,
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE JOURNAL or PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY
AND
SCIENTIFIC METHODS
EDITED BY
FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE
AND
WENDELL T. BUSH
VOLUME VI
JANTJABY-DECEMBEB, 1909
V 11 I""""
ft b J 1
, It*
NEW YORK
THE SCIENCE PRESS
1909
B
I
TL
PRESS OF
THI NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANT
LANCASTER. PA.
VOL. VI. No. 1. JANUABY 7, 1909.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
ALGEDONICS AND SENSATIONALISM
IT is seldom that I have experienced a stronger sense of the mental
grasp and intellectual integrity of the writer of a book than I
do as I close Titchener's "The Psychology of Feeling and Atten-
tion." To the author's keen insight, sound reasoning, and fine
judgment, are added high scientific aims and standards^ and a
vigorous attempt to free himself from scientific bias.
And yet I find myself convinced that in this last-mentioned effort
we note, in at least one important direction, a signal failure. In the
very beginning of the first lecture 1 we read that "when we speak
of the laws of attention, we have always in mind a distribution or
redistribution of the sense-processes that make up the consciousness
of the moment ; ' ' and here and throughout the whole of the book we
find a bias towards sensationalism which in my view often leads
the author to overlook certain data of the greatest importance to his
consideration, and thus to reach conclusions that are entirely un-
warranted : for it is all too true, as he says, 2 that ' ' if you are ' favor-
ably impressed' by a scientific theory, the facts that support the
theory crowd in upon you, while the outstanding facts, those that
can not connect with the trend of consciousness, fail to present them-
selves; you mean to be impartial, and the conditions of attention
make you one-sided. ' '
In relation to the matter to be treated in this article the author
indeed rejects the extreme sensationalistic position of Stumpf, to
which I shall especially refer below ; but in the end he returns to a
modified form of it, and the book is fairly saturated with sensa-
tionalistic phrases and arguments.
It is natural, of course, that our psychophysicists who necessarily
concern themselves so continuously with sense-phenomena should
show a tendency to underrate the significance of non-sensational ex-
perience ; but it appears to me that with them as a class sensational-
ism has become nothing less than an obsession. It is true that among
1 Op. cit., p. 7. Italics mine.
*0p. cit., p. 198.
6 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
them there are not wanting distinguished exceptions, men of deeper
insight who will not allow themselves to be blinded to the wealth of
facts which tell against the sensationalist position, men like Pro-
fessor R. S. Woodworth for instance, whose name, by the way, does
not appear in the "index of names" of authorities quoted by Pro-
fessor Titchener, a fact which is very significant in this connection.
Unless we assume this obsession in favor of sensationalism it is im-
possible to understand how able men like Titchener and Kiilpe and
Stumpf can overlook the patent fact that an enormously large pro-
portion of our pleasures and pains (or unpleasantnesses if you will)
are far removed from what we all agree to call sensations : that this
large proportion is made up largely, for instance, of emotional situa-
tions, which it can not be claimed are certainly sensational in their
total constitution; but especially of states that are involved with
the agreeable flow of thought, and with the disagreeableness attend-
ing the thwarted development of presentations in doubt and hesita-
tion.
The greatest difficulty in connection with the discussion before us
is the persistency with which the issues are clouded by the use of
the vague term "feeling," which, as Ward 3 long ago showed, is
employed with many distinct meanings. Titchener often substitutes
the word "affection" for feeling, but does not thus relieve us from
this difficulty; for he thinks of affection sensationally, yet the term
has a distinctly emotional connotation and is often made to refer
to emotions directly, 4 while, on the other hand, it much more often
is meant to refer to pleasure and pain. Certain pleasures, to be
sure, are spoken of as emotional, 5 and emotions are said to "arise
from the combination of feelings, ' ' 6 but as I indicate below 7 the sug-
gestion that emotions are pleasure-pain compounds is not war-
ranted by the evidence before us.
As I wish to avoid vagueness so far as possible, I may say at
once that I propose here to consider pleasure and pain as such, and
not ' ' feeling " or " affection. ' '
8 Confer my article " The Nature of Feeling," this JOURNAL, Vol. III., p. 29.
Top of p. 129.
6 P. 89, 1. 19 ff.
6 P. 129.
7 Confer my " Pain, Pleasure and ^Esthetics," pp. 90 ff. ; also my article
" Pleasure-Pain and Emotion," Psychological Review, January, 1894. The most
cogent objection to the classification of emotions as pleasure-pain phenomena,
or of pleasure-pain as emotional phenomena, lies in the fact that all our clearly
differentiated emotions (e. g,, surprise, fear, anger, etc.) are definable as forms
of instinct experiences which are the correspondents of instinct actions which
have to do with the advantage of the whole organism in the presence of special
environmental conditions; and there is no evidence whatever that pleasure or
pain can thus be described.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 7
To one who takes the broad view above spoken of, from which
the sensationalist is debarred by the "permanent set" of his mind
if we may borrow an engineering term it becomes apparent that we
must look for the nature of pleasure-pain in some psychic process
or situation more general than that which is correlated with periph-
eral stimulation; and this leads men like Ward and Stout to look
quite over the heads of the sensationalists. Thus Ward 8 tells me
"there is pleasure in proportion as a maximum of attention is
effectively exercised ; and pain in proportion as such effective atten-
tion is frustrated" : and Stout 9 that "the antithesis between pleasure
and pain is coincident with the antithesis between free and im-
peded progress to an end."
It is more than twenty years since Ward wrote his definition, and
there is no evidence that he has seen reason to withdraw or modify
it. It is more than sixteen years since I published in Mind certain
articles, which appeared later as chapters in my book "Pain-
Pleasure and JEsthetics," in which I attempted to show that in
search for the general process involved in algedonic phenomena we
must lay emphasis on efficiency in relation to pleasure, and ineffi-
ciency in relation to pain; and that pleasure-pain must thus be
looked upon as a general characteristic, or quality, 10 as I called it,
of all presentations. This truth that the general psychic processes
efficiency and inefficiency had essential relation to algedonic phe-
nomena is a doctrine at least older than Aristotle, and was recognized
in his time as corresponding in some manner with the physical
processes involved with bodily efficiency and inefficiency. So strong
has been the conviction that this relation is of importance that the
theory has held its own notwithstanding that, as commonly stated
with reference to the efficiency and inefficiency of the whole organ-
ism, it meets with serious difficulties which were not removed by
Spencer's attempt to restate it in developmental terms as having
reference to efficiency-inefficiency of the organism as a member of a
species. The persistence of this doctrine among thinkers of various
schools seemed to me a fact of importance, and it occurred to me that
the objections to it might be removed if it were stated in terms of
the efficiency and inefficiency of the neural elements whose activities
correspond with the presentations which appear pleasant and pain-
ful respectively. This suggestion led to the formulation of an
algedonic theory which I did not publish until I was firmly con-
vinced of its general correctness, and which I have been studying
carefully during the years since the publication of my book above
8 Encyclopedia Britannica, article on "Psychology," p. 71.
" Analytical Psychology," II., p. 270.
10 See below.
8 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
mentioned, gaining in the course of that study much corroboration
of the hypothesis, and seeing no reason to think it requires sub-
stantial modification. This, it is true, may be due to the fact that
I am "favorably impressed," to use Titchener's phrase, with an
hypothesis in which I have a personal interest: but I have done
my level best to avoid this bias, and no one can ask more of any
mortal.
In connection with this psychological hypothesis I attempted to
show that the neurological evidence in our possession did not con-
tradict, but rather favored, this view ; and the physiological bent of
the psychologists of the day led them to treat this, which was
really a side issue, as though it were all there was of any moment
in my discussions; while the sensational obsession under which
many of them labored prevented all appreciation of the general
psychological position defended, and blinded them to the significance
of the evidence presented in opposition to the sensational view.
This evidence I gave in detail both in my book above mentioned,
and in a special article entitled "Pleasure-Pain and Sensation," 11
which the editors of Mind 12 allowed to be described in their review
of periodicals as "a thoroughly searching and effective criticism of
the theory that pleasures and pains may be regarded as special
kinds of sensation coordinate with other kinds such as sensations of
color and sound." But to speak of this as an effective criticism
indicated altogether too sanguine a view, as is evidenced in the late
strong defense of the sensational theory of pleasure and pain by
no less eminent a psychologist than Stumpf. 13 This view of
Stumpf 's has been attacked lately by Professor Max Meyer; 14 and is
rejected by Titchener in the work here discussed, although he also
rejects my view, and substitutes one of a sensationalist type to which
I refer later.
The limits of this article will, of course, prevent me from repeat-
ing what has appeared in my articles and book above referred to;
but I may say that perhaps the most striking weakness of the
sensational doctrine of pleasure-pain is found in the fact that each
presentation that is clearly recognized as a sensation answers to a
receptivity of energy from the environment; and each differentia-
tion of sensation to a differential form of this energy. If pleasure
and pain, then, are sensations, we surely must look for some types
11 Philosophical Review, I., 6, November, 1892.
12 January, 1893, p. 136.
18 " Ueber Gef tihlsempfindungen " ; read before the Society for Experimental
Psychology at Wiirzburg in April, 1906, and since republished with slight
changes in the Zeitschrift fur Psychologic, XLIV., 1906, pp. 1 ff.
14 " The Nervous Correlate of Pleasantness and Unpleasantness," Psycholog-
ical Review, XV., 4 and 5.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 9
of environmental energy to correspond with them ; and such we do
not find.
I may be allowed space, perhaps, to note one other point, which
has come to my attention since my book was written, in relation to
the position of the hypothetical nerve terminals. We have what are
called "pain spots" on the skin: this is not questioned, but as I
have claimed it may be held that they are points which under usual
stimulative conditions are almost necessarily painfully qualified : this
view being favored by the late observation, to which Titchener calls
attention, 15 "that stimulation of a 'pain spot' gives qualitatively
different sensations, according to the intensity of the stimulus. At
a very low intensity we have itch ; then prick or sting ; and lastly, at
higher intensities, pain."
Passing over the fact, very remarkable if the sensational theory
is true, that no "pleasure spots" have been discovered, we must,
I suppose, if we maintain the radical sensationalist view, assume that
pain sense terminals similar to those ending in the "pain spots"
exist in the nerves, and muscles, and intestines, and in the teeth.
Now we find that nature grants us sense terminals only so far as
they serve the organism by bringing into existence instinctive reac-
tions which lead to advantageous or protective results. The sensa-
tionalist, then, may claim that the "pain spot" sense terminals are
placed on the surface of the skin to bring into existence the in-
stinctive reactions determining withdrawal from dangerous stimula-
tion ; although it may be noted that this advantage would be equally
well gained if qualitative painfulness led to the same result. But
what shall we say of intestinal pains, and sciatica pains? Do they
induce instinctive reactions of the organism which lead to protection
of the disordered parts or of the organism? And what shall we
say of the tooth-nerve pains? We may assume, I suppose, if we
choose, that there are pain terminals in the teeth: but if so it is
evident that they can not be placed there for organic service. For if
they exist they do not come into action until the tooth is so far injured
by decay as to be beyond repair by the natural man. What is more,
they do not give rise to any instinctive reactions looking to the pro-
tection of, or advantage of, the organism as a whole, or of the tooth
part. In fact, the natural man is merely led by the pain to extract
the aching tooth, an action which involves clear intelligence and is
not instinctive; and which, furthermore, is of disadvantage to the
organism, as the loss of the tooth tends to impair the man's digestion.
The reader may think that we have already said enough con-
cerning this radical sensational theory, especially as Titchener, to
whose work we here especially refer, joins us in rejecting it; so we
" P. 90.
10 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
may turn to the consideration of the grounds upon which Stump f
rejects the qualitative theory that I defend, in which rejection
Titchener agrees with Stumpf on the ground that it "received its
coup de grace at the hands of Kiilpe in 1893. " 16
The question is whether the facts which Kiilpe presents are
properly stated and interpreted; and whether they suffice to over-
balance the evidence in favor of the qualitative, or what Titchener
might call the attributive view.
And in this connection we find an exemplification of a mistaken
scientific procedure which may almost be called the experimental-
ist's fallacy which leads the investigator to abandon a theory
without hesitation provided he discovers a single fact which seems
to contradict it; and this without even asking whether any large
number of facts are explained by the theory. If the latter is the
case he surely is not warranted in claiming that his contradictory
observations necessarily give the coup de grace to the theory; but
should be led to ask whether he thoroughly comprehends the theory,
or whether he has correctly interpreted the facts which appear to
be opposed to it.
It appears to me that if Stumpf consistently carried out the
principle upon which he acts in waiving aside, on the basis of
Kiilpe 's opposition, the qualitative or attributive view of pleasure
and pain, he would drop even more quickly his own sensational view,
if he could once grasp any small proportion of the evidence un-
favorable to it that has been presented. 17
We may now consider the two objections to the qualitative theory
of pleasure and pain which to Kiilpe and Stumpf and Titchener seem
sufficiently formidable to warrant the overlooking of all favorable
evidence. And I may say at once that the first of these difficulties
occurred to me after the writing of my book, and was interpreted
long before my attention was called to Kiilpe 's criticism. It has not
seemed to me important enough to make it the basis of any special
written discussion.
To put it in Titchener 's words, 18 "Kiilpe points out that affection
can not be an attribute of sensation of the same sort as the recog-
nized attributes, because it has attributes of its own. Sensations
show differences of intensity, quality, time, and (in some instances)
space; affection shows differences of intensity, quality, and time."
Now when I speak of the intensity or duration of a pain I am
dealing with pain as viewed in reflection, not with an experienced
19 P. 84.
17 He acknowledges in a foot-note to his Zeitschrift article that he has heard
of the existence of my book above mentioned, but has not read it.
"P. 84.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 11
pain. Apart from such reflective consideration I can not refer to
the intensity or the duration as an attribute of the pain. In such
consideration I may use the phrase degree of pain, instead of the
phrase intensity of pain, without any change of meaning whatever.
In exactly the same way I may look upon intensity in reflection,
and then may speak of its degrees. If, then, it is true that the
ascription of degrees to pain proves that pain can not be an attribute
of a presentation (sensational if you insist), then it would seem to
follow that the ascription of degrees to intensity proves that in-
tensity can not be an attribute of a presentation.
And the same may be said of duration. In the mood of reflection
we may speak of the duration of an intensity as well as of the dura-
tion of a pain; and if the ascription of duration to a pain proves
that pain is not an attribute of presentations, then the ascription of
duration to an intensity proves that intensity is not an attribute of
presentations.
Of Kiilpe's qualitative differences of pleasure and pain we need
not speak at length, for his meaning is not clear to me, nor ap-
parently to Titchener, who with his usual candor admits, 19 "I my-
self have never observed a qualitative differentiation of pleasantness-
unpleasantness, under experimental conditions. ' ' It may be well to
say, however, that in relation to this matter of quality I am not
confident that Titchener quite catches the meaning of the theory I
uphold. He seems to suggest that I look upon pleasure and pain as
qualities in the same sense that we speak of the difference between
the qualities of sensation which yield audition and sight, which are
the only qualities with which the sensationalist concerns himself.
But I use the term quality in a broader sense (the word character-
istic might almost take its place). I use it in much the same way
in which we often employ the term to apply to intensity ; 20 and under
Titchener 's phraseology I am not sure that I am not justified in
speaking of the theory, as I have once or twice above, as the attribu-
tive theory of pleasure and pain.
We may turn now to Kiilpe's second difficulty, 21 namely,
' ' that the annihilation of an attribute of sensation carries with it the
disappearance of the sensation; whereas a sensation may be non-
affective, indifferent, and still be far removed from disappearance. ' '
I may acknowledge at once that I have probably been led by the
common use of the word indifference to employ it carelessly, much
as Titchener himself does, for instance, on the top of page 69 ; and I
am ready to agree that certain of my statements may have led to a
*P. 161.
" Cf. my " Pain, Pleasure and Esthetics," p. 46.
* Op. tit., p. 85.
12 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
misunderstanding of my position in this regard. But it seems to me
that my conception of indifference ought to be sufficiently clear in
the fact that I speak of it as a point of transition; 22 and in the fact
that I have distinctly held that much that we ordinarily speak of
as indifference is merely a condition where pains and pleasures are
nicely balanced, and of such very low degree as not to be noticeable.
With this conception in view it seems to me that Kiilpe's second
difficulty disappears. It is perfectly true that a sensation does not
disappear because it becomes what we call ' ' indifferent ' ' ; but that
is because its pleasure has been reduced to a minimum, as when, per-
haps, it is about to give place to pain ; or because its pain has 1 been
reduced to a minimum, as when, perhaps, it is about to give place to
pleasure. Where the pleasure is of high degree the pleasure can
not suddenly disappear, unless the presentation to which the pleas-
ure attaches also disappears; and the same is true of pain of high
degree. In this respect, therefore, it is as true of the pleasure-pain
attribute as it is of the intensity attribute, that its annihilation car-
ries with it the disappearance of the presentation which it qualified.
We may turn now for a moment to Titchener's own theory, 23
which, with his usual caution, he does not claim to be more than
plausible.
"The affections," he says, "appear ... as mental processes of
the same general kind as sensations . . . that might, under favor-
able conditions, have developed into sensations, ' ' that are, as it were,
non-developed sensations. "Had mental development been carried
farther, pleasantness and unpleasantness might have become sensa-
tionsin all likelihood would have been differentiated, each of them,
into a large number of sensations." The function of pleasure is
to report "good" and that of pain to report "bad."
Here we have a theory sufficiently sensational to allow its author
to maintain his rank as a leader among the sensationalists. But let
us see to what it leads us. If development had not been checked
we would under this view have had not merely pleasure and pain,
but a pleasure, (3 pleasure, y pleasure, etc. ; and 8 pain, c pain, pain,
etc.: for surely a, (3, and y would all have reported "good"; and
8, e, and would all have reported "bad." And in such a high
state of development pleasure would surely be an attribute of a, ft, y,
etc.; and pain an attribute of 8, e, . And if in a higher state of
development pleasure and pain might thus have an attributive
nature, it is difficult to see why the author of this theory should so
obstinately oppose an hypothesis which grants them this same na-
ture, as they now exist in our supposedly undeveloped state.
22 Cf. Fouillee, " Psychologic des idees forces," p. 67.
33 Op. tit., pp. 291 ff. Italics mine.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 13
In closing I may say a word in relation to the attributive alge-
donic theory in its physiological aspect.
We have various degrees of activity in those parts of the nervous
system which concern us in considering consciousness. The recogni-
tion of these degrees of activity is clearly important to the develop-
ment of the conscious animal, and we should therefore expect them
to have psychic correspondents. Nor are we disappointed, for we
discover them in our appreciation of diverse degrees of intensity.
We have also diverse relations between the call for activity in
nerve parts due to stimulations, and the capacity to react ; this rela-
tion involving either neural efficiency or neural inefficiency. And
as the recognition of these differences of relation is also clearly im-
portant to the development of the conscious animal, we should expect
them also to have psychic correspondents.
Nor are we disappointed here; for, in my view, the discrimina-
tion of the relation of neural efficiency is given in consciousness as
pleasure, and the discrimination of the relation of neural inefficiency
is given in consciousness as pain. And these pleasures and pains
are general qualities or attributes of presentations, just as their
neural correspondents are general characteristics of neural activities.
Is it at all likely that neural relations so important to the per-
sistence of the animal involve no corresponding psychical dif-
ferentiations? I think not. And if this is true, what such psy-
chical differentiations other than pleasure and pain have the op-
ponents of the attributive algedonic theory to offer for our con-
sideration? HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL.
NEW YOBK CITT.
DISCUSSION
OBJECTS, DATA, AND EXISTENCES: A REPLY TO
PROFESSOR McGILVARY
I CAN not be otherwise than grateful to Professor McGilvary
for the pains he has taken in acquainting himself with my
logical analysis and in setting forth his results so clearly and suc-
cinctly. 1 Gratitude, if nothing else, would lead me to respond to
his friendly challenge.
I
I begin by quoting almost in toto one section of his criticism,
having inserted letters for convenience of subsequent reference to
portions involved in the discussion.
1 In his article entitled " The Chicago ' Idea ' and Idealism," in this
JOURNAL, Vol. V., p. 589.
14 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
"There is one further difficulty that I wish to lay before Pro-
fessor Dewey in connection with his new distinction between fact
and idea, (a) I suppose that most of us accept the other side of
the moon as a fact, on a par as fact with this side of it. . . . (&) This
fact, while as accepted fact it is on a parity with this side of the
moon, yet as experienced fat seems to differ considerably from it.
I can see the one; I can not see the other. . . . There is, after the
conclusion is reached that the moon has two hemispheres, a con-
siderable difference in our experience between the two hemispheres,
and this difference does not seem to budge however we may pry
upon it with changed meanings of terms. The realist, following the
ordinary usage, says that while there are two lunar hemispheres, only
one can be immediately experienced, and the other is accessible to
us only by means of idea. . . . What is pragmatism going to do
with this difference 1 If it ignores it, can it keep peace with science ?
... (c) Science makes a thoroughgoing distinction between ob-
servation and inference, between empirical facts and scientific con-
structions upon the basis of facts. . . . What we take to be a
satellite, 240,000 miles distant from the planetary earth, may after
all not prove to be what we think it is. But suppose that such a
change in scientific construction should ever take place? (d) All
is not lost from present scientific fact; there remains the fact that
there is a bright something occasionally in experience, growing from
slender crescent to full orb. . . . This fact may come to be in-
terpreted as anything you please, and get accepted as that thing;
but it will be there to be accepted somehow whenever any one con-
stituted like us opens his eyes and turns them in the right direction
at an opportune time. This kind of fact, and there are many of
them, forms the inexpugnable datum of thought. It is the givenest
of givens, datissimum datorum. . . . These data of the first order
are in the game, but not of it. They give to one lunar hemisphere
a primacy which no terrestrial thought-reorganization can give to the
other. Now a philosophy which keeps close to experience can not
well ignore this distinction between the two kinds of data."
Contradictions confront one in the subject-matter of this
passage the natural inference is that they have their source in my
position: Is this the case, or do they inhere in the ground taken
by my critic ? Let me first state the gravamen of the charge brought
against me, as briefly and as impartially as may be. I have held that
objects accepted at the conclusion of a judgment (the lunar
sphere, for instance) issue from a process of judging in which data
(brute observational facts) and hypothetical meanings (conceptual
ideata) are at once discriminated from and referred to each other;
and that they issue in such fashion that the finally accepted object
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 15
presents both a reorganization of the data through the "idea" and a
verification of the "idea" through the experimental processes by
which a meaning is taken up into the data. Mr. McGilvary holds
that this lands me in subjective idealism for it admits no "facts"
or "objects" except those into whose constitution "ideas" have
entered. It also puts me in conflict with scientific method for it
ignores "data of the first order" which remain the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever, so far as any "thought reconstruction" is con-
cerned. 2
II
My reply, in substance, is (1) that I have not ignored the exist-
ence of datissima datorum; that the assertion of their existence
antecedent to ideas as such is essential to my theory of the recon-
structive nature and work of the reflective process; (2) that my
critic confuses such data, wholly non-cognitional, non-logical in
character, with data which are in and of judgment, and hence dis-
tinctively logical in quality; (3) that he puts himself in conflict with
science in ascribing to data (of the second kind) a higher knowledge
value than belongs to the objects which are accepted as the conclu-
sions of judgment.
The following discussion, while involving the above propositions,
will follow, however, a different order. I shall try to show that in
the portions of the citation marked off by the letters (&), (c), and
(d), he has repeatedly transferred what holds good in one sort of
situation to another sort of situation, and that the difficulties he notes
flow not from my position, but from this interchange of propositions,
each sound in itself, but so distinctive in meaning and reference as
to negate the possibility of such transfer.
1. The lunar sphere (it is suggestive, as we shall see below, that
my critic sticks closely to "two hemispheres" rather than to one
sphere) is related as stated in (&) to the individual's act of recog-
nizing it in a twofold way. Just because the assertion in (a) is true,
viz., that the two hemispheres stand as accepted facts on a parity,
the individual in apprehending the single total fact can not be related
to the far and to the near sides in the same way. The statement
about the difference in the modes of experiencing the two sides is
thus congruous with the acceptance of the object in which a judg-
ment is concluded and it is congruous only with its acceptance.
An analysis of the way a fact is apprehended can not, by the nature
of the case, be made to yield a statement of the nature of that fact
"Mr. Nunn in his suggestive "Aims and Achievements of the Scientific
Method " has also criticized the view of hypothesis and its function set forth
in the " Contributions to Logical Theory " on substantially the same ground.
See sections 67 and 68.
16 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
which is incompatible with the nature whose method of apprehen*-
sion is under analysis. I come in the sequel to the question of why
I deny I am an idealist; but the gist of the matter lies right here.
All idealist epistemologies with which I am acquainted perform
exactly the self -contradictory act indicated in the last sentence.
There are two alternative ways of interpreting the statement of
my critic that "as an experienced fact" the other side of the moon
differs from this side, even though it be on a parity "as an accepted
fact." In one way of interpretation, the fact that "only one side
can be immediately experienced, and the other is accessible to us
only by means of idea, ' ' refers precisely to the ways in which the
different related elements in one complex fact are accessible to us.
The proposition has as its universe of discourse not the relative cog-
nitional status, or respective knowledge-values, of this side and the
other side of the moon, but the mode of our access to elements pos-
sessed of the same cognitional value. The other mode of interpreta-
tion concludes that because our mode of access is different, therefore
the elements to which we have access stand on a different footing. 3
2. Let us consider both of these alternatives in relation to Mr.
McGilvary's argument. If we take the first (which seems to me
perfectly sound) we may discriminate, with respect to the lunar
sphere, different relations of the two sides to our manner of appre-
hension ; and from the standpoint of the relation of the moon to our
cognizing organism distinguish the sensory quale of this side from
the ideal or suggested quale of the other side. "We may even, if we
wish to (but I wish nobody wished to), speak of the former qualities
as, in this relation, sensations ; the latter as ideas but, of course, if
we so name them the facts control the meaning of the names, not the
names the character of the facts. "Sensations" mean what Professor
McGilvary in an earlier article 4 well termed sensa, i. e., qualities of
an object in relation to our mode of apprehension. It is a disap-
pointment that Mr. McGilvary has not borne in mind in this article
what he so clearly pointed out before viz., "that the term sensation
is an omnibus term" (p. 458). If he had done so, he would have
realized that in pointing out a fifth passenger in an obscure corner
of the coach in which Mr. McGilvary had already discovered four
fellow-travelers, I was neither altering the "ordinary acceptation"
of the term (which of the four is the "ordinary," I wonder?) nor
yet denying the existence of the facts to which any one of the other
* The implication in the quoted passage that the fact as immediately ex-
perienced occupies a position cognitionally superior to the fact accepted after
judgment is somewhat startling in view of Mr. McGilvary's previous criticisms
of me, on the basis of attributing this notion to me. But of this " more anon."
4 This JOUENAL, Vol. IV., p. 457.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 17
four refers. But in any case, if Mr. McGilvary intended or accept8
this alternative interpretation, no inconsistency lies at my door. It
is true as an accepted fact of astronomy that the two sides of the
moon are on a parity ; and it is true as an accepted fact of psychology
(or whatever the universe of reference may be) that, given this
astronomical fact, the experience of apprehending it is related to its
two sides in different fashions.
If the other interpretation is accepted, then and then only, does
this side have a certain priority and supremacy over the other side ;
and only then can Professor McGilvary charge me with ignoring the
plain procedure of science. But if he intends and accepts this second
alternative, then he uses his analysis of our recognizing-experience
to discredit scientific knowledge the conclusion that the two sides
stand as hemispheres on a parity. In this case, it turns out to be he,
not I, who should be worried about "keeping peace with science"
for I do not think he will persuade the astronomer to accept a moon
which is fact on this side and idea on the other : green cheese possibly,
but "idea" never.
3. In the portion designated (c) a further confusion comes to
view. The difference between the two modes of cognitive access to
one fact appears now to be confused with a distinction lying within
the process of judging or coming to know, viz., that between "obser-
vation and inference," "empirical facts" and scientific constructions
upon them. Again two alternatives are possible. Either it is meant
that this distinction (with superiority resting on the side of "obser-
vation" and "empirical facts") holds during the process of judging
the real form of the moon, while, that is, we are still in search of an
' ' acceptable ' ' fact ; or it is meant that this quality of values persists
after the conclusion is reached even after the problem of its form is
solved ! If he means the former, he has no quarrel with me, for it is
precisely this antithetical relation of datum and ideatum which I
have made the peculiar differentia of judgment-in-process, as dis-
tinct from inconclusion. But if he means the latter, how shall he keep
peace with science ? For the characteristic of scientific knowledge is
that it finds its genuinely acceptable object in the conclusions of a
systematic process of inferential inquiry rather than in "observa-
tions" isolated from all inferential matter, or in "empirical facts"
set over against rationally organized and explained facts. When
doubt as to the objective character occurs or recurs, then, of course,
the antithesis recurs; and then the datum becomes the factual ele-
ment and the ideatum, the hypothetical element. But as long as the
conclusion remains unchallenged, so long the object is as the conclu-
sion describes it. Moreover, when there is doubt (and hence when
judgment is going on, not concluded) the factual superiority is only
18 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of the datum in that judgment over its hypothetically suggested in-
terpretation, not over the accepted facts of scientific conclusions as
such. For the entire process of re-coordinating the raw data rests
upon the acceptance of a whole system of other facts, not questioned
simultaneously, which are conclusions of other judgments in which
thought has intervened.
