy which makes the future frankly of an experimental
3 ' Outlines of Psychology,' second edition, p. 361.
4 L. c., p. 569.
8 L. c., p. 569.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 171
nature undoubtedly has a difficult task in drawing to it the adherence
of the common thinker. That my to-morrow's sunrise is of an
experimental nature, is proverbially a difficult proposition to accept.
Let UP turn to Wundt's method of deriving from the primary
reality of experience the particular realities of life. He says some-
thing like this. In the midst of the flux and change of immediate
experience there are certain factors which vary less rapidly than do
other factors. The kaleidoscope has a general outline which does
not change as rapidly as the particular patterns. This relatively
greater permanency of certain factors is enough to break up primary
experience into certain distinguished phases. The past furnishes in
this way, through the changes within experience, sufficient justifica-
tion for analysis into particulars. And, after analysis has been
effected, the relatively most stable factors are the ones most readily
and definitely objectified. What is it that science as well as common
thinking has come to regard as the most distinctively objective of
all facts? Space, answers Wundt. Why? Just because space is
the least variable of all the facts of our experience. We are not
dependent, according to this view, on the corroborations of the future
for the motives for objectification.
Wundt seems by this reference of objectification to the past to
escape some of the difficulties of the pragmatic thinking. That the
future should corroborate the past is just as natural in Wundt's
system as in that of James. But the corroboration is not a new kind
of fact with Wundt. It is merely another way of saying that the
factors of experience which are relatively stable now are accepted
as likely to be stable to-morrow and the next day, and are in cor-
roborative experiences found to be stable as expected.
Wundt pushes the matter still further. Among the regularities
and changes of experience there come up certain contradictions.
One experience does not on its face show agreement with what fol-
lows. Thus, I see a mass of color now, and a moment later it is gone,
while the surrounding factors seem to continue relatively unmodified.
Here is, in the fact of change, a contradiction between successive
experiences rather than the corroboration for which James looks.
Such contradictions in experience, says Wundt, are the motives for
an active reconstruction of experience. I try to find some means of
bridging over the break in my experience. I actively interpret the
disappearance of the mass of color. I unify the mass to begin with,
and then I put under the colors some substratum that will explain
for me the way in which they are carried out of my field of vision.
I fill in experience, in other words, with a construct. I use for my
case of the colors the construct substance. The construct is, when
once built up, my unifying, satisfying factor. I did not find it in
172 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
this form in the first bit of experience, but experience drove me to
make it up in or.der to secure internal harmony. The construct is
not an original part of immediate reality, it is a supplementary phase
of experience.
Wundt goes even further than this. There may be higher con-
structs than these which are necessary for the organization of ex-
perience. Thought often carries itself forward into a purely ideal
realm. There are then exercised ' free acts which are carried out by
thought in obedience to inner impulses, without any compulsion from
perception.' 6 The building up of the idea of infinity is an illustra-
tion of this purely ideal activity.
There is in this doctrine of Wundt 's system, which recognizes the
possibility of transcending original experience, a strength and com-
prehensiveness which our American empiricism can, it seems to me,
hardly afford to overlook. Wundt is not a radical empiricist. He
has used, in some articles published in the ' Philosophisehe Studien'
later than the 'System,' the title 'critical realism' as descriptive of
his general position. Critical realism starts with pure, or immediate,
experience, just as does radical empiricism. Critical realism loses
nothing of the empiricism which we are all seeking in some fashion
to attain. But critical realism does not wait for validity to grow out
of corroborations. Critical realism finds that the data of original
reality grow and develop by their own progressive variations and
relative stabilities. There is here just as much recognition of process
as in the thinking of James. There is just as much seeking for the
given relations, but there is a frank recognition of the possibility of
creative synthesis by which new relations and new demands shall
develop. In short, critical realism is radically empirical to begin
with, and clearly conscious of its empirical basis throughout, but it
does not hesitate to recognize processes which elaborate the original
data of experience and bring in new and harmonizing links.
Wundt 's position in this matter may perhaps be made clear by
asking the pragmatist why there is in given experience any impelling
desire for new knowledge. Certainly corroborations are not always
explicitly in mind when one feels the lack, of unity and harmony
among present factors of experience. Certainly no practical demand
is immediately conserved by much of our every-day scientific investi-
gation. The investigator feels a certain vis a tergo pushing him on
to find relations which shall organize what is now at hand. Corrobo-
ration usually comes after scientific hypothesis, and will hardly ex-
plain why one formulates hypotheses. Indeed, the very direction in
which corr.oboration is to be sought is in the great majority of cases
specifically pointed out by hypothesis. Not merely the fact, then,
' System,' p. 79.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 173
that present experience reaches towards the future must be recog-
nized ; it must also be recognized that there are characteristics in the
present which determine the exact way in which this reaching for-
ward takes place. The kind of determination of knowledge which
James emphasizes, namely, that which consists in corroboration, will,
if taken by itself, leave the future, as we have seen, always experi-
mental. The determination of knowledge from behind is in no way
incompatible with future corroborations, but it gives to the present
a standing and independence which are more in agreement with our
usual complacent acceptance of the certainty and objectivity of
things.
Another, great strength of "Wundt's system lies in the fact that
he does not find it necessary to minimize distinctions which are of
vital importance to both science and plain living. James makes the
difference between the extension of things and the spatial charac-
teristics of ideas as insignificant as he can. "Of every extended
object," 'he says, "the adequate mental picture must have all the
extension of the object itself." 7 In the next sentence his phrase is
again an obvious effort to make the difficulty disappear, for he goes
on to say, ' ' The difference between objective and subjective extension
is one of relation to context solely. ' ' Then follow at length illustra-
tion after illustration in which a variety of clearly recognized dis-
tinctions between objective and subjective relations are made to
seem as unessential as possible. In answer to all this one can hardly
refrain from insisting that the first effort ought to be expended in
showing how any differences can arise in the midst of a unitary, pure
experience. That objective and subjective space are somehow alike
we. all admit, unless, indeed, we refuse to admit the existence of ob-
jective space. But how in a world of pure experience can subjective
and objective space be different? The difference must not be min-
imized. If you say to me my idea of a mile is a mile long I am at
least at liberty to retort that I am not accustomed to having my ideas
described in that way. I save the word mile for the context thing.
This being true, the likeness of my idea to the thing is not the matter
of discussion; I insist on knowing why one context can make me use
the descriptive word mile for a certain bit of experience, and imme-
diately another, context can forbid my using the same word for the
same bit of experience.
Wundt recognizes this difference fully ; his first concern has been
to examine it. Given an all-inclusive experience, he asks as his first
question, what is the reason for the breaking up of experience ? Why
is that relation between my sensations which I call subjective space
7 James, THE JOUBNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC
METHODS, Vol. I., No. 18, p. 488.
174 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
different from the objective relation which I study in my geometry ?
Because, he answers, after I have a great variety of subjective spatial
arrangements, I can abstract the arrangement phase of experience
from this or that content ; and when I find how permanent the mode
of arrangement is as contrasted with the content, I can objectify the
spatial arrangement in a unique fashion, and mark it off from my
single experiences as objective space. The emphasis with James is
on likeness. He is so radically empirical that he seems a little
anxious lest his empirical basis shall get away from him. Wundt is
no less empirical, but he is ready to admit the necessity in experience
of reconstructions and abstractions which rework and redefine the
original data of experience.
Another distinction which James tries to make seem unessential
is the difference between your object and mine. Like subjective and
objective spaces, so myself and other selves do not seem to dwell
together in harmony in pure experience. Cover up the distinction
between different selves, and the way seems much clearer for a single
formula of pure experience. But the distinction between your thing
and my thing and yourself and myself will not down. James has in
his most recent article 8 gone through some of the objections
which may be urged against his position that your thing is identical
with my thing. He argues in Section III. of that article that one
may have in his own individual experience successive experiences
of the same thing, and yet may immediately recognize all these suc-
cessive experiences as of the same object. Wundt would call a halt
even at this preliminary conclusion. Wundt would object that one
recognizes the sameness of the thing when the thing is presented in
successive experiences, not immediately, but only by actively ab-
stracting from a whole cluster of differences which do, as a matter
of actual experience, present themselves. Three experiences of M
are, according to Wundt, all referred to the same object M, only by
a crystallizing of the like factors of the three different experiences
into an objective reference. The objective reference is what needs
to be explained since it does not come full-fledged out of the single
original experience. There is no objective reference without a proc-
ess within the process. And now we see why Wundt would not rush
forward, as does James, and say that since there is no reason why my
three experiences should not be of the same M, therefore we need
have no hesitation in believing that your experience and mine and
that of my neighbor may also be of the same object. My experience,
Wundt would say, refers to an object only by virtue of a developed
outward reference. Your object does not have the same history as
8 'The Thing in Its Relations,' JOUBNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND
SCIENTIFIC METHODS, Vol. II., No. 2, pp. 29-41.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 175
mine. The transition from subject to subject is even more radical.
It is more of a constructive process than the transition from my first
experience to my second experience. Wundt does not hesitate to give
full emphasis to the distinction between individual experiences. He
does not leave the foundation of immediate experience in discussing
the concepts by which we bridge over these distinctions any more than
does James, but he admits a far-reaching reconstruction within ex-
perience.
In short, "Wundt goes about his constructive work by dealing with
the processes in experience which make for, differentiation and sec-
ondary reorganization. He holds that in life and in refined scientific
thought the emphases within experience and the rearrangements
which result from the selections of certain centers of emphasis are
of first-class importance. Things are the results of emphasis. Only
by reflection and abstraction can things arise; they are secondary.
Let me indulge in a somewhat lengthy quotation from Wundt to
show how various forms of selective thinking may elaborate the same
original data of experience. 9 "It is," he says, "indeed true that
there are certain contents of experience which belong to the sphere
of psychological investigation and are not found among the objects
and processes studied by natural science: such are our feelings,
emotions and decisions. On the other hand, there is not a single
natural phenomenon that may not, from a different point of view,
become an object of psychology. A stone, a plant, a tone, a ray of
light, are, when treated as natural phenomena, objects of mineralogy,
botany, physics and so forth. In so far, however, as they are at the
same time ideas, they are objects of psychology, for psychology seeks
to account for the genesis of these ideas, and for their relation, both
to other ideas and to those psychical processes, such as feelings, voli-
tions, etc., which are not referred to external objects. . . . The point
of view of natural science may, accordingly, be designated as that of
mediate experience, since it is possible only after abstracting from the
subjective factor present in all actual experience ; the point of view of
psychology, on the other hand, may be designated as that of imme-
diate experience, since it purposely does away with this abstraction
and all its consequences."
Perhaps the disposition which James shows to make little of the
distinctions between objective and subjective space, and between
your object and mine, is explicable on the ground that James is just
now giving us only the introductory chapters of his system. The
reason why pure experience breaks up into subjects and objects may
come out more fully in later discussions. I am not at all clear that
Wundt and James are radically different in their views. As one
' Outlines of Psychology/ second English edition, pp. 2 and 3.
176 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
reads the two at this moment, however, Wundt seems to have gone
much further away from the original data of naive, pure experience ;
or perhaps we may be justified in saying, further along the road to
the common man 's world and the world of science. James evidently
feels the necessity at first of meeting the absolutist and the rational-
ist, and of making good his empirical foundations. Wundt spends
much less time clearing the ground and takes up very much more
fully the details of discussion which issue from his fundamental
thesis. That the final outcome of both systems will have much in
common is as apparent as any of the differences in procedure which
I have discussed above.
Thus James"s striking statement that the notion of consciousness
must be abandoned in favor of its pragmatic equivalent in realities
of experience can be paralleled by the following quotation from
Wundt: "There is no place in psychology for hypothetical supple-
mentary concepts such as are necessary in the natural sciences, be-
cause of the presupposition in the natural sciences of an object inde-
pendent of the subject. The concept of the actuality of the mind,
accordingly, does not require any hypothetical determinants to define
its particular contents, as does the concept of matter, but quite to
the contrary, the concept of actuality excludes such hypothetical
elements from the first, by defining the nature of mind as the imme-
diate reality of the processes themselves." 10
Parallelisms such as this one show clearly enough that the temper,
and tendencies of the two systems are much alike. It is the likeness,
after all, which has led me to make these suggestions of a comparison.
I shall be satisfied if the differences drop into the background ; and
I have already indicated that the signs seem to point to a greater
convergence, rather than divergence, as the consequences of James's
fundamental thesis are worked out. CHARLES H. JUDD.
YALE UNIVERSITY.
TN an article in this JOURNAL entitled 'Does Consciousness Exist?' 1
-* I have tried to show that when we call an experience 'con-
scious,' that does not mean that it is suffused throughout with a
peculiar modality of being ('psychic' being) as stained glass may be
suffused with light, but rather that it stands in certain determinate
relations to other portions of experience extraneous to itself. These
form one peculiar 'context' for it; while, taken in another context
of experiences, we class it as a fact in the physical world. This
10 ' Outlines of Psychology,' second English edition, pp. 356-357.
1 Vol. I., p. 477, September 1, 1904.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 177
'pen,' for example, is, in the first instance, a bald that, a datum,
fact, phenomenon, content, or whatever other neutral or ambiguous
name you may prefer to apply. I called it in that article a 'pure
experience. ' To get classed either as a physical pen or as some one 's
percept of a pen, it must assume a function, and that can only
happen in a more complicated world. So far as in that world it
is a stable feature, holds ink, marks paper and obeys the guidance
of a hand, it is a physical pen. That is what we mean by being
'physical,' in a pen. So far as it is instable, on the contrary, coming
and going with the movements of my eyes, altering with what I
call my fancy, continuous with subsequent experiences of its ' having
been' (in the past tense), it is the percept of a pen in my mind.
Those peculiarities are what we mean by being ' conscious, ' in a pen.
In Section VI. of another article 2 I tried to show that the same
that, the same numerically identical pen of pure experience, can
enter simultaneously into many conscious contexts, or, in other
words, be an object for many different minds. I admitted that I
had not space to treat of certain possible objections in that article ;
but in a subsequent article 3 I took some of the objections up. At
the end of that article I said that still more formidable-sounding
objections remained; so, to leave my pure-experience theory in as
strong a state as possible, I propose to consider those objections now.
The objections I previously tried to dispose of were purely
logical or dialectical. No one identical term, whether physical or
psychical, it had been said, could be the subject of two relations
at once. This thesis I sought to prove unfounded. The objections
that now confront us arise from the nature supposed to inhere in
psychic facts specifically. Whatever may be the case with physical
objects, a fact of consciousness, it is alleged (and indeed very
plausibly), can not, without self-contradiction, be treated as a por-
tion of two different minds, and for the following reasons.
In the physical world we make with impunity the assumption that
one and the same material object can figure in an indefinitely large
number of different processes at once. "When, for instance, a sheet
of rubber is pulled at its four corners, a unit of rubber in the middle
of the sheet is affected by all four of the pulls. It transmits them
each, as if it pulled in four different ways at once itself. So, an
air-particle or an ether-particle 'compounds' the different directions
of movement imprinted on it without obliterating their several
2 ' A World of Pure Experience,' ibid., Vol. I., p. 564, October 13, 1904.
8 ' The Thing and its Relations,' in the present volume of this JOURNAL,
p. 29.
178 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
individualities. It delivers them distinct, on the contrary, at as
many several 'receivers' (ear, eye or what not) as may be 'tuned' to
that effect. The apparent paradox of a distinctness like this sur-
viving in the midst of compounding is a thing which, I fancy, the
analyses made by physicists have by this time sufficiently cleared up.
But if, on the strength of these analogies, one should ask: "Why,
if two or more lines can run through one and the same geometrical
point, or if two or more distinct processes of activity can run through
one and the same physical thing so that it simultaneously plays a
role in each and every process, might not two or more streams of
personal consciousness include one and the same unit of experience
so that it would simultaneously be a part of the experience of all
the different minds ? ' ' one would be checked by thinking of a certain
peculiarity by which phenomena of consciousness differ from
physical things.
While physical things, namely, are supposed to be permanent
and to have their 'states,' a fact of consciousness exists but once
and is a state. Its esse is sentiri; it is only so far as it is felt ; and
it is unambiguously and unequivocally exactly what is felt. The
hypothesis under consideration would, however, oblige it to be felt
equivocally, felt now as part of my mind and again at the same
time not as a part of my mind, but of yours (for my mind is not
yours), and this would seem impossible without doubling it into two
distinct things, or, in other words, without reverting to the ordinary
dualistic philosophy of insulated minds each knowing its object rep-
resentatively as a third thing, and that would be to give up the
pure-experience scheme altogether.
Can we see, then, any way in which a unit of pure experience
might enter into and figure in two diverse streams of consciousness
without turning itself into the two units which, on our hypothesis,
it must not be?
II
There is a way; and the first step towards it is to see more pre-
cisely how the unit enters into either one of the streams of con-
sciousness alone. Just what, from being 'pure,' does its becoming
'conscious' once mean?
It means, first, that new experiences have supervened; and,
second, that they have borne a certain assignable relation to the unit
supposed. Continue, if you please, to speak of the pure unit as
'the pen.' So far as the pen's successors do but repeat the pen or,
being different from it, are 'energetically' 4 related to it, it and they
will form a group of stably existing physical things. So far, how-
* For an explanation of this expression see above, Vol. I., p. 489.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 179
ever, as its successors differ from it in another well-determined way,
the pen will figure in their context, not as a physical, but as a
mental fact. It will become a passing 'percept,' my percept of that
pen. What now is that decisive well-determined way?
In the chapter on 'The Self,' in my 'Principles of Psychology,'
I explained the continuous identity of each personal consciousness
as a name for the practical fact that new experiences 5 come which
look back on the old ones, find them 'warm,' and greet and ap-
propriate them as 'mine.' These operations mean, when analyzed
empirically, several tolerably definite things, viz. :
1. That the new experience has past time for its 'content,' and
in that time a pen that 'was';
2. That 'warmth' was also about the pen, in the sense of a group
of feelings ('interest' aroused, 'attention' turned, 'eyes' employed,
etc.) that were closely connected with it and that now recur and
evermore recur with unbroken vividness, though from the pen of
now which may be only an image all such vividness may have gone ;
3. That these feelings are the nucleus of 'me';
4. That whatever once was associated with them was, at least for
that one moment, 'mine' my implement if associated with hand-
feelings, my 'percept' only, if only eye-feelings and attention-feel-
ings were involved.
The pen, realized in this retrospective way as my percept, thus
figures as a fact of 'conscious' life. But it does so only so far as 'ap-
propriation' has occurred; and appropriation is part of the content
of a later experience wholly additional to the originally 'pure' pen.
That pen, virtually both objective and subjective, is at its own
moment actually and intrinsically neither. It has to be looked back
upon and used, in order to be classed in either distinctive way.
But its use, so called, is in the hands of the other experience, while it
stands, throughout the operation, passive and unchanged.
If this pass muster as an intelligible account of how an experience
originally pure can enter into one consciousness, the next question is
as to how it might conceivably enter into two.
Ill
Obviously no new kind of condition would have to be supplied.
All that we should have to postulate would be a second subsequent
experience, collateral and contemporary with the first subsequent
one, in which a similar act of appropriation should occur. The two
acts would interfere neither with one another nor with the originally
8 1 call them ' passing thoughts ' in the book the passage in point goes
from pages 330 to 342 of Vol. I.
180 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
pure pen. It would sleep undisturbed in its own past, no matter
how many such successors went through their several appropriative
acts. Each would know it as 'my' percept, each would class it as a
'conscious' fact.
Nor need their so classing it interfere in the least with their class-
ing it at the same time as a physical pen. Since the classing in both
cases depends upon the taking of it in one group or another of asso-
ciates, if the superseding experience were of wide enough 'span' it
could think the pen in both groups simultaneously, and yet distin-
guish the two groups. It would then see the whole situation con-
formably to what we call 'the representative theory of cognition,'
and that is what we all spontaneously do. As a man philosophizing
'popularly,' I believe that what I see myself writing with is double
I think it in its relations to physical nature, and also in its rela-
tions to my personal life ; I see that it is in my mind, but that it also
is a physical pen.
The paradox of the same experience figuring in two conscious-
nesses seems thus no paradox at all. To be 'conscious' means not
simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's
being added to that being; and this is just what happens when the
appropriative experience supervenes. The pen-experience in its
original immediacy is not aware of itself, it simply is, and the second
experience is required for what we call awareness of it to occur. 6
The difficulty of understanding what happens here is, therefore, not
a logical difficulty : there is no contradiction involved. It is an onto-
logical difficulty rather. Experiences come on an enormous scale,
and if we take them all together, they come in a chaos of incommen-
surable relations that we can not straighten out. We have to abstract
different groups of them, and handle these separately if we are to talk
of them at all. But how the experiences ever get themselves made, or
why their characters and relations are just such as appear, we can
not begin to understand. Granting, however, that, by hook or crook,
they can get themselves made, and can appear in the successions
that I have so schematically described, then we have to confess that
even although (as I began by quoting from the adversary) 'a feeling
only is as it is felt, ' there is still nothing absurd in the notion of its
being felt in two different ways at once, as yours, namely, and as
mine. It is, indeed, 'mine' only as it is felt as mine, and 'yours'
9 Shadworth Hodgson has laid great stress on the fact that the minimum
of consciousness demands two subfeelings, of which the second retrospects the
first. (Cf. the section ' Analysis of Minima ' in his ' Philosophy of Reflection,'
I., 248 ; also the chapter entitled ' The Moment of Experience ' in his ' Meta-
physic of Experience,' Vol. I.) 'We live forward, we understand backward'
is a phrase of Kierkegaard's which Hoffding quotes.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 181
only as it is felt as yours. But it is felt as neither ~by itself, but
only when 'owned' by our two several remembering experiences,
just as one undivided estate is owned by several heirs.
IV
One word, now, before I close, about the corollaries of the views
set forth. Since the acquisition of conscious quality on the part
of an experience depends upon a context coming to it, it follows
that the sum total of all experiences, having no context, can not
strictly be called conscious at all. It is a that, an Absolute, a ' pure '
experience on an enormous scale, undifferentiated and undiffer-
entiable into thought and thing. This the post-Kantian idealists
have always practically acknowledged by calling their doctrine an
Identitatsphilosophie. The question of the Beseelung of the All
of things ought not, then, even to be asked. No more ought the
question of its truth to be asked, for truth is a relation inside of
the sum total, obtaining between thoughts and something else, and
thoughts, as we have seen, can only be contextual things. In these
respects the pure experiences of our philosophy are, in themselves
considered, so many little absolutes, the philosophy of pure experi-
ence being only a move comminuted Identitatsphilosophie.
Meanwhile, a pure experience can be postulated with any amount
whatever of span or field. If it exert the retrospective and appro-
priative function on any other piece of experience, the latter, thereby
enters into its own conscious stream. And in this operation time
intervals make no essential difference. After sleeping, my retro-
spection is as perfect as it is between two successive waking mo-
ments of my time. Accordingly if, millions of years later, a similarly
retrospective experience should anyhow come to birth, my present
thought would form a genuine portion of its long-span conscious
life. 'Form a portion,' I say, but not in the sense that the two
things could be entitatively or substantively one they can not, for
they are numerically discrete facts but only in the sense that the
functions of my present thought, its knowledge, its purpose, its con-
tent and 'consciousness,' in short, being inherited, would be con-
tinued practically unchanged. Speculations like Fechner's, of an
Earth-soul, of wider spans of consciousness enveloping narrower ones
throughout the cosmos, are, therefore, philosophically quite in order,
provided they distinguish the functional from the entitative point
of view, and do not treat the minor consciousness under discussion
as a kind of standing material of which the wider ones consist.
WILLIAM JAMES.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
182 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
DISCUSSION
PHENOMENALISM AND THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE
TO prolong a discussion for the mere setting at rights of one's
position were fatuous pains, but a better promise seems to
warrant some comment upon the issues raised in the papers 1 of Dr.
Montague and Professor Strong in partial bearing upon my own
paper upon ' The Concept of Consciousness. ' In that paper I aimed
at presenting merely a point of view, not at all a metaphysical solu-
tion; but it is undoubted that in metaphysics points of view are at
least implicit solutions, furnishing at least one's axioms; and, con-
sequently, though the unattempted must remain unattempted, the
burden of the issue is not to be evaded.
I
First of all, a matter of epithet. Dr. Montague designates my
position 'nai've realism' and Professor Strong (not without reason)
objects. As a matter of fact, I could scarcely choose the dubbing,
least of all as connoting what Dr. Montague infers. Were 'naive
realism' merely a designation of sincere good faith and a somewhat
expansible satisfaction in the reception of experience en Hoc, I could
not demur; but it seems to me that both this term and 'idealism'
have become freighted with onerous epistemology ; neither usefully
names that non-partisan and catholic complacence in mere events
which I conceive as the ideal ante-epistemology, and for the defini-
tion of which I was feeling in my previous paper.
Certainly it is with some astonishment that I find myself credited
by Dr. Montague with a 'telepathic' theory of perception and by
Professor. Strong with belief in an ' extra-conscious world of matter. '
So far from harboring either of these notions, or yet from entertain-
ing the epistemological dilemmas which called them forth, I had not
conceived myself to be in a position to define either one. My espe-
cial concern was, for the nonce, to escape epistemology and consider
the possibility of an approach to metaphysic through compliance
with the natural urgence of the phenomenal stream rather than by
the bridging of what seems to me an artificially delved psychophys-
ical gap. For the moment, I wished to disregard the problem of
'body and mind' in order to consider the more ancient and palpable
problem of events in general. To indicate that the origin of interest
is the event the moment-to-moment happening which may or may
not turn out to be a metaphysical somewhat I chose the term 'phe-
*In Vol. I., Nos. 11, 19 and 20 of this JOURNAL.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 183
nomenalism' as conveniently evasive. From the point of view of
an epistemologist, Professor Strong is quite right in terming this a
'lazy phenomenalism.' But surely there is another point of view,
that of the ontologist; and it was ontological applications of epis-
temological interpretations (of consciousness) which I was criti-
cizing, and an ontological predisposition which I was urging as meta-
physically natural.
I am far from considering this predisposition to be naive if by
'naive' is meant the attitude of the metaphysically unsophisticated.
Naivete, in the sense I urge, is rather a mental achievement, by no
means of the easiest after generations of communal thinking and
ideal construction. But the difficulty of the mental disrobement is
no invalidation of the method, which, even in pursuance of the Car-
tesian attempt, imperfect as it was, has been richly rewarded.
II
Now, from the point of view assumed, the relation of conscious-
ness to the nervous system is in kind not different fron any other
relation of phenomena. Provisionally the brain belongs to the same
category as the fixed stars, that is to say, the category of things hav-
ing sensuous insistence, and, granted a hypothetical uniformity in
experience, ontological determination of the stars is in some kind
ontological determination of the brain ; granted uniformity and con-
sistency in nature, our problems must eventually solve themselves.
But uniformity really possesses no a priori necessity, and, in
fact, in the world of seemings is squarely belied. The one thing
we are surest of is our present comprehension of things hurrying to
extinction. The isolative experience remains the common one, and
consistency and continuity remain ideal. The aspect of unity in
science is attained only by disregard of what fails to comport to the
chosen gauge, resulting occasionally in most grotesque dissections,
as, for example, when consciousness is made a sort of catch-all for
unwieldy physical qualities, with the final absurdity that it has swal-
lowed practically all that gives robustiousness to physical reality,
while the uniform physical world that is left to us is a world of
airy nothings.
Nevertheless, the instinct for uniformities, amounting as it does
to a veritable passion of the intelligence, is not without meaning.
Provided we always recognize that unities and identities are mental
economies, methodological devices, and not a priori facts, we are
warranted in our hypothesis. Uniformities are schemata rather
than realities, and their value lies in the fact that they are keys
to experience. Each science, with its selected uniformities, is a key
184 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
to a particular field, and metaphysics, as usurping the most general
field, is key to them all. Together they form a chart for the broad
orientation of our way in life. But the chart is formed by a process
of ideal selection, and the fact of selection of what is significant for
us from what is not, or does not seem, significant, is no impeach-
ment of the reality of the graceless residue.
"With the others, the science of the human organism also is carto-
graphic. "Were every conscious event invulnerably paralleled by a
brain event (as seems to me wholly credible), still the correlation of
the two would not have been carried beyond the cartographer's
standpoint. Concomitance is not identity, nor is an idea of a tri-
umphant democracy a delirium of electrons. The office of language
is to make distinctions, not to obliterate them. Indeed language,
which I take to be nature's analysis of experience, reveals many dis-
junctions as gaping as that between mind and body.
By no means would I deny that there is uniquely a problem of
knowledge. Only it is not primarily a problem of body and mind ;
that is a conceit which comes later, as a sort of third party 's thought.
At the start there is merely a heterogeneous experience, from the
raw stuff of which there is slowly built up, by ideal or by instinctive
selection, a structure which we call our system of knowledge. The
problem which thence arises concerns the relation of the order of
this construction to the historic order, of nature. This problem per-
tains to a kind of natural logic, and is only to be solved, I imagine,
by a sufficient account of the evolution of mind ; and no one will be
rash enough to say that the disentanglement of its historic from its
schematic elements 'real' from 'ideal' is like to prove an easy task.
Ill
But* conceding, as I do, a unique problem of knowledge for which
I am prepared to offer no solution, Professor Strong, who does offer,
a solution, may very properly require reason for hesitance in accept-
ing it.
The reason he himself fairly shows in the second part of his dis-
cussion (No. 20 of this JOURNAL). The distinction there drawn be-
tween knowledge properly so-called and the immediacy of real quali-
ties is one which I do not doubt. But, in deducing from this dis-
tinction that 'matter' (by which I presume to be meant reality not
yet consciously related to the self) is sensation, it seems to me that
he does not escape the epistemologist's bias. His conclusion only
makes explicit what this bias necessitates the establishment of an
identity between psychical and physical, between mind and body,
which language refuses to recognize. In ordinary speech the brain
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 185
is not sensation, body is not mind, and ordinary speech represents
at least intellectual expediency. Nor does a system which resolves
to a mere assertion of the oneness of body and mind heal the gap
which its terms presuppose.
For me the significance of the distinction which Professor Strong
stresses lies elsewhere. Those real qualities which from our psycho-
logical point of view we call sensuous are the basis of what is truly
naive in experience, and presumably of what is properly the sub-
stance of the world. In human experience, with its intense special-
ization, they do not overtly display their ontological character ; even
in perception, as Professor Strong rightly says, they are mingled
with palpable cognitive elements, and these give to our facts their
ostensible natures. But it is easy to satisfy oneself of the insecurity
of these natures. A fairly concentrated mental effort enables us
to alter them at will, and in reviewing the mind's development one
readily detects the progressive alteration of nature. Human experi-
ence as organized by human knowledge pursues idiosyncratic courses,
and its so-called anchorage of fact is its most palpable and partial
fiction.
Nevertheless, we are forced to judge and infer from the midst
of this experience and on the basis of what it affords. Fortunately
it does not leave us destitute. Knowledge even in perception-
is characteristically retrospective. That is to say, it recognizes an
order of nature quite distinct from its own ; its essence is the affirma-
tion of a history which it schematizes, nor does it pretend to be
true to this history except so far as is humanly expedient. The
human bias is frankly avowed.
That we can wholly escape the disability which the form of
knowledge entails is not to be thought, but certainly its own re-
quirements of consistency and completeness impel us to affirm for
those primary qualities which we guessingly recognize in perception
other relations than their relations to our thought or feeling of
them. The unitary consciousness that thinks and feels is a rela-
tively late product of evolution and can not but concede a reality
antedating itself. To reconstruct that reality into a world-order
evolving in independence of our thought, is a proper problem of
philosophy. In that reconstruction, body and mind would each
find proper account, but it is hard to believe that they would be con-
founded with one another as things, after having been first so
saliently distinguished by nature, or that they would be separated
irrevocably as qualities when nature so emphatically unites them in
a single experience. The ' psychophysical organism,' like other
'things,' is a highly specialized group of easily distinguishable
186 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
attributes and functions, and it would seem to be metaphysically idle
to hypothecate but one or two species of reality where nature has so
plainly furnished a multitude.
IV
There is one other point to which I would briefly refer. In my
previous paper I had endeavored to be explicit in challenging the
notion of a brain-enveloped consciousness, and I can only under-
stand Dr. Montague's curious misapprehension of my position,
which leads him to credit me with a belief in tentacles of conscious-
ness reaching from the brain to the fixed stars, on the supposition
that he is unable to conceive non-spatial experiences, or even non-
coordinated spatial experiences. As a matter of common concep-
tion, many of our ideas have nothing to do with space, while
those that have are not always concerned with the same space. The
space which we call real, as opposed to that which we denominate
ideal, is quite plainly the outgrowth of processes of selection, and
it is by no means evident that its reality is not to a large extent a
fiat creation. In fine, even on the hypothesis of a noumenal space
there is no insistent reason for locating consciousness within it,
while from a Kantian point of view this would be patently absurd.
But Professor Strong has so admirably answered Dr. Montague 's
misapprehension (in No. 19, page 520) that I need not dwell upon
it here. There is, however, one point in which both Dr. Montague
and Professor Strong find an especial cogency the matter, of time,
disparity between an event and its perception and to this I would
briefly revert.
The gist of the difficulty lies, I take it, in a failure to recognize
the retrospective reference of perception. We recognize the object
perceived as the cause of the perception of it, thus by the very nature
of causality assigning it to the historical rather than to the cognitive
order of events. This does not necessitate that the sensuous ele-
ment in the perception the flare of the dying star itself become
symbolical; as a matter of fact, this symbolizes nothing. But the
perception, besides the sensation, includes that which makes it per-
ception, and that in turn includes a direct sensible inference of the
existence in time of the object perceived. The temporal lapse we
recognize as temporal continuity, or, in other words, we perceive
time.
If we ask what, in a metaphysical sense, is the cause of a percep-
tion, we must acknowledge that, very possibly, it may be different
from what it is perceived to be; that is, our perceptual inferences
are liable to error. But it is absurd to pretend that a cause is not
actually perceived. When we analyze or when we experimentally
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 187
enlarge the range of our perceptions, we may expand the cause
beyond our original perception ; we may add inference to inference,
and include, for example, the body and its perceptive mechanism,
or even inter-stellar happenings. In doing this, we interlard real
qualities with ideal constructions, hereditary as well as individual,
instinctive as well as rational, and, the chances are, eventually choose
as the sole normal node of reference for reality its sensuous aspect,
that is, its relation to perceptual consciousness.
But, even supposing the necessity of this choice, we may still urge
that events are perceived as temporal in precisely the same sense in
which they are perceived as spatial. I agree wholly with Professor
Strong that the continuity of the world-order as a whole whether
temporal, spatial, or causal is not directly conveyed in experience.
But minor continuities are so conveyed, and our most ordinary life
comports itself to the assurances which these continuities afford.
H. B. ALEXANDER.
SPKINGFIELD, MASS.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
A System of Metaphysics. GEORGE STUART FULLERTON. New York,
The Macmillan Co., 1904. Pp. x -f 627.
'Back to Berkeley' is the suggestion which comes to the reader of
Professor Fullerton's work from more than one aspect of the treatment.
Indeed, the author himself often calls attention to the points of similarity
between his doctrine and that of Berkeley. The theory of space, the
relation between visual and tactual sensations, the almost complete ignor-
ing of elements other than sensory, and lastly, a point which is decidedly
in the author's favor, a lucid and trenchant style, all remind the reader
of the brilliant writer of two centuries ago. In yet another respect the
present treatise recalls Berkeley. Metaphysics for Professor Fullerton
means almost precisely what it meant for Berkeley chiefly a theory of
knowledge, with some incidental treatment of the relation of mind to
mind, and with a theistic outcome. Professor Fullerton has an extended
discussion of the relation of mind and matter, but otherwise there is
close agreement as to the scope and method. There is in Professor
Fullerton's system little or no reference to conceptions of the universe,
except under the categories of mechanism and teleology. There is no
mention of the general conception of evolution. There is little or no
effort to consider the nature of reality, except from the standpoint of
the problem of knowledge. There is no effort to relate the moral or
esthetic aspects of reality to its other aspects; so that if we were to take
the title, ' A System of Metaphysics,' literally, it would leave out much
which might reasonably be considered in a treatment of ultimate reality.
Doubtless, however, an author has a right to write a book upon the sub-
388 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ject which interests him, and if he pleases to call it ' A System of Meta-
physics,' it may be said that the term has no such well-defined usage as
would prevent him from so naming it.
The main interest of the work lies in the author's views as to the self,
the external world, and the relation between the two. There is a brief
chapter on the will, and two on God, but, as these topics seem to interest
the author chiefly as an opportunity for the criticism of other theories,
they may be omitted from this notice.
The view which the author presents of the external world, as he him-
self states, suggests the doctrine of Berkeley, Hume and Mill. Its main
difference is its effort to avoid their psychological standpoint. ' The
psychologist distinguishes between his consciousness of the real world
and a real world which he assumes to lie beyond it' (p. 193). The key
to the author's position is found in the conception of the symbol. The
' real,' ' external ' world must be a world of which we are conscious, and
therefore in a sense must be in consciousness. At the same time, it is
evidently not identical with any particular intuition; for in any object
regarded as real, there are parts or qualities not actually sensed at the
moment, and perhaps, like the other side of the moon, never actually per-
ceived. The real external world is thus a compound of sensational and
imaginary elements. This ' is represented or symbolized in any specific
consciousness by elements which must be in part, though not wholly,
identical with the elements symbolized.' If we ask more specifically
what kind of sensations belong to the real world and what to the symbol
in consciousness, we are given an answer based in the first instance on
Locke and Berkeley: the secondary qualities are subjective; visual sensa-
tions are signs of touch sensations. Sensations of touch and movement
are capable of accurate measurement, ' fall into an interrelated system
which is capable of accurate description, and, through their relations to
which, sensations of other classes may be given that orderly arrangement
which constitutes the difference between a chaos and a world.' The
tactual world 'is what we mean by the objective; other elements of our
experience are by contrast subjective' (p. 154). This distinction is
further illustrated by space. ' All space is tactual space. Colors do not
occupy the same place as the tactual things to which they belong. They
do not occupy space at all, nor do sounds or tastes or odors.'
When now we come to the analysis of space, the aim is to distinguish
between the space of intuition and ' real space.' The latter has the qual-
ities which Kant attributed to space, viz., it is infinitely divisible, and
is a single whole. On the contrary, the space of intuition is not
infinitely divisible although it is composite. To reach a space to which
mathematics will apply, with its lines which are always lines and not
simple points, we substitute for the specific space of intuition a tactual
space. But this is only a temporary resting-place, and we must substitute
for this the space of ' real ' things as conceived by science. Nor is this
permanent: "Every reality in which we may rest at any time is, thus,
a relative reality, and its space is relatively real. The absolute object
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 189
and its absolute space are not an object (intuitive) and a space (the
' form ' of an intuition), but rather an indefinite series of substitutions
gathered up and hypostatized into an individual. It is to this absolute
object and its absolute space that the mathematical conceptions apply
in all their rigor" (p. 191). ' The real world in space and time, is then,
a vast complex of tactual things standing to each other in certain rela-
tions of distance and direction, and passing through a system of
changes.'
So much for the real world. What of the mind? The mind is for
Professor Fullerton only a word for the 'totality of mental phenomena,'
or ' a particular group of experiences.' Indeed, there seems little justifica-
tion for using a noun in the singular when speaking of experiences which
are referred to the ' subjective order.' The sort of experiences which are
usually cited as evidence that there is something not included within the
material world, are 'sounds, odors, colors, tastes.' Whether by accident
or by choice, the processes of thinking and willing are not emphasized
in forming the conception of the mental. Perhaps the author does not
care to emphasize processes which seem to evidence unity and activity,
for "his satire is never keener nor his satisfaction more evident than in
his derision of the doctrine of a self or knower, in distinction from the
elements of consciousness, elements of sensation and idea, of material
and form. The Kantian or Neo-Kantian ' synthetic activity,' and the
' atomic self ' of the ' plain man ' are equally in contempt. A historical
and psychological explanation is offered for the fact that certain thinkers
have maintained the doctrine of a synthetic activity. It is a survival of
the 'faculty' psychology: 'consciousness is complex; what can better
synthesize than a synthetic activity?' (484). There is no theoretical
justification for the assumption of any such activity, either outside of
experience or within experience.
It might perhaps be supposed that in recognizing ' form ' as one of
the elements of consciousness, Professor Fullerton is doing justice to all
that Kant really demonstrated as a non-sensational element in experi-
ence. If, however, Professor Fullerton intended to include in his anal-
ysis of consciousness anything corresponding to the organization of con-
tent, or anything which would imply that a self was shaping its content
in accordance with needs or ends or categories of its own, he has cer-
tainly not made this prominent. He occasionally uses such words as
' conception,' speaks of the external world as a ' construct,' and in one
passage which, so far as I have noticed, is unique, he actually speaks of
what might be regarded as a constructive activity of consciousness in
forming a geometrical conception of a line and point (p. 191). But if
there is any active functioning of the intelligence assumed in the system,
it is referred to incidentally, and not made a constitutive element in build-
ing up experience. The whole theory, in fact, is a theory of content.
There is no important use of conceptions of function or activity or
organization.
This applies as well to the theory of the external world. The differ-
190 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ence between the subjective and the objective is found in the difference
between the symbol and the symbolized, between the visual and the
tactual. It is unnecessary to say that those who think that Kant con-
tributed a new insight to the analysis of experience believe that, in the
real world of objective things, the conception of permanence and the
conception of causality, which are important elements in that very ob-
jective order of which Professor Fullerton speaks, can not be properly
brought under the conception of sensation. If now Professor Fullerton
replies that to allege any organizing activity in consciousness is to fall
back upon the old faculty psychology, it is easy to retort that his own
favorite expression, *' consciousness is complex,' carries with it as ob-
jectionable implications of a different sort. If space permitted, it would
be easy to amuse the reader by replacing Professor Fullerton's ridicule
of the literal, physical meaning of synthesis, given on page 481, with
equally senseless ridicule of applying the term complex to the mind in
a literal sense. How, it might be asked, can consciousness be 'folded
together ' ? The real point of the matter is, of course, not in names, but
in the general conception of experience which our names indicate; and
my understanding is that Professor Fullerton, like Berkeley, would char-
acterize all our experience in the general manner indicated by the term
sensational, rather than in a manner indicated by the conception of
organization. Berkeley, to be sure, believed in a self, but he gave it no
function in the organization of experience. Professor Fullerton's con-
struction of experience involves memory and imagination, but, with the
exception of incidental hints, seems to involve nothing more.
But whatever may be one's view as to the necessity of a synthetic unity
for knowledge, a more fundamental question of method is suggested.
Is it good metaphysics to discuss the unity of the self to say nothing
of the immortality of the soul and the existence of God ; from the
cognitive aspect only? Action according to a purpose is certainly a
phase of consciousness that should be reckoned with here. The facts
of agency and responsibility have had a large share in the historical
origin of the conception. They should still be considered, at least, in
discussing the worth of the conception.
In the treatment of the relation between mind and body there is much
acute criticism of both inter-actionistic and parallelistic theories. It is
held that both involve a conception of mind and body as separate en-
tities. Both attempt explanation by classification of the relation in
question with what is really a material analogy. Nevertheless the author
prefers the parallelistic point of view. In anticipation of the objection
that parallelism explains nothing, he insists that 'we have no right to
ask that the relation of mind and body be explained, in the usual sense
of the term' (. e., by classing it with other relations). ' The relation of
mind and body is unique.' Probably all would grant the uniqueness of
this relation, but it is not especially illuminating to stop with this state-
ment. It reads better as a first word than as a last word. If it is
premature to ask for an ' explanation ' of the origin of consciousness, of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 191
the significance of consciousness in evolution, of the process called con-
trol, it would at least not seem unreasonable to ask for some attempt to
investigate in these directions. The ' plain man ' is indeed reassuringly
told that he may continue to say that certain changes in the physical
world take place because a certain man formed a plan provided he
means only that there has been a constant relation between plan and
accomplishment. But I for one should have been glad to have some
suggestions toward a way of thinking consciousness and the physical
world in view of these facts.
With regard to the discussions on space, it seems to me that the criti-
cisms of the Kantian view misinterpret the implications of the phrase ' in-
finitely divisible.' To hold that a finite line, which is infinitely divisible,
can be traversed, does not involve the doctrine that one must complete an
infinite series in order to traverse it. The doctrine of infinite divisibility
implies that if you proceed along a series, in which the law is that each suc-
cessive term is half the preceding, you can never reach the limit in that
way. This, however, does not mean that to pass over any space you must
do it according to that law. Of course, too, the mathematical interpreta-
tion of his spinning top would be, that if the speed were increased the time
of the revolution would approach nearer and nearer to zero as its limit;
it would never reach that limit. While Professor Fullerton was inserting
these puzzles, he might in consistency have further edified the reader by
quoting one of the consequences of Berkeley's theory which that author
himself was acute enough to discover, viz., that an isosceles right-angled
triangle can not be drawn. For if a line is composed of a definite number
of points, then the hypothenuse of such a triangle would have to be com-
posed of a number of points equal to the square root of two, which is
not an exact number.
In writing this notice I have sought to point out the chief features
in the standpoint which seem to me to challenge attention. I have not
thought it necessary to dwell on the acuteness, the brilliancy and the
force with which Professor Fullerton has urged his views. These will
be anticipated by those who are acquainted with his writing, and will
be recognized by the reader. I can but feel, however, a decided regret
that the author did not see fit to take up more directly the problems sug-
gested to the thinker of to-day by natural science and history, and to push
forward the boundary of our thinking along these lines.
JAMES H. TUFTS.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.
Analysis of 'Localization,' Illustrated by a, Brown-Sequard Case. C.
SPEARMAN. British Journal of Psychology, Vol. I., No. 3, pp. 286-314.
The main contention of this paper is in the direction of a vigorous
protest against the dictum of Forster, that tactile localizing power is com-
pletely dependent upon the efficiency of movement-sensations. The occa-
sion for the present analysis was afforded by a Brown-Sequard case under
treatment in the Leipzig nerve hospital about a year ago. Upon admis-
sion to the hospital the condition of the patient was as follows: The
192 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
movements of the left leg were atactic, and all sense of its position was
lost. Tactile sensibility on this leg was diminished but not destroyed.
The movements of the right leg were only slightly atactic, and the per-
ception of position was normal. The tactile sensibility of this leg was
almost completely destroyed. After the removal of a knife-point which,
in a stabbing fray twenty-six years before, had been broken off at the left
of the sixth dorsal vertebra, the patient began a slow but steady improve-
ment. The operation was performed in October, 1903. For four months,
beginning with the following May, the patient was under examination by
the writer, and about 3,800 careful tests were made.
As a preliminary to the spatial tests, an exact quantitative determina-
tion was made of the sensibility to movement and to contact on the two
legs. The general state of these matters has already been noted. In the
course of the experiments it was found that fatigue diminished the move-
ment sensibility of the left leg only and the tactile sensibility of the right
leg mainly.
The capacity to localize cutaneous impressions on the legs was then
subjected to a detailed examination. Three methods of procedure were
used: the 'simple/ where, after the manner of Henri, sight and contact
were excluded ; and those of Weber and Volkmann, termed ' groping ' and
' looking,' respectively. The three methods gave diverse results. By the
' simple ' method the left leg (insensible to movement) showed the greater
inability to localize contacts. But by the other two methods this same
left leg displayed the greater localizing capacity. In all three cases
fatigue produced no appreciable change. It is significant to note in con-
nection with this last fact that it was only in the state of fatigue that the
compass test showed any very marked derivations from the normal on
most of the regions explored. In fatigue, however, all power to dis-
criminate the two points, whether simultaneously or successively applied,
was lost.
The attempt to interpret these seemingly conflicting results forces the
author to make a fresh critical analysis of the various localizing processes.
With the general features of this analysis most psychologists would, I
fancy, be in substantial agreement. Special interest attaches to the dis-
cussion of the ' simple ' localization. How does a finger-tip come to point
with any degree of accuracy at a stimulated point on a lower limb? It
would seem that one must first know just where in surrounding space this
stimulated part of the limb is. This information can not, however, be
given by ' positional ' sensations, for there are no such sensations. Nor,
on the other hand, can introspection find any movement-sensations finely
enough graded to serve as accurate indications of a limb's position, not
to mention the fact that, if they did exist, the localizer would have to
collect and interpret all the messages from the joints in the entire circuit
from the finger-tip to the excited spot a process not to be discovered in
consciousness. The writer is therefore forced to assume that the arousal
of perceptions of position is accomplished by the mechanical summation,
without accompanying consciousness, of neural excitations caused by
movement, proceeding possibly from the corpuscles of Vater, the result
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 193
alone reaching consciousness under the form of a definite spatial percep-
tion. Derangement of this purely physiological mechanism is responsible
for the impairment of localization as well as for definite illusions such
as allocheiria, the excitations either failing to reach the cortex, or arous-
ing a wrong cortical area, and thus evoking an erroneous spatial image.
On this view loss of sensibility to movement, and loss of power to
localize tactual impressions, may, to be sure, be coincident, but they are
not causally related. The lesion that impairs one function may or may
not impair the other also. The improvement in localizing under the meth-
ods of ' groping ' and ' looking ' is due, the author holds, to the aid of the
associated spatial images which are aroused in addition to the pure ' there-
ness ' of the ' simple ' method.
The contention which the author is chiefly interested in supporting
seems to be well maintained. The merits of the paper lie in the presenta-
tion of trustworthy experimental data, and in the clear and comprehensive
analyses, a genuine contribution being made to both fact and theory. We
are thus helped to advance a little in this puzzling field of tactual localiza-
tion. It seems a great pity, however, that the patient himself could not
have been made to contribute to the matter by his own introspections. If
such were gleaned, they are not revealed to us. The analyses of the local-
izing process refer to the normal individual. But as welcome and as
badly needed as these are, we have still greater need of analyses made by
one in whom the localizing functions are deranged. Must we wait for a
Brown-Sequard case in the person of a professed psychologist before our
needs are satisfied? A. H. PIERCE.
SMITH COLLEGE.
A Comparison of Some Mental and Physical Tests in their Application
to Epileptic and Normal Subjects. W. G. SMITH. British Journal
of Psychology, January, 1905. Vol. I., No. 2, pp. 240-261.
Six normal individuals (attendants in an asylum), five epileptics whose
general intelligence was not notably impaired, and five epileptics showing
marked dementia were tested with respect to power of recognition, imme-
diate memory, simple and choice reaction time, discrimination of length,
rapidity of movement, tremor, rhythm and strength of grip. In dis-
crimination of length, rapidity of movement, tremor, rhythm and strength
of grip there was no apparent difference between the groups. No demon-
strable differences were found in the influence of practice, though the
normal individuals seem to improve slightly more. In recognition, mem-
ory and reaction time the epileptics are inferior; the essential facts being
as follows:
RECOGNITION.
PICTURES. WORDS.
Forgetting. Confusion. Forgetting. Confusion,
av. m.v. av. m.v. ay. m.T. av. m.T.
Normal 1.2 0.5 0.8 0.4 1.7 0.6 0.8 0.5
I. Epileptic (nearly normal) 1.3 0.7 0.7 0.5 2.1 0.8 1.9 1.3
II. Epileptic (demented) 1.7 1.0 2.5 1.2 2.2 1.2 3.3 1.3
194 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
IMMEDIATE MEMORY. LETTERS RIGHTLY PLACED.
Series of
4 Letters. 5679
Normal 3.9 4.8 4.9 4.9 4.6
I. and II. Epileptic 3.6 4.1 3.8 3.8 3.0
REACTIONS
| Choice. Simple (throwing cards in a heap)
av. m.v. av. m.v.
Normal 17. 1.6 8.3 0.6
I. Epileptic 23.6 2.7 11.0 1.0
II. Epileptic 32.0 3.0 13.6 1.2
It seems likely that the choice reaction time or, still better, the dif-
ference between an individual's simple and choice reaction time may
have diagnostic value. Unfortunately Mr. Smith does not give the indi-
vidual records or explain clearly whether the m.v.'s are (1) the averages
of the mean deviations of individual's separate trials from their averages,
or (2) the averages of the deviations of the averages of individuals from
the average of the whole group. Apparently his m.v.'s are the former,
though to estimate the reliability of his results and to estimate the diag-
nostic value of the tests the latter are essential.
Such work as this is very much needed, not only for obvious practical
reasons, but also because, as Mr. Smith says of his negative results, it
' forces on our attention the richness and complexity of mental life.' All
workers in individual psychology should, however, make it an absolute
rule to print the individual measurements except when the expense is
prohibitive. EDWARD L. THORNDIKE.
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
Applied Axioms. ALFRED SIDGWICK. Mind, January, 1905, pp. 42-57.
" As an excuse for writing on so ancient a subject as the respect which
is properly due to 'undeniable truth,' a modern instance will be useful
as showing that, in spite of the antiquity of the problem, its solution is
still a little obscure." The 'modern instance' which furnishes the sup-
posedly necessary justification for this article is Dr. McTaggart's con-
tention (in Sttfdies in Hegelian Dialectic, pp. 110-113) that we must
either abide by the law of contradiction in all cases or else assume that
sensation apart from thought can assure \is of reality. As against this
argument, Mr. Sidgwick, who adopts the position of pragmatism, main-
tains that a contradiction may result from the unavoidable defects of
language and of thought, in so far as thought depends upon antithesis;
and consequently " that the actuality of anything must be judged on other
grounds than that of our power of explaining its nature in words ; and
that, where we are compelled for all practical purposes to recognize that
a thing or a process is actual, no verbal argument to show that it is im-
possible has any standing-ground." The easy dilemma by which Mc-
Taggart demolishes this position overlooks the essential distinction ' be-
tween an undeniable law and an undeniable major premise (or use of an
undeniable law).' Stated abstractly, the law of contradiction is a law
the truth of which no one would find it worth his while seriously to doubt.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 195
In concrete cases, however, it is always possible that the proposition,
A is B, while literally true, may be virtually untrue, owing to the neglect
of some important aspect or detail. Rigid insistence upon the law,
therefore, becomes a positive source of error, for it withdraws attention
from possible ambiguities in the predicate, and it results in the hasty
condemnation as illusory of such notions as causation and change, which
have most abundantly proved their practical value. Mathematical axioms
are no exception. " Behind an inference resting on an appeal to arith-
metical principles there is always implied the saving clause 'so far as
these are numbers ' which includes both the proviso ' if I have counted
as I intended ' (i. e., correctly), and the proviso ' if the laws of number
are applicable to the subject.' "
Stated briefly, the point of the article is that the law of contradiction
is trustworthy only when we are able to assure ourselves that the premises
in the given case have been stated correctly. For such correctness the
law itself of course furnishes no guarantee. This much is fairly obvious.