4. In the passage marked (d) the issue shifts to what seems to
me a more tenable position. Up to this point, my critic has assumed
the hemispherical quality of this side of the moon to be a given
"empirical fact" from which the hemisphericity of the other side is
an inference ! If we had any direct knowledge that this side of the
moon is a hemisphere, the "conclusion" that the other side is a
hemisphere might adorn an exposition of Kant's analytic judgments,
or enliven a treatise on "immediate inference," but it would not
illuminate the history of astronomy. Of course, the inference is that
the moon is a sphere, the hemi-sphere character of both sides being
involved in this conclusion. This obvious fact is indicated in Mr.
McGilvary's reference to the "bright something occasionally in
experience growing from slender crescent to full orb as the primary
datum. ' '
The substitution of this statement for the hemispherical character
of this side only strengthens, however (it may be truly replied) Mr.
McGilvary's argument, for here at last are indeed datissima
datorum. But how does this bear down on me? I have insisted
(much to my discredit among "objective idealists") that there are
non-logical antecedents for every specific reflective situation (and
that all reflective situations are specific) so that knowledge involving
thought is occasioned by non-reflective or alogical ("practical")
factors in an antecedent experience. 6 I ask for no better proof of
the hold of intellectualistic 6 epistemology upon current thought than
is afforded by the fact that the position that thought operates in all
judging processes (and hence is embodied in all judgment-conclu-
B I may remark in passing that some of the criticisms made against this
position from the side of the objective idealists would not have been made if
it had been seen that my position does not demand that the prior situation as
prior should be non-reflective per se, but only as calling out thought that it
does this in virtue of a clash or conflict which itself is wholly non-reflective,
no matter how reflective the situation in which it is found.
* Professor McGilvary incidentally questions the use of the term " rational-
ism " in my " later writings." I do not recall how extensive that use is, but
I plead guilty. Rationalism is too closely associated with " free thought," or
free criticism, on one hand, and with the antithesis to empiricism on the other,
to be conveniently used as a term to designate intellectualism as against prag-
matism: for pragmatism may be "rationalistic" in the first sense, while
empiricism may be sensational empiricism has been as intellectualistic as.
any rationalistic theory.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 19
sions) has seemed to so many critics to involve an idealistic theory
of the nature of existence. It would, if to exist and to be subject-
matter or result of cognition were equivalent terms. But the very
denial of intellectualism claims that to exist to exist even as
matter of "experience" is not to be identified with the status
of a cognized something, whether during judgment or as its con-
clusion. And this mode of existence furnishes me as well as Pro-
fessor McGilvary an impregnable fortress, a "givenest of givens. "
If to believe in it makes him a realist, then it also makes me one.
If there be a difference between us, it must be in the character
assigned the prior factor. What is the nature of what happens
"whenever one constituted like us opens his eyes and turns them in
the right direction" (italics mine), so that a crescent or an orb is
seen? I say that what happens has the nature of an act; that it
exists as an act. I have said that while the act may be cogni-five
(that is, exercise an influence upon further knowledge) it is not
itself properly called cognition. 7 What does Professor McGilvary
say?
If he says that it is a mode or content or object of knowledge,
qua knowledge, what relation does its content bear to the datum in
judgment? Is it identical with the former? Are the heavens and
the furniture of the earth which we see when we open our eyes and
turn our heads the same thing as those isolated, selected data of
observation which the astronomer accepts as given, and works upon
in figuring out the shape of the moon? Then is the rational or
objective idealist lying in wait to swallow up Professor McGilvary
by his simple method of pointing out the merely particular, merely
observational (i. e., sensible), merely fragmentary, chaotic, lawless
character of such data, and the necessity of conceptual (or thought)
relations to organize such brute trivialities into our significant world
of related objects. Or, on the other hand, does Professor McGilvary
mean that looking and seeing things is knowledge par excellence f that
T Aside from the question of fact, a dialectical difficulty should perhaps,
to avoid misapprenhension, be referred to. It may be said that I am assuming
that primary " data " are here known or may be known as acts, and hence
I have myself reduced them either to " data " undergoing interpretation or
else to accepted objects of judgment. This objection, so frequently made,
shows again the domination of the intellectualistic assumption. My position
is that the term "experience" denotes primarily a mode of existence; experi-
ence may exist as an act-of-a-certain-specific quality, and that does not have to
be reduplicated as knowledge in order to possess the character which it has.
As for the other objection frequently made, that this reference to an act is
pure individualism, I only want here to point out that it is the critic's assump-
tion, not mine, that an act such as seeing is something attached to or possessed
by an individual. As I see it, the individual is within, not without, the act,
and within it as only one of its factors.
20 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
it represents the cognitional function at its best ? Then how does he
keep peace with science? How does he avoid the conclusion that
scientific knowledge is a hoax, an intentional arbitrary perversion of
or declension from what we already know in a better, truer way?
But, on the other hand, if it be admitted that what occurs when
"one constituted as we are" uses his organs in accordance with their
own structure is not knowledge at all in any intellectual or scien-
tific sense of that term we are free to admit the primary existence
of something with respect to any and all thinking, and at the same
time free to admit that when the standpoint of knowledge as knowl-
edge is once taken, the conclusions of systematized inference have a
status superior to any other determinations.
This, I hope, at least answers the question of Professor Mc-
Gilvary as to what I mean when I say that I do not conceive my
position to be idealistic. I do not think it requires "thought" to see
and to hear any more than it does to digest; though I also think
that after thought has intervened such an action may be performed
better, more economically and effectively and also more chaotically
and wastefully to say nothing of its results having an infinitely
more precious value.
Ill
Professor McGilvary inquires whether I am not, in any case, an
idealist in the current sense of idealism a sense which he states as
follows: "the theory which regards all reality as embraced within
experiences or within experience. ' ' He adds, ' ' A clear unambiguous
answer by Professor Dewey to the question whether he is an idealist
in the current sense as defined above would, I am sure, make his
view much more intelligible." Ah, my dear questioner, I am
tempted to reply, there are certain prerequisite conditions for "a
clear and unambiguous answer ' ' : namely, that the question be clear
and unambiguous. What is meant by "embraced"? Is it to have
an existential meaning? that some thing called experience holds
physically or metaphysically other things in its embrace ? Then I do
not accept the theory. Or is its meaning methodological? that phi-
losophy, like science, proceeds intelligibly and fruitfully to verifiable
results only by taking experienced, not transcendental, things, and
by discussing them in the characters they empirically possess, not in
the characters which, according to some a priori method, they ought
to possess? In that case my answer might be affirmative, coupled
with the admission that I know shamefully little about ' ' all reality, ' '
since my empiricism is precisely that the only realities I do know
anything about or ever shall know anything about are just exper-
ienced realities for I do not suppose the phrase "all reality" was
a trap laid for me.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 21
Again, would not a "clear and unambiguous" definition of ex-
perience be both a boon in general and a prerequisite to a clear
and unambiguous answer to the question asked? In neither of the
two senses of experience which Mr. McGilvary expressly sets forth
(on page 595) can I answer his question affirmatively. In the sense
in which he uses the term on his next page (in the passages quoted)
but without defining it, my answer would probably be affirmative.
But in that case I am confused, for Professor McGilvary says that
view is realism. And a reply that made me out both realist and
idealist at the same time might not strike anybody as "clear and
unambiguous." But perhaps if Mr. McGilvary should make ex-
plicit the sense in which he uses the word "experienced" when he
talks, for example, about our experience of the moon as changing
from crescent to full orb, and should contrast that with his use of
"experience" in the instance of the perceived stone, he would dis-
cover a vital and pregnant meaning of experience which would
reveal that he and I as human beings are much alike in what we
mean by experience. And in that case I am quite willing to leave
it to my critic by what names he and I are to be labeled.
JOHN DEWEY.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Etudes d'histoire et de psychologic du mysticisme. HENRI DELACROIX.
Paris: Felix Alcan. 1908. Pp. 470.
This considerable contribution to our psychological knowledge of
religious life is the work of one known heretofore as an historian, the
author of an " Essay on Speculative Mysticism in Germany," who now
reveals himself as also a well-informed and acute psychologist.
His intention has not been to make a study of mysticism in general,
but merely of a well-defined group, namely, the Christian mystics, Ste.
Theresa, Mme. Guyon, Francis of Sales, John of the Cross, and Suzo.
He explains his choice by the remarks that these persons are creators who
have found a new form of life, and that there are extant documents
autobiographical and others which make possible the realization of his
purpose. This book deals, then, in essence, with the group of mystics
that is the subject of my two papers in the Revue Philosophique for 1902,
and of my article on the " State of Mystical Death " in the American
Journal of Psychology for 1903. But the reader will find in Delacroix's
volume a much more complete historical study of Christian mysticism
than any psychologist had so far attempted, and also a more detailed and
thorough treatment of its problems. This is too solid and deserving a
piece of work for me to subject it to the shabby treatment, deserved by too
22 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
many productions on similar subjects, of a critical review limited to the
very small space at my disposal. I shall, therefore, wait for more suitable
opportunities of dealing with those of his views which, to my mind, call
for discussion, and content myself here with such statements as may serve
to give some idea of the content of the book. I may, however, add that
my publications on mysticism show little substantial disagreement with
him.
The first three chapters (pp. 1-117) deal with Ste. Theresa: her life,
the development of her mystical states, her auditions, and her visions.
In the second of them he sets down three great periods, characteristic also,
with minor differences, of the development of every one of the mystics of
this group. They are: (1) A period marked by delightful experiences of
an ecstatic sort. The author describes it (p. 65) as "a discontinuous
possession of God in which moments of contemplation and of activity
alternate, and in which subsist the ordinary distinction between the divine
and the human. (2) A period bearing some analogy to the depression
stage of psychopathic persons; it is characterized by persistent diffused
pain and more or less frequent moments of " painful " or " negative
ecstasy." (3) The preceding experiences bring about, or coincide with,
"a radical and total transformation of the soul and of life by a contin-
uous divine possession, permanent and conscious." It is this stage Ste.
Theresa calls spiritual marriage.
In the same chapter is discussed the external influences which may
have determined the form and the sequence of her states. This problem
is taken up in a broader manner in a later chapter (" Experience, Systems,
and Tradition "), and the conclusion is reached that although one recog-
nizes in the formation and the development of the mystical life the influ-
ence of external directing ideas church doctrines, for instance which
keep the "expensive intuition" of our mystics from intolerable extrava-
gances, nevertheless one can bring back their experience neither "to the
suggestion of a personal system of a purely abstract construction formed
before the experience, nor to a tradition" (p. 363).
Mme. Guyon is then taken up in a similar manner: first, her life
(pp. 118-196) ; then the analysis of her mystical states and automatisms,
their several forms, their development, and their final outcome (pp. 197-
234). This chapter includes a careful and penetrating comparative an-
alysis of automatic and of voluntary activity, and an explanation of the
intelligent collaboration of the subconscious with the conscious activity
that leads to the establishment of the final, well-defined state common to
all the mystics of this group. The characteristics upon which the divine
origin of the mystical states rests, according to the mystics themselves,
are noted here as already in the case of Ste. Theresa.
Comparatively little space is devoted to St. Francis of Sales, John of
the Cross, and Suzo.
In chapter VIII. the author returns to Mme. Guyon, relates the great
dispute about Quietism in which Bossuet, Fenelon, and Mme. Guyon were
the chief actors. These interesting historical pages bring into clearness
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 23
the points of difference between the extraordinary Christianity of the
mystics and the common-sense Christianity represented by Bossuet.
The last chapter (pp. 365-426), entitled " The Mystical Experience,"
would provide one who could not read the whole book with a partial sum-
mary of the preceding analyses and generalizations, and with a discussion
of several of the deeper problems of Christian mysticism ; to wit, By what
psychological mechanism can these mystics identify their confused " intui-
tions " with the conception of God set forth by the church ? What is the
nature of the "mystical intuition"? What is the nature of mystical
passivity, and how does it contribute to the end sought by the mystic?
How are we to account for the systematic progression of the several
mystical states and for their outcome, described by the mystics as " the
permanent and continuous union of God with man " ?
The systematization of the mystical states is the point on which our
author places the greatest emphasis. In the preface he had already
declared that Catholic mysticism is " progressive and systematic." " It is
this idea of a progress that must be placed in the foreground because it is
the one least seen. Most psychologists have thought ecstasy to be the
state characteristic of Christian mysticism, and that when not in ecstasy
they found themselves in the condition common to all Christians. . . . But
that shows a failure to understand the originality of the great Christian
mystics; the intermittent and alternating ecstasy gives place to a contin-
uous and homogeneous condition. The transformation of the personality
achieved by them is accomplished only little by little, and takes them
through a series of states of which the humblest is ecstasy." This con-
tinuous and homogeneous condition of the Christian mystic who has
reached his goal is contrasted with the antecedent stage (pp. 67-68) :
" Whereas ecstasy [the experience characteristic of the earlier period]
momentarily suppresses life . . . and absorbs the whole mind in the con-
templation of the divine, immobilizing the body in catalepsy, paralysis,
and contracture, here [in the final period] the mental and bodily powers
are no longer suspended . . . the divine no longer destroys the conscious-
ness of the self and of the world, but, on the contrary, it gives itself
through them . . . the self is no longer anything else than divine activity."
In agreement with the overwhelming majority of psychologists, Dela-
croix believes that " the most sublime states of mysticism do not exceed
the power of nature; religious genius suffices to explain its grandeur, as
disease accounts for its weaknesses" (preface, p. xix).
JAMES H. LEUBA.
BBYN MAWB COLLEGE.
The Religious Teachers of Greece, being Gifford Lectures on Natural
Religion delivered at Aberdeen by JAMES ADAM. Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark. 1908. Pp. lv + 467.
Not the least interesting part of this book is the memoir of the author,
from the pen of his learned widow, which is prefixed to the lectures. We
gather there, in faithful detail, how Mr. Adam was the child of High-
24 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
land peasants, rising by dint of prizes and competitive examinations to
be tutor at Emmanuel College; and how, all through his laborious life,
he was upright, kindly, overworked, and typically academic. The only
distractions he allowed himself from a grammatical study of the classics
(since his love letters, full of Greek quotations, can hardly be called
distractions) were to take walking-tours, and to play with his children.
This unaffected picture of the devoted scholar prepares the reader for
his work, explains its limitations, and adds a certain charm to its sim-
plicity. For it is extraordinarily simple, in spite of the labor and learn-
ing involved in preparing it. The plan of the lectures is to repeat the
sayings, and expound the probable opinions, of Greek poets and phi-
losophers, from Homer to Plato, in so far as these opinions may be
assimilated to that type of religion to which the author and his audience
are accustomed. There is no thought of first inquiring what religion
essentially is, or what it ought to be; no effort to take an impartial view
of its varieties; no attempt to fall imaginatively into even those par-
ticular movements of the fancy which created Greek religion, or which
transformed it. We are not expected to perceive that these movements
expressed far more numerous ideal forces, and far richer passions, than
those which the word religion now stands for at Aberdeen. With what
naivete everything is measured by a provincial standard appears in the
phraseology, no less than in the scheme, of the book. Thus we read on
page 39, " Another not less unfavorable feature in Homer's conception of
the Deity." On page 61, " There is no more religious import in the
Homeric elysium than can be justly attributed to the epicurean heaven."
On page 188, " Where, then, are we to look for Anaximander's uncreated
Deity? ... It is probable, therefore, that Anaximander deified the
' Infinite.' " A jewel of innocence is the following, on page 27 : " It is a
trite but true saying that just as man, in the Old Testament, is made in
the image of God, so God, in Homer, is made in the image of man."
But the acme of denaturalization is reached when, more than once, the
term " the infinite " is applied to the Platonic ideas, and the term " the
finite" to the endless flux of phenomena. Here the vague rhetoric of
contemporary pantheism is allowed actually to invert the correct lan-
guage and the high sentiment of Plato.
There are compensations, however, for not possessing imaginative
sympathy with the point of view of the ancients, nor critical conscious-
ness of one's own point of view. The student will find in Mr. Adam's
pages a trustworthy collection of Notizen about the religious feelings of
the Greeks. He will find a candid interpretation of particular texts,
leaning to the safe, literal, conservative side, yet always keeping in view
the latest hypotheses of editors and theses-mongers. He will also find,
in some cases, an excellent sketch of a personage and his religious com-
plexion. Socrates, on his private, loyal, non-philosophical side, where
the extreme ideality of this thought gave way to the extreme homeliness
of his piety, is naturally a sympathetic subject to Mr. Adam; and I do
not remember to have read anywhere a more instructive and convincing
presentation of the barefoot, obdurate, unflinching Socrates, conscious of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 25
a divine mission, obedient to a mysterious voice, convinced that a man-
loving Providence rules the course of nature, and that nothing evil can
come to a good man, either in this world or in another.
G. SANTAYANA.
HABVABD UNIVERSITY.
The Gospel of Pain. THOMAS J. HARDY. London: George Bell & Sons.
1908.
This is one of the books which, by starting from a new place and not
foretelling the goal, try to conduct us back into orthodoxy unawares.
Mr. Hardy begins with a descriptive chapter on " The Present Unrest,"
which concludes with the modern and, I think, decadent question,
" Whether life itself contains any indication that the struggle it involves
is worth while."
In the second chapter the author finds such an indication in the con-
duct of heroic persons who suffer. In them the spiritual life triumphs,
and if it triumphs, then the convictions in which it centers must be true.
One of these convictions is immortality, another is God and the possibility
of our union with him. We need this conviction in the present unrest.
Apart from it "men have no proper joy, and only succeed in a dull
acquiescence in duty or what they term ' fate,' or else in sating them-
selves with pleasure till they suffer in their turn."
In the third chapter, entitled " The Supreme Paradox," the words of
Jesus in his humiliation are quoted, " Be of good cheer, I have overcome
the world." This is the highest example of the triumph of the spiritual
life. It is higher than that of Socrates because Socrates in his triumph
did not reveal so much anguish. " Expressions which never broke the
silence of a Socrates only reveal how much fiercer was the conflict of
Jesus, and how much more complete and sublime his victory."
In the fourth chapter, on " The Transforming Life," it is shown how
much importance Jesus gave to material conditions and needs, in spite
of his ideality. The indubitable fact is pointed out that marvelous
transformations are wrought in whole families by a single member who
becomes imbued with the spirit of Jesus. " They are lifted above poverty
and suffering. They have their commonwealth in heaven. They have
realized the great secret that heaven and blessedness lie within them."
This is a short and wise chapter.
In the fifth chapter, on " The Spiritual Idiom," it is stated that we
should not let the logical difficulties, arising out of intellectual language,
get in the way of our communion with God. It is further stated that we
could hardly imagine a number of persons communing with God except
upon a basis of petition. It is also stated that " prayer is the solution of
the social problem."
The sixth chapter is called "The Problem and the Conflict." The
spiritual life gives rise to a "problem of evil," and that problem has to
be discussed, but without very definite results.
In the seventh chapter, called " The Guarantee of Triumph," we are
26 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
indubitably landed on the old ground. Christ is the guarantee. Christ
is divine and without sin. " There is one question which every one who
sincerely wishes to arrive at the truth about Jesus Christ is bound to
answer: Was he without sin? On our answer to this question turns not
only our attitude towards Christ, but, it is not too much to say, our
ultimate attitude towards life itself." Having saddled ourselves again
with this unnatural question, we find ourselves in other familiar and
inconsequent difficulties : " In what sense could a sinless person under-
stand sin? and, what value can the triumph of a divine person have for
mankind ? " The atoning sacrifice, the incarnation, the triune mystery,
and the other higher mathematics of a superfluous theology are brought
bravely forward as we approach the end of the book.
The last chapter is " The Home of the Soul." The home of the
soul is the church.
Nobody would suspect from the title or the early pages of the book
where it was going to land at the end. That is the only novel thing
about it.
There are, however, some beautifully written passages. We are
persuaded as we watch beside the beds of sufferers " that it is no ruthless
crushing of life that we see, but the release of all that is noblest and
permanent from what is temporary and obstructive. We feel that it is
our own blindness that is death; our own protest that is discord; and in
that silent room, saddened with the somber ritual of disease, we stand
face to face with immortality."
Mixed with such eloquence, we find sentences of this kind : " Saul of
Tarsus dipped his pen into the fountain of contemporary knowledge, and
clothed his interpretation of the cross in the garb of what was then
* modern thought.' " The book is as undiscriminating in art as it is in
morals and philosophy.
MAX EASTMAN.
COLUMBIA UNIVEBSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
KIVISTA FILOSOFICA. May, June, July, 1908. Un'equivalente
aprioristica delle metafisica (pp. 289-303) : S. TEDESCHI. - Meinong's
theory of objects, treated with qualified approval. La psicolo-gia delta
esperienza indifferenziata di James Ward (pp. 304-329) : A. LEVI. - Con-
tinues and concludes the account of Ward's psychological theories.
Bramanesimo , Buddismo e Cristianesimo (pp. 330-348) : A. TILGER. - Re-
ligion begins when man first speculates on the problem of evil and of
the finite. Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Christianity present a Hegelian
sequence: Brahmanism believes in the abstract and indefinite, Buddhism
in the concrete and empirical, Christianity in the union of the infinite
and the finite. Eduardo Zeller e la sua concezione storica (pp. 349-354) :
A. FAGGI. - Zeller never overcame the disposition, derived from his
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 27
Hegelian beginnings, to treat the history of philosophy as a process inde-
pendent of the general history of culture. Le idee morali nella dotrina di
un psicologo scandinavo (pp. 355-363) : L. M. BILLIA. - A laudation of the
moral philosophy of the Norwegian, Kristian Birch Reinchelward Aars.
II metodo delle matematiche e I'insegnamento elementare della logica (pp.
364-371) : P. F. NICOLI. - A protest against the exaltation of mathematics
as philosophical method in so far as the former is conceived as merely
deductive method. Mach o Hegel (pp. 372-380) : L. MIRANDA. - Mach, in
his theory that logical forms are only practical expedients without in-
trinsic value, has but restated Kant. Kant started from an arbitrary
position. The true position is that of Hegel. Bolletino bibliografico.
Notizie e pubblicazioni. Sommari delle riviste straniere. Libri ricevuti.
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQTJE. November, 1908. Le nouveau senti-
mentalisme esthetique (pp. 441476) : CH. LALO. - The theories based on
the conception of Einfuhlung are unclear, not adequate for the facts to
be explained, and do not rest on acceptable philosophical principles. La
philosophic des valeurs (pp. 477497) : J. SECOND. - An analysis of Pro-
fessor Miinsterberg's " Philosophic der Werte." L' antipathic : etude
psychologique (pp. 498-527) : TH. EIBOT. - A study of the teleology of
antipathy and the principal phases of its development. Le HI* congres
international de philosophic: H. DELACROIX. Analyses et comptes rendus:
A. Chide, La mobilisme moderne: FR. PAULHAN. E. Boirac, La psy-
chologic inconnue: S. JANKELEWITCH. Dugard, W. Emerson: sa vie et
son ceuvre : F. Roz. J. Fabre, La pensee moderne: de Luther a Leibnitz.
L. DAURIAC. Mary Williams, Six Essays on the Platonic Theory of
Knowledge: C. HUIT. Siegel, Herder als Philosoph: LALO. A. Bonucci,
La derogabilita del diritto naturale nella scholastica: G. L. DUPRAT.
Baumann, Julius. Der Wissensbegriff. Heidelberg: Carl Winter's Uni-
versitatsbuchhandlung. 1908. Pp. viii + 231. 3 M.
Leonard, William E. The Fragments of Empedocles. Translated into
English verse. Chicago : The Open Court Publishing Co. 1908. Pp.
viii + 92.
Pikler, Julius. Uber Theodor Lipps' Versuch einer Theorie des Willem.
Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Earth. 1908. Pp. viii + 50.
Pikler, Julius. Zwei Vortrdge uber dynamische Psychologie. Leipzig:
Johann Ambrosius Earth. 1908. Pp. 26.
Read, Carveth. The Metaphysics of Nature. Second edition, with
appendices. London: Adam and Charles Black. 1908. Pp. xiii +
372.
Spir, A. Moralitdt und Religion. Herausgegeben von Helene Claparede-
Spir. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Earth. 1909. Pp. vi + 390. 8 M.
Vial, Louis Charles Emile. Les erreurs de la science. Troisieme edition.
Paris: Louis Charles Emile Vial. 1908. Pp.449. 3.50 fr.
Watson, John. The Philosophy of Kant Explained. Glasgow: James
Maclehose & Sons. 1908. Pp. xi + 515. 8s. 6d. net.
28 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
NOTES AND NEWS
ACCORDING to announcement, the American Philosophical Association,
the American Psychological Association, and the Southern Society for
Philosophy and Psychology met in affiliation with the American Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Science in Baltimore, December 29-31, 1908.
The retiring presidents of the three societies read their addresses, Pro-
fessor Miinsterberg before the American Philosophical Association on
" The Problem of Beauty," Professor Stratton before the American Psy-
chological Association on " The Betterment of Rival Types of Explica-
tion," and Professor Sterrett before the Southern Society for Philosophy
and Psychology on " The Proper Affiliation of Psychology." The three
societies joined in a smoker at the Johns Hopkins's Club on the evening
of December 30. Officers for the ensuing year were elected as follows:
For the Philosophical Association President, Professor Hibben, of
Princeton "University; Vice-president, Professor Tufts, of the University
of Chicago; Secretary-treasurer, Professor Thilly, of Cornell University;
new members of the Executive Committee, Professor Bakewell, of Yale
University, and Professor Woodbridge, of Columbia University. For the
Psychological Association President, Professor Judd, of Yale Univer-
sity; Secretary -treasurer, Professor Pierce, of Smith College; new mem-
bers of the Executive Committee, Professor Sanford, of Clark University,
Professor Lindley, of the University of Indiana, and Professor Thorndike,
of Columbia University. (We regret to omit the names of the officers
for the Southern Society, but up to the time of going to press these have
not been received.) The sessions were well attended and marked by con-
siderable discussion. Further reports of the meetings may be expected in
subsequent numbers of this JOURNAL.
OF interest to students of pedagogy will be the " Enzyklopadisches
Handbuch der Erziehungskunde," published by Joseph Loos, with the
cooperation of more than a hundred 1 specialists, now completed by the ap-
pearance of the second volume (Vienna: Pischer's Wittwe und Sohn).
It contains 1,101 pages, with many illustrations and six separate supple-
ments. The contents cover the whole field of education. Some of the
articles are monographs on the subjects.
ACCORDING to the Nation, " to the definitive edition of the works of
Descartes, published under the auspices of the French minister of public
instruction by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, there has been added a
supplementary volume of correspondence (693 pages, L. Cerf)."
THE Eckardt publishing house, of Leipzig, has in press an edition of
selected works of Fichte, and an edition of selected works of Hegel is
in preparation. A similar edition of selections from Schelling has
already appeared.
MR. H. G. HARTMANN, who was appointed instructor in philosophy in
Acadia College, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, last October, has been advanced
to the grade of professor.
VOL. VI. No. 2. JANUARY 21, 1909.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE HIDDENNESS OF THE MIND
I HAVE for some time been interested in accounting for a
tendency among philosophers to assume that it is essentially
characteristic of a mind to be accessible only to itself. This proposi-
tion is rarely supported by evidence; it is commonly held to be
sufficient to call attention to it. I furnish here three instances of
what I mean, one taken from a philosophical classic, the others from
the writings of contemporaries:
Now it is impossible for me to form the smallest representation of a think-
ing being by any external experience, but I can do it through self-consciousness
only. Such objects, therefore, are nothing but a transference of my own con-
sciousness to other things, which thus, and thus only, can be represented as.
thinking beings. 1
The essence of a person is not what he is for another, but what he is for
himself. It is there that his principium individuationis is to be found in what
he is, when looked at from the inside. 1
That the mind of each human being forms a region inaccessible to all save
its possessor, is one of the commonplaces of reflection.*
These are formulations in behalf of epistemology, ethics, and
psychology of an almost universal presupposition. I believe this
presupposition, as ill-defined and unreasoned as it is universal, to be
the greatest present obstacle to the clear and conclusive definition of
mind. There can be no doubt of the propriety of distinguishing
"internal" and "external" views of the mind, and there can be no
doubt of the practical or other circumstantial importance of
emphasizing self-knowledge. But I do not believe that such dis-
tinction and emphasis lead properly to any generalization such as
those which I have quoted; nor do I believe that they contribute
fundamentally to the definition of mind. In justification of my
belief I propose to consider three topics: (1) the hiddenness of the
individual mind from general observation; (2) the mind's famil-
1 " Critique of Pure Reason," Max Mailer's translation, p. 282.