As a plea for an arrest of judgment until further data are secured the
argument may often be quite in place. But whether we can pass directly
from this to the conclusion apparently intended, that practical considera-
tions may justify us in entertaining opinions which are in open conflict
with our reasoned results that is indeed another question, and one for
which the author advances no proof.
B. H. BODE.
UNIVEESITY OF WISCONSIN.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PHILOSOPHIE UNO PHILOSOPHISCHE
KRITIK. Band 125, Heft 1. Das Verhdltnis des Fiihlens, des
Begehrens und des Wollens zum Vorstellung und Bewussisein (pp.
113-163) : J. BERGMANN. - The ego that finds within itself feeling,
etc., is a unity such that two objectively distinct and particular
properties can be united in it only if two other properties standing to
them in the relation of universal to particular, and also reciprocally
conditioning each other in that though objectively distinct they are sub-
jectively identical, are such that, were one of them only present in the
ego, that ego would be the universal for which the two first named prop-
erties would both be particulars. No one can have ideas without percep-
tion of self. Every feeling has an idea for a substrate, and every idea,
a feeling. To free intensity from its contradictions we must say that
intensive properties no more tend to disappear with decrease of intensity
than do tones with the lowering of pitch. The contrast of positive and
negative applies to feelings. Zur geschichtlichen Bedeutung der natur-
philosophie Spinozas (pp. 163-186): A. HOFFMANN. - Spinoza was far
more truly a successor of Hobbes than of Descartes, both as regards the
use of the geometrical method, and as to emphasis on social philosophy,
the relation of body and mind, free will, and the differences between hu-
man and other souls. Bericht uber die italienische philosophische Lit-
196 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
teratur des Jahrens 1902 (pp. 186-202) : C. D. PFLAUM. Recensionen.
R. Falckenberg, Hermann Lotze. I: Das Leben und die Entstehung der
Schriften: M. WENTSCHER. E. Meumann, Die Entstehung der ersten
Worth edeutung beim Kinde: M. ISSERLIN. K. Eisler, Studien zur Wert-
theorie: J. K. KREIBIG. A. Dryoff, Uber den Existenzialbegriff : v. ASTER.
Notizen. Neu eingegangene Biicher. Aus Zeitschriften.
Elkin, W. B. Hume: The Relation of the Treatise of Human Nature-
Book 1 to the Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. New York :
The Macmillan Co. 1904. 8vo. Pp. ix + 330.
Hibben, John Grier. Logic, Deductive and Inductive. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons. 1905. 8vo. Pp. xvi + 439. $1.40.
Santayana, George. The Life of Reason or the Phases of Human Prog-
ress. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1905.
Vol. I. Reason in Common Sense. 12mo. Pp. x + 291. $1.25.
Vol. II. Reason in Society. 12mo. Pp. viii + 205. $1.25.
Yale Psychological Studies. Edited by Charles H. Judd. Psychological
Review, Monograph Supplement. No. 29. The number contains the
following articles : ' Introduction to a Series of Studies of Eye Move-
ments by Means of Kinetoscopic Photographs,' by Charles H. Judd,
Cloyd McAllister and W. M. Steele. ' The Fixation of Points in the
Visual Field,' by Cloyd N. McAllister. ' The Muller-Lyer Illusion/
by Charles H. Judd. ' The Poggendorff Illusion,' by E. H. Cameron
and W. M. Steele. < The Zollner Illusion,' by Charles H. Judd and
Henry C. Courten. ' Analysis of Reaction Movements,' by Charles H.
Judd, Cloyd N. McAllister and W. M. Steele. 'Practice without
Knowledge of Results, by Charles H. Judd. 'Movements and Con-
sciousness,' by Charles H. Judd.
NOTES AND NEWS
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY has received $100,000 from Mr. Jacob H. Schiff
to endow a chair of social work, and the new professorship has been filled
by the appointment of Dr. Edward T. Devine, general secretary of the
Charity Organization Society, director of the School of Philanthropy and
editor of Charities. This endowment makes possible the close affiliation
between the School of Philanthropy and Columbia University.
THE first Herbert Spencer lecture, established by Pandit Shyamaji
Krishnavarma, M.A., of Balliol College, was given at Oxford, on March
9, by Mr. Frederic Harrison, M.A., honorary fellow of Wadham College.
MR. SHYAMAJI KRISHNAVARMA has offered to establish six traveling
fellowships at Oxford, five of them to be called the Herbert Spencer
Indian fellowships. The fellowships are intended for natives of India.
DR. R. S. WOODWORTH, instructor in psychology in Columbia Univer-
sity, has been promoted to an adjunct professorship.
APBIL 13, 1905 VOL. II. No. 8.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
KANT'S DOCTRINE OF THE BASIS OF MATHEMATICS 1
treatment of the philosophy of mathematics by Kant, in
*- the 'Critique' and in the 'Prolegomena,' is equally character-
istic of his philosophy in general, and of the age in which he did
his work. The age in question was one of a rapid development in
certain relatively advanced regions of mathematical research. But
it was also an age of disillusionment regarding the power of mathe-
matical science to demonstrate metaphysical truth. It was further-
more a time when mathematical inventiveness was decidedly more
noticeable than mathematical rigor; and when construction had for
the moment outrun logical reflection in mathematics. On the other
hand, it was a time when the philosophers had learned many lessons
concerning the importance of experience for their own constructions.
Consequently it was a period when mathematics and philosophy were
further apart, in spirit and in interest, than they had been during
a portion of the seventeenth century. The mathematicians were
in a sense more disposed to novel speculation and researches. The
philosophers were less confident of the success of a priori construc-
tions. Since the death of Leibnitz no thorough-going effort to-
wards a philosophy of mathematics had been made. The efforts
of Leibnitz himself regarding this topic were very imperfectly known
in the age when Kant wrote. In brief, it was a moment when a
sharp sundering of the task of the mathematician and of the philos-
opher appeared especially called for. That a critical philosopher
should lay stress upon the contrast was, therefore, extremely nat-
ural. Even as a rationalist Kant had to feel that reason in philos-
ophy had other offices than it had in mathematics. And the mathe-
maticians of the time were too little possessed of an insight into the
philosophy of their own science to give him any aid in bridging the
chasm that seemed to him to divide the two kinds of activity.
Furthermore, the way in which his own critical thought came to
him, namely, through the reflections which first culminated in the
year 1769, was a way which served to emphasize the contrast be-
1 Read at the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Phila-
delphia, December 28-30, 1904.
197
198 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tween mathematical and philosophical truth. The discovery of the
essay of 1769, on 'The Reason for the Distinction between Regions
in Space,' was such as very soon to lead Kant to the conclusion
which characterizes the dissertation of 1770, namely, to the con-
clusion that space and time predetermine the form of the phe-
nomenal world of our percepts, but do not throw any light upon
the ultimate nature of things. When Kant passed from the doctrine
of the dissertation to the later deduction of the categories, he indeed
learned to abandon all methods of obtaining knowledge of the
noumena ; but the failure to win this knowledge did not bring philos-
ophy any nearer again to the position of mathematics. The business
of philosophy remains for Kant the criticism of fundamental con-
cepts, and the determination of their range of validity. The busi-
ness of mathematics he conceived as the construction of those objects
whose laws are determined by the forms of our perceptual faculty.
This contrast of the two is henceforth, therefore, absolute. Philos-
ophy, as the Metkodenlehre of the ' Critique ' explains to us, possesses
no axiom of a theoretical character, and can justify its concepts
only by an explicit proof of their necessity as the conditions of a
possible experience. Philosophy, therefore, can never construct its
objects of synthetic knowledge. Such objects, constructed and
presented by the mind for itself and to itself, are the topics of
mathematical science alone. The certainty of mathematical science
depends entirely upon the necessity which for us our forms of per-
ception possess. Kant never falters in his assurance that these, our
forms of perception, are determinate, are finished, are for us abso-
lutely predetermined by our constitution. In the 'Prolegomena' he
triumphantly shows how the possibility of an exact knowledge of
mathematical truth is explicable upon his theory and not upon any
other. In emphasizing the contrast between mathematical and
philosophical method, he expressly does so on the ground that no
form of pure thinking can ever present to the mind an object, or
can ever demonstrate the properties of this object otherwise than by
a mere analysis of a prevously given concept. And Kant always
confidently speaks as if mere analysis must necessarily lead to com-
paratively barren and unprogressive scientific precedure. By pure
thought I can discover that man is rational, only in case my defini-
tion of man has already included rationality amongst the marks
which are to be characteristic of man. If mathematical science is
able to know objects a priori and in ways which are both synthetic
and instructive, that must be because mathematical science depends
upon something quite different from pure thinking. As this some-
thing is a priori and necessary, it can only be, in Kant's opinion,
a form of perception, and our power to construct objects in accord-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 199
ance with this form. So much, then, for the view of mathematics
which Kant took.
The development of mathematical science since the time of Kant
has followed a path which his influence has no doubt affected, but
whose direction he was entirely unable to foresee. The mathe-
maticians of Kant's time did indeed make unhesitating use of gen-
eralizations derived from the observations of objects constructed in
space; and they made this use in a way which rigorous mathemati-
cians no longer regard as justifiable. The mathematicians since the
time of Kant have tended more and more to follow the very direction
which he would have warned them not to follow. Namely, they
have, on the whole, increasingly forsaken the method of trusting to
perceptual construction as a means of mathematical demonstration.
Geometry without diagrams is now the order of the day amongst
the most rigorous students of the bases of geometry. Where dia-
grams are introduced, the reader is especially warned (as in Hil-
bert's recent lectures on the foundations of geometry, autographed
for his hearers) the reader is expressly warned, I say, to take as
it were no logical notice of the diagrams, to regard them merely
as hints, illustrations, suggestions of a relational structure whose
consequences are to be developed without any use of the perceived
properties of diagrams. In this sense it would seem as if the ideal
of modern mathematics were the ideal of a science of pure concepts
the very ideal that Kant expressly declared to be impossible for
mathematical science. Kant warned the philosophers that they
must not attempt to use the methods of mathematics, just because
they could not construct their concepts a priori. The modern
mathematician is warned that he must not put his trust in the
properties of visible figures, just because the ideal of his science,
the ideal of the search for necessary conclusions, is an ideal which
perceptual intuition rather confuses than directly furthers. As
Kant interprets the business of mathematics, the mathematician has
seen, and therefore believes. He believes because he has seen a
priori. The modern logicians of mathematics would rather seem to
say, Blessed is he who has not seen, in Kant's sense of the reine
Anschauung, but has yet learned rationally to believe; for he alone
has learned with true rigidity to grasp the meaning of his fundar
mental concepts.
As an incident of this whole development of modern mathe-
matical logic there have appeared various doctrines concerning the
bases of geometry which appear to be remote enough from those
which Kant explicitly recognized. The tridimensionality of space is
for Kant a result of the a priori form of intuition. The modern
geometer would in general admit that we can indeed see no con-
200 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ceptual reason why space must be limited to three dimensions. But
instead of saying like Kant, that the limitation of space to three
dimensions is something a priori, necessary and certain, the modern
geometer would regard this limitation as something which, from the
point of view of pure mathematics, is not necessary at all. The
properties of a tridimensional space can be, with sufficient definition
of the other properties of space, rationally developed. But the
form of a tridimensional space is, logically speaking, only one of
countless possible forms, whose logically definable properties are
precisely as justified a topic of pure mathematics as are the prop-
erties of the space of our ordinary geometry. If you reply that
tridimensional space is alone worthy to be called space, because that
is the only kind of space that we happen to have, then the modern
mathematician replies that this limitation may be as important as
you please for philosophy, but is an empirical limitation, which
makes tridimensional geometry of great importance for applied
mathematics, but which, just because of the limitation, has nothing
whatever that is mathematically necessary about it. In brief, show
me a form of intuition of the Kantian type so the modern logician
of mathematics might say, and if I accepted your account of it,
I should regard it merely as a character belonging to a specifically
defined human experience, a character which for that very reason
would have no sort of mathematical necessity about it, and, there-
fore, no authority which need limit in the least mathematical gen-
eralizations which may be suggested by this form, but which may
vary from it in any given way.
So much for tridimensionality. But of decidedly greater im-
portance for modern theoretical geometry than the merely formal
possibility of doing away with the limitation of geometry to three
dimensions is that study of geometrical implications, necessities, and
possibilities which has appeared in connection with the non-
Euclidean geometry, and which still continues, in the form of con-
stantly new additions to our present list of possible geometries. The
geometry which Euclid found it convenient to work out explained
the relations present in a large number of observable diagrams, by
means of certain simple principles. As a fact, this explanation of
the observed phenomena by the assumed principle was, in Euclid's
case, incomplete, since there are demonstrations in Euclid which do
not follow from the axioms alone, but which depend upon the
observation of special diagrams. The modern geometer regards
such demonstrations as unsatisfactory, just because they make use
of principles which the diagram more or less unconsciously suggests,
and which the Greek geometer did not make explicit in his list of
axioms and postulates. In other words, that very use of intuition
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 201
which Kant regarded as geometrically ideal, the modern geometer
regards as scientifically defective, because surreptitious. No mathe-
matical exactness without explicit proof from assumed principles
such is the motto of the modern geometer. But suppose the rea-
soning of Euclid purified of this comparatively surreptitious ap-
peal to intuition. Suppose that the principles of geometry are
made quite explicit at the outset of the treatise, as Fieri and Hilbert
or Professor Halstead or Dr. Veblen makes his principles explicit
in his recent treatment of geometry. Then, indeed, geometry
becomes for the modern mathematician a purely rational science,
so far as any one special form of geometry is concerned. But here-
upon a question of great philosophical interest becomes only all the
more insistent. Any one form of geometry, such, for instance, as the
Euclidean geometry, depends upon assuming the simultaneous truth
of a number of distinct fundamental principles. It is possible to
show, and in recent mathematical treatises it has been distinctly
shown, that such principles can be so stated as to be logically quite
independent of one another, so that no one of them could be deduced
from the others. A system of objects which should conform to
some of these principles and not to the others is therefore perfectly
definable, is mathematically possible. This has been indubitably
shown in case of the system of principles assumed by Euclid, and is
all the more obvious when to Euclid's explicit principles are added
such statements as make explicit the meaning of those principles
which, guided by surreptitious appeals to intuition, he more or less
unconsciously assumed. Under these circumstances, that very in-
difference to what we perceptually find present in this or in that
diagram, that indifference, I say, which modern mathematical
method encourages makes all the more inevitable the question : What
necessity is there of assuming precisely that system of mutually
independent first principles which Euclid found it convenient to
assume, and which, with some supplements, the modern expositors
of Euclidean geometry employ? Since it is demonstrable that no
sort of logical inconsistency would be involved in supposing the
existence of systems of objects which satisfy some of these principles
and not others, whence, if from anywhere, is derived the authority
of this particular system? As is well known, the modern logicians
of mathematics differ a good deal in the theories of knowledge which
they use in their answer to this question. But it may be said that
very few students of the logic of mathematics at the present time
can see any warrant in the analysis of geometrical truth for regard-
ing just the Euclidean system of principles as possessing any dis-
coverable necessity. The facts of the world of experience seem to
be economically describable, so many say, in the terms of Euclidean
202 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
geometry. But in this sense Euclidean geometry differs in no whit
from the concepts of the theory of energy. Mathematical necessity
belongs to the deductions from the principles, and to them only.
For those who take this view a considerable range of difference of
opinion still remains open, regarding the sense in which this con-
venience of Euclidean geometry as a means of describing the world
is forced upon us by experience. Some are disposed to say, No other
system of geometry seems to be probably applicable to our physical
world. Some would insist that, for reasons upon which I need not
here dwell, the known phenomena might be characterized in non-
Euclidean terms, if only we could agree to accept certain conventions
which actually run counter to our present mental habits. There are
some mathematical logicians who are disposed to accept the Kantian
view far enough to admit that the Euclidean space form is the ex-
pression of what we men, so long as we remain true to our present
perceptual nature, must needs find the most natural way of inter-
preting spatial experience. But about one matter nearly all the
modern students who approach the subject without a distinct pre-
existing Kantian bias are agreed, namely, that whatever necessity
belongs to Euclidean geometry, apart from the necessity of its
deductions, is in no sense mathematical necessity, any more than the
present necessity that bitter tastes, if sufficiently strong, should
be disagreeable is a mathematical necessity. "With this view I my-
self agree. It determines our judgment as to the positive value of
Kant's view of the basis of mathematics. For mathematics, from
the modern point of view, is concerned with necessary inferences.
If the field within which necessary inference is itself a possible
matter is in any way a restricted field, that is, if there are some
subjects that admit of systematic mathematical treatment, while
other subjects altogether forbid such treatment, then the field within
which systems of exact mathematical inference are possible is de-
termined by the categories of thought, and not by the forms of any
intuition. The ideal of mathematical science is the exact develop-
ment of the consequences of all those ideal forms which it is possible
to subject to exact treatment at all.
Thus, if the ego has a determinate relational structure, and if
this relational structure admits of mathematical treatment, then,
and just in so far, the science of the ego will become a branch of
mathematics. What will make it so, if at all, will not be the neces-
sity under which we now stand of appreciating the presence of the
ego, but the capacity which our concepts of the ego may possess of
development in terms of a precisely definable system of relationships.
In the same way, if our spatial experience presents a character, which
admits, as it does, of precise relational definition and development,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 203
then we shall have, as we have, a mathematical geometry. But the
mathematical necessity of this geometry will belong solely to the field
where the exact development of the relational structure of the ideal
entity called, for instance, Euclidean space, is possible. Mathemat-
ical necessity will in no wise be possessed by this entity itself as dis-
tinct from any other entity (say a non-Euclidean space), which can
be treated with equal exactness. God may have made our space-
perceiving nature on the lines of Euclid 's geometry. If he did, that
is a matter of experience, not of mathematical necessity.
If your boots have a relationally exact structure, there may be
a mathematical science of this structure, precisely so far as the rela-
tions in question are exact. But it will be no part of mathematical
science to determine whether or why you have any boots at all. If
you insist that the form of your boots is determined a priori by the
form of your feet (a proposition which may be regarded rather as
advisable than as necessary), then the form of your feet will be
a topic for mathematical science, precisely so far as the relations
involved in this form constitute a system reducible to certain fun-
damental principles, and such that the characters of this system can
be deduced from these principles. But mathematical science will
have nothing to do with the question why you have any feet at all,
or why you have not fins instead. If one conceives an absolute being
possessed of a totality of perfect mathematical knowledge, so that it
defined with absolute adequacy all possible relational systems, even
such a being, so far as it was merely mathematical, would define only
general types of ideal objects, and not individual objects such as
these boots and feet and fins, unless, indeed, it added to its mathe-
matical determination such will-decisions as distinguish the indi-
vidual deed that we do from the possibility that we leave undone.
In brief, a form of intuition, if such exists, is precisely a character
belonging to the individual nature of man as a real being, and is not
a mathematical necessity. It is a mathematical necessity that an
ideal entity defined in general as 'a spendthrift' will become bank-
rupt if his capital is so much and if he regularly exceeds his income
by so much a year. You can provisionally predict when such a
spendthrift will become bankrupt. But there is no mathematical
necessity that in the real world anybody should be a spendthrift.
That result, if it happens, is due to free will, or to inherited disposi-
tion, or to training, or to the devil, or to whatever other existence
you decide to take into account. As I regard this distinction be-
tween the general definition of an ideal necessity and the individual
decision of a will as valid from an idealistic point of view just as
much as from an empiristic point of view, as I regard the Absolute
as subject to this distinction quite as much as we are, just because
204 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
it is an absolute distinction, I should myself fully agree that a
Kantian form of intuition, if you can prove its existence in our own
nature, has absolutely no interest as the foundation of any mathe-
matical science, except in so far as it may suggest to some mathema-
tician the particular ideal topics upon which he finds it convenient
to build up a mathematical theory.
So much for the way in which the whole modern mathematical
development is distinctly opposed to the Kantian conception that
something called a form of intuition, distinct from a conceptual sys-
tem, is a necessary basis of mathematical investigation. But there
is indeed quite another, aspect of the Kantian doctrine to be consid-
ered. Kant, after defining with a natural, but to us no longer inter-
esting, narrowness the business which he calls the mere analysis of
pure concepts, decided very correctly that so barren an undertaking
as declaring that a rational animal is rational could be of no service
for enlarging our knowledge. He accordingly maintains, in the
form of the famous distinction between synthetic and analytic judg-
ments, that every significant science which truly enlarges our knowl-
edge depends upon a genuinely constructive and synthetic process.
He also very correctly pointed out that every productive type of
reasoning depends upon its own sort of experience. Whoever rea-
sons, unquestionably observes something. That is, whoever considers
some ideal object, and yet enlarges his knowledge as he does so, gets
this knowledge from actually observing what happens to his idea as
he works over it. Now observing what happens to one's ideas as one
works over them is indeed definable as a kind of rational perception.
But the possibility of such rational perception exists quite as much
when you are considering the idea of God, or Kant's favorite idea
of the possibility of experience, as when you are observing facts of
spatial experience, or your boots. There is indeed a great differ-
ence between observing an ideal process, and making a decision as to
which one of two ideas, whose consequences you have ideally ob-
served, you shall henceforth allow to be individuated as the deed
that you choose. There is also a sharp difference between observing
such an ideal process, and looking to see whether that which the
natural world permits to exist does or does not accord with your
ideas. In either case you are observing a process which expresses
a purpose. But abstract ideal processes without final and individual
decisions, are observed in a way which differs from the way in which
decisive and individual facts are identified as actually or as prob-
ably real facts of existence. For the ideal processes, with whose
consequences mathematical science is alone concerned, are universals
in the abstract sense. What you observe as the consequences of such
an abstract idea may or may not accord with what your, own personal
decision, or the decision of the world-will permits to exist as indi-
vidual fact. Hence observing a mathematical necessity is never the
same as observing an individual existence. And for the same reason
observing a mathematical necessity is never the same as observing
what we call a phenomenon of nature. Nevertheless, observing a
mathematical necessity is indeed observing a process of ideal con-
struction, and its results. And every such process of ideal con-
struction unquestionably has a form. This form is, however, not
what Kant meant by a form of intuition as distinct from a form of
thought, for what you observe when you observe mathematical
truth is a precisely and abstractly definable and general necessity,
which is neither the perception of a fact in the natural world, nor
yet a final decision of your own will, nor yet a metaphysically indi-
vidual thing; but which is precisely the general way in which this
idea has to express itself. The principle that guides one in such
observations is unquestionably what Kant meant by the principle of
contradiction, when he called this principle the principle of an-
alytical judgment. So far as an idea is defined as a type of action, a
plan, a way of behavior, it necessarily implies whatever is such that
the contradictory of this consequence would be opposed to the idea
itself. Whenever you observe such implications you observe a sys-
tem of truth which comes to you as the system of the consequences
of certain ideal processes. Such an observation is, however, an ob-
servation of synthesis, quite as much as it is an observation of the
truth of Kantian analytical judgments. And as a fact, the lesson
of Kant's whole deduction of the categories is that analysis apart
from synthesis is impossible, and vice versa. In consequence, mathe-
matical truth is indeed truth relating to a system of possible experi-
ence. And the mathematician observes the structure of this system
empirically. Only because what he observes is an abstract process
of construction, not an individual phenomenon, the truth that he
discovers is of abstractly universal application to all things, what-
ever they may prove to be and if such there be that conform to
his ideal constructions. Mathematical insight is, then, not without
experience, and, if you please to use the term, not without intuition.
But the intuition is not of perceived diagrams, nor of the special
conditions of human experience, but of the relational structure of
an ideal system.
Mathematical science has nothing to say, for instance, as to
whether either human beings or the inhabitants of Mars are neces-
sarily forced to count. Mathematical science defines the eternal
validity of numerical truth. This truth is true for us. It is also
true for the inhabitants of Mars, if there are any such. We experi-
ence it to be true because we try an ideal experiment, and see that
206 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
what was true in this ideal case must needs be true of an infinity of
other ideal cases, precisely because of the abstract nature of what we
have observed. This which we have observed must be true for all
beings and at all times and places, because the opposite would be
contradictory. But mathematical science has nothing to say as to
whether or no we, or the inhabitants of Mars, must be beings such as
are able to perceive this truth. Kant, however, was quite wrong in
supposing that the application of the principle of contradiction
would give us an analysis only of commonplaces. He was quite
right in supposing that whenever we think we engage in a con-
structive process and observe something. But what we observe
when we think is, as the non-Euclidean geometers show, frequently
so general that we can define vast numbers of objects that we never
hope or even desire to perceive ; precisely as a moral agent is capable
of conceiving accomplished plans of action that he never, hopes to
carry out, and that in many cases he deliberately forbids himself to
carry out. Yet every consideration of a plan of action is an ideal
sort of acting, which simply does not carry itself out into the indi-
vidual deed, but remains abstract and general.
It is a perfectly fair question to ask, What is the universal form
of that abstract type of ideal experience upon which all reasoning
processes depend? This, however, is the question, not of the
Kantian forms of intuition, but of the categories. The forms of
thought are unquestionably the forms of mathematical science.
That is what the whole recent mathematical theory has made mani-
fest. On the other hand, the immortal soul of the Kantian doctrine
of the forms of intuition remains this, that thinking itself is a kind
of experience, that true thinking is synthetic as well as analytic, is
engaged in construction of a peculiar kind, and not in mere barren
analyses such as the statements that all rational animals are rational.
Kant was right that the novelties of mathematical science are due
to the observation of the results of constructive processes. He was
even right that the observation of a diagram, in so far as the dia-
gram is simply the expression of an idea, may be an admirable guide
in the thinking process. He was wrong in supposing that a special
form of intuition, such as that of Euclidean space, can have any
other necessity than that which every individual fact in the world
possesses. Every fact, in my opinion, is what some will decides it
to be. Every fact is individual. But that does not determine the
range of ideal possibilities, nor the range of mathematical truth.
For mathematical truth is concerned with the consequences of ideas
in advance of, or apart from, the decision whether those ideas which
are then taken as what I have elsewhere called internal meanings,
are expressed in individual realities. Mathematical science is ab-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 207
stract, and can, therefore, never define the whole truth. For the
whole truth of things is always individual, and is never expressible
in terms merely of abstraction, nor in terms of merely logical impli-
cation. On the other hand, as soon as you consider any individual
fact, as, for instance, the fact that this man has this form of intui-
tion, you consider what, if true, is no topic of mathematical science.
I conclude, then, that Kant's theory of the basis of mathematics has
been in one respect wholly abandoned, and properly so, by the
modern logic of mathematics. In another respect, precisely in so
far' as Kant declared that constructive synthesis and observation of
its ideal results are both necessary for mathematics, Kant was un-
questionably right. And as nobody before him had so clearly seen
this fact, and as the progress of mathematical logic since his time
has been so profoundly influenced by his criticisms, we owe to him
an enormous advance in our reflective insight in this field.
JOSIAH ROYCE.
HARVARD UNIVEBSITT.
SOME OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS FOR PHILOSOPHY
TPOR a long space of time the domains of philosophy and mathe-
-*- matics were regarded less as intersecting spheres of interest
than as adjacent fields separated by a kind of 'dead line' that no
worker in either might venture to cross without risking the loss both
of his identity and of the respect of his fellows. I once heard a
distinguished mathematician say that the study of mathematics acts
on the metaphysical instinct like sulphur on the itch. Undoubtedly
that savant had a philosophy, but, like the Irishman's snake, he
was unconscious of it, and he was the less tolerant on that account.
On the other hand, the mathematician has not infrequently been
compelled to forgive such disrespect as that of Sir Wm. Hamilton's
on ground analogous to the good old Catholic principle of invincible
ignorance. Happily, the tokens more and more abound that the
uncanny day of such misunderstandings is rapidly passing away.
It may return again, but not for some generations. A new era has
begun that shall be distinguished by intellectual sympathy and co-
operation, by increasing wholesomeness of scholarship. The indicia
have reference to old records. They indicate the reestablishment
of broken traditions of an older time when philosopher and mathe-
matician were often united in a single personality. Such men as
C. S. Peirce and Pearson and Mach and Couturat and Poincare and
Georg Cantor, exemplify clearly enough that the larger incarna-
208 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tions are not impossible even in these crowded days of narrow
specialization.
Nowhere else is the community of interest so vast and con-
spicuous as in the theory of assemblages. By the latter I mean the
doctrine variously entitled Mengenlehre and Mannigfaltigkeitslehre
by the Germans, theorie des ensembles by the French, and often
referred to in English as the theory of manifolds or aggregates, or
by other analogous designations. Many of its ideas date at least
as ancient as historical thought, and have figured in important ways
in logic, in philosophy and in mathematics steadily from the earliest
times. On the other hand, many of its chief concepts, its char-
acteristic and ruling notions, and their organization into a distinct
and self-supporting body of coherent doctrine, may be said to con-
stitute the latest great mathematico-philosophical creation. If
mathematics is the most fundamental of the sciences, assemblage
theory is destined to be regarded as the most fundamental branch
of mathematics. Herein lies its immeasurable import for philos-
ophy. Viewed in retrospect, it appears as an inevitable product
of the modern critical spirit. Already it is seen to underlie and
interpenetrate both geometry and analysis. Its connection with
modern logic is most intimate, often approximating identity with
the latter. And philosophy in some wide-awake quarters has already
recognized in the doctrine of manifolds her own most promising and
inviting field.
Now in this young, vigorous and rapidly unfolding doctrine,
there have been for some time certain recognized outstanding ques-
tions that ought to challenge mathematician and philosopher alike,
in equal measure certainly, if not in manner the same. These prob-
lems are of two classes: those that have been very recently solved,
and those which still await solution. I purpose to state some of the
problems here in the hope that some rising philosopher may feel
their challenge and, in case of the latter class, direct a yet uncon-
quered genius to their solution.
A question of the former class is: Can every assemblage be well-
ordered f It has just received an affirmative answer by E. Zermelo. 1
The fundamental character of the problem, the simplicity of the
means employed in its solution and especially the bearings of the
solution on kindred dependent questions, justify a brief report upon
the matter in this place.
"What, then, is an assemblage? Any collection of objects or
things (elements) of whatsoever kind or kinds is an assemblage.
An assemblage, to be mathematically available, to be available, that
is, for the purposes of rigorous thought, must be defined; and it is
1 Mathematische Annalen, Band 59, Heft 4, November, 1904.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 2C9
said to be defined when and only when we know enough about it to
know that an arbitrarily given object either is or is not an element
of it. When is a defined assemblage said to be well-ordered
(wohlgeordnet, l)ien defini)f The answer is, when and only when
its elements have been so disposed in fact or in thought that one
may affirm of it the following three propositions: (1) of any two
of its elements a and b, one, as a, precedes, i. e., is of lower rank,
and the other, as b, comes after, i. e., is of higher rank; (2) of any
triplet of its elements a, ~b, c, if a is of lower rank than b, and 6
is lower than c, then a is lower than c; (3) the assemblage has an
element of lowest rank, a first element, and the same is true of every
part of the assemblage ; that is, of every assemblage whose elements
are elements of the given assemblage.
The simplest possible example of a well-ordered assemblage is
that of the integers in their natural order 1, 2, 3, , v, v -f- 1, ,
it being agreed that any element (figure) v shall be of lower rank
than an element v + a if the number v is less than the number
v -f- o-. It is easily seen that the assemblage in question satisfies
the three necessary and sufficient conditions. The same is true of
the assemblage of all rational numbers greater than zero and less
CL C
than 1, if it be agreed that of every two such numbers T and -j.
o a
that one shall have lower rank which has the smaller number for
sum of its terms, and that, ifa-f-& = c-f-din case of two numbers
^ and -, then the smaller of these shall have the lower rank. Thus
o a
arranged, the assemblage stands : , ^, , f , , , f , f , . But if
the same elements be arranged in their so-called natural order, that
is, on a line of unit-length from zero to 1, and if it be agreed that of
two numbers that one shall be of lower rank whose distance from the
origin (zero) is the less, then, though the assemblage is indeed or-
dered, it is not iv ell-ordered, for in its present arrangement it fails
to satisfy condition (3) ; it has, for example, no first element, no
element of lowest rank, and the like is true of countless numbers of
its parts. It is plain, then, that not every assemblage, not even
every ordered assemblage, is well-ordered. What Zermelo has estab-
lished is that every assemblage can be well-ordered.
To such as know that it is impossible to denumerate the points of
a continuum, that is, to set up a one-to-one correspondence between,
say, the points of a unit-line and the integers, Zermelo 's result is apt
to be surprising, and, because of its far-reaching implications, it
is really astonishing. Of such implications, two of the most im-
portant and striking are these: first, every conceivable assemblage
can be so arranged that each element (unless it be the last, an insig-
210 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
mficant special case) shall be followed by a next; and second, that
every assemblage can be so arranged that every sequence of its ele-
ments a, b, c, '" in which a has higher rank than &, 6 higher rank
than c, etc., must have an end, a last element. Any one who will
seriously attempt to conceive the points of the room in which he
is sitting so arranged that the assemblage shall have the two prop-
erties just stated, can not fail to have a deepening sense of the
marvelous character, the awful comprehensiveness, of Zermelo's
proposition.
And what, pray, is the stuff of which the demonstration is woven *
What are the auxiliary concepts employed ? Few indeed and simple,
though tenuous and slippery and lithe. First is the notion of the
assemblage of all the parts of a given assemblage E. Another idea
is that of associating or pairing with each of those parts some definite
element of the part, to be then known as the 'distinguished'
(ausgezeichnete) element of its associate part. A third concept is
that of the off-cut of a well-ordered assemblage, the term denoting
the part (of a well-ordered assemblage) whose elements, all of them,
are of lower rank than a given element of the assemblage. Obviously
to each element of the assemblage there corresponds a definite off-
cut. A very important role is played by the notion of y-assemblage :
an assemblage A is a -/-assemblage A provided it is well-ordered
and, in addition, possesses the property that, if e is an arbitrary
element of A and if O is the off-cut corresponding to e, then e is
always the 'distinguished' element of E O, where the latter sym-
bol denotes all the elements of E except those of 0. Such are the
Sommerfaden out of which the author has contrived the beautiful
figure of his demonstration.
I have already pointed out two of its important bearings. An-
other of its consequences is that it immediately removes from the
field of doubt or controversy another question of the utmost funda-
mental significance. I refer to the question concerning the com-
parability of every pair of assemblages. The meaning of the ques-
tion can be made sufficiently clear by a word of explanation. Two
assemblages, A and B, are said to be equivalent when and only
when it is possible to set up between the elements of A and those
of B a one-to-one correspondence. The simplest familiar example
of such equivalence is that where A denotes the assemblage of in-
tegers and B that of their doubles. Such examples abound in the
worlds of space and number. On the other hand, A is said to be
less than B and B greater than A, when A and B satisfy the two
conditions: (1) A has no (proper) 2 part equivalent to B; (2) B has
*A proper part of A is a part composed of some but not all of the elements
of A.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 211
a (proper) part equivalent to A. Now either of the relations,
equivalence and less (greater), excludes the other. That admits
of rigorous demonstration. But herewith is not resolved the ques-
tion whether one or other of the relations subsists between every
two assemblages. If A and B are equivalent, then neither is less
than the other; if one of them is less than the other, the two are not
equivalent; but herein is plainly no ground for inference that they
must be either equivalent or one less than the other. Possibly in
some cases neither relation holds, i. e. } A and B may not be compar-
able. In such an eventuality, we should have to recognize two
classes of assemblages: the comparable and the non-comparable.
Behold the matter from another point of view (due to Borel). If
A and B be two assemblages, then the following four cases may
arise: (1) A has a part equivalent to B but B none equivalent to
A; (2) B has a part equivalent to A but A none equivalent to B;
(3) A has a part equivalent to B and B has a part equivalent to A ;
(4) A has no part equivalent to B and B none equivalent to A.
The symmetry here is noteworthy. In passing, I wish to signalize
the importance of the principle of symmetry in fundamental ques-
tions of logic, and to suggest the topic, the logical significance of
esthetic principles, or its equivalent, as possibly worthy of an as-
pirant to the doctorate. To resume, it is noteworthy that the four
cases are not merely hypothetical, they exist. Cases (1) and (2)
are, of course, essentially the same, and are exemplified by taking
for A or B a point continuum and for B or A the totality of integers.
In such case one is less than the other. To exemplify case (3) it
suffices to let A stand for the assemblage of real (rational and ir-
rational) numbers and to let B denote the assemblage of the irra-
tional numbers. It has been proved that if A and B fall under case
(3), they are equivalent. Case (4) alone remains. That it is not
empty is shown at once by letting A denote the assemblage a lf a 2 and
B the assemblage b lf & 2 . In this particular example, A and B are
indeed equivalent, but does the notion of equivalence attach to
every pair A and B of (4), a case shown to exist? Georg Cantor,
easily the primate of all contributors to Mengenlehre, believed the
answer should be affirmative. But he had not been able to give a
scientific, i. e,, a transferable,* demonstration, and men of the type
of Borel held the matter in doubt. Was Cantor's conviction rooted
in esthetic soil? Was it due to a fine commanding sense of what
esthetically ought to be? At all events his conviction was just, if
not logically justified, for it is an obvious corollary to Zermelo's
'Concepts and proofs are essentially social affairs. They must be intel-
ligible to at least two minds, or, what is tantamount, to one person at least
twice. Such need not be true of emotion.
212 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
proposition that every two assemblages are comparable and that, if
they belong to case (4), they are equivalent.
So much for 'problems' that may be regarded as very recently
settled. I turn now to the second kind. Of these the most con-
spicuous is that of determining whether there is thinkable an assem-
blage having a power intermediate to that of the denumberable as-
semblage and that of the continuum. These terms demand explana-
tion. If the assemblages A and B are equivalent, they are said to
have the same power (Mdchtigkeit) . An assemblage having the
same power as the assemblage a l5 a 2 , a 8 , , a v , , without end,
is said to be denumerable, or to have the power of the denumerable
assemblage. To avoid confusion, it is well to note that power has
not been defined ; it is sameness of power that has been defined. An
assemblage, such as that of the irrational numbers, that has the same
power as that of the real numbers, or the points of a line-segment,
is said to have the power of the continuum. Now it is well known
and readily admits of proof that, if A has the power of the denumer-
able assemblage and B the power of the continuum, A and B have
not the same power. In fact, as above noted, A is, in the case sup-
posed, less than B. Is there an assemblage 7 intermediate to such
an A and B? That means, is there an / greater than A and less
than Bf All efforts to prove or disprove that such is the case have
been thus far baffled. The proof offered by the late Paul Tannery
has been found defective. The problem meets one on the very
threshold of assemblage theory and apparently demands acumen and
ingenuity rather than a large fund of mathematical knowledge.
It may be useful to view the question from another point of view.
As is well known, Cantor has defined 'classes' (I), (II), of
higher and higher power, where by higher is here meant that (I)
regarded as an assemblage is less than (II) similarly regarded, and
so on. This achievement of his, which is one of the boldest and
most brilliant in the annals of mathematic genius, was done as fol-
lows. He made use of three principles of number generation.
These, stated in full generality, are: (1) the addition of unity, 1,
to a number already formed; (2) positing, in case of an endless
sequence of numbers (integers) having no greatest, a new number
that shall be the first integer after the sequence and immediately
greater than every number of the sequence; (3) subjecting all num-
bers generable by (1) and (2) to the condition that all those pre-
ceding any specified one of them shall have the same power as a class
already defined.
Starting with 1, class (I), 1, 2, , v, , is defined by (1). By
(2), w is put to be first after (I) and greater than every number of
(I). Combination of (1) and (2) yields + 1, + 2, , 2,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 213
2u> + 2, , w 2 , to 2 + 1, -, Mto 2 , , n<a a , . Class (II) is struck
out by application of (3) to the foregoing sequence of transfinites.
Cantor proves that (I) and (II) are not of the same power and
that there is no assemblage between (I) and (II) in the sense of
intermediate above explained. Hence our problem is to show that
(II) has the power of the continuum or that it has not. It is inter-
esting to note that with exquisite impropriety Cantor has denom-
inated his three principles Logical Moments. Moments they un-
doubtedly are; but logical, they are just as undoubtedly not.
Neither are they illogical. They are super-logical, being precisely
the critical points in his process of transfinite creation where logic
pauses for a new start, the adoption of a principium, a choice, never
compelled, but only solicited and always declinable. The possibility,
the spiritual vision, of a generalization, logic may and often does
present, but the deed of generalization logic is impotent to do or
force.
I shall close by stating another outstanding question that is im-
mediately suggested by the procedure just described, though the
same question is encountered on many another path. It is: Is there
in the constitution of the human mind any limitation to the defini-
tion of higher and higher powers of assemblages? Is, in other
words, an assemblage of all assemblages and elements logically avail-
able? Is the notion meaningless? Is it free from interior contra-
diction? Would such an assemblage have to be an element of (in)
itself? Whatever the answers be, can we, do we, ever or always,
dispense with such a 'notion'? Can the word all be safely used
conjunctively in the sense of none excluded?
CASSIUS J. KEYSER. .
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Elements of Metaphysics. A. E. TAYLOR. London, Methuen & Co. ; New
York, The Macmillan Co. 1903. Pp. xvi + 419.
This book is the most comprehensive and systematic treatise on meta-
physics that we have yet had from a living writer in English. It dis-
cusses with definiteness and clearness of style and in well-ordered arrange-
ment the chief problems of ultimate philosophy. Professor Taylor is a
disciple, though not a slavish follower, of Mr. Bradley, and he endeavors
in a constructive and original fashion to unite the general speculative
position of Mr. Bradley with the interpretations of actual experience
which have found fullest expression and elucidation in the writings of
Professors Ward and Royce. And whatever one's opinion as to the final
coherence of the various strains in Professor Taylor's doctrine one must
214 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
recognize the eminent skill with which he has illustrated and defended his
position in relation to the physical and psychological sciences. In fact
I should be disposed to say that the herein attempted synthesis of Brad-
leian absolutism with the teleological conception of knowledge and the
self is most instructive in the books devoted to ' Cosmology and Rational
Psychology.'
The first book, entitled 'General Notions,' discusses successively the
'Problem of the Metaphysician,' 'Metaphysical Criterion and Metaphys-
ical Method ' and the ' Subdivisions of Metaphysics.' Metaphysics, we
are told, deals with the general character of reality, and, while by its
intellectual or reflective procedure it differs from poetry and religion, its
goal is the same as that of mysticism. The method of metaphysics is
analytical, critical, non-empirical and non-inductive; its material is im-
mediate experience, 'psychical content' or 'psychical matter of fact';
and its criterion, the law of contradiction. Reality is identified at the
outset with immediate experience or psychical content in so far as this is
self -consistent (p. 20). And here at the outset Professor Taylor pre-
judges the whole case by an offhand assertion that reality must be self-
consistent. We may say that knowledge of reality must be self -consistent,
but is there any meaning in making such an assertion about reality if
reality be identical with experience? There seems to be a confusion in
the assertion that experience is bound to conform to the law of contradic-
tion. For it is precisely the contradictions in experience that drive us
beyond itself to a thought-construction of reality. Again, if we base
philosophical construction on actual experience, is it not misleading to
assert that metaphysical procedure is non-empirical and non-inductive?
This, it seems to me, would be to commit philosophy to a barren formal-
ism; and, indeed, Professor Taylor's own work is perhaps most valuable
when he does not stick to his method.
In the second book, on the ' General Structure of Reality,' the author
lays down the fundamental principles of his metaphysics. In chapter I.,
'Reality and Experience,' the absolute or ultimate reality is defined as
that structure of the world-system of which all purposes, each in its own
way, must take account. The author has already defined reality as psy-
chical content or immediate experience, and he now endeavors to show that
these definitions coincide. Purpose springs from, and seeks its goal in,
feeling. 'To say that reality is essentially one with immediate feeling
is only another way of saying that the real is essentially that which is of
significance for the attainment of purpose' (p. 55) (to which, it seems
to me, should be added 'and for the defeat of purpose'). But purpose
is always the expression of individual interest, and so Professor Taylor
adds to his definitions this: 'Reality is uniquely individual.' Through-
out the whole work constant use is made of this teleological conception
of reality, and insistent emphasis is put on the fact that Reality is imme-
diate psychical content or feeling, in which the distinctions of reflective
cognitions have been merged and lost, oneness of feeling and insight (p.
61), etc. Now this higher and integral immediate experience he some-
times recognizes as including the labor of thought as this is developed
through ideal activity ; but he nowhere makes clear the relation of thought
to experience. After all it is individual selves who have experience and
in whom thought is organic to experience. It is surely no more legitimate
to take some type of feeling-experience, such as esthetic or personal emo-
tion, separate it from its place in the total life of the self, and hypostatize
it as the Absolute, than it would be to take pure thought. What is
this but Erfahrung ilberhaupt, an abstraction like Bewusstsein uber-
haupt? And, while the author repudiates the category of whole and
part as inadequate to the nature of reality, he frequently speaks of
the ' absolute ' or ' universe ' as one whole of experience, which at
once includes, but in itself differs from, the finite individual experi-
ences which are its contents. It is just here that difficulties begin
with Professor Taylor's doctrine. In the remaining chapters of Book II.,
' The Systematic Unity of Reality/ ' Reality and its Appearance the
Degrees of Reality,' ' Substance, Quality and Relation,' and ' Change and
Causality,' we find discussed the main characteristics of the ' Absolute '
or ' Ultimate Reality ' in relation to the world of finite individuals.
The degree of reality which anything possesses, we are told, corre-
sponds to its degree of individuality, and the degree of 'individuality'
depends (1) on comprehensiveness; (2) on inherent systematization ' (p.
110). The whole of Reality is the one perfect individual (p. 113), and
its individuality means that it is the systematic embodiment of a single
coherent structure in a plurality of elements or parts, which depend for
their whole character upon the fact that they are the embodiments of
precisely this structure. So far each finite individual seems to have his
integral place and function in the whole. But now we find the emphasis
falling on the unity, continuity and timelessness of Reality. The whole
of reality is one infinite substance (p. 139), emphasis is laid on its supra-
relational character, and it is argued in the criticism of causation that
the view that there is discontinuity in events is inherently self-contra-
dictory. (The force of the argument depends here on ruling out the pos-
sibility that causal interaction is an immediate relationship of real self-
active, and, therefore, so far discrete centers of being.) These and similar
expressions reveal the Spinozistic trend of Professor Taylor's argument,
and the treatment of time, evolution and the self in Books III, and IV.
becomes significant in this regard. The author recognizes that time is
essentially bound up with the life of finite selves, and is hence par excel-
lence the historical category. And, in his valuable discussion of evolu-
tion, he admits a proximate reality in the process of evolution which is
evaluated in terms of finite individuality. Furthermore, the reality of
the self is bound up with growth or development. But the whole of
Reality can not develop ; therefore evolution, history and selves with their
discontinuous series of actions and experiences (p. 311) have no place
in Ultimate Reality. For the entire time-process is appearance, and the
lives of finite selves are bound up with it.
Now, on the other hand, we are told in the concluding chapter that the
Absolute is the final realization of our intellectual and our practical ideals.
And great stress is laid throughout on the teleological character of indi-
216 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
viduality in science, in action and in experience, as a key to the nature
of reality. Now it seems to me that human interest, purpose, striving, as
marks of spiritual individuality, are essentially matters of growth, of
history, of what our author calls the time-process. The timeless, supra-
relational Absolute Experience and the finite, teleological activity of the
human individual lie unreconciled in his system. He starts out from the
Bradleian Absolute in which all relations and distinctions are submerged
or absorbed, and then he recognizes a relative reality in the actual dy-
namic and historical movement of selves; but he does not achieve a syn-
thesis of these two motifs. He does not, indeed, face at all the question,
what must ultimately be meant by ascribing any reality to the finite as a
' content ' of the Absolute Experience. The latter is above all the dis-
tinctions and imperfections of human experience. How then do these
enter into and become constitutive of its placid, static unity? How do
their pains contribute to its eternal bliss? We are told, indeed, in the
chapter on the Self that the absolute unity of experience may be best
prefigured as a society of selves. But in any actual society the unity is
effective and the society coheres just in so far as the unity is a principle
of action in each and every individual self. But the absolute is no self,
and since all selves are finite the infinite unity of experience can not dwell
.in their thoughts alone. Where then is it? It seems to me that a more
consistent consideration of the actual nature of so-called finite selves, and
a closer regard of the time-process, would have led the author farther
away from his Spinozistic and Bradleian Absolute, and closer to an inter-
pretation of reality in terms of selfhood, and to a higher valuation of the
time-process. It would have led, too, to a recognition of the inadequacy
of such conceptions as psychical ' content ' or ' matter of fact ' to describe
reality, in view of the purposive or self -active character of the human
individual. And finally it would involve a more explicit recognition of
the transcendence of experience which is involved in metaphysics.
In Book III., ' Cosmology,' the author works out in a very interesting
and convincing manner the theory that the physical order must be the
presentation to our sense of a system or complex of systems of sentient
subjects, and that the mechanical view of nature has only the value of a
methodological postulate or working view for physical science. Hence
the principles of mechanical physics have only relative validity. Hence,
too, ' laws of nature ' represent only statistical averages, and we have no
guarantee that actual concrete cases exhibit exact conformity to law.
" Our failure to detect specific forms of sentience and purpose in what
we commonly call ' inorganic ' nature need mean no more than that we
are here dealing with types of experience too remote from our own for
detection" (p. 209). In refuting the mechanical view of nature Pro-
fessor Taylor neatly shows that the very conception of a machine arises
from and involves intelligence and purpose.
The whole treatment of ' Matter,' 'Law,' 'Descriptive Science,' etc.,
constitutes one of the very best bits of cosmological discussion in English.
In chapter I. of Book IV. the author argues effectively against the
purely atomistic conception of psychology as a surrogate for an incom-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 217
plete physiology. He recognizes that the psychological conception of
conscious life is a ' transformation ' of actual experience, and explains
this transformation in terms of Avenarius's ' introjection ' theory. Pro-
fessor Taylor finds that psychology has the positive and important func-
tion of furnishing general symbols for ethical and historical appreciation.
In the next chapter he argues for the interactionist view as the best scien-
tific working hypothesis as to the relation of soul and body, laying stress
on the breakdown of parallelism in the face of the teleological aspects
of mental life, and its consequent failure to make room for the applica-
tion of psychology to ethical and historical appreciations. The author
makes it clear that the whole problem is a ' scientific ' one, inasmuch as
immediate experience reveals no dualism of body and soul.
I have already referred to his treatment of the 'self in the next
chapter. There are many points that might be discussed here, but space
limits forbid my referring to more than one. Professor Taylor argues
that, since the self requires an external environment and depends on the
contrast-effect generated by social relations, the self is essentially finite.
It, seems to me that the argument equally applies to ' experience.' The
latter involves the contrast between the experiencing ' subject ' and the
t content ' or ' object ' of experience. And it is a mere quibble to say that
we have some experiences without this distinction, since in knowing and
asserting that we have them we are already conscious of the distinction.
I think a good case could be made out for an absolute self by developing
the conception of environment as 'organic,' rather than merely external
to the self, and of ' social contrast ' as a phase of self-expression and inter-
communion.
The chapter on { Moral Freedom ' is one of the best in the book. Here
the author shows the common ground of the fallacies of determinism and
indeterminism in the assumption that all rational connection must be
of the type embodied in the temporal causal series, and points out that
we do not know and can not say that a man's character is fixed as thus
and so until he has actually expressed his individuality; and that hence,
although a man's action is the expression of his selfhood, we can never
predict absolutely what he will do. Is, then, character created in and by
action ?
In chapter V, * Some Metaphysical Implications of Ethics and Re-
ligion,' it is argued that Reality must somehow make provision for the
gratification of our ethical, religious, and esthetic interests. But we can-
not say how this is done, and ' perfect virtue,' ' perfect happiness ' and
' infinite progress ' are self -contradictory concepts. In religion we con-
ceive of the ideal of perfection as already existing in an individual form.
God is the timeless, infinite Absolute, and in him evil is seen to be mere
illusory appearance. Here again it seems to me when we recur to the
Absolute our finite interests, activities and deeds come perilously near
losing all their reality, and our old difficulty as to the relation of the
Absolute to the teleologically conceived human self becomes very dubious.
In the last chapter we are told that the Absolute transcends both
thought and will. The conclusion involves an element of agnosticism
218 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
and of mysticism. Metaphysics adds nothing to our information, and
yields no fresh springs of action.
The work is provided with a splendid analytical table of contents.
Whatever one's personal attitude toward the theories advanced, one must
pay tribute to the wide knowledge, speculative keenness and clearness of
expression of Professor Taylor's work. No serious student of funda-
mental problems can afford to neglect this book.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON.
HOBART COLLEGE.
Time and Reality. JOHN E. BOODIN. Monograph Supplement, Psycho-
logical Review, October, 1904. Vol. VI., No. 3. Pp. 119.
The common opinion is that time is one-dimensional, continuous and
something that essentially involves direction. These views Professor
Boodin contests. He identifies time with the mere ' fleetingness ' of
reality; he would make its function exclusively negative. It is 'abso-
lute non-being.' ' Relative non-being has to do with differences at different
points of reality,' but absolute non-being is ' dynamic,' it is ' that prop-
erty of the real subject-object' (i. e., of the real world) which 'creeps
into all our systems of truth and falsifies them, necessitating new ones,'
which makes necessary ' incompatible judgments,' that is, ' different judg-
ments as regards the same attribute of reality at the same point ' (p. 28).
The question raised by this definition is distinct. It is not whether
of several uses of the term time one shall be selected by convention as
the use. We are familiar with the ' paradoxes ' of time, due to the sup-
position that one term, and presumably one thing, includes aspects of
reality in some way antithetical. Dr. Boodin would make the import
of time perfectly simple, and, indeed, purely negative. And the question
therefore is, what is this absolute non-being? And what is the signifi-
cance of calling it time?
Absolute non-being is our invention f to account for passing away and
novelty' (p. 118). It is the antithesis to the 'permanent or habit' char-
acter of reality. ' Precisely the opposite of what is said of space must be
said of time' (p. 29). But in every description that Dr. Boodin gives
of time, except in this bare definition of it, we find included phases of
permanence and positivity. For example, time, in necessitating incom-
patible judgments, must hold to that identity to which the incompatibility
relates. Indeed, time alone makes possible any kind of judgment (p. 62).
It no less necessitates new systems of truth than falsifies old ones (p. 28).
Admittedly (p. 30), without the relatively stable space system we could
have no measurement of time process, and time as a negative property
would be inconceivable. But what makes our ' invention ' conceivable is
surely part of its power ' to account for passing away ' (v. s.), and is there-
fore part of that ' invention.' And how could pure negativity be meas-
ured?
Does not Dr. Boodin's account of time as pure negativity thus break
down entirely ? If, however, we would name the positive qualities of time,
we must meet his objection that the properties we would most readily
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 219
%
predicate of time themselves presuppose time, that to call time continuous,
serial or quantitative, e. g., is * meaningless,' 'begging the question' or
' viciously circular.' The logic of definition rests under a cloud, I believe.
So I would consider Dr. Boodin's application of the same principle of
criticism in cases where the issue is simpler.
For example, he rejects as circular the Kantian definition of continuity
(pp. 42-3). Kant said we have continuity when between two points, how-
ever selected, a third can always be found. Dr. Boodin takes this to
mean that the points themselves make the continuum, and notes that they
do not in the case of the rational fractions. He concludes that Kant
gave so ' futile ' a definition of continuity only because he had unawares
begged the question by presupposing a continuum. I suppose one must
answer that Kant meant merely to give the mark by which we may know
that points are in (not are) a continuum ; so that such ' circularity ' is
the definition's best commendation. Just as in the geometer's definition
of a point or a philosopher's definition of substance. Aristotle said a
continuum is found where the parts have common boundaries. But
what glues the boundaries together, asks Dr. Boodin. A continuum, by
definition, exists where the boundaries are common and need no gluing.
If this is circular it is not vicious.
I conclude that to be thus circular may commend the description of
time as serial, continuous, etc. I would also point out that to define time as
absolute or dynamic non-being is ' circular ' in the extreme. For dynamic,
the significant term, as well as such parallel descriptions as ' creeping in,'
' necessitating,' and ' falsifying,' are in terms of process and imply time,
the thing defined. But such and all criticisms of his definition are more
or less clouded by a doubt. For Professor Boodin distinguishes between
the world of reality and the world of truth. In the latter, time is our
invention to ' account for passing away ' ; but really, time is indescribable,
it is only the positive that is described. So perhaps all criticisms apply
only to the ' invention/ not to the real, which may be as Dr. Boodin de-
scribes it. And yet it can not be described !
Ostensibly Dr. Boodin regards the category of potentiality as but ob-
scurely plausible (p. 73) ; purpose in the world means our subjective pur-
poses, not valid of the real (p. 85). Science is right in discarding teleo-
logical categories for purposes of explanation (p. 71). All explanation,
so far as it attains its ideal, is of the type of mechanical causation, where
the effect equals the cause and nothing really happens (p. 48-52). Hence
Dr. Boodin describes the world as dual, a world of process on the one
hand, a world of truth, a 'static stare,' on the other. All description
must be timeless (p. 62). The self in seeking to unify experience ignores
the very process it means to explain (p. 52). Time renders all our sys-
tems of truth invalid; yet we have (p. 119) and should have (p. 52) a
faith that ' truth shall abide.'
One may ask whether this is ' really ' so, or only ' truly ' so. If to the
world of ' truth and ideal construction ' one opposes the world of the real
and indescribable process, the elusive 'individual core of being' (p. 63),
then we must admit that the very duality here stated, and the difference,
220 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
is ' ideal construction.' It is, then, but a ' shadow ' of the real. And, if
our doubt here is self-destructive, what must be said of a faith in the
abiding of a truth which is never true of anything, and never persists
through time at all.
The assumption here is that process can not be described. Dr. Boodin
in his very statement of this position describes the process by which the
result is attained. The categories of potentiality and purpose are his
readiest tools; tendency and implication and fulfillment and direction are
the fruits time brings him with the seeds of growth and purpose. Does
not the biologist or the historian, too, describe life and development as
such, in terms that we accept as descriptive of the real, or as failing in
that, not because they eliminate process, but in contrast with another
process known and described?
Surely, then, if we are to say anything at all of time we can not deny
to it at least direction. Even the static ' now ' of immediate experience,
through which things flow, gives to the flow a ; before and after ' character
in virtue of a similar distinction we find attached to that ' now ' as now.
And this direction character is yet more obvious in the sense in which
time flows. But with this direction comes in at least the potentiality of
series and quantity; for between before and after is implied at least a
third somewhat.
Simultaneity, moreover, is not simply banished from time, but the
temporality is bound up with the assertion that the existence of 6 requires
the non-existence of a and c, because a, 6, c form a certain kind of series,
and are therefore simultaneous in another sense. This serial character
we find also in the 'now,' giving it at least two bounds and something
between. Thus ~b, the now, appears successively in perhaps many different
lights, all essential to its elementary time character; and series, con-
tinuity and quantity seem successively to be denied and asserted of time,
in different connections.
These remarks I suppose to be entirely trite. They are but prelim-
inary to an expression of wonder that the attempt should be made, as it
is in Dr. Boodin's book and in Hobhouse's l Theory of Knowledge,' to
present time as something simple, or, as in Bradley's well-known work, as
something contradictory. Both attempts seem to flow from the idea that
the concept time must be a perfectly simple thing, like well, I know not
what. Surely the task is to fill out the account, such as Aristotle offered,
of the way in which various conceptions are held together in the one con-
ception of time, and not, after the entirely false pattern of generalization,
to seek one abstract concept, other than time, which shall ' unify ' by
obliterating all the complexity of time.
PERCY HUGHES.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 221
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
ARCHIV FUR SYSTEMATISCHE PHILOSOPHER Band X.,
Heft 4, December, 1904. Die Aufgabe wissenschaftlicher Asthetik (pp.
433-480) : C. D. PFLAUM. - Scientific esthetics is defined as the knowledge
of the purely intensive valuations of the contents of the soul. In support,
the opinions are cited of authorities from Plato to Jonas Cohn, the defini-
tion being taken from the last. Particularly it is maintained that Kant,
in spite of appearances, did not really deny the possibility of a scientific
esthetic, nor exclude therefrom consideration of values. Uber die Ver-
wechslung des sinnlich Angenehmen mit den Kunsteindrucken und einige
andere Folgen der sogenannten empirischen Asthetik (pp. 481-509) : R.
SKALA. - Naturgefiihl and Kunstgefiihl are to be identified. Empirical
esthetics considers esthetic valuation only from the subjective side. Fech-
ner makes the distinction between pleasant and esthetic feelings one of
degree; but, in fact, he overlooks the esthetic feeling altogether. Em-
pirical esthetics is responsible for the modern idea that two arts taken
together will produce more effect than either one alone. Gerechtigkeit
(pp. 510-520) : B. STERN. - Righteousness is, first, to avoid interference
in the psychical life of other men and of beasts, and, second, in that of
one's own psychical life. Das Problem der Willensfreiheit vom Stand-
punkt des Sollens (pp. 521-540) : H. STAEPS. - Freedom rests on belief in
the power of the ideal. It frees us from the dominion of natural lusts and
from egoism; it gives rule to the latent force of truth, beauty and good-
ness. ( Jahresbericht uber Erscheinungen der Soziologie in den Jahren
1799-1904 (pp. 543-561) : R. GOLDSCHIED. - Special attention is paid to
' Altersklassen und Mannerbiinde. Sine Darstellung der Grundformen
der Gesellschaft ' by H. Schurtz.
ARCHIV DER GESCHICHTE DER PHILOSOPHIE. Band
XI., Heft 2. January, 1905. Die Atomistik und Faraday s Begriff der
Materie (pp. 139-166) : O. BUEK. - Faraday's theory is contrasted with
that of Boskowich. The latter presents definite logical difficulties; the
former is incomplete, being the basis of Thompson's recent theories.
Fechner's error lay in taking nature as something given instead of a
useful construct. Through this error have crept in mythological and
childish treatments, such as Zollner's. The logical relation of Faraday's
doctrine to that of Helmholtz and other more modern theories is still to
be determined. Voltaire als Philosoph (pp. 166-215) : P. SAKMANN. - A
detailed study of Voltaire's conception of philosophy, his epistemology,
his cosmology, his idea of God and proof of God's existence. While he
followed Locke in the main, his philosophical capacity was greater than
is commonly supposed. Herder und Tetens (pp. 216-249) : W. UBELE. -
The comparison refers to their treatment of the theory of language.
Tetens is less rich, but more precise; he emphasized the practical origin
of speech and the place of conception therein. Herder asserted speech
222
to be fundamentally a matter of emotion. Le commentaire arabe
d'Averroes sur quelques petits ecrits physiques d'Aristote (pp. 150-252) :
H. DERENBOURG. Vetilles d'un lecteur de Platon (pp. 253-264) : L, M.
BILLIA. -A discussion of texts and interpretations in three of the dia-
logues. Die ' Geschichte der Philosophic ' am zweiten philosophischen
Kongress in Genf (4-8 September, 1904) (pp. 265-270) : K. JUNGMANN. -
Jahresbericht; Die Polnische Philosophic der Letzten zehn Jahre (1894-
1904) : H. VON STRUVE. - Die neuesten Erscheinungen. Eingegangene
Biicher.
VIEETELJAHRSCHRIFT FUR WISSENSCHAFTLICHE PHI-
LOSOPHIE UND SOZIOLOGIE. Band XXVHI., Heft 4. December,
1904. Uber ein Paradoxon in der Logik Bolzanos (pp. 375-392) : J. K.
KREJBIG. - Bolzano contended that in some instances the law of the inverse
proportions between the content and extent of a concept does not hold;
his examples are not true exceptions, but serve to bring out certain neg-
lected features of the law. Die Geschichte der Erziehung in s.oziolo-
gischer Beleuchtung (pp. 393-421) : P. BARTH. -The growth of the * ency-
clopedic education ' in Greece, and its social causes ; similar social changes
in Rome lead to the borrowing of Greek educational ideals. Individual-
ism the fundamental cause of degeneracy. Zu Kants und Lockes Ge-
dachtnis (pp. 422-426): P. BARTH. Besprechungcn (pp. 427-172): K.
Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte: P. BARTH. F. Mauthner, Beitrdge
zu einer Kritik der Sprache: P. BARTH. S. Witasek, Grundziige der
allgemeinen Asthetik: H. SPITZER. A. Posada, Literatura y Problemas
de la Sociologia: E. Di CARLO. E. Oscar, Nietzsches Lehre, in ihren
Grundbegriffen: R. RICHTER. H. Cohen, System der Philosophic: I. H.
GRUNBAUM. Berichtigung und Erwiderung. Philosophische Zeitschrift-
en. Bibliographic.
Dubois, Sr., Les Psychonervoses et leur Traitment Moral. Paris : Masson
et Cie. 1904. 8vo. Pp. x + 537. 8 fr.
Frenzel, Karl, Ueber die Grundlagen der exacten Naturwissenchaften.
Leipzig und Wien : Franz Denticke. 1905. 8vo. Pp. 145. 3 M.
Gomperz, Heinrich, Weltanschauung slehre. Ein Versuch die Haupt-
probleme der allgemeinen theoretischen Philosophic geschichtlich zu
entwickeln und sachlich zu bearbeiten. Jena und Leipzig: Eugen
Diedrichs. 1905. Bd. I. Methodologie. 8vo. Pp. xv + 416. 13 M.
Semon, Richard, Die Mneme als erhaltendes Prinzip im Wechsel des
organischen Geschchens. Leipzig: W. Engehnann. 1904. 8vo. Pp.
xiv + 353. 7 M.
Von Leonhardi, H. Karl Christian Krause als philosophischer Denker
gewiirdigt. Leipzig: Theodore Weicher. 1905. 8vo. Pp. 475.
2.40 M.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 223
NOTES AND NEWS
THE group of experimental psychologists which met at Cornell Uni-
versity during the last Easter recess, held its second meeting at Clark
University on Friday, March 31, and Saturday, April 1, Professor E. C.
Sanford presiding. The programme was begun on Friday afternoon by
an inspection of the Clark Laboratory, during which three reports were
made by advanced students on research work in progress in the laboratory.
Mr. L. M. Terman discussed ' Tests of Bright and Dull Boys,' Mr. A. L.
Gesell, ' The Correlation of Handwriting and School Standing/ Mr. W.
F. Bock, ' The Psychology of Acquisition as Shown in Learning to Type-
write.' The first session was opened by Professor A. H. Pierce, who re-
ported on researches now under way in the Smith College Laboratory
on the effects of imperceptible shadows. Discussion by Professors
Titchener and Sanford followed. Mr. Stevens, of Cornell University,
next read a paper by Professor Max Meyer on ' Auditory Sensation in
an Elementary Course,' which was discussed by Professors Titchener,
Sanford and Pierce. On Friday evening, Professor Sanford gave an
informal dinner to the guests in attendance. The Saturday morning
session was addressed by President G. Stanley Hall, who read a paper on
' Tendencies and Dangers in Experimental Psychology,' which was fol-
lowed by an interesting discussion, led by Professor E. B. Titchener.
Dr. J. P. Hylan followed, and Professor Titchener and President Hall
again spoke by way of reply to criticisms. After the discussion the
psychologists repaired in a body to the physical laboratory where Pro-
fessor Arthur G. Webster gave a demonstration of a new apparatus for
the measurement of the absolute intensity of tone. President and Mrs.
Hall received the members for luncheon at the President's house, after
which the closing meeting was held to hear a paper by Professor I.
Madison Bentley on ' Tonal Analysis,' followed by a demonstration in the
laboratory. After a vote of thanks to the authorities of Clark Univer-
sity and in particular to President Hall, Professor Sanford and Librarian
Wilson, the meeting adjourned and the guests were given an opportunity
of inspecting the laboratories and the library of the university. It was
agreed that the next meeting should be held in the spring of 1906 either
at the Yale laboratory or at the University of Pennsylvania.
THE Section of Anthropology and Psychology of the New York Acad-
emy of Sciences in conjunction with the New York Section of the Amer-
ican Psychological Association met on March 27, 1905, at the Psycho-
logical Laboratory of Yale University in response to an invitation of
the Philosophical Club and the Anthropological Club of Yale. The
psychological laboratory and the anthropological collection at the Pea-
body Museum were open to visitors throughout the day. There were
two sessions, afternoon and evening, and the visitors dined with their
hosts at the Graduate Club. The following papers were read : ' Central
Anaesthesia During Eye Movement,' Kaymond Dodge. 'Movements of
224 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Convergence/ Charles H. Judd. 'Radical Differences in the Upper
Limit of Audibility,' Frank G. Bruner. 'Variations in Sung Tones,'
E. H. Cameron. ' Perception of Linguistic Sounds,' F. L. Wells. ' Men-
tal Growth in Deficient Children,' Naomi Norsworthy. ' Classification
of the Senses,' Robert MacDougall. 'Memory Tests of Faces,' Will S.
Monroe. * Transference of Practice,' G. Cutler Fracker. ' Practice and
Training,' J. McKeen Cattell. ' Studies in Reading Aloud,' L. A.
Weigle. ' Chance,' W. L. Sheldon. ' Types of Monism,' W. P. Montague.
THE Science Hall of Denison University, containing the laboratories
of chemistry, geology and biology and the scientific library, was de-
stroyed by fire on the morning of March 30. The files of the Journal
of Comparative Neurology and Psychology and many valuable books and
papers were lost.
DR. ROBERT M. YERKES, of the department of psychology of Harvard
University, has been awarded the Boyleston Medical Prize for 1905, the
subject of his essay being, '' Auditory-Tactual Reinforcement and In-
hibition in the Frog.'
GEORGE V. N. DEARBORN, Ph.D., M.D. (Columbia), has been promoted
to the full professorship of physiology in the Tufts College Medical and
Dental Schools.
PROFESSOR WILHELM OSTWALD, the eminent physical chemist of Leip-
zig, will again this year take part in the work of the summer school of
the University of California. He has been appointed also on the Har-
vard faculty under the arrangement recently made by Harvard for an ex-
change of professors with German universities, and will lecture at Har-
vard for a half-year.
PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAMES sailed for Greece on March 11, to be gone
until June. He will attend the International Congress of Psychology
at Rome.
DR. WILLIAM P. MONTAGUE, tutor in philosophy in Columbia Uni-
versity, has been appointed instructor in the same university.
APRIL 27, 1906 VOL. II. No. 9.
>r :xi nr; .
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
IS SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM A NECESSARY POINT OF
VIEW FOR PSYCHOLOGY? 1
world is my idea.' These words, which form the opening
sentence to Schopenhauer's 'World as Will and Idea,' may be
taken to express with literal exactness the speculative attitude of
the psychology of to-day towards reality. This attitude of subjective
idealism has been inherited through a long and highly reputable line
of philosophic descent. It meets us at the beginning of modern
philosophy in Descartes 's famous cogito ergo sum; it finds a more
complete expression in Berkeley's dictum that all esse is percipi, but
attains its most suitable formulation for the purposes of psychology
in the sceptical analysis of David Hume, who, discarding as fictions
the res extensae and res cogitantes of his predecessors, declared the
mind, and the known universe as a whole, to be merely a 'bundle of
perceptions'.
It is safe to say that the psychology of to-day has not gone
much beyond this standpoint of the great English empiricist. Re-
jecting the soul as a metaphysical superstition, and affirming the
knowledge of an extra-mental world to be mediate, and hence uncer-
tain, it rests content to remain within the circle of its own ideas,
except perchance when it now and then strays into the realm of
physiology, or is lured away into the attractive but uncertain domain
of the unconscious. In general, however, it asserts that the limits
of the ego can not be transcended; that reality is what the subject
makes it, and that without this making the external is, for all we
know, non-existent.
It is an extremely fascinating doctrine, this radical subjectivism,
which becomes solipsism when interpreted in terms of the intellect,
and pragmatism when formulated in the categories of the will. The
doctrine seems so self-evident, it is so clear and convincing, that it
is apt to be accepted without question. Therefore, even to hint at
the possibility of its untruth may appear rash. The present dis-
cussion, however, ventures to raise the question as to whether its
1P This paper was read before the North Central Section of the American
Psychological Association, at Chicago, November 26, 1904.
225
226 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
validity may not legitimately be doubted, and whether modern
empirical psychology is obliged to assume this point of view at the
only possible theoretical interpretation of reality.
We can best answer this query by reviewing the chief arguments
that have induced psychology to accept as certain the theory that
known reality is purely subjective. These arguments fall under
the general head of the relativity of sensation, and rest on the
assumption that the only certain knowledge is that which is direct
and immediate. The ancients were impressed with this thought,
and from the days of Protagoras and Aristippus down to those of
^nesidemus and Sextus Empiricus felt the force of the doctrine of
homo mensura. The senses constantly deceive us, and do not cer-
tainly point to a stable externality; hence only of the subjective
states can reality be unreservedly affirmed. To this argument
modern psychology has added another, which rests on the hypothesis
that all our conscious states are physiologically conditioned. There
is no psychosis without a neurosis. The external stimulus (standing
for the extra-mental object) becomes a conscious fact only by excit-
ing the end organs of sensation, traversing the afferent nerves, and
producing a change in the cerebral cortex. To suppose that a
process so mediated can reveal to us an independent reality, we are
told, is sheer nonsense. We must reject the world of the naive
realist, and admit that all we can know are elements of our own
consciousness.
The physiological argument is excellently and briefly stated by
Professor Strong as follows: "The physiological argument takes
its departure from the fact that every perception is correlated with
a perceptional brain event, which latter is a fairly remote effect of
the action of the perceived object on the senses; and argues from
this that it is impossible the knowledge of the extra-bodily object
should be immediate. It points, moreover, to the account of the
constitution of the object given by physical science, according to
which color and other secondary qualities are in the object some-
thing entirely different from what they are in the mind."
This is the argument, and in effect the only one by which sub-
jective idealism attempts to set forth and coordinate its facts. I
say that it is the only argument, because other, reasons given to
substantiate the view-point of solipsism are in the nature merely of
supposedly self-evident postulates, not in any sense demonstration
or proof. On the other hand, the arguments from the relativity
and mediate nature of sensation are not adequate to reach the con-
clusions which they aim to establish, for they are incapable of prov-
ing positively their thesis. All they accomplish is to discredit the
view of naive, uncritical realism, but to show that this view is un-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 227
satisfactory is by no means to prove that subjective idealism is true.
As a positive proof, the entire argument is a failure, for the simple
reason that it can establish the relativity of our perceptions only
by holding that among these there are certain factors that are not
relative. At every step it assumes in some instances to be true that
which in general it is trying to prove false. The fallacy here con-
tained I have endeavored elsewhere 2 at some length to point out, and
shall not attempt within the limits of this paper to review it. I will
simply repeat that the argument from the relativity of perception
to subjective idealism fails as a positive proof, because it assumes
that we possess an absolute knowledge, immediate and direct, of
certain experiences in order to prove that other, and indeed all,
experiences of exactly the same nature are relative, mediate, and
subjective. So it happens that if the premise be true the conclusion
must of necessity be false, while the truth of the conclusion estab-
lishes the falsity of the premises by which the very conclusion is
reached.
This, then, is where the argument from relativity leaves us. We
find it sufficient to discredit the assumptions of the plain man, but
insufficient to construct for itself a view. Subjective idealism, if
it hopes to establish its contention, must do so on grounds other
than negative. This it attempts to do by the assertion that we can
know only ideas. Translated into terms of solipsism this statement
reads, I can know only my own conscious states. This is the very
citadel of the idealistic faith, and is generally considered im-
pregnable. In regard to it Schopenhauer has remarked that solipsism
can not be proved false, but that the practical man who seriously
holds to such an hypothesis is a fit subject for the mad-house. The
correct position, however, I believe to be the opposite. I can see
no madness in a person holding theoretically, or even practically,
the position of solipsism. It means a radical but consistent inter-
pretation of experience in terms of the new idea, and conduct for
this reason should be no different from the point of view of the
subjective idealist than from that of the uncritical realist. The
former would recognize among his ideas certain mental states that
were relatively unstable and subject to his voluntary control, while
there would be others unyielding and beyond his power to change
or direct. The approaching train, although merely his idea, would
still be a fact capable of causing destruction to another idea, or set
of ideas, his physical body. In this purely mental world would be
subjective and objective elements. The solipsist would find it neces-
sary to relate these elements in a proper coordination and subordi-
2 Philosophicnl Review, March, 1902, in an article on "The Common-Sense
View of Reality.'
228 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
nation, and he thus would act with a due regard for. himself and
others. It seems to me that the objection of practicability urged
against subjective idealism is based upon a misunderstanding of the
scope and meaning of the doctrine. It is not for this reason that it
must be set aside, but rather because when rigidly interpreted it
leads to a self-contradiction far more fatal than that which con-
fronts the realist. This statement to be justified must be examined
further.
The assertion that I can know only my ideas may mean one or
both of two things, namely: I can have as an object of direct,
intuitive knowledge only my past conscious states; or that, in any
mental state I may possess, my knowledge is limited to a content
which is itself a part of that mental state. Let us look at the latter
consideration first. For example, suppose I make the explicit or
implicit judgment, this object is a book; the subjective idealist would
assert without hesitation that the book of my experience is a purely
subjective affair, an ideal element in the sum total of the conscious
moment. There may be an external reality corresponding to my
experience of book, but of that I can have no knowledge.
The first objection which I believe may be brought legitimately
against this assertion is that the content of a total state of con-
sciousness can not itself be ideal, paradoxical as this statement may
seem. The content is not a part of the conscious state, as the
branches are a part of the tree, or the sun a part of the universe.
The content is of a different order and nature. If the content were
in the ordinary sense ideal, mark what would follow. This content,
as ideal, must likewise have an object, for we know of no conscious-
ness devoid of content, nor can we imagine any. But carrying out
our assertion, that we can know only ideas, we would be forced to
admit that this content of the content would itself have a content,
also ideal, and so on. to infinity.
Let us look at the matter from a slightly different point of view.
Every complex state of consciousness ordinarily is held to be made
up of more simple psychic elements, namely, sensations and images.
It is these, according to the doctrine of idealism, that the complex
state of consciousness knows, and not an extra-mental reality cor-
responding to them. These are the objects of our immediate
knowledge, which are present as elements in the complex noetic state.
Should we say, to avoid the difficulty of the infinite regress pointed
out above, that these elements do not know but are known, we plunge
ourselves into another equally great difficulty; for how can we then
explain the process by which a combination of non-noetic states form
a complex conscious state capable of knowledge? So we are con-
fronted with a dilemma in both cases. If we assert that the com-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 229
plex conscious state has simply conscious states as objects of
knowledge, it would seem to follow that as conscious they must be
conscious of something, and so on ad infinitum. If, however, we
consider them non-noetic elements of consciousness, we are forced
to raise the question as to how their combination can yield a complex
noetic state.
But I am quite sure that this entire argument will appear to
many as a quibble that can easily be set aside by the assertion that
the noetic state has been illegitimately divided into subject and
object, knower and known. Knowledge-of-book is one total complex
in which the knowledge and the book are separated only by a false
abstraction. And this I am quite willing to grant. The immediate
state of consciousness is a complete unit and there can be no artificial
separation between knowledge-of-book and book: there is no knowl-
edge without book and equally there is no book without knowledge.
Book in this sense is not something that I know, so much as a state
of consciousness through which I know. If this is a true analysis,
however, we can not say that we know ideas, but that we know by
means of ideas, or that all knowledge is ideal, an assertion of a
truism which no one can dispute. But in this state of knowledge
there is an intention which ascribes an extra-mental reality to every
noetic psychosis. It is that intention which sets up an object non-
ideal, or at least extra-ideal. If the intention can not realize itself
knowledge is false, for it does not reach its object. To assume that
we really know we must believe the intention is capable of realizing
itself. It is this intention that gives an object to our knowledge, and
this very intention asserts the extra-ideal character of that which
it intends. If there is nothing to which the intention can refer,
then all knowledge is an illusion. We can not know that we have
a mental state even; which seemingly subjective knowledge is, as
will be shown later, in the moment of knowing a fact of extra-mental
reference.
But the problem may be approached from still another stand-
point. To do this we may again go back to our consciousness of
book, concerning which, as has already been said, we are told by
the idealist that the book, and hence all its qualities, are mere deter-
minations of my present conscious state. I reply that if this is so,
I can never know book; nay more, I can never know even its most
subjective quality, color; for the color is not merely the determina-
tion of my present conscious state. It exists as color only because
my present state of consciousness is linked with past experiences.
Take away all reference to that which transcends the present moment
(and all else in extra-mental), and the content of my experience
vanishes. Doubtless something would remain, but what that some-
230 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
thing would be we can only surmise ; it certainly would not be color ;
it clearly would not be a judgment in regard to an experience; no,
not even a sensation, for. a sensation is intellectual and demands
more than the immediate experience for its reality. Even the animal
so low down the scale of mental life that it possesses no more complex
a conscious state than 'thing-a-me-bob-again,' to use an expression
borrowed from James, has in that experience transcended the im-
mediacy of the conscious now. And here we come again to the
essence of the whole difficulty. Any intellectual state, whatever it
may be, depends for its validity on a something which transcends
itself. The very act of knowing affirms the extra-mental, and im-
mediate knowledge does not exist, at least as far as human beings
are concerned. If we possessed this immediate knowledge we should
not know it. All our conscious processes must be mediate. To
criticise knowledge because it is mediate is to deny the possibility
of any certainty whatsoever. An immediate cognition is a con-
tradiction. It can not even arrive at cogito. This was the great
discovery of Descartes, hinted at before in Anselm's much-abused
ontological argument, namely, that knowledge, to be certain, must
transcend itself, and that intellectual certainty posits something
beyond the state which expresses the certainty.
But some one may urge that this extra-mental reference that
knowledge demands is a reference from one conscious experience to
another, and therefore a reference which does not transcend the
consciousness of the individual. This brings us back from the
second meaning of the proposition to the first, namely, that we can
know only our past mental states ; an assertion which by implication
is contained in that part of the proposition already discussed; for,
as we have already seen, knowledge of the present state demands
as its warrant a knowledge of past experiences. Thus these two
meanings in the assertion of subjective idealism fall under one head
in the last analysis. The first proposition, in the light of what has
already been said, can be examined briefly.
It must be remembered that the past conscious experience as
such no longer exists. Our knowledge of it is a mediate one, as
indirect and remote in many ways as the knowledge of a physical
fact, and it is as truly extra-mental as is the spatial universe.
Any argument which may be applied to prove the unreality of the
external world may be used to prove the unreality of past experi-
ence. It is the source of deception and illusion quite as much as is
the world outside. The latter is external to us in space, the former,
however, in time. If we doubt the existence of the one we can legiti-
mately doubt the existence of the other as well, and the only reality
of which we then can be certain in the sense that subjective idealism
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 231
demands is a reality of the immediate moment. Kegarding this,
however, as has already been pointed out, no assertion can be made
which does not transcend its immediacy; in other words, all knowl-
edge, even of the most rudimentary type, must on this assertion
cease. If subjective idealism were true, no one could make the asser-
tion. Indeed, the mind would be that bundle of conscious elements
that Hume conceived, but the bundle would have no bond of con-
nection between its various parts, mental life would have neither
continuity nor meaning; it would in fact be nothing at all that we
can conceive, a point of consciousness without relation to past or
future. To this psychic atomism does solipsism, when rigidly in-
terpreted, inevitably lead. Such a doctrine can not be successfully
refuted, for it offers no point of attack. Its mere statement is an
absurdity.
If the above analysis be correct, we are forced to the conclusion
that, while naive realism contains contradictions, it can not so easily
be set aside as ordinarily supposed. The plain man is often accused
of views that he does not possess, and though his suppositions in
regard to reality may be stated to his disadvantage, it does not fol-
low that by plunging him into difficulties his critics have removed all
difficulties from their path. Subjective idealism can not establish
its position by negative criticism. Its positive assertions have been
shown to be full of contradictions, and are untenable. But if both
naive realism and subjective idealism prove incapable of giving us
a true knowledge, two roads to reality are left open: one by means
of a critical realism, and the other by means of an absolute idealism.
The merits of these two views it is not my purpose here to discuss.
I will simply add in conclusion that many of the difficulties which
subjective idealism encounters confront absolute idealism as well.
STEPHEN S. COLVIN.
UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOIS.
LOGICAL PROBLEMS, OLD AND NEW
up-to-date fashion of studying the nature of judgment is
the most liberal one conceivable, basing apparently on Mill's
conception of logic as the entire theory of the ascertainment of rea-
soned or inferred truth. By an easy extension in the scope of
'ascertainment' everything which in any way contributes to make
a given meaning what it is comes in for a due share of consideration.
The structure and functions of the human organism, appetites,
feelings, the historical setting of the particular judgment-act, and
the assertion embodied in this act are all reckoned with. Some
232 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
investigators among the Germans go so far as to regard the need and
methods of communicating assertions as a proper theme of logical
study, an extreme view whose chief use is to show how far afield
men nowadays hunt in quest of facts relative to logical issues.
The new tendency justly claims to be the outgrowth of scientific
methods and results. The judgment, for instance, is investigated
not merely in the light of what is asserted in it, but quite as much
with reference to all those circumstances which an observer may
find connected with its rise and function. No longer is the appeal
to the introspection of the judging individual enough; this latter
party must be watched in the act of thinking, his conduct must be
described and later compared with his own assertions. Such a study
of function involves an inquiry into the aim and motive of judging.
Here again the patient's own remarks and intentions do not wholly
determine the diagnosis of the doctors of philosophy; unbiased ob-
servations made by trained observers are likewise taken into account.
Most important, however, is the fact that the center of interest re-
mains in every case the solution of this question, how does the indi-
vidual M come to judge that A is B? What makes him think as
he does, when he does, and for the purpose he does ?
Putting the question thus shows up the radical difference be-
tween logics old and logics new. These latter do not study the
methods of argument, the forms of syllogism, and the implications
of accepted meanings. Following the verdict of Mill once more,
the latter-day logician finds in Aristotelianism a formal logic whose
end and aim gained by the observance of logical precepts, is not the
truth, but merely consistency. For this modern thinker such a
study is unprofitable in every sense. Now inasmuch as many men
have convinced themselves that whatever is unprofitable is thereby
false, and have argued that necessary connection, consistency,
identity, and all the other conceptions so vital to scholastic thinking
are nothing save ideal constructions or ways men have chosen to
think in order to gain their ends, a comparison of old logic with
new may help us to see the import of this conviction. The startling
assertions made of late may best be understood and estimated after
we have found what problems have been studied.
The new logic Has often been heralded as the successor of the
elder one, as if it really displaced this latter by refuting all the
supposed 'logical forms' discovered both by Aristotle and by the
modern mathematicians. But I have been impressed by the fact
that the different problems handled by the old school and the new
one prevent sweeping condemnations. There are other reasons for
checking the ardent nihilism of certain freshly issued theories, but
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 233
I shall discuss here only the objection which bases upon the hetero-
geneity of the subject-matters of the respective logics.
The most cursory examination of what is vaguely called a judg-
ment shows a twofold problem; the judgment-act must be studied
as an event taking place under definite psychophysical conditions,
while, on the other hand, the meaning asserted in this act must be
investigated with reference to its connection with other meanings.
We need not struggle with metaphysical difficulties in order to see
that the event of judging is determined by many and various things,
such as the individual peculiarities of the agent, the field of his
momentary attention, his feelings, desires and so on. All his
previous experiences color in some way the present act and its
asserted 'content.' Hence the assertion, the willed meaning thought
and perhaps uttered, is not detachable from its birthplace and its
forebears. What is judged 'to be the case' is qualified by all the
determinants of the whole present situation. And so one is tempted
to infer that the grounds for so judging are just these determinants.
But an inspection of a concrete case reveals a subtle confusion.
Let us suppose that some need arose for me to find out what the
sun is composed of. Consciousness of this need somehow holds my
attention to various 'relevant' facts. The temperature of the orb,
its weight, the disturbances on its surface, and so on are all thought
of, and lead me to think that a body presenting such peculiarities
'must be' gaseous. What leads me to judge that the sun is gaseous?
Of course, the need for some explanation leads me to judge some-
thing; but this need is not the reason why the sun is gaseous. It
seems like a travesty upon earnest thinking to perpetrate such plati-
tudes, yet the tendency of the times warrants the commonest of
commonplaces. I admit freely that the recently advanced refuta-
tions of dualism are sound, but I fail to see how they are pertinent
to the logical problem. Let us grant with the humanists that a
one-to-one correspondence of 'real objective' with 'real subjective'
is absurd, and that the psychical is impossibly a 'reproduction' of
an objective archetype. Have we not still the problem of reference
awaiting solution? In every judgment there is a reference to a
'state of affairs' which is, in its very significance, not qualified by
the special conditions which bring about and determine that partic-
ular judgment-act and the 'interpretation' embodied therein.
What every man, cave-dweller or humanist, means, when he says
something, is that ' this or that is the case ' ; and even if some more
enlightened friend could convince him that his judgment was really
only an ideal construction fashioned by himself alone in order to
fulfill some desire, his reply would be, 'Well, I mean that what I
said is true regardless of all you say.'
234 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Accepting the modern theory that the 'states of affairs' referred
to in every judgment are only meaning-complexes, ideal construc-
tions, the same difficulty confronts us as of old. For the meanings
in such complexes are what they are only when their reference-
objects are accepted with them. Is it not clear that the 'sun' of
which I speak and about which I judge is 'a bright spot overhead,'
' a body at a great distance from me, ' or ' the center of our planetary
system'? And does not this preclude my thinking of 'sun' as a
mere idea, a hypothesis, a habit of interpreting experience ? Were
I to find nothing but such characteristics in that which I mean by
'sun,' I could not say a single thing about it which I now do. That
which is a bright spot overhead or the center of our planetary system
can not be a psychical state. In short, the very meaning of the
idea is 'that which is not an idea.' The curious thing is that
nearly all modern logicians fail to see just this point ; that all there
is to a thought, idea or belief, as such, is what a clumsy psychology
naively calls the 'content,' and that this 'content,' instead of being
'in' the psychical state, as the barbarous terminology might seem to
indicate, is just ivhat we think it to be. Indeed, this is what we
call the 'content.'
The reason for the rejection of the old logic by the new lies
in this latter 's hopeless confusion of the judgment-octf with the
willed meaning. There are three utterly distinct sets of relations
to be studied: (1) The relations of one meaning to another; (2)
the relations of a meaning to its own origin; and (3) the relations
of a meaning to the origin of another meaning. The second and
third sets are investigated by the new logic. They form a perfectly
legitimate object of inquiry, probably capable, under sane treatment,
of yielding us a vast fund of new and useful facts. But, in order
to investigate them properly the scientist is often forced to abstract
from the intended meanings; that is, he thinks of these latter as
'phenomena' in the mental life and handles them solely as occur-
rences. What wonder, then, that, finding the needs and desires of
men direct their thinking, he concludes that what is judged to be the
case is 'caused' by human will! The old logic, on the other hand,
confines itself to the study of certain typical relations existing be-
tween the various ' things- we-mean. ' It can not hope to explain
how we come to think about just the things we do at just the time
we do. Nor can it aspire to explain 'will,' 'psychism' and the like,
save in so far as the way in which meanings relate gives some gen-
eral indication of the nature of the thinking process. In one sense,
'mere consistency' is here studied, but not as if it were, as Mill and
others think, something different and apart from the 'truth.'
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 235
In this connection another disaster has been brought about by
modern psychology; old-time logic is popularly labeled 'the science
of the equation of concepts' or 'the science of equivalent expres-
sions,' but usually in such a way as to make one think that what
the logician compares are the psychical states, as some 'condition
of mind,' instead of the intended meanings, which are not ideas
nor feelings nor volition. A discussion of this error can not find
place here. Enough to say, though, that the relations of my 'mental
states' to one another are toto codo different from the relations of
the things I 'think about' (while in those states) to one another.
There are, then, at least three distinct problems. Thus far no
evidence is forthcoming whereby any one of them may be reduced
to the terms and conditions of either or both of the others. Unless,
carried away by the wish to find a smooth philosophy, we must con-
tent ourselves with special studies. And this forbids sweeping
condemnation of other lines of investigation. It is unsafe to say
much more than this as yet. Old-fashioned logic is being taken
up by mathematicians, and expanded far beyond its scholastic form ;
as a science of correction it is still active. Merely because it can
not do duty as a metaphysic, a theory of ethics and a biology, is
hardly an honest reason for hooting it out of court. Substantially
the same charge may be brought against its scoffer; genetic logic
hardly helps us to think better, any more than it can explain the
'origins' of logical consistency or can derive what I will to mean
from the conditions which lead me to desire 'things.'
WALTER B. PITKIN.
BEBLIN, GERMANY.
DISCUSSION
IS RADICAL EMPIRICISM SOLIPSISTIC?
TF all the criticisms which the humanistic Weltauschauung is re-
* ceiving were as sachgemass as Mr. Bode's in this JOURNAL for
March 2, the truth of the matter would more rapidly clear up. Not
only is it excellently well written, but it brings its own point of view
out clearly, and admits of a perfectly straight reply.
The argument (unless I fail to catch it) can be expressed as
follows :
If a series of experiences be supposed, no one of which is en-
dowed immediately with the self-transcendent function of reference
to a reality beyond itself, no motive will occur within the series for
supposing anything beyond it to exist. It will remain subjective,
and contentedly subjective, both as a whole and in its several parts.
236 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Eadical empiricism, trying, as it does, to account for objective
knowledge by means of such a series, egregiously fails. It can not
explain how the notion of a physical order, as distinguished from
a subjectively biographical order, of experiences, ever arose.
It pretends to explain the notion of a physical order, but does so
by playing fast and loose with the concept of objective reference.
On the one hand, it denies that such reference implies self-trans-
cendency on the part of any one experience; on the other hand, it
claims that experiences point. But, critically considered, there can
be no pointing unless self-transcendency be also allowed. The con-
junctive function of pointing, as I have assumed it, is, according
to my critic, vitiated by the fallacy of attaching a bilateral rela-
tion to a term a quo, as if it could stick out substantively and main-
tain itself in existence in advance of the term ad quern which is
equally required for it to be a concretely experienced fact. If the
relation be made concrete, the term ad quern is involved, which
would mean (if I succeed in apprehending Mr. Bode rightly) that
this latter term, although not empirically there, is yet noetically
there, in advance in other words it would mean that any experi-
ence that 'points' must already have transcended itself, in the ordi-
nary ' epistemological' sense of the word transcend.
Something like this, if I understand Mr. Bode's text, is the
upshot of his state of mind. It is a reasonable sounding state of
mind, but it is exactly the state of mind which radical empiricism,
by its doctrine of the reality of conjunctive relations, seeks to dis-
pel. I very much fear so difficult does mutual understanding
seem in these exalted regions that my able critic has failed to
understand that doctrine as it is meant to be understood. I suspect
that he performs on all these conjunctive relations (of which the
aforesaid 'pointing' is only one) the usual rationalistic act of sub-
stitutionhe takes them not as they are given in their first inten-
tion, as parts constitutive of experience's living flow, but only as
they appear in retrospect, each fixed as a determinate object of
conception, static, therefore, and contained within itself.
Against this rationalistic tendency to treat experience as chopped
up into discontinuous static objects, radical empiricism protests. It
insists on taking conjunctions at their ' face- value, ' just as they come.
Consider, for example, such conjunctions as 'and,' 'with,' 'near,'
'plus,' 'towards.' While we live in such conjunctions our. state is
one of transition in the most literal sense. We are expectant of a
'more' to come, and before the more has come, the transition, never-
theless, is directed towards it. I fail otherwise to see how, if one
kind of more comes, there should be satisfaction and feeling of ful-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 237
fillment; but disappointment if the more comes in another shape.
One more will continue, another, more will arrest or deflect the direc-
tion, in which our. experience is moving even now. We can not, it is
true, name our different living 'ands' or 'withs' except by naming
the different terms towards which they are moving us, but we live
their specifications and differences before those terms explicitly ar-
rive. Thus, though the various 'ands' are all bilateral relations,
each requiring a term ad quern to define it when viewed in retrospect
and articulately conceived, yet in its living moment any one of them
may be treated as if it 'stuck out' from its term a quo and pointed
in a special direction, much as a compass-needle (to use Mr. Bode's
excellent simile) points at the pole, even though it stirs not from
its box.
In Professor Hoff ding's massive little article in a recent number
of this JOURNAL, 1 he quotes a saying of Kierkegaard's to the effect
that we live forwards, but we understand backwards. Understand-
ing backwards is, it must be confessed, a very frequent weakness of
philosophers, both of the rationalistic and of the ordinary empiricist
type. Radical empiricism alone insists on understanding forwards
also, and refuses to substitute static concepts of the understanding
for transitions in our moving life. A logic similar to that which my
critic seems to employ here should, it seems to me, forbid him to say
that our. present is, while present, directed towards our future, or
that any physical movement can have direction until its goal is
actually reached.
At this point does it not seem as if the quarrel about self-trans-
cendency in knowledge might drop? Is it not a purely verbal dis-
pute ? Call it self-transcendency or call it pointing, whichever you
like it makes no difference so long as real transitions towards real
goals are admitted as things given in experience, and among experi-
ence's most indefeasible parts. Radical empiricism, unable to close
its eyes to the transitions caught in actu, accounts for the self-trans-
cendency or the pointing (whichever you may call it) as a process
that occurs within experience, as an empirically mediated thing of
which a perfectly definite description can be given. ' Epistemology, '
on the other hand, denies this; and pretends that the self-trans-
cendency is unmediated or, if mediated, then mediated in a super-
empirical world. To justify this pretension, epistemology has first
to transform all our conjunctions into static objects, and this, I sub-
mit, is an absolutely arbitrary act. But in spite of Mr. Bode 's mal-
treatment of conjunctions, as I understand them and as I under-
stand him I believe that at bottom we are fighting for nothing dif-
1 Vol. II., No. 4, pp. 85-92.
238 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ferent, but are both defending the same continuities of experience
in different forms of words.
There are other criticisms in the article in question, but, as this
seems the most vital one, I will for the present, at any rate, leave
them untouched.
WILLIAM JAMES.
HABVAKD UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
University of California Publications. Philosophy. Volume I. Studies
in Philosophy prepared in Commemoration of the Seventieth Birthday
of Professor George Holmes Howison. Berkeley. The University
Press. November 29, 1904.
This volume is beautifully executed, and its essays are all of solid
merit. Dealing as they do with diverse topics, it will be best to take up
each in turn very briefly.
The first paper is entitled The Summum Bonum, by Professor Mc-
Gilvary. "Before discussing the question of the nature of the highest
good we must first ascertain what is meant by 'good' in the positive
degree." But 'good' is an ambiguous term. Sometimes it means the
'pleasant'; sometimes, the 'desired.' Sometimes, the desirable in the
sense of 'that which we should desire if all the consequences of all the
different lines of conduct open to us were actually exercising on us an
impulsive force proportioned to the desires or aversions which they would
excite if actually experienced' (what the author calls the ' teleologically
desirable'). Sometimes it means the desirable, not in the sense that we
now do, or ever will desire it, but in the sense that we 'feel that we
should desire it' (the 'categorically desirable'). Besides all these mean-
ings, the good may mean, ' not the obligation to desire the object, but the
obligation to attain the object without reference to desire ' (the ' cate-
gorically obligatory').
"Having thus discovered so many meanings for the term 'good,' we
should be prepared to find as many meanings for the term ' highest good '
or summum bonum. And this is exactly what we do find." Along with
this conception of the highest good there goes a sense of obligation to
strive to attain it, the ' good ' and the ' obligatory ' being identical only
in the last of the uses of the term above enumerated.
'We are now prepared to take up the question whether there is any
reasonable highest good for men at large.' From the individualistic point
of view none can be asserted. But from the point of view of the social
nature of the individual ' all normal men do have at heart the good of
some other beings than themselves,' and this common good becomes iden-
tified with the individual good. In this sense only is there a highest good.
The second paper, by Professor Mezes is a discussion of The Essentials
of Human Faculty. It is a statement of the principal reasons for the
human ascendency, the chief of which on the mental side is the ' ability
to decide among alternatives.'
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 239<
He distinguishes three general types of novel action. ' The first is
action by trial and error, . . . the second, action that is purposive but
not chosen, the third, action that is purposive and chosen.' Animals share
with man in the capacity for the first two kinds of action. Man alone is
capable of the remaining type.
'Animals ask single or simple questions, but do not ask double, com-
plex, or general questions.' ' They see fitting means, but do not seek
them ; and seeking means implies the general question.' * In brief, ani-
mals are capable of asking questions which do not involve the presence of
several alternatives in their minds at once, but appear to be quite in-
capable of asking questions which do involve such mental alternatives.'
' The perception of relations is the distinctive human power.'
He connects the evolution of this power in a very interesting way with
the evolution of the hand and of the erect stature. ' Volitional effort,' he
says, 'which makes possible choice, our original differentia, turns out to
be the psychic correspondent, gradually preserved and organized, of the
physical strains and stresses incident to erectness.' Erectness is 'the
matrix from which issued the germ of volitional effort.'
One questionable position is that in which the author says that effort
is 'an additional weight the self can drop into the ideal scale prior to
decision, an increment of force that may well, in the case of difficult ac-
tions, be used so to reinforce muscular energy as to render possible
what muscular energy unaided could never have accomplished.' This
appears to the reviewer to labor under the same limitations as Professor
James's theory of the will upon which it is based to be, in fact, a bit of
antiquated faculty psychology in the midst of an otherwise illuminating
organic and functional statement.
The third paper, on Some Scientific Apologies for Evil, by Professor
Stratton, rejects the current ' attempts to justify moral evil by an appeal
to natural science.' The 'law of contrast,' according to which evil is
necessary as a foil or background for the good, is rejected on the ground
that ' the law of contrast does not demand that actual evil should coexist
with the good.' ' The mere idea of evil is a sufficient contrast,' and ' the
idea or thought of evil is not itself an evil.' ' It seems as if the thought
of moral evil could have been suggested perhaps even by the behavior of
animals.' In any case, ' it does not appear that the evil which we actually
find is indispensable to our consciousness of the good.'
Nor is evil simply good in the making, or 'lower stages of develop-
ment when viewed from above.' A vigorous tree, a beautiful bird, an
intelligent horse does not seem evil simply because it is lower in the evo-
lutionary scale. A child does not seem evil because it is immature.
There is no identity between the undeveloped and the bad. Professor
Stratton even goes so far as to suggest that moral evolution is possible
without evil, and says that we must return to the conviction 'that the
truest revelation of God's character comes, not through nature or natural
evolution, but by some inner light, some inner voice.' The argument is
not convincing.
Professor Rieber in the fourth paper, on Pragmatism and the A priori,
240 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
has stated clearly one or two important principles of pragmatism and
misstated others; or, at least, the reviewer thinks that the pragmatists
themselves will regard them as misstatements. There is great need just
at this time of a clear definition of the issues here involved.
The author's main contention is for an a priori, eternal or absolute
element in experience, and especially in knowledge. ' Not what an idea
has come from, nor what it is just now discovered to be, nor what it is
going to do by and by, but what it eternally is, must furnish us with our
deepest insight into the world of reality.' Therefore he objects to the
appeal to evolution upon which he conceives the pragmatist to rest his
case. ' Mind, which the pragmatist puts last in the evolutional series,
is in the profoundest sense of the word first.' Hence the necessity of
' rising above the temporal order to a timeless point of view.' Likewise
he objects to pragmatism as a pure empiricism, because he conceives that
' the pragmatist announces at the outset that thought, being a function
in the present situation, exhausts its entire meaning in that situation,'
whereas in truth, he says, ' we do have knowledge that is logically prior
to experience,' which ' is itself the condition of experience, and therefore
can not be derived from experience.' ' What meaning,' he asks, ' can we
possibly attach to the pragmatist's conception of reality, that, as a whole,
changes always? If he does not wish us to take him literally and after
all intends to provide for some sort of permanence, how can he give his
world of fluent inherited ideas any stability of meaning? '
In reply to this it might be asked what is meant by permanence and
by change. If idealism insists on a permanent element in a static
sense, then pragmatism is not idealistic, since it maintains that perma-
nence means permanence in the midst of change, a moving equilibrium
in which the stability of a gyroscope or the life of an organism may serve
as the type. But is idealism necessarily synonymous with absolutism?
A similar line of argument would show that pragmatism is not neces-
sarily identified with a pure empiricism, as the author thinks it is. He
says : ' The path along which empirical thought moves can not be marked
out except by reference to some fixed point of view that lies outside of
that path.' This the pragmatist denies. A 'fixed' point of view, he
says, is no point of view at all. A point of view is a developing thing.
It is fixed, that is, it is taken as relatively fixed, only for the given situa-
tion, but is itself constantly undergoing evolution with the development
of experience. This is empiricism, but it is not mere empiricism; it is
not sheer relativism. As the author himself puts it in his exposition of
the pragmatist's position, ' Even if all is flux and our conceptions of the
true, the beautiful and the right are always changing, we need not despair.
We must not think that we are thereafter consigned hopelessly to the
quagmire of uncertainty and error. The discovery that nothing is stable
need not paralyze action.'
The author further objects that 'pragmatism emphasizes effects of
action as tests of validity, but does not furnish a criterion by means of
which we may distinguish good from bad effects.' The reply might be
made that the pragmatist finds the criterion in the social implications of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 241
the consciousness of the individual. The pragmatist says, l Our thoughts
are born of our needs.' But in saying that he does not deny that these
needs themselves need to be explained. To explain them is the socio-
genetic problem. The pragmatist simply insists on basing his philosophy
of life in the most obvious truths of experience and then working out
from this as a basis to the consideration of the terminal problems.
The author objects to the ' genetic theory of the judgment/ upon
which he says the pragmatist bases his entire logic. 'Aside from being
a useful instrument in the struggle for existence,' he says, thought ' has
the more important office simply to be true.' ' It is one function of a
judgment to be useful, that is, to reach out beyond itself. But its other
and most fundamental function is just to be true.' But surely truth is
true only under specific conditions. There is no such thing as truth at
large or truth in the abstract. And the specification of the conditions
always introduces the possibility, nay, the necessity, of elements of utility.
He links what he calls the ' action-theory of thought ' of the pragmatist
with the James-Lange theory of the emotions. ' We do not act because
we think, but we think because we act.' He is unable to see that both are
true. He points his criticism with an illustration. ' The light in an
electric globe may be said to stand midway between the current that goes
in and the current that goes out of the globe. It represents a stage in
the process. Now suppose the outgoing current of electricity did some
work, turned a motor, for example. The light then would be in insep-
arable connection with this activity. We could appropriately speak of it
as a function of the action in the motor. The light, however, does not
turn the motor, it is a mere attendant phenomenon in the process. Now
in the action-theory of thought, the idea occupies an analogous position.'
The terms of this illustration show how completely the author has missed
the gist of pragmatism. From the standpoint of a strict continuity,
light has existence solely in terms of vibrations (or whatever change the
physicist regards as the objective counterpart of the experience of light),
and in this sense ' light ' does play its part in relation to the turning of the
motor, at least negatively, in diverting energy that would otherwise be
available for turning the motor. It is not a mere ' attendant phenomenon '
in the process. The pragmatist is not committed to epiphenomenalism.
One of the main contributions of a true pragmatism is to get back of the
dualism implied in that theory.
Instead of its being true that pragmatism must ' stand or fall with the
Spencerian agnosticism,' it is the case rather that in pragmatism we for
the first time see evolution in its true setting. He is the first to take the
evolution principle really seriously. Spencer's philosophy, in spite of its
pretensions, never really penetrated to the real significance of evolution,
as is sufficiently shown, not only by his doctrine of the unknowable, but
also, as Professor Royce has recently shown, in his formal statement of
the evolution principle itself. Pragmatism is no more bound up with
Spencerism than it is with Hegelism.
Finally, the author falls into the error, common to nearly all of the
recent critics of pragmatism, of supposing that this doctrine is com-
242 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
mitted to subjective idealism and individualism, and therefore that it is
' a protest against every species of ontology.' But identification of the
logical with the ontological categories, the notion of a reciprocal deter-
mination of thought and reality, does not necessarily imply a denial of
the ontological categories; it simply means protest against a certain kind
of ontology.
Professor Bakewell, in the fifth paper, defends idealism against
pragmatism, which he calls the Latter-Day Flowing-philosophy. This
philosophy, he says, justly emphasizes ' the universality of the dynamic
standpoint, the concrete character of experience, and its inevitable an-
thropocentric reading. But idealism is not thereby routed; in intellect
still is found the organizing principle that makes experience intelligible;
but it is intellect conceived as immanent in the process of experience, and
not merely transcendent. And, inasmuch as the fixed standard is found
in the life of the individual knower, the result is, to use Professor How-
ison's phrase, personal idealism.' This passage sets forth clearly enough
the author's position. A single point will be taken up for criticism.