'Rashdall, "Personal Idealism," p. 383. Dr. Rashdall deplores the tend-
ency among Hegelians to overlook this important truth.
* Washburn, " The Animal Mind," p. 1.
29
30 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
iarity with itself; (3) the characteristic difference between the
mind within and the mind without. In the present paper I shall
confine myself to the first of these topics, and shall aim to be on the
whole constructive rather than critical. To this end I shall offer
positive evidence of the mind's hiddenness, while at the same time
guarding the evidence against misconception. It will appear, if the
analysis be correct, that in certain respects and under certain circum-
stances a mind can only with great difficulty be known by another
mind. It will also appear, however, that this does not imply the
absolute impossibility of knowing another mind, but virtually in-
volves the assignment of mind to that same open field of experience
wherein all other objects lie. The inaccessibility of mind may be
defined logically, or generalized empirically. In other words, it may
be contended on general principles that the individual mind, because
it contains its elements, must therefore exclude other minds from
these elements; or it may be contended that the content of an
individual mind does as a matter of experimental fact escape the
external observer. I shall examine these two contentions separately.
1. The exdusiveness of the individual mind logically defined. It
is essentially characteristic of content of mind, such as perceptions
and ideas, to belong to individual minds. My idea is mine ; and in
some sense, then, falls within my mind. But it would be unwise
hastily to conclude that it is therefore exclusively mine. It is clear
that my idea can not be alienated from my mind, without contradic-
tion. It must not be attributed to the not-my-mind which is the
other term of a disjunctive dichotomy. But it does not follow that
my idea may not also be your idea. There are many such cases.
Friends are essentially such as to belong to friends, and my friend is
veritably mine ; but he may without contradiction become yours also.
Similarly my home, my parents, my country, although in order to
be what they are they must be possessed by such as me, may without
logical difficulty be shared with you.
But I may seem to have overlooked a vital point. Although one
thing can be the object both of my idea and of yours, can my id#a
itself be also yours? Does not the whole being of my idea lie in its
relation to me? Doubtless Neptune may become my idea, and also
yours; but can my idea of Neptune ever become an idea of yours?
Now this clearly depends upon whether the determination of Nep-
tune which makes it my idea can itself submit to another determina-
tion of the same type. There is no a priori objection that would not
beg the very question under discussion. Here again cases from other
classes of objects are very common. The sum of three and three
may itself be added to three ; you may paint me in the act of paint-
ing my model; the general may fear the fear of his army. And,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 31
similarly, a thing's relation to me as my idea may enter into another
such relation to you and become your idea. It will doubtless remain
true that my idea simply, and your idea of my idea, will differ
through the accession of the last cognitive relationship ; and that in
this sense my idea can not be identical with your idea. But it is
impossible even to state this trivial proposition without granting
that you may know my idea, which is the point at issue.
The mere fact, then, that ideas are always included within some
mind, and thereby excluded from what is altogether not that mind,
contributes no evidence for the absolute privacy of mind. Any
group whatsoever is private, in the sense that what is in it can not
by definition be outside of it, nor what is outside of it in it. But
this does not prevent what is inside of it from being also inside of
something else, nor does it prevent the entire group from being
inside of another like group. Everything depends on the particular
nature of the groups in question. Generally speaking, groups may
be either intersecting or exclusive. Thus the tariff-reform group
intersects the republican party, and the high-protectionist group even
falls wholly within it, without any loss of identity. On the other
hand, coordinate geographical areas, such as North and South
America, lie wholly outside of one another. "Whether minds, then,
be intersecting or exclusive groups depends wholly on the special
properties of mind, and not at all on the general properties of the
group relation. And there can be no doubt of the ground for
classifying minds among intersecting rather than exclusive systems.
Indeed such a classification would seem to be necessarily implied in
the general conception of social intercourse. How, then, are we to
explain the widespread disposition to regard minds as exclusive?
In the first place, we readily extend to our minds the group rela-
tion which holds in the case of our bodies. There is a special sense
in which things are inside and outside of the mind, but it tends
naturally to be confused with the sense in which things are inside
and outside of the body. The tendency is partly a misuse of
schematic imagery, and partly a practical bias for the bodily aspect
of the body. Suffice it here to remark that the mutual exclusiveness
of our bodies is so highly emphasized that even the vaguest supposi-
tion that our minds are within our skins is sufficient to give rise to a
notion that they too are wholly outside one another. Such a sup-
position is generally admitted to be false, but it nevertheless lingers
on the scene, and not only falsifies the grouping of mind, but exag-
gerates the difficulty of knowing mind from the standpoint of gen-
eral observation. 4
4 1 shall return to this point in a later paper on " The Mind Within and the
Mind Without."
32 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
In the second place, various motives, methodological, religious,
and social, have so emphasized the difference between mind and
mind, or between the individual mind and the outer world, that this
difference tends to be transformed into a relation of exclusiveness.
Psychological introspection, when superficially interpreted, defines a
region set apart from nature and society. Religious introspection
heightens the difference between the inner life and the life of the
world. The problems of personal morality under complex social
conditions tend to heighten the difference between individual lives.
Such a proposition as "No one else can understand me" has only to
become familiar and practically intensified to be converted readily
into an absolute principle. Thus the difficulty of knowing certain
aspects of another mind tends to be mistaken for the impossibility
of the entrance of mind into mind. Proverbial difficulties easily
become logical impossibilities. To avoid gross confusion it is neces-
sary to examine the difficulties concretely and circumstantially; to
point out the conditions under which they arise, and the elements of
mind which they tend to obscure.
2. The empirical difficulty of knowing another mind's content.
Beyond question the content of an individual mind at any given time
may be successfully hidden from general observation. But this in
itself does not imply any general proposition to the effect that a
mind is essentially such as to be absolutely cut off from such observa-
tion. It may be that your inability to discover what I am imagining,
thinking about, or remembering, is only like the assessor's inability
to discover the amount of my property ; and no one has asserted that
property is essentially knowable only to its owner. Let us examine
the circumstances.
In the first place, it is evident that under favorable circumstances
you have no difficulty in following my mind. Where, for example,
we are engaged in such intercourse as involves a bodily dealing with
physical objects it is as easy as it is indispensable for each to know
what is in the mind of the other. The objects themselves here pro-
vide mutually accessible content in a manner that is unmistakable.
A clear case in point is the exchange of currency for merchandise;
but to illustrate the experience exhaustively would be to traverse
nine tenths of life. Such mutual apprehension of the physical things
which you and I have in mind is the condition of all intercourse
between us ; we could not shake hands without it. 5
6 It is customary to create a difficulty even here by persistently looking
for the content of mind within the periphery of the body instead of in the
environment where it properly belongs. I am reserving specific treatment of
this 1 misconception for my later paper on " The Mind Within and the Mind
Without."
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 33
There is another way in which you readily follow my mind,
namely, through my verbal report. We do not often sit down and
deliberately disclose our minds to one another; more commonly we
use language to the end that we may together think the same things.
But if you are a psychologist, or an interpreter of dreams, I may
"tell" you what is in my mind. Now it is frequently assumed by
the sophisticated that when I thus verbally reveal my mind you do
not "directly" know it. You are supposed directly to know only
my words. But I can not understand such a supposition, unless it
means simply that you know my mind only after and through hear-
ing my words. If it is necessary for you to take a book from the
shelf and turn over its pages before you can discover the date of
Kant's birth, or walk across the street before you can discover the
number of your neighbor's house, do you therefore not know these
things directly when you do know them? And if you must wait
until I tell you before you know whose image is in my mind, do you
therefore not know the image directly when you do know it ? If not,
then what do you know directly when the matter is concluded?
Surely not the word, which, having served its turn, receives no
further notice. It is not the word which is communicated except in
the wholly exceptional cases in which the word is not understood
and so does not fulfil its function. And it is certainly implied in all
of our subsequent action and intercourse relating to the image that
we have access to it jointly, just as we do to our money and our
lands ; that you know it now even as I know it.
It is important to labor under no misapprehension concerning the
general function of language. Language does not arise as the ex-
ternal manifestation of an internal idea, but as the means of fixing
and identifying abstract aspects of experience. If I wish to direct
your attention to the ring on my finger, it is sufficient for me to point
to it or hand it to you. In seeing me thus deal with the ring, you
know that it engages my attention, and there occurs a moment of
communication in which our minds unite on the object. The ring
figures in your mind even as it does in mine ; indeed the fact that the
ring does so figure in my mind will probably occur to you when it
does not to me. If, however, I wish to call your attention to the
yellowness of the ring, it will not do simply to handle it. The whole
object will not suffice as a means of identifying its element. Hence
the need of a system of symbols complex enough to keep pace with
the subtlety of discrimination. Now the important thing to bear in
mind is the fact that as a certain practical dealing with bodies con-
stitutes gross communication, so language constitutes refined com-
munication. There is no difference of objectivity or subjectivity.
34 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
In the one case as in the other mind is open to mind, making possible
a coalescence of content and the impinging of action on a common
object.
But let us now consider the circumstances which hide the content
of my mind from your observation. The most important general
fact is this : that your observation will be baffled just in so far as my
dealings with the content of my mind are not peripheral. Contrary
to a common philosophical opinion, my purpose, intention, or desire
is least likely to escape you. This element of my mind is revealed
even in my "molar" action, in the motions of my body as a whole.
Your apprehension of it is as sure and as indispensable to social rela-
tions as your apprehension of the physical objects that engage my
attention. The content of my purpose, that is, the realization pro-
posed, and my more or less consistent devotion to it, are in your full
view, whether you be a historian of character or a familiar com-
panion. It is not, then, the desiderative element in mind that escapes
observation, nor is it any such typical element, but all content in so
far as the mind 's dealings with it do not reach the visible exterior of
the body. But what is implied in this very statement?
In the first place, we imply that the content in question is such
as to be knowable by me if I can identify it. Commonly doubt
exists only as to which of several things, all plainly known to you,
is at the moment known to me. I may tell you, and when I do one
is selected and the others fall away. Or you may conjecture, and
if your conjecture be true you possess the content, but without being
sure of the relation to my mind.
But in the second place, and I here anticipate a charge of grave
omission, the relation of the content to my mind must be supposed to
be objectively and discoverably there, even when I do not acknowl-
edge it by a verbal report. It is impossible to formulate a case of
memory, for example, without affirming a connection between the
past event which contributes the content and the locally present mind
that is recalling it. If I am in fact here and now recollecting a
meeting with President Cleveland which took place at the White
House in 1894, a complex is defined the essential terms of which are
in your plain view. And the connection must be homogeneous with
the terms. The past event as it was must be engaged or dealt with
by me as I stand before you. In other words, the original perceptual
response must be continued into the present. But this is possible
only through the identity of the nervous system. The link of recol-
lection, connecting past and present, lies in a retrospective function-
ing of my body which can be accounted for only by its history. And
this is as accessible as any natural or moral process. When you
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 35
know that I am looking at the moon, the salient facts are before you,
the focalized posture of my body and its organ of vision, the concen-
tration and consistency of my action, and, most important of all, the
moon. In the case of my recollection of President Cleveland the
facts are more complicated, and even in part inaccessible, but equally
with the facts just cited they are in the context of your possible
knowledge. They consist in such elements as my central attentive
process, certain persisting modifications of my cerebrum, my original
dealings, practical and neural, with President Cleveland, and Presi-
dent Cleveland himself. 8
For purposes of further illustration, consider the case of dis-
guised perception. I am watching you "out of the corner of my
eye, ' ' hoping to deceive you as to my real thoughts. If the strategy
is successful it proves that I can render equivocal the evidence you
commonly rely on. But does any one seriously suppose that the
direction of my thoughts is not discoverably there in the retinal and
nervous process responding to your body, and in my intention to
deceive ? Where my mind is the object to be known, I can embarrass
the observer because I can control the object. I can even make and
unmake my mind. As you seek to follow my thoughts, I may accel-
erate them or double on my tracks to throw you off the scent. But
I enjoy the same advantage over you if you are an assessor seeking
to know my property, and neither in the one case nor in the other is
it proved that the facts are not there for you to know as well as I.
Indeed the special qualifying conditions to which we are compelled
to refer when describing the hidden mind leave no doubt that the
difficulties in this case are essentially like the difficulties which
counter and thwart any cognitive enterprise. Some things are more
difficult to observe than others, and all things are difficult to observe
under certain circumstances. This is true of mind in no mysterious
or unique way.
I grant that there is much more to be said by way of clarifying
the issue. It is only just to admit not only that the mind may be
hidden from the observer, but also that it is in certain respects
peculiarly accessible to itself. This, of course, does not prove that
only I can know myself, or even that I can really know myself at all,
but may mean simply that certain data can be collected more con-
veniently by me than by anybody else. It is only just to admit also
that mind as observed introspectively differs characteristically from
mind as observed in nature and society. But this does not prove
that either is not directly known, or that either is not the real mind.
Every complex object presents its parts in a different order when
The seeming paradox of a present knowledge of past events I have dis-
cussed in a previous paper, this JOUBNAL, Vol. III., p. 617.
36 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
approached in different ways, but in the object as wholly known
these parts fit and supplement one another. These are considera-
tions to which I hope shortly to return.
RALPH BARTON PERRY.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
WHAT IS PERCEPTION? 1
IN criticizing my discussion of perception, two of my reviewers
have called attention to the fact that I have omitted anything
but the most casual mention of the dependence of perception on past
experience. This they consider to be a defect in the treatment, in
view of the fact that no present experience can be fully explained
without reference to the past. I refer to these criticisms for the
purpose of meeting them with the most explicit statement that in my
view perception should be discussed without bringing in, as has been
the custom, a mass of revived factors. I am prepared to undertake
the defense of the position that percepts do not contain revived
elements in any such fashion as appears in the conventional dis-
cussions.
A concrete illustration will make this antithesis perfectly clear.
In reading the familiar words of every-day language, we are con-
stantly recognizing that these words have a value and meaning for
our mental lives which can be explained only by reference to the
earlier contact which we have had with them. The earlier experi-
ences which I have attached to such a word as ' ' man, ' ' for example,
give that word a value for my consciousness which is totally dif-
ferent from the value which it would have for the consciousness of
a child who had not learned to read, or for the consciousness of a
foreigner unacquainted with our language. But when the psy-
chologist attempts to account for this present interpretation of the
word "man" in my consciousness by saying that there is a train of
revived elements brought forward from earlier experiences, he falls
into confusion. The important fact is that here and now my
consciousness is such as to give meaning and value to this word.
Quite apart from the history of the matter there is a present situa-
tion to be understood and explained, and it mixes matters badly to
talk about past experiences which are not now present when what is
supposed to be under discussion is the present experience and its im-
mediate characteristics.
Let us return to our concrete case and follow it through several
stages of its development. When the individual who is learning to
1 The first paper of this series appeared in Vol. V., p. 676, of this JOUBNAL.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
read is first brought into contact with the printed word "man,"
he is given at the same time the sensory impression of hearing which
comes from the pronunciation of the word by his instructor. The
auditory impression in this case is immediately used by the indi-
vidual who is learning the word as a guide for his own articulation.
He learns to react in such a way as to adjust himself to the audi-
tory sensations which he receives from his instructor's voice and his
own. Through the sound he thus comes to attach to the visual im-
pression a form of reaction which would not have been suggested by
the visual impression itself. As soon as the habit of articulation is
once established, however, the sound impression loses its importance
and may be dropped altogether from a description of the individual's
experience with the printed word. The elements of the situation as
they appear in the case of the developed reader are a visual im-
pression followed by a reaction of articulation, and in some cases the
articulation is reduced to the lowest possible terms. We have
evidence in abundance that the reactions of articulation are of great
importance in explaining the present perception of a word even when
they are so reduced in intensity as to give rise to no sound whatsoever.
It would, however, be very far from the truth to contend that the
visual impression arouses first an auditory memory and then a
process of articulation. The auditory factor has served its purpose
and disappeared altogether, leaving behind its consequences, but no
remnant of itself as a concrete factor in the situation.
Another illustration which may be carefully examined is that of
continuous vision in the monocular field in spite of the blindspot.
Here, as those writers tell us who insist upon a formal explanation
of vision, certain factors of experience are actually added to the
stock of present sensory elements, so that the field of vision is filled
out by these added factors. Again I take the opportunity of
emphasizing very clearly the antithesis between such a position with
regard to vision in the blindspot and the position which I have
attempted to defend. The effect for visual perception is, indeed,
like that which would be secured by adding to consciousness certain
sensory factors which are demonstrably not present. But this effect
of continuous vision is no sound basis for the argument that the
method of attaining the effect is the particular one assumed. The
same effect may here, as in so many other cases, be produced by a
variety of different methods, and it has been my purpose to call at-
tention to a method which seems to me to find very much more in its
support than that which has been commonly accepted. I should say
that the interpretation of the visual field as continuous is not at all a
matter of adding content factors, but rather a matter of the use to
which the given content factors are put. In other words, without
38 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
developing any elaborate machinery of added factors, we may
explain continuous vision by saying that the sensory factors which
are given are all that are necessary to call out in consciousness the
.complete interpretation. Continuity does not exist as a matter of
sensation at all; one could add factors to all eternity and get no
continuity. It exists rather as a general result of the constant habit
of treating such factors of experience as are given in sensation in
terms of a larger recognition of their value and effect upon active
life. Every individual has learned by experience with the world
that the field of vision presented to the single eye is continuous, and
that it may be so treated. We never make any minute analysis of
each particular field of vision, but we go forward in every case with
the general mode of interpretation justified by experience. A closer
examination of the phenomena themselves will show that this state-
ment is defensible in all detail. Suppose an observer is looking at
a field colored by some shade of color which he has never seen before.
This is no radical assumption, for some of the minor shades of color
certainly could be found which would be novel to any individual.
Such a field of color viewed monocularly would undoubtedly be in-
terpreted as continuous in spite of the fact that the observer had
never before had this particular shade of color presented to him.
We should then find ourselves obliged to say, if we insisted on
finding factors with which to fill in the blank space, that the filling in
of the blindspot consists in this case, not in the borrowing of ele-
ments from the past, but rather in the bringing over of elements
from the surrounding parts of the field of vision to the blind area.
In other words, the sensory factors which we should assume, since in
this case there would be no legitimate appeal to past experience,
must be borrowed from the present surrounding field. It thus
appears that the formula of remembered sensory factors is altogether
indefensible even in the cases sometimes used in support of such a
formula. It is somewhat more difficult to give an equally pointed
argument for the abandonment of the sensory formula altogether,
but when once the formula of borrowed factors is weakened, it will
easily give place to a formula of functional interpretation. Thus,
it is much simpler to assume that the blindspot is wholly neglected
and that the interpretations of continuity are based upon what is
given, the blindspot being neglected, than to assume the more
elaborate process which does not correspond to any observable fact.
We do not know from direct observation that we fill in the blind-
spot. The burden of proof lies with him who asserts that we do.
The same may be said of a great variety of other cases. Take,
for example, the familiar case of the person who overlooks a false
letter in a misprint, or who recognizes without hesitation a word
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 39
from which a letter has been omitted. The formula which has been
adopted by many writers for such cases as these is that the absent
letter is supplied out of earlier experience, or that the present visual
image which is incorrect is entirely neglected and an element derived
from past experience substituted for it. The fact is that there is
no need of any such elaborate assumption. Indeed, it would be a
very doubtful basis for general explanation of our recognition of a
word to assume that a present visual image can be neglected in
favor of a much fainter element drawn from past experience. The
simpler treatment of such a case is to recognize a general fact that
the visual perception of words does not deal in detail with each one
of the letters. We recognize words, and even phrases, in a single
glance, and many of the elements are so vague that they may be
treated as entirely passed over in ordinary perception. To be sure,
when we are learning to recognize a new word, the details are all of
them subjects of careful examination. The details are at that time
vividly presented and constitute a complex of factors, each element
playing its part in the building up of the total complex. As the
process becomes more and more familiar, many of these elements
recede into the background of consciousness. "We now select those
characteristics of the word as a whole which are necessary for its
recognition. These characteristics may be the general length of the
word together with a few of its more conspicuous letter elements.
These few salient characteristics are the sensory factors upon which
we depend for our present recognition of the word. To assume that
the details continue to be used in later life in the same vivid way in
which they are used while we are learning the word, is to overlook
one of the most essential changes in mental development. And yet
this seems to be exactly what many theorists have done when they
try to make us believe that each time we come in contact with a
word we fill in all of the sensory elements that have ever been
utilized at any time in building up the percept of this word.
The fact is that formalism without limit has come into our
psychology with all these hypotheses about added memory elements
and added sensory factors. One gets a notion from reading the
ordinary text-book on psychology that a percept is a kind of
rationally constructed argument with oneself in which one builds up
a huge complex of factors into an elaborate mental process.
Pausing for the moment in our criticism of the usual doctrine of
perception, let us call attention not merely to the weakness of the
theory of "added factors," but to the dangers for the elementary
student of introducing him to all this hypothetical constructive
process. Suppose it is said that the doctrine of factors derived from
past experience is at least picturesque and keeps the student alive to
40 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the history of each perceptional development. I should say that
even this reference to the development of present percepts is un-
timely, for it fills the mind of the student with a formal kind of
doctrine which makes him approach every mental process with a
false atomistic notion of its probable composition. He gets the
notion that one is at liberty to introduce into his accounts of ex-
perience any elements that seem to him necessary for an easy ex-
planation of their present composition. A kind of imaginary de-
scription of what an experience might be in order to fit the theory
is substituted in the student's mind for a rigid demand that the
description of mental processes conform to careful observation.
This statement is borne out by the history of psychology, for the
conventional treatment of mental life has been atomistic and formal.
Elements have been emphasized rather than functions. Indeed, we
find it difficult to introduce into our current discussions of mental
processes anything except the most definite and formal concepts.
Witness the fact that we have been listening of late to a discussion
which has been confused because there seems to be no way of
defining a common functional fact of mental life in anything but
negative terms. We hear much about imageless ideas. Such
phrases represent what is undoubtedly a perfectly legitimate reaction
against the formalism of the earlier description. They indicate
that in dealing with complex ideas there must be something besides
the repetition of earlier sensory factors. And yet the writers who
use such negatives find it extremely difficult, if not quite impossible,
to explain the basis of these imageless ideas. Certainly there must be
some sort of content in the mind when, for example, one makes a vol-
untary movement and is not conscious of any definite sensory picture
as the basis of the movement itself. Appeal is sometimes taken to
some such general formula as the "total situation" as the basis and
motive of behavior. This phrase "total situation" certainly must
include certain definite elements of experience which must be
classified as sensory processes, or at least as recalled ideas. The
mistake consists in the usual tendency to make sensory factors or
ideational images the only possible phases of consciousness. The
fact is that every experience is made up in part of phases which are
totally different from those which can be described by the term
image. The simplest perception of an object which is presented to
the eyes contains a great deal more than the sensory elements of
which it is composed. It consists of certain forms of arrangement
and certain tendencies toward reaction which must be recognized by
any student who would work out an adequate account of these
processes. In the same way any idea contains very much more than
the image which has usually been described in the discussion of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 41
memory processes. There may, indeed, be an image present, but it
is usually the least significant part of a whole situation. It makes
very little difference when I think of my friend whether I have a
full image of his personal appearance, or even a vague outline ; it is
enough that the faintest image basis should be present for the
elaborate processes of thought and action which the idea aroused in
me. To call these processes of action and arrangement imageless is
very far from the mark. They are, indeed, phases of consciousness
which differ from sensory images or memory images. They are
functional aspects of experience. As such they are not separable
from content factors altogether, nor can their significance for mental
life be understood without a recognition of their relation to the con-
tent factors of experience. To cut off, for example, the moment of
mental activity which immediately precedes a voluntary action, and
to say that this moment of consciousness is devoid of content factors
because there is no image of the reacting organ, is to fail to recognize
the fact that voluntary behavior is the final stage of a total process
which includes at its outset some form of mental content. Follow-
ing upon the first presentation of content there may have been a
most elaborate process of readjustment and reaction. This elaborate
process is not to be classified in terms which are appropriate only to
its first stage. To say that any phase of the process is non-sensory
seems to be an effort to set something in opposition to what is
expected. The very use of the term would seem to indicate that
there is a lingering desire on the part of the student to recognize sen-
sory elements as the fundamental facts of experience. The whole
situation could be much more adequately dealt with by recognizing
from the outset that every situation is made up of phases which are
sensory and others which are utterly indescribable in sensory terms.
These latter should not even be called non-sensory since it is not in
keeping with their nature to compare them with sensory elements.
Once the possibility of recognizing a wholly different type of
explanation is admitted, the conscious process will be treated as a
complex made up of sensory elements and other processes which are
functional in character and deserving of a separate treatment. We
shall then see that any particular phase of experience may be de-
scribed either with reference to its sensory facts or with reference to
its functional phases of activity. When accordingly the sensory
elements are conspicuous in a mental process, we shall recognize the
conspicuousness of these elements as an important characteristic of
the whole process. When, on the other hand, the sensory processes
are relatively less conspicuous, we shall treat it as a part of our
psychological problem to explain why the sensory factors are thus
insignificant. The balance between the two types of mental activity
42 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
will thus come to be a problem in itself, and certainly one of the very
greatest moment to explanatory science.
The formula which will be found to be useful in the adjustment
of relations between sensory processes and other phases of conscious-
ness is a formula based upon the recognition of bodily activities as
important conditions of mental life. Whenever a sensation gives
rise to a certain reaction, the importance of that sensation for the
individual is determined not by its own quality and intensity, but
rather by the relations into which it is brought through its tendency
to arouse reaction. The reaction which a particular individual will
tend to give to a sensory impulse is undoubtedly a matter of de-
velopment. All of the instincts are important conditions of con-
sciousness because they are the sources of reactive tendencies, and
all of the acquired habits of the individual are significant for the
same reason. Whether a given mode of reaction and its consequent
effects upon conscious organization are due to instinctive organiza-
tion or to some kind of personal experience which has resulted in a
habit, the importance of the motor processes for the present percept
is clear. The present percept is not made up of the past experience
or the stages of development which produced the habit, the percept
is a simple direct process of recognition just because of the present
conditions which now exist. - It is the immediate condition which
interests us in explaining the nature of perception. If we are led
off into a discussion of how the percept came to be what it is, we
shall make the percept seem to be more complex than it really is.
Let us consider the definite case of space perception. Although
such perception is a product of long individual development and
adjustment, it is at the present moment conditioned by the fact that
a given sensation arouses a definite reaction in its own direction. It
would confuse the mind of a student to say of present space per-
ception that it is made up of a large number of past experiences with
different bodily adjustment. Whereas to say that the immediate
localizing of a present sensation is the conscious result of a present
motor tendency, is a direct and altogether valid formula. The
source of such a motor tendency is often remote, as, for example, in
the case of the eye. There can be no question that there is a reflex
tendency born in every individual so to adjust the eye that images
fall upon the f ovea. Our space perception is in a very large measure
conditioned by this reflex tendency, and in so far forth it is quite
appropriate to say that our present space perception depends upon
an innate tendency in the nervous organization. This innate tend-
ency is in no sense of the word a sensory element, nor is it an idea
or memory image of any kind whatsoever. Again there are certain
personal experiences which have supplemented the innate reflex
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 43
tendencies. Such personal experiences as jgrow out of the repeated
contact with familiar objects in the environment have perfected our
adjustment of the relation between visual impressions and the move-
ments of our right and left hands and other active organs. These
gradually accumulated personal experiences have been added to the
innate tendencies of behavior in such a way as to build up a single
system of reactions conditioning a single space in perception. It is
quite impossible to see how a final scheme of spatial arrangement
can include innate factors and also those derived from personal
experience if it is not recognized from the outset that spatial arrange-
ment is something other than a series of memory images. Spatial
perception is the product of a system of reactions. Whatever the
source in the past, the common outcome of all of these different in-
fluences is a definite mode of present arrangement of sensory factors
in a spatial scheme dependent upon a present system of motor
tendencies. To describe the nature of this present mode of adjust-
ment in adequate terms is a psychological problem very much more
urgent than to go into the elaborate discussion of the sources of this
present mode of adjustment.