The true is that which works. The good is that which satisfies. This
is pragmatism. But is there anything, the author asks, which might not
under conceivable circumstances meet the requirements of this criterion?
May we not conceive a situation in which what we now call the false and
the evil would give satisfaction because it serves the utilitarian ends of
the moment? If so, what becomes of the distinction between the true
and the false, the good and the evil?
But is not this as if a carpenter should refuse to use his gauging in-
strument to mark a straight line because he had heard that parallel lines
meet at infinity ? No doubt there are circumstances under which it would
be right to do what from our present point of view we call lying, stealing,
or committing murder, but this admission does not destroy the existence
or the validity of the standards which govern my present conduct. The
admission of the ultimately hedonistic and utilitarian character of our
criteria does not necessarily result in subjectivism and scepticism. Prag-
matism is not mere individualism.
Our desires and our needs are socially determined, have a social content,
and a social validity. Truth and utility have a social stability. And
this sort of stability is permanent and trustworthy because an organic
expression of the social character of the consciousness of the individual.
Here is a genuine and practicable standard because it represents a dy-
namic equilibrium or balance of the actual conditions within which the
individual must work out his freedom. It is no spurious and abstract
validity, no pseudo-stasis of a transcendental sort, won at the price of
denying all the rich diversity of concrete experience. It is in terms of
experience, as the author himself says, that the standard must be stated,
and this means, as he does not seem fully to realize, that the standard
can not be ' fixed,' and that it is as much social as it is individual, that it
is only by being social that it can be truly individual.
The sixth paper, by Professor Henderson, on Some Problems in Evolu-
tion and Education, is a valuable one. ' Two conceptions, springing from
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 248
the study of the process of organic evolution, are especially significant
from their bearing on the theory of education.' These are the signifi-
cance of infancy, and the opinion that acquired characters are not in-
herited.
The prolongation of infancy is to secure increased plasticity in the
individual organism in order to adapt it in the increasingly variable con-
ditions which accompany the greater complexity of structure in the higher
stages of evolution. ' A stage of infancy can have no function except to
prepare for unpredictable changes in which the former generation is un-
able to survive.' Hence the education of the human infant should be
* directed largely to the task of developing an ability that can be used in
all emergencies rather than to the formation of specific habits.' Society
finds in the helplessness of its infants the freedom that is the parent of
progress.
If this is true ' we do not care very much whether there is any inherit-
ance of acquired characters.' ' The more variable the environments the
more likely will it be that the habits adapted to one condition will be
useless, or positively an encumbrance, later on. Hence we might expect
that the evolution of organisms adapted to more and more complex and
variable environments, would mean the evolution of the non-inheritance
of acquired characters.' The purpose of reproduction is to secure di-
versity. 'Heredity preserves continuity where reproduction assails it.'
Prolongation of infancy and non-inheritance of acquired characters
are thus the methods by which such discontinuity is brought about in
evolution as is requisite to insure this diversity of structure and function
involved in all progress. And social heredity, or education, is the con-
sciously directed means of transmitting the accumulated wisdom of the
race without the blindness and rigidity of physical heredity. The law of
conscious selection, fitting the weak to survive, carries evolution to a level
higher than the mere blind struggle for existence with the survival of the
fittest, which is the law of natural selection.
The seventh paper, on Philosophy and Science in the Study of Educa-
tion, by Principal Burks, points out the looseness in the current phrases,
* Science of Education ' and ' Philosophy of Education,' as applied to
even the best systematic thought in this field. In the strict sense of these
terms, as he defines them, there is no ' science ' and no ' philosophy ' of
education. But he pleads for a more thoroughly rational philosophy of
life and conduct as the basis for true educational theory. As he sug-
gestively states the matter, ' education is merely human life under the
influence of conditions and stimuli artificially instead of naturally se-
lected. By reason of this intimate correspondence between the educa-
tional process and the normal social life of man, the fundamental prob-
lems of education are identical with those of life in its larger aspect, and
the philosophy of education is nothing less than the philosophy of life.'
The eighth paper, by Professor Lovejoy, on The Dialectic of Bruno and
Spinoza, is an able exposition and estimate of the contradictory elements
which go to make up Spinoza's system. He traces back the contradiction
in Spinoza's conception between ' the unity and the multiplicity, the
244 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
transcendence and the immanence, of the divine substance, to a similar
dialectic in neo-Platonism and in Bruno. He shows at once the justice
and the injustice of the diverse interpretations by Sir Frederick Pollock
and Mr. Joachim, on the one hand, who expound Spinoza in a highly
idealistic fashion, and of E. Caird and J. Caird, on the other, who fail
to recognize the common root of the antitheses inherent in Spinoza's
thought, and thus make him out more illogical than he really is. The
author's own view is that it is necessary for the proper understanding of
this philosopher to keep in mind 'Che origin of both sides of the contra-
diction in a single dialectical ground, and hence the impossibility, for
Spinoza, of unequivocally giving up either side, without abandoning his
whole method of philosophizing.'
The ninth paper, by Professor Stuart, is entitled The Logic of Self-
realization. " The notion of the ' concrete universal ' in modern philos-
ophy ... is, first and foremost and in its essence, an ethical conception."
The author shows that in the development of the 'explicit ethics of the
concrete universal the theory of Self-realization the idea of derivation
has for the most part been construed in a metaphysical fashion, according
to the letter of rationalism, and hence misconstrued with the result that
the ideal of a completely realized self has been understood on the analogy
of the rationalist's substance, as a source and origin of particular moral
guidance in details.' He, on the other hand, holds ' that the ideal thus
understood is as useless for any such practical purpose for any purpose
of ethical theory, that is to say as the metaphysical concept of the con-
crete universal is tacitly confessed to be by its expounders for the pur-
poses of factual science.' The true significance of the self-realization
principle lies in its consideration as ' essentially an ideal of ethical
method, and not a contentual or descriptive ideal from which either the
details or the generalities of right conduct are to be extracted.'
Dr. de Laguna in the tenth paper, on Utility and the Accepted Type,
starts from the common distinction between ethical judgments based upon
conformity to the accepted type of what is right and wrong, and judg-
ments based upon utility or the interest or indifference which the agent
displays toward the common good. ' How can judgments so pronouncedly
different in nature bear the same generic name ' (' ethical ') ? t The time
has passed for answering . . . simply by denying the ethical character
of either of the main factors involved.' By a very instructive comparison
with similar judgments in the esthetic sphere, the author shows that the
' two classes of moral judgment are allied in a continuous common devel-
opment.' ' The type- judgment and the act which follows it can not be
understood by any abstract analysis that leaves out of account their
genetic connection with consideration of utility.' That is, utility and
conformity are alike essential as the progressive and the conservative
elements in the moral life.
The eleventh paper, by Dr. Dunlap, is entitled A Theory of the Syllo-
gism. The ordinary classification of propositions is not exhaustive as
regards their forms. He substitutes the classification into simple and
complex, the latter being subdivided into specific hypothetical, specific
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 245
disjunctive, general hypothetical and general disjunctive. After illus-
trating what he means by these terms, he shows how they are combined
in the syllogism, which he defines as ' an interrelation of two judgments
summed up in a third judgment.' His mode of symbolizing the relations
of the propositions in the syllogism is in some respects new, and will be
of interest to the formal logician.
The twelfth and last paper, by Dr. Overstreet, on The Basal Principle
of Truth-evaluation, is an attempt to give positive character to the test
by inconceivability of the opposite. The first part of the paper is de-
voted to a restatement of the dialectic of universal scepticism. His own
positive conclusion is ' that the truth of any content whatever lies in the
ability of that content to maintain itself completely.' ' Truth is an abso-
lute uniformity or self-maintenance of meaning.'
H. HEATH BAWDEN.
VASSAE COLLEGE.
The Principles of Mathematical Physics. HENRI POINCAR. The Monist,
January, 1905, Vol. XV., No. 1, pp. 1-25.
This article is an address delivered before the St. Louis Congress,
translated by Professor Halsted. To review it here, when recourse to
either the original or the translation can be had so easily, would not be
worth while, did it not contain matter of philosophical interest not made
explicit by the author, and yet very a propos to the recent frequent dis-
cussions of pragmatism. The author's general position is well known to
many; yet it may be well to restate this. 1 For him the axioms of geom-
etry are neither synthetic judgments a priori nor experimental facts, but
rather conventions, definitions. Our choice among them remains free,
and is limited only by the necessity of avoiding all contradiction.
The foundation of mechanics is closely similar, yet with a difference.
Although the fundamental principles of geometry are conventions set up
in studying space, because of experiments in physiology and mechanics,
they do not refer to the objects experimented with. The principles of
mechanics do, however, relate to these objects, and that science must re-
main experimental. The author views such hypotheses in physical science
as that matter is continuous or that it is atomic as indifferent. This
ought to be most critically suggestive to him who claims that, correspond-
ing to, e. g., atomic (molecular) formulae, real atoms must exist. The real
aim of the scientist is not to find out whether, e. g., the ether is or is not
formed of atoms, but to foresee optical phenomena. The differential
equations by which he does this express relations; the former are true if
the latter preserve their reality. We may image the relation by substi-
tuting for the equation some appellation like movement or current, but
'the real objects will remain eternally hidden from us.' If, then, be-
tween the members of different sets of images the same relations respect-
ively exist as between the objects, one is free to choose his imagery. The
differential equation is then an abstraction presenting the common fea-
tures of, e. g., periodic phenomena, some of which may be those of motion,
1 Cf. ' La Science et 1'Hypothese,' Paris, 1903.
:246 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
but all are not necessarily so. It means simply that between all periodic
phenomena there exists a close and abstract relationship which corre-
sponds to a profound reality, and is the consequence of more general prin-
ciples of energy, of least action, etc.
We find this general position of Poincare to be very much the same
as that taken by Duhem in a recent series of articles. 2 For the latter
' a physical theory is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from
a small number of principles, which aim to represent as simply, as com-
pletely and as exactly as possible, an ensemble of experimental laws.'
In both positions we discover three implications which are of phi-
losophic interest. The first is that, as we use or think these mathematical
propositions, it is not only unnecessary, but indeed impossible, to present
images which shall constitute or be adequate to their meaning. In this
there is indicated also the psychological nature of scientific thinking in
some fields. It is essentially symbolic and efficient. Secondly, although
in response to the desire to conceive how something is possible, some image
or series of images may be formed and some appellation, e. g., movement,
given, not only are these images inadequate, but it is quite possible, if
images be insisted on, to get different sets of them. Accordingly different
systems within almost any of the different fields of knowledge may arise,
each with as good and no better claims than the others. Thirdly, and in
connection with these two, a mathematical proposition (differential equa-
tion) may be effectively or efficiently used to control and foresee phenom-
ena without any images at all being presented, and, accordingly, without
any question as to that truth which has been held to consist of a corre-
spondence between them as ideas and real things. Symbolism and prag-
matism, then, go here hand in hand. In seeking knowledge in physics
and chemistry one may say, indeed, that we are after nvt truth, but effi-
ciency, efficient symbols and their rules-of-the-game-like manipulation, as
an instrument of control and foresight. Paradoxically, their use makes
a man able to do; his general position, his thinking all reality in the like-
ness of some image, can determine only what he does.
In his present paper Poincare ' diagnosticates ' the case of physics in
the crisis through which it is now passing crisis because of ' Zeeman
effects ' and radium and ' Brownian movements,' etc., and in so doing he
recognizes the above principles.
Mathematical physics, born of celestial mechanics, represented all
nature as 'springing' from masses which attracted and repelled each
other according to some exponent, not always 2, but perhaps 5 or
6 (Briot's atoms of ether). It rendered the further service of ' making
precise the notion of the physical law as not something static and immu-
table, but as a differential equation.' The reviewer finds in this origin
one reason for the persistent attempts made to image all phenomena in
terms of the changes in the configuration of minute hard masses, t. e., for
one kind of atomism, a mode of conceiving which emphasizes particularly
the keeping of the law of identity intact.
2 La theorie physique, son objet, sa structure, P. Duhem. Revue de Philos-
ophic, April, 1904- January, 1905.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 247
But for our author this mode of conceiving is not necessary. He finds
that the first crisis arrived when this conception of ' central forces ' no
longer appeared sufficient. ' One gave up trying to penetrate into the
detail of the structure of the universe, and was content to take as guides
certain general principles whose object is to spare us this minute study.'
Thus, for example, in a machine in which the initial and final wheelwork
is alone visible, and the nature of the internal mechanism is not known,
the principle of conservation suffices to determine for us what ratio the
couples applied to each wheel must have in order to effect compensation.
Our author mentions six general principles whose application as ' rules
of the game ' enables us to draw conclusions, whatever may be the invisible
mechanism in nature. These have resulted from experiments with objects
and refer to these, yet are nevertheless conventions and may not always
be found efficient.
They are: (1) the conservation of energy, (2) its degradation, (3) the
equality of action and reaction, (4) relativity, (5) the conservation of
mass and (6) least action.
To illustrate their application, he says that although ' we know nothing
as to what is the ether, how its molecules ( ?) are disposed, whether they
attract or repel each other, we do know that its transmission of optical
and electrical perturbations is made conformably with these general prin-
ciples of mechanics, and that suffices for the establishment of the equa-
tions of the electromagnetic field.'
' The hypothesis of central forces contained all the principles,' but
now this conception has become a useless support, or rather embarrass-
ment, since it makes the principles partake of its hypothetical character.
Enlarged, found in different vestments, consolidated as these principles
have been, are they now to crumble away in the presence of radium and
Brownian movements, etc.? A second crisis!
Take the principle of Carnot, the only one not an immediate conse-
quence of the hypothesis of central forces; for if to these all physical
phenomena were due, then all these should be reversible. But this was
not so in nature. Events could not be turned backward without the hands
of the Maxwellian demon. At least so it was thought until recently the
microscopist saw in the movements of little particles in suspension motion
transformed into heat and conversely, and the Carnot principle was im-
periled.
Even the principle of relativity, according to which the laws of phys-
ical phenomena should be the same whether for an observer fixed or for
one carried along in a uniform movement of translation, has been at-
tacked : Take two electrically charged bodies, seemingly at rest ; the earth
nevertheless carries them; but a charge in motion is a current; we have,
therefore, really two currents which attract each other. Measure this
attraction, and have we not measured the velocity of the earth absolutely
and not relatively?
Again it has been attacked in the very ingenious attempts made to
measure the velocity of the earth in relation to the ether, but the results
have been negative. To explain this obstinacy the mathematicians have
248 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
had to accumulate hypotheses, such as that bodies in motion undergo a
uniform contraction in the sense of the motion and that in forces those
^components which are perpendicular to the translation of the earth are
reduced. ' The very energy of the defense proves how serious has been
.the attack ' on the principle of relativity.
So, also, has the Newtonian principle of the equality of action and
reaction been questioned. It has been held that one electron makes another
-at a distance vibrate through the mediation of the ' intervening ether.'
Evidently the compensation between the action and reaction could not be
simultaneous; the perturbation has a finite velocity. If the action and
reaction be held to take place between the ether adjacent to the electron
.and this latter, this is contrary to the principle of Newton, since the pro-
jectile here has no mass; it is not matter, but energy. Analogously and
experimentally it is possible to get what is termed the ' Maxwell-Bartholdi '
pressure of light.
One way out of the difficulty, seemingly, is to suppose the ether at-
tached to some material substratum; but this has been experimentally
disproved by Fizeau, and Michaelson and Morley. Another is that 'the
movements of matter are exactly compensated by those of the ether; but
the principle so extended would explain everything since, whatever might
be the visible movements, we could always imagine hypothetical move-
ments which compensated them.' But able to explain everything, it per-
mits us to foresee nothing, it becomes inefficient and useless.
In this we again discover Poincare's recognition of a view-point we
have previously emphasized, viz., that a general or universal principle may
influence what a man does or wishes to do, but can not make him able to
do. The conviction, e. g., that everything is energy and that this is con-
served, does not always enable one the better to foresee and control phe-
nomena. This can be done at present only by the mathematical symbol-
ization of experimentally measurable quantities in the form of an equa-
tion. Put in another way, one may say that if a term be raised to a
genus it can no longer be used as a species by which to differentiate, yet
differentia must be discovered in order to predict and control. We will
leave it to the reader to make the application to panpsychism, etc., and
return to our author's presentation of the attack on Lavoisier's principle
of the conservation of mass.
' The calculations of Abraham and the experiments of Kauf mann have
shown that the mechanical mass is null, and that the mass of the electrons,
at least of the negative ones, is of exclusively electrodynamic origin;
there is, therefore, no mass other than this latter, and this augments with
the velocity and even depends on the direction.' ' So-called mechanical
masses will vary in accordance with the same laws as the electrodynamic
masses. And if no longer a constant mass then there is no longer a center
of gravity.' 'And if the coefficient of inertia is not constant can the
attracting mass be ? ' That is the question. We here see the difficulty
which has been felt from, say, the time of Maxwell in defining mass crys-
tallized by the shock of recent experimental work.
We now come to the principle of the conservation of energy. This is
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 249
' strained ' by all the recent work on radioactive bodies. They ' create '
incessantly (?) a notable amount of heat. Sir Wm. Eamsay, to be sure,
says this store of energy is, however, quite exhaustible, say, in 1,250 years.
But let it be conjectured, by way of explanation, that, e. g., radium is
only an intermediary taking up energy and giving it out in divers forms !
Then our general principle is saved; but by what an advantageous, con-
venient, unverifiable and irrefutable explanation! All the objections of
future experimenters are answered beforehand; they can not assail the
principle. It is intact; but of what use? Made general, how inefficient!
' In the presence of this general ruin of the principles, what attitude
will mathematical physics take ? ' First, it is proper to ask if all of this
is really true, for all these objections are encountered only among in-
finitesimals. However, only experiment can settle the question, and in
the meantime we are to continue our work as if the principles were still
uncontested, or, in the face of our doubts, make an effort to save them.
We must ' heap up hypotheses,' leaving it to the experimentalists to seek
the crucial experiment with which to decide between them.
But suppose all such efforts fail, and we can not reconcile the prin-
ciples with the results of experiment. Shall we try to mend them by a
coup de pouce, like that one used in accounting for the energy of radium?
That is always possible, but with it the principle would cease to be fecund.
Consequently ' it would be necessary to rebuild anew,' to have a third
period bearing traces of the second as this did of the first. And in this
perhaps it is the kinetic theory of gases which is about to serve as a model
for the others. The laws of chance will then make a very great number
of elementary facts cooperate for a common end. ' Physical law will then
no longer be solely a differential equation, but will take the character of a
statistical law.' We should, perhaps, likewise have a whole new me-
chanics where inertia increases with the velocity! Ordinary mechanics
would remain a first approximation, true for velocities not too great, and
we would still act as if we believed in the principles, as if they were true
within these limits. They are too useful to deprive ourselves of them
entirely, but they would not be efficient for data though extended uni-
versally.
In conclusion, we may repeat the statement of the principles of phil-
osophical interest which the author seems to make use of. These are:
Mechanical principles are conventions set up because of and referring to
objects experimented with. These, as the results of certain other experi-
ments show, are, if not false, at least useless if extended universally. A
physical law or theory consists of mathematical equations containing sym-
bols for real relations, and by the manipulation of these equations enables
us to predict and to control (scientific symbolism and pragmatism) in
an experiment without presenting images (atoms, etc.) for the meaning
of these symbols, and as to the structure of objects ; such equations apply
to changes of state, of quality, etc., as well as to those of position; if
images be insisted on, different systems are possible. Physical science is
indifferent to truth if this be only the correspondence between images and
reality, but rather is concerned with the efficient instruments of manipula-
250 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tion and experimentation, i. e., with symbols, equations and with facts.
Only in this way is the use of apparatus made possible. These symbols,
conventional principles, equations, their manipulation and experiments
with these in mind are the aspects and means of knowledge in those fields
in which we are most able to do. This is pragmatism and not absolutism.
EDWARD G. SPAULDING.
COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YOBK.
JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY AND PSYCHOL-
OGY. January, 1905. On the Areas of the Axis Cylinder and Medul-
lary Sheath as Seen in Sections of the Spinal Nerves of Vertebrates (pp.
1-16) : H. H. DONALDSON and G. W. HOKE. - The areas, in cross section,
of the axis cylinder and of the medullary sheath are very nearly equal to
each other ; and this holds true, with deviations of less than two per cent.,
of all classes of vertebrates above the Cyclostomes. On the Number and
Relations of the Ganglion Cells and Medullated Nerve Fibers in the
Spinal Nerves of Frogs of Different Ages (pp. 17-56) : IRVING HARDESTY.
- There are about three times as many cells in the frog's spinal ganglia
as fibers in the dorsal roots ; there are always more fibers in the combined
nerve distal to the ganglion than in the two roots together. Some of this
' distal excess ' is accounted for by the bifurcation of fibers, both sensory
and motor, which occurs to a limited extent just distal of the ganglion;
another known factor, and probably the most important, is the incoming
of sympathetic fibers which pass into the ganglion and end there; it is
also possible, though not proved, that some of the cells of the ganglia,
while sending no fiber inward to the cord, send one outward. The ' distal
excess ' increases with the age of the frog. Editorial. Psychology and
Neurology (pp. 57-61) : H. HEATH BAWDEN. - There is need for the two
sciences that deal with the nervous system to cooperate in investigation
and discussion, but this is made difficult by the diverse history and meta-
physics of their concepts. When once the energic conception, applied to
both matter and mind, has thoroughly penetrated biology and psychology,
it will go far toward removing the difficulty. The International Com-
mission on Brain Research (pp. 62-65) : G. ELLIOT SMITH. - History of
the origin of the Commission, and account of its first meeting in London
in May, 1904. Literary Notices.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PHYSIOLOGIE
DER SINNESORGANE. January, 1905, Band 37, Heft 1 u. 2. Quan-
titative Untersuchungen uber die Bleichung des Sehpurpus in mono-
chromatischen Licht (pp. 1-55) : WILHELM TRENDELENBURG. - The curve
of the bleaching effect of spectral colors is well-nigh identical .with that
of the threshold values of these colors in faint light vision and this again
identical with the curve of the energy absorbed. Results are in accord
with theory that visual purple reenforces faint light vision. Experi-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 251
mentelle Beitrdge zur Lehre vom Gedachtnis. Erster Teil (pp. 56-103) :
P. EPHRUSSI. - (1) In the memorizing of nonsense syllables the part
method of learning is considerably more economical than the learning by
wholes. (2) In the memorizing of numerals or pairs of words or numer-
als the whole method gives best results. Uber -farbige Lichtfilter (pp.
104-111) : GUNNI BUSCK. - Determination of intensities of lights trans-
mitted by various colored solutions for various wavelengths. Effects of
intensity as well as quality of colors may be important in biology. Lit-
er aturbericht.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PHYSIOLOGIE
PER SINNESORGANE. February, 1905, Band 37, Heft 3 u. 4. Ex-
perimentelle Beitrdge zur Lehre vom Gedachtnis. Zweiter Teil (pp. 161-
233) : P. EPHRUSSI. - Influence of rapidity of reading on memory. Rapid
reading gives best results in systematic method of learning; in chance
method slow reading most economical. Paradoxical result explained as
due to decrease in association in rapid reading. Vergleichende Messung
der Jcompensatorischen Rollungen Welder Augen (pp. 235-249) : ROSWELL
PARKER ANGIER. - Compensatory rolling of both eyes is identical or nearly
so both as to amount and direction. The conclusions of Delage, who
found considerable differences, are criticised and denied. Die scheinbare
Vergrosserung der Sonne und des Mondes am Horizont (pp. 250-261) :
EUGEN REIMANN. - History of the problem. Sky at zenith appears nearer
and darker than at horizon due to degree of transparency, thickness, illu-
mination and relative brightness of background. The apparent size of
objects seen under equal angles increases, therefore, from zenith to horizon,
since they are at an apparently greater distance. Literaturbericht.
Carson, Thomas G. Man's Responsibility. How, and Why, the Almighty
Introduced Evil upon the Earth. New York and London : G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. 1905. 12mo. Pp. vi -f 524.
Frenzel, Carl. Uber die Grundlagen der exacten Naturwissenschaften.
Leipzig und Wien : Franz Deuticke. 1905. 8vo. Pp. 145. 3 M.
Grotenfelt, Arvid. Geschichtliche Wertmassstdbe in der Geschichts-
philosophie bei Historikern und in Volkbewusstsein. Leipzig: Teub-
ner. 1905. 8vo. Pp. 211.
Hennig, Richard. Wunder und Wissenschaft. Eine Kritik und Erk-
larung der okkullen Phanomene. Hamburg: Schultze. 1904. 8vo.
Pp. 247. 4 M.
Lipps, Theodor. Die ethischen Grundfragen. Hamburg und Leipzig:
Leopold Voss. 1905. 8vo. Pp. 327. 5 M.
Peckham, George W. and Elizabeth G. Wasps, Social and Solitary.
With an introduction by John Burroughs. Boston and New York:
Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 1905. 12mo. Pp. xiv
$1.50 net.
252 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Stephen, Leslie. Freethinking and Plain Speaking. With introductory-
essays on Leslie Stephen and his works by James Bryce and Herbert
Paul. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1905. 8vo.
Pp. bdv + 410. $1.50 net.
Stockl, Albert. Lehrbuch der Logik. Achte Auflage, neubearbeitet von.
Dr. Georg Wohlmuth. Mainz: Kirchheim & Co. 1905. 8vo. Pp.
xviii + 479. 8 M.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE fifth annual meeting of the Western Philosophical Association
was held at the University of Nebraska, April 21-22, 1905. Professor A.
Ross Hill, president of the association, chose for the subject of the annual
presidential address, 'Philosophy and Education.' The program of the
meeting was as follows : ' The Place of the Time-Concept in Epistemology
and in Metaphysics,' Professor J. E. Boodin ; ' The Category of the Un-
knowable,' Mr. David F. Swenson; 'The Esthetic Attitude,' Dr. Robert
Morris Ogden ; ' Some Contradictions in Current Theories of the Psy-
chology of the Judgment,' Professor W. B. Pillsbury ; ' The Relation of
Psychology to the Philosophy of Religion,' Professor F. C. French ; ' The
Meaning of Right,' Professor Frank Sharp. In addition, there was a
general discussion on ' The Present Estimate of Kant's Place in the His-
tory of Theoretical Philosophy,' led by Professor A. 0. Lovejoy, and vol-
untary reports in philosophy and psychology.
AT the recent meeting of the board of regents of the State University
of Iowa, the following changes were made in the department of philosophy
and psychology : Professor G. T. W. Patrick was granted leave of absence ;
Professor C. E. Seashore was made head of the department; Professor
Arthur Fairbanks, of the department of Greek, was asked to give the
courses in ancient and medieval philosophy and the philosophy of religion ;
Dr. J. B. Miner was promoted from instructor to assistant professor of
philosophy, and Mr. Daniel Starch was appointed assistant in the labo-
ratory.
THE Rev. William I. Chamberlain, now in charge of the missionary
college at Verlore, India, has been appointed professor of philosophy at
Rutger's College.
PROFESSOR HUGO MUNSTERBERG, of Harvard University, has declined
the offer of a chair of philosophy, tendered to him by the University of
Konigsberg.
PROFESSOR CHARLES M. BAKEWELL, associate professor in philosophy
in the University of California, has been appointed professor in philosophy
in Tale University.
DR. R. B. PERRY has been promoted to an assistant professorship of
philosophy at Harvard University.
MAY 11, 1905 VOL. II. No. 10.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
NATURAL VS. ARTISTIC BEAUTY
GOING back to the beginning of the history of esthetics, we find
that Plato's interest in beauty was overshadowingly in that
of real being, and that only in a very qualified sense would he con-
cede the works of art to be beautiful at all. So, too, the true founder
of modern philosophical esthetics, Kant, approached the esthetic
problem primarily from the side of real objects, and only secondarily
raised the question of artistic beauty. When we come to Hegel,
however, we find the theory of the beautiful expressly identified with
that of fine art. And the writer of our only noteworthy English his-
tory of esthetics, Bosanquet, follows in the wake of his master, Hegel,
and makes the same identification. Indeed, the definition of esthetics
as the philosophy of fine art, may be regarded as being, from a va-
riety of influences and reasons not requiring here to be specified, the
orthodox and, so to speak, official view to-day. This, perhaps, is
what makes its fresh consideration only the more needed. I take
the Hegelian statement and justification of it as representative, be-
cause with so thorough a philosopher as Hegel, or. even Bosanquet,
a deliberate defining of esthetics as exclusively or essentially philos-
ophy of fine art, implies an express and thought-out pronouncement
touching the relation of these two regions of the beautiful, Nature
and Art, and, more particularly, a pronouncement as to their relative
rank in beauty. Such a pronouncement we do find in either writer.
Clearly its bearing is not merely on our verbal definition of our
science, but on how far certain topics need to be enlarged on in our
substantive treatment of it, if indeed they require to be introduced
at all. Perhaps it is only putting the same thing another way to
add that, on the soundness of our conception of the relation of
nature and art, will depend whether our esthetics does justice to
every phase of actual fact in our experience and ordinary estimation
of the beautiful. The purpose of this short paper will be to can-
vass, for the reason already indicated, the position developed by
Hegel and Bosanquet on this question of Nature versus Art, and to
determine how far it needs to be assented to, and what follows. The
consequences, however, whether for the doctrine or history of es-
thetics, can only be suggested.
254 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Hegel condemns natural beauty to a very inferior place as com-
pared with that of art. For him there is nothing in the former
which is not taken up, 'conserved' and enriched in art. Hence the
inclusive adequacy of the definition of esthetics as philosophy of fine
art. Centrally, this condemnation of nature by Hegel rests upon
a proposition fundamental to his own general philosophic standpoint,
namely, that truth attains its appropriate and adequate embodiment
only in the form of pure (i. e., reflective, subjectively self-conscious)
thought. On his view, the sensuous concreteness of the natural ob-
ject is not an addition to its significant content, but a 'superfluity,' 1
an irrelevant obscuration of its pure essential import. 'All the
time,' he says, 'its (the natural object's) truth is contaminated and
infected by the immediate sensuous element. ' 2 And since ' The hard
rind of nature and the common world give the mind more trouble in
breaking through to the idea than do the products of art' for the
reason that these latter relatively abstract away from 'the immediate
sensuous element' and 'the hard rind of nature,' and thus make
some approach to the purity of thought, it is evident why the
products of art should be rated above nature in significance and
beauty. For, of course, the core and substance of beauty lie but
in depth and wealth of significance. However, Hegel's contrastings
of the expressive powers of nature and art have an interest aside
from their technical bases in his system. One might adopt a general
philosophical point of view exactly the opposite of the Hegelian, and
maintain that as to the amount of meaning somehow wrapped up
and dynamically efficient in it, the perceptual world indefinitely
excels that of thought, the thought-world being an inadequate ab-
straction and a falsification, which, not one whit the less from the
fact of its reaction into and fertilization of perception, forever fol-
lows in the rear of the latter; and yet at the same time one might
concede that, of the two modes of perceptual presentation, the imme-
diate natural and the artistic, the artistic, from its very approach
to the abstractness of reflective thought, was, as Hegel held, of the
greater esthetic worth, because it possessed the richer capacity of
bringing the wrapped-up content of truth or meaning into relative
explicitness. In fact, Hegel's disparagement of nature in her revela-
tory power as beauty, reaches back, along with the exaggerated ab-
stract intellectualism of his whole system itself, to a deeper root in
a general inability, on his part, to appreciate nature as other than
a comparatively blind and meagre region. As in his philosophy in
the total it is his nature-philosophy which is the weakest section, so
1 Bosanquet's translation of ' The Introduction of Hegel's Philosophy of
Fine Art,' p. 16.
2 Ibid.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 255
in his esthetics it was inevitable that that should show forth as the
least impressive part in which demand was made on his sense of
nature as a sphere of the beautiful. Bosanquet confesses as much
when he feels, at any rate in portions of Hegel's discussion of the
natural beautiful, something 'half-hearted,' 3 and when he acknowl-
edges that Hegel's concentration of attention upon sharply marked,
compact, individual beings in nature, to the comparative neglect of
those looser large aggregates and masses such as make landscape, and
his progressively higher estimation of the individual existences ac-
cording as they are inorganic, vegetable or animal, do not corre-
spond to the order of our actual experience. However, Hegel has a
reason for depreciating nature, which may appeal without any
special reference to a Hegelian rendering of it. The natural object
is inferior to the art-product because, unlike the latter, it has not
been, he says, 'born born again, that is of mind'; 4 or because, as
he words it in another place, it 'has not sustained this (the art
work's) passage through the mind.' 5 This want of the new birth in
mind may be construed into at least three things. First, since, of
course, nature exists for us only as a construct in our own percep-
tion, the want intended to be pointed out may be, that mere natural
perception does not sufficiently evoke and express the percipient sub-
ject, his capacities, ideals and inward reaches of being. Second,
the natural object is not, like the product of art, a deliberate con-
struction, and therefore is defective in content and import. Third,
whatever may be the presence of the mind in nature, it can not there
feel thoroughly aware of itself, and hence at home and free.
The contention that in natural (immediate) perception the con-
tent and nature of mind are but imperfectly exhibited, is entirely
in keeping with Hegel's general doctrine that the advance towards
pure thought is an advance in completeness of content and ration-
ality in the sense that all release from admixture of irrelevancy
and confusion is a positive progress towards adequacy and com-
pletedness. But for those of us who are loath to write down the
sensuous body as a contingent and expressionless contamination of
mind, the question does not turn on this point of relative purity
and appropriateness in the mind's different modes of manifestation.
It takes instead this form: Is the mind in its whole extent of re-
sources projected into its direct, natural perceptual constructs?
What does modern psychology say, with its doctrine of 'appercep-
tion,' and Its declaration that in every experience, every object set
'Bosanquet, 'History of Esthetics,' p. 338; cf. also p. 337.
* Bosanquet, translation of 'Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine
Art/ p. 3.
8 Ibid., p. 55.
256 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
by the mind before itself, are brought to bear and embodied the
mind's whole organized capacity and content? If there is any
deficiency in the mind's self -projection in natural perception,
clearly it must be in that lack of self-awareness on the mind's part
which, in this form of experience, we must cheerfully acknowledge.
But how radical this lack is, and what compensations it may or may
not carry with it, have not yet been settled.
Does the fact that nature is not a deliberate creation of the mind
make her inevitably a region of profound unconsciousness, with her
meaning hopelessly deeper sunk in implicitness than is the case in
art? We need, in the first instance, to recall that the deliberate-
ness of art is of a very peculiar sort, or rather that it is a common-
place of even the most ordinary opinion that essentially art is not
deliberate at all. The creative process may be deliberately initiated,
as we might initiate our looking at a landscape; or even it may be
possible that by a mere reflective cleverness and judgment we lay
down certain broad outlines and a provisional rough sketch of the
path our creation is to take; but for the rest we require the whole
essential life and quality of the work to be the outcome of intuition,
inspiration, unconsciousness. Still, that the intent of the whole
process is precisely to render meanings more felt in some sense
then more nearly explicit than they are in the immediate presenta-
tion of nature can not be denied. On the other hand, is it in-
evitably the case that in the natural object the mind can not find
itself and feel at home and 'free'? This brings us directly to our
third count in the supposed inferiority of nature, namely, that how-
ever much of meaning may be buried away in the natural object,
the mind can not there be aware of it, and therefore find itself, as
in the product of fine art. This really is the very problem of our
whole paper itself; but, before we undertake to settle it, we have to
determine what we are going to include under the object of nature.
Here Bosanquet, in support of the Hegelian condemnation of nature
and restriction of esthetics to fine art, brings forward a theory of
what constitutes nature esthetically considered, which we must make
our reckoning with, not the less because it is so sophisticated a con-
ception. It will be found quite in accord with Hegel's own declara-
tion that for the judging of natural beauties there is no adequate
norm of standard. 6
Bosanquet develops at considerable length 7 the argument, that
by natural beauty is to be understood only such beauty as exists
for the untrained perception of the average man. He explains by
drawing a comparison with the world of knowledge. Natural
8 Bosanquet, transl. of ' Intro, to Hegel's ^Esth.,' p. 5.
7 ' History of ^Esthetics,' pp. 3, 4.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 257
beauty corresponds to that informal, unsifted, unorganized knowl-
edge, so called, which belongs to the man in the street; whereas to
the critical, clarified, orderly, recorded knowledge of the trained
man of science, corresponds the beauty which the artist reveals and
preserves for us in the world about us. Bosanquet speedily drops
the restriction that recording and permanence enter essentially into
beauty; and concedes that "it is a blunder to imagine that there is
no art where there is no 'work of art' "; which of course it is, just
as it would be to assert that there is no science where it is not written
down in a book. But, furthermore, is the contrast between science
and art on the one hand, and common sense and natural beauty on
the other, itself just? Granted that science and art are alike
'interpretations' of nature ; but does it follow that developed acumen
and insight can be exercised only in the artificial region of the
laboratory or. studio? Surely we do not have to conclude that
actual, direct, so to speak out-of-door contact with nature just as
she comes, inevitably remains at the vulgar level of her, while the
mind capable of deeper thought and deeper appreciation moves on
to some more exalted region than just nature herself? The most
gifted scientist may bring his subtlest powers to bear in his mere
plain looking, or plainest judging, and this for him will be his com-
mon sense; and so the most exquisite artistic endowment may be
called into play in contemplation of solid matter-of-fact objects, and
these do not thereby cease being natural. Bosanquet concedes such
a finer use of perception, but would, however, describe nature lifted
to this level as in reality art : the actual perception of the man of
artistic genius is itself a creation of art. This is a needless per-
version of terms in the interest of an arbitrary definition and limita-
tion of esthetics. It may be true that common sense and mere
natural perception both constitute descriptions of the world; how-
ever, they are not, by the naive consciousness, appreciated as such.
To the latter, they are an immediate experience of the presence of
the fact itself; and precisely herein differentiated from those delib-
erate, sophisticated describings called science and art. Why not
retain this useful distinction, and call by the name of nature all
beauty whatsoever, no matter by whom experienced, which is gotten
through out-and-out unspoiled presentation? Natural beauty thus
conceived which is the conception in all ordinary talk or discussion
would not be without a norm of measurement ; the norm would be
the testimony of the most competent judges, precisely as it is in art.
Such a natural beauty, too, might at last stand some chance of rivalry
with that of art. For it might possibly, in certain circumstances,
exhibit characteristics and superiorities of its own not simply be
'included, ' as the Hegelians hold, within the beauty of art. Whether
258 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
under such natural beauty should be embraced actual human per-
sonalities and spiritual traits, or even human bodies, need not now
trouble us, though I can see no valid reason why these facts of actual
nature should not be counted among the beauties of nature.
I am not going to maintain an absurdity. I am not tempted to
minimize the real vocation of art. In part, no doubt, its business
is, as Hegel and Bosanquet both point out, to record and give per-
manence to the otherwise fleeting in esthetic experience; in part,
too, merely to disseminate, publish notable scenes and situations
which, as immediate spectacles, are accessible to only a small public.
But neither of these comparatively lowly functions, much less any
delight men take in technique and cleverness of imitations, would
explain the mighty part art has played in the history of culture.
Its prime and characteristic business is precisely that of releasing
import out of the tangle and confusion of the actual world. But
does this imply that nature always and everywhere is confused and
tangled ? May not a percipient of genius, approaching a mountain,
or the sea, or a noble human figure, in the proper mood, find in the
immediate presence of it a satisfaction and significance at least as
deep and convincing as any he could get from an artistic rendering
of the same object? Does nature never strike us as at least as
'perfect' as art? Does the painter of a sunset or of a human face
always 'idealize,' and never content himself humbly to transcribe,
and preserve and publish? If the natural object suffers to some
degree from a lack of abstract directness in the 'idea' of it, may not
this want be more than compensated for in the object's very fuller
concreteness ? For why need the concreteness of it be an irrelevancy
and a distraction ? Why may not, rather, the very unexplored out-
skirts of it dartle prophetic gleams and hints of import, and charge
the mind full of a sense of meaning 'deeply interfused' 1 ? Moreover,
if we are not disciples of the gospel that the natural habitat of mind
is amid abstractions, but instead regard them as part of the fall from
Eden, and part of the penance through which the Garden is to be
won again, the more liberal concreteness of nature, where we truly
do not find ourselves bewildered by it, ought only to give us a more
inspired, or at least a more securely easeful, sense of at-homeness. So,
too, the sensuous integrity of the natural object ought to lend it some
of that impression of solidity which the sense of the real massiveness
of the materials employed imparts as a legitimate esthetic effect to
the art of architecture.
There is, however, a superiority of nature over art much more
obvious than any of these. I might designate it as that which arises
from nature's greater scope scope in magnitude, and as to variety.
An incontestable part of the esthetic power, of a vast natural pan-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 259
orama or event, as a hundred-mile front of grand snow-capped peaks,
or an earthquake, lies in its very size and might, which art absolutely
can not reproduce. Or if it be contended that poetry is able im-
aginatively to summon it before us, then in the merely imaginative
form it lacks that penetrative intensity which, so long as it hinders
none others, is a genuine esthetic quality.
But, lastly, and beyond all others, nature has the advantage of
being real. In saying this, I know that I not only brush aside the
Hegelian attempt to demonstrate that at bottom it is the 'Idea' and
not the living flesh-and-blood being. that seizes our, deep attention,
if only we will be philosophically enlightened, but am, apparently,
running counter to the whole established tradition of esthetics.
Beauty, it is agreed on all hands, must be a disinterested experience.
Granted; yet in our anxiety over the old perversion of beauty to
moralism and didactics, are we not going to an opposite absurd
extreme of abstraction? Are we not, in greater or less measure,
still following in the wake of Kant, when, to make sure against any
admixture of the intellectual or ethical interest, he set up a 'pure'
beauty, which, strictly, would have been a matter of blind feeling
and unrealizable, and over against that an 'impure' beauty, of which
sort, consistently speaking, all actual beauty was, and, paradoxically,
dignified and appealing just in the measure that it was impure?
The mind's esthetic responses can not thus, can not at all, be cut
off from the intellectual and ethical. The experience is named solely
according to its center of gravity, according as the phase of esthetic,
intellectual, or ethical reaction is in the ascendent. But now, if in
the so-called esthetic experience you preserve the true esthetic center,
the primacy of the esthetic moment, what else than pure gain in
getting the largest possible injection of the intellectual and moral
appreciation, the largest possible accompanying consciousness also
of these values, calling out, in short, the whole man, instead of some
pale, unreal, mincing part of him? It is trying this last that ends
in estheticism, art-f or-art 's sake, and the whole train of kindred
fallacies and degeneracies. On the other hand, if you will, reality
is itself a factor in rational wholeness. It is, doubtless, this reality
which at bottom gives, if nothing else, that superior sense of solidity
which we spoke of above as accompanying the fuller sensuous con-
creteness of the natural object. The natural object has an advan-
tage, then, even esthetically, in being real.
What are some of the consequences to esthetics from our argu-
ment here? We allowed ourselves space for only a word on this
point. If theory would concede what every lover of nature is alto-
gether persuaded of, and recognize that natural beauty is not of
necessity in every instance only an inferior, inchoate form of the
260
same thing that art renders in more perfect shape, it might discover
that natural beauty had some differentiating characteristics and
superiorities of its own, such as we have been suggesting, and might
find it worth its while to investigate these, in the interest of a
sounder discrimination in its treatment of the beauty of art itself.
Out of such a procedure might issue even such a thing as a completer
insight into the whole final mission and upshot of art, for instance,
if it could be shown that the end of art is not to lead us away from
nature, but to mediate nature for us, bringing us ever from a lower,
blinder level of nature ultimately back to nature on a higher, more
intelligible plane. This alone would be worth while; but there
might, perchance, further come to pass even that which Hegel de-
clares no one has taken it into his head to try, namely, a systematic
account of the beauties of nature, as distinctively natural. 8 These
two or three things would surely bring about a juster balance than
must seem to prevail in our discussions of the subject of beauty gen-
erally: even the layman could now appreciate that the frontiers of
our theory of the beautiful run impartially with those of the king-
dom of beauty itself. Finally, there would be some readjustment
of perspective in the writing of the history of esthetics. To take
but one instance, the historians of esthetics would not then fall into
the distortion of envisaging all that Plato says on the subject of
beauty from the point of view of its least valuable portion, namely,
his utterances on poetry and the arts; but would start rather from
the indefinitely weightier, part of his reflections, that which has to
do with 'real' beauty. Plato would then loom up in very altered
proportions in the work of a writer like Schasler, and even Bosan-
quet would estimate some points quite differently. Other conse-
quences could be indicated, but the above will suffice to illustrate our
thought. GEORGE REBEC.
UTOVEBSITT OF MICHIGAN.
THE POSSIBILITY OF A PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSIDERA-
TION OF FREEDOM.
TN contemporary discussions of freedom the general point of
*- departure is the definition of freedom as a practical truth or
a social necessity. That is, the ethical, political, institutional and
industrial conditions of to-day vitally demand on the part of each
individual a sense of his own responsibility in the social order, and
this consciousness of responsibility, it is held, implies an accom-
' Has not the work of men like Ruskin suggested that there might be richer
possibilities in such an undertaking than Hegel cared to promise it ?
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 261
panying consciousness of freedom. As to the absolute truth of free-
dom, the tendencies are, on the one hand, to regard the consciousness
of freedom as illusory, while at the same time emphasizing its prac-
tical value, and, on the other hand, to regard it as true by means of
such postulates as a transcendental self, chance, or effort as an ' inde-
pendent variable.'
In this age of psychology, it is natural to attempt a psychological
consideration of freedom. But this attempt meets immediate op-
position in the writings of such men as Professor James and Pro-
fessor Miinsterberg who draw a sharp line of distinction between
psychology and philosophy. They say that as a science psychology
is bound to insist upon the categories of causality or Uniformity of
sequence, and of an empirical self. This implies a deterministic
view of experience which is incompatible with our practical con-
sciousness of freedom because it is contradictory of such postulates
of the transcendental self, etc., mentioned above, which are con-
sidered essential to any conception of freedom. Therefore these
writers hand over the question of freedom to metaphysics or philos-
ophy in contradistinction to psychology.
"Whether metaphysics (or philosophy) and psychology are
disparate as they are thus held to be depends upon the data and
significance of psychology. Both Professor James and Professor
Miinsterberg make statements to the effect that psychology has its
own peculiar data and method to which for scientific purposes it
may strictly limit itself and to which, because of philosophical impli-
cations, it must limit itself. Psychology which trespasses upon the
territory of philosophy has an entirely destructive import for all that
concerns us most deeply, our personalities, our freedom and our duty.
These two writers hold this view, notwithstanding their repeated em-
phasis on the fact that psychology was not created as an end in itself,
but to subserve the real interests of life, our demand for rationality,
for the unification and control of our experiences. So to state as a
final definition of psychology that it is a mere abstraction from the
realities of life is practically to deny that psychology can serve those
purposes for which it was created. Now the issue defines itself in
their conception of the data of psychology as independent existences,
ready-made material, variously designated as objects in consciousness,
mental elements, states of consciousness; the issue centers in this
conception and in the logical conclusion therefrom that the formulas
of psychology are mere abstractions. It is agreed that psychology
was created to subserve the real interests of life. In one sense, then,
the data of psychology do not exist as facts in themselves, but as
organic outgrowths of these interests. And are not the formulas of
the psychologist real in so far as he has brought them into existence
262 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
as instruments for the solution of his problem ? They are real in the
sense that they are forms which experience takes when examined
with reference to its nature as a concrete process. What makes them
unreal is to consider them apart from the ends for which they were
created ; or, to express it positively, it is reference to value that vital-
izes and so justifies them. That is, either psychology is inherently
instrumental in the service of the every-day interests or it has no right
to exist. It is concerned with functions and values as well as with
structures. From this point of view we see the intimate and essen-
tial relation between philosophy and psychology.
Since psychology deals with the laws and conditions of the proc-
ess of experience, a psychological consideration of freedom comes to
mean a discussion of the problem how the experience of control with
its corresponding sense of freedom is possible. This involves an in-
terpretation of the terms, subject and object, agent and instrument,
a discussion of the implications of this interpretation with reference
to certain categories that are always bound up with theories of free-
dom, and finally a consideration of the relation of thought to action.
Philosophy has maintained that, given the two factors subject
and object, agent and instrument, in order for experience to be
possible they must somehow be brought together. Subjective ideal-
ism and materialism have both failed to solve the problem. The
dilemma centers in the conception of subject and object as separate
entities. This conception, however, is purely an assumption; we
know no objects apart from ourselves, no reality apart from that
which we experience. Our experience is an activity conditioned by
a changing environment and by changing interests. It is the process
by which we come to know and interpret reality, to reconstruct and
utilize our environment; it is also the process by which reality, ob-
jectivity, comes to be what it is through our interests and interpre-
tations. That is, reality is experience, activity. We must cease to
regard it as something static and external upon which the subject
or agent works db extra. It exists only as it is continually recreated
in instrumental relations to our needs. This, at least, is the only
reality we know. Subject and object, or agent and instrument, then,
are not two different orders of being, but may be accounted for as
organically or functionally differentiated within the concrete process
of experience. Reality or the objective side of the self is experience
taken as given ; the subjective side is experience conceived as under-
going reconstruction. Both as such are abstractions. The actual
experience is the organic realization of the latter through the instru-
mentality of the former. It is only in the disadaptions of experience
that we distinguish between subject and object, agent and instrument,
and that they are held apart only until, through reconstruction, ex-
perience is again unified.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 263
From this point of view we see no necessity for postulating a
transcendental ego. Since the time of Hume a great deal has been
written of a permanent self behind the phenomena of mental life.
Such a postulate, it is held, is necessary to a conception of freedom.
Thus the problem is formulated: Are we justified in conceiving of
the self as a permanent presupposition or must we limit our. judg-
ments to what we know of passing states of consciousness? If we
conclude the former, we can not account for change and growth in
our experience ; if the latter, we can not account for unity and per-
manency. Conservation and change are essential factors in our
experience. For, on account of the dynamic character of our en-
vironment and the need of our mental life for reconstruction, if the
self were lacking in the power to change, it would be lacking also in
the power to preserve that part of its nature which it was most eager
to preserve. Hence we gain nothing by postulating a transcendental
or pure ego, for we can never bring such a self into connection with
a world of changing phenomena. Nor do we need such a presupposi-
tion, for the term organic as applied to experience gives both unity
and variety. The self is a growth, not a static entity existing before
its activity or passing states. The facts seem to require no more than
the conception of habit to explain the sense of a permanent or iden-
tical self in our experience, and the conception of impulses and
ideals as habits comes to consciousness for reconstruction to explain
the changing element in our. experience. In one sense there is no
such thing as a permanent self, we never have the same experience
twice; and, in another sense, we never have a passing state of con-
sciousness, an experience once had becomes an organically consti-
tutive element in all our future experience.
We also see from this view that cause and effect are inadequate
terms to apply to the growth process of consciousness since they
imply relations between separate entities. Such relations are ex-
ternal, so that it is impossible to conceive how the cause passes over,
into the effect. The phases of experience are growth relations.
Therefore no absolute line can be drawn between the causes and the
effects. We may, of course, abstract certain conditions which ap-
pear more significant and call them the cause, but actually all the
conditions are contributing factors in any process. We can employ
the terms not in any fixed sense, but only relatively to the circum-
stances of the concrete situation. What is now regarded as cause is
again regarded as effect and what is effect from the point of view of
all that has gone before is cause of all that is to follow. The effect
is impossible unless it is intrinsic in the cause, and the cause is not a
reality until it fulfills itself in the effect.
It will be said that this statement does away with the causality
264 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
category in one sense and so with the old determinism which denned
that which is determined as that which is externally made to be what
it is. But, after all, does it not leave the causality category intact ?
For just because it no longer conceives of isolated independent exist-
ences it leaves no room for chance 'independent variables,' as Pro-
fessor James says. In the conception of reality as an organic process
the idea of sequence or necessity is rendered stronger than ever.
How, then, are we to understand the terms necessity and chance ?
It seems adequate to interpret them as functional categories growing
up within the process of experience. No one doubts the practical
value of the sense of freedom, whether, he believes that freedom
predicated is "a reality or an illusion. On the other hand, the fore-
sight by which we control our conduct is really the recognition of
inevitable relations. That is, both the idea of freedom and the idea
of necessity are instrumental in the ethical life, if either is thus
instrumental. And the solution of the antinomy involved in this
statement is found in conduct itself. Necessity and freedom as such
are abstractions. All activity which is mediated in consciousness
grows out of vague feelings of an end to be attained and of the
means by which to attain it. So long as the activity is still in the
future, as it were, the conception of the end is only general, and
hence the idea of chance is relevant. The consciousness of the means
we are to employ is consciousness of objectified experience, experience
that we have achieved. This reference to the past is a reflection upon
essential relations, hence the idea of sequence, necessity. The ac-
tivity itself is the concrete process of identification of means and
ends, of realization of the latter through the former. To this process
we apply neither the term necessity nor chance, but actuality.
In his essay, 'The Dilemma of Determinism,' Professor James
dwells exclusively on the side of chance. He uses as an argument
the supposition of a choice made twice over, so that two different
universes result, neither one of which we can assert to be the rational
sequence of what went before the choice. So, he holds, the notion of
chance is made good. But in this argument no mention is made
of any predisposition or partiality toward the two options. More
than that, the entire argument rests upon the non-existence of any
predisposition. If such an experience of indifference between two
objects could ever occur there would be no activity at all. That is,
in leaving out the element of partiality in the consideration of choice,
Professor James has abstracted from the actuality of the choice just
that which was necessary to constitute it.
It is obvious, on the basis of the above statements, that thinking,
feeling and doing are differences of degree, not of kind. AYe are
always acting; feeling and thinking are functionally differentiated
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 265
within that activity. They are instrumental to conduct. Experi-
ence is dynamic; changes are always taking place, and coming to
consciousness as disadaptations. Thinking is this consciousness of
friction or. tension, and is carried on for the sake of the unification
of experience. It is the interplay of images as tentative modes of
response or as experiments to discover the response that will adjust
the organism to the environment. This view is closely allied to the
pragmatism current to-day which regards thought as an instrument
that has its origin in the practical needs of our, nature and finds its
function in the realization of the practical ends of life. Thinking is
essential to practice and has its value in its practical efficiency; it
brings to consciousness the inadequacy of the previous experience
and serves to reconstruct it. It is valid if it successfully controls
and directs action.
How is freedom to be interpreted from this point of view? It
may be said that the term is robbed of all its significance unless the
agent is something apart from the situation or the instrument,
unless there is a transcendental or permanent self to which freedom
may be referred. How can we think of it with any sense of its
actuality if the term chance is relevant only in consideration of the
future, and if in the organic conception of the relation of thought
to action, no room is left for the will as a separate and superaided
power to enter into our experience and dominate it? If these
metaphysical presuppositions are necessary to the conception of
freedom, then the term is deprived of all its significance according
to the above conclusions. For these conclusions recognize no free-
dom except that which is in relation to our environment, to our
instincts and habits, our feelings and ideas, in short, to the growth
of experience. We know no absolute freedom. However, we do not
need such a conception, for although we know no freedom apart from
conditions and relations, these limitations are not static, but changing
in accordance with the principles of a growth process. Moreover,
as to these presuppositions so regarded as essential to a belief in
freedom, they do not constitute its significance ; they have grown up
about the term as explanatory assumptions. The real meaning of
freedom has consisted in the value of such a belief in lending in-
centive, vitality, responsibility, and hence efficiency, to our conduct.
Freedom is, then, efficiency, it is control, rational judgment, science,
character, the ability to make one experience function for another.
There seems to be no reason why we should employ in the definition
and explanation of freedom any other than these terms, which stand
for the realities themselves, not for what may be predicated by these
realities. Thus it is possible to avoid the metaphysical antinomies
involved in such predications. But what is this control? It is the
266 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
mediation in consciousness of an instinct or. a habit, the reconstruc-
tion of a mode of response which once answered our purpose to meet
the new conditions of the present situation. That is, as we have said,
abstract freedom, like all abstractions, is not to be found. Con-
trol is always concrete. It inheres in a certain object or end to be
attained, it is always freedom from or mastery over those specific
conditions which oppose the attainment of this object.
Professor James, on the contrary, maintains in his chapter on the
will that ultimately the means of control is effort as a spontaneous
increase of energy, as an 'indeterminate function,' or an 'independ-
ent variable. ' He holds that the condition for action is the absence
of contradictory images or ideas in the mind. The antagonism of
ideas is deliberation. When the inhibitions are removed we are said
to decide. This decision or fiat in the moral sphere is really the act
of dropping the idea contradictory to the wise action and filling the
mind with the latter. Now in certain cases the fiat seems to take
place in the line of greatest resistance, so that effort appears to be
an 'independent variable.' The question of free-will, therefore, re-
lates solely to the amount of effort of attention which at any one
time we can put forth. Hence the problem is insoluble on strictly
psychological grounds, for it is impossible for psychology to tell
whether more or less effort might have been exerted. It is a consid-
eration for metaphysics ; and the contradiction involved in the con-
ception of action in the line of greatest resistance is handed over to
metaphysics for solution.
But while energy is of course essential, it isn't so much the
amount of energy which he is able and willing to put forth that
makes the man as it is his ability so to organize his interests and
activities that he does away with friction, thus making the most of
his organic energy actual at any one time. The man who really
does the most in the world is the man who conducts his life on a
scientific basis. In other words, freedom is, as we have said, the
name for intelligence, for order, and method in our acts. In this
age of advanced civilization, to say 'I can' does not mean I have
the energy, but I know how. The man who gains mastery over
the circumstances of the situation in which he is placed is the
man who understands those circumstances, who knows how they
happen to be what they are and hence how they can be modified and
utilized. The more we know about consciousness, about the condi-
tions of the growth of the mental life, the better are we able to
control our mental and moral responses. In one sense, then, there
is no limit to our freedom, since continually through science we are
coming to understand more and more the conditions of our experi-
ence and to invent instruments of control.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 267
Now, if it is not through the addition of effort as a spontaneous
force, how do we keep the attention fixed upon one idea? The
truth seems to be that we can't just 'drop' this idea and fill the
mind with that, as Professor James maintains that we can. It is
not possible to drop an idea any more than it is possible to annihilate
an object or a force. And just as in the physical world there is no
creation, but transformation, so in the mental and moral world our
real achievement is conscious reconstruction. Consciousness at any
one moment is an outgrowth of previous experiences more or less
incipiently expressing themselves and emerging as images. These
images are active factors in the present experience no one of which
can be left out of account or mechanically dropped. We are not
free from any one of them, but by taking due account of each, by
directing them into working relations, that is, by centralization and
organization, there results an activity which may be termed spon-
taneous and free within itself. It is deliberation which is this process
of reconstruction of ideas ; it is deliberation through which they are
brought into working relations. What actually happens when we
decide is just this modification and organization of conflicting ideas
or interests.
In one sense, then, there is no problem of freedom. And this
statement is illustrated by the fact that not all experience is affected
by a belief in freedom. Prereflective experience needs no such be-
lief. The practical man just goes ahead planning and acting, un-
disturbed by any questions as to whether he is a free agent or not.
It is the moral man of a certain type who asserts upon reflection as
to the technique of his conduct, that it is his faith in his own free-
dom and responsibility alone that prompts him to do the moral act.
And it is on this basis that certain writers, as Professor C. A. Strong
and President Hadley, maintain that freedom is a practical truth or
a social necessity. While it is true that this belief is essential to some
people as an incentive to act, in such cases it is always accompanied
by a certain doubt as to freedom, or rather it is in fact conditioned
by doubt, since it is this scepticism which renders freedom essential
as a practical truth. The belief as such is an abstraction; it has
value only as it is necessitated by doubt in a concrete situation, and
only as it actualizes itself under the conditions of this situation,
which it does in the manner described.
We have already emphasized the necessity in a working concep-
tion of experience of regarding it as an organic unity. When dis-
adaptions occur within the process, the activity is brought to con-
sciousness for reconstruction as a conflict between nature and value,
self and object, means and ends, habits and ideals, desire and effort,
pleasure and duty, higher and lower self, and the like. In each case,
268 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
however, these terms do not stand for separate orders of being, but
for correlative phases of the tension. This view explains the fact
that good habits are conditions of high ideals; that while desire is
the incentive for effort, effort is the measure of desire ; that our real
pleasure is the joy we take in doing our duty, in getting mastery over
the conditions in which we are situated, that is, in unified activity.
From this point of view deliberation may be denned as just this
organic tension which comes to consciousness in the form of dif-
ferent phases of experience, the interaction of which is instrumental
in the growth of character. In other words, deliberation by setting
the stimulus over, against the response affords the opportunity for
defining the stimulus before it is acted upon ; it has been defined as
a rehearsal of action, though not quite to the point where it becomes
overt. By setting the ideal over against the habit, the situation
over against the agent, by detaching desire from the object, blind,
chaotic and inefficient actions are avoided. By holding apart means
and end, deliberation renders the conceptions of chance and neces-
sity instrumental in the sense we have explained above. On the
one hand, the emergence of consciousness marks the emancipation
from fixed habits of action through the introduction of new desires
and sensations, new interests and values in life, while, on the other
hand, deliberation functions as the investigation, comparison and
synthesis of these interests. ANGEE L. KELLOGG.
VASSAB COLLEGE.
DISCUSSION
ME. BODE'S REVIEW OF 'APPLIED AXIOMS'
IN Vol. II., No. 7, of this JOURNAL, p. 195, Mr. B. H. Bode raises
a point of some interest to pragmatists and others. But in
order to bring his question into line with the argument of the
article to which he refers, we must alter his statement of it slightly.
With this object in view it should run : ' ' Can we pass directly from
the admission that the law of contradiction is liable to be misap-
plied, and that, therefore, adverse judgments based upon it are
arrestable, to the holding of opinions which, if such adverse judg-
ments were not arrestable, would have to be at once condemned?"
The difficulty escapes me. There is no question here of arresting
and accepting the same opinion, but only of continuing to accept an
opinion while the supposed condemnation of it is arrested. At worst,
the position of those who continue to believe something which is
disputed on questionable grounds is rather like that of those who
trade with a sea-port which is 'nominally' blockaded. Somehow the
trade goes on, even if not with entirely thoughtless confidence.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 269
No doubt the old Adam the dogmatic spirit in us prefers to
live in thoughtless confidence, and perhaps even dislikes to have his
opinions called in question. But the pragmatist has less excuse than
other people for this slackness or this quite unnecessary fear of
criticism. All his 'truths,' he freely admits, are pro tern, truths
at best, and the duration of their validity is uncertain. Meanwhile,
he can not take very seriously a 'paper blockade' of objections that
seem to lead nowhere and to rest upon mere disregard of the risk of
verbal ambiguity. Formal logic is, to him, a region of elegant ideals
which do not connect with the actual puzzles of life; and so far as
metaphysics is bounded by formal logic, elegance again is the utmost
virtue that he can see in it. His only course, therefore, is to carry on
business as usual until at least the practical effect of the objections,
their relevance to real difficulties of judgment and so their meaning
can be shown.
Except for the possible misinterpretation to which the last two
sentences of Mr. Bode 's note might give rise, I find no fault with his
account of the article, but rather admire the clearness with which he
has brought out its main points.
ALFRED SIDGWICK.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY, ENGLAND.
KEVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays. G. H. HOWISON. Second
Edition, revised and enlarged. New York, The Macmillan Company.
1905. Pp. xlviii + 450.
This second edition of Professor Howison's well-known volume of
essays is a reprint, with some slight verbal changes, of the first, supple-
mented by a new preface and fifty pages of appendices, explanatory and
defensive. There is also a modified and enlarged statement in the original
preface (pp. xxiii f .) of the difference between the author's system of per-
sonal idealism and the monadology of Leibniz. The new matter serves to
bring out more sharply the essential features of the system, to show the
inner connection of the several essays, originally all of an ' occasional '
nature, and to place the whole theory in a somewhat clearer light.
Whether these advantages for the comprehension of the theory are not
more than offset, as regards the theory itself, by the clearer exposure of
its weakest points is at least doubtful.
To come at once to the gist of the matter. In the original preface
the chief doctrines in the system were summarized in ten propositions
(pp. xii-xviii) . The first two of these were, in brief, as follows : " I. All
existence is either (1) the existence of minds, or (2) the existence of the
items and order of their experience; ... II. Accordingly, Time and Space,
and all that both ' contain,' owe their entire existence to the essential cor-
270 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
relation and coexistence of minds." The remaining propositions set forth
the more distinctive doctrines, the eternal pluralism of a realm of minds,
all equally eternal, with no origin at all, yet logically related and spon-
taneously cooperating, not the subjects, but the source of nature's laws,
constituting together 'the Unmoved One that moves all things,' God,
'the impersonated Ideal of every mind' and 'the living Bond of their
union,' reigning, not by power, 'but solely by light,' the 'metaphor' of
creation meaning ' simply the eternal fact that God is a complete moral
agent.' Now in the preface to the present edition we are informed (p.
xlvi) that all these peculiar doctrines of the author's ' personal idealism '
are simply corollaries of those first two propositions. But those proposi-
tions, if we allow a certain reasonable interpretation of the second of
them, are clearly the common property of Idealisms of various sorts.
Are we to conclude, then, that Professor Howison's is the only strictly
reasoned variety? Surely it is obvious that there is no more necessary
connection between those propositions and the peculiar tenets of an eternal
pluralism of minds related as Professor Howison thinks them related than
there is between those propositions and, say, the 'Absolutism' of Pro-
fessor Royce or the ' Apeirotheism ' of the late Mr. Thomas Davidson.
In truth, the doctrine of the sole existence of minds is entirely neutral as
regards their origin and relations.
But Professor Howison does not base his system, in the last resort, on
these two isolated propositions. In reply to a critic of the first edition
who had complained that the audacious speculations in the book lacked
proof, he now tells us (pp. xliii, xlvii and Ap. D, p. 416) that the proof of
the entire system, including the propositions cited, is the demonstration,
which he claims to have given in several places in the essays, of the reality
of a priori knowledge. The trouble, however, here is that the reality of
a priori knowledge is confused with its metaphysical interpretation. In
itself the conception of a priori knowledge is simply the conception of
knowledge that can not logically be derived from the particulars of sen-
sible experience. But this conception leaves open indefinite possibilities
as to the actual empirical processes in and through which an individual
might conceivably attain such knowledge, while its attainment or posses-
sion decides absolutely nothing as to the temporal or non-temporal char-
acter, or other relations of dependence or independence, of the existence
of the subject that has it. The mystery is that individual minds with
cognitive functions should exist at all; but if they exist, the peculiar log-
ical character belonging to some, or some aspects, of their cognitions will
doubtless be such as their nature and the nature of any system of which
they may form a part will prescribe. Why should not a mind, temporal
in origin and dependent on a whole universe of conditions for its activity,
if it be truly cognitive at all, be capable also of cognition a priori?
Professor Howison, indeed, argues for the eternal, that is, non-temporal
self-activity, and, therefore, immortality, of the individual mind as fol-
lows : (1) ' Consciousness of Time is inseparable from our essential be-
ing'; (2) 'we are conscious of Time as a unity at once absolutely com-
plete and also infinite ' ; (3) ' Time is, therefore, inevitably brought home
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 271
to the soul as its real source' (pp. 300 f.). But the fallacy lies on the
surface. Admitting the premises for the sake of the argument, though
in the writer's opinion they are quite baseless (cf. the author's confusion
and contradiction in the thought of time and unity, p. 47), the legitimate
conclusion is surely not that the soul, that is, as the context explains,
' the individual mind,' is the ' source ' of Time, but only that it has an
a priori knowledge of it. According to Professor Howison, the funda-
mental a priori cognition is that which each mind has of itself, and this,
he holds, includes the knowledge of its correlation with other minds (p.
47). Would he infer that each mind is not only the ' source ' of its own
existence, but of that of every other mind as well? Probably not; and
yet he should do so, if the argument is to be equal.
One of the great weaknesses of the system is its inadequate explana-
tion of Nature. On the one hand, the individual mind is made the source
of all Nature's laws (p. 306) ; it is also made, in virtue of its power of
a priori cognition, the source and explanation of psychophysical parallelism
(pp. 295 ff.) ; and, as we have just seen, it is made the source of Time.
On the other hand, Space and Time, with all their contents, are referred,
as we have also seen, to ' the essential correlation and coexistence of
minds.' Again, more specifically, ' the new system refers the entire being
and linkage of Nature to the minds other than God, so far as concerns its
efficient causation' (p. 391). This is doubtfully consistent and certainly
abstract, and meanwhile the bands of Orion and the procession of the
equinoxes, in short, all the specific features of the order of Nature, remain
just the same brute facts as before. Nor does the author appear to be
any more successful with his conception of God and God's relation to the
world. In the first place, the proof of God's existence is lame; the argu-
ment (p. 354 ff.) is that God must exist because the idea of every self
involves the idea of God as the perfect intelligence, the ideal type. But
this only proves the existence of the idea. Again, God is conceived as
only the final cause of the world of minds ; he ' has no efficient relation to
their being' (p. 371). On the other hand, the final cause is declared to
be the ' originating' member of the system (p. 365), and God's supremacy
is even spoken of as ' omnipotent ' (p. 313). But the members of the sys-
tem are expressly characterized as being without any origin at all ; they are
all alike free, self-posited, and God only thinks them as distinct from
himself in thinking himself. And by God's being a final cause is merely
meant that he is an attracting ideal: God's immanence is moral, the in-
dwelling in spirits as their light (p. 72). But why drag in 'God' for
any 'providence' of his? Why, on the theory, is not every spirit self-
illuminating, just as, on the theory, every person, according to the author's
favorite quotation, has 'life in himself? Pantheism is characterized
(p. 64) as atheism, on the ground that it denies the distinct existence of
God in his office as Creator; and Professor Howison frequently writes as
though he held a special brief for theism: but it is hard to see how a
theory which holds creation to be only a metaphor for the eternal fact
that God is a moral agent is any better off, or why, in fact, God is needed
at all.
272 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The author charges opposing systems with ' Creationism.' This he
explains to mean making the efficient cause central, whereas he makes
the final cause central (p. 393). But his conception of efficient cause
seems to be narrowly restricted to the conception of mechanical causa-
tion, while, in spite of his Hegelian antecedents (see p. 63 n. and p. 67 n.),
he never gets beyond the equally narrow conception of final cause as
an attracting ideal. When, therefore, he makes this the sole causal
relation of mind to mind, he is naturally unable to explain, e. g., the
peculiar impression made by his own ideas on an unsympathetic critic.
But seriously, is there not such a thing as an immanent final cause
of a whole, or the principle of a whole determining its parts? In
monistic idealistic systems God is conceived as this principle, as the
' ground ' as well as the ' goal ' of finite minds and of Nature, each
mind containing and expressing the principle, being self-conscious and
self -determining, indeed, but not in an absolute sense, because no mind
except God is completely self-conscious, i. e., possesses the complete con-
sciousness of itself, or is completely self-determining, because there is
no complete self actually there to determine. This view of monism the
author never really attacks.
As a final criticism, mention should be made of the disfiguring
solecisms which occasionally mar the text and add to the irritation of a
reader who does not see why a claim to be a philosopher should exempt
one from writing good English. Such, e. g., are ' sourcefulness,' in the
sense of being the source of (p. 309), ' enwholing self ' (p. 298), l universal
greatening' (p. 255) and 'to reluctate' (p. 77).
But in spite of disagreement one may feel grateful to Professor Howi-
son for giving us so much to think about. It is to be hoped that he
may fulfill the promise of a more systematic exposition of his ideas, in
which event much that now appears doubtful or obscure will probably
appear both clear and illuminating.
H. N. GARDINER.
SMITH COLLEGE.
Zur Experimentellen KritiTc der Theorie der Aufmerksamkeitschwanlc-
ungen. BERTIL HAMMER. Zeitschrift fur Psychologic und Physi-
ologic der Sinnesorgane. Bd. 37, Hft. 5. Pp. 363-367.
The article is strongly suggestive of the famous chapter on snakes in
the volume on the fauna of Iceland. In the first place, the author argues
that whatever the causes of the phenomena in question may be, they have
nothing to do with attention or we could not record them. He then
attempts experimentally to reduce the fluctuations of slight visual stimuli
to adaptation, a purely retinal process, and ascribes auditory oscillations
to changes in the source of sound.
His experiments on sight follow Pace very closely. The stimulus was
given by the boundary between rectangles of paper photographically pre-
pared to give very slight differences of brightness. A dot on the dividing
line was fixated and a record made of one appearance and reappearance.
His results show that the times were longer with greater differences, that
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 273
they usually became shorter during a series of experiments and that
negative after-images could be registered while resting the eyes between
experiments.
On the basis of these results the author insists that the vanishing in
all so-called attention fluctuations is due to adaptation and the recovery to
slight eye movements. This conclusion seems doubtful for several reasons.
(1) As the author rather savagely points out, in most other experiments
the fixation is by no means accurate and the disappearances come in spite
of slight movements. (2) Even in fixation intended to be constant, as
in the present investigation, it is not likely that the eye was motionless
for the eight to thirty seconds during which the experiment lasted, as
McAllister has recently pointed out that the eye is seldom at rest for one
ninth of a second continuously. At least it would be most unlikely that
it should be absolutely at rest for so long a period as twenty seconds and
then move unconsciously at the end of that time. (3) The appearance of
negative after-images between the series of experiments does not neces-
sarily indicate that the process of adaptation had continued until the
retina is no longer capable of reacting, as we constantly find these images
appearing when we could still clearly see the color that induced them.
His experiments seem then to be far from proving either that his con-
ditions and those under which his so-called attention would arise are
identical, or even that adaptation and eye-movement will explain his own
observations.
This leaping at conclusions is still more evident in his investigation
on the fluctuation of auditory impressions. The author found that he
seemed to get the variations in the ticking of a watch at first, but soon
noticed that the maxima coincided with a certain position of the balance
wheel. He tried listening to several watches and even a chronometer and
found that the ticking of all seemed to have fluctuations (apparently
the ear was the only criterion). He concludes that all watches are alike
in this respect and all earlier results are erroneous. He then prepared an
electro-magnetic sounder, which he assumes gives constant intensities,
and discovered no fluctuations. There was no attempt to obtain an ob-
jective measure of the intensity of the ticks of the watch and even if
we are convinced of the correctness of his statement for one instrument
it does not follow that all have the same peculiarity. The second appa-
ratus is no more likely to give constant tone than the one used by Dr.
Dunlap, and a man predisposed to a negative answer would hardly be
likely to have the patience to search out the comparatively narrow range
of tone intensities within which fluctuations occur.
While any investigation which points out unnoticed possible sources
of error in older works should be welcome, it is nevertheless hazardous to
announce negative results in a field so much worked over on -the basis of
a few hours' experiments.
W. B. PlLLSBURY.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
274
An Analysis of Elementary Psychic Process. A. E. DAVIES, Psychological
Review, Vol. XII., No. 2-3, Mch.-May, 1905. Pp. 166-206.
The purpose of this investigation, the author states, is to ascertain
something as to the nature of elementary conscious states. James has
said that sensations are essentially ' cognitive.' Mr. Davies thinks that
elementary phenomena of psychic character may be rather of an effective
nature, or at least should be conceived as feeling processes.
In an experiment in a dark room, the attempt is made to find by intro-
spection what comes first into consciousness. Momentary light stimula-
tions are employed. The figures presented in this illuminated field were
circles, crosses, stars, triangles, etc. Twenty-two observers were used,
sixteen, however, for one hour only, and but two giving as many as six
sittings. The conclusions reached are briefly the following: (a) The
illumination comes before the perception of form. The conscious con-
tents are differently experienced, and hence the first stage is not percep-
tion. The perception must grow before it can be defined. (6) We get
an image by the large number and variety of movements connected with
these elementary phenomena (p. 205). (c) These numerous sensations
accompanying the various involved movements are thus related to the
feelings, ( they are the feelings become objectified.' Feelings hence tend
to { pass beyond themselves.'
The author concludes in his summary (p. 206) : (1) " That our most
elementary psychic processes are feelings, which are not content, but
intent of consciousness. (2) That feeling process eventuates in physio-
logical changes which involve movements of the special sense and other
organs, that these movements are, on the one hand, the objective side of
feeling, and on the other, practical attitudes toward a present situation,
the character of the reaction depending on the agreeableness or disagree-
ableness of the feeling process. (3) That these adjustments have psychic
importance because of the kinesthetic sense material which through them
becomes functional. (4) That with the complication of the sense data,
these develop ' suggestions ' which operate, under the guidance of feeling,
as principles of its organization into definite products or perceptions."
It is not immediately clear to the reader just what, after all, this
research has established. Why should not the illumination itself be
merely a vague perception? That the subjects say it has at this stage
some feeling-tone does not seem to exhaust the experience. To call
elementary psychic states feelings which are not 'content but intent of
consciousness' is but another name (and just as vague a one) for an
undifferentiated experience. Again it is difiicult to conceive how what
is by nature not ' content ' can ' pass over ' into what is. And if it does,
then its psychological importance really seems to rest in its ' cognitive'
character.
Further, to say that the 'feeling process eventuates in physiological
changes, etc.,' is but a reversal of the James-Lange theory of emotions,
thereby suggesting that feeling is not itself connected in any way with
sensation. The word ' feeling ' thus used connotes simply vagueness, not
the affective character of psychic states. Tawney 1 has shown that such
terminology does not tend to throw light upon the psychological elements
of our mental states.
In paragraphs three and four of the summary, ' feelings ' are appar-
ently not a character of the ' kinesthetic sense material,' nor are they,
as Wundt would claim, functions or ' principles of its organization.' The
author prefers to designate as ' suggestions ' that which arises from the
' complication of sense data,' and which is ' operative.' Feelings guide.
The content is sense data, the product, perceptions, and feelings are
simply that which causes the process to occur.
This being the case, there seems little reason to deny content of some
sort to even elementary psychic process. Feelings could not ' guide '
where there is nothing to guide. In short, it seems not to be possible to
describe any psychic state, elementary or complex in terms either of feel-
ing or cognition alone.
Those reported introspective notes of the present investigation seem,
too, to be open to this interpretation. When 'suggestion,' or the asso-
ciational element, entered into their experience of this bare vague illumi-
nation, clearly a perceptional character, even though illusory, entered in.
When the feeling element entered, as in the judgments ' pleasant ' or
' unpleasant,' there was something which pleased or displeased. ' White-
ness against the black,' or pleasure of monotonous darkness being broken,
seem to suggest content. In the nature of the case very decided feeling
of any sort could scarcely be any more definite than the perception, as
the experience was only momentary.
The article is very interesting and suggests a point of view as to the
nature of feeling. The statement that this is all one means by feeling
or an expedient use of the term, many psychologists would undoubtedly
call into question. CHARLES HUGHES JOHNSTON.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE PHILOSOPHICAL EEVIEW. March, 1905, Vol. XIV., No.
2. The Mission of Philosophy (pp. 113-137) : G. T. LADD. - " Two classes
of judgments, the judgments of fact and law, and the scientific concep-
tions and highest generalizations derived from such judgments, on the
one hand, and, on the other hand, the value-judgments which satisfy the
ethical, esthetical and religious sentiments, and which lead to the forma-
tion of ideals, seem quite habitually to be in conflict. The task of
philosophy is the perpetual readjustment of the relations between them,
with a view to secure a higher and completer harmony." The Content
and Validity of the Causal Law (pp. 138-165) : BENNO ERDMAN. - Em-
pirically conceived, cause should be defined as the immediate uniform
antecedent. " Spinoza, the most consistent of dogmatic rationalists, finds
'Cf. Tawney, G. A., 'Feeling and Self- Awareness,' Psychological Review,
K., 1902, pp. 570-596.
276 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
himself compelled in his formulation of the analytic interpretation of the
causal relation handed down to him, to transform it into a mathematical
one. Mach, the most consistent of recent German empiricists, finds him-
self compelled to recognize that the empirically synthetic relation between
cause and effect includes no other form of dependence than that which
is present in the functional mathematical relations. However, this agree-
ment of two opposing views is no proof that empiricism is on the right
road." \To ~be concluded.'] Proceedings of the Fourth Meeting of the
American Philosophical Association (pp. 166-194): Treasurer's account;
election of officers; abstracts of papers; list of members. The Metaphys-
ical Status of Universal^ (pp. 195-203) : W. H. SHELDON. - " The universal
is supposed by many to be not concrete, and, therefore, to have a lower
metaphysical status than concrete individual facts or events. This sup-
position rests on a misapprehension of the nature of a universal. It
should be defined not as a permanent entity incapable of complete realiza-
tion in experience and indifferent thereto, but as a particular image or
response plus a fringe, a suggestion of further possible similar images
or responses, which the former, having been associated with similars,
gradually acquired." Reviews of Books: Edward Caird, The Evolution
of Theology in the Greek Philosophers: H. N. GARDINER. W. R. Sorley,
The Ethics of Naturalism and Recent Tendencies in Ethics : JAMES SETH.
Norman Smith, Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy: DAVID IRONS. Sum-
maries of Articles. Notices of New Books. Notes.
ARCHIVES DE PSYCHOLOGY, 1904. Becherches sur le Sens
olfactif de I'escayot (Helix Pomatia) (pp. 1-78) : EMILE YUNG. - History
of the problem. Tactile sensibility is generalized on whole integument,
but especially acute about the mouth and tentacles (antennae). A second
sense on the tentacles requires no contact with the substance perceived,
and is sensitive to stimuli giving no such sensation to human beings.
The long tentacles are somewhat more sensitive than the short ones.
Experimental determination of smell sensitivity to favorable and unfavor-
able substances. Smell is not wholly localized in the tentacles, vestiges
remaining in their absence. Microscopic anatomy of sense organs. Les
rapports du mental et due physique (pp. 92100) : ED. CLAPAREDE. - A short
discussion of the psychophysical parallelism and related theories, in-
clining to the former, though recognizing its defects. Des Phenomenes
de Paramnesie (pp. 100-109) : AUG. LEMATTRE. - The phenomena of f ausse
reconnaissance studied on a subject somnambulistic in childhood, an
attack of scarlatina changing the abnormality to the form considered.
Dissent from the theory of double perception. Paramnesia may be a true
representation of previous experience, but the first state is received and
retained in subconscious memory, i. e.j while the subject was distracted or
dreaming. There is conscious recrudescence of an experience at first
subconscious. These unconscious experiences occur in general but shortly
before their recrudescence, appearing, however, to belong to the remote
past. De la Memoire (pp. 145-163) : J. LARGUIER DES BANCELS. - The
antithesis of organic and inorganic matter is not absolute. Memory, a
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 277
characteristic function of organic matter, has its analogues in inorganic
nature, there being a continuum from one to the other. The recognition
of this plasticity is essential to many physicochemical concepts. Re-
cherches Experimentales sur I'Educabillte et la Fidelite du Temoignage
(pp. 234-314) : MARIE BORST. - History of problem and exposition of vari-
ous methods of experiment. Reliable deposition is a rare exception ; every
witness supplies the gaps in the memory. There is a tendency to make
the sequence of events more logical or dramatic. Testimony increases in
reliability with practice. About one tenth of the replies of a willing
witness are false. Narrative is more reliable than examination. Testi-
mony of women is more complete and reliable than that of men. The
quantity and quality of testimony are usually inversely related. One
twelfth of all sworn statements are false. Un cos d'Audition Coloree
Hallucinatoire (pp. 164-177) : AUG. LEMAITRE. - Subject, a boy of fourteen ;
pseudochromsesthesia appearing at eleven, no pseudochromsesthesic he-
redity. Exists only for linguistic enunciations by others than himself.
Colors very variable. In another case the colors are very constant, ac-
cording to table of chromatic complements of words at yearly intervals
for four years. Pseudochromsesthesia may admit of a physiological ex-
planation as an intimate association between linguistic and visual centers.
REVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE. February, 1905. Le Role des Para-
doxes dans la Philosophic (pp. 127-134) : G. VAILATI. - Many axioms which
at first appear to contradict the self-evident are later seen not to do so.
This has often been the case in mathematics. La pensee philosophique
et la pensee mathematique (pp. 135-148) : X. MOISANT. - Philosophy, like
mathematics, requires abstraction; but unlike mathematics it must syn-
thesize abstractions into an organic system. Again, unlike mathematics,
it should reveal the personal attitude of the thinker toward life as a whole.
Expose critique des principales objections contre la theorie du neurone
(pp. 149-162) : E. BALTUS. - Discussion of objections to the neuron theory.
On the whole, though the problem is yet unsettled, the nerve-element
probably must be an independent structural unit. Reflexions critiques
sur ballanche et le l>allanchisme (pp. 163-170) : P. VULLIAUD. A criti-
cism of Erainnet's estimate of Ballanche, in the Essai sur la Philosophie
de P.-S. Ballanche. Apropos de I' Atmosphere metaphysique des Sciences
naturelles: Lettre de X. Moisant, Reponse de M. Vignon. Analyses et
Comptes Rendus : F. Brunetiere, L'utilisation du positivisme : J. GARDAIR.
H. Bremond, Newman, le developpement du dogme chretien: J. V. BAIN-
VEL. F. le Dantec, Les influences ancestrales: F. MENTRE. P. Jacoby,
Etudes sur la Selection chez I'Homme: F. MENTRE. F. Klein, Au Pays
de ' la Vie intense ': E. A. Periodiques anglais. Bulletin de 1'Enseigne-
ment philosophique. Paul Tannery: Chronique. V e Congres Interna-
tional de Psychologic.
REVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE. March, 1905. Allocution au Congres
de Philosophie de Geneve (pp. 235-242) : E. NAVILLE. - Theory and prac-
tice should not be divorced; one's philosophy should be one's life. Unity
278 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
and harmony of the sciences should be strengthened. Philosophy pre-
serves us from the narrowness of over-specialization. Hoene-Wronski et
Lamennais (pp. 243-258) : W. KOZLOWSKI. - J. Bertrand's judgment of
Wronski as a fool is superficial; this is shown by Wronski's criticisms of
Lamennais. Wronski was an extremist and somewhat misled by the
fervor of his own convictions. L'unite de la philosophic et la theorie de
la connaissance (pp. 259-266) : L. M. BILLIA. - Every thinker who desires
a system betrays a belief in the fundamental oneness of the universe.
The nature of knowledge, which is systematization essentially, is the
whole philosophic problem. But true knowledge has for its object per-
fection, or righteousness. Thus the scientia prima is ethics. La theorie
physique : son objet et sa structure (pp. 267-292) : P. DUHEM. - A physicist
can not work by mere observation without any theory, as a physiologist can ;
for the use of instruments in physics implies the acceptation of a whole
group of theories. Alternative theories in regard to a fact are always
more than two in number; therefore, there are no experimenta crucis
ruling out all theories but one. Physical theories exist by groups or
systems. La crise du droit naturel (pp. 293-298) : CH. BOUCAUD. - Defi-
nitions of natural right should be verified by a positive study of human
history and psychology; but this does not invalidate ideals which have
been devised by speculative philosophy, for the latter is itself a part of
human history and psychology. Analyses et Comptes Rendus: Mgr.
Mercier, Ontologie, ou Metaphysique generale: D. V. F. Queyrat, Les
Jeux des Enfants: T. DE VISAN. A. Bazaillas, La Vie personnelle. H.
Sidgwick, Lecture on Ethics of Green, Spencer and Martineau: H. LEARD.
E. Lauvriere, Edgar Poe : P. CHAINE. E. Thouverez, Les grandes Philos-
ophes, H. Spencer. Atti del Congresso internazionale di Scienze storiche
Vol. XI., Vol. XII.: F. MENTRE. A. Bernard, Lemons de Philosophic:
T. DE FISAN. Periodiques anglais. Periodiques americains. Sommaire
des Revues. Bulletin de 1'Enseignement philosophique.
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. February, 1905. La paix et la guerre
(pp. 114-132) : CH. RICHET. - Perpetual peace is possible and desirable,
from both psychological and social points of view. Military virtues are
found in industrial and professional life; military vices are not. War is
sorrow alike to victor and victim. Essais d'esthetique empirique (pp.
133-146) : VERNON LEE. - Esthetic pleasure must arouse or suggest some
one of the many useful activities of life. It is not the work of art itself,
but the activities suggested by it, which give us esthetic pleasure. This is
the teaching of empirical esthetics, which studies the psychology of the in-
dividual in the presence of the work of art. Autorite et Itberte (pp. 147-
179) : CH. DUNAN. - The conception of God as author, creator, has gradu-
ally been replaced by that of God as the spirit of eternal justice, the idea of
ideas ; who does not exist, but is most real. The authority of an existent
God gives way to the freedom we all share, as rational beings, with this
universal reason. Revue Critique: Les besoins et les tendances dans I'
economie sociale (pp. 180-189) : M. HALBWACHS. - Criticism of Schmol-
ler's Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre. Analyses et
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 279
Comptes Rendus: L'Annee philosopJiique : J. DELVAILLE. A Rist, La
Philosophic naturelle integrate et les Rudiments des Sciences exactes:
G. M. P. Stern, Das Problem der Gegebenheit : G. H. LUQUET. Ch.
Fere, Travail et plaisir: P. CHASLIN. Dr. Nuel, La Vision: B. BOURDON.
Toulouse, Vaschide et Pieron, Technique de Psychologie experimental:
B. BOURDAN. A Renda, La Dissociazione psicologica: TH. RIBOT. V.
Mercante, Psicologia de la Aptitud matemdtica del Nino : J. PERES. Ch.
Rapport, La Philosophie de I'Histoire comme Science de I' Evolution: CH.
LALO. R. Loening, Geschichte der strafrechtlichen Zurechtnungslehre :
A. LEVI. Delitto e Pena nel Pensiero dei Grecio: G. RICHARD. Abbe
Piat, Aristote: F. PICA VET. Revue des Periodiques Etrangers. Livres
Deposes.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PHYSIOLOGIE
DER SINNESORGANE. March, 1905, Band 37, Heft 5. Psychophysi-
ologische Untersuchungen uber die Bedeutung des Statolithenapparates
fur die Orientierung im JRaume an Normalen und Taubstummen (pp.
321-362) : G. ALEXANDER and R. BARANY. - Determination of accuracy with
which direction of lines drawn on forehead or optical stimuli could be
perceived when the head or body is inclined at varying angles. Compara-
tive study on normal persons and deaf mutes aims to discover ' role played
by the static organ in orientation in space.' Zur experimentellen Kritik
der Theorie der AufmerJcsamkeitschwaukungen (pp. 363-376) : BERTIL
HAMMER. - Fluctuations of attention to visual stimuli are due to retinal
fatigue and changes of fixation, the latter causing the recurrence. In the
sense of hearing there are no fluctuations of attention. Literaturbericht.
Jauman, G. Die Grundlagen der Bewegungslehre. Leipzig : J. A. Barth.
1905. 8vo. Pp. vi + 421. 12 M.
Krauss, S. Theodule Ribots Psychologie. Jena : Costenoble. 1905.
8vo. Pp. x + 170. 4 M.
Kronenberg, M. Ethische Prdludien. Miinchen: Beck. 1905. 8vo.
Pp. vii + 322. 5 M.
Lukas, T. Psychologie der niedersten Tiere. Wein und Leipzig: Brau-
miiller. 1905. 8vo. Pp. via + 276. 5 M.
McDougall, W. Physiological Psychology. Temple Primers. New York :
The Macmillan Co. 1905. 18mo. Pp. viii +' 172. $0.40 net .
Poincare, H. Lemons de mechanique celeste. Paris: Gauthier-Villars.
1905. Svo. Pp. 365. 12 fr.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE Board of Directors of the Kant-Gesselschaft has decided to offer
a prize of 500 M. for the best essay on the theme ' Kant's Conception of
Knowledge Compared with that of Aristotle.' The competition will
280 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
close on October 1, 1906, and the award announced on April 22, 1907.
The essay may be written in German, French, Italian, or English, and
should be sent to the Kuratorium of the University of Halle. Professors
Heinze, Riehl and Vaihinger will be the judges of the competition. Fur-
ther information regarding the competition may be secured by addressing
Professor Vaihinger.
THE North Central Branch of the American Psychological Associa-
tion met on Saturday, April 22, 1905, at the University of Chicago. The
following papers were read : ' The Perception of Reality,' J. D. Stoops ;
' The Irradiation of Light,' Foster Boswell ; ' Report on Recent Work on
the Growth of the Nervous System,' H. H. Donaldson ; ' The Wundt
Pendulum Complication Apparatus as Tested by the Duddell Oscil-
lograph,' W. D. Scott; 'Pragmatism and its Critics,' A. W. Moore; 'De-
velopment of Ethical Sentiment in the Child,' M. V. O'Shea; 'Feeling
as Emotion and Sentiment: A Neglected Chapter in Psychology,' L. C.
Monin; 'Racial Differences in the Upper Limit of Audibility/ F. G.
Bruner.
THE second volume of ' Philosophy at the Beginning of the Twentieth
Century' the Festschrift dedicated to Professor Kuno Fischer on his
eightieth birthday, lately issued, contains the following papers : ' Rechts-
philosophie,' by Dr. Emil Lask ; ' Geschichtsphilosophie,' by Professor H.
Rickert ; ' ^Esthetik,' by Professor Karl Groos ; and ' Geschichte der
Philosophic,' by Professor W. Windelband.
MB. L. A. WEIGLE, assistant in the Yale Psychological Laboratory, has
accepted a professorship in philosophy at Carlton College, Minn. Mr.
Weigle will complete the work for the doctorate in philosophy at Yale
in June.
SIR W. C. MACDONALD has given funds to the McGill University for
the endowment of a psychological laboratory and for the extension of
the library of the Philosophical Department.
DR. K. MARBE, professor in philosophy in the University of Wiirzburg,
has been called to the Academy of Social and Industrial Science in
Frankfort.
THE annual conference of the British Child-Study Association will be
held at Derby on May 11-13, under the presidency of Professor Muirhead,
of Birmingham University.
VOL. II. No. 11. MAY 25, 1905
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE PLACE OF AFFECTIONAL FACTS IN A WORLD OF
PUKE EXPERIENCE
/"COMMON sense and popular philosophy are as dualistic as it
^^ is possible to be. Thoughts, we all naturally think, are made
of one kind of substance, and things of another. Consciousness,
flowing inside of us in the forms of conception or judgment, or con-
centrating itself in the shape of passion or emotion, can be directly
felt as the spiritual activity which it is, and known in contrast with
the space-filling objective 'content' which it envelopes and accom-
panies. In opposition to this dualistic philosophy, I tried, in a
recent article in this JOURNAL/ to show that thoughts and things are
absolutely homogeneous as to their material, and that their opposi-
tion is only one of relation and of function. There is no thought-
stuff different from thing-stuff, I said; but the same identical piece
of 'pure experience' (which was the name I gave to the materia prima
of everything) can stand alternately for a 'fact of consciousness' or
for a physical reality, according as it is taken in one context or in
another. For the right understanding of what follows, I shall have
to presuppose that the reader will have read that earlier article. 2
The commonest objection which the doctrine there laid down runs
up against is drawn from the existence of our 'affections.' In our
pleasures and pains, our loves and fears and angers, in the beauty,
comicality, importance or preciousness of certain objects and situa-
tions, we have, I am told by many critics, a great realm of experi-
ence intuitively recognized as spiritual, made, and felt to be made,
of consciousness exclusively, and different in nature from the space-
filling kind of being which is enjoyed by physical objects. In Section
VII. of that earlier article, I treated of this class of experiences very
inadequately, because I had to be so brief. I now return to the sub-
ject, because I believe that, so far from invalidating my general
thesis, these phenomena, when properly analyzed, afford it powerful
support.
14 Does Consciousness Exist?' Vol. I., p, 477.
2 It will be still better if he shall have also read the article entitled 'A
World of Pure Experience,' which follows that one and develops its ideas still
farther. See this JOURNAL, Vol. I., pp. 533, 561.
281
282 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The central point of the pure-experience theory is that 'outer*
and 'inner' are names for two groups into which we sort experiences
according to the way in which they act upon their, neighbors. Any
one 'content,' such as hard, let us say, can be assigned to either
group. In the outer group it is 'strong,' it acts 'energetically' and
aggressively. Here whatever is hard interferes with the space its
neighbors occupy. It dents them ; is impenetrable by them ; and we
call the hardness then a physical hardness. In the mind, on the
contrary, the hard thing is nowhere in particular, it dents nothing,
it suffuses through its mental neighbors, as it were, and interpene-
trates them. Taken in this group we call both it and them 'ideas'
or 'sensations'; and the basis of the two groups respectively is the
different type of interrelation, the mutual impenetrability, on the
one hand, and the lack of physical interference and interaction, on
the other.
That what in itself is one and the same entity should be able to
function thus differently in different contexts is a natural conse-
quence of the extremely complex reticulations in which our experi-
ences come. To her offspring a tigress is tender, but cruel to every
other living thing both cruel and tender, therefore, at once. A mass
in movement resists every force that operates contrariwise to its own
direction, but to forces that pursue the same direction, or come in at
right angles, it is absolutely inert. It is thus both energetic and
inert; and the same is true (if you vary the associates properly) of
every other piece of experience. It is only towards certain specific
groups of associates that the physical energies, as we call them, of
a content are put forth. In another group it may be quite inert.
It is possible to imagine a universe of experiences in which the
only alternative between neighbors would be either physical inter-
action or complete inertness. In such a world the mental or the
physical stattis of any piece of experience would be unequivocal.
When active, it would figure in the physical, and when inactive, in
the mental group.
But the universe we live in is more chaotic than this, and there
is room in it for the hybrid or ambiguous group of our affectional
experiences, of our emotions and appreciative perceptions. In the
paragraphs that follow I shall try to show:
(1) That the popular notion that these experiences are intui-
tively given as purely inner facts is hasty and erroneous; and
(2) That their ambiguity illustrates beautifully my central thesis
that subjectivity and objectivity are affairs not of what an experi-
ence is aboriginally made of, but of its classification. Classifications
depend on our temporary purposes. For certain purposes it is con-
venient to take things in one set of relations, for other purposes in
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 283
another set. In the two eases their contexts are apt to be different.
In the case of our affectional experiences we have no permanent and
steadfast purpose that obliges us to be consistent, so we find it easy
to let them float ambiguously, sometimes classing them with our. feel-
ings, sometimes with more physical realities, according to caprice or
to the convenience of the moment. Thus would these experiences,
so far from being an obstacle to the pure-experience philosophy,
serve as an excellent corroboration of its truth.
First of all, then, it is a mistake to say, with the objectors whom
I began by citing, that anger, love and fear are affections purely of
the mind. That, to a great extent at any rate, they are simultane-
ously affections of the body is proved by the whole literature of the
James-Lange theory of emotion. All our pains, moreover, are local,
and we are always free to speak of them in objective as well as in
subjective terms. We can say that we are aware of a painful place,
filling a certain bigness in our organism, or we can say that we are
inwardly in a 'state' of pain. All our adjectives of worth are sim-
ilarly ambiguous I instanced some of the ambiguities on page 490
of the former article. Is the preciousness of a diamond a quality
of the gem ? or is it a feeling in our mind ? Practically we treat it
as both or as either, according to the temporary direction of our
thought. 'Beauty,' says Professor Santayana, 'is pleasure objecti-
fied'; and in Sections 10 and 11 of his work, 'The Sense of Beauty,'
he treats in a masterly way of this equivocal realm. The various
pleasures we receive from an object may count as 'feelings' when we
take them singly, but when they combine in a total richness, we call
the result the 'beauty' of the object, and treat it as an outer attribute
which our mind perceives. We discover beauty just as we discover
the physical properties of things. Training is needed to make us
expert in either line. Single sensations also may be ambiguous.
Shall we say an 'agreeable degree of heat,' or an 'agreeable feeling'
occasioned by the degree of heat? Either will do; and language
would lose most of its esthetic and rhetorical value were we forbidden
to project words primarily connoting our affections upon the objects
by which the affections are aroused. The man is really hateful ; the
action really mean; the situation really tragic all in themselves and
quite apart from our opinion. We even go so far as to talk of a
weary road, a giddy height, a jocund morning or a sullen sky; and
the term 'indefinite' while usually applied only to our apprehen-
sions, functions as a fundamental physical qualification of things
in Spencer's 'law of evolution,' and doubtless passes with most
readers for all right.
Psychologists, studying our perceptions of movement, have un-
earthed experiences in which movement is felt in general but not
284 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ascribed correctly to the body that really moves. Thus in optical
vertigo, caused by unconscious movements of our, eyes, both we and
the external universe appear to be in a whirl. When clouds float
by the moon, it is as if both clouds and moon and we ourselves shared
in the motion. In the extraordinary case of amnesia of the Rev.
Mr. Hanna, published by Sidis and Goodhart in their important
work on 'Mutiple Personality' (New York: Appleton, 1905) we read
that when the patient first recovered consciousness and "noticed an
attendant walk across the room, he identified the movement with his
own. He did not yet discriminate between his own movements and
those outside himself" (p. 102). Such experiences point to a primi-
tive stage of perception in which discriminations afterwards need-
ful have not yet been made. A piece of experience of a deter-
minate sort is there, but there at first as a 'pure' fact. Motion orig-
inally simply is; only later is it confined to this thing or to that.
Something like this is true of every experience, however complex, at
the moment of its actual presence. Let the reader arrest himself in
the act of reading this article now. Now this is a pure experience, a
phenomenon, or datum, a mere that or content of fact. 'Reading'
simply is, is there; and whether there for some one's consciousness,
or there for physical nature, is a question not yet put. At the
moment, it is there for neither; later we shall probably judge it to
have been there for both.
With the affectional experiences which we are considering, the
relatively 'pure' condition lasts. In practical life no urgent need
has yet arisen for deciding whether to treat them as rigorously
mental or as rigorously physical facts. So they remain equivocal;
and, as the world goes, their equivocality is one of their great con-
veniences.
The shifting place of 'secondary qualities' in the history of phi-
losophy is another excellent proof of the fact that 'inner' and 'outer'
are not coefficients with which experiences come to us aboriginally
stamped, but are rather results of a later classification performed
by us for particular needs. The common-sense stage of thought is
a perfectly definite practical halting-place, the place where we our-
selves can proceed to act unhesitatingly. On this stage of thought
things act on each other as well as on us by means of their secondary
qualities. Sound, as such, goes through the air and can be inter-
cepted. The heat of the fire passes over, as such, into the water
which it sets a-boiling. It is the very light of the arc-lamp which
displaces the darkness of the midnight street, etc. By engendering
and translocating just these qualities, actively efficacious as they
seem to be, we ourselves succeed in altering nature so as to suit us ;
and until more purely intellectual, as distinguished from practical,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 285
needs had arisen, no one ever thought of calling these qualities sub-
jective. When, however, Galileo, Descartes, and others found it best
for philosophic purposes to class sound, heat and light along with
pain and pleasure as purely mental phenomena, they could do so
with impunity.
Even the primary qualities are undergoing the same fate. Hard-
ness and softness are effects on us of atomic interactions, and the
atoms themselves are neither hard nor soft, nor solid nor liquid.
Size and shape are deemed subjective by Kantians; time itself is
subjective according to many philosophers; and even the activity
and causal efficacy which lingered in physics long after secondary
qualities were banished are now treated as illusory projections out-
wards of phenomena of our own consciousness. There are no activi-
ties or effects in nature, for the most intellectual contemporary
school of physical speculation. Nature exhibits only changes, which
habitually coincide with one another so that their habits are describ-
able in simple 'laws.'
There is no original spirituality or materiality of being, intui-
tively discerned, then; but only a translocation of experiences from
one world to another; a grouping of them with one set or another
of associates for definitely practical or intellectual ends.
I will say nothing here of the persistent ambiguity of relations.
They are undeniable parts of pure experience; yet, while common
sense and what I call radical empiricism stand for their being ob-
jective, both rationalism and the usual empiricism claim that they
are exclusively the 'work of the mind' the finite mind or the abso-
lute mind, as the case may be.
Turn now to those affective phenomena which more directly con-
cern us.
"We soon learn to separate the ways in which things appeal to our
interests and emotions from the ways in which they act upon one
another. It does not work to assume that physical objects are going
to act outwardly by their sympathetic or antipathetic qualities. The
beauty of a thing or its value is no force that can be plotted in a
polygon of compositions, nor does its 'use' or 'significance' affect in
the minutest degree its vicissitudes or destiny at the hands of phys-
ical nature. Chemical 'affinities' are a purely verbal metaphor; -
and, as I just said, even such things as forces, tensions and activities
can at a pinch be regarded as anthropomorphic projections. So far,
then, as the physical world means the collection of contents that
determine in each other certain regular changes, the whole collection
of our appreciative attributes has to be treated as falling outside of
it. If we mean by physical nature whatever lies beyond the surface
286
of our bodies, these attributes are inert throughout the whole extent
of physical nature.
Why then do men leave them as ambiguous as they do, and not
class them decisively as purely spiritual ?
The reason would seem to be that, although they are inert as re-
gards the rest of physical nature, they are not inert as regards that
part of physical nature which our own skin covers. It is those very
appreciative attributes of things, their dangerousness, beauty, rarity,
utility, etc., that primarily appeal to our attention. In our commerce
with nature these attributes are what give emphasis to objects; and
for an object to be emphatic, whatever spiritual fact it may mean,
means also that it produces immediate bodily effects upon us, alter-
ations of tone and tension, of heartbeat and breathing, of vascular
and visceral action. The 'interesting' aspects of things are thus
not wholly inert physically, though they be active only in these
small corners of physical nature which our bodies occupy. That,
however, is enough to save them from being classed as absolutely
non-objective.
The attempt, if any one should make it, to sort experiences into
two absolutely discrete groups, with nothing but inertness in one of
them and nothing but activities in the other, would thus receive one
check. It would receive another as soon as we examined the more
distinctively mental group ; for though in that group it be true that
things do not act on one another by their physical properties, do
not dent each other or set fire to each other, they yet act on each
other in the most energetic way by those very characters which are
so inert extracorporeally. It is by the interest and importance that
experiences have for us, by the emotions they excite, and the pur-
poses they subserve, by their affective values, in short, that their
consecution in our several conscious streams, as 'thoughts' of ours,
is mainly ruled. Desire introduces them ; interest holds them ; fitness
fixes their order and connection. I need only refer for this aspect
of our mental life, to Wundt's article 'Ueber psychische Causalitat,'
which begins Volume X. of his Philosophische Studien. 3
It thus appears that the ambiguous or amphibious status which
we find our epithets of value occupying is the most natural thing in
the world. It would, however, be an unnatural status if the popular
opinion which I cited at the outset were correct. If 'physical' and
'mental' meant two different kinds of intrinsic nature, immediately,
intuitively, and infallibly discernible, and each fixed forever in
8 It is enough for my present purpose if the appreciative characters but
seem to act thus. Believers in an activity an sich, other than our mental ex-
periences of activity, will find some farther reflections on the subject in my
address on 'The Experience of Activity 5 in the Psychological Review for
January, 1905.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 287
whatever bit of experience it qualified, one does not see how there
could ever have arisen any room for doubt or ambiguity. But if,
on the contrary, these words are words of sorting, ambiguity is
natural. For then, as soon as the relations of a thing are sufficiently
various it can be sorted variously. Take a mass of carrion, for ex-
ample, and the 'disgustingness' which for us is part of the experi-
ence. The sun caresses it, and the zephyr wooes it as if it were a
bed of roses. So the disgustingness fails to operate within the realm
of suns and breezes, it does not function as a physical quality.
But the carrion 'turns our stomach' by what seems a direct operation
it does function physically, therefore, in that limited part of
physics. We can treat it as physical or as non-physical according
as we take it in the narrower or in the wider context, and conversely,
of course, we must treat it as non-mental or as mental.
Our body itself is the palmary instance of the ambiguous. Some-
times I treat my body purely as a part of outer nature. Sometimes,
again, I think of it as 'mine,' I sort it with the 'me,' and then certain
local changes and determinations in it pass for spiritual happenings.
Its breathing is my 'thinking,' its sensorial adjustments are my 'at-
tention,' its kinesthetic alterations are my 'efforts,' its visceral per-
turbations are my ' emotions. ' The obstinate controversies that have
arisen over such statements as these (which sound so paradoxical, and
which can yet be made so seriously) prove how hard it is to decide
by bare introspection what it is in experiences that shall make them
either spiritual or material. It surely can be nothing intrinsic in
the individual experience. It is their way of behaving towards each
other, their system of relations, their function; and all these things
vary with the context in which we find it opportune to consider them.