One final statement which can be made in support of the fore-
going argument is that an overemphasis of ideational processes in
the earlier psychology has vitiated in very large measure the whole
treatment of perception. Perception has again and again been
treated as if it were a process made up of elaborate forms of reason-
ing. To hold that the perceptual recognition of an object which
stands before me is the result of anything like an elaborate form of
reasoning is to grossly misunderstand the economy of mental life,
for percepts are advantageous just because they are simple and
direct. It is to do violence also to the fact now so fully recognized
in psychology that ideas are relatively very late forms of mental
action. The animals are supplied with all of the perceptual forms
of consciousness though they have not developed ideas, or language,
or any of the high types of abstraction. How can they be conceived
to have developed their simple perceptual processes if the formula
for these processes is to be worked out in terms of remembered
factors? One interesting question that suggests itself in this con-
nection is the question how animals become so highly adapted to
spatial differences, as contrasted with man, who seems to acquire the
spatial form much more slowly and very frequently less accurately.
If space were always to be recognized as the product of ideas, we
should have to assume in certain birds, for example, a very high
type of mental development. What we can recognize, on the con-
trary, is that the perception of animals and the perception of man
may issue in similar forms of mental adjustment in the end, but may
44 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
reach these ends by wholly different routes. The animals show in-
stinctive recognition of spatial relations as a result of organized
racial reaction. Man has to work out many of his reactions indi-
vidually. To demand a single formula for the two processes of
development is to confuse the final stage of the evolution with its
earlier stages.
These illustrations make clear the position which I hold regarding
the nature and treatment of perception. Perception is a compact,
immediate process dependent for its explanation upon present con-
ditions here and now at hand. To depart from this formula tends
to destroy clearness of thought and exposition.
CHARLES H. JUDD.
YALE UNIVEBSITY.
SOCIETIES
THE EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN
PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
npHE eighth annual meeting of the American Philosophical Asso-
-*- ciation took place, in conjunction with the sixtieth annual
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
in Baltimore, at the invitation of the Johns Hopkins University, on
December 29, 30, and 31, 1908.
The official social functions were a reception by President Ira
Remsen, of the Johns Hopkins University, to members of the asso-
ciation and affiliated societies in McCoy Hall on Monday evening,
and the joint smoker of the American Philosophical Association, the
American Psychological Association, and the Southern Society for
Philosophy and Psychology at the Johns Hopkins Club on Wednes-
day evening.
Three presidential addresses were read before the associations.
The Philosophical Association adjourned, as usual, to hear the address
of the President of the Psychological Association, on Wednesday
afternoon. Professor Stratton spoke on "The Betterment of Rival
Types of Explication " in psychology, making a broad-minded appeal
for an open-door policy. In the evening, the President of the Philo-
sophical Association, Professor Munsterberg, addressed a large audi-
ence in the assembly room of the Baltimore City College, in his usual
eloquent fashion, on "The Problem of Beauty." And at the close of
the last session, on Thursday, the association listened to the President
of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Professor
J. Macbride Sterett, who spoke on "The Proper Affiliation of Psy-
chologywith Philosophy or with the Natural Sciences?"
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 45
The meetings were, for the most part, interesting and well at-
tended, but the opinion was generally voiced that there were too
many presentations at each session and that the previously prepared
discussions created a formal and unsatisfactory atmosphere. It
would be advantageous if abstracts could be circulated more freely
beforehand and the discussion trusted to the spontaneity of the
moment. Logical problems had by far the greatest prominence,
being represented by more than half of the papers. Pragmatism,
except for some criticisms, appeared only in the form of a philosophy
of development, but as such was of considerable importance. Ethics
was represented by two studies, both at the last meeting; theology
had one paper, the first day; and, except for Professor Miinsterberg's
address, esthetic problems did not appear at all.
The first paper of the regular sessions, by Dr. Karl Schmidt,
"Concerning a Philosophic Platform," urged the establishment of a
basis of agreement amongst philosophers in the form of a problem to
which progressive contribution might be made, so that philosophy
could attain a growth similar to that of science. A like note was
struck at the last meeting by the "Doctrine of Histurgy," of Mrs.
Franklin, in which was commended a fixed group of principles for
philosophy, selected by a consensus of the competent, and fitted to-
gether to constitute a woven tissue or fabric of truth.
Professor Spaulding followed Dr. Schmidt with a paper on ' ' The
Postulates of a Self -critical Epistemology. " After pointing out
that epistemological theories, as knowledge, usually contradict their
own principles, Professor Spaulding proceeded to expound the pos-
tulates of a self-critical theory and to find such a theory in evolu-
tionary realism. A short, but lively, discussion followed. Professor
"Woodbridge interpreted the first postulate "that there must be pos-
tulates" as a denial of the possibility of epistemology, or rather the
reduction of it to logic. This view was so well seconded that it
seemed as if epistemology was to vanish from philosophy, and Pro-
fessor Spaulding had to take refuge in the position that at least there
are problems involved in knowing and the solutions of these problems
must be based on hypotheses.
Miss Rousmaniere contributed a study in inductive logic, cour-
ageously undertaking to provide "A Substitute for Mill's Methods in
an Introductory Course. ' ' As scientific investigation does not actu-
ally follow the course layed down by Mill, a new account based on
recent science, Pasteur's "Life and Letters," is formulated. Discus-
sion showed approval of the plan, but a desire for further generaliza-
tion and development of the results.
As representative of theological problems, Dr. Hayes described
our knowledge of God as the result of inference closely analogous to
46 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
that whereby we attain our knowledge of men. It was objected that
the latter knowledge is acquired through direct perception of bodily
expressions, and Dr. Hayes replied that we could know men equally
well through their works.
Mr. Steele's " Naturalistic and Theoretic Thinking " touched
upon so many great philosophical problems that it proved fruitless
in discussion.
On Wednesday morning there was a large attendance and a some-
what less scattering of interests. Dr. Ewer's "Paradoxes in Real-
istic Epistemology " defended dualistic realism on the ground that
its paradoxes are not genuine contradictions although the facts may
be puzzling. Perceptions need not claim to be perceptions of present
objects, and are, in fact, always perceptions of a more or less re-
mote past.
Professor Albee exposited the "Present Meaning of Idealism. "
Prefacing his remarks with the assertion that subjective idealism and
materialism are dead, he denned objective idealism as the philosophy
that starts with experience and analyzes its two complementary parts,
the subjective and the objective. Mind is merely one side of experi-
ence when experience is regarded as an organic whole. The distinc-
tion between realism and idealism is vanishing with the increasing
recognition of experience as the only reality. Mr. Pitkin asked the
pertinent question, If idealism is no longer a means of explanation,,
but merely a method, why retain the name? to which was replied,
The name is to commemorate its idealistic ancestors.
The discussion of the afternoon was tensest over Professor Creigh-
ton's criticism of portions of Professor Baldwin's "Genetic Logic"
under the title ' ' The Notion of the Implicit in Logic. ' ' The genetic
series always demands something new; it is, therefore, not explana-
tory, and its underlying identity is not clear. Professor Baldwin
explained that both teleological and mechanical analyses depend upon
imposing outside categories on a series, while real explanation must
be implicit in the series. Both teleological and mechanical explana-
tion are possible, but they are not exhaustive. Time limitations cut
off the discussion without mutual understanding having been reached.
With respect to "The Field of Propositions that have Full Fac-
tual Warrant, ' ' Professor Marvin pointed out that generalization in
the factual field is extremely limited. Our factual propositions
quickly become postulates. The facts form a logical bridge between
the existential and the non-existential; they suggest principles and
guide development, but all inference is deductive. Induction goes
by leaps.
Dr. Sheldon's "Analysis of Simple Apprehension" was a psycho-
logical study of presentations having objective reference, and con-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 47
eluded that the psychological facts give no justification of the logical
use of the subject-predicate relation. The sufficient definition of the
simplest cognition is a content in relation, plus a disposition to
believe. Mr. Pitkin pointed out that such psychological analysis is
not fruitful, for it is not itself indisputable.
On Wednesday afternoon the first paper was omitted on account
of the absence of Professor Leighton, but even so the meeting was
hurried. "The Outline of Cosmic Humanism," by Dr. Doan, recalls
an early suggestion of Charles S. Peirce, and was aptly characterized
by the last speaker of the day, Professor Hume, as Schopenhauerian
pragmatism. Professor Hume spoke of "Pragmatism in its Rela-
tion to the History of Philosophy," and drew the conclusion that
pragmatists ought to pay more attention to the meaning of will ; and
if they pass beyond merely human will, Schopenhauerian and
Pichtean pragmatisms are possible, and pragmatism may even find
itself functioning as absolute idealism.
Professor Montague, on "The Good, the True, and the Beauti-
ful," also criticized the pragmatic movement. The true can not be
subordinated to the good, for the true arises from the conformance
of a judgment to environment, the good from the conformance of
environment to desire, and the beautiful from the harmony of an
organism with its environment; and these concepts are, therefore,
essentially independent.
The best received and most brilliant paper of the afternoon was
Professor Moore's "Absolutism and Teleology." Absolutism com-
plains that the evolutionary point of view can furnish no criterion
of progress, but absolutism, although it assumes a goal for the uni-
verse, admits that no finite individual can know what that goal really
is, and so it gets no help from the assumption. Professor Hibben
was inclined to demur on the ground that the two points of view,
absolutistic and developmental, are not mutually exclusive.
Thursday morning was devoted to a discussion: "Realism and
Idealism." Although expressing doubts as to the utility of the
discussion, Professor Royce appeared as the first speaker. He stated
his well-known form of idealism. The real world is nothing but the
true interpretation of the surroundings in which I find myself. To
reject idealism is to declare that your world is interpreted in a way
which is not an interpretation. Professor Royce spoke rather sharply
of those who are always prating of experience as if experience were
something inflexibly given, whereas immediate personal experience is
inadequate, and human experience is only an ideal construction. The
real world is postulated, or, in the language of Professor Miinster-
berg, acknowledged. The essence of idealism is to hold that the
world is real only as an interpretation of experience. Therefore, he
48 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
added, all idealism's opponents will verify this thesis and appear as
idealists.
Professor Dewey, who followed, claimed to avoid this consequence
by remaining within specific concrete limitations. He showed that,
in its history, the logic of description has always side-stepped idealism
and remained realistic. It is only the generalization of logical
motives that leads to absolutism.
Professor Woodbridge followed with the statement that idealists
make the reflective character of consciousness primary, while realists
make it secondary. He then developed his realistic theory of the
nature of consciousness, affirming the existence of both qualitative
and quantitative causes in nature and explaining the presence of
sense organs as an apparatus developed to bring about responsiveness
to qualitative causes. This responsiveness results in qualitative
effects which we call sense qualities. These qualities, however, do
not constitute consciousness. It is only when reactions due to the
coordinating and unifying function of the nervous system supervene
upon these qualities that consciousness exists.
Professor Bakewell criticized at some length the popular inter-
pretations of Berkeley. Eealists must retain reality within experi-
ence; the solid ground of fact resolves into the shifting ground of
experience, and idealism is differentiated only by the stress it lays
on the subject-object relation and the activity of thought.
Professor Norman Smith criticized vigorously both realists and
idealists for shirking the problem of the relation of mind and body.
Objective idealism merely emphasizes the relation of subject and
object, but does not touch the psychophysical problem. Professor
Dewey 's realism vacillates between subjectivism and materialism,
and for Professor Woodbridge, also a materialist, the relation of
mind and body is passed over as a needless metaphysical puzzle.
Avenarius and Bergson have been obliged to make this problem cen-
tral, and Professors Dewey and Woodbridge ought to do so.
The papers were then open to discussion. Professor Ormond
expressed his doubts of there being any real issue at stake. Professor
Dewey asked that the label materialism be defined, and if he is a
materialist, what of it ? The discussion might have been more inter-
esting if there had been some attempt to answer these questions.
Professor Woodbridge showed some surprise that he should have been
thought to have centered his discussion on any other problem than
that of the relation of mind and body, and did not appear overcome
by the criticism that his view made certain problems needless meta-
physical puzzles. Professor Smith appealed to the audience as to
whether Professor Woodbridge had said anything about conscious-
ness. The discussion was summed up by Professor Royce as veri-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 49
fying his prediction, and especially Professor Dewey had made use
of an idealistic scheme of past and present in his historical remarks.
Professor Woodbridge merely put himself out of the world and
described how it looks to one who is not in it. The problem of mind
and body is to be solved through the fact that the brain itself is only
real as an idealistic interpretation.
Several interesting things must have appeared to an onlooker in
this discussion. In the first place, as had already been suggested by
Professor Albee's paper on Wednesday, idealism has taken on a new
meaning and is not so different from realism as might have been
supposed. It was also interesting, within twenty-four hours of the
time we had been told by Professor Albee that materialism was dead,
to find it reincarnated in Professors Dewey and Woodbridge or
shall we take Professor Albee's statement and Professor Smith's
criticism as the premises of an enthymeme of the third order? The
underlying differences between the idealists and the realists might,
perhaps, have been more clearly brought out by a discussion of abso-
lutism and non-absolutism, as such differences were evident although
not explicitly expressed. In general, the idealists seemed more
polemical and were prepared to start from a preconceived interpreta-
tion of the universe as a whole, and the realists were too busy devel-
oping their concrete problems to indulge in as much polemic as would
have been desirable. The idealistic contributions to thought were
limited necessarily to the exposition or the filling in of already exist-
ing systems, almost to deductions of consequences, while the contribu-
tions of the realists took the form of a growth toward a system not yet
fully defined.
Wide-spread fatigue, due to the strain of the previous meetings,
was manifest on Thursday afternoon, and the pressure of time was
greater than ever. Considerable interest was aroused by the paper
of Dr. Isaac Husic, substituted for the one announced, on "A Plan for
a Philosophical Lexicon of Philosophic Terms in Greek, Syriac,
Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin." It was voted informally, as an expres-
sion of interest, that a committee be appointed by the Chair to con-
sider the value of the work, and to report on it to the association in
the business meeting of next year. Professors Royce, Newbold, and
Gardiner were appointed.
The result of Professor Singer's "Reflections on Kant's First
Antinomy" was that Kant's discussion is adequate in so far as it
deals with space, but inadequate as to time. A finite past time is
intelligible, for there are no moments in a mechanical system in a
state of complete rest, but the fact of a finite or infinite past can
only be settled on experimental grounds. An infinity of experiments
is necessary, so the antinomy holds good.
60 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The ethical discussions of the meeting were presented by Dr.
Cohen and by Dr. Mecklin. Dr. Cohen's paper, on "Kant's Doc-
trine of the Summum Bonum," was an interpretation and defense
of Kant's union of goodness and happiness. Dr. Mecklin 's "Idea
of Justice in Christian Ethics" contrasted the Greek view of justice
as an attribute of the state with the Christian attribution of it to
the individual. Justice is not a Christian virtue, for it conflicts with
self-sacrifice, and consequently holds a place only in the last
judgment.
Mrs. Franklin's paper has been mentioned in connection with
Dr. Schmidt's in the account of the first session.
At the business meeting of the association a vote of thanks was
offered to the Johns Hopkins University for the courtesies shown the
association. The following officers were elected : President, Professor
Hibben, of Princeton University ; Vice-president, Professor Tufts, of
the University of Chicago; Secretary-treasurer, Professor Thilly, of
Cornell University; new members of the Executive Committee, Pro-
fessor Bakewell, of Yale University, and Professor Woodbridge, of
Columbia University, to succeed Professor Lord, of Columbia.
Dr. Cunningham, of Middlebury College, Professor Wilde, of the
University of Minnesota, Professor Payne, of the University of
Virginia, and Professor Pratt, of Williams College, were elected
members of the association.
It was voted to leave the decision as to the place of the next
meeting of the Philosophical Association to the Executive Committee,
with an expressed preference for New Haven.
The committee on the publication of important works of early
American philosophers reported that the Columbia University Press
would probably be enabled by friends of the University to publish
the "Elements of Philosophy," by Samuel Johnson, the first Presi-
dent of Kings College, edited by Professor Woodbridge, under the
auspices of the name of the association. The committee was asked
to continue its work by encouraging other universities to do likewise
with respect to appropriate works, and $75 from the funds of the
association was set aside to aid in the preparation of a bibliography
of early American philosophy.
It was resolved that a committee be appointed by the Chair to
cooperate with similar committees from the Historical Society and
other societies in getting philosophical research before the Carnegie
Institution in Washington under the same conditions as other scien-
tific work. And it was also resolved that a committee be appointed
to cooperate with similar committees from other societies to influence
the Committee on Ways and Means in Washington to the end of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 51
having scientific books, printed in English, admitted at the Customs
House free of duty.
HAROLD CHAPMAN BROWN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
La philosophic moderne. ABEL RET. Paris : Ernest Flammarion. 1908.
Pp. 369.
It is the purpose of this book to present " a summary statement of the
form which the great problems of philosophy assume at the present time."
The original physiognomy of modern philosophy is a result of the intimate
connection between philosophy and science. Instead of ignoring the
accomplishments of scientific activity, according to the manner of the pre-
ceding epoch, the philosophy of to-day takes as a point of departure of its
inquiries the results of positive knowledge. Leaving aside all isolated
attempts at solution, we have the general tendency of theoretic activity
expressed in the antithesis of "scientism" and pragmatism. Either sci-
entific method is the only path to the attainment of truth (positivism,
rationalism, "scientism") or there are other sources of true knowledge,
such as " religious feeling, moral ideas, sentimental intuitions." Accord-
ing to this latter point of view, science is an artifice whose sole validity
consists in its practical utility. The current of ideas representing this
movement is synthetized under the expression "pragmatism." It is the
essential thesis of this study to oppose " scientism " to pragmatism.
The method to be followed in this examination of contemporary philo-
sophical problems is indicated by the characteristic intimate connection
between philosophy and science already noted as the original physiognomy
of modern philosophy. Each chapter of this book is devoted to a special
problem, and is at the same time concerned with a fundamental science,
or rather with the value of the particular science, the objective knowledge
it can give us. Chapters II., III., IV., V., VI., VII. are concerned,
respectively, with the problem of number and extension (the quantitative
properties of matter), the problem of matter, the problem of life, the
problem of mind, the moral problem, the problem of knowledge and of
truth. The fundamental query throughout these discussions presents
itself as follows: Is knowledge merely a consequence of practical activity,
and is truth to be identified with that which succeeds? or is success a
result of science because knowledge is of real relations? While it is the
primary aim of the author to give an unbiased outline of the existing
condition of the discussion as manifested in the general problem of each
science, he briefly indicates his own conclusion upon the subject in favor
of the scientific or positivistic point of view as against the teaching of
pragmatism. He affirms that the knowledge to be obtained by means of
scientific method is satisfactory to his own requirements, but admits that
there may be other needs for other natures.
52 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
We shall mention briefly some conclusions in the successive chapters.
Mathematics, originating in experience, gives us knowledge of certain
groups of real relations (order, number, extension). These once obtained,
the scientist may proceed to manipulate them in an arbitrary manner, but
the results of such manipulation apply to experience because of their
foundation in original real elements. The author remarks that prag-
matists have been frequently mistaken in claiming the teachings of scien-
tists to be evidence of the theory of pragmatism. For example, Poincare,
instead of being a pragmatist, is too little of a pragmatist, since he does
not require that arbitrary creation must refer back to experience if it is
to be valid.
The problem of matter is one of experimental inquiry. Physics gives
us knowledge of a more complex set of relations than those of mathematics.
The physicochemical theory of life gains ground every day and points
to the conclusion that life is an ensemble of relations more rich and com-
plex than those of matter and attached to the mechanical and physico-
chemical relations.
In the imperfect state of psychological science, the burden of attain-
ment appears to promise conclusions the same as in the other domains of
knowledge. Psychological science will consist " in establishing not only
necessary relations between the different manifestations of psychological
life, but also between these and certain manifestations of the biological
life and certain actions of the environment." Pragmatism has rendered
an important service in putting mind in nature.
Morality has nothing in common with theoretic speculation. It is an
art, and must utilize the science concerned with the manners of men.
With respect to the problem of truth, there appear to be indications
of the following solution: Eelations, not terms, are given first in knowl-
edge. Experience shows us the transformation of condition to condi-
tioned. Science is not true because it succeeds, but succeeds because
it is true.
In Chapter VII. the author presents the general conclusion as to the
nature of philosophy. Science and philosophy differ not in object nor in
method, but in point of view, the philosophical point of view being dis-
tinguished by being more general. It is the province of philosophy to
coordinate the results of the sciences and to originate the general hypoth-
eses for the sciences as a whole.
The style of the book is clear and concise, and the whole is interesting
reading. One feels that the endeavor at impartial statement of positions
has, on the whole, been accomplished. The discussions of the philosophic
positions of the various sciences are illuminating. In the opinion of the
reviewer the sketch of the theory of pragmatism appears to be mainly
influenced by the movement of thought in France, although important
reference is made to William James and the Anglo-American movement.
This may account for the extreme emphasis upon the philosophic activity
of the scientists. Thus some arguments cited as adverse to the conten-
tions of pragmatism seem to be in harmony with recent technical discus-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 53
sions of the subject. However, the omission of such material may have
been necessitated by the summary and synthetic character of the study.
SAVILLA ALICE ELKUS.
NEW YORK CITY.
Elementary Experiments in Psychology. CARL E. SEASHORE. Henry
Holt & Co. 1908. Pp. xi .+ 218.
The difficulty of developing an experimental attitude toward mental
processes and of securing an adequate acquaintance with the spirit and
methods of the experimental investigation of mental phenomena is pre-
sumably encountered by most teachers of large introductory classes in
psychology. In the absence of a satisfactory manual of elementary ex-
periments to accompany the text-book and lectures, students rarely get
a first-hand acquaintance with mental processes and a real appreciation
of methods of studying them. The result is that, while they may all
learn much about psychology, they do not form the habit of psychologiz-
ing. A few may get the psychological attitude, but it is safe to say that
the majority do not. Such class demonstrations as are practicable give
crude results and are unsatisfactory. They may amuse and interest, but
they are not particularly instructive. The time, labor, and expense
involved in giving a large class actual laboratory practise, even with a
well-equipped laboratory, makes this method of introduction to modern
psychology impracticable.
For these reasons, to which every teacher will no doubt agree, there
is a definite need for such a manual as Professor Seashore's " Elementary
Experiments in Psychology." It is a valuable addition to the hand-
books in psychology, and ought to be warmly welcomed in every quarter.
The purpose of the book, as set forth in the author's preface, is "to
meet the requirements for a series of experiments in the first course in
psychology. It makes individual experiments, as opposed to class demon-
strations, practicable, regardless of laboratory facilities or the size of
the class. The student is given means and encouragement for pursuing
each problem intensively in order that he may acquire independence of
thought and action, realize the actuality of mental processes, and get
here and there a vision of the vastness, the orderliness, the practical
significance, and the charms of mental life."
This purpose of the book is admirably fulfilled. Great pedagogical
skill and ingenuity are shown in the planning of simple experiments,
which, if properly carried out, are sure to train the student in habits of
introspection, to give him a knowledge of psychology as an experimental
science and to arouse an interest in the solution of its problems. The
experiments are well selected, can easily be made by one student alone or
by two working together, except the experiment on reaction-time; they
require very little apparatus, or such as can be readily obtained, and
yet are adequate to illustrate psychological principles and give insight
into methods of their study. The directions to the student are clear,
concise, and unambiguous, and the brief discussions of the experiments
are stimulating and suggestive.
54 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The manual, moreover, covers a sufficiently wide range of topics to-
give the student familiarity with the problems and methods in the main
lines of experimental investigation. The first three chapters treat of
visual sensations after-images, contrast, and the visual field. The fourth
chapter gives the well-known experiments in visual space perception
entoptic phenomena, the retinal image, accommodation, double images,,
and stereoscopic vision. The fifth chapter gives a rather elaborate series
of experiments in auditory space. The experiments on the visual field
and on auditory localization strike the reviewer as being relatively too
complex and difficult and to require greater ability in introspection than
is likely to be found in the average student. The chapters which follow
give well-chosen experiments in tactual space, cutaneous sensations,.
Weber's law, mental images, association, memory, apperception, attention,
normal optical illusions, affective tone, and reaction-time. In the reac-
tion-time experiments the chain-reaction method is of necessity adopted.
This may do very well for a rough demonstration of simple reaction-time,
but it is doubtful if it is even worth while to attempt to analyze out by
its means the times of discrimination, choice, cognition, restricted asso-
ciation, free association, and judgment.
Professor Seashore's book is certain to be widely used, especially by
the growing number of teachers who believe that an adequate introductory
course in psychology can not be given without some actual experimental
work. It will be of value to those students who do not pursue the sub-
ject beyond a first course, and will serve for those who do as a valuable
introduction to laboratory work. Moreover, it should promote an in-
telligent interest in the study of psychological problems.
V. A. C. HENMON.
UNIVEBSITY OF COLOBADO.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
ARCHIV FUR GESCHIOHTE DER PHILOSOPHIE. October,
1908, Band XV, Heft 1. Uber das Problem der Freiheit auf Grund
von Rants Kategorienlehre (pp. 1-27) : J. STILLING. - Conscience, our
sense of freedom, and the categorical imperative are naturalistic in
origin, developments under social conditions. Aristoteles Urteile uber die
pythagoreische Lehre (pp. 28-48) : 0. GILBERT. - Plato's " Philebus " shows
the relation of the Pythagorean doctrines of odd and even, infinite and
finite, to Aristotle's concepts, matter and form. Die Geschichte des
Symbolbegriffs in der Philosophic (pp. 49-79) : M. SCHLESINGEE. - In the
philosophy of ancient Greece symbolism was rather an attractive, poetic
garb than a necessity of exposition. Asthetische und teleologische
GeschichtspunTcte in der antiken Physik (pp. 80-113) : A. E. HAAS. -The
esthetic preference for circular motion, and for the distinction between
celestial and mundane laws, retarded physics ; at the same time all ancient
sciences gained much from esthetic interest, and from the teleological
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 55
theories which it occasioned. La theorie des incorporels dans I'ancien
stoicisme (pp. 114r-125) : E. BREHIER. - For the stoic, events, qualities, and
laws were the incorporeal and the unreal, that which is said or affirmed of
the real, the sensible, the corporeal. Bericht uber die Philosophie der
europdischen Volker im Mittelalter 1897-1907 (pp. 126-139) : C.
BAEUMKER. - Unfavorable criticism upon F. Uberweg's " Grundriss der
Geschichte der Philosophie der patristischen und scholastischen Zeit,"
1905 edition. Die neueste Erscheinungen. Historische Abhandlungen in
den Zeitschriften. Eingegangene Biicher.
Chamberlain, Arthur Henry. Standards in Education: With Some Con-
sideration of their Relation to Industrial Training. New York: The
American Book Co. 1908. Pp. 265. $1.00.
Cutten, George Barton. The Psychological Phenomena of Christianity.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1908. Pp. xviii + 497. $2.50
net.
Driesch, Hans. The Science and Philosophy of the Organism. The
Gifford Lectures delivered before the University of Aberdeen in the
year 1908. Vol. H. London: Adam & Charles Black. 1908. Pp.
xvi +, 381. $3.00 net.
Sidis, Boris. An Experimental Study of Sleep. From the Physiological
Laboratory of the Harvard Medical School and from Sidis's Labora-
tory. Boston : Richard G. Badger. 1909. Pp. 106.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE following account by Professor Edouard Perrier, of the Museum
d'Histoire Naturelle, of portions of a skeleton recently discovered in
southern France in strata of the middle Pleistocene period is of excep-
tional interest : " The skull is that of a man of extremely low type, an
ape-man, or perhaps of a man-ape of greater cranial capacity than any at
present known. This great cerebral development leads M. Perrier to
consider it, on the whole, a human skull. But the very thick, low cranial
dome, the flattened forehead and pronounced orbital ridges, the broad nose
separated from the forehead by a deep furrow, and the much elongated
snout-like maxillaries combine to give the skull a marked gorilla-like
seeming. The brain cavity, however, is, as already said, very much larger
than that of the gorilla or any other present-day anthropoid. The limb
bones are curved and present a conformation which indicates that this
Pleistocene man walked more often on all-fours than in an erect position.
The bones seem to be fairly intermediate between those of a man and
those of the present-day anthropoids. Altogether Professor Perrier (whose
scientific standing gives his opinions in the matter high authority) believes
that he has in his hands the specimens have been purchased by the
museum remains much more ancient than those of Neanderthal or Spy,
and actually representing a type intermediate between Pithecanthropus
and present man."