I think I may conclude, then (and I hope that my readers are
now ready to conclude with me), that the pretended spirituality of
our emotions and of our attributes of value, so far from proving an
objection to the philosophy of pure experience, does, when rightly
discussed and accounted for, serve as one of its best corroborations.
WILLIAM JAMES.
HABVAED UNIVERSITY.
activities of the artist and of the scientist are many-sided
and their relations so complex that a multitude of contrasts
may readily be acknowledged to exist between them. Were these
differences unrelated, an adequate discrimination of their provinces
would be possible only through an exhaustive enumeration of their
288 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
points of divergence. If, on the other hand, the various manifesta-
tions of each attitude are systematically connected, it should be
possible to point to some broad and simple distinction in method
or point of view upon which this profusion of contrasted characters
depends, and by which the affiliations of any particular bit of ex-
perience may be determined.
If among the manifold attitudes of the human will a funda-
mental principle of differentiation be sought, we shall find ourselves
habitually making a twofold division of the forms of subjective
experience. It is hard to give a name to these discriminated types ;
no term is adequate and exclusive. The one is what the subject is
conscious of; the other, what he is concerned with. These terms
represent different aspects of experience, not events distinct in time ;
for the two are inseparable moments of every content of experience.
Out of this discrimination of attitudes arises a derivative distinc-
tion between aspects of the content of consciousness which we call
existence (what one is conscious of) and worth (what one is con-
cerned with). With existence the perceptive subject is engaged.
Here one strips oneself as far as possible of all personal attitude
toward the experience. The event is viewed as purely objective,
alike for a multitude of observers ; and in the ideal process is sought
the most adequate representation of these universally valid relations.
Worth concerns the active subject. From this point of view the
experience is treated solely as an object of will, a motive. Its sig-
nificance lies in the direction and amount of its force as an impulse
to activity. It is a moment in a constructive life.
In dependence upon the discrimination of these aspects of ex-
perience arise two different modes of regarding any object or process
of the world. From the first point of view it is looked upon as a
totality having purpose and significance, all parts being organic to
one end. The reality of the thing under this conception lies in its
unity. The constituent elements by themselves are meaningless.
They exist only as parts which receive significance through the whole.
From the second point of view the object or event is regarded as po-
tentially a group of elements, not as a significant unity. Its stand-
point is atomistic. The totality exists only to be analyzed, to be
reduced to its constituents, whether material or causal. It is of the
latter that permanent existence is strictly to be predicated, and this
in proportion to their simplicity and universality. The form of
their combination is a teleological unity depending for its appear-
ance upon the selective point of view of the human will and suffer-
ing transformation from moment to moment as the purpose of that
will fluctuates.
Every activity which embodies the former point of view deals
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 289
with phenomena in a creative way; every application of the latter
concept is a treatment of experience from the critical point of view.
By the creative attitude, then, is meant all activity which seeks to
convey the unitary significance of the thing or event. Its aim is to
set the object or process forth in such a manner that the effect which
it produced upon the constructively apperceptive subject shall be
passed over to the observer. The critical activity, on the contrary,
is concerned wholly with the analysis of experience into its phenom-
enal elements. "With its significance, that is to say, its value as
dependent upon any such selective point of view, criticism has as
little to do as possible. Its single function is the determination of
uniformities of connection between phenomena through processes of
analysis. It seeks always to dissolve the structure of experience and
to exhibit its irreducible elements in their relation to one another.
The unanalyzed object may be a thing of interest, of beauty or of
worth; it can not be the subject of any form of descriptive or crit-
ical activity.
Both the description of experience and its interpretation are
forms of reorganization by the purposeful human will. Creative
and critical activity alike dissolve the continuity of actual experi-
ence for the purpose of rearranging its elements in an ideal order.
The attitudes of artist and scientist, which share in this common
attribute of ideal reorganization, are to be discriminated by the
motives which underlie their special forms of synthesis, and by the
criteria which determine the order in which their materials are ar-
ranged. The critical activity seeks a logical reconstruction of ex-
perience for the purpose of description, and in response to the
demand of the human spirit to understand its world. The creative
activity undertakes a sentimental reconstruction of experience for
the purpose of producing a mood and in response to the demand of
the human spirit to enjoy its world. By the term artist is here
meant all who thus deal with experience in a creative way; by
scientist, all who deal with it in a critical way. The terms apply
also, of course, to all moods and successive moments of the individual
life in which, as may alternately occur, the treatment of experience
is now logical and then sentimental.
Scientific work is a function of the subject as perceptive, and
has to do with the existence of phenomena. The direction of activity
is toward understanding, the objective expression of which is knowl-
edge. One's aim is to describe through generalizations or laws.
The object of a description is fact. Its criteria are exactitude and
completeness. Accomplishment is truth ; failure is error. Artistic
work is a function of the subject as active and is always an expres-
sion in some form of the worth of experience. The will is directed
290 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
toward use and enjoyment through the products of the creative ac-
tivity. One's intention in relation to such a product is solely to
estimate on the basis of ideals. The result of an estimation is value.
Its criteria are sincerity and power. Accomplishment is holiness
(wholeness) ; failure is sin. "We have here two sets of terms cor-
responding to each other, which may be set in opposite columns as
indicative of the two contrasted forms of activity, and as determin-
ing the terminology of the two great classes of writing which
DeQuincy has called, respectively, the literature of knowledge and
the literature of power.
The nature of critical activity will perhaps not be in doubt, but
the limits of creative expression and the implications of its attitude
are less evident. The artist's aim, whether in his esthetic appeal
to the apperceptive personality or in his ethical appeal to the con-
structive personality, is to affect, to impress, to move. The selection
of his material and the method of his arrangement are both dom-
inated by this one purpose. In the province of esthetic creation it
is the aim of the artist so to present the thing or event that the effect
produced upon him by the contemplation or experience of it shall
be passed over to the beholder. He seeks, in short, to communicate
his own mood. In the province of ethical creation, on the other
hand, it is the artist's function to communicate his own will. His
aim is so to present the thing or event that it shall be effective in
transforming the activity of the subject to whom it is addressed.
Not truth, but power, is at the heart of all artistic activity; not to
understand, but to feel and to use, constitute one the recipient of
the creative impulse. Truth, indeed, must be there, but it is truth
of impression, which is sincerity, not truth of description.
The two moods, critical and creative or appreciative, are indeed
mutually incompatible. Experience presents only successive trans-
lations from the one point of view to the other, never the combina-
tion of the two. The artist as such can not so apprehend the rela-
tions of the object of his contemplation as to rationalize his prefer-
ence. He ceases to be in the attitude of artist the moment he under-
takes to analyze the nature and basis of his judgment of worth. He
is no longer creator, but critic ; for he has ceased to enjoy his experi-
ence, and become merely an observer of it. For equally of the scien-
tist must it be said that the contemplation of the relations discovered
by his analysis as sources of enjoyment means his instant translation
to the artistic point of view. The
' . . . Lone watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,'
if in the mood which Keats conceives to be his, is simple poet. The
descriptive fact lies wholly in abeyance ; for him the romance of the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 291
experience and its sublimity are the only realities of the moment.
Science can take account of none of these things. For it emotion is
a sum of phenomenal elements ; the moral will is a complex reaction
resolvable into a set of causal connections. Science neither estimates
nor determines values; it apprehends neither dignity, nor use, nor
goodness, nor. beauty in its objects. Its world is there to be weighed
and measured, not to be appreciated and enjoyed.
In explaining the useful classification of sciences as descriptive
and normative it has sometimes been said that the former, such
as astronomy, natural history, philology and psychology, describe
facts; while the latter, such as grammar, logic, esthetics and ethics,
prescribe values. Grammar, for example, does not inquire how
men do, as a matter of fact, use words, or how they have used them
in the past; such is the office of philology, a descriptive science.
On the contrary, it prescribes how one ought to use his words. Hence
the alternative title 'prescriptive' science. In such a classification,
the work of the sciences contained in the latter group is confused
with those aspects of the undivided human life which it is their
function to describe, with the arts of correct speaking, of good taste
and of right living. Ethics never seeks to prescribe ideals of human
conduct, to determine what shall constitute our notion of good or
evil. It aims only to analyze the already existing phenomenon of
moral judgment. Esthetics aims only to determine the form of the
beautiful object and the nature and basis of its impression as an
actual experience which men share in common. There is no science
but descriptive science and analysis is its method.
The work of science is the transcription of the objectified world
of experience, in terms of its temporal and causal correlations.
The work of art is the representation of human emotion or purpose
through the symbols of the external world. This peculiar and char-
acteristic difference in the ends toward which their activities are
directed is forced upon our notice in every comparison of artistic
and scientific work. The aim of the latter is to give a systematically
completed description of phenomena. It is not simply those prop-
erties of the thing which may work him advantage or injury that
the scientist studies, but the whole system of relations in which it
stands to other existing things. It can not be said that no difference
in rank exists in the scientist's world, that all facts are of equal
value to him. Wherever systematization appears there must be
subordination of lower to higher. In the end, perhaps, the criterion
of worth in the two fields is the same, namely, richness of relation-
ship. For the scientist that is the higher, the more important, which
involves the greater range of implications. It is the deeper rela-
tion, the wider law ; and the goal of his inquiry is the universal law,
292 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the complete expression of the relatedness of the world. His work
is not perfected until he has brought every object and event into
connection with all other existences. The science to which each
individual contributes is a systematic unity. Every property dis-
covered, every relation established, implies all preceding work as its
condition, and itself gives further validity and significance to that
body of knowledge.
In art no such transcendent unity appears, but, on the contrary,
irreconcilable rivalry and exclusiveness. Mood suceeds mood with-
out fusing, the one artistic conception replaces the other instead
of combining with it to form a greater whole. The object of
esthetic contemplation is such in virtue only of its embodiment of
this very ideal of complete self-dependence. The fundamental
principle in the composition of a picture, in the construction of a
monument, in the writing of a poem, in the formation of character,
is the pervasive unity of it, wherein all the functions of its parts
are comprehended and fulfilled. The art-product is a closed system
in which every impulse finds satisfaction because each thought which
penetrates it is reflected backward, and finds its object ultimately
within the circle of elements which the work comprises.
No such unity is conceivable in the special sciences. The de-
scription of an isolated thing is impossible. It is perceived at once
to be a fragment. Its relations must be broken off on every side
if it is to be lifted into solitary view. In this lies the fundamental
distinction between the critical and creative attitudes. The scientist
explains the individual object by integrating it with a wider system ;
the artist interprets a wider system by representing it in an indi-
vidual object. Science therefore expresses itself in abstract uni-
versals, but art in concrete particulars. Nothing less than the
whole will serve science as an ideal; in art a sketch, a microcosm
may reveal the type more perfectly than the finished portrait or the
macrocosm.
The function of the artist, then, is so to select and represent the
single object, the individual experience, that it shall exhibit the
universal, and so stimulate the imagination of all who have shared
in its experience.
This delight in the single object, its acceptance as representing
the universe, is wholly foreign to science. Yet the underlying mo-
tive of all description, of all explanation, is the desire for unity, a
unity never attained, but foreshadowed and involved in every
synthesis, for the attempt at explanation is the expression of a striv-
ing to view the world as one rational system. It is, therefore, a
unity which becomes more definite as the description of the world
grows more comprehensive and adequate. The perfect science is
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 293
the complete expression of existence, a knowledge which can be
stated only as the apprehension of that existence in the form of an
artistic whole; not as the elusive sense which sometimes thrills one
with the feeling that the significance of existence lies at the moment
within his grasp, a mystic insight which can not be put into intel-
lectual terms; but in that adequate realization of the inconceivably
manifold relations of the world which we ascribe to the divine mind.
The apprehension of existence as such a unity, a system in which
the meaning of every part lies wholly within the system and nothing
leads the contemplative mind beyond its bounds, is what I under-
stand by the esthetic attitude; the system which can thus be con-
templated is what I understand by the artistic object. In their ulti-
mative motives, therefore, the two forms of activity have a common
meeting-place, and the appreciative contemplation of the world of
reality becomes the crown and completion of scientific work.
EGBERT MACDOUGALD.
NEW YOBK UNIVERSITY.
TT^VER since the time of Maury considerable aid in understanding
-* ^ dream processes has been afforded by the study of the
hypnagogic state. Save that the onset of sleep brings with it the
distinctive feature of the dream, namely its illusory sense of reality
together with all the subsidiary characteristics that this immediately
involves, save in this respect the hypnagogic state offers a rather
exact parallel to the dream itself. In both is there the reproduction
of the unusually vivid impressions of the day. In both is there the
heightened clearness and intensity of the various types of imagery
peculiar to the individual. Indeed, this last phenomenon is so
marked that, as Myers has pointed out, we first get revelations of
our visualizing power by noting the phantasmagoria of the hypna-
gogic period. In both are there the abrupt transitions, the sudden
lapses, the irruptions of the irrelevant and the unfamiliar, the spon-
taneous coming and going of chaotic and multiform processes that we
can neither check nor further. Similarly there are in both states
occasional moments when all processes are extraordinarily coherent
and rational, moments when vexing difficulties become clarified, when
uncertainties are resolved and complexities are simplified. Less
frequently we find in both states increased powers of recall, so that
the revivals in the hypnagogic stage of dates, addresses or lines of
poetry furnish an exact parallel to that well-attested hypermnesic
character of certain dreams which often bring to the dreamer prac-
tical waking consequences of a highly convenient nature.
294 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
All these matters are now commonplaces of dream psychology,
to those of us at least who are fortunate enough to have well-defined
hypnagogic experiences. One feature of this general concordance
of which I have been speaking seems, however, not to have been
noted, presumably for the reason that it is of rare occurrence. This
is the revival of impressions that, while never consciously received
by the individual, have yet come within the range of vision or of
hearing. As far as dreams are concerned, Maury reported such
cases and investigators since his time have published plenty of con-
firmatory evidence. Members of the S. P. R. have collected the
most striking instances of this sort. But I am not aware that a
hypnagogic parallel for these occurrences has as yet been noted.
Nevertheless, such a parallel would lie quite within the range of
expectations, particularly in view of the fact that crystal vision and
shell hearing present precisely analogous phenomena. The case
that I append has been given me by a student whose observations
and reports are unusually accurate and reliable. Her hypnagogic
state is exceptionally prolonged, lasting generally from thirty
minutes to an hour. During this time there is a great variety of
clear-cut and distinct visual imagery ranging from colored mosaic
patterns to pictorial rehearsals of the day's experiences. The
particular experience here recounted relates to the revival of impres-
sions that had undoubtedly fallen within the range of possible vision
without being consciously attended to. The account is given in the
third person.
"A. had been gathering a small orchid, commonly called Pagonia
or Lamb's-tongue. Ordinarily it is a beautiful shell-pink and very
fragrant. Occasionally it is white, and perhaps in a hundred pink
ones a single white one may be found. One day A. looked very
carefully for a white one, as she wanted to show it to a friend who
was also a nature-lover, but she failed to find one. That night in
the hypnagogic state she saw two, very distinctly, near a small clump
of alders and low laurel. The setting of marsh, moss and cranberry
blossoms was complete. The day following A. went again to the
place of the search and found the white pagonias as indicated. She
then remembered that the previous day, just as she had reached that
part of the marsh, one of her companions punctured her hand on a
barbed wire fence and that she had gone to bind it up. ' '
This is only one of a number of entirely similar experiences that
A. has had. I have before me a second account describing how the
hiding-place of a lost key was revealed in the hypnagogic vision.
As simple, after all, as these matters really are, it seems worth while
to put them on record, in the hope of eliciting further testimony
along the same line. A. H. PIERCE.
SMITH COLLEGE.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 295
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Studies of Feeble-Mindedness*
The study of the mentally defective classes is of interest and impor-
tance to both physicians and psychologists. Unfortunately, however,
psychologists have concerned themselves almost wholly with the investi-
gation of the mental processes of normal people, and have not considered
the subject of abnormal psychology. Physicians, on the other hand, are
interested in abnormal psychology, but largely, and almost exclusively, in
those mental processes which are of importance for diagnosis, and those
1 Under this title there have been included the following articles on idiots,
imbeciles, enfants arrieres, enfants faibles d'esprit, and on enfants anormaux
and abnormal children when it was evident that the term ' abnormal ' was used
synonymously, or nearly so, with ' feeble-minded ' :
1. 'Les enfants anormaux a Bruxelles.' DEMOOR ET DANIEL. Annte
psychologique, 1900, VII., 296-313.
2. ' Experiences de copie : essai d' application a 1'examen des enfants
arriere"s.' SIMON. Ibid., pp. 490-518.
3. ' L'interpr Station des sensations tactiles chez les enfants arri&re"s.'
SIMON. Ibid., pp. 537-558.
4. ' Eine experimentelle Studie fiber die Association in einem Falle von
Idiotie.' A. WRESCHNER. Allg. Zeitsch. f. Psychiatric, 1900, LVIL, 241-339.
(Complete account of association experiments. Prolix but good in giving
material for comparison.)
5. 'Taste and Reaction Time of the Feeble-Minded.' A. R. T. WYLIE.
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 1900, IV., 109-112.
6. ' Study of the Senses of the Feeble-Minded.' A. R. T. WTIJE. Hid.,
pp. 137-150.
7. 'Memory of the Feeble-Minded.' A. R. T. WYLIE. Ibid., 1900, V.,
16-24.
8. 'Motor Ability and Control of the Feeble-Minded.' A. R. T. WYLEE.
Ibid., pp. 52-58.
9. " L'illusion de poids chez les anormaux et le ' Signe de Demoor.' " E.
CLAPAREDE. Arch, de Psychol., 1903, II., 22-32.
10. 'La mesure de 1'attention chez les enfants faibles d'esprit (phrenas-
theniques).' F. CONSONI. Hid., pp. 209-252. (Good material but not suffi-
cient work on normal children for comparison. Esthesiometric results not
checked by other methods.)
11. ' Notes sur la psychologic des enfants arriere"s.' T. JONCKHEERE. Ibid.,
pp. 253-268.
12. ' Psychophysical Tests of Normal and Abnormal Children.' R. L. KELLY.
Psychol. Review, 1903, X., 345-372. (Incomplete and evidently hasty work.
Not sufficient account of methods for purposes of confirmation. Subjects not
described.)
13. 'Experimental Studies in Mental Deficiency: Three cases of Imbecility
(Mongolian) and six cases of Feeble-mindedness.' F. KUHLMANN. Amer. Jour,
of Psychol., 1904, XV., 391-446. (Excellent article. Material well digested.
Good bibliography.)
14. 15. ' Ueber die Assoziationen von Imbezillen und Idioten.' K. WEHKLIN.
Jour. f. Psychol. u. Neurol., 1904, IV., 120-123, 129-143. (Confirmation and
extension of Wreschner's work. Many cases.)
296 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
which help in making prognoses. What information we have, therefore,
is meager in amount and, perhaps, as is sometimes said, superficial.
Many interesting mental phenomena are noted and explained in an off-
hand way, and many have not been noted, because they are thought to
be of little diagnostic or prognostic importance. The conditions which
have been studied only superficially and those which have not been studied
are likely to throw light upon similar but elusive processes in normal
people. Much valuable information could be obtained from a study not
only of the defects, but also of the exaggerations and the inconsistencies
in the insane and feeble-minded.
The possible difficulties of experimentation upon the insane and the
mentally deficient may have kept some psychologists from attempting
investigations. It may be said, however, that the difficulties have been
greatly exaggerated, and such difficulties as there are may be readily
surmounted. Opportunity for the careful and systematic study of pa-
tients may be obtained readily at many hospitals. Whatever former
disinclination to the study of patients by ' outsiders ' medical men may
have had has given place to a willingness to have careful experiments
made to obtain a better knowledge of the psychical conditions in the
mentally abnormal. The studies which are reported in this review indi-
cate clearly that it is considered necessary to have general observations,
such as are given by Sollier/ analyzed, supplemented and verified by a
careful study of cases by experimental methods.
The feeble-minded have been classified according to many different
criteria speech, moral and intellectual capacity and dullness, extent of
mental faculties and attention and the names designating the conditions
have widely differed. Dagonet makes four classes: (1) Simple-minded,
(2) imbecility, (3) idiocy, (4) automatism. Voisin has used the term
' mental debility ' in about the same sense as Dagonet's ' simple-minded.'
Sollier, who bases his classification upon the process of attention, divides
the feeble-minded into three classes only : " (1) Absolute idiocy, a com-
plete absence and impossibility of attention; (2) simple idiocy, a feeble-
ness and difficulty of attention; (3) imbecility, instability of attention." 1
In all classes Sollier says there is not only a diminution in quantity, but
also a modification in quality of the mental faculties. Moreover, it may
be added, all idiots present cerebral lesions and are thus further differen-
tiated from normal people and imbeciles.
1. Sensation. Several authors have cited the disturbances and aber-
rations of sensation as the cause of the lack of mental ability in some of
the feeble-minded. It is undoubtedly true, as has been pointed out, that
the absence or alteration of sense organs prevents the associational proc-
esses ordinarily concerned with these spheres, and to that extent there
is a defect of the mental life. Blindness or deafness or the lack of other
senses, or a combination of two or more defects in one person, does not
necessarily produce an incapacity for the associations in other sensory
motor paths. Sensory defects may contribute to, but they are probably
2 ' Psychologie de Pidiot et de 1'imbecile,' 2d edit., Paris, 1901.
8 Op. tit., p. 17.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 297
not the greatest and certainly not the only factors in, the production of
mental weakness.
Most idiots, Schleich found, are hypermetropic, while in normal chil-
dren there is a tendency to myopia. Wylie (6) 4 found in the children
examined by him a visual dullness six to eight times the normal, and
Kelly (12) in the pupils of the Physiological School (who are not de-
scribed, but who are probably imbeciles), found poor vision. One half
were below the standard of keenness, and there was astigmatism in all
but one or two. On the other hand, Sollier makes the general statement
that ( in imbeciles hearing as well as sight presents nothing abnormal.'
Schleich has defined the abnormality in the feeble-minded, but from the
articles by Wylie and by Kelly it is impossible to tell what the differences
are.
Owing to the incomplete color vocabulary of many idiots and imbeciles
it is difficult to make determinations of the color sense. Jonckheere (11)
and Kelly (12) agree that often color vision is defective. Kelly reports
six out of twelve children with some kind of color blindness and one with
total color blindness. Only two of Kelly's cases had an accurate color
vocabulary, and the same deficiency has been noted by Jonckheere.
Furthermore, Jonckheere states that in these cases it is very difficult to
develop the sense (terminology).
Only two cases in the Physiological School were found to have normal
hearing (12), but in other places nothing abnormal has been found (6
and Sollier, see above).
Taste and smell are, very often dulled or perverted in the feeble-
minded. The general statement is made that simple idiots are voracious
and gluttonous, and that imbeciles are nearly all gourmands. Idiots will
carry to their mouths anything which comes to hand just as very many
normal children do but, in addition, some will eat salt as if it were sugar.
Stones, earth, sticks, bugs and even excrement are swallowed by those in
whom taste is lacking or perverted. Of 66 children examined by solu-
tions of quinine, acid and salt, 23 could not tell any difference, 16 re-
sponded to the bitter, 40 to acid and 22 to salt. Twenty of the brightest
children averaged for threshold sugar, 1.3 per cent, solution; salt 0.48
per cent; acid, 0.41 per cent.; quinine, 0.0177 per cent. (5).
The pain threshold is higher than in normal children (6 and 12), tem-
perature threshold higher (12), touch dulled (6) and the double point
threshold of touch increased (3 and 12), while the muscle sense is un-
usually bad (6 and 11). Wylie (6) found a dullness of the muscle sense
varying according to the general mental ability, and because of its im-
portance in the education of the feeble-minded efforts are now being made
towards a thorough training in this field.
Demoor (1) has found and Claparede (9) has confirmed a reversal of
an ordinary weight illusion in cases of idiotism. When two masses of
unequal size, but of equal weights, are lifted, the smaller is judged the
heavier. This illusion is found in children from the age of six or seven
and is constant throughout life in normal people, but in lower grades of
* These numbers refer to the numbers of the articles quoted in note 1.
298 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
idiotism a reverse judgment is given constantly in some cases, and in
others the illusion is absent. The reverse illusion called the 'sign of
Demoor ' is found in those cases which are incapable of education, and
it has been suggested as a means of diagnosis of idiotism in its worst
form. Claparede concludes from his study that "the presence of the
weight illusion does not mean that the feeble-minded are of a teachable
type, but the 'sign of Demoor,' when present, speaks strongly in favor
of idiotism."
2. Motor Ability and Fatigue. Motor training is the kind of educa-
tion to which most of the feeble-minded readily respond, and upon which
depends much of their other teaching. If the movements are rapid and
accurate and under fair degree of control much may be hoped for in any
attempt to improve their condition. Considerable attention has been
devoted, therefore, to the study of motor ability, particularly in relation
to school work in the hospitals.
Strength and steadiness (8), accuracy and rapidity of movement (12
and 13) are all less than in normal children, and the threshold of move-
ment is larger (12). Experiments similar to those made by Fullerton
and Cattell 5 on the accuracy of perception of the extent of movement in
34 children of the Minnesota School showed no appreciable deviation
from the normal (although the author concludes that there is an error
of 2 to 10 times the normal) (7). 8 All the experimenters found a very
Wylie F. and C.
100 mm. +8 +11.8
300 mm. 1 +2.8
500 mm. 17 + 4.3
700 mm. 4.8
It must be remembered that W.'s results are obtained from children, and
that perhaps the 500 mm. experiments would give effects similar to those found
by F. and C. for 700 mm.
slow rate of tapping and arm movement (8, 12 and 13). Kuhlmann (13)
obtained results of practice in accuracy, throwing at a target, but the
curve is not regular, and showed a decrease in ability so that occasionally
it dropped to a point below which it had started. This is undoubtedly
due, as the author points out, to decreasing interest ; but when the interest
is again aroused, as was done, the curve rises again.
The experiments on tapping most rapid and continued movements
were examined for evidence of fatigue. Many of the subjects tapped at
a very slow but continued speed throughout the experiments, and it was
difficult, sometimes impossible, to make them tap at a faster rate. The
average maximum rate is very slightly above the normal rate. Some
tapped faster at first and gradually decreased in rapidity, but neither
Wylie (7) nor Kuhlmann (13) believes the decrease to be due to fatigue.
Kelly attributes the result to a rapid fatigue, but disregards certain re-
sults. Of the children examined by him three showed an increase in
8 ' Perception of Small Differences.'
* The errors from Wylie's series and those obtained by Fullerton and Cattell
(p. 48) are as follows.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 299
tapping with the finger from the first to the last parts of the experiment,
and four showed corresponding increases in rapidity with arm movements
(12). The results would not lead one to believe that ' fatigue with back-
ward children, as would be expected from their low vitality, is very rapid
and considerable' (Kelly, 12), but rather that 'the lowering of interest
and attention does not permit deduction regarding fatigue (Kuhlmann,
13).
3. Attention. Most authorities agree that the lack of attention is the
most common defect in the feeble-minded and the greatest hindrance to
their education. If the attention can be sufficiently aroused and trained
it is probable that other deficiencies will give place to a more normal
condition. Since this matter is considered of such importance we should
expect much time given it in the experimental determination of the con-
dition in imbeciles and idiots, but, unfortunately, few of the experimental
studies consider the subject.
The results of the experiments upon motor ability and fatigue re-
ported above give some indication of the extent of the attention. Kuhl-
mann (13) compared the maximal and the normal rate of tapping, and
found an average increase of only 1J taps per second when the attention
was directed to make movements as rapidly as possible. (One subject
showed a decrease in rate, and another gave practically the same results
in both sets of experiments.) The maximum rate is much slower than in
normal children. When the subjects were told to tap in time with the
beat of a metronome, the accuracy was much greater during the first half
minute than at any later time. It seems evident, therefore, that the
attention was kept up for about 30 seconds. The esthesiometric tests of
Consoni (10) show, in a uniformity of the double-point threshold, a con-
siderable degree of attention to stimuli of one kind, but when distracting
influences were brought in lights, counting blows on the other hand,
counting the beats of a metronome, odors, tasting solutions, etc. the
threshold was much greater and much more varied than in normal chil-
dren. The alterations in attention were found more prominent in the
phrenasthenics of the most marked type. Consoni appears to agree with
Sollier 7 in his conclusion: the degree of general capacity of attention is
in direct relation to the power of inhibition, and the examination of the
attention furnishes a precise means for the estimation of the degree of
mental weakness.
4. Reaction Times. Twenty-two children gave an average of .388 sec.
(M. V., .08) for touch reaction, 21 experiments each; and sixteen children,
for sound, averaged .293 sec. (M. V., .085), 24 experiments each. Eight
Mongolian type averaged .396 sec. for touch (M. V., .095), and .360 sec.
for sound (M. V., .113) (5). The individual averages and variations are
not recorded, and it is impossible to tell how much variation there is in
the group, and how large the individual variation is. Wylie concludes,
however, from the experiments that ' long reaction times and high mean
variations seem to be characteristic ' of the feeble-minded.
In his experiments on association Wehrlin noted the time for giving the
7 Op. cit.
300 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
associations in one high-grade idiot and four imbeciles. One subject was
found to give reactions as rapidly as normal people, but the other four
were very slow. The average time in seconds for the associations to con-
crete words was found to be 3.4 sec., normal subjects 1.8 sec.; to abstract
words, 3.7 and 1.9 sec., respectively; to adjectives, 3.5 sec. and 1.9 sec.;
and to verbs, 3.3 sec. and 2.2 sec. (14 and 15). Wreschner has in one
subject the times of about 1,000 association reactions, but these have not
been calculated in a manner that makes them available (4). The average
time in his experiments is about 3 seconds. The naming of ten object
pictures, the distributing cards of different kinds, etc., were used to de-
termine the time for discrimination, association and movement in the
subjects examined by Kuhlmann (13). For naming a picture and dis-
tributing a picture card Kuhlmann found an average time of 1.48 and
1.46 sec., respectively. For distributing colored cards, 1.67 sec., and for
form cards 1.93 sec. The general average for the discrimination, asso-
ciation and movement for one card is 1.64 sec. In addition, the author
made separate tests of discrimination time with dominoes, in which
experiments the time was very long. No direct comparison is given for
normal children.
5. Association and Memory. As was to be expected, the associations
of idiots and imbeciles are simple and not very varied. Wreschner (4)
used as stimulus words, (a) adjectives descriptive of light and color, form
and direction, movement, touch, temperature, hearing, smell, taste, pain
and general sensations, and esthetic feelings; (fe) nouns parts of the
body, objects in a room, in a house, in a city, in the earth, botanical words,
names of animals, members of a family, and occupations; (c) abstract
words with cheerful and sorrowful idea content, descriptions of feelings,
will, understanding and consciousness, legal conditions and interjections.
These words were used as stimuli ten times each. The associated words
which were given are noted in detail and the time in seconds for each
association. These are grouped, classified and analyzed in detail. One
is struck with the persistence of certain associations throughout the series
of ten, and with the fact that there are so many purely sound associations.
He finds that the relative number of sound associations for adjectives is
1 : 3.8 ; for concrete words, 1 : 0.7, and for abstract words, 1 :0.4. The con-
tent associations take a longer time than the sound association, and this
is particularly noticeable if the sound and content associations for the
same stimulus words are considered. Only one case was tested by
Wreschner, viz., an idiot. Wehrlin experimented on 13 idiots and im-
beciles average age, 40 with 58 to 290 experiments each. The simple
character of the ' associations ' is evidenced by the following list of kinds
of associations which were given (14 and 15).
1. Tendency to definition : e. g., ' year ' ' 12 months.'
2. Tautology : e. g., ' run' ' a man runs ' ; ' hair ' ' beautiful hair.'
3. Generalization : e. g. t ' bread ' ' eatable.'
4. Time, origin, use, etc., characterization : e. g., ' book ' ' for reading.'
5. General functions : e. g., ' wood ' ' it burns ' ; * bird ' ' it flies.'
6. Examples and reminiscences: e. g., 'sick' 'I was sick'; 'father'
' he threw me down stairs once.'
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 301
Probably in no other single aspect of mental activity of the feeble-
minded are there so varied differences as in memory. Many are unable
to remember the simplest words, while others have remarkable memories
for special things, e. g., calculation, playing musical instruments, etc.
Jonckheere (11) reports two cases- of remarkable memory. An imbecile
boy examined by him could recognize and name in French or German the
disks for a music box with which he played, although he could not read.
In this case there was a memory of the arrangement of holes in the disk,
or probably of the design of the inscription. Another feeble-minded boy,
who entered the school at the age of 9 with only a German vocabulary,
learned in 3J years French and the Flemish patois and can recite in
Dutch. Many of the children of the Vaucluse School have been found
to compare favorably with normal children in their memory for numbers
and words (copying 50 figures and two sentences) ; but idiots and im-
beciles do poorly in all three tests (2).
Four numerals can be immediately repeated by many feeble-minded,
and some can give five or six (12). Wylie tested the visual memory by
having children pick out 5 cards (containing colors, letters or forms)
previously shown to them, from a number, with the following average
results: form, 2.4 cards recognized; color, 2.4; letters, 2.6 (7). Similar
results were obtained by Kuhlmann (13). The auditory memory was
tested by repetition of six associated words, repetition of groups of sen-
tences, and selection of five nonsense syllables, with the following results :
average number of words given correctly, 3.8; words in sentences, 11;
nonsense syllables, 2.1.
6. Miscellaneous Observations. All authors agree that the notions of
time and space are very difficult to teach the feeble-minded (Sollier,
Demoor and Daniel, and Jonckheere). Time is much more difficult than
space, and past time much harder than future (11).
Like other mentally underdeveloped people, bright colors are most
often preferred. Music with its rhythm has a wonderfully dynamogenic
effect, and in some schools it is being used, with excellent results, in
classes for gymnastics and motor training.
SHEPHERD IVORY FRANZ.
MCLEAN HOSPITAL FOB THE INSANE,
WAVEELEY, MASS.
Psychical Selection. (Empiriomonism in the Study of Psychics.) A.
BOGDANOPF. Questions of Philosophy and Psychology (Kussian Vo-
prossy Phil, y Psychol.), May- June and September-October, 1904,
pp. 335-379 and 485-519.
The author seeks to ascertain ' the direction of psychology, if unity of
experience were in principle made its underlying basis.' His conception
of empiriomonism he sums up in the following theses :
1. Dualism of experience is inadmissible as a principle. Despite their
diversity, the elements of experience are in both spheres, the 'physical' and
the 'psychical,' the same in themselves neither physical nor psychical;
i. e., they are outside the pale of these determinations (the thesis of
empiriocriticism) .
302 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
2. The ' physical ' and the ' psychical ' represent two ways of grouping
the elements of experience: the psychical being experience organized
individually; the physical, experience organized socially (the first thesis
of empiriomonism).
3. Every objective (physiological) vital process has a parallel sub-
jective one. This parallelism must be interpreted in the sense that the
physiological life-process is the reflection of the subjective complex in the
socially organized experience of living beings (second thesis of empirio-
monism) .
4. The progressive development of cognition leads to a harmoniously
integrated, monistic organization of experience, whose immediate expres-
sion is the organic unity of epistemological methods. This unity we attain
by subordinating the 'subjective' in experience to the 'objective,' by
applying to the individually organized experience means elaborated in the
sphere of the socially organized experience. In our time this tendency
is manifested in the idea of universality attributed to the law of the con-
servation of energy (the thesis of energies).
Thus the author's problem is one of method, viz., the application of
psycho-energies in psychology. Now, the concept energy implies com-
mensurability and universal equivalence of phenomena. As to the former,
psychical phenomena are magnitudes ' intensive,' inasmuch as they ex-
hibit more or less f force ' ; l extensive,' inasmuch as they are capable of
associating with one another, thus making up the greater or smaller full-
ness of conscious life. Of course, they are not exact quantities of energy;
but is not ' exactness ' a relative term also in the other natural sciences ?
As to the requisite of equivalence, empiriomonism, by its second thesis,
rises above it. Indeed, the psychical phenomenon and its concomitant
physiological process can no more be regarded as two than the body, visu-
ally perceived, can be segregated from the same body, tactually perceived.
THE SCHEMA OF PSYCHICAL SELECTION. From this view-point the indi-
vidual experiences (Erlebnisse) are, with reference to the psychical system
as a whole, either positive or negative; i. e., they either increase or de-
crease the sum total of its energy. This formula embraces alike the data
of biomechanics and of psychology. Psychically, the fluctuations of vital-
ity are expressed in pleasure and pain, i. e., in the so-called positive or
negative ' affectional.' Indeed, all psychical life moves between these two
poles of the affectional; and the almost tautological statement that ' pleas-
urable is whatever is sought after and painful whatever is avoided ' may
be said not only to underlie all applied psychology, but to express the whole
process of 'psychical selection.'
The relation of this process to consciousness appears from defining the
latter as ' the province of coordinated psychic variations' for, the nature
of psychic variations being determined by the sign of the affectional, it
follows that the whole field of consciousness is at once the field of psychical
selection. Thus, the process of psychical selection naturally rises to the
rank of a universal principle in the investigation of life as the stream of
inner Erlebnisse.
THE SCHEMA OP ASSOCIATION. The elements of psychical experience
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 303
are connected by association, those of the physical world by the higher
type of objective uniformity. The principle of psychical selection is now
called upon to ' explain ' this psychical connection as follows :
1. Association by contiguity takes place when A and B together occur
in consciousness. But then they both are controlled by psychical selec-
tion, and form, therefore, one system of energic equilibrium, whose rela-
tive fixity is determined by the intensity of the affectional (a fact under-
lying pedagogical methods).
2. The higher type of association, that by similarity, is grounded in
mental habituation; the latter, again, is governed by psychical selection,
thus: (a) the habitual complex recurs more easily; (b) its fixity is ever
increasing. For, like the energic process, psychical selection tends toward
stable equilibrium, at the same time forming more extensive systems,
with a resultant average affectional naturally small, but positive; and this
accounts for the fact that (c) the affectional of the habitual complex
inclines toward indifference, excepting cases with a negative affectional,
where it passes into a positive one; for, in the sum total, psychical selec-
tion is positive. Instance the student of chemistry getting habituated to
the smell of H 2 S so as to find it in the end even agreeable.
From the foregoing the author infers en passant that the principle of
psychical selection is broader than what he would call 'psychological
Lamarckism,' i. e., ' habituation ' and ' exercise ' (which play so important
a part for Avenarius).
Now, the process of ' generalization ' and ' discrimination/ this basis of
knowledge, is possible only because the complex A occurs contiguously in
more than one connection. In this repeated occurrence, whatever is com-
mon to the complexes is more acted upon by psychical selection than the
* individual ' traits ; the common becomes more conservative and its affec-
tional more reduced, i. e., a ' generalization ' is realized. This process of
generalization is at the same time an association Toy similarity. If A as
the most-repeated combination has been abstracted from the less repeated
B, C, etc., A is none the less associated with each one of them, and occur-
ring, say, in A and B, ' tends ' to call forth also its other combinations ;
one bird ' reminds ' one of another bird.
The ' coldness ' of knowledge, the relative indifference of the affec-
tional in ' generalizations ' and ' concepts,' is at once explained. More-
over, this * coldness ' underlies the logical ' law of identity ' : a high affec-
tional indicates intense psychical selection, setting mental complexes in
commotion, i. e., changing their ' identity.'
3. Finally, the highest type of association, that by contrast or dissim-
ilarity (or discrimination), is grounded in the 'rivalry' of mental com-
plexes.
Psychical life exhibits two inseparably connected types: the image-
complex (passive) and the will-complex (active attitude). The latter, as
such, is energically negative (= loss of energy 1 ) ; hence, whenever it dom-
inates the direction of psychical selection is negative, and persists until
harmony between the two complexes is established.
1 This justifies the identification by some philosophers of impulse, will with
sufferance.
304 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
And now the association in question. The sight of a black man pro-
vokes the image of a white man, but not of white paper; obviously, dis-
similarity presupposes similarity. Let us then pursue a concrete illus-
tration. The white are at war with the black. A white soldier, strayed
off, seeks his way to safety; at a distance he perceives a silhouette; but
is it of a white or a black man? Here ensues a rivalry of two images
associated with opposite impulses (will-complexes), a 'wavering' attended
with a negative affectional, a ' disagreeable ' situation.
Upon analyzing the two images you find that they, having in common
A (= human features), are already associated by similarity. But the
one has yet the element B (white) and the other, C (black), and A and B
has a will-complex different from that of A and C. Furthermore, in the
course of the rivalry each will-complex accentuates the dissimilar elements
to the neglect of A ; and this is the fundamental trait of ' association by
dissimilarity,' or of the ' form of discrimination.' It takes place when the
images associated by similarity are at rivalry owing to the dissimilarity
of their respective will-complexes. Indeed the image is always connected
with some wiZZ-complex, 'scholastic amusement in hair-splitting' not ex-
cepted, for the ' word ' is predominantly a will-reaction, so that, inasmuch
as similar images are signified by dissimilar words, they are eo ipso asso-
ciated with different will-acts.
All these considerations lead the author to regard ' psychology as the
science of psychical (or associative) forms of experience that are deter-
mined by its variable contents.'
In his second article the author proceeds to show the practical applica-
tions of the principle of psychical selection.
The components of a psychical system are: (1) the ErleT}nisse form-
ing the raw material, distinguished as to quantity, quality (heterogeneous
or homogeneous), or intensity; (2) the direction of psychical selection,
positive or negative; and (3) the intensity of the affectional. An abun-
dant material, heterogeneous and intense, with a perfectly balanced affec-
tional is the ideal norm, the limiting abstraction toward which psychical
development is progressing; while the variation of these moments, sever-
ally or jointly, determines psychic types.
The work of selection is only positive, for even negative selection, like
the hammer that destroys only the unstable and frail, tends to remove
whatever is vitally unimportant or detrimental to the system (t. e., the
negative while removing a negative becomes positive). In this crucible
the psychical development receives its twofold coloring: it is 'realistic'
(corresponding to the environmental combinations most repeatedly posit-
ed) and ' monistic ' (predominance of harmoniously unified complexes).
Furthermore, the positive selection proper, keeping consciousness wide
awake, feeds the creative activity of imagination, and develops the will-
power hardened by the negative process. Socially regarded, the ideal type
would tend to reconcile, to harmonize, all the contradictions of his epoch,
would be the encyclopedic genius of his time (a Faust).
Now vary the components, (a) Let the negative selection, ceteris
panbus, be much below the positive; the result is a variety characterized
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 305
by the predominance of ' fancy ' over realism, of eclecticism over monism,
and by unstable will-power. Heine (himself typifying this variety) styles
it the Hellenic type. This ' Hellenism ' is in our time represented mostly
by the { artistic nature.'
(6) The negative selection is much above the positive. Here ' reality '
(repeatedly posited environment) is colored intensely gloomy; the nega-
tive process, not powerful enough to eliminate it, derives with the help of
the positive selection combinations from this reality which are themselves
not real (such as ideal images of happiness). The resultant variety is
characterized by 'utopism' instead of realism, but with a pronounced
monistic tendency manifested in consistency between thinking and acting,
and by an invincible will-power in the struggle for existence. This is the
'Hebrew' type portrayed by Heine. These two types are only distin-
guishable historically.
(c) A quantity of psychic material much below the maximum distin-
guishes the characters of every-day life, who, though analogous to the
former, occupy a lower plane. If favored by circumstances they may
become the ' heroes ' of the ' crowd.' A Washington, also a Gladstone or
a Lincoln, belong to this type.
Ordinarily, Heine's Hellenic and Hebrew types lose respectively in
beauty and earnestness in proportion as the quantity of psychical material
falls below the maximum. Instance the degenerate parasitic classes of a
community, on the one hand, and the type produced by the Catholic con-
vent, on the other.
Again, according as the positive or negative selection prevails there
obtain Heine's Philister; in the one case caricaturing the Hellen, in the
other the Hebrew.
Finally, on this narrow basis of scant psychical material there grows
up the type of the ' specialist.' From the ordinary Philistine he differs
only in part, notably as far as his specialty goes ; beyond this there reigns
a miserable incoherence and flat eclecticism of psychical masses. How-
ever, a highly intensified selection renders the development of this type
monistic, though in a peculiar manner, viz., the specialist (of this higher
type) views everything through the medium of his specialty. The mer-
chant regards all human life from the view-point of exchange. J. Ben-
tham, that child of the newly-born English capitalism, has based his whole
philosophy upon the special ideal of the most profitable bargain with
reality.
In conclusion the author illustrates the foregoing by analyzing a con-
crete case, Shakspear's Hamlet.
Hamlet belongs to the Hellenic type. His psychic system represents
a dual organization: Hamlet the warrior by descent (instance his dex-
terity in fencing), and Hamlet the artist. Theoretically these two per-
sonalities coexisted; but when Hamlet is called upon to act we find him
wavering, irresolute; the Hellenic lack of integrity, for which the pre-
dominance of positive selection (happiness) is responsible, comes to light.
But then the work of negative selection, the harmonizing force of suffer-
ance, sets in, pushing Hamlet toward the ' ideal ' type. He becomes an-
306 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
other man; his thirst for harmony passes into an active will to create
harmony by punishing crime and restoring righteousness. Hamlet suc-
combs, but as conqueror: he leaves his place to Fortinbras, a man of
known integrity. Thus, the essence of the tragedy is: the Hellenic soul
through painful struggle and profound suffering (i. e., through negative
selection) attains to a higher form of integrity and perfection.
C. KUNTZ.
ISEUN, N. J.
Tine Limits of Genetic and of Comparative Psychology. MARY WHITON
CALKINS. British Journal of Psychology, January, 1905. Pp. 261-285.
This paper begins by distinguishing genetic from comparative psy-
chology. Genetic psychology may or may not use the comparative method.
Its distinctive feature is not its method, but that it treats its object as
developing. This object is the conscious self. And development, as
used here, is defined as 'the succession of more complex upon simpler
states, or, conversely, of simpler upon more complex states of a unitary
being.' ' Development, in the technical sense of evolutionary biology, can
not possibly be predicated of conscious selves,' and heredity and natural
selection have no possible application in such psychical development.
Turning to comparative psychology, the author discusses the 'con-
tinuity theory,' which holds consciousness to be a property of life, and
the ' mechanistic theory,' which denies that organisms whose actions are
unvaried reflexes are conscious. It is shown that neither has proved
more than a possibility. ' Both agree in recognizing consciousness where
there are adapted reactions.' Using this criterion, it will perhaps be
found that all forms are conscious, and the field of comparative psychology
1 is, after all, as wide as animal life.'
If we consider the nature of the consciousness of the different forms,
the problem becomes more limited. " The minimal consciousness which
an animal can be proved to have is the consciousness which accompanies
the trial and error type of learning. ... As parallel of the preliminary,
random performances, there is no need to assume any save a sensational
(and primitively affective) consciousness of the animal's environment
and its own movements." The acquired reactions imply imagination, the
animal reacts with purpose. Further, animals react only to concrete
situations without analyzing them, they lack relational consciousness.
And lastly, an animal, to be conscious at all, must be conscious of itself.
But this does not mean that animals have attained such self-conscious-
ness as reflective imitation involves. JOHN F. SHEPARD.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
EEVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. March, 1905. La regularite univer-
selle du devenir et les lois de la nature (pp. 225-251) : W. M. KOZLOWSKI. -
Uniformity of nature underlies induction. Regularity is a projection of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 307
our thought. Experience accords with laws because we explain exceptions
by new laws. Scientific laws are hypothetical judgments. La Paix et la
Guerre (pp. 252-270) : CH. RICHET. Humanity has progressed not by
war but by peace. War may be natural, but society is meant to overcome
natural evils. Arbitration will soon become universal. Pacific educa-
tion is the only method. Amitie et Socialite (pp. 271-282) : G. PALANTE.
Friendship is in sharp contrast with sociality or altruism. The latter is
based on convention, frowns on spontaneity, fears isolation, disapproval
of the crowd. The former is exclusive, aristocratic, egoistic, encourages
freedom and progress. Revue Critique: La Beaute rationnelle (pp. 283-
294) : FR. PAULHAN. Review and criticism of P. Souriau, La Beaute
rationnelle. Analyses et Comptes Rendus: P. Martinetti, Introduzione
alia Metafisica: J. SECOND. L'Annee psychologique : B. BOURDON. R. S.
Woodworth, Le Mouvement: J. PHILIPPE. H. Thompson, Psychological
Norms in Men and Women. J. Whatson, Animal Education. J. F.
Messenger, The Perception of Number. J. W. Jones, Sociality and Sym-
pathy. Etudes sur la philosophic morale au XIX e siecle: J. DELVAILLE.
W. H. Johnson, The Free-will Problem in Modern Thought: J. SECOND.
R. Richter, Der SJcepticismus in der Philosophic: C. Bos. C. de Vaux,
Avicenne: F. PICAVET. R. Richter, Friedrich Nietzsche: G. PALANTE.
J. K. Hollitscher, Friedrich Nietzsche: G. PALANTE. F. Rittelmeyer,
F. Nietzsche und das Erkenntnisproblem : G. PALANTE. A. Drews,
Nietzsches Philosophic: G. PALANTE. O. Ewald, Nietzsches Lehre in
ihren Grundbegriffen : G. PALANTE. R. Oehler, F. Nietzsche und die
Vorsokratiker: G. PALANTE. Revue des Periodiques Etrangers. Livres
deposes.
Bastian, A. Die Lehre vom Deriken, 3. Teil. Berlin: Dummler. 1905.
8vo. 5 M.
Dedekind, R. StetigJceit und irrationale Zahlen. 3. Aufl. Braun-
schweig: Viewig und Sohn. 1905. 8vo. 1 M.
Dumas, G. Psychologic de deux messies positivistes, Saint Simon et
Auguste Comte. Bibliotheque de philosophic contemporaine. Paris:
Felix Alcan. 1905. 315 pp. 7.50 fr.
Georgy, E. M. Das Tragische als Gesetz des Weltorganismus. Berlin:
Kohler. 1905. 8vo. 4.50 M.
Goedeckemeyer, A. Die Geschichte des griechischen Skeptizismus.
Leipzig: Dietrich. 1905. 8vo. 10 M.
Medicus, F. /. G. Fichte, Dreizehn Vorlesungen. Berlin: Reutter und
Reichard. 1905. 269 pp. 3.80 M.
Miinsterberg, Hugo. The Eternal Life. Cambridge: Houghton, Mifflin
& Co. 1905. 72 pp. $0.85 net.
Ossip-Lourie. La psychologic des romanciers russes du XIX siecle.
Bibliotheque de philosophic contemporaine. Paris: Felix Alcan.
1905. 438 pp. 7.50 fr.
Puffer, Ethel. The Psychology of Beauty. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin
& Co. $1.25 net.
308 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Romundt, H. Kanis KritiTc der Reinen Vernunft, abgelcurzt auf Grund
ihren Entstehungsgeschichte. Gotha: Thienemann. 1905. 8vo.
2M.
Weismann, August. The Evolution Theory. Translated by J. A. and
M. R. Thomason. 2 vols. Longmans. $8.50 net.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE Arnold Gerstenberg studentship at the University of Cambridge,
of the annual value of nearly 90, tenable for two years, open to men and
women who have obtained honors in Part I. or Part II. of the Natural
Sciences Tripos and whose first term of residence was not earlier than
the Michaelmas term of 1900, will be offered for competition in the
Michaelmas term, 1906. It will be awarded by means of essays. The
subjects for essays are: (1) a philosophical discussion of the doctrine of
energy and particularly of the new theory of energetics; (2) a critical
examination of Descartes's philosophy of nature; (3) the relation of
mathematics and the theory of probability to physics; (4) the theory of
psychophysical parallelism; (5) the scope and methods of comparative
psychology; (6) the philosophical import of post-Darwinian theories of
natural selection. Candidates must send on or before October 1, 1906,
an essay on one of the above subjects to Dr. James Ward, Trinity College,
and declare their intention, if successful, of pursuing a course of philo-
sophical study.
AT the meeting of the Western Philosophical Association, held in
Lincoln, Neb., on April 21 and 22, the following officers were elected for
the ensuing year: President, Professor James H. Tufts; Vice-President,
Professor F. C. French; Secretary and Treasurer, Profesor A. O. Love-
joy; members of the Executive Committee, Professors W. B. Pillsbury
and A. Ross Hill. The following were elected to membership : Professor
Charles W. Fordyce, Dr. L. C. Monin, Professor J. B. Stoops, Dr. Frank
P. Graves, Mr. H. C. Campbell and Dr. J. C. Merriam. A report of the
meeting, with abstracts of the papers and discussions, will appear in an
early issue of the JOURNAL.
PROFESSOR JAMES R. ANGELL'S ' Psychology,' published in this country
by Henry Holt and Company, has been republished in England by Con-
stable and Company. A second edition of the work, in which a number
of revisions have been made, has been issued.
DR. R. B. PERRY has been advanced to an assistant professorship of
philosophy at Harvard University.
VOL. II. No. 12. JUNE 8, TJ05
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE RELATIONAL THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND
ITS REALISTIC IMPLICATIONS
ONE needs not to be a disciple either of Hegel or of Comte to
recognize that there has been, in the methodology of the special
sciences and in that of science as a whole, a certain historical proces-
sion or evolution of concepts, which has proceeded somewhat along
the lines described by Ludwig Stein in an article printed in the
Archiv fur Systematische Philosophic, August, 1903, entitled 'Der
Neo-Idealismus unserer Tage.'
In our first efforts to understand a thing we are apt to seize upon
its most interesting and important characteristic, and attempt to
explain its behavior in terms of that. The property thus singled
out is felt to be the essence or substance of the thing, the other
properties are thought of as accidents or attributes which are in
some way supported by it. This is the first stage in the development
of methodological concepts, the stage of definition, working by the
category of Substance.
Sooner or later we realize the inadequacy of this attitude. The
property which seemed from one point of view to be essential is
from other points of view found to be less important, less worthy
to constitute the true nature of the thing than the group of prop-
erties which were regarded as mere accidents. This discovery leads
us to treat the object as a complex of qualities, none of them worthy
to be called substance, but each worthy of investigation as a phe-
nomenon. This is the second stage of methodological development,
the stage of empirical description and analysis, working by the
category of Quality or State.
But, as before we found that the substance or essence of a thing
depended upon its attributes, so now we find that the attributes do
not themselves determine the times and places of their occurrence,
but depend in their turn upon the relations between other objects.
We thus attain the third and final stage of scientific method, the
stages of prediction and explanation, in which each object of study
is viewed under the category of Relation. This method of correlat-
309
310. THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ing every phenomenon with a conditioning relation subsisting be-
tween other phenomena enables us to pass from one part of reality
to another, and to bring together all discrete objects in the sub-
stitutional continuum of knowledge. The current view of the
physical world as a mechanism or nexus of spatio-temporal rela-
tions, of which all the qualities, whether essential or accidental,
between which the relations subsist are viewed as symbols of one
another, is the general outcome and the most striking illustration
of our third stage of methodological evolution. But, in the progress
of special branches of physical science, the final triumph of the
^ relational method is equally obvious. Light and heat, for example,
which were first viewed as occult substances, and later analyzed
and described in terms of their various manifestations, are now
finally correlated with the relations of motion which accompany
them, and which determine the time, place and degree of their occur-
rence. In the same way, the movement of the planets at first ascribed
to quasi-personal essences by the scholastics, and, second, described
and analyzed by Keppler, was, thirdly, scientifically or predictively
explained in relational terms by Newton. It is of course true that
some of the sciences have been unable fully to realize the relational
ideal. In biology, for example, while we no longer regard life as
an occult substance or force, we are still in large measure limited
to the analysis and classification of its phenomena; we are as yet
unable adequately to explain life, i. e., to express it as a relation or
function of other things. But the ideal of the biologist is, I take
it, the same as the ideal of other scientists. And he would be glad
to correlate vital phenomena w r ith some particular type of spatio-
temporal relation for the same reason that the physicist is glad to
correlate a color or a tone with a definite rate of oscillation.
So far we have been considering the methodology of the physical
I sciences, the study of the objects of consciousness. We have seen
that in that field of study the category of substance has given rise
to the category of quality, which has in its turn made way for the
category of relation. When we turn to the psychological study of
* consciousness itself, as the phenomenon of awareness, w r e might ex-
pect perhaps to find a similar methodological development. To a
very limited extent such an expectation would be fulfilled. Descartes,
Spinoza and Leibniz do in a measure represent in their several con-
ceptions of consciousness the three stages and categories which we
have been considering. For Descartes consciousness is a substance,
for Spinoza it is a series or complex of qualities corresponding point
tc point with the physical series, while for Leibniz consciousness is
a relation. In a remarkable passage in the Monadology, Leibniz ex-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 311
plains the conscious or apperceptive state of a monad as consisting
in the organization in the monad of its petits perceptions with re-
gard to some one of them as a center. As the world organized with
reference to some one of its points is a monad or substance, so the
monad organized with reference to one of its qualities is conscious-
ness. Thus mind and world, consciousness and unconsciousness,
are not, as with Descartes, different substances, nor, as with
Spinoza, different attributes or qualities. They are of the
same substance and the same qualities, their difference is entirely
a difference of relation. It is a matter of regret that the rela-
tional theory of consciousness thus clearly formulated by Leibniz
should have been so bound up with his peculiar metaphysical views
that it failed to gain any notable recognition or development at the
hands of his successors. And what applies to Leibniz in this matter
applies equally to Herbart. For Herbart, too, developed a relational
view of consciousness, which, like the Leibnizian view, failed to gain
general acceptance by reason of the metaphysical doctrines with
which it was entangled. In fact, modern conceptions of conscious-
ness have been dominated almost entirely by the more primitive
attitudes of Descartes and Spinoza. In both England and Germany
consciousness has been treated as a substance in which the apparently
independent objects of the experienced world inhered as dependent
states or ' ideas, ' which is the attitude of Locke and Berkeley no less
than of Kant and Fichte. Or else, after the manner of Spinoza,
consciousness has been conceived as a series of purely secondary
qualities, running parallel to the stream of purely primary qualities
supposed to constitute the material world. For the first or Cartesian
view interaction is at once a necessity and an impossibility, whhe in
the second or Spinozistic conception all the artificialities of paral
lelism are inevitably implied. In short, we do not find in the his-
tory of the science of consciousness that abandonment of the cate-
gories of substance and state and that definite adoption of the
category of relation which are so manifest in the history of the ob-
jective sciences. And if it be admitted that progress in physical
science has been nearly proportional to the degree to which the rela-
tional or mechanical ideal has been accepted, we might infer that
the relatively backward state of psychology is due, not so much to
the intrinsic difficulties of its subject-matter, as to its persistent use
of methodological categories which are elsewhere outworn and dis-
credited.
In view of this general situation it is encouraging to note that
within a comparatively recent time several writers have inaugurated
a movement to put consciousness on a par with other objects of study,
312
by investigating it under the category of Relation. Mach in Ger-
many, Bawden, James and "Woodbridge in America, in relative inde-
pendence of one another, and in complete independence of Leibnizian
and Herbartian precedents, have formulated the difference between
physical and psychical as a difference of relational context rather
than as a difference of substance, or a difference of quality. We
must admit, however, that gratifying as these new formulations of
the relational theory of consciousness undoubtedly are, most of them
suffer from the taint of that very subjective and non-relational view
which they are intended to replace. Mach, 1 for example, uses the
term 'sensation' to denote the primary elements which are to stand
as the terms both of the physical and of the psychical order of rela-
tion, thus implying that both physical and psychical are ultimately
modes of the psychical. With Professor Bawden 's functional view
of the physical and psychical, 2 I find the same difficulty; for that
view, if I understand it, would also make consciousness the ultimate
reality within which the physical and psychical orders are differ-
entiated in response to the pragmatic needs of the conscious experi-
ence itself. In the theory of Radical Empiricism, recently promul-
gated by Professor James, 3 there is less of subjectivism than in either
of the foregoing, and yet here also the primal elements of reality
are described by the psychical term 'pure experience.' Even a pure
experience implies a consciousness of it; its esse depends upon
percipi. Then again Professor James 's adherence to the ' humanistic '
theory of knowledge, which to many of its critics appears to regard
axioms as postulates, and to hold that propositions owe their truth
to the fact that people believe them, would seem to indicate that
despite certain undeniably realistic features 'radical empiricism' is
not quite free from the subjectivism of Berkeley and Hume. Pro-
fessor Woodbridge 's statement 4 of the relational theory stands out
in contrast to the formulations thus far considered, in that it con-
tains a recognition that objects and truths do not depend for their
existence or nature upon any consciousness of them, and that they
are for that reason not to be described by any such psychical terms
as sensations or mental needs or pure experiences, but rather as real
and independent objects in space and time, which are sometimes
related in the continuum of consciousness and sometimes not.
1 ' Analysis of Sensations.'
2 ' The Necessity from the Standpoint of Scientific Method of a Recon-
struction of the Ideas of the Psychical and Physical.' JOURNAL OF PHILOS-
OPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS, Vol. I., No. 3, pp. 62-68.
8 'Does Consciousness Exist?' ibid., Vol. I., No. 18, pp. 477-491. Cf. also
Dr. R. B. Perry's able article on ' Conceptions and Misconceptions of Conscious-
ness.' Psychi. Rev. XI, pp. 282-296.
4 'The Nature of Consciousness,' this JOURNAL, Vol. II., No. 5, pp. 119-125.
And this brings me to what I regard as the first and fundamental
implication of the relational theory of consciousness, viz., realism
a complete abandonment of the Cartesian, Berkeleian and Kantian
view of the conscious self as a substance in which objects must inhere
in order to be real or true. All relations presuppose the existence
of terms between which they subsist. If consciousness is at length
to submit to the same scientific treatment that we accord to other
phenomena i. e., if it is to be equated to a mode of relation between
things it must inevitably be regarded as secondary to those things.
Consciousness, in short, must be thought of as inhering in its objects!
rather than its objects inhering in it. In fact the new relational
theory of consciousness is in every sense correlative to the old real-
istic theory of the objects of consciousness. If consciousness is a
relation, objects of consciousness must be real independently of their
standing in that relation, while conversely, if objects are real inde-
pendently of a consciousness or knowledge of them, then that con-
sciousness or knowledge can not be anything other than a relation
between them.
Assuming the truth of this correlation, I shall use the terms
realism and relationalism interchangeably, in the hope of making
more clear the new conception of consciousness by identifying it
with the more familiar realistic view. And in the remainder of my
paper I wish to consider: (1) The agreement of this conception (a}
with the instincts of common sense, and ( & ) with the facts of science ;
(2) the objections which have been made to the theory by idealists
or non-relationists.
First, then, the relational theory is admittedly in accordance
with common sense, which naturally thinks of the physical world as
passing in and out of our consciousness without gain or loss of ex-
istence. Consciousness of objects is supposed to depend upon the
relation of the object to our eyes, ears and skin. And it is quite
impossible for an unsophisticated person to imagine that objects
which pass from his field of view thereby cease to exist.
Again, the scientist, and especially the physiologist, is at one with
the plain man in treating consciousness as a relation. For him,
the perceiving of an object depends upon the relation of the brain
to the stimulus received from the object. His realism is not, to be
sure, so nai've as that of unreflective common sense, for he recognizes
the personal equation the inevitable distortion of perspective which
results from having to perceive things through the imperfect media
of brain and nerves. But his whole science rests on the supposition
that consciousness does enlighten us as to the nature of objects, not
314 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
indeed as to what they might possibly be apart from all relations,
but as to what they actually are in relation to our brain.
So much by way of a brief statement of the essential agreement
of the relational theory with instinctive beliefs and with the con-
clusions of science. We pass now to our second point a considera-
tion of the arguments against conceiving consciousness as a mode of
connection between the organism and its environment.
The idealists from Descartes to Fichte have urged two lines of
objection. They have claimed, first, that objects of immediate per-
ception are intuitively known to be states of the knower. To this
the realist replies by denying the supposed intuition. That is to
say, he denies that there is anything in his consciousness of objects
that can be interpreted as implying their dependence on his con-
sciousness. Cogito ergo sum is to him not a whit more certain or
primary than Cogitatur ergo est. Consciousness appears as a purely
diaphanous medium which in no way supports or alters its objects.
But, secondly, the more empirically minded idealists, those, for
example, of the British school, are inclined to help out the first
or Cartesian argument by pointing to the dependence of perceived
objects upon their relation to our sense-organs. This so-called
physiological argument, which would infer a dependence of objects
upon a non-physical mind by appealing to the fact that they are
always perceived in relation to a physical body, is an obvious non
sequitur. So far as I can see, all of the arguments for idealism are
simply elaborations of one or the other of these two lines of appeal.
There is, however, one consideration or assumption which, though
hardly to be classed as an idealistic argument, has nevertheless lent
some color of validity to the paralogism just mentioned. I refer to
the doctrine accepted by the majority of physicists of the subjective
nature of the ' secondary qualities. ' As things stand at present, the
idealist can always say to his opponent: "You grant that colors,
sounds and odors have no objective existence; why should you not
be consistent, and grant also that the space, time and mass rela-
tions (which are inconceivable apart from these or some similarly
specific qualities) are subjective also?"
Now, there are few more unjust decrees in the history of scientific
legislation than the sentence of banishment from the physical world
which, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, was pronounced
upon the secondary qualities. As soon as the modern investigator
discovered that scholastic science was fundamentally wrong in that it
failed to perceive that the secondary quality or specific nature of a
phenomenon was, as such, of no use in determining the time, place
and intensity of its occurrence, he jumped to the conclusion that all
genuine qualities were subjective.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 315
The prime error of the scholastic philosophy of nature did not
consist in 'filling space with substantial forms,' or, as we should
now say, in recognizing that with every quantity, or extensive mode
of energy, there is correlated a quality, or intensive mode of energy,
what the panpsychist would call a sensation. The scholastic error did
not, I say, consist in the objectivization of qualities, for, panpsychism j
aside, we do not hesitate at the present day to fill the brain with
substantial forms or, in the modern phrasing, to correlate psychical
with neural processes; and if the complex phenomena of our con-
scious experience can be correlated with protoplasmic changes, there
is no reason to suppose that simple, though equally specific, qualities
are not correlated with changes in inorganic matter. 5 The real I
error of the scholastics lay, as we have already said, in the belief that
these substantial forms or objective qualities were causally effective,
and that they determined by their specific natures the times and
places of their occurrence. The only way to predict the where and ,
when of a thing is to find its relations to the where and when of I
other things. That is the mechanical theory. But, because the
time and place of a thing can only be scientifically expressed as a
function of other relations of time and place, it by no means follows
that times and places are empty or void of specific natures, and that
the physical world is a set of relations without terms, of primary
qualities without secondary qualities.
Air, waves stimulate the auditory nerve, and sound is manifested ;
hydrogen unites with oxygen, and water is manifested a substance
differing from its components both in primary and in secondary
qualities. Yet we do not hold that water is subjective and hydro-
gen and oxygen objective. Why should we hold that sound is more
subjective than water? Like every object, the secondary quality
depends for its manifestation upon the relations of other objects.
But this observable dependence of sensible objects upon physical
and physiological relations does not imply an unobservable depend-
ence upon consciousness.
I would call special attention to the status of the secondary quali-
ties in connection with the relational theory, for the following rea-
son: As long as the secondary qualities are accepted as objectively
real there is no temptation to regard consciousness as anything but
a relation. The physical world is a self-supporting system if it
' The distinctive function of protoplasm may consist, not in creating new
qualities, but in giving a new relational form to qualities that normally occur
anywhere. In the American Journal of Psychology, for January, 1904, the
present writer, in support of this statement, suggested a relational theory of
consciousness in which the psychical in general is identified with the ' specious
present,' which is the simplest or limiting case of memory.
316 THE JOURNAL OJ PHILOSOPHY
''% possesses the concreteness of secondary qualities, and as such needs
not to inhere in any mind in order to exist.* On the other hand,
if the physical world is void of all specific natures, and is only a
regress of spatial and temporal relations, then it is not self-support-
ing, but must be regarded as parallel to or inherent in conscious-
/ ness. Berkeley would never have dreamed of regarding the per-
ceived world as a subjective state if he had not inherited from Locke
and Descartes the mistaken inference that, in the case of the second-
' t
ary qualities, relativity to the body implied dependence on the mind. I
He simply extended this inference with perfect consistency to the
primary qualities, while his predecessor had applied it only to the
secondary qualities.
If the world of concretely perceived facts is real, consciousness
must be a relation between them. The realistic theory of the world
and the relational theory of consciousness are, as we have already
said, implied in each other. This recognition of the identity of the
two theories will be slow in coming, for the reason that the rela-
tionists, from Mach to James, have been by sympathy and training
idealists of one type or another, and they are naturally loth to
recognize the incompatibility of their later conclusion that con-
sciousness is a relation subsisting among objects with their earlier
belief in consciousness as a substance in which objects must subsist.
And yet the day may come when Mr. Russell's recent aphorism,
that a truth no more depends on the knowing of it than an apple
upon the eating of it, will be regarded, not as a paradox, but as a
truism. If philosophy is to achieve any such deliverance from sub-
jectivism, I think that it will be effected by the demands on the
part of psychologists for a relational view of consciousness. 6
W. P. MONTAGUE.
COLUMBIA UNIVEBSITY.
In order to bring together the various points of the paper I subjoin the
following summary: Every object of study, except consciousness, has first been
regarded as a substance, second, as a group of qualities, third, as a relation
between other objects. The conceptions of consciousness, however, if we ex-
cept the theories of Leibniz and Herbart, have generally alternated between
the first and second of the methodological categories. Recently, several philos-
ophers have independently suggested that the relational category should be
applied in the study of consciousness as well as in the study of its objects, that
the phenomenon of consciousness, of awareness, should be correlated with such
relations between other phenomena as will best explain its function and its
origin. The relational theory of consciousness, however, implies a realistic
theory of sensible qualities, both primary and secondary. And, conversely,
when once this realism is recognized, there is no temptation to relapse into \
either of the idealistic or non-relational conceptions of consciousness. This
paper was written for the fourth meeting of the American Philosophical Asso-
ciation at Philadelphia, December, 1904.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 317
A DEDUCTION OF THE LAW OF SYNTHESIS
rpHE first crucial problem of logic, upon the solution of which
-*- depends all further advance, is the determination of the law
of thought whereby the form of judgment which is symbolized ' A
is B' is made possible. The traditional laws of thought identity,
contradiction and excluded middle seem, on the face of them, to
give no excuse for such a proposition; nay, they would appear
rather to preclude its possibility. If ( A is A,' and 'A is not non-A,'
and if A and non-A exhaust the universe of predication, there would
seem to be no possible justification for predicating B of A. For
either B is identical with A, in which case the proposition ought to
be expressed in the form 'A is A'; or B is not identical with A, in
which case, being that which is not A, it falls into the class which,
by the law of contradiction, is precluded from being made a predi-
cate of A. Yet, notwithstanding the seeming impossibility of bring-
ing the proposition ' A is B' into conformity with the three laws, that
proposition symbolizes our only fruitful mode of thought, the ortho-
dox judgments ( A is A' and ( A is not non-A' being the expression
of a process, if such it may be called, that in comparison is utterly
barren.
The question then at once arises as to the adequacy of the tradi-
tional laws of thought. If ( A is B' can not be justified in terms of
the principles of identity, contradiction and excluded middle, must
we conclude that the law which does give it legitimacy is one that is
at complete variance with them a law of synthesis, as the expression
is, instead of their empty law of analysis ? Or, on the contrary, may
we find it possible, notwithstanding appearances, fruitfully to reduce
this judgment to conformity with the traditional laws as these stand
in their analytic statement? Or, finally, instead, on the one hand,
of rejecting the three laws outright, or, on the other, of accepting
them in their barren analytic character, may we find that, if we take
note completely enough of the conditions of their expression, they
are the real laws, not only of analysis, but of synthesis?
The second mode of solution has not been without its advocates.
When the difficulty is pressed that B is not identical with A, and
therefore can not rightly be predicated of it, these logicians would
say that it is not the traditional laws that are at fault, but rather
our formulation of the judgment. B, as sheer B, is, indeed, not
identical with A; but, when we pronounce the judgment { A is B, f
we do not mean that A is sheer B; rather do we mean that the B
which is predicated is that B which belongs wholly to A; so that the
proposition, rightly expressed, is 'A is AB' (I make here no refer-
ence to the difficulties regarding the copula). Thus, taking the
318 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
judgment in intension, 'the rose is red' means, not 'the rose is red-
ness in general,' but 'the rose is rose-red."* But though, by this
qualification of the predicate, the proposition is brought more nearly
into accord with the law of identity, it still does not fully satisfy the
requirements of that law. As now stated, the proposition is not
solely the expression of identity, but also of the relation of substance
(or subject) and inherent attribute. The rose has rose-redness; it
can not be said that the rose is rose-redness. But it is important to
note that the law of identity, in itself, gives no warrant for the ex-
pression of substance-attribute inherence. \Miile it is true that such
inherence always involves identity, it is not true that identity, as
purely such, involves substance-attribute inherence. Since, then,
the law under consideration is solely a law of identity, it is operative
only with regard to that category and can validate no such meaning
of attributive relation as is expressed in the intensive meaning of the
proposition 'A is AB.' Hence, if the proposition 'the rose is rose-
red' is to be made to accord fully with this law, it must be so trans-
formed that it will express complete identity and nothing more.
Thus it becomes 'the rose-red rose is the rose-red rose'; or, to sym-
bolize, 'AB isAB.'
But it may be denied that ' A is AB' expresses attribute inherence.
This can be done only on the assumption that propositions express
solely extension and never intension. Thus, 'the rose is red' means
'the rose is red-thing,' and this being properly qualified (and con-
sequently quantified) becomes 'the rose is rose-red-thing.' It is true
that attribute inherence has here been eliminated from the preposi-
tional form ; but it has been done at the cost of accepting an entirely
erroneous theory of judgment. The assumption that judgments are
to be taken only in extension is one that simply makes impossible any
judgment at all. For if the subject is a 'thing' and the predicate
a ' thing, ' they are either different things or one identical thing. If
they are different, we have, on the theory of pure extension, no means
of passing from the one to the other in the manner of predication.
They are two things, and they must ever remain two separate things.
The judgment in intension, of course, closes the gap by claiming a
'universal' to be present in all difference of things. If, on the other
hand, the subject and predicate are one identical thing, then obvi-
ously every proposition should be expressed ' this thing is this thing, '
or 'AB is AB.' But even this is not an adequate formulation, for
if the 'this thing' of the predicate is different from the 'this thing'
of the subject, the proposition is still not identical ; while if the predi-
cate is the identical thing that the subject is, the act of predicating
the thing of itself can add no meaning to it, nay, is not even neces-
sary to its self-identical meaning, as Boole himself showed in his
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 319
formulation of his 'Index Law.' Hence the proposition rightly re-
duces to the subject-concept 'this thing.'
Thus, whether, we regard the judgment as properly to be taken
in intension or in extension, the attempt to reduce it to accord with
the law of analytic identity, either by qualifying or quantifying the
predicate, inevitably commits it to the form 'AB is AB.' And even
this is more correctly to be expressed as the single concept AB.
I refrain from pointing out the sheer thought-suicide that is com-
mitted by this mode of reduction. That has been so effectively ex-
pressed by many logicians that nothing further, need be added. I
wish rather to call attention to a less noticed but equally serious diffi-
culty involved in this manner of treatment. In reducing 'A is B'
to 'AB is AB' (or 'AB = AB'), we have, so far as the relation of
AB to AB is concerned, a strict conformity to the law of identity.
But (disregarding the inevitable further reduction to the form of a
single concept) the question now arises, by what law of thought do
we justify the expression of the subject and of the predicate as AB.
The legitimacy of this complex-concept is always taken for granted.
If, in AB, A and B are different from each other (which they must
be unless we are willing to reduce AB to AA A), they are two
thought-elements united into a single concept. Hence we have in
AB a conceptual conjunction of differences. It follows, then, that
if AB is one thought or concept, we have a one that is at the same
time a two. But if the one is the two, this goes directly counter to
the law of contradiction. If, now, in order to bring the conjunction
of differences into accord with this law, we hold that AB is not a one,
or unity, in the same sense that it is a two, or diversity, we must
express this, according to the law of identity, by saying that its unity
is its unity, while its diversity is its diversity. But if, by its self-
identical unity, we mean unity as entirely exclusive of diversity, such
unity is perfectly meaningless. If, on the other hand, in order to
save meaning, we admit that the self-identical unity is nevertheless
a unity in diversity, then we simply push the problem back a step ;
and we still have on our hands the problem with which we began, of
validating unity in diversity. Again, if, by the concept's self-iden-
tical diversity, we mean its unified diversity, the problem is likewise
pushed back without solution. It remains, then, for us to regard
the diversity as sheer diversity, i. e., without unification. But the
results of such a view are equally disastrous; for, as wholly non-
unified, AB is simply the aggregate of A and B; in which case, the
proposition 'AB is AB' means rightly the two propositions ' A is A'
and 'B is B.' It follows from this principle of reduction that
wherever propositions predicate diversity, as in 'AB is AB,' this
must be understood simply as a shorthand expression for. the addi-
320 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tion of separate conceptual units. If, then, we expand the short-
hand in order to make the content quite unequivocal, the true form
of the proposition is a series of propositions, each one of which ex-
presses the self-identity of one undifferentiated component of the
aggregate-complex, the self-identity, that is, of a bare unit. Hence
'the rose-red rose is the rose-red rose' must properly reduce to 'rose
is rose' and 'red is red.' Nay, 'rose' being itself a conceptual unity
of complexity (and 'red' being so likewise), must be reduced to its
items of pure simplicity. Here, then, we have, in logic, the disin-
tegration of all thought into a sheer atomism. In the absurdity of
such a result lies the real refutation of this mode of reducing proposi-
tions to the form of analytic identity.
It is true, indeed, that a concept is not a unity in the same sense
that it is a diversity ; yet this must not be taken to mean that unity
absolutely is not diversity and that diversity absolutely is not unity.
Unity is diversity; and it is exactly this affirmation of a predicate
that is different from the subject that can not be brought into the
straight- jacket of the analytic law of identity.
From this evident failure we turn again to the question how we
may provide for the logical possibility of the proposition 'A is B.' I
think that the answer to this question will be found, not in a repudia-
tion of the traditional laws of thought, but in the recognition that
the law which makes ' A is B' possible, is present as the very condi-
tion of the possibility of the traditional laws. This has indeed been
well understood by the great synthetic logicians; and I am making
no claim in this paper to the presentation of a new doctrine. I
merely wish, by the help of a slightly different mode of symbolizing
the traditional laws of thought, to express the law of synthesis as a
direct deduction from the traditional laws. The ordinary mode of
procedure has been to show the necessity of this law of conceptual
synthesis on broad epistemological grounds, rather than to indicate
the manner in which the law may be seen to grow out of the tradi-
tional laws and to become, indeed, their intrinsic expression. Such
a direct 'deduction,' or drawing forth into explicitness of what is
implicit in the traditional laws is, I think, possible with regard to
the principle of synthetic thought.
In our ordinary negative propositions, the negation is made with
respect to something. If I say, ' smells are not sounds, ' the exclusion
of sounds from smells is not absolute, but partial. Both smells and
sounds are sensations ; they differ with respect to their common sen-
sational quality. Again, if I say, 'smells are not pianos,' the differ-
ence is obviously greater than in the former case. Yet it is not a
complete difference as to their possession of reality: they are each real.
Nor is it an absolute difference as to their possession of possibilities
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 321
for good or evil, or for giving pleasure or pain ; for they both have
such possibilities. Rather, having not only bare reality, but also,
among others, the possibilities mentioned, they differ as to the man-
ner in which they possess these. Hence the exclusion of predicate
from subject is not absolute, but is one that is made within an iden-
tity that holds even in spite of the mutual exclusion.
If, now, we pass to the formula for complete exclusion, 'A is not
non-A/ may be we here likewise ask in what respect A and non-A
differ? If they differ in a respect, then there is a 'something/ a
generic quality, in which, or with reference to which, they differ.
But this will mean that the difference is not sheer and absolute, but
is grounded in an identity that holds notwithstanding the difference.
Yet when we ask in what respect A differs from non-A, our first
answer is, 'Wholly.' A is in nowise non-4, and non-A is in nowise
A. This answer, however, at once shows itself to be an untrue state-
ment of the negative relation involved. For as soon as we declare
that A and non-A are wholly different, we admit that they are not
wholly different in so far as they agree in the quality of mutual
exclusion of the opposite. Agreeing in this character of mutual ex-
clusion, they differ, indeed, as to the manner in which this generic
quality is realized : A excludes non-A, and non-A excludes A. That
is, the content of each exclusion is different, but its nature is in each
the same. It is, indeed, just this identity of opposite-excluding char-
acter that makes possible the negative relation expressed by the law
of contradiction.
This presence of identity in order to the expression of difference
may perhaps more easily be seen by means of a less subtle reference.
In whatever universe of discourse our. formula, 'A is not mm- A/
may be employed, both terms will always, in some sense, be real.
At the least, they will both be real as ideas. If our universe of
discourse, for example, be such that A is taken to stand for exist-
ence, then non-J. will signify non-existence. But non-existence, as
an expression of opposition to existence, is not sheer unreality, for
at any rate it is an ideal object of reference. But so, likewise,
is existence an ideal object of reference. It is true, indeed, that
existence is a 'something more,' which non-existence is not; but
this 'something more' is simply the element of difference between
the two. Existence and non-existence being each an ideal object of
reference, they differ as to the manner in which their generic ideality
is in each case specifically realized. Hence here again the difference
is with respect to an identity. The mutual exclusion expressed by
the formula of the law of contradiction differs from any of our con-
crete mutual exclusions only in that, in the latter, the definite generic
identity is implied with more or less clearness ; while, in the abstract
322 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
formula, that identity is still left almost utterly vague, with the pos-
sibility of assuming any definiteness that may be required by the
concrete situations. Notwithstanding this, however, we are just as
certain in the case of the abstract formula as in that of concrete
propositions that ground of identity there must be where there is
predication of difference.
A difficulty may perhaps be raised by noting the fact that in such
a proposition as 'sounds are not smells' there is a doubt as to the
ground of identity ; for, if we use the form ' sounds are non-smells, '
the identity would seem to be by no means the same as when we say
' sounds are not smells. ' In the latter, case, the ordinary interpreta-
tion would compare smells and sounds in their proximate class,
sensations, exactly as when we say, 'red is not blue'; while in the
former it would regard non-smells as comprising all of reality that
is not smells. It is true that there is this difference in the possible
grounds of identity ; but it will easily be seen that the presence of
this difference is rather an argument in justification of the position
taken. It may be true that in the affirmative proposition with a
negative predicate the only identity is 'reality' in its barest sense;
nevertheless, even as such, it is the generic element which we have
claimed to be necessary, the generic which has its specific realization
even in mutual exclusives.
It follows, then, that the formula, ' 'A is not -non- A' does not ex-
actly express its own real meaning. That formula does not (upon
pain, if it does, of complete impotence) mean that A and non-J.
are absolutely excludent of each other.; it means that, possessing
some ground of identity, these two terms nevertheless differ in the
manner in which they possess that identity. We may represent this
identity present in all mutual exclusions by the symbol U. The law
of contradiction, then, properly expressed, reads: 'AU is not non-
AU.'
If this be the real and indeed the only proper expression of the
law of contradiction, our next step to the explicit statement of syn-
thetic relation will not be difficult. By '?7/*we have indicated the
identity which both A and non-A are. It follows, then, that A is
1 U, iand that non-A is U. But A is likewise not V ; for if it were
completely U, it would at the same time be non-A. Hence A, at once,
is U and not U. If, remembering our analytic laws, we look sus-
piciously upon this result, we are now precluded from condemning it
in terms of the law of contradiction, for we have just seen that this
law presupposes these very conditions if it is to have any meaning
whatever. Hence, with the law of contradiction itself the expression
of this very seeming contradiction, we are forced, by the dialectic
of the situation, to recognize that in such a relation of subject and
predicate is expressed the fundamental nature of all thought.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 323
If, now, (1) A is U, but (2) A is not U, we have in (1) the very
form of synthetic proposition which we have been seeking to justify.
U is predicated of A, but is nevertheless not completely identical
with A. This is exactly the relation which we found expressed in
the proposition ' A is B,' and which the laws in their analytic form
could not account for. Since the relations which they bear to A are
the same, we may now legitimately substitute E for U. Thus the
synthetic proposition has its justification. Indeed, it is now seen to
be a correct, though unclear, formula for the real synthetic law of
identity.
The three laws of thought will then be properly symbolized as
follows :
Law of identity: AU is AU.
Law of contradiction: A U is not non-AZ7.
Law of excluded middle : Within the identity U, any subject of
predication is either. A or non-A.
It is true that in this formulation, the law of identity is still, by
itself, an inadequate expression of the law of synthetic thought.
Notwithstanding this, however, it does not in its present, as in its
traditional form, succeed in hiding completely all traces of that
synthetic law. For as now formulated, it contains the important
symbol AU, which represents a complex concept. But such a con-
cept, in so far as it is a unity that is likewise diversity, is the very
typical form of synthetic thought. It was because purely analytic
thought could provide for no such unity in manyness that we de-
clared the traditional laws unable, on the face of them, to validate
even such a proposition as ' AB is AB.' Hence the form, 'AU is AU,'
which is analytic in its subject-predicate relation, exhibits the pres-
ence of synthetic thought in the form of its subject and its predicate
terms.
The form ' AU is AU' is especially inadequate, however, in that
it fails, in the formulated relation between subject and predicate,
to express the fact that all predication of identity may be made only
as difference is likewise predicated. This, to be sure, as we have
said, is implied in the presence of such a term as AU, but the truth
is not made explicit by the exhibition of any difference between sub-
ject and predicate. Such predication of difference in the very act
of predicating identity is expressed in the proposition 'A is B'; but
the formulation here is faulty, since it errs in the opposite way by
explicitly stating difference and, except as implying it in the copula,
allowing the identity to go unexpressed. Undoubtedly the truer
formulation of this most usual and fruitful mode of thought is ( AU
is BU.>
The law of contradiction, also, as formulated above, is still by
324 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
itself an inadequate expression of the law of synthetic thought. It
indeed makes clear, which was not true of the old formulation, the
fact that difference, even if outright, is always in terms of identity ;
but like the law of identity, it fails to express the even more impor-
tant truth, that all identity must be predicated in terms of difference.
In like manner, the law of excluded middle is still a one-sided
expression of real thought. Yet in the present formulation it makes
clear not only the fact expressed by the old form, that the world of
predication is completely dichotomizable, and in so far systematic,
but the further important fact that in being thus exhaustively
divisible into two, it still maintains its oneness of generic being
throughout the two divisions.
It has, indeed, often enough been agreed that the three laws of
thought are each insufficient to express the whole truth about thought.
We should not, however, permit them to be so inadequately formu-
lated that they keep effectively concealed all trace of thought that
is real and fruitful. With the symbolization just given, it seems to
the writer that the truth of the laws in their old forms is preserved,
while there is added to this truth of analysis the all-important truth
of synthesis. H. A. OVERSTREET.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOBNIA.
DISCUSSION
THE REALISM OF PRAGMATISM
"PROFESSOR COLVIN in his instructive article on Subjective
-*- Idealism and Psychology, 1 lets drop this significant remark:
"It is an extremely fascinating doctrine, this radical subjectivism,
which becomes solipsism when interpreted in terms of the intellect,
and pragmatism when formulated in the categories of the will."
The words I have italicized are significant because, thrown in inci-
dentally and not in an argument pro or con as to pragmatism, they
reveal what seems to be the general assumption. Accordingly this
may offer a fit and uncontroversial opportunity tor making a some-
what personal and dogmatic Auseinandersetzung.
Speaking of the matter only for myself, the presuppositions
and tendencies of pragmatism are distinctly realistic; not idealistic
in any sense in which idealism connotes or is connoted by the
theory of knowledge. (Idealistic in the ethical sense is another
matter, and one whose associations with epistemological idealism,
aside from the accidents of history, are chiefly verbal.) Pragma-
1 ' Is Subjective Idealism a Necessary Point of View for Psychology ? ' this
JOUBNAL, Vol. II., No. 9, April 27, 1905, p. 225.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 325
tism believes that in knowledge as a fact, an accomplished matter,
things are 'representative of one another,' to employ Woodbridge's
happy, because correct, phrase. 2 Ideas, sensations, mental states,
are, in their cognitive significance, media of so adjusting things to
one another, that they become representative of one another. When
this is accomplished, they drop out; 3 and things are present to the
agent in the most naively realistic fashion. 'States of conscious-
ness' refer to getting knowledge; to the situation when things as
objective fail us; have, so to speak, gone back on us; when accord-
ingly we neither have them to know nor yet to know with. It is in
this situation, and only in this situation, that 'states of conscious-
ness' exist or have meaning, cognitively speaking. And if I put in
the phrase, 'cognitively speaking,' it is only to take account of the
emotions; and with reference to the emotions the significant point
is that they also arise and function in problematic situations; in sit-
uations whose objective determination or character is not known,
not presented.
Instrumentalism is thus thoroughly realistic as to the objective
or fulfilling conditions of knowledge. States of consciousness, sen-
sations and ideas as cognitive, exist as tools, bridges, cues, functions
whatever one pleases to affect a realistic presentation of things,
in which there are no intervening states of consciousness as veils,
or representatives. Known things, as known, are direct presenta-
tions in the most diaphanous medium conceivable. And if getting
knowledge, as distinct from having it, involves representatives,
pragmatism carries with it a reinterpretation, and a realistic inter-
pretation, of 'states of consciousness' as representations. They are
practically or effectively, not transcendentally, representative. They
represent in the sense in which a signature, for legal purposes,
represents a real person in a contract; or as money, for economic
purposes, represents beefsteak or a night's lodging. They are
symbols, in short, and are known and used as such.
Knowledge, even getting knowledge, must rest on facts, or things.
But the need of truth, of cognitively assured things, means once
more that such things are not present just as the beefsteak is not
eating, in the situation in which money stands for it. Things in
problematic situations must operate through representatives,
ministerial agents, through psychical things, which, for the purpose
in hand and for that only, stand for and thus accomplish what
things would accomplish viz., mutually realistic significance if
they were only there. Psychical things are thus themselves real-
3 See Science, N. S., Vol. XX., p. 587; and this JOURNAL, Vol. II., No. 5,
March 2, 1905, p. 119.
'The sense in which their value remains will be spoken of later.
326 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
istically conceived ; they can be described and identified in biological
and physiological terms, in terms (with adequate science) of
chemicophysical correspondents. 4 Psychologically, they are them-
selves literal emotions and felt impulses. Moreover, they are real-
istically conditioned from the genetic side. Their origin as
existences can be stated and must be stated in terms of adjustments
and maladjustments among habits, biological functions. 5 The re-
proach that has been brought against 'pragmatism' of utilizing
biological evolutionary data, might, it would seem, at least have
preserved it from the reproach of subjectivism.
In short, the point that the critics of pragmatism have missed
with a, surprising unanimity, is that in giving a re interpretation of
the nature and function of knowledge, pragmatism gives necessarily
a thoroughgoing reinterpretation of all the cognitive machinery
sensations, ideas, concepts, etc.; one which inevitably tends to take
these things in a much more literal and physically realistic fashion
than is current. What pragmatism takes from idealism is just
and only empiricism. That, to it, is the real lesson of the sub-
jectivism which has held sway since the time of Descartes and Locke.
This lesson learned, we can think freely and naively in terms of
things because things are no longer entities in a world set over
against another world called 'mind' or 'consciousness,' with some
sort of mysterious ontological tie between them. Again, prag-
matism has learned that the true meaning of subjectivism is just
cmfa'-dualism. Hence philosophy can enter again into the realistic
thought and conversation of common sense and science, where
dualisms are just dualities, distinctions having an instrumental and
practical, but not ultimate, metaphysical worth; or rather, having
metaphysical worth in a practical and experimental sense, not in
that of indicating a radical existential cleavage in the nature of
things.
I speak only for myself, but in giving my hearty assent to what
Professor James has said about the nature of truth (see this
JOURNAL, p. 118, Vol. II.), I venture to express the hope that he
also conceives the matter in some such way as I have suggested.
Certainly it is the obvious deduction from his denial of the existence
* This possibility of objective statement is, I take it, the meaning of the
psychophysical parallelism if it has any meaning. There is no sense that
I am aware of in which their description is to be limited to brain terms rather
than to chemical terms, or to terms of changes among extra-organic objects,.
or to terms of changes among social objects, persons. The point is simply that
psychical changes do correspond to changes in reality.
5 Pragmatism would thus deny absolutely that psychology rests upon the
idealistic presupposition. The psychologist has the same naive right to things
and bodies as has the geologist or zoologist.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 327
of consciousness. It is the witness borne by Professor Mead
in his Definition of the Psychical. It is what I had supposed to
be the only possible outcome of my essays in the Contributions to
Logical Theory though I am glad to have this opportunity of
expressing my indebtedness to conversations with Professor Wood-
bridge, as well as to his published articles, for making me aware
of the full force of their realistic implications.
In conclusion, I wish to say a word upon the ethical idealism
involved. Speaking from the cognitive standpoint, it is difficult to
conceive of anything stranger, more curious, more wholly unantici-
patable, than that certain things emotions, sensations which are
biologically conditioned as to their origin, should become bearers
of the transformation of things into things mutually representative
or significant of one another. But such is the empirical fact. It
demonstrates that while ideas, states of consciousness, drop out in
our assured esthetic, intellectual and practical transactions with
things, leaving a face-to-face or realistic situation, yet their worth,
their value, remains in the significance which things have gained
as representative of one another. The increments of meaning which
things are constantly taking on is as much the product of psychical
existences, as the added significance of words is the result of their
use in propositions, i. e., with a context. They are the media of
effecting the transformation of conflicting, unsatisfactory, and con-
sequently fragmentarily significant situations, into situations where
things are surely and reciprocally (in an all-around way) significant
of one another. Hence the free, the indeterminate, the growing, the
potential factor in reality. Meaning, significance is never just pre-
determined. It is always hanging upon the operation of the psy-
chical, of the peculiarly individual. Hence morality: the recogni-
tion of responsibility for the use of the psychical, as the ultimate
determiner of the ways in which the world of all (you and me) who
live among things grows in significance. It is because the psychical
is, cognitively, realistic, that morality has an empirically real sanc-
tion and yet an ideal bearing of infinite import. It never gets in the
way of things of knowledge to obstruct or pervert; but its prior
operations control what things become representative of one another,
and hence the experienced meaning, or value, of those things.
JOHN DEWEY.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
328 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Bulletin de la societe franchise de philosophic. March, 1905. 5 Annee,
No. 3. Esprit et matiere. These: M. Binet. Discussion: MM.
Bergson, Darlu, J. Lachelier, Pecaut, Rauh.
M. Binet proposes to define matter and mind, and to present a theory
of the connection between them. Reality exhibits two fundamental sorts
of elements, sensations and the consciousness which accompanies sensa-
tions. The distinction between the physical and the psychical is replaced
by the distinction between the object of consciousness and the act of
consciousness. The sensational or content element which we find in
images, emotions, effort, etc., is not to be regarded as the means by which
we know the external world, it is the external world itself. Our sensa-
tions are the physical world. Mind is the activity of consciousness; it
is not a thing, but a function. In itself, however, mind is incomplete:
it requires an object or point of application, and this object is sensation
or matter. Former theories of the relation of mind to body made the
mistake of supposing that mind could exist more or less independently
of body: spiritualism giving mind thorough independence, materialism
making mind a product of the body, parallelism positing two coordinate
series; whereas in fact mind and body are strictly correlative and in-
separable.
The more intimate nature of the mind-body relation is as follows:
Two facts which seem incompatible offer the chief difficulty, (a) Our
thought is conditioned by a special intra-cerebral motion of molecules
and atoms; (&) but this same thought has no consciousness of the
molecular motion, is not directly aware of the nervous impulse. A molec-
ular wave must reach a point in the visual cortex before we see the ob-
ject in front of the eyes. How is it that consciousness ignores the
physiological process upon which it depends, and, as it were, projects
itself to the distant object? We must bear in mind that in this molecular
wave is carried and implied all that we know of the external object which
stimulates it. This nerve vibration represents the work of two factors,
it expresses the nature of both the object which provokes it and the
nervous apparatus which transmits. One of these factors which modify
the nerve vibrations is constant, i. e., the part played by the nervous
system; the other is inconstant, varying with the changing external
stimulus. We may conceive that consciousness, which maintains itself
only in change, ignores the constant factor in the nervous vibration, and
is cognizant only of the variable element. We are not, therefore, con-
scious of the constant presence of the cerebral mechanism, but only of
the external object which introduces the element of variety. It is the
physical world itself which is transmitted in the nervous system, and con-
sciousness perceives it by the analysis of the nerve vibration.
The discussion of Binet's presentation opens upon the question of his
fundamental division of reality. It is pointed out by M. Rauh that the
distinction merely of content and activity of consciousness quite ignores
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 329
the concept of the unconscious. The unconscious is not to be explained
as the subliminal, a mere mode of the conscious: it is both the known
object and the knowing subject at the time when they are neither known
nor knowing. M. Lachelier agrees that there is a mode of existence in
which subject and object are not discriminated, but out of which they
evolve. This state, however, is not the unconscious, a merely hypothetical
condition, but is an ' affective mode,' a ' simple affection,' or ' state of
simply living,' an actual known condition which we find persisting in
all sensation, perception and thought. Further, certain kinds of sensa-
tions and perceptions are more objective than others. In differentiating
the subject two sorts of experience are of greatest importance, (a) visual,
(Z>) perception of resistance: an experience of taste, smell or even sound
does not necessarily involve a subject distinct from the sensation, but
the perception of a color-arrangement, which presupposes the ability to
distinguish the contour of the different colors, implies a subject, or an
activity whose unity is contrasted with the multiplicity of the colored
surface. As to the perception of resistance, it is through the self's over-
coming obstacles that the self becomes defined.
The discussion relative to Binet's theory of the union of mind and
body is led by M. Bergson. Bergson takes exception to the idea that
external perception occurs ' inside the brain ' ; he would localize it rather
in the object perceived. If we ask, " how can I be in the object which I
perceive?" he would reply "how can you be in the brain which per-
ceives it ? " The self is no more in the brain than in the object outside.
The self exists virtually in everything perceptible, and actually in every-
thing perceived. He says, with Leibnitz, that we have a confused per-
ception of the entire universe, but a distinct perception only of that part
of the universe upon which we can exercise an influence more or less
immediate. If we ascribe to the physiological process more than the
function of limiting practically our actions, i. e., if we make it in any
sense the cause of perception, we can not escape the hypothesis of psycho-
physical parallelism.
M. Darlu objects to the original standpoint of Binet's ' subjective
phenomenalism.' By calling facts of consciousness physical, Binet is
greatly altering current usage; for, in fixing arbitrarily the point where
subjective and objective separate he is destroying the real meaning of
the objective. In common speech, and still more in science, we call that
the physical element of sensation which we recognize as most objective.
The element is physical because it is more independent than all the rest
of our will, because we are accustomed to measure it, to calculate upon
it, to foresee it.
In the above thesis of M. Binet the points, that the content element
of consciousness is for us external reality, that content and function are
correlative inseparable aspects of consciousness, and that they constitute
a distinction of prime importance, are statements highly interesting
and comprehensible, but comprehensible only as giving a psychological
standpoint. As a metaphysical theory of the connection between mind
330 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
and body 'subjective phenomenalism' contains difficulties. The dualism
which M. Binet is trying to avoid appears in his own theory at the point
where he ascribes to the central nervous system its peculiar function of
carrier or supporter of the universe. Differences in nerve-vibration con-
stitute the external world; but what then constitutes the vibrating nerve
mass, unless matter and motion are the same? Consciousness discovers
external reality by analyzing this molecular motion of the nerve-sub-
stance, but if different motions are the experience ' green,' ' blue,' ' sweet,'
' hard,' etc., where did we ever get the idea ' molecular motion ' as a
common substrate for them? What status has a cortical area when it is
not functioning? What does it mean to say that consciousness analyzes
the nerve- vibration ? If everything is either content or act of conscious-
ness, it would seem to mean either that we know the vibration im-
mediately as content of consciousness which Binet admits we do not,
or, it means that the vibration is actually the activity of consciousness.
On this latter hypothesis the act of consciousness is reduced to motion
of the most materialistic variety.
Again, if act of consciousness and object of consciousness are to
stand as the fundamental discrimination in reality, some theory of
their correlation must be proposed, unless we are content to accept the
Kantian dualism of the a priori and a posteriori.
The most suggestive contribution to a solution of these problems
appears in the criticisms by M. Bergson. For him the subject, or the
activity of knowing, is not localized in the brain any more than it is in
the whole perceptible universe. What is localized is the practical
response to perception. Solicitation to action seems the primal situa-
tion within which clear and distinct images emerge; on the other hand,
the body, which is the chief instrument in action, is an image among
other images or representations. Hence body and mind are interpre-
tative of one another. If this be a just elaboration of M. Bergson's
remarks it shows that his point of view is in harmony with other recent
doctrines on the psychical-physical question. If one dare generalize, the
tendency appears to be to identify the physical with the existential or
mechanical aspect of reality, the psychical with the interpretative, teleo-
logical aspect. From the view-point of practical necessity the mechanical
stands for the past, and the teleological for the future. Such a state-
ment as the last accommodates the point brought forward by Darlu that
the physical stands for the commensurable side of experience; for it is
the past or accomplished fact which is the basis of calculation, and which
is most independent of our will.
A striking omission from the discussions of the Societe is the lack of
any attempt to discriminate the psychological from the metaphysical
standpoint. Indeed, the theory of subjective phenomenalism looks like
an effort to erect the psychological attitude into the sole basis for meta-
physics. The function of metaphysics would seem to many to include
the correlation of the truths of all sciences rather than to adopt the
postulates of any special one as final reality. It is out of different phases
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 331
of metaphysical inquiry that the special standpoints of different sciences
have been generated. It becomes any science to cling to its limitations
as its special opportunities, and psychology, having finally attained an
individual status, would be better engaged in cherishing this golden egg
than in bombarding with it the metaphysical goose that laid it.
KATE GORDON.
MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE.
Experimentelle Beitrdge zu einer Theorie des Derikens. HENRY J. WATT.
Archiv f. d. Gesamte Psychologic, Band IV., Heft 3. Wiirzburg.
Pp. 289-436.
This is a study of controlled association, a problem beset with many
technical difficulties. Belonging to that class of problems whose prac-
tical approach is through the direct medium of speech, it is very depend-
ent on the far from satisfactory methods of speech registration as yet
available. The apparatus employed in this instance was of the usual
form, including drop-screen, break-make relay, chronoscope and voice-key.
The handling of this last instrument has been the Achilles' heel in much
work done along these lines, nor, with all the careful handling of the
remaining apparatus, do its limitations seem to have been fully taken
into account. The promptitude with which this instrument registers the
reaction varies considerably according to the phonological character
of the initial of the reaction-word. A prompt break never occurs save
with an initial explosive, and not always then. A more accurate and
hardly less cumbersome form of apparatus would have been the Rosapelly
laryngeal recorder, with a tambour for the breath stream of voiceless
initials, recording on smoked paper.
The forms of association studied are: genus-species, species-genus,
between coordinates, part-whole, whole-part, between parts of one whole.
On the basis of the subjects' introspection three classes of reaction are
noted. In class A there is a single movement from stimulus to reaction;
and four subtypes are here distinguished, in which, between stimulus
and reaction, there appears either a visual image, a word image, a vague
hesitation, or nothing appreciable. The last mentioned, which is of
rare occurrence, tends to be the shortest, but its other differentia are prob-
ably due to habits of imagery, so that it is doubtful whether it really
forms a distinct type of association. In classes B and C the movement
from stimulus to reaction is not single. In B the intervening element
is highly indefinite, in C it is a definite object of an unsuccessful search.
These tend to be longer than A, and C longer than B.
The proportion of mediate associations is very subject to individual
difference, and also varies with the character of the control. A slight
tendency to negative correlation in the number of the two types of
mediate "association seems to exist for all subjects. Phonetic lapses were
frequently observed, and the phenomena of persistent association com-
plicated the results to a slight extent. Throughout, however, the psy-
chological limitations of the problem are only too apparent. The num-
bers of cases are necessarily small, and the mean variations large,
332 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
occasionally 30 per cent, of the average. Controlled association-time is
eminently subject to individual differences in experience that can not
be analyzed out objectively, and introspective evidence has but narrow
limits of validity. The small number of words which it is possible to
use as stimuli, and the large constant errors that are introduced if it
is attempted to repeat them, constitute other grave difficulties. With
whatever care experimental conditions may be observed, and with what-
ever fullness results are collated and presented, it does not seem probable
that under present conditions the problems of controlled association
offer other than negative results of value to experimental psychology.
F. L. WELLS.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
The Argument for Immortality. A. K. ROGERS. International Journal
of Ethics, April, 1905. Pp. 323-338.
The motive of the article is to emphasize anew the importance of
the idea of immortality for the moral and religious life in view of recent
tendencies to assign it a place of but secondary importance. The exact
meaning of the concept is not determined, the author confining him-
self wholly to a defense of its validity. No consideration is given to the
argument from revelation, nor to that from spiritualistic phenomena;
in the latter case, from the belief that ' the bad company which they keep
must necessarily affect the reputation of such facts if not their character.'
The metaphysical argument is recognized as invalidated by the passing
of the old idea of a soul substance, and the conclusions of science are
shown to be wholly negative with reference to the idea. The moral argu-
ment is the only effective one. The older form of this, in which the de-
mand is made that happiness be proportioned to virtue, does not neces-
sarily imply the bribe theory of goodness, but only our demand that
reality recognize our moral judgments. And ' can virtue stand justified
to our minds, except as it does find that external confirmation which im-
mortality tries to postulate ? ' But, granted that the ethical life must be
objectively vindicated, does this imply the stability of the individual
life, or is the progress of the race sufficient for the purpose? Moral
values are grounded in the relationship of persons and may be said to
culminate in love. And ' in its inmost heart love is a relationship which
does not stop with those universal qualities of a man which make him
simply an actor in the world history. It clings to the very core of
individuality itself, and will be satisfied with just this as a living and
continuous person, whose place no one else can wholly take.' The de-
mand for immortality is thus not a selfish one, but is the demand that
the person whom we love be immortal. And, if we express the nature of
God by love, ' could we really respect a God for whom love, or fellowship,
meant merely a temporary or passing phase of his experience, whose ob-
ject was called into existence only to be dismissed again from the scene ? '
NORMAN WILDE.
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 333
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
AMEEICAN JOTJENAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. April, 1905. A
Study of Precocity and Prematuration (pp. 145-183) : LEWIS M. TERMAN.
- This is a descriptive study tending to show some of the manifestations
and tendencies of early maturity of bodily and mental functions. Espe-
cially emphasized is the baneful and retarding influence in mature
efficiency of the too early manifestation of sexual feelings, nervousness,
overeducation, and religious convictions, and also the relation of these
to criminology in the earlier years. Anent Psychophysical Parallelism
(pp. 184-189) : EDMOND MONTGOMERY. - The author arrives at the duality
of the world idea by being compelled to interpret as different another's
consciousness and that consciousness as conceiving some external object.
Also the significance of this for psychology and epistemology is stated.
Song and Call Notes of English Sparrows when Beared by Canaries
(pp. 190-198) : EDWARD CONRADI. - An experimental study. Two young
sparrows were placed, before they had learned any of the calls of sparrows,
in a cage with some canaries. At first they used the sparrow calls, but
soon forgot these and learned the call notes of the canaries with whom
they were associated, as well as some of their songs. On again being
placed with sparrows, however, they soon returned to the language of
sparrows. Eye Movements (pp. 199-207) : BERNICE BARNES. - Some ex-
periments to test the validity of Listing's and Donder's laws. The same
degree of torsion was found whether the eye moved across the field
diagonally, or when passing from the primary to a secondary and then
across to the point. Donder's law was found to hold, though there was not
the slightest evidence of Listing's law. The Problems of Experimental
Psychology (pp. 208-227) : E. B. TiTCHNER.-The address given before the
congress of Arts and Sciences at St. Louis and previously published in
one of the November numbers of Science. Experimental Psychology in
Italy (pp. 225-227) : G. E. FERRARI. - The writer corrects some impres-
sions given in an article on the same subject by a fellow countryman,
and published in the American Journal of Psychology for October. Proof
and Disproof of Correlation (pp. 228-231) : C. SPEARMAN. - This is an
answer to some criticisms of the author's statements and methods of
correlation. He especially attempts to show that roughness in measure-
ment can not disprove a positive correlation, though it may a negative
result. The Significance of the Human Hand in the Evolution of the
Mind (pp. 232-242): EGBERT MAcDouGAL. - An attempt is made to show
that since the hand is fundamentally an organ of expression, its mechan-
ical, tactual, perceptual limitations imply a concomitant narrowness in
the mental realm.