66 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
AT the recent meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and
Psychology, held at the Johns Hopkins University, December 30-31, 1908,
the following officers were elected for 1909: President, Professor Lefevre,
of the University of Virginia; Vice-president, Dr. Franz, of the Govern-
ment Hospital for the Insane; Secretary-treasurer, Professor Buchner,
of the Johns Hopkins University. To serve three years as members of
the Council: Professor Messenger, of the Virginia State Normal School,
and Professor Ogden, of the University of Tennessee. Other members
of the Council are Dr. Harris, of Washington, D. C., President Purinton,
of the West Virginia University, Professor Baldwin, of the Johns Hopkins
University, and Principal Halleck, of Louisville, Ky.
PROFESSOR HUGO MUNSTERBERG has returned to Harvard University
from a trip to Chicago, Toronto, and Ithaca. He spoke in Chicago before
the Chicago Club on "Psychotherapy," before the Germanic Society on
" Books and Readers in Germany and America," and before the Commer-
cial Club on " Psychology in Commerce and Industry." In Toronto he
addressed the Canadian Club on "Right and Wrong in the Prohibition
Movement." At Cornell University he spoke on " New Developments in
the Psychological Laboratory " and " Psychology and Law."
PROFESSOR HAECKEL will resign his chair at the end of the winter
semester in order to devote himself to his phylogenetic museum. As his
successors at Jena, the faculty has proposed Professor Lang, of Zurich,
Professor Kiickenthal, of Breslau, or Professor Platte, of Berlin. It is
said that Professor Platte will be selected by the administration.
THE Clarendon Press is publishing in two volumes the papers read
before the recent Congress for the History of Religions, held at Oxford.
From the same press comes a low-priced reprint of Jowett's translation of
Plato's "Republic." The volume contains the translator's introduction
and the analysis which appears in the third edition.
THE Society for Philosophical Inquiry held a meeting at the George
Washington University on Tuesday afternoon, January 12. The topic for
discussion was " Music and its Relation to the other Arts and to General
Culture." Professor George L. Raymond was speaker for the afternoon.
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE are publishing a translation of the latest work
of Professor Rudolf Eucken, who received recently the Nobel Prize for
literature. The translation is entitled " The Life of the Spirit."
PROFESSOR G. S. BRETT, formerly of the Government College at Lahore,
India, has been appointed lecturer in classical philosophy at Trinity
College, Toronto.
THE date for the unveiling of the monument to Lamarck, in Paris, has
been postponed until next May. It will occur just before the Darwin
celebration.
A REPRODUCTION of the first edition of the " Critique of Pure Reason,"
published by Hartknoch at Riga, in 1781, is announced.
MR. ASA GIFFORD, of Yale University, has been appointed instructor
in philosophy at Bryn Mawr College.
VOL. VI. No. 3. FEBRUARY 4, 1909.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
AN OUTLINE OF COSMIC HUMANISM
IN a former paper in this JOURNAL 1 the writer outlined an hypoth-
esis of absolute experience, suggesting here and there a philos-
ophy of "cosmic humanism" which, if worked out, might redeem
American philosophy from its present level of brute pragmatism and
unromantic realism. If only the master pragmatists would suppress
their endless essays in defense and definition of their method! All
but the most stiff-necked and unregenerate of the younger English-
writing philosophers have long ago adopted the pragmatic method,
but now stand amazed and dismayed to find their masters indulging
themselves in the sin of elaboration and analysis. This abuse of the
"method of definition" is the natural vice of rationalism. It were
better that the pragmatists applied their energies to cultivating the
world-ground which they have already wrested from their hered-
itary foes.
The world-ground lies fallow, awaiting the hand and will of an
expert. Meanwhile it may be well to offer, as a stimulant and irri-
tant, an outline of the world-view which in his former paper the
writer described as "cosmic humanism."
I
The pragmatist has on his hands a world-ground. What shall he
make out of it? There is a certain pusillanimity in the present
attitude of pragmatism. The Promethean boldness of rationalism's
world-views may well have staggered the gods. But now their divine
amazement is tempered with heavenly mirth by the spectacle of a
wnM-philosophy which yet does not dare to press beyond the limits of
tedious definition and timid, " on-the-whole " hypotheses. The his-
tory of earlier pragmatisms with their homo mensura sophisms makes
it certain that, unless pragmatism produces a man who shall measure
the very cosmos by himself, the movement begun so potently and
promisingly a few years ago will prove as evanescent as a passing
breeze. The pragmatist 'theory has never yet been genuinely tested.
l Vol. IV., pp. 176-183. The present paper was read before the American
Philosophical Association at its recent meeting in Baltimore, December 29-
31, 1908.
68 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Such a test would require that the, so far, rather sterile pragmatic
philosophy were incubated for a while in the self-same cosmic matrix
wherein the seeds of rationalism have hitherto germinated and flour-
ished. What sort of world-view is the pragmatic passion likely to
breed if it thus germinates and produces its kind on a cosmic scale ?
Its offspring must be in some sense a world-view. In this matter
the pragmatist must recognize the validity and persistency of the
human spirit's search for something universal and eternal. Such a
search has indubitably had its functional value in the growing ex-
perience of the race, and must, therefore, by the pragmatic test be
recognized as helping to constitute the living truth. What, then, is
this perfect passion for universals and eternals 1 Has it the validity
of a world-forming, world-creating principle? Is it merely a pas-
sion? Perhaps the passion itself is the one universal thing in the
world ? Does it connect, or disconnect, the human from the cosmic ?
Is it the whimpering and wailing of a soul in an incurable agony of
finiteness? Or is it the terrific will force of an Ubermensch claiming
his birthright as an aristocrat of the universal life ? It may well be
that a painstaking critique of this old-fashioned passion for the
eternal and universal will expose impulses out of which pragmatism
itself may organize a view of the world covering in principle the
whole ground of reality.
It is certain that, whatever the eternal is, it is not of the nature
of ideas. The prime fallacy of rationalism arises from its failure to
distinguish between the function and the content of an eternal im-
pulse. The region in which the self acknowledges a universal a priori
quality in its processes is, as the literature of speculative mysticism
attests, a region of transempirical consciousness. Wherever the
mystic experience has divulged a content of ideas, these can be shown
to be preconceptions subconsciously stored away in the mystic's past
experience. The pure function of consciousness in this transem-
pirical region has the imperative, eternal, universal quality just
because it has no empirical content. It is a pure function ; its uncer-
tain content, the irreducible contradiction between ideas and will, has
always been regarded by the first-class pessimist as an unmitigated
evil.
It can not be affirmed that this pure function is inwardly diversi-
fied into fourteen forms of experience, more or less. Here, again,
the evidence of speculative mysticism must be trusted. The per-
sistent characteristic of the pure mystic experience is its spaceless-
ness, timelessness, causelessness. For some years the writer has
experimented in this mystic region, but has been unable to identify
in the experience, e. g., of time, as infinite, any quality that distin-
guishes it from space, as infinite. The experience in both cases is
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 59
one of perfect fluency without ideational content. The infinite as
well as the infinitesimal space-experience begins to "swim" or
"shiver" as consciousness verges upon the abysmal. These are the
habitual expressions by which my subjects have sought to symbolize
the perfect fluency of the universal and eternal quality in the experi-
ence of space and time.
And this which is true of the infinitudes of the pure reason is
equally true of the infinitudes of the practical. Who can uncover,
say, in wisdom, as infinite, a quality that isolates it from goodness,
as infinite? In the wisdom literature from Plato to Emerson these
terms of practical infinitude are constantly interchanged and inter-
fused. The eternal goodness is in all points wise: the universal
wisdom is in all directions good. In the mystic experience neither
goodness nor wisdom has any ideational content.
The first principle of cosmic humanism confronts us here. What-
ever may be in detail the defects of the world-view herein outlined,
this first principle I hold to be indefeasible: "infinite" when attached
to any substantive whatsoever is the sign of a contentless, formless
function of experience. A self-organism, whether human or cosmic,
is fundamentally finite on the side of its empirical content. There is
no such thing in man or cosmos as an infinite idea.
The writer's former thesis in cosmic humanism is, therefore, not
guilty of begging the question between pragmatism and rationalism
in affirming that there must be even in a world-experience a region
of absolute subconsciousness the infinity of which is purely func-
tional. We may grant, with philosophers like Leibnitz and Hart-
mann, the hypothesis of an unending, unconscious fecundity in the
world-ground. The cosmic life may be in an incomparable degree
teeming with germinating ideas and wills. We are driven, neverthe-
less, by the most fundamental structure of our own organisms of
experience to presuppose a formless function underlying all these
countless half-conscious impulses, ideas, and passions of the world-
ground.
In its first principle cosmic humanism is thus aligned with specu-
lative mysticism rather than with rationalism. It acknowledges in
the world-ground an "infinite tendency" rather than a well-ordered
and self-representative structure of eternal and universal ideas.
II
In its second principle this cosmic application of the pragmatic
method must transfer to the world-ground another ingrained feature
of the human organism of experience; namely, the instinctive coor-
dination of blind impulses into a consistent organism of vital experi-
ence. The pure function of consciousness does, in fact, take on a
60 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
living content ; the unconscious does become conscious ; the simple
fluency of primal consciousness does become dirempted by warring
wills and ideas. The prenatal bareness of animal experience does
fructify with the passing years. The cosmic function has evolved a
cosmos with the passing ages. Now, is this a fructification into con-
sciousness of unconscious idea or of unconscious will?
Here, again, the bias of rationalism must yield under the test of
experience. This test has already shown us that the inmost structure
of consciousness excludes the notion of a divine mind full of an
infinite number of infinite ideas and forms. But rationalism might
justly intervene at this point with the sentimental contention with
which throughout its history it has gripped the race of men. Putting
aside all metaphysical claims with respect to the ideas of the eternal
and universal, this pure sentiment of rationality simply claims that
at any rate the motives of the cosmic life are always ideational rather
than impulsive, calm rather than passionate. The sole aim of world-
experience is to arrive at an eventual, inner harmony of its ger-
minating ideas, to subject all wills to this ideal of consistency and
smoothness of being. In a word, the prime aim of experience is to
become reasonable.
If this final defense of rationalism is an argument for the primacy
of ideas as against impulses, its argument can not claim the support
of experience. On the contrary, nothing is more certain than the
primacy of the impulsive phase of consciousness. The consciousness
of single-celled animals is fundamentally motor ; likewise the prenatal
consciousness of the higher animals. In these two cases no idea
whatever (except, perhaps, sensations of pressure and warmth) can
be present in the organism 's inner experience ; and yet the very signs
are motor by which the psychologists infer that they are conscious at
all. Or, again, in idiocy and senile dementia, where consciousness
approaches once more its primal state, the last functions that linger
above the threshold are not ideational, but motor. In "absolute"
idiocy there still remains a vegetating activity ; in dementia the first
functions to disappear or become confused are ideational, and in the
last stages an impulsive activity continues long after it becomes only
too painfully apparent that all control from ideational centers has
ceased.
With scrupulous regard for the structure of known organisms of
experience, cosmic humanism is thus able to take a second step in its
construction of world-experience. It now conceives that experience
to be an infinite, totally subconscious function whose first steps in
world-experience are impulsive rather than ideational. No matter
how persistently a world-soul may in its present constitution be aim-
ing at inward reasonableness, in its beginning it had no idea where or
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 61
how its activity was coming out. Like every other organism of
experience, it just became, it just grew! In this matter cosmic ex-
perience is again comparable with the mystic passion which desires
an infinite number of things, and yet has no idea what these things
are. The cosmic passion may be eternal, the cosmic idea is inherently
temporal.
Ill
These initial impulses arising blindly within the formless and
fluent infinity of world-consciousness have undergone coordinating,
organizing, and hardening processes. In the present state of the
cosmos the average observer will be very reluctant to accept any doc-
trine of the present plasticity of cosmic stuff. In this matter of
plasticity the materialist now has the weight of evidence in his pan of
the scales. The patent fact is that, except within very narrow limits
indeed, things are not plastic under our processes of practical reac-
tion. By overdoing its hypothesis of the perfect plasticity of the
world-ground, humanism might easily fall into the pathetic fallacy
of absolute idealism. On the clear ground of known experience the
humanist may insist (a) that the cosmos conceived as world-experi-
ence must be inwardly a pure function, and (&) that in its initial
processes of growth it was an inchoate matrix of perfectly plastic yet
blind impulses-to-be. But it can not be urged on the same ground
that world-experience in its present state is thus blindly and per-
fectly fluent. World-impulses, whatever they may be in their in-
ward, primeval character, are now outwardly fixed and hardened.
Does, then, the structure of cosmic humanism fall to pieces be-
cause one can not by taking thought pinch off a cubit of world-stuff
and plaster it on his own head, nor by praying make the sun stop in
its course ? There is a certain merit in the criticism of one of prag-
matism 's doughty opponents who declares that the theory is designed
solely for the man who needs to get out of a scrape. But the apparent
bathos of pragmatism at this point arises solely from a failure to fit
the structure of human experience fully into the cosmic scheme. For
it is true of human experience, not only that it has this inner and
initial plasticity, but also that in its adult form it has stiffened and
hardened into all sorts of physical fixtures. In our own organisms
there exist innumerable physical processes which are only subcon-
sciously felt and are ordinarily wholly uncontrolled from higher
centers. In both its phylogenetic and ontogenetic origin this human
experience began, we may fairly suppose, as a plastic feeling-con-
sciousness of the total organism: the plastic simplicity of the con-
sciousness of the single-celled animal and of the freshly impregnated
fetus is paralleled in each case by the plasticity and simplicity of the
62 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
organism itself. But with the inward formation of physical systems
each discharging a fixed function in the evolving organism there pro-
ceeded likewise, on the side of consciousness, a certain subconscious
hardening of physical consciousness; e. g., feelings of visceral
massiveness, of joint and muscle strains, of physical weight, hardness,
and the like.
Humanism, disabused of any metaphysical hypothesis of cosmic
plasticity, should propose at this point an hypothesis of cosmic, phys-
ical subconsciousness. In brief, two postulates are involved in the
fundamental structure of physical experience. (1) The physical
universe has originated not by the fully conscious control of some
eternal intelligence, but, rather, through a hardening into objective
being of the unconscious, organic needs of the impulsively evolving
cosmos. (2) The physical universe is now felt in the cosmic life as
so much pull and strain and dead weight. 2 In a word, plasticity is
no more a characteristic of cosmic than of human experience.
IV
On the other hand, the humanist metaphysic need not postulate a
cosmic experience less plastic than the human. As we have just seen,
the physical parts of an organism are felt. They are not inwardly
and radically sundered from the region of conscious being; they are
subconscious, but not unconscious. Moreover, within certain limits
physical processes are subject to control from the higher motor cen-
ters of the organism. Consciously controlled heart-beating, accel-
erated or depressed circulation of the blood, voluntary bisecting of
the viscera, the suggestive therapeutic reduction of inflammation in
diseased parts, the psychic treatment of nervous and chronic diseases
these are cases in point. The evidence by no means proves the
complete plasticity of the human organism under conscious control
from higher centers; it does indicate, however, that there is in the
conscious organism no inherent inability which would prevent the
controlling of physical processes from volitional centers of the cosmic
life.
Y
The foregoing conclusions expose the marrow of the divinity
within the dry bones of scholasticism. The genius of the schoolman
is revealed and exhausted by his search for a necessarily permanent
* I need hardly say that this transcription of physical subconsciousness from
the human to the cosmic scale should not be carried to an anthropomorphic
extreme. In the cosmic life there are, of course, no visceral feelings, no muscle
and joint strains, and all that. At the most the cosmic physique feels in a
universal degree the intracortical strains and the brain fatigue which assail the
human life.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 63
principle underlying and pervading the shifting sands of being. And
this is the lasting passion of all seekers after the universal and eternal.
That such a principle is discoverable we have seen. It is in
reality not a system of fixed and well-ordered concepts, but a pressure
of conscious activity presupposed in all our processes of experience
and felt even in the region of our subconscious, organic life. But
the very process of analysis which discovers this active principle of
all experience does not wholly satisfy the scholastic passion for an
eternal whose existence is necessary. It is conceivable that the func-
tion of consciousness even on a cosmic scale should cease to be active.
There are cases of known organisms wherein the active, organizing
principle has practically ceased to work. In absolute idiocy and
coma the organism of experience seems to be slipping back into the
abyss of totally unconscious non-being. Either because of a con-
genital poverty of impulses-to-be, or through a fatiguing of these
impulses, conscious activity seems about played out. If, now, we
apply the norm of human to cosmic experience, we may admit the
possibility of defectiveness and fatigue even in the cosmic organism.
The persistency of the physical universe in the midst of its ceaseless
flux of being must thus be interpreted partly as the natural healthi-
ness of a great cosmic animal 3 and partly as the conscious resistance
of cosmic energy to the deranging forces of mental disease. 4 The
real existence of universal principles or laws is, therefore, to be
regarded not as necessary, but rather as the achievement of a partly
conscious and partly subconscious will-to-be in the cosmic life.
VI
It remains only to ward off a possible misunderstanding of the
foregoing analysis of the world's absolutely subconscious matrix by
explaining that this discussion of the ' ' infinite ' ' has no explicit refer-
ence to the tender infinitudes of religious experience. To affirm
that the absolutely subconscious has in itself a blind character which,
as blind and unconscious, is strictly submoral, or to consider that this
subconscious world-life has arrived at and is now consciously working
out in its voluntary centers a personal character, or to submit the
ground on which religious experience may justify its antagonism to
positivism in claiming that this personal character is cosmic and not
* A large part of the living truth is undoubtedly expressed in the cosmic
animism of Greek culture. See Plato's description of the world-soul as a " per-
fect animal," " Timaeus," 31. Cf. Aristotle: "Deity is an animal that is ever-
lasting and most excellent in nature. . . . This constitutes the very essence of
God," " Metaphysics," Book XI., 6.
* Such resistance appears to fail, as we have seen, on the human plane in
cases of idiocy and senile dementia and on the stellar plane in cases of " dying "
comets.
64 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
merely human these questions the writer hopes to discuss at some
future time in a paper dealing with " The Cosmic Character."
FRANK C. DOAN.
MEADVILLE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Psychology of Feeling and Attention. EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER.
New York : The Macmillan Co. 1908. Pp. 404.
Psychologists of feeling have as a rule started at the big end of the
horn. Titchener proposes to reverse this procedure, and to take his de-
parture from elements themselves. All fundamental differences in psy-
chological systems depend upon the different conceptions of sensation,
feeling, and attention. A knowledge of the issues here involved and of
the relevant facts becomes imperative. The problem of sensation, though
it is the farthest advanced of the three, is an involved one. The unsettled
state of feeling and attention is notorious. Temperament and training
have largely determined the attitudes thus far taken toward these prob-
lems. Titchener claims, however, to " keep as closely as possible to docu-
ments and to experimental results."
As sensation must be for the author the standard of reference through-
out his discussion, he attacks at once this preliminary problem. Two
usages of the word must be distinguished. " The sensation for psychology
is any sense-process that can not be further analyzed by introspection."
" The sensations of psychophysics, on the other hand, are the sense-cor-
relates of the elementary excitatory processes posited by a theory of
vision or of audition, etc." The sensory element of psychology, with
which the author is concerned, must be defined in terms of its attributes.
The provisional definition of attribute may be that it is any aspect of
sensation which fulfils the conditions of inseparability and independent
variability. Independent variability is within limits only a reliable test
of an attribute. Following Miiller, Titchener groups attributes of sensa-
tions into those of qualitative and those of intensive character. In the
intensity group come such sensation characteristics as intensity proper
(degree), duration, extension, and clearness. Qualitatively a sensation
may possess a " complex of distinguishable qualitative attributes," or a
single one. A sensation of color may (without approaching or withdraw-
ing from the zero point) be varied in hue, tint, and /chroma, three dis-
tinguishable attributes in the quality group. Likewise volume and pitch
in the quality of the tone sensation are distinguishable, each one being
at the same time qualitative. In pressure sensations, also, there is over-
lapping of the ticklish, the quivering, and the granular qualities. This
overlapping is found as well in pain and certain kinesthetic sensations,
and, possibly, in alimentary sensations. Titchener concludes here that
"psychology has taken the simplicity of the qualitative attribute in too
dogmatic a spirit," showing very forcibly " that there is a great deal of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 65
work still to be done before we can make out a final list of the sense
qualities."
As to the intensity problem decision is likewise difficult, instances of
the independent intensity variation being hard to find. In the sphere of
vision Bering, Hillebrand, and Kiilpe have each denied its existence.
Concomitant quality variation confuses introspection. Titchener thinks,
however, that psychophysics has explained and resolved the difficulty of
the spatial and temporal attributes. Controversy is active for the reason
that we confuse time estimate and durational experience, space estimate
and extensional experience. The charge of equating the psychical and
the physical has been met in the case of intensity and can here be dis-
missed. Empirically " duration appears to attach to all sensations," and
extension to visual and the three cutaneous senses. The fourth intensive
attribute, reflecting as it does the distribution of attention, is very fully
dealt with later in the discussion. There are also, yet to receive adequate
investigation, attributes of a " higher order," which may or may not be
further analyzed, such as the penetratingness of certain scents, or the
urgency of pains, or the obtrusiveness of certain colors. In estimating
the number of possible sensations Titchener raises the question as to why
quality has been accepted as the " individualizing " attribute of sensation.
If intensity should also be an individualizing attribute the number of
visual sensations would be unaltered, although the auditory list would be
greatly lengthened. The same problem arises with the other attributes,
and Titchener suggests that their differences, like intensive differences,
should be regarded as ultimate and distinctive. Yet he sees no necessity
here for logical strictness. A classification should be adopted for the
sake of expediency. Such problems of this introductory chapter are
presented to put the reader " in tune " with the author in his later study
of the still more baffling questions relating to feeling and attention.
Some psychologists have held that there is no independent feeling
element, some that there is. The James-Lange theory dispenses with
this independent element by identifying affective processes and organic
sensations ; Stumpf, by divorcing sense-feeling from emotion ; both differ-
ing from Titchener, who believes that simple feelings " represent a stage
or level from which we ascend to the emotions," and vice versa. Hence
for the author the only thoroughgoing procedure is to attack the problem
at the bottom, by examining the criteria of sense-feeling, or affection.
Subjective is the term which is supposed to differentiate feeling from
sensation, and those using it have tended to confuse epistemological and
psychological inquiries. Wundt, however, uses subjective in the sense of
" tendency to fusion." This characteristic is not, however, attributable to
a single element, and likewise it does not satisfactorily differentiate feel-
ing and organic sensation. Another meaning for subjective is that it
refers to the uniqueness of the experience, while objective, characterizing
the sensational element, refers to the common experience by different
observers of the external stimulation. The phenomena of adaptation
show sensation to be in a similar case, and hence " variability of affective
judgment may be due, precisely, to difference in affective adaptation."
66 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Feelings, again, are called subjective because they can't stand alone in
consciousness: sensations objective because they can. Some sensations
are subjective, however, and some feelings objective, if we are to admit
introspective records. Hence objective and subjective are poor names with
which to distinguish elementary sensation and feeling.
Affections, again, are said to be unrealizable, while sensations can
be localized. As to " outer localization," feelings are often localized,
some sensations never. The question of "inner localization" brings up
the question of mixed feelings. Can affections coexist, as sensations do,
in consciousness? Here Kiilpe and Wundt are arrayed against Ebbing-
haus and Sully. Titchener apparently thinks he finds experimental sup-
port here for the impossibility of the coexistence of feelings. This feel-
ing criterion is at least in doubt; the evidence, though strong, is not
conclusive.
Sensations, again, merely differ, feelings are antagonistic. Sensation
differences, expressed in paired terms, cold-hot for example, do not in
themselves imply real opposition, and opposition does seem to require the
presence of feeling. Still " affective opposition " is meaningless unless
we understand by it " mutual incompatibility in consciousness," a con-
cession to an unproved, though likely, assumption, in Titchener's mind.
A fourth suggested criterion is that, while sensation is stronger than
image, image-affection is intensively equivalent to the sense affection.
As this involves the mooted problem of affective recall, Titchener cites
Ladd as counter-authority, and points out the need of " experimental
control of affection," mentioning the objection that this rests on two
doubtful assumptions; that sensation and image differ only in intensity,
and that the image-affection (?) may not have passed in each case into
sense-feeling.
Again it has been said that habit nation marks off feeling from sensa-
tion. The direct analogue is here, however, obvious. Lastly, affections
are said to lack the attribute of clearness. This, authorities to the con-
trary, Titchener thinks the most firmly grounded criterion of affection.
Thus the conclusion seems to be that it is necessary to discard the criteria
of habituation and central intensity, to pronounce doubtful those of sub-
jectivity and non-localizableness, and to attach some importance to the
qualitative antagonism and to the lack of the clearness attribute. Here,
as indeed throughout the volume, Titchener succeeds admirably in forcing
the appeal to experience, and to experience, moreover, under experimental
conditions.
Ruling out from consideration numerous historical and epistemological
attempts to reduce affection to sensation, the discussion now centers upon
Stumpf's 1906 paper, " TJeber Gefiihlsempfindungen." Stumpf clearly dis-
misses the possibility of conceiving feeling as an attribute of sensation,
since it itself possesses attributes. Titchener agrees, thinking this an
error that dies hard. As to another alternative, that feeling is an inde-
pendent element, Stumpf throws the burden of proof on the adherents to
this view. Unless the difference between sensation and feeling is primary
and fundamental, conceptual hypotheses of their independent existence
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 67
violate scientific economy. Stumpf, then, is concerned in showing that
affection is best and most truly conceived, not as attribute, nor as coordi-
nate element, nor yet as a special kind of sensation, as vision for example ;
but rather as a (central ?) concomitant sensation. By an appeal to the
different senses Stumpf concludes that pain is a sensation and that pain-
quality is a quality of sensation. To this Titchener assents, dissenting,
however, both as to the nature of this pain-quality and as to whether un-
pleasantness is really a qualitative character of the pain itself. Stumpf
here has overlooked the significance attached to the pain sensations that
are still pleasant. Again, for Stumpf itch is a pleasant sensation, for
Titchener it is an itch sensation with a pleasurable (or not) concomitant
affection. In short, Titchener thinks that the Stumpf theory would have
to mean (p. 95) that " pleasures of touch or temperature, sight or sound,
aroused by intensive peripheral stimulation, depend for their pleasurable-
ness upon the coexcitation of the organs of tickling, itch, lust, etc." So
again, in the problem of agreeableness and disagreeableness of stimulation
of visual, auditory, taste, or smell organs, Stumpf's theory does not satisfy
introspection. Its author would say that, physiologically, it is possible
that agreeableness excitation is never set up independently of visual or
auditory, etc., or that agreeableness and color are intimately fused, or that
agreeableness sensations are of central origin. In this last case, of
course, they can never be isolated by modifying peripheral stimulation.
Here Titchener thinks Stumpf unwarranted in bolstering up his theory
by purely psychophysical arguments. The possibility of " isolating the
pleasure organs " of vision, etc., obviously is not taken seriously by
Titchener. Stumpf's conclusions rest upon the assumption that some-
thing that can be separate in idea, but not separately sensed, is still a sen-
sation. Concerning here the related problem of the separateness of
imaged affection and of sensory image, Titchener, aside from his own
convictions about affective imagery, finds " no atom of reliable evidence "
of the fact. Even so, Stumpf would answer, the affective element might
still be an " accessory sensation of central origin."
In brief, Stumpf has not been consistent in his attempt at a descrip-
tive task; he has examined the three alternative affection criteria and
found them wanting; he has established pain and itch, for example, as
sensational in character (taking for granted, however, that they and their
analogues are thus affective concomitant sensations) ; he has surmounted
the difficulties in sight, sound, taste, and smell by a retreat into psycho-
physics ; in short he has posited the psychophysical possibility of centrally
excited accessory sensations, thus lending his name to a proposed sub-
stitute for the " affective element " theory of Titchener and others. Here
the critic can see in the substitute no possible applications which would
seem to justify the rejection of the independent element hypothesis ; this,
too, after examining those proposed.
Titchener next devotes a whole chapter to a consideration of Wundt's
tridimensional theory of feeling. He sees germs of this theory in the
early writings of Wundt and attempts to account for that author's ap-
parently shifting attitudes toward the problem. He then outlines the
68 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
finished theory and numbers the five general arguments used by Wundt
in its defense. This is in substance a resume of the published controversy
between these authors, already familiar to psychologists. Briefly,
Titchener thinks Wundt's reliance upon results of the impression method
irrelevant, his support for the three dimensions based on temporal rela-
tions of affective experience (given up by Wundt himself) useless, and
the argument based on the general conditions of conscious contents,
intensive, qualitative, and temporal (disregarding without reason the
spatial) , as " logically defective and psychologically indefensible."
There remains, however, the necessity for testing the soundness of
Wundt's introspective evidence, and the validity of his analogy from the
qualitative analysis of the emotions.