EEVUE DE METAPHYSIQTJE ET DE MOEALE. March, 1905.
Definitions fondamentales (Vocabulaire logiquement ordonne des idees les
plus generales et les plus abstraites) (pp. 153-192) : SULLY PRUDHOMME. -
An attempt to give definitions which can be used as standard in phi-
losophic discussions. About seventy concepts are defined, such as being,
nothing, existence, thing, function, condition, difference, substance. Sur
334 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
la logique de I'invention (pp. 193-223) : E. LE ROY. - Invention rises from
the dark, and contradictory in the mind; needs no rules of methods, even
defies the laws of logic. The virtues of contemplative thought are the
vices of creative thought. Invention is helped by cultivating respect for
images and reactions; such is the spirit of the philosophic nouvelle. Les
principes des mathematiques (pp. 224-256) : L. COUTURAT. - According to
Dr. Veblen's system, descriptive geometry is based on two concepts (the
point and the relation of order between three points) and twelve axioms.
These define a categorical, not a disjunctive, system. Metrical geometry
demands also the concept of size. Pure geometry uses points not as being
spatial positions, but as abstract terms which enter into certain ordinal
relations. It is not the science of real space, but a branch of the logic of
relations. Applied geometry is an experimental science. Etudes cri-
tiques: Myers, La theorie du subliminal (pp. 257-282): H. DELACROIX.
- Telepathy is far from being established. Experimental metaphysics is
essentially chimerical. Spirit or soul is a transcendental concept, and
could not in any case be proved empirically. Une nouvelle tentative de
refutation de la geometric generale (pp. 283-290) : E. DELSOL. - Answer
to M. Techalas' various criticisms of the above work of M. Delsol. Livres
nouveaux. Theses de doctorat.
ARCHIV FUR SYSTEMATISCHE PHILOSOPHIE. February,
1905. Band XI., Heft 1. Uber Notwendigkeit, Wirklichkeit, Moglich-
keit und die Grundlagen der Mathematik (pp. 1-26) : K. GESSLER. - The
necessity of mathematical, as compared with naturalistic demonstrations
depends upon the relative ease and simplicity of the chain of propositions
leading to certain empirical facts. The existence of these latter facts is
a complex question, calling for gifts not essentially mathematical. Ex-
amples are the existence of limits, of cardinal numbers (Cantor), and
the ' possibility ' of certain processes and equations. Bewusstsein und
Wirklichkeit (pp. 27-45) : A. GUREWITSCH. - Consciousness is percep-
tion, thought, feeling, will; reality is nature, life and history. With
regard to these two fundamental concepts eighteen others may be as-
serted, such that were any one of these taken as the point of inquiry
consciousness and reality would in turn appear as in like manner predic-
able of that. De Lege Motus (pp. 47-60) : B. LEMCKE. - Any motion
once begun can never cease. Rest, as the lack of motion, is never per-
ceived; while to imagination it appears as the terminus of decreasing
motion, to reason it is the limit of such a motion and never comes to
existence. Der energetische Mutualismus (pp. 61-85) : F. Gr. MARENZI. -
Energetics is the all-embracing science, and as a metaphysics substitutes
a mutualism for a monism everywhere. For example, God would be
known of man, man would know God. Theistic Idealism (pp. 86-104) :
J. LINDSAY. - Idealism is, no doubt, the philosophy destined to prevail;
but not the Hegel-Royce type, that makes our consciousness a part of
God's, or God the mere ideal of man. God's immanence must consist
with his absolute character. Jahresbericht; La philosophic en France
(pp. 107-120) : C. Bos. - Special attention is given to Stirner's
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 335
' L'individualism anarchique,' and A. Levy's ' La philosophie de Feuer-
bach.' Neueste Erscheinungen.
VIERTELJAHRSCHRIFT FUR WISSENSCHAFTLICHE PHI- '
LOSOPHIE UND SOCIOLOGIE. Atomistik und Energetik vom
Standpunkte okonomischer Naturbetrachtung (pp. 1-25) : H. WOLFE. -
In this epistemological essay it is maintained that while in the molecular
theory full justice is done to the individuality (i. e., the ultimate unique-
ness) of bodies, in the theory of energetics that is not the case. Two
types of energetics. Die Grundlagen des naturlichen Monismus bei
Karl Christian Plank (pp. 28-66) : H. PLANCK. - Planck, like Spencer,
held that only growth, not existence, can be described, that it has but
two characters, attraction and repulsion, exemplified here in sensation
and in pure thought. Conclusion follows. Die Gliederung der Gesell-
schaft ~bei Schleiermacher (pp. 67-110) : G. STOSCH. - The philosophical
service of Schleiermacher is to have grasped in vital fashion the secret
of individuality, that each man expresses the universe in a particular
manner. Antiquated though his method of classification is, yet the in-
ductive method can not dispense with such speculations as his. Besprech-
ungen, Duplik: H. SPITZER. Zu neuerlicher Abwehr: S. WITASEK. W.
Windelband, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie: W. REGLER. H.
Orestano, Le idee fundamentali di Federigo Nietzsche nel loro progressivi
svolgimento : H. MOLLER. B. Russell, The Principles of Mathematics:
F. HAUSDORFP. Philosophische Zeitschriften.
Baird, J. W. The Color Sensitivity of the Peripheral Retina. Washing-
ton, D. C. : The Carnegie Institution. 1905. 80 pp.
Joel, Karl. Nietzsche und die Romantik. Jena und Leipzig : Diederichs.
1905. Svo. 366 pp. 9 M.
Kleinpeter, H. Die Erkenntnistheorie der Naturforschung der Genen-
wart. Unter Zugrundelegung der Anschauungen von Mach, Stallo,
Clifford, Kirchhoff, Hertz, Pearson, und Ostwald. Leipzig: Barth.
1905. Svo. 156 pp. 3.80 M.
Motora, Y. An Essay on Eastern Philosophy. Leipzig: R. Voigtlander.
1905. Svo. 32 pp. 0.80 M.
Princeton Contributions to Philosophy. Edited by Alexander T. Ormond.
Vol. I. No. 4. April, 1905. Metaphysical Elements in Sociology, by
Philip H. Fogel. 56 pp.
Roark, R. N. Economy in Education. New York, Cincinnati, and Chi-
cago: American Book Company. 1905. 12mo. 252 pp. $1.00.
Ruyssen, T. Essai sur devolution psychologique du jugment. Paris:
Alcan. 1904. Svo. 380 pp. 5 fr.
Thilo, C. A. Fr. H. Jacobis Religionsphilosophie. Langensalza : Beyer
& Sohne. 1905. Svo. 54 pp. 1.20 M.
Thilo, C. A. Kant's Religionsphilosophie. Langensalza: Beyer & Sohne.
1905. Svo. 65 pp. 1.20 M.
Ueberwig-Heinze. Geschichte der Philosophie. Neunte Auflage. Bd.
II. Miltelalter. Berlin: Mittler und Sohn. 1905. Svo. 403 pp.
8.50 M.
336 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
University of Iowa Studies in Psychology. Edited by Carl Emil Sea-
shore. Psychological Review, Monograph Supplements, March, 1905.
Contents: Perimetry of the Localization of Sound, by Daniel Stark,
45 pp.; Periodicity and Progressive Change in Continuous Mental
Work, by C. E. Seashore and Grace Helen Kent, 56 pp.; A Case of
Vision Acquired in Adult-Life, by J. Burt Miner. 16 pp.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE University of California has issued the following announcement
regarding its publications in philosophy : " The University of California
Publications in Philosophy are planned to contain constructive and crit-
ical investigations in the whole field of Philosophy, including its several
departments of Psychology, Observational, Experimental, and Rational;
Logic and the Theory of Knowledge; Metaphysics; Ethics; the Philos-
ophy of Religion; the History of Philosophy; Political Philosophy and
the Philosophy of History; and Cosmology, or the Philosophy of Nature.
They will consist of writings by the Staff of the Department of Philos-
ophy, by its graduates, by its actual students, or by others whom the De-
partment may invite, and will be under the editorial supervision of the
head of the Department, Professor G. H. Howison. The first volume,
under special editorship, has just appeared. It is in the form of a
Festschrift, dedicated to Professor Howison on the occasion of his seven-
tieth birthday, and contains papers by twelve graduates of the Depart-
ment, on various philosophical problems. The second volume is now in
progress and will be published in separate numbers. The first number will
consist of two essays by Professor Howison, on " The Place of Philosophy
in the Field of Knowledge," and will be principally concerned with a sys-
tematic inquiry into the Conceptions Fundamental to Philosophy and into
its Methods. The numbers will appear at irregular intervals, and each
volume, when complete, will contain approximately 300 pages. The sub-
scription price is $2.00 per volume."
IN accordance with the tutorial system adopted by Princeton Uni-
versity, perceptors with the grade of assistant professor have been ap-
pointed in the department of philosophy and psychology as follows: Pro-
fessor R. B. Johnson of Miami University, Dr. Adam Leroy Jones of
Columbia University, Professor W. T. Marvin of Western Reserve Uni-
versity, Dr. Wilmon H. Sheldon of Columbia University, and Dr. E. G.
Spaulding of the College of the City of New York.
THE seventieth birthday of Professor Caesar Lombroso will be cele-
brated in connection with the Sixth International Congress of Criminol-
ogy, which meets at Turin next year.
DR. E. B. HOLT has been advanced to the position of assistant pro-
fessor of psychology at Harvard University.
DR. J. CARLTON BELL has been appointed instructor in experimental
psychology in Wellesley College.
' VOL. II. No. 13. JUNE 22, 1905
THE PERSONAL AND THE FACTIONAL IN THE LIFE OF
SOCIETY
LONG ago Plato drew an analogy of the soul or self, the human
individual, to society, and so too Aristotle, though not to so-
ciety, but more broadly to all nature, and the one analogy or the
other has had a good deal of fascination, not to say intellectual satis-
faction, for thinking men ever since. Yet, so far as I am aware,
at least one of the implications of the idea has never been fully
stated or appraised. Moreover in my opinion this is much to be
wondered at, since a strong case for personality or individuality
is involved and since also some real light is thrown upon certain
problems that time and again have perplexed the minds of men and
that at the present time, of course in modern dress, are of absorbing
interest. To these matters, then, I would now ask attention, namely,
to the case for personality implied in the analogy and with regard
to the problems just now said to be illuminated, especially to a sug-
gestion bearing on the solution of the issues now under so much dis-
cussion between the pragmatists and their many assailants.
But before entering upon these special undertakings let me say
that the time-honored analogy itself has, and most properly should
have, the freedom of the city of logic. Of course other than logical
approval of it might be cited. Biology and sociology and psychol-
ogy might be called in to give testimony, and out of the past, the
more recent past, Leibnitz with his lex analogice or, for that matter,
with the general import of his monadology, might be appealed to.
But without tarrying for support from these quarters, highly respect-
able though they are, I make a simple, yet certainly timely and
with apologies for so much emotion soul-satisfying reference to
the logic in the case. Thus, in these enlightened days, to say nothing
of Plato's time or Aristotle's, how can the true part of anything
ever dare not to have an analogy, even a 'one-to-one correspondence'
to the whole in which it is comprised ? And this being, as in due
time will appear, quite as important how can any whole ever have
parts without having also, actually or potentially, parts within
337
338
parts? In fact, given any divided whole, the division, however far
it may be carried, will always involve at least these three typical
factors: (1) the individual as the part still undivided, though at the
same time necessarily inwardly alive with the self-same differential
operation to which it has owed its origin; (2) the group-part or
class, which for the convenience of the adjective form may be known
also as the faction and which was important especially to Plato in
his analogy of the individual to a class-divided society; and (3)
the all-inclusive whole. And among these factors in all possible
ways, that is, even between individual and individual, or individual
and group, or group and group, as well as between individual and
whole, an analogy in terms of all the various elements of the original
differential operation will persist; such, almost truistically, is the
logical condition of division or differentiation.
The analogy, however, must itself share in the differentiation; it
must have as many various forms as it finds expressions. Although
in every case the relation must be one of analogy, it can never be of
the same order or degree. That of the individual to the group or
faction, for example, must be qualitatively distinct from all others,
say from that of the individual either to another individual or to the
all-inclusive whole. Not even the much used and very commonly
abused distinction between small and large writings can adequately
represent the differentiation here in question, for consider how vari-
ous, internally as well as externally, are the terms among which the
analogies maintain. Thus, factional differences are bound to be
sharper or wider, they are inevitably more deeply set and more
exclusive of each other than individual differences, and in conse-
quence the faction is, not, indeed, absolutely, but characteristically
special or particularistic. Because of its intermediate position be-
tween the individual and the whole it is, so to speak, only one among
many instead of being, as in the cases of the two extremes, many in
one. It conspicuously appropriates a particular character, and while
not excluding any of the other characters that are incident to its
own production, it includes these on the whole only in a negative
way, in the way in which opposition includes what it opposes, or
action the reaction it always implies, or in general any different
thing, the thing or things from which it is different. The extremes,
however, as was said, are each 'many in one.' The individual, being
still only potentially divided and being, as it were, the latest resi-
dence of the differential operation, is always, in some measure, di-
rectly and positively active with all the factors of the operation, and
this in spite of the special restraints of any particular class-affilia-
tion, and the whole is macrocosmic with reference to the microcosmic
individual, but is, at the same time, qualitatively distinct. "Whatever
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 339
a merely formal logic might say, real logic requires that at most
macrocosm and microcosm are only metaphors of each other. Even
their difference of size would be quite enough to distinguish them at
least as sharply as the same difference distinguished imperial Rome
from her prototype the Greek city-state. Can the whole and the
part be one or many or many in one, can they be real or alive or con-
scious, can they be personal, can they be anything whatsoever in
qualitatively the same way? Men have often seemed to think so,
but without any warrant whatsoever. The faction, then, the indi-
vidual and the whole are qualitatively different expressions of the
elements of the operation that has made them, and their relations,
although always dependent on analogy, must be equally various.
But now to leave these questions of logic and to turn directly to
the first of the two special interests of this paper, namely, to the case
for personality, perhaps no idea will be more immediately useful
than that of what is often styled the unity of experience. The unity
of experience is neither more nor less than the totality of human
relations. It is the experience-whole comprising all the phases of
human nature, which is to say, all the actual and possible relations
of man to nature in general, or all the manifold states and activities,
stages and events of human life. Human nature is analyzable in an
indefinite number of different ways; it is, to illustrate, physical,
mental and spiritual, or more elaborately it is athletic, industrial,
political, intellectual, moral, esthetic and religious, and in its social
life has developed institutions answering to these different phases
of itself ; it is, again, lawful and lawless, young and old, conservative
and radical, sympathetic and selfish; but, whatever the mode of
analysis, the unity of experience embraces all the elements, aspects
or relations that the analysis reveals. In a word, in the language of
the simple logic indicated above, the unity of experience is only the
all-inclusive whole out of which has sprung the differential opera-
tion that has made human society and human history, that has given
rise to the social class or faction and the individual person.
The person, then, as the real individual, as the part that is still
undivided, that in itself is quick with the differential operation, is
thus the living, integral exponent of the unity of experience. In
him every phase or part of what is possible in human experience
moves with some power. He is religious, political, industrial; or
spiritual, intellectual and physical; or good and bad, conservative
and radical, all in one. Hence the familiar idea of the universality
of any side of human nature, of the political side, for example, or
the religious or the physiological. Personally all individuals are all
things in one.
But the story of personality hardly ends here. Before any
340 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
appraisal of what has so far been said can be properly made atten-
tion must be turned to the social class or faction. If the person in
his nature is general or all-inclusive with reference to the unity of
experience, the factional life is special, particular or partial; it is
one-sided and outwardly exclusive. Sociologically as well as logic-
ally factional differences are, as has been said, wider and sharper than
individual or personal differences. Personally all men are born
equal; not so factionally. Personally all men are free, socially ap-
proachable, liberal in thought and act ; not so factionally. Personally
all are the same unity or whole ; not so factionally. Judged from its
classes, society is even a hot-bed of specialism, its classes always
tending to become castes, and of hostility, its differences inducing
open conflict.
Whence, to emphasize at once a most important conclusion, the
typical relation of the person to the class is not, as so often said or
implied, that of the particular to the general; instead it is that of
the general to the particular, of the whole to the part. Only, to say
no more than this would be a serious mistake, for at least in two
ways this statement must be modified. Doubtless the required modi-
fications are directly consequent upon the nature and origin of the
relation, but, nevertheless, they need to be carefully remarked. Thus,
logically and sociologically, factional differences are not merely wider
and deeper ; also they imply higher development. Factional life may
be special, but through the strength that union gives and the power
that springs from repetition or imitation, it attains to a high degree
of skill and insight. Again, factional life, like that of corporations,
lacks soul ; it tends to become formal and mechanical and in the sense
that this indicates, it is static. Between individual and class there
is a difference very like that between impulse and habit or organic
life and mere physical process, or, say, between human nature in
terms of its life-principle, of its distinctly dynamic character, and
in terms of its establishments or institutions. Accordingly, the rela-
tion of the person to the class is indeed that of the whole to the part,
but of the whole in a state that is relatively undeveloped to the part,
more or less highly developed, and of the whole in the form of a
living functional activity, the differential operation of the unity of
experience, to the part in the form of an institution.
From all this it appears also that the labor involved in the main-
tenance and development of human life is divided between the person
and the social classes in some such way as follows. The class life
stands for analysis and special development and establishment;
personal life, for synthesis and vitality. The factional life of the
class is specialistic and reaps for human nature all the familiar
advantages of specialism; the personal life is general or universal
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 341
and saves human nature from the disruption and the stagnation to
which specialism always tends. And while so to define the differ-
ence between person and class or to regard the relation of the two in
the way suggested, even with the qualifications that were promptly
added, may involve some abstraction and so some limitation of the
view, nevertheless, the view is as real and as significant at least as
the actual conditions upon which it rests. Even though persons
may be differentiated from each other in an indefinite number of
ways, no two being personal, materially, in the same way, still the
relation of whole to part, subject again to the distinctions of devel-
opment and of dynamic or static character, remains significantly a
typical relation of the person to the class.
And, if this be the typical relation, then not only is the story of
the person seen to be inseparable from that of the class, but also
there is clearly a real place in social life for the person. Factional
life lacks completeness and vitality, and personality, the living, in-
tegral expression of the unity of experience, supplies these defects.
True, a conflict of classes or factions may always be counted on,
since the unity of the total life, which, of course, includes the classes,
will prevent their ever being indifferent to each other, and this con-
flict will make for both completeness and vitality, but negatively,
indirectly, always as if from outside. Only through the person can
vitality and completeness be secured positively and directly and
immediately.
The person, furthermore, because of his particular class-affiliation,
what with the attainment in the way of skill and insight which this
imparts, is always under the constraint, not merely of overcoming
the specialism, but also of applying its special training to all sides of
his nature. Out of the depth and the breadth of his own personal
character he must ever react against the narrowness and the factional
ritual, and taking this ritual or professional technique to be valid
mediately rather than immediately, in spirit rather than in letter,
must ever seek to translate its factional experience to all parts of
his life. Only so can he be true both to his special classification and
to his personal wholeness.
But is such translation possible ? On its possibility the case for
personality here in question must finally depend. Logically there
can be but one answer to this question, and that an affirmative one,
since analogy, the condition of translation, must be universal among
the parts of any unity as well as between any part and the whole.
No two parts, it is true, can be literal, prosaic reproductions of each
other, but metaphors of each other all parts are bound to be, so that
any acquired power of thought or action, however special, may and
must have meaning for the whole life of the person. Accordingly,
342 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
with the acquired freedom of any part the metaphors relating part
to part may, if not must, flash to the remotest regions of the person 's
experience-world. The left hand with its unconsciously developed
power, of course usually unexercised, of mirror-writing, affords only
a very crude illustration of what this implies.
Psychology, it is conceded, has sometimes questioned the con-
clusions of logic in this matter. Quite properly, I doubt not, science
in general has never been in the habit of trusting the leading of
mere logic in the solution of its problems. But, be that as it may,
I think in this particular matter that no psychologist has ever suc-
ceeded in making out a negative case. A few have tried to do so,
have thought themselves for a time successful, and then in the end,
though not without some reservations, have gone over to the other
side. Probably their undertaking has been inspired by the ex-
travagant views sometimes entertained, whereas if it could be remem-
bered that no special training could be literally applicable beyond the
particular sphere of its development, the relation between part and
part of human nature being only analogous and metaphorical, and
that in any case special training when artificially experimentally?
acquired or when a result only of an imitated routine can hardly
count as conclusive evidence, the problem would lose character and
psychology would be ready even to accept the logical solution.
Logically, then, the translation is possible and psychologically, to
say the very least, there is no real evidence against its possibility.
As to the translation being positively natural or necessary as
well as possible, the suggestion may not be impertinent that what
is truly possible must be also real, that is to say, certain of fulfillment
or rather somewhere and somehow, in some manner and in some
degree, actually in expression. Even the possible has never been
made out of nothing. Moreover, the translation now in mind,
plainly can require nothing unnatural. It exacts only that all the
different elements of experience, whether as personally or as fac-
tionally manifested, shall be true to their origin. The obstacles to
translation, that seem obstacles because the analogies are meta-
phorical instead of literal, can be only apparent, because already
they have been overcome by the very differential operation that has
made person and faction.
And, the person being at once the living integral exponent of
the unity of experience and the member of some class or faction,
translation is his most characteristic activity. In it we see him a
leader by nature. In it lies his genius. Indeed it is that which
makes the great leader or the great genius, for through it the person
is ever showing himself transcendent of his class and training, of
the institutions that have brought him up. Factional life, further-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 343
more, develops through imitation and repetition, but personality
through invention. Invention, the application of special develop-
ment beyond the sphere of its attainment, is only the psychological
term for what sociologically is leadership. In the theory and in the
practice of art, morals, religion, politics, science and all the other
special sides of experience, the factional and the personal are to be
distinguished in this way; witness the familiar antitheses between
the typical and the vital in art-expression, the formally ideal and
the useful or pleasant in morality, the legal and the sovereign in
politics, the orthodox and the spirtually alive in religion, technical
skill and real insight in science, and so on. These antitheses are
all very important to the understanding of human experience, par-
ticularly of its history, but they are frequently seriously misapplied.
Really they show the personal ever asserting itself against the fac-
tional ; the living whole against the developed, established part, and
always in order that the whole, overcoming the exelusiveness of the
part, may translate and appropriate its acquirements. Individ-
ualism some have called the movement; others, liberation of the
spirit; and both accounts are correct, "When has individualism not
brought cosmopolitanism or universalism ? The individual being the
living integral expression of the unity of experience, how could in-
dividualism have any other result?
So there is a case for personality in Plato's or Aristotle's analogy
of the part to the group-divided whole. The person has in social
evolution a role that is as distinct as it is necessary and as real as
the mere difference between part and whole. As at once a corrector
of partiality and a translator and distributor of special development,
he holds a place of honor that can not be assailed.
It would be interesting now to consider in some detail the value
of personality, as so conceived, to history and to sociology, and to
show in particular how the person can be real and vitally individual
and yet be at the same time party to the life of an organic society.
Perhaps no more serious difficulty has confronted the organic theory
than just this of finding a place for a genuine personality. And,
apart from history and sociology, may not the use here made of the
distinction between part and whole, group and individual, have its
interesting application to psychological doctrine, especially to such
a difference as that between perception and conception? But all
these subjects, however attractive, can receive only mention. This
paper is already unduly long and a second topic, namely, the sug-
gestion in the old analogy that throws light on the issues raised by
pragmatism, still remains to be examined.
Into the more serious intricacies of the problems of pragmatism
1 have no intention of going. I wish only to point out that in
344 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
dealing with any of those problems it must be important to dis-
tinguish carefully, as many certainly do not, between the personal
and the factional in experience. Candid recognition of this dis-
tinction with all that it involves would hardly clear up all the ob-
scure places, but it would, I feel sure, remove a good deal of the
obscurity and confusion that still prevail. Thus, for experience
in what I should call its factional, professional form, pragmatism
can not fail to seem quite inadequate. It makes experience rela-
tivistic, fluent, intangible. It lacks seriousness almost to frivolity.
It has no true sense of most ordinary proprieties of logic and meta-
physics. But professional experience with its many familiar con-
ceits, for example, of art for art's sake, science for science's sake,
religion a sacred trust, business on strictly business principles, logic
and ethics both normative sciences, and so on, is not all that there is
to experience. Professional experience, always institutional in
character and accordingly always presuming upon both formal and
material objectivity, demands something in the nature of an a priori
sanction ; involving as it does the formalism of factional life, and the
conservatism, too, as well as the formalism, it demands not only an
a priori but also an absolute, even an absolute with all the virtues,
not to add all the vices of brute self -identity ; it can, in short, regard
reality only as the reality of the institution, though it may get so
far as to reduce the institution epistemologically to a transcendental
form and metaphysically to a thing-in-itself, or some equivalent
thereof. But, once more, experience neither begins nor ends with
its factional, professional manifestations, important as these are.
The personal has always to be reckoned with, too, and the person,
as if the king who can do no wrong, being legally or institutionally
supreme and being therefore free from any implicit, unquestioning
respect for the mere majesty of the a priori or the sacred preroga-
tives in the self-identity of the absolute, makes demands of his own,
and these pragmatism has tried to satisfy.
Wherefore, in all fairness, both pragmatism and intuitionalism
if this be the best single name for the assailant of pragmatism,
are relative ; the former to experience as personal, the latter to experi-
ence as factional; and recognition of this common relativity should
be of some help towards their reconciliation. Only let no one waste
any of his fine sentiments over the peace here in prospect. Quite
reasonably one may still believe that their opposition is their real
peace, that they are equally necessary to a growing experience. In
theories of experience should not the conflict between the personal
and the factional be quite as strenuous and persistent as in the real
life to which the experience belongs? As for the real life, it may
not be unpardonable to say that its peace certainly is conflict.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 345
Moreover, for a final word, both pragmatism and intuitionalism
being relative and so only partial truths, it is plainly indiscreet for
the advocates of the latter to count on refuting the former by ex-
posing its one-sidedness, as some writers in spirit if not in letter seem
to be doing. In the realm of philosophical theory, as elsewhere,
people occupying crystal palaces should not throw boulders. There
is a case for pragmatism in just so far as there is a case for person-
ality, and in any event the case for pragmatism is just as strong as
that for its resentful antagonist. If certain people find themselves
quite unequal to the task of harmonizing the two gospels they would
do well to give up systematic philosophy altogether and turn liberally
eclectic.
The pragmatist is no regicide. He has not slain the absolute
absolutely. Some seem to judge him as if he had. But this he is :
a protestant who would exalt faith above formal reason; the real
spirit of absolutism above an hypostasized, self -identical reality;
life above its institutions; the personal above the factional and
professional,
ALFRED H. LLOYD.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
RECENT THEORIES OF GENIUS 1
rpHE literature on the subject of genius during the last two years
* presents two tendencies: negative, against the Lombrosian or
pathological school; positive, toward the explanation of genius as a
superb synthesis of normal functions. To this sublimation of normal
psychology may be added a trend toward the subliminal. Besides the
academic views there is a popular attempt to make genius a mani-
festation of the unconscious, a mystical flowering of a mysterious
secondary personality. It is unnecessary to recall the familiar con-
tentions of the Lombrosians regarding the man of genius as an
aberrant type. There is an obvious inconsistency on the part of
those anthropologists who give as characteristics of genius such
antithetical qualities as precocity and stupidity, heightened and
lowered sensibility, hypermnesia and amnesia, and thereby include
the most famous of men in the drag-net of degeneration. These
things are not to be considered as marks of alienation, but as signs
of the nervous instability of a rapidly changing species. Hence the
genius should be compared not with the lunatic or criminal, but
with the child. As President Stanley Hall has recently said:
1 Read before the American Psychological Association, Philadelphia, De-
cember 30, 1904.
346 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
"Geniuses are always the apotheosis of adolescence. At this age
all may be said to be normally geniuses, some in slight and some in
high degree, some for a fitting moment and some for life. Accord-
ing to the severe and minute criteria of the Lombroso school, perfect
sanity is a painfully limited, commonplace and stupid thing, which
very few of the great and good of the world have enjoyed. Like
every conception based on averages, it is lacking in all individual-
izing traits, and has lost sight of variation. More than almost any
other writer on abnormalities, this author lacks all appreciation of
adolescence, which always involves more or less psychic inebriation.
He fails to see that excess of normal vitality not only safely can, but
must, explore the beginning of many morbidities, both to know the
more varied and intense possibilities of human life and to evoke the
sanifying correctives. ' ' 2
Over against the degenerative theory there has recently been put
the physiological. This considers genius a superior faculty, but
always in exclusive and perfect relations with the physiological con-
ditions of the organism in general, and of the nervous system in
particular. This hypothesis of Vincenzo Allara, 3 as yet presented
only in a tentative form, has the advantage of taking account of
pathological conditions, transitory or permanent, inherited or ac-
quired. Thus it correlates certain abnormalities with the processes
of inspiration, by claiming that the various stigmata irritate and
increase the functional activity of the brain cells. In criticism it
may be allowed that ubi irritatio, ibi affluxus, yet to make genius a
higher faculty, entirely physiological, is as extreme as the explana-
tory statement that all intellection, from imbecility to normal think-
ing, consists of emanations or secretions of the nerve-cells, Allara 's
purely physiological theory, with latent references to hypothetical
neurons, has its deficiencies. It is, nevertheless, to' be hoped that
he will work out those distinctions, for which exact words are lack-
ing in English, between 'genials' and 'genioids' (geniali, genioidi).
An insistence on these terms would lead to the avoidance of the Lom-
brosian confusion, and many that are now put in the hall of fame
might better be placed elsewhere.
The most effective criticism of the last edition of the 'Man of
Genius' is made by Professor Nazzari in his extended work 'Le
Moderne Teorie del Genio.' Passing by that obvious question-beg-
ging statement that sane men of genius have unperceived defects,
Lombroso is attacked in his persistent contention that the nature of
genius is necessarily epileptoid, since the latest investigations show
that the epileptic attack with consciousness is similar to the creative
1 ' Adolescence,' I., 320-1, New York, 1904.
3 ' Sulla quistione del genio,' Arch. f. syst. Phil, X., 2, 1904.
act of genius. Venturi upholds this view by suggesting that epi-
lepsy acts as a safety valve ; but Nazzari claims that there is here a
failure to distinguish between two kinds of degeneration, that of
body, and that of mind. Even if there be degeneration of certain
organs, there need not follow the involution of the entire organism.
Allowing that a morbid state may actually indicate progression, may
be a sign of disintegration preparatory to a higher evolution, it is held
more generally true that the impulse to inspiration comes from cer-
tain favoring organic dispositions consisting generally of the excita-
tion of the cortical centers through increased nutrition following on
the greater flow of blood.
Further modifications of Lombroso's views are to be seen in his
followers outside of Italy. Nisbet once held to the close analogies
between genius and insanity, such as marked eccentricity and de-
rangement of the emotional basis. He now uses as synonyms for
madness such qualifying terms as nerve disease, nerve disorder, un-
soundness. But it is in Germany that the most sensible reaction is
to be perceived. Nordau is modifying his identification of epilepsy
with inspiration, of genius with degeneration, while Moebius in his
* Ueber das pathologische bei Goethe ' contends that the man of genius
is a production of evolution, not of degeneration. The latter adds
that the vigor of genius, compared with that of the ordinary man, has
a tinge of madness, yet this does not interfere with marvelous produc-
tions. A morbid interpretation of this statement is guarded against
by Flechsig's explanation, that when artists become insane they lose
their creative power, and that their great capacity for attention is in
marked contrast with the rapid mental exhaustion of the unsound.
So far these views appear merely a contradiction of Carlyle 's saying
regarding the infinite capacity for taking pains, or, put into modern
terms, that mere industriousness does not make captains of industry.
While accepting Flechsig's conclusion that the brain of the
genius is distinguished by greater excitability, greater richness of
organization, Nazzari adds that there is no inheritance of cerebro-
anatomical structure, but only transmission of vague tendencies and
predispositions which 'perhaps have their base in a certain func-
tional orientation of the nerve-cells.' As betraying the figurative
inconsistency of this passage, it is elsewhere implied that this
'orientation' is inherited, for the pathological factor is said to act
as a dissolvent in the progeny of genius. This is likewise an im-
plicit contradiction of Nisbet 's principle, that genius tends to reap-
pear in families, a view which a compatriot of Nazzari has also ques-
tioned. Professor Renda, in his 'Destiny of Dynasties,' 4 has shown
that the endowment of unusual mental force in the founder of a
4 ' II Destine delle Dinastie, 1'Eredita Morbosa nella Storia,' Torino, 1904.
348 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
family tends to disturb and disrupt the organism of his descendents.
Applying Galton's law, under Pearson's formula, it is well-nigh
proved that exceptional talent is dissipated in the pedigree with
the rapidity of a geometrical progression.
Turning from these psychopathic interpretations to the more
positive theories of genius, Nazzari inclines to an objective stand-
ard. In place of Renda's criterion of exceptionality he puts ob-
jective excellence; in place of Nisbet's contention, that genius is a
mere sport or variation, betraying lack of adaptation to environ-
ment, he holds that environment is an actual stimulus; not an
obstacle, but a coefficient to ability. Accepting Professor Baldwin's
principle, that the genius, in contrast with the eccentric, awakens
admiration because of the extraordinary sanity of his social judg-
ment, 5 it is shown that this is because he has overcome the obstruc-
tions of environment, has struggled successfully against that natural
selection which suffocates the inferior. In connection with the
dictum that the manifestations of genius are incomprehensible with-
out the reaction of a vast social sympathy, we may put the views of
Professor Royce on the conditions of mental initiative. In treating of
the higher scale of mental existence he says there is 'a constant
tendency to the appearance of variations of individual conduct whose
precise details are not predetermined by heredity, and yet are not
easily to be explained merely in terms of docility. ' e In confirmation
of this current opinion may be put the statement of Professor Strat-
ton, that genius 'does not produce isolated or unprecedented work,
but comes as a culmination of much partially successful striving
on the part of others working in the same line.' 7
We are now approaching the prevalent opinion that genius is
only the ego in its higher form, a form of mentality approaching a
collective consciousness. As a French authority has recently ex-
pressed it, genius is no abnormality, but a difference of degree and
not of kind. An organizing intelligence, it coordinates a mass of
observed facts apparently contradictory. For example, optimism
may be irreconcilable with facts, pessimism with reason, yet genius
harmonizes all by the higher principles of reason. The creative
fancy is thus identical with genius in scientific knowledge, in forming
rational hypotheses, in artistic concepts. Genius is no incompre-
hensible wonder, but the ego in its higher forms. 8 Thus to make
genius a form of mentality approaching a collective consciousness
1 ' The Story of the Mind,' p. 226.
9 ' Outlines of Psychology,' p. 305, New York, 1903.
' ' Psychology and Culture,' p. 225, New York, 1903.
8 Gabriel S^ailles, ' Das kiinstlerische Genie,' tr. by M. Borst, Leipzig, 1904.
Cf. Arch. f. Gesamte Psy., III., 4, p. 211.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 349
is to follow the suggestion of Joly, of some twenty years ago, that
the man of genius is for the life of his country and epoch that which
the brain is to the complex organism, coordinating everything, dis-
ciplining and subordinating forces, and directing all things toward
a single end, while recognizing, nevertheless, his nourishment from
the infinitely minute labors and actions of the organism which he
animates. 9 This theory of genius, as Spiller has recently noticed,
is largely a convenient social convention, since it enables historians
to summarize the work of a period in simple way. Spiller, never-
theless, practically returns to Joly's starting-point by claiming that
personal capacity mainly depends on the desire and ability to ab-
sorb and elaborate the accumulated intellectual treasures of the
environment. 10
The representatives of what might be called the social-contract
or the storehouse theory have made the problem so very clear, as
to lead one to suspect that it is not solved. Is genius no incompre-
hensible wonder? If it is an infinite capacity for taking pains, is
this due to physical nerve force, or psychic vitality? If to the
infinite capacity be added originality, whence came this unknown
X, so lacking in other personal equations? These are some of the
questions asked; the answers to them are legion. The capacity, the
vitality,, the originality are variously attributed to unconscious
cerebration, as with Carpenter; to unconscious psychic activity, as
with von Hartmann; to a subliminal consciousness, as with Myers.
It might seem useless to discuss these survivals of exploded notions,
except for one thing; although the given symptoms appear mystical,
the attempted explanation may be rational. The characteristics of
the act of inspiration are impulsiveness, intermittence and uncon-
sciousness; but the mechanical, subconscious characteristics are here
no more mysterious than in the normal psychology of association,
attention, and other primitive phenomena. Taking the normalizing
of function as the clue out of the mystic maze, one may make bold
to enter the dim borderland of the psychic researcher. The late
Frederick Myers, chief explorer of twilight psychology, postulated
for genius a subliminal self. In his 'Human Personality,' 11 there is
little attempt to explain the problem in comprehensible terms of
association, attention and memory. Instead, an inspiration of
genius is defined as a subliminal uprush, an emergence into ordi-
nary consciousness of ideas matured below the surface. An Ameri-
can representative of this mythological school, the author of 'The
Laws of Psychic Phenomena,' turns the subliminal self into a sub-
' Psychologic des Grands Hommes,' p. 274, Paris, 1883.
"'The Mind of Man,' p. 417, London, 1902.
u Or ' The Survival of Bodily Death/ London, 1903.
350 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
jective self, which, as related to the ordinary, objective, every-day
self, is marked by a faultless memory, perfect inductive reasoning
and inconceivably rapid mentation. 12 These books are cited in in-
dication of a popular tendency to misuse the subconscious, turning
it, so to speak, into a psychological waste-basket into which are
thrown the residual phenomena of hypnotism, automatism, inspira-
tional speaking and genius itself. Such procedure arises from a
confusion between the unconscious and the subconscious. Taking
the latter in the sense of the marginal or what may better be desig-
nated the minimal consciousness, there is offered a legitimate in-
strument for the investigation of genius. Thus it has been said
that thought always has its foundation in the subconscious, but in
a subconscious ancillary to the conscious. The base of the sub-
conscious is larger, its comprehension more rapid; lengthy processes
are apprehended in the consciousness without running through the
intermediate series of judgments leading to the conclusion. In
genius there is an abbreviated reasoning, a progressive condensa-
tion of thought, originating in intuition. Yet the last stage is an
irreducible minimum, the peculiar modus operandi of the human
mind. 13 Nazzari is here safe because merely suggestive. Else-
where he is too dogmatic, and describes the operations of genius
as if he had seen something take place in a transparent skull. The
process of reasoning, he declares, appears in an instant in the mind
of genius as a vague possibility, without becoming fully conscious.
Later, when criticism and judgment succeed inspiration, the will
intervenes and fills up the lacunae of the psychic series.
To hypostatize the subconscious is dangerous; to create a
separate entity is fatal to the abiding unity of the self. Yet to
study the subconscious in the genius as a mode of the mind's func-
tioning appears to open the most promising line of investigation.
Some fresh method is demanded because the results of the recent
theories of genius are so largely negative. But before suggesting
that method it is necessary to summarize conclusions. (1) The
pathological school makes genius a neurosis of an epileptoid nature;
to it genius and insanity are but different phases of a morbid
susceptibility. But, as Hirsh 14 has said, genius resembles insanity
only as gold might be said to resemble brass; in genius there is no
necessary lack of balance in the cerebro-spinal system. (2) The
physiological school says that the great masters are great workers,
and that genius is a higher faculty depending upon a given phys-
ical endowment. But, as Professor Jastrow 15 has pointed out, we
12 Hudson, ' The Law of Mental Medicine,' New York, 1903.
13 Nazzari, op. cit., p. 137.
"'Genie u. Eutartung,' 1894.
15 'The Status of the Subconscious,' Am. Jour, of Psy., Vol. XII.; Art.
' Genius,' Baldwin's ' Diet, of Phil, and Psy.,' New York, 1901.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 351
are not acquainted with the neural substrate, and there are certain
mysteries of endowment not open to introspective analysis. (3)
The social school makes the great man the essence of the spirit of
the times, the intensification of the Zeitgeist. Statically, he may
be considered the index of the progress of society; dynamically, an
initiator of change, a perturbation which masks evolution. But
here, objects Professor James, the causes of production of great
men lie in a sphere wholly inaccessible to the social philosopher.
He must simply accept geniuses as data, just as Darwin accepts his
spontaneous variations. 16 (4) The subliminal school, conceiving
an extra, subterranean personality, claims that below the normal
ego there appears another psychic series with its own memory,
imagination, sensibility. Against this view, Professor Fullerton 17
holds that, although there may be a degree of consciousness when
the mind contains certain systems of knowledge, which it is uncon-
scious of possessing when in its ordinary state, yet such a conscious-
ness is not an inner light, not a peculiar, supernormal activity.
The various theories of genius apparently lead to negation. It
would seem that only a genius can comprehend a genius in soul and
body, and that we must wait to infinity for the lines of psycho-
physical parallelism to intersect. But meanwhile it may be possible
to apprehend some of the given phenomena, perhaps as normal
psychoses in attenuated forms, or as neuroses in higher manifesta-
tions. The latest investigations on the borders of the minimal con-
sciousness are here of considerable promise. Thus Professor Strat-
ton, 18 in his chapter on the evidence for unconscious ideas, has sum-
marized actual experiments which discount psychopathic vagaries or
subliminal imaginings. Referring to those masses of ideas which
disappear and reappear on the threshold of consciousness, he says
that the natural history of the mind need not confine itself to those
occurrences which a trained introspection can report, since experi-
mental results show us that such a view cramps the facts. One or
two of these results may now be tentatively applied to an alternative
explanation of genius. Taking, for example, the evidence from ex-
periments in the discrimination of the minimum audibile of the
tuning-fork, we might say that the absolute threshold of the ordinary
man is not the discriminative threshold of the genius. Or from the
effect of unseen shadows on the Miiller-Lyer figure it might be in-
ferred that the artist sees what is hidden to the man in the street.
Instead, then, of attributing auditory and visual hyperesthesias of
16 ' The Will to Believe,' p. 225.
"'A System of Metaphysics,' Chap. XXX. 'The Subconscious,' Mind,
New York, 1904.
18 ' Experimental Psychology and Culture,' New York, 1903.
352 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
great men to neuropathic or psychopathic causes, it would be better,
to say that they surpass only through a higher development of
healthy, normal functions. Therefore, if experimental psychology
has shown that it is now possible to perceive what were not long since
imperceptible mental events, it is fair to conclude that further brain
processes or psychic facts may be discovered which will put much of
our evidence as to genius in a new light.
I. "WOODBRIDGE RlLEY.
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
DISCUSSION
MR. JOHNSTON'S REVIEW OF 'AN ANALYSIS OF
ELEMENTARY PSYCHIC PROCESS'
T HAVE read with as much care as I am capable of the criticisms
-* of Mr. Johnston in his review of my article on 'An Analysis
of Elementary Psychic Process' in the May 11 number of this
JOURNAL, yet I am not quite sure that his meaning is clear to me,
or that the points on which he differs are correctly apprehended.
I make this statement because I am loath to believe that any one
acquainted with current psychological literature is so naive as to
think that the cognitive character of our elementary psychoses is
an established fact, or that it is heresy to 'suggest a point of view
as to the nature of feeling' that seems to contravene the Lange-
James theory of emotion. And yet if I undestend correctly the
critic is led to criticize just because the article disputes, on evidence,
the adequacy of the intellectualistic account of the earliest forms
of conscious life, and by implication points out as Mr. Johnston
thinks a relation between feeling and certain physiological changes
which 'reverses' that stated to exist by Lange and James. I
confess I would be very well satisfied to be mistaken on both counts,
for such criticism not only lacks novelty, but it is not pertinent to
say that one is on the other side of disputed questions.
Beyond these general lines of criticism, Mr. Johnston's com-
ments which all point to the necessity of a cognitive view of con-
sciousnessseem plausible because (1) he ignores one of the main
indeed the main position of the paper; and (2) misunderstands
the rest in essential respects. "With regard to (1) I should like
to refer to the data presented on pp. 174 f., and the interpretation
on pp. 193 f. My point in these places is that perception, even of
illumination as distinct from form, is not the most elementary ex-
perience of which we are conscious. There is something else which
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 353
can not be accurately described in terms of cognition just because
it is not experienced as the qualification of an externally determined
spatial world. This I have called feeling. As I use it, feeling is a
descriptive term for a definite class of experiences which I have
grouped together in one section, and, for the purposes of the dis-
cussion, there should be no need for misunderstanding what it con-
notes. The choice of the term for this end seems justified by current
usage ; it is at any rate adequate ad hoc. If we get away from words
and theories to facts, what I deny is that you can remain true to
experience and describe these feelings in terms of 'content.' They
are mental experiences which, not being 'contents,' entirely escape
the notice of our hard and fast structural psychologists.
Turning to (2), I may notice, to begin with, the assimilation of
'feelings' and 'intents' which is due to the critic maintaining his own
not my point of view. It is a little surprising that so near to
the origin of the 'Principles of Psychology' we should meet with
such an obvious instance of the 'psychologist's fallacy.' Of course,
from that point of view, if feelings are intents, and intents nothing
but a particular class of contents, then feelings must be contents
and consequently cognitions. But this is altogether too simple.
Whatever may be the view of others, I have never identified feelings
and intention. Intention, for me, is a function; it is a characteristic
of a process whether of feeling or of cognition as process (cf. pp.
189, 190). So much at any rate is clear from the paper; but on this
and other points raised in this discussion I shall hope to have some-
thing to say when I have had time to collect experimental material.
Mr. Johnston remarks that the reversal of the relation between
feeling process and the involved physiological changes as stated in
the Lange- James theory 'suggests that feeling is not itself connected
in any way with sensation,' and leaves feeling to stand for 'simple
vagueness.' As to the latter, I have said enough above concerning
the character of feeling, and as to the former, I am not to be held
responsible for the inferences of my readers when they fly in the
face of what I have stated elsewhere in the paper. I have, at any
rate, 'suggested' something as to the relation between feeling and
sensation on p. 205.
Further, I do not use the term 'suggestion,' as my critic says,
in the sense of ' associational element,' nor is his account of the
function of suggestion, which he describes as 'entering in,' accurate.
Association and suggestion are contrasted on the ground that the
former involves an ideational element that is controlling ante rem,
while in the latter this is not the case (pp. 191, 192). It is, as I
said, the 'non-rational character' of the perceptual process that is
designated by the term suggestion (p. 192). And so far from 'en-
354 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tering in,' I stated explicitly, on the same page, that 'conscious
processes develop their own suggestions.' I am also credited with
deriving suggestions 'from' the 'complication of. sense-data,' al-
though I took pains to say that 'the mechanism of suggestion lies
outside the limits of our inquiry,' and in the summary, from which
Mr. Johnston quotes, where I say 'with the complication of sense-
data, etc.' (p. 206), only a temporal relation is stated. With these
corrections I still fail to see how it is possible to accurately report
the earliest stages of the experiences under consideration as con-
tents of consciousness.
In conclusion I wish to express my appreciation of Mr. Johnston's
services in calling special attention to a paper which, while it
deals with quite a limited field of inquiry, has in it, for me at
any rate, the points of starting of many others, and I can very well
understand that if it has not 'established' anything the fates for-
bid we should be so near intellectual bankruptcy as that it may
serve a higher purpose in being the center, for a few minds, of an
intellectual ferment.
ARTHUR ERNEST DAVIES.
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Philosophy as Scientia Scientiarum and a History of Classifications of
the Sciences. ROBERT FLINT. Edinburgh and London, Wm. Black-
wood and Sons, 1904. Pp. x + 340.
Professor Flint is known widely as the author of two works on the
philosophy of history and of several .theological treatises distinctly con-
troversial in character. The merits and defects of the work before us
suggest these two lines of the author's activity. On the one hand, it
denotes exhaustive research, it contains within small compass an aston-
ishing amount of material, thoroughly reliable as to matters of fact, set
forth in perfect order and with a conciseness commendable as rare in
philosophical works. But, on the other hand, though dialectical skill is
not infrequently exhibited, it is shown rather in keenness of distinction
than in search for and criticism of basal presuppositions.
The value of the book, therefore, is largely historical; it is a work of
reference, and offers perhaps little of importance in the way of logical
or metaphysical discussion. But its appearance at this time has a sig-
nificance of which the author is well aware, though he is none too explicit
in the matter. It marks a new direction in the study and teaching of
philosophy.
Comte and Spencer were at one in their desire to turn men of philo-
sophic bent from certain studies that still are held to be the ' main prob-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 355
lems of philosophy,' such as the nature of mind, its relation to the body,
idealism and realism, knowledge and faith, and how we know we know.
It is not too much to say that the normal British and American mind
is heartily sick of certain of these problems as discussed. But neither
Comte nor Spencer effected his purpose. If such problems are now to
move from the center of the stage, they are not relegated to the lumber
room of philosophical history on the ground of senselessness or insolu-
bility; they will have a place merely coordinate with other problems, and
primarily because of a restatement involving at least their partial solution.
To say this, I take it, is the real significance of the first part of Professor
Flint's book. Philosophy is not merely scientia scientiarum, he says ; but,
as such, it has a splendid and indispensable duty. And the second part of
the book shows, as has never been shown before, the richness of material,
the accumulated stores on which he who would fulfil this duty may work.
' Philosophy, thus viewed, would afford the most important guidance
in education. It must be, indeed, the very basis of rational education in
science.' A philosophy of science ' would lay the very corner-stone of
the science of education' (pp. 21, 22). This conception, though not new
to theory, is alien to practice. But it is emphatically the thing for which
British philosophy has stood and which British and American philosophy
may soon in a measure effect. And I suppose that this book should be
viewed almost as a text-book for the study and teaching of philosophy
as the science of the principles of science.
The first sixty pages deal with the divisions of philosophy. We must
note here an inconsistency. On page 5 Flint says, 'philosophy, viewed
as scientia, scientiarum, is simply science which has attained to a knowl-
edge of the unity, self consistency, and harmony of the teachings of the
separate sciences.' But this task he makes later (pp. 29, 37) but one of
three problems with which philosophy as scientia, scientiarum is con-
cerned; it is the problem, viz., of positive philosophy; and there remain
the problems of critical philosophy, the ' investigation into the nature of
knowledge itself ' ; and the problem of metaphysical philosophy, ' a theory
of being and becoming.' These three constitute theoretical philosophy,
or scientia, scientiarum. Philosophy also includes the problem of prac-
tical philosophy, dealing with the worth of things ' in relation to one
another, and to the great final end of existence' (p. 37).
Positive is a term nicely fitted and historically limited to the Comtist
philosophy, and it is a misnomer for a philosophy that counts itself but
a division of philosophy. It were better to identify this first division of
theoretical philosophy with scientia scientiarum; particularly if we be-
lieve, as I think we must, that the distinctions drawn between it and
critical and ' metaphysical ' philosophy melt before examination. The
latent purpose of the author, I take it, is to clear the philosophical field
for a philosophy of science (theoretical philosophy), on the one hand, and
a philosophy of history (practical philosophy), on the other.
In the two hundred and seventy-three pages of large print that follow
on the history of classifications of the sciences every important classifica-
356 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tion yet made is offered, with explanations and brief criticisms. This is
the first task for philosophy as scientia scientiarum and as positive phi-
losophy (p. 67). The arrangement is simply chronological. It is char-
acteristic of the author that, while he finds something to condemn and to
commend in each system, he goes almost to an extreme in avoiding any
such comparison and synthesis of the several schemes as might possibly
lead to a warping of his presentation of their principles and details.
Seldom does he defend his criticisms; space no doubt forbids. We are
told that Kant or Hegel err, and there is an end.
It seems at first sight a real defect that no classification of these
classifications is appended, nor any positive system advanced as right,
in opposition to the systems every one of which is declared, in some im-
portant feature, to be wrong. But the educational purpose of the author
is only thereby made apparent. He is preparing a field for future cul-
ture, rather than gathering last season's crops.
Besides the better known classifications are included several Italian
systems, and the neglected work of Ampere. Most space is given, nat-
urally, to the systems of Plato (which, with that of Bain, he comes
nearest to approving), Aristotle, Bacon, Hobbes, Hegel, Comte, Spencer
and Pearson. In every case the student is put in the way of referring to
the original statement of the system. Least satisfactory is the account
of Hegel's system. Dr. Flint is content to leave the reader with the im-
pression that Hegel gained his system not from study of the world, but
from ' the bosom of a metaphysical philosophy.' Yet he affirms that ' to
ignore the truth and grandeur of his general theory of the correlation
and combination of the sciences, in critically gazing at such imperfec-
tions, must be pronounced almost as irrational as to doubt or deny the
brightness of the sun, because a telescopic examination shows it to be
mottled over with a number of dark spots.' Among the few cases where
Dr. Flint must be accused of ignoring the real meaning of the writer is
his criticism of Hobbes's description of ethics as conversant with men's
passions, and of the ' science of just and unjust ' as dealing with ' conse-
quences from speech in contracting.' The most cursory examination of
Hobbes's position should reveal that by ethics he here means a branch of
psychology (and etymology might defend the use) ; while by the science of
the just and unjust is meant something like the study of the formal side
of the laws that be, divorced from that study of the grounds and prin-
ciples of right and law that Hobbes terms politics. That is, instead of
dealing in a ' strange and arbitrary way ' with l moral science,' it is ob-
vious that he is not, as concerns these two sciences, dealing with moral
science at all.
The criticism Dr. Flint makes on Aristotle's conception of philosophy
raises a particularly interesting point. We may pass over his contention
that ' the distinction between productive and practical sciences ought not
to have the importance ' Aristotle assigns it, since ' every science is
both regulative of action and productive of results.' The second con-
tention that sciences should not be classified according to their ends,
since these lie beyond the sciences to which they belong, and are nothing
fixed, need not detain us ; though both points are eminently fertile. The
third ' defect ' noted is ' the want of a philosophy inclusive of, but superior
to the sciences.' Aristotle ' viewed philosophy as merely a whole, a sum
made up of the sciences as a unit is made up of its component fractions.
But this leaves no philosophy distinct from the sciences, and either able
or entitled to coordinate and organize them.' "What Aristotle called
First Philosophy and his commentators Metaphysics, does not perform
this function. Its object is being as being, and so it is the antecedent
and presupposition of all other sciences, . . . but it possesses a merely
abstract universality, and it has no power, nor is it any part of its business
to organize the various sciences into a system."
Certain features of this argument 