In the first place, Titchener is impressed with the significance attached
to the fact that Wundt repeatedly changes the terminology for his
maximal dimensional opposites. The real difficulty evident is one of
reconciling the apparent conflict of the demands of accurate introspection
and of the necessity of maintaining this assumed typical affective move-
ment between opposites. Titchener's real introspective difficulty in assent-
ing to Wundt's classification is shown by other psychologists, even by those
who are themselves, as Royce and Vogt, disposed to some dimensional
theory. The multitude of elementary qualities which these dimensions
are supposed to include involve one, of course, in still more intricate and
perplexing problems. As compared with the richness of Wundt's, Titch-
ener finds his own introspection of these compound feelings very meager.
He feels strongly that Wundt confuses organic sense material with feel-
ings, and that the lack of interest of the latter in organic sensations
per se accounts for the apparent richness of affective qualities. In short,
the organic sensations are responsible for the tridimensional theory. Ex-
perimental investigations by Titchener and Hayes are here reported as
" experimental evidence " to the contrary, though it is not claimed that
they are conclusive. On the whole Wundt's theory is valuable chiefly in
that it is a starting-point for further inquiries. As yet Titchener offers
no hint at any constructive theory. So fascinating and necessary first
is this clean critical preparatory survey.
Before we are to have his own tentative psychology of feeling, attention
(the clearness attitude of sensation) must be treated. Experimental psy-
chology may justly point with pride to three principal and distinct achieve-
ments : the recasting of the doctrine of memory and association, a scien-
tific treatment of individual differences, and, despite vague hints through-
out the whole history of psychology, the discovery of attention by an
explicit formulation of the problem " the nerve of the whole psycho-
logical system." As the name of Helmholtz must be associated with the
doctrine of sensible quality, and that of Fechner with sensible intensity,
so must that of Wundt be with the doctrine of attention. Despite this
fact, even recent writers, Ebbinghaus and Pillsbury for example, by " con-
stant appeal to casual introspection," really confess scientific weakness.
Many have too readily acquiesced in Kant's doctrine, that introspection
(really retrospection) of psychology can never be identical in import with
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 69
the introspection of physical science. Titchener concludes that there is
no difference here in principle, illustrating his point, and concluding that,
in the case of the disappearance of affective processes, this is due to
another fact, the " incompatibility of affection and attention." The
really adverse influences in the study of attention have been due to " the
pressure of popular psychology and the obviousness of application." Sci-
entific psychology has, however, fought clear of the popular fallacy of
regarding attention as a faculty. Again, the demand for immediately
applicable formula? " has discouraged that work of scattered exploration by
which alone a science is enabled to advance."
Titchener proceeds to show how the real problem of attention centers
in the fact of sensible clearness, and that it can best be studied by con-
ceiving it as an intensive attribute of sensation. He has prepared for
this discussion by his introductory treatment of sensation. Baldwin's
Dictionary cites five types of attentional theory. These are representa-
tive, and Titchener makes the point from them that " wherever you look,
you find some form of reference to clearness; clearness is, so to say, the
first thing that men lay their hands on, when they begin to speak of
attention."
It remains to consider under what conditions sensation appears with
maximal clearness. These are (1) intensity of stimulus (including
duration or extensity considered as equivalents of high degree of sensible
intensity) ; (2) quality (some qualities intrinsically clearer than others) ;
(3) temporal relations of stimulus (suddenness, pretty well assured;
repetition as such still requiring experimental proof) ; (4) movement of
stimulus (especially in the fields of vision and touch) ; (5) novelty (a
true condition in its own right in so far as it means non-associatedness) ;
(6) the associative relationship between the sensation and the whole
circle of momentarily dominant ideas (in complex sensory or in acquired
ideational interests) ; (7) the accommodation of organs of sense (as a
negative condition at least, if we admit in addition to " attributes of
stimulus " " psychophysical dispositions ") ; and (8) the absence or cessa-
tion of the stimulus (a true condition only when foregone attention is
presupposed). Thus, just as the central fact of attention is clearness, so
all " empirical conditions of conscious clearness may be grouped together
as conditions of a powerful impression of the nervous system" (p. 204).
Titchener does not go into elaborate discussion of theory. Intensive
stimuli set up psychophysical processes of relatively great strength,
qualitative make appeal to peculiar nervous susceptibility, repeated
stimuli with cumulative strength rank with the intensive, sudden stimuli
impinge upon nervous elements of a high degree of susceptibility, mov-
ing stimuli arouse different nervous elements in quick succession, in a
sense also being cumulative, novel stimuli do not have to share their
effects with associates or rivals, and the anticipatory image makes the
correlation of a given excitation coincide with a psychophysical one
already in progress. Likewise, of course, excitations in the line of a
" psychophysical disposition " will have greatest effect, whereas " periph-
eral accommodation" opens the gateway to the cortex, giving the stim-
70 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ulus strength from the first. Finally, it is a matter of little consequence
to recast all these empirical conditions into those physiological and those
psychological. The sole condition is nervous disposition. Genetic psy-
chology may classify these determinants in the order of time, experimental
psychology delimit and quantify their influence, and physiology exhibit
the mechanism of their nervous operation.
Thus attention, clearness, is conditioned upon nervous predisposition,
exactly as the attribute, quality, is conditioned upon nervous differentia-
tion. To be an attribute of sensation implies that it varies, within limits,
independently of other concurrent attributes. This is the first law of
attention. Some qualities admit of a very narrow range of clearness-
degree. The intensity-relation to clearness is the debatable ground, how-
ever. Here Titchener, citing flatly opposed authorities, is again driven
to experimental results. From these he positively concludes that, with
strong as well as with weak stimuli, attention has an intensifying effect.
He can not explain what this means physiologically or psychologically.
Attention in a measure thus is seen to be an independently variable attri-
bute, while at the same time it seems bound up with intensity. Weak
sounds may be as clear as loud ones, but weak clear sounds may not
be as weak as they would be at a lower degree of intensity. From the
foregoing it is natural, from physiological conditions, that intensity and
clearness should be intimately related.
The law of the two levels is Titchener's second law of attention. Bald-
win and Angell (who follows him) have confused physiological and psy-
chological clearness, in positing four levels in consciousness. Ward's
three grades include " subconscious presentations " as one level. Mar-
shall seems to find by introspection a " feel " of a narrower or fuller aura
in the lower field of inattention. Helmholtz, Leibnitz, and Wundt find
kinds and degrees of clearness clear and obscure grades. Morgan dis-
cusses the focus and the margin. Titchener can not verify the distinc-
tions purported to have been found by Baldwin, Angell, and Marshall.
The question of the relative degrees of clearness in the two levels is found
to be a difficult one. Titchener, while admitting the possibility, can not
discover these in the lower level. He takes issue with Wundt's intro-
spective interpretation of a clear, a half-obscure, and a wholly obscure
(merely a feeling of " something there ") field, the first two in his opinion
belonging to the upper, the last to the lower level. If clearness be taken
as a sensible attribute of sensation, and introspection here be clearly dis-
tinguished from the conjoined assimilative function of cognition, it will
be found that, so far as clearness (attention) is concerned, the clear and
the half -obscure belong both to the upper level. These are recoverable in
the " image of reproduction." Likewise James, in his " Stream of
Thought," interested in the cognitive function, is primarily concerned
with the upper conscious level. This actual two-level formation of con-
sciousness is narrower above, broader below. This assured difference of
clearness of focal fields is a promising field for experiment, however
doubtful the case may be with the lower level.
The third law of the temporal relations of attention, the so-called laws
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 71
of accommodation and of inertia, is a law of the total attentive con-
sciousness rather than of clearness itself, and hence not pertinent in an
elementary psychology of attention. It relates to problems of perception
and of idea. For Titchener throughout a simplified psychology of ele-
mentary attention is the desideratum.
Following up, then, Titchener's clean-cut inquiry into the " carrying
power of clearness under simple conditions," we are given the law of
prior entry, which permanently displaces former absurdly proposed ex-
planations of the negative displacement of the bell-stroke, in complication
experiments, by showing it to be a phenomenon due to definite predisposi-
tion of the attention, of " prior entry." As to the law of limited range,
Titchener, against Ebbinghaus, agrees tentatively with the more common
account that many stimuli may become clear in consciousness at the
same time, at least until this consensus has been subjected to experimental
revision.
Concerning the law of temporal instability, Wundt has confused the
term instability with discontinuity in his claim for the latter. Titchener
questions discontinuity " even in extreme instances of successive associa-
tion." The quality attribute is not " intrinsically intermittent," though
the quality may fade out. Experiment must decide here also as to whether
clearness is intermittent. The question becomes this, Does fluctuation
occur in all sense departments? In touch attention shows no fluctuation
sometimes for several minutes, in one instance for over ten minutes.
This, in the sphere of touch, with no accommodation organ, suggests that
conditions for fluctuation are peripheral. Evidence is next forthcoming
that the same holds good of hearing, and that fluctuations in sight are
due to " very special conditions residing in the function of the peripheral
organ." At least a safe tentative position is that until peripheral condi-
tions are investigated further appeal to the cortex is useless. Peripheral
conditions of clearness are intermittent, the oscillation of the central
predisposition is an open question. Titchener is not concerned, of course,
with the fluctuations of the total attentive consciousness. The law of
temporal instability holds for central predispositions.
A final law of attention, illustrative of Titchener's attempt " to disen-
tangle the really elementary problems from the problems of the total
attentive consciousness," is that of degree of clearness, some law of
clearness comparable to Weber's law for intensity. This has not been
discovered, no way of measuring attention directly or indirectly having
proved satisfactory. Suggestions, however, as to methods for objective
tests which might indicate gross differences in attentional degree and
capacity in different observers, or constancy and fluctuation in the same
observer, are given. All experimental investigations where introspection
is judiciously got and interpreted, and even results from expression in-
struments, might be utilized in the needful work of differentiating con-
scious degrees of clearness.
Titchener has been constructive in his treatment of attention, but as
yet only critical in his feeling discussions. His final chapter is con-
structive here also, although modestly offered as " tentative and provi-
72 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sional." He deprecates the intellectualism typical of Herbart, the sensa-
tionalism of contemporary physiology, the strong intellectual-bias in-
heritance of experimental psychology, and the inertia of settled philo-
sophical tradition. He welcomes the revival, from the eighteenth century,
of revolt from intellectualism and of interest in affective processes.
Physiological tradition has been broken. Experimental study can now
clear the air. Affection must be given elemental rank. It lacks the attri-
bute of clearness, it " moves between opposites," there is with sensations
a concurrence of these distinguishing characters, and finally the genetic
difference between sensation and affection can very likely be made out.
Let us, then, dismiss the unproductive affective memory hypothesis, and,
contrary to Stumpf, work with feeling in its own right. What theory,
then, will round out the above elemental considerations? Assume that
consciousness is ultimately homogeneous. Assume that affections appear
as " undeveloped sensations, that might, under favorable conditions, have
developed into sensations." Assume further that peripheral organs are
necessary for affections. (This last is Titchener's implicit assumption.)
Hazard a guess that these organs are the " free afferent nerve-endings,
distributed in the various tissues of the body, which represent a lower
level of development than our special receptive organs." With Mach he
says, " Had mental development been carried farther, pleasantness and
unpleasantness might have become sensations," differentiated each into
a larger number of sensations. This theory would explain the absence
of the attribute of clearness. By this arrested development they can never
attain to clear consciousness.. " Affective experience is the obscure, indis-
criminable correlate of a medley of widely diffused excitatory processes "
(p. 292). This theory will also explain the "movement between oppo-
sites " by these processes reporting, as good or bad, the " tone " of the
bodily systems from which they proceed. Mixed feelings are thus ac-
counted for (dismissed ?). The lack of qualitative differentiation would
thus be explainable, as would the introspective resemblance between
organic sensations and affections. Genetically they are akin. Titchener's
apologetic conclusion here is that " where our positive knowledge is prac-
tically nil,, there is no disgrace in being wrong."
The relation of attention to affection can be anticipated. Titchener
can scarcely take Ebbinghaus seriously in the latter's contention that the
affective value of impressions is one of the conditions for attention,
relegating such vagary to the " popular psychologies." In the second
question of systematic importance he finds himself in agreement ; namely,
in the possibility of attending without feeling, finding that instances of
" feelingless attention " are " of fairly common occurrence." The con-
nection, obvious and natural, need not be universal The term " will "
covers both the facts of attention and the facts of action, those of action
being simply cases of attention. Of course, we act without feeling.
As of action, we may have automatic, instinctive, or mechanized atten-
tion. The relation between affection and attention so far is merely
external, may be only so. Affection reports the tone of the " organless "
part of the bodily system, " attention clarifies the sensory contents under
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 73
the influence of powerful nervous stimuli." Naturally (assuming the
correctness of Titchener's theory of feeling) the special organs become
adapted to these attentional stimuli, " so that, while the corresponding
sensations appear, at least momentarily, at the conscious focus, there is
no felt shock or tilt of the whole living body, no concomitant pleasantness
or unpleasantness. We may attend without feeling." This, for Titch-
ener, is a welcome " loosening up " of systematic psychology. Can the
opposite occur, can feeling with its organic tone, its undeveloped " periph-
eral organ" functioning, be present while the sensory contents are still
obscure? Wundt thinks this possible. Titchener thinks Wundt confuses
feelings and organic sensations, he himself concluding that the relation
between affection and attention is in this sense intrinsic. Strong feeling
implies relatively clear sensible factors.
The expectation and effort which are supposed to accompany attention
are not necessarily affective. The problem of effort leads to the im-
portant question of the motor interpretation of attention and to the dis-
tinction of attentive states as voluntary and involuntary. Titchener thinks
that a motor explanation can not adequately explain all the facts. It is
an exaggeration to define attention entirely in motor terms. In many
cases cited no motor outflow can be found. As neither strain sensations
nor feelings aid in distinguishing forms of attention, Titchener offers
his primary passive, active, and secondary passive forms as a useful
genetic classification which does not slur observed differences.
The discussion ends with a graceful apology which will tend possibly
to silence the hostile critic and to stimulate sympathetic ones (and there
very likely will be many) who can not pursue the subject along the in-
teresting and various lines suggested by the author.
It is amusing to speculate upon how many unwary readers may be
caught by the ambiguous title of " The Elementary Psychology of Feeling
and Attention." It is " elementary " in somewhat the sense that Mc-
Dougall's " Primer " is, another innocent looking little book. The reader
will soon discover himself, however, grappling in Titchener's discussion
with fundamental and baffling conceptions. His task is clean-cut, even
without the constant references to "systematic psychology" and the
sharp slaps at " popular psychologies," at ready-remedy applications, at
cortex speculations, at the questors for results who use shaky methods
(among whom the writer is classed), at those who simply adopt epis-
temological or teleological attitudes in psychological inquiries, and
even at those who confuse psychophysical with psychological conditions
and conceptions. The beauty of it all is that one is thrown back upon his
haunches at every step. He must introspect for himself, either to agree
or to disagree; and if conditions are not right for this, he has created
in him the desire for recourse to reliably recorded introspections. The
exceptional value of Titchener's own self-recorded introspections, given
with assurance and under desirable conditions, will be recognized by all
psychologists who are interested in the special problems under discussion.
The rich number of urgent experimental problems, together with the
large citation of introspections from authorities who are flatly opposed,
74 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
produces in the reader a rather healthy bewilderment, which should serve
mightily to stimulate definite investigation. And, in that the book is an
avowed attempt at a contribution to a systematic psychology from ele-
ments, one wishes that Titchener had at least made explicit in some
connection his attitude toward certain very definite and pointed considera-
tions recently formulated by Woodworth in the James commemorative
volume and by Calkins in her recent articles in this JOURNAL a demand
for a recasting which may make necessary the recognition of elemental
disparate constituents of consciousness other than those from which
Titchener takes his starting-point. Though it is true that he seems to
follow where his facts lead, still the writer has the feeling that there
are other and at least equally compelling considerations which have not
been allowed due weight.
Another noticeable feature of the book is the evident desire of the
author to give Wundt due historical prominence, ascribing to him cer-
tainly his full share (all that even a father of science could desire) of
priority in most affairs of moment in the development of "systematic
psychology." The importance of this for the historian of psychology can
not be questioned, if the verdict itself is not too generous.
As to the new theory of feeling proposed by Titchener, although its
actual formulation fills scarcely three pages, I think the author's whole
exposition and outlook depend for their provisional acceptance entirely
upon this general explanation, and upon the possibilities of its adaptability
to the varied phenomena observable. I seem to find a suggestion that it
would in the main be acceptable to Cattell in his article in the James
commemorative volume (pp. 580 ff.). However, though quite ready to
plead guilty, with many others, to the charge of " cortex speculation "
with scarce hope for any verification at an early date, I do not see that
Titchener's shifting the speculation to some possible peripheral apparatus
should be taken any more seriously than Stumpf's no less reckless attempt
at " isolating the pleasure organs " of vision for example, which may ac-
company the sensory color excitation. Stumpf is avowedly sensational-
istic in so far as introspection (or identical terminology) goes ; Titchener
is too, I think, dangerously near the same position. Titchener assumes,
of course, that any feeling must be either pleasant or unpleasant. This
dimension, if no other, holds always. He further assumes that all psy-
chologists admit this much. I do not understand Binet, O. Minnemann,
nor Royce to admit this; as I have before insisted, 1 Royce also believes
Wundt to mean that feelings of any one of the dimensions can exist in the
absence of the other dimensions, citing examples from his own intro-
spection. The rough, popular, teleological, non-introspective, pleasant-
unpleasant differentiation and opposition is the one useful for ordinary
daily life, of course. It suits Titchener's theory of feeling evidently be-
cause feeling^ is conceived as a sort of vague, unspecialized, undeveloped
consciousness. Without the vividness attribute for feeling in its own
right, this conclusion is natural and, I suppose, inevitable. With clear-
ness as merely an aspect of intensity, and, moreover, with no clearness
1 See, for example, Royce's " Outlines of Psychology," pp. 176 ff.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 75
but this sort of sensible intensity clearness, what some understand by a
peculiar distinctness (degree of affective clearness) is ruled out. Feelings
per se can never develop. On this view it is hard to see how they can
ever be fully analyzed by introspection. I am disposed to believe that,
just as Titchener has discovered something radically wrong in the prin-
ciples of introspection of those whose interpretations and views diverge
from his own, so there is something inadequate in his own principles of
introspection.
He makes much of the so-called introspective resemblance between
organic sensations and feelings (p. 293). I do not believe there is any
more intrinsic resemblance here than with any other kind of sensation.
Wundt's affective dimension of restlessness (excitement), or Royce's, as
the latter has clearly pointed out, may indeed always have as a companion
process concomitant sensory experience of movements, for example, " but
the feeling of that value of our experience which makes it an object of
momentary discontent" 2 is a feeling bearing irrespectively no resem-
blance to sensory factors. It is true that Titchener charges Wundt and
all dimensionalists with this very error of confusing organic sensations
and affections, but I think it is equally true that he has not exhausted
introspective possibilities by assuming that our discovery of organic sensa-
tions will reduce the richness of feeling characteristics. The very be-
ginning assumption or hypothesis, that from an evolutionary standpoint
sensations were probably first differentiated, seems to deserve grave ques-
tioning. Tawney and Davies, at any rate (and many others), have in
different ways given some reason for doubting the fruitfulness, and the
intelligibility even, of such a supposition. It is plausible on Titchener's
physiological theory, however.
This leads us to what seems to me the crux of the whole matter, so
far as adverse criticism goes. Titchener deprecates and combats sen-
sationalism and intellectualism. Does not Titchener himself in reality
offer an intellectualistic account of conscious life ? " It is a healthy in-
stinct that sends us back and back again to the channels of sense, as we
seek an appreciation of the fulness and richness of the mental life."
Peripheral " channels of sense " seem to me to mean avenues for sense
material; and it seems just as likely, more so, if there are elements of
consciousness intrinsically different from sensations, that the concomitant
functioning organs might differ too. So far as I am able to see it, the
same criticism Titchener directs against Stumpf may possibly be turned
against himself. So far as the "healthy instinct" goes, it would seem
that just as many turn back and back again also to some concomitant
nervous activity which may account for or correspond with the actual
introspective difference between feeling and sensation. Titchener's ex-
press desire to look for peripheral counterparts for feelings displays a
disposition to class feelings with organic sensations in a more intimate
way, as intrinsically more like sensations, than Stumpfs method of
merely naming them sensations. The latter by centrality of reference
seems to me to suggest somewhat more introspective distinction between
'Royce, "Outlines," p. 178.
76 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
feelings and sensations than the former, and to come nearer helping us
out of the difficulty mentioned above in the quotation from Royce. Titch-
ener would rule the teleological principle out of affective psychology
altogether, and I suppose almost everybody would agree with him. The
danger is to slip easily, with the help of some new formulation, back into
the intellectualistic attitude. It remains that the use of the teleological
principle had nothing to do with those dark ages in the psychology of
feeling at the impossibility of whose return Titchener rejoices.
As to his doctrine of mixed feelings I can not agree, not only because
I do not, frankly, desire to, but because my own work on feeling, and the
introspections there gathered from many subjects, I can not gainsay.
Method may be more valuable than results at the present stage of our
knowledge (or ignorance), but methods will avail more than method, and
I believe that an elemental psychology upon which a more comprehensive
systematic psychology may be built will some day be framed on some-
what different lines from any that yet exist. This will begin with a
fundamental reconstruction of the conception of psychic elements. The
interesting theory above reported is not (all others that I know fall in
the same category) free from certain implications which seem to me to
violate every introspection and every ideal I depend upon. Titchener's
discussion of the clearness attribute is, of course, pivotal. The problems
he seeks to explain by his theory as formulated arise from this position.
Miinsterberg's discussion of the independent vividness attribute shoiild
have been dismissed somehow for his puzzled readers. If feeling and
attention are not " incompatible " Titchener's position is weakened on
both counts, and his groundwork calls for a recasting. Other problems
not mentioned by him replace some of those he stresses. The impossibility
of attention to feeling is too readily assumed. This is the only way we
shall ever learn about either organic sensations or feelings. Subjects have
rarely been given extended training in feeling introspection. None of the
introspective data upon which Titchener relies is got from subjects spe-
cifically trained for long periods of time with excitations arousing pre-
sumably elemental feelings. He dismisses, without warrant I think, cer-
tain empirical considerations which were emphasized in my own investiga-
tions, one of these being the possibility of training in feeling introspection,
and another the independently variable vividness of feelings. A fuller
discussion of these and other points, however, I reserve for separate con-
sideration. If the condition for clearness is " a powerful impression of
the nervous system" it seems highly improbable that feelings may have
no such occasion to function. I may be blind to the possibilities, the im-
plied and possible ramifications which can be worked out and adapted to
the explanations of common experience, but I seem instinctively disin-
clined to work with an hypothesis which seems to rest upon the presup-
position that feeling itself can not be developed and refined. Judd has
seemed to me to deprive feeling of content, to empty it of significance in
its own fight. Titchener disagrees with Judd, but I don't know just
how. On his theory I can't see just what distinctive function feeling
(an example of arrested mental development) may have in life. " Had
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 77
our physical development been carried farther, we might have had (in-
stead of our vague affective life) a corresponding increase in the number
of internal sense organs " (p. 292). Despite my inability to describe what
the attitude is which may be free from intellectualistic and also from
teleological shortsightedness, and despite my effort to accept Titchener's
tentative hypothesis, I do not feel entirely without misgivings under his
flag. To be reasonable, one should offer a substitute. This would imply
a treatise. This I do not presume to attempt. I have, however, honestly,
even if inadequately, tried to suggest my personal reaction to the work
as a whole. I suppose some of my objections may be ruled out as
" epistemological." But somehow it seems to me that our epistemological
presuppositions inevitably underlie and exercise some directive influence
upon our characteristic attitude toward psychological problems, especially
those of feeling. Moreover I can not understand exactly how we can
safely divorce such considerations when we lay our elaborate groundwork
for a " systematic psychology." At any rate this divorcing, in the
opinion of the writer, has not been done by James, or Miinsterberg, or
Judd, or Titchener, etc., and when one tries to make articulate in what
fundamental respects he differs from another, for temperamental or other
reasons, he finds himself at their starting-point. I am myself unable to
find an attitude yet worked out which seems to me sufficiently free from
sensationalism and intellectualism to allow for a treatment of feeling
which satisfies my own introspection. Titchener has made undoubtedly
an important contribution, and the very sort that was needed. Professor
Titchener ranks so high, and merits it all so clearly, that his modest and
undogmatic, even at times apologetic, attitude so abashes one that it is
doubly difficult for the writer, who is even in name scarcely yet a psy-
chologist, to raise a dissenting voice.
After all Titchener has eminently succeeded in what he set out to do,
stimulate systematic investigation, state critical problems, lend his name
to an original theory, and offer a wealth of concrete material and well-
stated considerations which can never be neglected by any future psy-
chologist of feeling.
CHARLES HUGHES JOHNSTON.
UNIVEBSITY OF MICHIGAN.
The Philosophy of Loyalty. JOSIAH KOYCE. New York : The Macmillan
Co. 1908. Pp. xii-f 409.
Readers of " The World and the Individual " have been awaiting with
eagerness the appearance of a work which should supplement the author's
metaphysics by the presentation of his ethical creed, as held by him
to-day. The " Philosophy of Loyalty," in which this hope seems about
to be realized, will, however, prove in some respects disappointing to the
special student. For it is, as expressly announced in the preface, neither
a text-book nor " an elaborately technical philosophical research," but
rather a popular discussion of a single problem, which took its final form
78 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in a course of lectures delivered before the Lowell Institute. Neverthe-
less, the problem chosen is so fundamental and is treated with so much
clearness that the essential features of the author's theory of ethics appear
in unmistakable outlines, even though the reasons offered for its accept-
ance are not elaborated with anything approaching completeness.
The subject-matter of the book is, broadly speaking, the content of the
moral ideal. This for Professor Royce, as for Hegel, consists in the
identification of the individual will with the universal will. This uni-
versal is, of course, the organic whole of which each individual mind is
a member. The creation of a harmony between myself and the world, in
other words the setting before myself of ends the realization of which
is at the same time the realization of the ends of my fellowmen, this is the
task that the moral ideal lays upon me. Such a prescription means,
negatively, indifference to all satisfactions that are merely individual,
except as they may be incidental to the attainment of the ultimate end;
with this will disappear all strife except that against the enemies of the
ideal itself. Positively it means the giving up of one's life to the service
not of individuals as such, for there is no reason why I should supply
others with what I do not allow myself, but of causes. For a cause is a
tie binding a number of individuals into a unity through their struggle
for or possession of a common object. What particular causes you and I
are to work for must be determined mainly by our tastes, our abilities,
and our circumstances. But whatever our cause may be, evidently we
must so choose and serve it as to increase to the utmost of our power the
amount of devotion to causes in the world. For only as society becomes
thoroughly permeated by such a spirit can it become completely unified.
If, by narrowing somewhat the common signification of a word, we agree
to call " the willing, practical, and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to
a cause " loyalty, then it follows from the preceding that all virtue is
loyalty of some sort, and the supreme virtue is loyalty to loyalty.
The evidence offered for the truth of this position is twofold. In the
first place, it is maintained that this unity of the one and the many is the
highest good of the individual himself, that, indeed, nothing is a good
except as it is supported and made what it is by this consciousness of
harmony. Whence by the convenient and (among philosophers) popular
assumption that the right is always and everywhere identical with the
agent's highest good, the equation, morality = loyalty, is obtained. In the
second place, it is asserted that the ordinarily accepted virtues, as
veracity, respect for property, and the rest, find their explanation and
justification in terms of this conception.
But may not the conception itself rest upon a myth ? Devotion to a
cause may, indeed, be the individual's highest good, but he can find it
such, as Professor Royce admits, or rather insists, only on condition that
he supposes the cause to be worthy of his devotion. Now a cause, as
we have seen, does not derive its ultimate value from the satisfaction its
realization will afford to individuals. Is worth, or value, to be defined,
then, in terms of something other than satisfaction? By no means; the
good must represent the satisfaction of some conscious being. If, then,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 79
morality be not the worship of a fetish, the cause must be a super-
personal being, an experience dwelling upon some higher level of con-
sciousness than any human being ever reaches. And the cause of causes,
the unity of the life of the race, can be nothing other than God. At this
level of insight morality passes over into religion, and loyalty may be
defined as " the will to manifest, so far as is possible, the Eternal, that
is, the conscious and superhuman unity of life, in the form of the acts of
an individual Self." The evidence for the existence of this super-
personal consciousness occupies the two closing chapters of the book. In
the seventh it is presented by means of a polemic against pragmatism, in
the eighth by a more purely constructive argument. As these add noth-
ing essentially new to the exposition in " The World and the Individual "
and in the presidential address, " The Eternal and the Practical," they
need not detain us here.
Such are the outlines of this simple and impressive picture of the
moral life. What, now, are we to say of the grounds upon which it is
recommended for our acceptance? In attempting to estimate their
adequacy we are confronted by the fact that the book is not a treatise,
but a series of popular lectures. Now, if a lecturer wishes a second
invitation to address the same audience, even if it be an average
" academic " audience, he must supply entertainment or edification, not
evidence. If, then, the present reviewer finds himself compelled to say
that (ignoring the metaphysical discussion as something already before
the philosophical public) the arguments of the earlier chapters seem to
him not merely unconvincing, but flimsy, he is not so much condemning
this book as giving the author a hint as to how to deal with the difficulties
of at least one reader when he comes to prepare a more thoroughgoing
presentation.
Professor Royce, as we have seen, reaches his conclusion by two dif-
ferent paths, through a doctrine of the good and a doctrine of the right.
The position that loyalty, as above defined, is the supreme good, by the
side of which all other objects of desire are (as I understand it) worthless,
is attained primarily by the author's favorite method of eliminating alter-
natives. The most important alternative attacked is hedonism. But his
argument, if valid, will hold equally against a number of closely related
theories such as Alexander's and Simmel's, which, for want of a better
name, may be called voluntarism. Now the essence of both hedonism
and voluntarism is catholicity and freedom. As far as the individual's
own good is concerned, they assert that the satisfaction of no desire is
as such worthless, and, provided that a harmony of desires has been
attained which is both comprehensive and stable, the individual's own
judgment as to the relative position of his different desires is not to be
condemned on any pretext, except as the interests of other persons are
involved. The representatives of this position will accordingly maintain
that he who picks out a single object of desire and holds it up as allein-
seligmachend, must give definite and rigorously tested evidences to justify
his contention. Unfortunately, this is precisely what we do not find.
"Unless you can find some sort of loyalty," we are told, "you can not
80 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
find unity and peace in your active living." The second of these two
statements gets what measure of truth it possesses not from the author's
ethical, but from his metaphysical, position, according to which the uni-
verse is perfect. For the devotee of a lost cause, if he really believes
it lost forever, will gain no peace from his devotion. The similar claim
with regard to unity stands as a mere bold assertion. Unity with others
in the pursuit of a common end undoubtedly enhances the value of that
end for most of us. For some persons it is possible that no other kind
of pursuit is capable of issuing in satisfaction. Such enhancement of
value can as easily find a place in the hedonistic or voluntaristic account
of the good as anywhere else. What is required, however, for Professor
Royce's purposes, is a demonstration that it must occupy precisely the
same place in every life; and, secondly, that everything else is worthless
for every one. The very beginnings of such a demonstration are lacking.
With regard to the argument that all the commonly recognized virtues
can be stated in terms of loyalty, it must be pointed out that all the
virtues indispensable for the conservation of existence can be justified by
any theory whatever which, in Nietzsche's phrase, affirms life. The real
test comes when we apply our theory to the actions which aim at something
more than the protection of the conditions of existence. No attempt is
made to meet this test. Furthermore, since the theory claims to describe
the moral life of common sense and not merely that of the philosopher,
it assumes that the judgments of common sense never regard as moral
the seeking for purely individual goods (whether for self or for another),
and, further, that common sense looks upon the success of a cause as
having a value independent of the good that may accrue to the indi-
viduals thereby affected. For the first of these assumptions no evidence
whatever is offered. For the support of the second I suppose the author
has in mind the peculiar enthusiasm which a cause is capable of evoking.
Doubtless a million is a more impressive figure than one. But a million
is, after all, made up of units, and whatever the source of its power over
the imagination, it is in any event not a product mysteriously generated
by the fusion of zeros.
If, in conclusion, we turn to another aspect of Professor Royce's work,
the pedagogical and homiletic, I believe all readers will agree in pro-
nouncing it a masterpiece. The method of approach and the order and
manner of treatment exhibit great skill. The style is transparently clear.
Every sentence pulsates with life. And the whole glows with a warmth
that can be infused only by a profound and generous nature that has
seen a noble vision.
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP.
UNTVEBSITY OF WISCONSIN.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 81
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
RIVISTA FILOSOFICA. September-October, 1908. 11 concetto
della storia della filosofia (pp. 421-464) : G. GENTILE. - Philosophy ex-
presses the problems and deeper needs of the society in which it arises.
Thus philosophy must not be isolated from history, but history is man's
progress towards freedom, and all progress towards freedom is progress
in philosophy. The history of philosophy involves the history of
humanity. History demands metaphysical and teleological interpretation.
La base anatomica dell' intuizione (pp. 465-496): E. LUGARO. - Intuition
is a representative function and dependent upon representative centers
operating at a level below internal or external stimuli. Un trattato ele-
mentare di filosofia Indiana, (pp. 497-513): L. SUALI. - Continues the de-
scription of contents of the " TarRamrita of Jagadiga " begun in a
previous number. II concetto della natura ed il principio del diritto
(pp. 514-524) : E. Di CARLO. - A discussion, with approval, of Del
Vecchio's recent book bearing the title of the article, and an effort to
clarify the author's deduction of the principle of right from his funda-
mental ethical principle, viz., the absolute anatomy of the subject or
person. La riforma della scuola media (pp. 525-542) : P. F. NICOLI. - A
discussion, with approval, of " Riforma della scuola media," by Salvemini
and Galletti (Palermo, 1908). Education in Italy suffers from the
attempt to maintain a monopoly for classical studies, and from methods
of mere memorizing. Terzo congresso filosofico internazionale (pp. 543-
553) : G. VIDARI. - Of particular interest were the papers of Royce, Croce
and Boutroux. Noticeable was the penetration of philosophical interest into
the stricter departments of science; a general opposition to pragmatism,
not, however, to reject it so much as to modify and correct it; and the
increasing importance of the contributions from countries other than
Germany, namely, England and America on the one hand, and France and
Italy on the other. Rassegna bibliografica : Opere di: F. Masci-A. Falchi
(pp. 554560). Attraverso le riviste italiane. Discussioni. Notizie e
pubblicazioni. Sommari delle riviste straniere. Libri ricevuti (pp. 561-
578).
Marchesini, Giovanni. L'intolleranza e i suoi presupposti. Turin : Bocca.
1909. Pp. vii + 266.
Seager, Henry Rogers. Economics. Briefer course. New York: Henry
Holt & Co. 1909. Pp. xii .+ 467.
Schechter, S. Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology. New York: The
Macmillan Co. 1909. Pp. xxii + 384. $2.25.
Schinz, Albert. Anti-pragmatisme. Examen des droits respectifs de
1'aristocratie intellectuelle et de la democratic sociale. Paris : Felix
Alcan. 1909. Pp. 309. 5 fr.
Spranger, Eduard. Wilhelm von Humboldt und die Humanitdtsidee.
Berlin : Reuther und Reichard. 1908. Pp. x + 506.
Vidari, Giovanni. L'individualismo nelle dottrine morali del secolo XIX.
Milan : Hoepli. 1909. Pp. xx + 400.
82 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
NOTES AND NEWS
Miss C. B. DUBOIS has published a monograph in the third bulletin
of Volume VIII. of the ethnological publications of the University of
California, dealing with Luiseno Indians of South California. The fol-
lowing is from a summary in Nature (January 7) of Miss Dubois's
article : " Though they have been exposed to European influence for
more than a hundred years, and have lived for nearly two generations
under rigid Christian discipline, it is remarkable that so many of their
pagan beliefs and customs have survived. It is still more noteworthy
that, about a hundred and twenty years ago, a pagan missionary move-
ment extended from them to the Diegueno tribe, among whom the new
cult which centers round the personality of Chungichnish was intro-
duced. This new faith, like others which have extended beyond their
original home, had every requisite of a conquering religion a distinct
and difficult rule of life demanding obedience, fasting, and self-sacrifice
and it enforced its commands by an appeal to the fear of punishment,
a threat that avengers in the shape of stinging weeds, the rattle-snake,
and the bear would punish neglect of its observances. The most im-
portant of the rites connected with the Chungichnish cultus is that of
Toloache, or the initiation of youths and girls. In the case of the
former, the candidates, in a state of nudity, are dosed with a decoction
of the jimson-weed (Datura meteloides) , which contains a powerful nar-
cotic and excitative principle. After the intoxication produced by this
drug has passed away, the secret dances of the tribe are performed and
the mystic songs are sung. The Shaman who conducts the proceedings
asserts that he is possessed of magical powers, and the initiates are in-
structed to imitate his feats. During the dance the performers appear
to speak in the tongues of beasts and birds, a rite possibly connected
with a belief in personal totem animals or guardian spirits, which up
to quite recent times survived among this people. These rites are fol-
lowed by a fast from salt and meat sometimes lasting two or three
weeks, and meanwhile the youth is instructed in the tribal code of
etiquette and morals. He is told, for instance, that no one should eat
immediately on rising lest the spirit which was absent from his body in
sleep should be unable to return. On the same principle, on return
from an expedition into the hills he must defer eating so as to permit
the wandering spirit to rejoin its mortal body. This initiation rite is
accompanied by an elaborate symbolism, of which Wanuwat, or the sac-
red net, and a form of painting or modelling in sand are the most prom-
inent features. The net is said to symbolize the Milky Way, a prom-
inent feature in the night sky of that region, which is regarded as the
home of the dead; and the main idea seems to be based upon an attempt
to free the departing spirits from this earth, and to prevent their return
by binding them in the net of the Milky Way. The sand painting may
perhaps best be described as a cosmological model in which the tribal
conception of the relation of this world to the heavens is portrayed. The
annual commemorative rite for the dead is performed over images repre-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 83
senting the departed, a custom common to the Hindus and other savage
or semi-savage races. Singing and dancing, with whirling of the bull-
roarer, precede the burning of the images, in some cases the clothing
and ornaments being consumed, in others removed by the friends. Like
the rite of the sacred net, the intention seems to be to expel the spirits
of the dead from the neighborhood of the living. The creation legends
of the tribe, now for the first time fully recorded by Miss Dubois, are of
considerable importance, and must be taken into account by all students
of comparative mythology. In the beginning existed only Kivish Atak-
vish, the Void, who was followed by Whaikut Piwkut, 'the whitish
gray,' who created two great round balls, which were male and female.
The union of sky and earth then produced the first people, now repre-
sented by the magic mortar, wampum strings, the mast used in the
death rites, and other sacred objects, animal and vegetable. Then ap-
pears a deified hero, Oniot, who is done to death by Wahawut, the witch,
and, as in the Hindu Yama saga, death thus entered the world. Besides
these is a group of interesting sky myths."
THE following abstract of the paper on " Some Implications of Recog-
nition," read by Dr. G. F. Goldsbrough before the Aristotelian Society on
January 4, is from the Athenaeum: " The subject was suggested by recent
papers on the subject of mental activity, and by the publication of an
empirical view of mind recommended for adoption by medical men in
preference to a metaphysical treatment of the subject. Dr. Goldsbrough
adopted the conclusion of Mr. Carr, who, following Hume, passed the
judgment upon idealism that, from the point of view of idealism, a final
or philosophical judgment on mental activity was impossible. After the
judgment of impossibility, immediately a person began again to think on
the subject, he was obliged to take the chance whether a philosophical
judgment would be found possible or not. On recognizing the reappear-
ance of other persons who had engaged in the pursuit of philosophy in the
past, a predication of mental activity in other persons as objects became
possible by the subject. This experience constituted the true foundation
for the predication of mental activity. Two persons in union in this
experience proved to each other that mental activity was no illusion.
Through subsequent experience they could predicate that their experience
of mutual reappearance and recognition had been an experience of union ;
and the immediately subsequent experience which appeared to enable
them to do this was mutual pressure of one on the other. Pressure was
realized as between the two persons, but the experience of between only
confirmed the predication of the previous experience of union, and when,
subsequently to the initial experience of union, which inferentially through
pressure had ceased, the predication of the previous reality of union had
only been confirmed. The experience of union could thus be predicated
to consist in freedom from pressure, or rest. Union and rest thus became
the foundations of the judgment of possibility for future philosophical
judgment. In order, however, to render judgment on mental activity
from these persons accessible to others further steps were necessary. The
first of these steps was concerned with the problem of identity, which for
84 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the purpose of judgment might be confined to formal identity. When
through the analysis of experience an agreement on formal identity was
reached, the passage to philosophical judgment became relatively easy.
Not, however, through two persons only. There was the connection of
past and present to be considered, and to be expressed through formal
identity. For this purpose another person in union with the previous two
was called for, who, through formal identity, could predicate knowledge
of the past of the one who was passive object to the other's mental activity.
The experience of three persons of this nature constituted the experience
of communion, upon which all future philosophical judgment must be
based."
ACCORDING to the Nation, " The Hague Society for the Defense of
Christianity asks for competitive discussions of the following themes:
(1) An Investigation of the Value of the Empirical Psychology of
Religion for the Doctrines of Christianity; (2) A Scientific Discussion
of Ethics on the Basis of Modern Religious Principles. The prize for
the former is to be bestowed on December 15, 1909, and for the latter on
the same day, 1910. The prizes are four hundred gulden and a gold
medal. Scholars of all nations may compete."
DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN, president of Stanford University, has been
elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science for the meeting to be held next year in Boston. Dr. William
H. Holmes, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, is vice-president of
Section H, Anthropology and Psychology; Professor James E. Russell,
of Teachers College, Columbia University, is vice-president of section
L, Education.
THE address given by Professor H. Poincare before the Mathematical
Congress at Rome, on the subject of " The Future of Mathematics," is
published in the Revue generate des sciences for December 15, 1908.
M. Poincare begins by discussing the purposes of the pure mathematician
and his relationship to the engineer.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY will bring out at an early date " Totemism
and Exogamy," by Dr. J. G. Frazer. The volume will include a reprint
of the author's " Totemism," long out of print, a " Geographical Survey
of Totemism," four articles published originally in The Fortnightly, and
a summary with conclusions.
PROFESSOR EDWARD B. TITCHENER, of Cornell University, will give at
the University of Illinois a series of lectures in psychology, probably
during the latter part of March.
A MONUMENT to Professor von Krafft-Ebing was unveiled in the hall
of the University of Vienna at the time of the recent international con-
gress in that city on the care of the insane.
PROFESSOR C. V. TOWER, of the University of Vermont, has gone
abroad for graduate study and travel.
SHELLEY'S translation of the "Banquet of Plato" has been repub-
lished by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
VOL. VI. No. 4. FEBRUARY 18, 1909.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
MOTOR PROCESSES AND CONSCIOUSNESS 1
IN view of the many different attempts which have been made to
explain the relation between motor processes and consciousness,
one can hardly be surprised if his own statements on this matter
do not command universal acceptance. The problem is one which a
large number of writers agree in regarding as the most important
special problem in psychology at the present time, but the solutions
differ widely. Perhaps the best way to meet one's critics under
such circumstances is to turn critic oneself and examine the other
views in the field and by such a comparative study exhibit the
virtues, if there be any, of the position to which one is himself
committed.
Among the first writers to emphasize the importance of motor
processes as general conditions of consciousness were Dewey 2 and
McDougall. 3 Dewey makes the statement that consciousness is con-
ditioned by the action of the whole nervous arc, and not by any
single section or part of the arc. Consciousness does not, therefore,
depend merely upon sensory impulses ; it is determined in character
by the motor end of the process as well as by its sensory beginning.
McDougall finds in new motor processes the chief conditions for the
rise of consciousness. It is only when the individual is working-
out a readjustment in active response that consciousness arises.
These two general theories are both suggestive, but leave, even
if they are accepted, all the details to be worked out by later in-
vestigation. We can not be satisfied with so broad a statement of
the general relationship if the principle is to serve as a guide to
concrete empiricism. To say with McDougall that new motor
processes are the conditions of all consciousness leaves us with the
necessity of showing how certain particular phases of consciousness
are related to particular types of motor process. Suppose we say,
for example, that the adjustments of the eyes in the visual per-
1 Earlier papers in this series were published in Vol. V., p. 676, and Vol. VI.,
p. 36, of this JOUBXAL.
1 Dewey, " The Reflex Arc Concept," pp. 358 ff., Psychological Review, 1896.
* McDougall, three articles in Mind, 1898.
86 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ception of objects are important conditions for the rise of processes
of recognition. We are still left with details unsolved as to the
specific phase of the recognition process which is related to the
sensory impressions on the retina and the specific phases of the
process which are related to the motor element. We are simply
called upon by McDougall's general formula to assume a broad
parallelism between novel motor processes and consciousness. The
same is true of Dewey's formula. To say that consciousness is
related to the action of the whole reflex arc does not give us any
definite answer to the question, What modification in consciousness
will result from a modification in the motor outlet of a given stimula-
tion? It is perfectly clear that like sensory stimulations do at
different times pass through the central nervous system of an indi-
vidual and emerge into the active organs through different channels.
What is the effect upon conscious life of a modification in such cases
of the avenue of motor discharge?
Besides these general theories there are a large number of more
specific theories. Thus Miinsterberg holds 4 that the openness of the
motor channels is always related to the vividness of consciousness,
and that the direction of a motor discharge conditions its value.
Royce 5 holds that ideas are always related to activities. He says:
' ' Our mental images of outer objects are never to be divorced from
our reactions." Baldwin 6 also makes the reaction phase of an idea
the general characteristic. These writers have all contributed im-
portant examples of the relation between motor processes and
special phases of consciousness, but what we miss in these special
examples is an exhaustive account of the relation of all motor
processes to consciousness. If it is true that ideas are determined in
character by their motor relations, how much more must it be true
that percepts and the immediate processes of recognition are de-
termined by motor processes. If it is true that vividness and value
are related to motor discharges, how much more must it be true that
the concrete relationship between conscious elements such as we find
in space relations is also dependent upon the direction of motor
discharges. While we are justified in criticizing Dewey and Mc-
Dougall as too general, we must criticize these writers because they
have furnished us with formulas which are not comprehensive
enough.
The formula needed is one which is at once comprehensive and
capable of application in detail to specific cases of various kinds.
Motor processes are evidently related to some very general aspect of
* Chapter 15 on " Die Aktionstheorie," " Grundziige der Psychologic," 1900.
8 " Outlines of Psychology," p. 285 passim.
"Mental Development," p. 313 passim.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 87
consciousness, and yet this general aspect must in each particular
case appear in some very definite, concrete manifestation. A phase
of consciousness which is thus general and at the same time specific
in its concrete manifestations is to be found in the fact of organiza-
tion. Thus when all of the sensory elements of a given moment are
organized into a single compact experience the special organization
of the moment is a concrete specific fact, but it is a fact which
exemplifies one of the most general and characteristic phases of
consciousness. Thus when one has a sensation of red he relates this
sensation to other phases of experience such as the background and
the surroundings of the color in a definite, concrete manner. That
he relates one element to the other factors of consciousness is an
exhibition of the most characteristic fact in all mental life.
The fact of mental organization is directly related to the fact
of the individual's reaction. As has been repeatedly pointed out
in earlier discussions, if one asks why a given sensation has value
for an individual he can not find the answer to the question in any
consideration of the quality or intensity of the sensation itself. The
sensation is of value by virtue of the active adjustment to which it
leads, and this active adjustment will in turn be related to the
complex of experience into which the sensation enters. Thus we
find ourselves discussing at once motor responses and facts of con-
scious organization. That the two groups of facts are closely related
can be shown by an examination of specific cases, and thus we shall
be able to give the general formula detailed content and at the same
time verify the broader statements which refer to the universal im-
portance of motor processes as conditions of all conscious organiza-
tion.
In the two preceding papers of this series feelings and space
perception have been discussed as specific examples of mental organi-
zations related to motor processes. All that was there said to show
the advantages of those special explanations can now be turned to
account in favor of the general formula of the dependence of all
types of organization upon motor processes.
A new example of the specific application of this general formula
may be found in the solution which it offers of the difficult question,
why there are within experience different degrees of unity. Thus,
to use Professor James's illustration, we recognize for certain
purposes the table as a unity and for other purposes we recognize
the table as made up of legs and top, each of the parts being in itself
a unity. Certainly the reason why experience breaks up at times
into larger and at other times into smaller unities must be clearly
understood before we can have any coherent account of mental
organization.
88 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
One of the recent writers who has dealt with this problem
without utilizing in any way the motor processes is Professor Dodge. 7
Professor Dodge is led to his discussion of unity by his experiments
on ocular movements, which experiments seem to furnish evidence
against the explanation of perceptual unity as dependent upon
muscle sensation. For some time Professor Dodge has been point-
ing out the difficulties with the movement sensation theory in its
various forms. He now comes to the constructive treatment of the
problem and attempts to show that the various retinal elements are
organized into unitary groups through similarity in their sensory
processes or in the ''life history" of neighboring nervous elements.
Thus if an external object stimulates a certain part of the retina,
the life history of a group of retinal elements excited by the object
will have a unity which depends upon the physiological fact that
these elements are for a period of time stimulated in like fashion.
This position does not differ very much from that earlier advo-
cated by Lipps. 8 Lipps also looks for the unity of mental processes
in the fact that neighboring points on the retina are frequently
stimulated from objective sources in the same way.
Both of these writers find the unity of mental processes satis-
factorily explained by the unity of the external sources of stimula-
tion. It is not easy to understand how they have overlooked the
fact that subjective unity is of a totally different type from ob-
jective unity. For example, in the illustration used by Professor
James, it is quite possible for a given observer to treat the mass of
sensory experiences which he receives from a given table in more
than one way. The unity in this case changes according as the sub-
jective motive is modified. Certainly no explanation that depends
entirely upon external reality will serve to account for this shifting
of the observer's interest and type of thought.
In the case of Lipps there is very definitely assumed back of the
unity of the retinal processes a combining and unifying entity which
utilizes the qualitative likenesses of the retinal processes. Professor
Dodge does not refer explicitly in his discussion to any unifying
subject which utilizes the like sensations that come from the retina,
but it is obvious that without some such assumption mere likeness
of the retinal processes would not serve as a bond between the dif-
ferent sensory elements of experience. And even if an integrating
subject is assumed, we are forced to ask what motives there are in
this subject's life which lead him to make up his experiences now on
T "An Experimental Study of Visual Fixation," Psychological Review,
Monograph Supplement, No. 35, pp. 72 ff.
8 Psychologische Studien, 1885, pp. 1 S. And also " Grundthatsachen de3
Seelenlebens," pp. 515 ff.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 89
the one scale and again on another. When the matter is put in this
form we see the advantage of recognizing that the subject is fully
understood only when he is looked upon as conditioned in his concrete
experiences by certain reactive tendencies which are radically dif-
ferent from the sensory elements which come from the outer world.
There is large justification, as has been pointed out in an earlier
discussion, for the statement that sensations are objective processes
constantly presenting themselves to consciousness, but determined
in their value for conscious life by considerations that grow out of
the uses to which they are put. These uses are always related to
behavior, which is the active and expressive side of the subject's
life. If the motives of behavior are such as to lead the subject to
react upon large sections of his environment, then the sensory ele-
ments from these larger sections of the environment will naturally
be grouped together. We may say that this is in response to a sub-
jective demand, but we have by our formula of reaction defined more
fully the nature of the subjective demand. We have recognized the
fact that the subject is himself a complex capable of scientific defini-
tion through a study of his special functions.
It is interesting to note in Professor Dodge's discussion that
when he gives a figurative account of the way in which retinal ele-
ments come to act in unity he represents the different groups of
retinal elements as bound together by what he calls ' ' rings of twine ' '
(p. 74). One is prompted to ask whether the pegs themselves which
Professor Dodge uses in his illustration furnish the twine which
binds them together, or whether this binding is done by some outside
agent. If it is done by some outside agent, then obviously all of the
earlier discussion of likeness in life history is irrelevant except in
so far as it can be shown that the outside agent is interested in
qualitative likeness in visual processes. If we attempt to show why
the outside subject is interested in such likenesses we find ourselves
confronted once more with the problem with which we started, and
we certainly can not free ourselves from this unproductive circle
by referring to the unity that exists in the objects which impress
our senses. Physical science long ago pointed out that the whole
scheme of physical organization differs radically from the appear-
ances which present themselves in consciousness. The fundamental
reason why individual experience is of value is that in this experi-
ence external agencies are reduced to a wholly new form of arrange-
ment. The new arrangement is significant to the individual in his
personal life, but has no objective value until it comes back into the
world of things in the form of a reaction of the individual upon
these things. Professor Dodge speaks in his discussion of the fact
that behavior "standardizes" the group organization of various
90 THE JOUENAL OF PHILOSOPHY
parts of the retina (p. 76). It is just this standardizing of the
group organization which gives them permanence and value in sub-
jective life. Why not recognize immediately that there is no funda-
mental distinction between standardizing and originating such an
organization? Indeed it is very difficult to see how the process of
standardizing could differ radically in character from the process
of grouping itself. And certainly if any writer continues to use the
two processes as separate, the burden of demonstrating the reason
for two different kinds of processes rests with him.
The formula of activity which has been suggested as a solution
for the problem raised by a critical examination of Dodge and Lipps
has the widest application in explaining the diversities and har-
monies in our conscious processes of recognition. Whenever we
recognize two seen things as alike, we must attribute the recognized
likeness not to the identity of retinal excitations, but rather to the
fact that whatever may be the retinal cue, the reaction in the two
cases is of the same type. We never see the same object twice in
succession from the same point of view, and we never get from any
object the same group of sensations. With every motion of the eye
there is a shifting of the relation between the sensory facts of
experience. And certainly with every one of the grosser bodily
movements there is a complete breaking up of the sensory arrange-
ment of the situation. We accept these fluctuations in sensation
without the slightest disturbance of our personal lives. It is not
important that we should discriminate minutely just how much of a
person's face we can see, or just how much of the outline of a
familiar object falls upon the retina. Anything will do which gives
us a cue for the right action. In our discussion of perception it was
pointed out that we do not fill in the sensory elements in the blind
spot, or in the misprinted word; we simply utilize the deficient
sensory experience in terms of our highly organized methods of
response.
What is true in dealing with processes of perceptual recognition
is strikingly evident when we come to deal with ideas. Here is a
sphere of experience in which, as Royce and Baldwin have pointed
out, the active processes are of first-class importance. Different
individuals have the greatest variety of mental images which they
retain in memory from their contact with the objects in the world
about them, and yet there is a certain agreement in their modes of
behavior whenever one of these ideas is called up through associa-
tion. So also with the different periods of individual experience.
The important fact in defining the psychological character of a
general idea is not that we should always discover like elements in
the different examples of this general idea ; it is important only that
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 91
whatever the image in experience, the reaction shall always be the
same. The reaction may get itself systematized in developed human
experience into the mere act of articulation, or it may be an elaborate
process of adjustment to practical demands. In any case the motor
phase of the process is general and subjective in its character, while
the content factors are particular and in themselves unorganized.
Unity of percepts and unity of ideas are accordingly phrases
which describe an aspect of consciousness dependent on motor
tendencies. Unity may be of various different kinds in different
concrete cases; the formula is thus capable of bringing together
under a single principle many different facts. Unity is, on the
other hand, always a manifestation of the essential organizing
tendency of mental life. We see, therefore, how this explanatory
formula meets the demand which was expressed at the outset for
a general formula which shall at the same time serve to guide in a
detailed account of mental processes.
CHARLES H. JUDD.
YALE UNIVEBSITY.
SOCIETIES
THE SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
THE seventeenth annual meeting of the American Psychological
Association was held in Levering Hall of the Johns Hopkins
University on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, December 29,
30, and 31, 1908. This was convocation week of the American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science, and a notable company of
scientific men, variously estimated at from two thousand to twenty-
five hundred in number, were attracted to Baltimore by the programs
of the society and the numerous organizations affiliated with it. If
these numbers are a gauge of scientific activity, there is reason for
abundant optimism regarding the status of research in America, for
at no previous time have so many men of science been gathered
together. The question has been repeatedly raised, however, whether
the real aims of the scientific societies are best furthered by these
large meetings with their surfeit of attractive programs, or whether
a desirable concentration of interest is not secured by holding the
sessions of the several societies in different cities.
This question was a live issue before the Psychological Association
when the choice of the next place of meeting came up for discussion.
Some of the members advocated segregation, and urged the accept-
ance of the invitation to go to New Haven, where the American
92 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Philosophical Association will probably hold its next meeting.
Others preferred to meet in Boston, together with the biological,
anthropological, educational, and other sections of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, postponing the holding
of a separate meeting until the following year, when the American
Association for the Advancement of Science expects to go to Minne-
apolis. The choice was finally left to the Council with instructions
to decide in the light of a vote of preference to be obtained from
the entire membership.
Of the total enrollment of two hundred and twenty members
scarcely one fourth were at Baltimore ; and the attendance upon the
meetings was not large, except at the joint programs. One session
for the hearing of papers was held with Section L the newly formed
educational section of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science and one with the Southern Society for Philosophy and
Psychology. On the afternoon of the second day the Southern
Society and the American Philosophical Association united with the
Psychological Association to hear the presidential address of Pro-
fessor Stratton upon "The Betterment of Rival Types of Explica-
tion." The subject of the functional versus the structural or de-
scriptive attitudes in psychology a somewhat familiar topic for
presidential addresses received a fresh and suggestive handling
from the point of view of the nature of the concept of cause which
each type of explication involves. In the evening of the same day
the societies met together again, to hear the address of Professor
Miinsterberg, president of the American Philosophical Association,
upon ' ' The Problem of Beauty. ' ' This eloquent defense of the abso-
lute nature of beauty held the attention of a large audience. Fol-
lowing the address, the societies were entertained at the Johns Hop-
kins Club at a joint smoker. Still a third presidential address, that
of Professor Sterrett before the Southern Society, was delivered on
the afternoon of the third day, the theme being ' ' The Proper Affilia-
tion of Psychology with Philosophy or with the Natural Sciences?"
That there has been no diminution in activity within the field
of animal psychology was evident at the opening session. Professor
Porter reported a continuation of the studies in the learning process
and visual discrimination of birds, such as have characterized his
laboratory at Clark University for some time. His assistant, Mr.
Kallom, has found that ring-neck doves and homing pigeons learn to
discriminate colors in from one third to two fifths fewer trials than
the English sparrow. The discrimination of forms is much more
difficult than the discrimination of colors. Professor Porter him-
self has been observing two single yellowhead parrots, and described
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 93
their behavior in detail. Instances of sudden imitation occur, not
all of which can be explained as cases of so-called deferred imitation.
The problem of imitation in monkeys has been freshly and vigor-
ously attacked by Mr. M. E. Haggerty. Three animals were trained
to solve a number of ingenious mechanical problems in order to get
food. Ten monkeys in the New York Zoological Park were then
tested for evidences of imitation in learning these same tricks. A
monkey was first given ample opportunity to acquire the trick him-
self. After his failure to do this, he was permitted to see another
monkey perform the act, and then immediately given a new trial.
In sixty per cent, of the instances the animal which had utterly
failed to perform the necessary act alone did it after seeing it done
by another monkey. In the course of the discussion Professor Thorn-
dike and Professor Watson pointed out the desirability of certain
additional control experiments, to determine how far other factors
than those of imitation enter in to explain the large percentage of
successes.
Professor Yerkes contributed the results of an investigation of
the process of habit formation in the dancing mouse, aimed to
determine the relation of age, sex, and intensity of inhibitory stim-
ulus to the rate of acquisition. Extended experimentation with a
large number of individuals disclosed the somewhat surprising fact
that the older mice learn more rapidly than the younger ones when
there is a large difference between the visual stimuli to be discrim-
inated; but when the discrimination is a difficult one the younger
mice excel. To account for such a difference it is necessary to
recognize that the formation of this habit involves at least two dis-
tinct factors, namely, sensory discrimination and associative memory.
Associative ability appears to improve between the ages of one and
ten months, while ability to discriminate differences of illumination
decreases. The most favorable intensity of the electric stimulus
which furnishes the incentive to learning is found to depend upon
difficulty of discrimination : as discrimination becomes more difficult
the optimal stimulus is found to approach the threshold. The form
of the learning curve is strikingly different for the two sexes.
Illness prevented Dr. Yoakum from reporting his investigation
of "The Temperature Sense of Squirrels."
"The Phenomena of Peripheral Vision as Affected by Chromatic
and Achromatic Adaptation, with Special Reference to the After-
image" was the title of a contribution by Dr. Fernald. The lively
interest which this paper aroused centered about its contribution to
the question regarding the existence of colored after-images from
unperceived color stimuli. Miss Fernald has found that when a
94 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
stimulus color through contrast with a white background has its
limits so contracted that it is brought just below the threshold, a
colored after-image is seen if it is projected upon a background
whose degree of illumination is peculiarly favorable to that color.
At the afternoon session Professor Angell, chairman of the com-
mittee on the standardization of measurements and tests, presented
a statement of what had been done during the year. Regarding
types of imagination, it has been found that no one of the common
tests is adequate. Tests of ability to command different forms of
imagery do not always disclose the preferred form; tests for the
form most frequently used do not show which is the most efficient.
Moreover, the most useful form of imagery differs with different
kinds of work. It is necessary to have tests of the various functional
aspects of imagination.
The task of standardizing tests of association and discrimination
has been brought so near to completion that Professor Woodworth
and Dr. Wells, who have this portion of the committee's work in
charge, were able to present a somewhat full report, with recom-
mendations. Less detailed accounts were given of the progress made
by the other subcommittees. The work of Professor Seashore upon
tests of pitch discrimination is well advanced, and will doubtless be
completed in time to form a portion of the forthcoming report of
the committee, for the publication of which the association has
authorized the expenditure of a sum not to exceed one hundred and
fifty dollars.
Before the organization of this committee, two years ago, some
doubt was expressed as to the expediency of the undertaking. The
fruits of cooperation are already beginning to ripen, however, and
the feasibility of a concerted attack upon the problems of standard-
ization is no longer questioned. But the members of the committee
alone can not be expected to solve the multitude of problems which
must be cleared up before any final recommendations are possible
regarding the best methods to be followed in taking many of the
common mental measurements. The only possibility of making
rapid headway lies through the active cooperation of a larger pro-
portion of the membership of the association with their committee.
Following the discussion of the report of the committee on meas-
urements, Professor Leuba gave a demonstration of a new apparatus
for the study of movement and Professor Dodge demonstrated an
ingenious lantern chronograph for classroom use. It is to be re-
gretted that no other new apparatus was brought to the meeting for
exhibition. In the future it will be the policy of the association to
encourage a larger number of exhibits and demonstrations, the first
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 95
step in this direction being the appropriation of a certain sum to
defray transportation charges on apparatus.
At the largely attended joint session on Wednesday morning,
President Stratton called upon Professor Dewey, chairman of the
education section of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, to preside. In a paper entitled "Psychological Investi-
gations that will help the Educator," Professor Kirkpatrick asked
of the psychologists a much more complete analysis of the complex
processes of learning, and a study of them under the working con-
ditions of the schoolroom.
An investigation looking in the direction pointed out by Professor
Kirkpatrick, on the process of counting, was described by Professor
Judd. The rate of counting a series of sensory impressions is
dependent upon the ease with which the individual can establish an
adjustment between this external series and an internal series which
for many individuals consists in the imaged articulation of the
numbers. The process of relating these two series is found to be less
complicated and to require less time in certain sense realms, such as
hearing, than in others, such as vision, where the necessary move-
ments of adjustment of the sense organ are more complex.
After the discussion of Professor Judd's experimental contribu-
tion, Professor Thorndike read a paper in which he advanced the
hypothesis that differences in "general intellectual ability" have
their physiological basis in differences in the number of axone end-
ings, and in the variety, extent, and excitability of their change of
position. The need for some such hypothesis arises from the fact
that the closest correlations of general ability with its several factors
are found, not among motor abilities or abilities in sensory discrimi-
nation, but among the associative and selective processes.
As an improvement in the technique of experimentation in mem-
ory, Professor Seashore advocated the plan of using only three or
four sensory stimuli which differ from each other in one respect only.
Thus, a group of four successive tones, alike in all but pitch, may be
given in any one of many arrangements. Among the advantages of
using such homogeneous material are the possibility of continuing
an experiment indefinitely with the same content and the adaptability
of the method to the study of almost any phase of the memory
problems.
Professor W. F. Dearborn reported that upon repeating a portion
of the memory experiments of Ebert and Meumann he found that
what appeared in the original experiments to be a general improve-
ment from special practise is due, in part, to the effects of practise
within the test series used. Orientation, attention, and changes in
96 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the technique of learning are adequate to account for the rest of the
improvement.
The session was brought to a close after a paper by Professor
Witmer upon "The Study and Treatment of Retardation." The
clinical, more minute methods of study were contrasted with the
statistical methods. Each has a place.
In spite of unusually attractive programs elsewhere, a good num-
ber were present to hear the joint program of the afternoon. One of
the most valuable contributions was that of Dr. Franz, upon "Sen-
sations Following Nerve Division." Section of the ulnar and me-
dian nerves of the arm resulted in losses of sensation similar to those
reported by Head and Sherren, but with these exceptions: certain
areas of the skin which retained the epicritic sensibility nevertheless
showed differences in threshold values so distributed as to indicate
an overlapping of the nerve supply. Tests on hair and temperature
sensibility also pointed toward the hypothesis of a double nerve
supply for both.
Professor Ladd described two cases of cerebral surgery without
anesthetics in which the patients retained consciousness throughout.
Significant facts regarding the sensitivity of the brain substance and
the nature of cerebral localization were pointed out; and the sug-
gestion was made that the partial independence of cortical action
which consciousness seemed to exhibit in these two cases gave hint
that it may.be possible for the life of self -consciousness to attain a
complete independence of the brain.
In connection with a tachistoscopic determination of the least
observable interval between visual stimuli to the two retinas, Pro-
fessor Hill found it necessary to distinguish two ways of attending.
The sensorial or mechanical type, involving little ideation, is con-
trasted with the apperceptive or associative type, involving more
complex central processes. The more suggestible observers belonged
to this second type.
Professor Ogden essayed a "Contribution to the Theory of Tonal
Consonance." Tonal consonance is the conscious correlate of a
relatively simple and economic activity of the auditory nerves. How
has the characteristic organic disposition arisen which renders the
response of the nerves easier when the tones are related in simple
arithmetical ratios? It has become established mainly through the
racial experience of overtones.
Discussion was lacking upon Professor Ogden 's paper and also
upon that of Professor Leuba, entitled "The Origin of Religion."
But the closing paper of the session, by Dr. Marshall, succeeded in
stimulating comment. Dr. Marshall advanced the position that
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 97
"intensity" and "vividness" or "clearness," characterizing the focal
portion of the field of consciousness, are terms which really refer to
the same quality, but with this difference: we use the term "in-
tensity ' ' when we are dealing with sensations, but when we find this
same quality in a wider context perceptual, ideational we feel the
need of a different term, and call it "vividness."
Although the session of Thursday forenoon was largely monopo-
lized by the annual business meeting of the association, time remained
for Professor Scott to present "An Interpretation of the Psycho-
analytic Method in Psychotherapy. ' ' Professor Scott maintained that
the success which often attends this method of treatment for hysteria,
obsessions, and phobias is really due to its skillful, even though unin-
tentional, use of suggestion. The success of the method does not,
then, prove the truth of the theory which underlies it the theory of
a realm of subconscious ideas in which suppressed emotional com-
plexes may exist.
At the final session, Dr. Rogers described an optical apparatus
by means of which the fingers, hands, feet, etc., are seen in other
directions than their true ones. The displacement is felt so strongly
that the kinesthetic sensations entirely fail to correct the illusion,
and gross errors of movement are the result. The apparatus is use-
ful in investigating the interrelations of visual and tactual space
perceptions.
Professor Whipple presented a communication designed to stim-
ulate interest in the psychology of testimony, a field bristling with
problems of theoretical and practical importance to which American
investigators have as yet given little attention. The main problems
of the "Psychologic der Aussage" were enumerated, the methods dis-
cussed and the results to date summarized with a compactness and
clearness which merited a larger audience.
At the annual business meeting Professor Judd, of Yale Univer-
sity, was elected president for the coming year, and was also ap-
pointed to represent the association on the council of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. To serve on the council
of the Psychological Association, Professor Sanford, Professor Lind-
ley, and Professor Thorndike were chosen. Seventeen new members
were elected: Professor Berry, of the University of Michigan, Dr.
Bingham, of Columbia University, Professor Bolton, of the State
University of Iowa, Professor Boswell, of Hobart College, Dr. Brown,
of the University of California, Dr. Burrow, of Johns Hopkins
University, Mr. Cole, of Wellesley College, Dr. Davis, of the Cali-
fornia, Pa., State Normal School, Dr. Ferree, of Bryn Mawr College,
Dr. Goddard, of the Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and
98 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Boys, at Vineland, N. J., Dr. Holmes, of the University of Pennsyl-
vania, Professor McKeag, of Wellesley College, President Pearce, of
Brenau College, Professor Pratt, of Williams College, Dr. Starch, of
the University of Wisconsin, and Dr. Waugh, of the University of
Chicago.
In recognition of the efficiency of the local arrangements for the
meetings resolutions were adopted expressing the gratitude of the
association to Professor Baldwin, Professor Watson, and the Johns
Hopkins University.
W. VAN D. BINGHAM.
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
THE FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SOUTHERN
SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY
THE Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology was organ-
ized in 1904, and held its first formal meeting at the Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, in December of the same
year. The representatives of philosophy and psychology in the
institutions in the southern states had not been feeling in any dis-
tinct manner the beneficial effects of the two national organizations,
the American Philosophical Association and the American Psycho-
logical Association, whose influences streamed almost directly west-
ward between more northern latitudes. In endeavoring to bring
stimulation and guidance to the southern workers in these topics, the
society planned to extend its interests so as to include both philos-
ophy and psychology. This program was undertaken partly in
recognition of the interrelations of these subjects, and partly in view
of the special needs in the educational developments of the territory
which it was to serve. Each succeeding meeting has shown an
increasing attendance and interest among its members ; and the insti-
tutions represented by its membership, from Florida to Missouri and
from Maryland to Texas, have appreciably felt its activity and the
standards it has brought forward.
The fourth annual meeting of the society was held at the same
university on Wednesday and Thursday, December 30 and 31, 1908.
It met in affiliation with the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, the American Philosophical Association, and the
American Psychological Association. More than one third of its
members were in attendance.
The society united with the American Psychological Association
in a joint session on Wednesday afternoon, one half of the papers
presented being read by its representatives, Professors Franz, Hill,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 99
and Ogden. It also joined later with the same association for the
address of its president, Professor Stratton, on "The Betterment of
Rival Types of Explication," and in the evening of the same day
with the American Philosophical Association for the address of its
president, Professor Miinsterberg, on "The Problem of Beauty."
A separate session was held on Thursday afternoon, at the close of
which these two associations joined with the society for the presi-
dential address of Professor Sterrett, on "The Proper Affiliation of
Psychology. ' '
In making his observations on "Sensations Following Nerve
Division" in an individual in whose arm the ulnar and median, and
probably also the medial antibrachial cutaneous, nerves had been
cut, Professor Franz found many results confirming those noted by
Head and Sherren. Some differences on touch indicate that there
is an overlapping of nerve supply for the arm, while others on tem-
perature and hair sensations point to a double nerve supply for these
sensations, all of which are contrary to the findings of Head.
Professor Hill presented a preliminary report on "Some Aspects
of Attention Involved in the Observation of Nearly Simultaneous
Retinal Stimuli" as controlled by means of a tachistoscope which
exposed illuminated disks to the periphery of both eyes. Suggestion
and individual preferences seem to show influence as well as object-
ively uniform conditions.
It was maintained by Professor Ogden, in his "Contribution to
the Theory of Tonal Consonance," that this unique experience may
be regarded as the conscious symptom of a relatively simple and
economic activity on the part of the auditory nerves. The origin of
this function is traced principally to racial experience of overtones
which through frequency of stimulation has organized dispositional
tendencies.
The papers presented at the joint session by representatives of
the American Psychological Association are mentioned in the account
of the meeting of that association, pp. 96-97 of this JOURNAL.
In presenting the main features of "A Point of View in Com-
parative Psychology," Professor Watson took issue with those in-
vestigators who have recently endeavored to clear the field for
explanations in animal psychology by carefully defining the criteria
of consciousness which are designed to be of assistance in the inter-
pretation of the facts of animal behavior. It was held that animal
psychology is really embarrassed by the attempts to place the psychic
amidst the facts which are obtained by observing behavior under the
conditions of control. The tendency of human psychology in its
scientific progress to get away from mere introspection as the chief
basis for technique, it was urged, should be given greater room in
100 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
animal psychology. It is not so much a question of consciousness
in the lower animals as, rather, how much phylogenetic interpreta-
tion of the psychic series as a whole can with advantage come to us
through comparative psychology.
Dr. Dunlap, in his paper on "The Extensity Theory of Pitch,"
reviewed the several theories of pitch which are more or less claim-
ants for recognition, and called attention to the group of phenomena
which are more satisfactorily explained by the extensity hypothesis
than by any of the rival theories ; namely, obliteration of high notes
by low notes, interval estimation, the influence of practise, patholog-
ical instances of non-fusing tones, the greater loudness of high tones,
and pitch contrast.
In presenting "The Trend of the Clinician's Concept of Hys-
teria," Dr. "Williams rejected Charcot's analysis of hysterical phe-
nomena, reviewed many of the facts of hysterical attacks, and held
that they could best be understood as due to suggestibility. Special
merit was found in the technique and conclusions of Babinski.
The intellectualistic rather than the voluntaristic view obtained
in Dr. Richardson's paper on "The Will and Belief," in which he
considered the bearings of those higher syntheses of experience which
are made in the effort to obtain a rational world. The impulses to
construct a world can not be chiefly emotional or volitional, as the
world is not irrational.
Dr. Furry prepared a sketch of a history of esthetics upon which
he is engaged, but illness prevented its presentation. An extended
note stating the main characteristics of his genetic point of view will
be found in the full report of the meeting in the Psychological Bul-
letin for February 15, 1908.
A psychological method was applied to the metaphysical problem
of immortality by Professor Messenger in his paper on "The Desire
for Continued Experience." Emphasis was placed upon the radical
distinction between endless experience and eternal existence, and the
suggestion was made that the vain efforts at logical proofs for the
latter should advantageously come to an end.
For his presidential address, Professor Sterrett undertook a dis-
cussion of the counter philosophical and scientific tendencies in psy-
chology under the topic of "The Proper Affiliation of Psychology."
The address was given only in part, as a basis for the discussion of
the topic which followed. He made a special plea for the point of
view which regards consciousness as an entity or an activity, and for
the "old" introspective psychology as the logical form of any psy-
chology. 1
In the discussion Professor Hume reviewed the more or less lack
1 The address will appear in full in the Psychological Review for March, 1908.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 101
of affiliation between philosophy and psychology historically, and
emphasized the necessity of a close relationship between them, both
as to the central issues of the problem of "the soul" and as to the
methodological phases of the two lines of endeavor. Professor Ladd
insisted that psychology may properly become affiliated with all the
sciences which can throw any light upon the problems of conscious-
ness, while at the same time it forms the best possible scientific intro-
duction to philosophy. These affiliations, however, do not involve
any necessarily consequent relinquishment of independence on the
part of psychology. The current discrediting of psychology is but a
passing phase of scientific criticism.
EDWARD FRANKLIN BUCHNEE.
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Science and Philosophy of the Organism. HANS DRIESCH. New
York : The Macmillan Co. 1908. Pp. xiii + 329.
" I should like to be as careful as possible in the admission of any-
thing like a 'proof of vitalism. It was want of scientific criticism and
rigid logic that discredited the old vitalism; we must render our work
as difficult as possible to ourselves, we must hold the so-called 'machine
theory' of life as long as possible, we must hold it until we are really
forced to give it up." Hans Driesch.
Those who have followed in recent years the reaction against the
materialistic and mechanical interpretations of biological phenomena are
familiar with the work of Hans Driesch. An invitation to deliver the
Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen has furnished Driesch with the opportunity
of bringing before a more general audience the conclusions to which his
analysis of living phenomena have led. The first volume of these lec-
tures (in English) has just appeared under the title of " The Science
and Philosophy of the Organism." The second volume is soon to follow.
Few, if any, zoologists of modern times could bring to the task the
many-sided abilities of the author of this volume. Trained in tbe most
modern school of zoology, widely read and interested in philosophy and
mathematics, possessed of an analytical mind of rare clearness, frankness,,
and insight, Driesch has compelled once more the attention of thinking
men to the famous doctrine of vitalism.
That Driesch has written a fascinating exposition of his subject few
will deny provided they have not become too callous to consider any
other interpretation possible than the current dogmatic materialism. Our
purpose is to present Driesch's argument for vitalism and to examine
critically the question of the validity of the evidence offered as a proof
of the doctrine.
Driesch replies to those who maintain that " there are no fundamental
102 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
principles in biology which would bring it in any close contact with
philosophy " that it will be his endeavor " to convince you that such an
aspect of the science of biology is wrong; that biology is an elemental
natural science in the true sense of the word. But if biology is an ele-
mental science then, and only then, it stands in close relations to epistem-
ology and ontology. . . ."
" Life is unknown to us except in association with bodies." " There
are three features which are never wanting wherever life in bodies occurs.
All living bodies are specific in form ... all living bodies exhibit metab-
olism ... all living bodies move." " It is form in particular which can
be said to occupy the very center of biological interest, at least it
furnishes the foundation of all biology." These statements are significant
inasmuch as the proof of vitalism is found in Driesch's analysis in the
study of form. It will no doubt strike the casual reader as strange that
Driesch seeks his proof in form rather than in the psychic phenomena
of the living world. It may be that the apparently simpler conditions
surrounding form-production have led him to look here rather than else-
where for the rigorous proof he seeks.
The first proof of vitalism is found in the relations of the parts
of the segmented egg to one another. The results of experimental
embryology have shown that the fate of each region of the blastoderm is
intimately connected with its relation to other parts; "the fate of a
part is a function of its position." Each part has potentially for a
time at least the property of becoming any part of the whole, its location
determines its development.
Driesch argues that the factors that determine the fate of each part
can not come from without, nor can they come from the interaction of
the parts. Therefore some other factor must be invoked to account for
the localization of the organs of the embryo. Driesch thinks that while
polarity and bilaterality the main directors of the intimate protoplasmic
structure are given, their interaction could not be responsible for the
manifoldness of development. He also believes that chemically different
compounds existing in the egg can not account for development, because
the form of elementary organs does not go hand in hand with chemical
differences, and can not, therefore, depend on them. But since we know
very little of the chemical composition of the substances of the egg, it
seems to the reviewer that Driesch's argument would be less open to
objection had he rested it on the well-known fact that a part already
demonstrably specialized can, if severed from the rest, make a new whole,
as when the foot end of hydra is cut off and quickly produces a new
hydra.
If it is granted, then, that neither external factors nor the presence of
chemically different substances in the egg accounts for development, can
we explain the process as the result of a complicated machine-like struc-
ture preexisting in the egg? This is disproven, Driesch thinks, by the
fact that if parts of the segmenting egg are taken away, the remaining
parts, as well as those removed, will each produce new wholes. No
machine is capable of behavior of this kind !
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 103
Since mechanical and chemical explanations fail, it follows that the
developmental process must be autonomous. This autonomous factor
Driesch calls " entelechy." He states that he will use this term only as
a sign of admiration for Aristotle's great genius ; " his word is a mould
which we have filled and shall fill with new contents."
It will be seen that Driesch's proof rests on a process of exclusion.
It fails unless all possibilities of mechanical explanation have been ex-
hausted. To many thinkers the proof will amount only to a demonstra-
tion that at present we are ignorant of the factors that determine the
formative changes in the developing embryo; but Driesch thinks that
his analysis has entirely excluded the possibility of mechanical interpreta-
tion.
In this connection it is not without interest to call to mind Lehmann's
recent important discoveries concerning fluid crystals. He has shown
that a number of organic compounds some of them, be it noted, known
to exist in the living body assume definite crystalline forms which
can be accounted for on purely physical grounds. These crystals can
take new matter into themselves and grow accordingly. If a part is
removed, it promptly assumes the same form as the original whole. Here
we have a machine, any part of it capable of changing into the form
of the original whole. It need not be argued from this that the organism
is a fluid crystal, although we think not a bad "case" might be made
out in favor of this view nor need we attempt to prove that the formative
processes are the same for the fluid crystal and for the living body; but
the example suffices to show that there do exist machines of which any
given part can reproduce the whole form.
The second proof of vitalism is derived from the power of every indi-
vidual to produce eggs capable of reproducing the parent organism a
fact so familiar that its use as a proof of vitalism comes as a surprise.
Driesch argues that our inability to think of this process as one on the
engine-pattern proves the autonomy of the process. But why so? If, as
we have seen, a piece of a fluid crystal reproduces a new whole, why
may not an egg which is only a piece of an animal arising by cell-division ?
A difficulty might arise in explaining how the egg divides; but cell-
division is not itself put down as evidence of vitalism. To the zoologist
the property of the organism to produce eggs appears in the same light
as do all other cell-divisions. If the continuity of material (germ-plasm)
be admitted, there is no special problem found here; what Driesch means
is that since the germ material has taken part already in one develop-
ment forming as it does a constituent part of the early embryo it is
inconceivable on a mechanical basis that it could return once more to
the starting-point. In part this property is something more than the
ability shown by pieces of the embryo or adult to reproduce the whole,
since the egg returns to the starting-point while the pieces press on to
their goal without going through the early stages again. It will be
admitted, we think, that here Driesch puts his finger on one of the
most subtle biological phenomena. The difficulty of picturing to oneself
how the return can be explained will be admitted by all thinking men.
104 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Those who seek consolation in the idea of the continuity of the germ-
plasm meaning thereby that a stream of undifferentiated material is
passed on from one generation to the next ignore the well-known fact
that in most cases all the cells take part in the early development. If it
be argued that, although present in the embryonic organs, the germ-
material is carried passively along for which view there is little or no
evidence the fact that differentiated cells that have functioned as parts
of the body may likewise return to the embryonic condition and pass
through the development will sufficiently cover the case. How serious
this difficulty may prove the future must decide.
Driesch's conception of the relation between entelechy and the ma-
terial through which or by means of which it acts is well brought out in
the following statement : " But what about the material continuity ap-
pearing in inheritance, which we have said to be almost self-evident, as
life is only known to exist in material bodies? Is there not, in fact,
a serious contradiction in admitting at the same time entelechy on the
one side and a sort of material condition on the other as the basis of all
that leads to and from inheritance ? " He promises in the second volume
to go further into the question ; " At present it must be enough to state
in a more simple and realistic way what we hold this relation to be.
There is no contradiction at all in stating that material continuity is the
basis of inheritance on the one side, and entelechy on the other." Both
are at work at the same time. " Entelechy, at present, is not much more
for us than a mere word, to signify the autonomous, the irreducible of
all that happens in morphogenesis with respect to order in the one
generation and in the next. But may not the material continuity which
exists in inheritance account, perhaps, for the material elements which
are to be ordered? In such a way, indeed, I hope we shall be able to
reconcile entelechy and the material basis of heredity." The first part of
this statement shows that Driesch is not as dogmatic in his advocacy of
vitalism as some of his critics would lead us to believe. No serious ob-
jection is likely to be raised if one calls autonomous all that is at present
irreducible in morphogenesis. On the other hand the attempt to treat the
entelechy as something apart from and yet controlling the material basis
will seem to most readers, we fear, to come perilously near to mysticism.
One satisfying fact emerges from this discussion, namely, that we can,
at will, divide the entelechy with a knife by cutting the egg in two, and
produce two new entire entelechies thereby. It seems altogether delight-
ful to be able to divide entelechy by so simple a means, but one may
doubt whether the problem is simplified when entelechy as well as material
is involved in the results.
A serious difficulty to Driesch's view may be found in the production
of galls on plants a difficulty dismissed by Driesch on insufficient
grounds, it seems to us. As the result of the presence of a parasitic insect
on or in the forming leaf, a complete morphological structure a gall is
produced. Some of these galls show remarkable adaptations for the
benefit of the parasite (but not for the plant) that produces the gall. At
the time when the inhabitants of the gall are ready to emerge the gall
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 105
opens and sets them free. Now we ask in all seriousness, whence has
come the entelechy in the gall? Does the plant contain the entelechy to
produce adaptive structures whose presence is injurious to the plant, or
does the activity of the enclosed insects introduce a new sort of entelechy
into the plant? Obviously it would be advantageous to the plant never
to set free the gall's contents, for thereby it would rid itself of its
parasites forever.
Whether we agree with Driesch or not concerning the nature of the
unknown factors of development, his attempt to hold our interpretation
to the more difficult epigenetic lines of thought is, we think, deserving of
the highest praise. Choosing the more difficult path, we at least keep
open the way for further work and thought.
We have selected for comment that portion of Driesch's book that will,
we believe, excite the greatest interest. But the book is enriched by
excursions into many other fields more or less related to the main theme
here discussed. The treatment of such matters as heredity, descent,
adaptation, Lamarckism, the logic of history, etc., contains much original
and independent thought. The handling of these matters will be found
stimulating and suggestive. The second volume, in which a discussion of
the more abstruse matters touched on in the present volume is promised,
will be awaited with interest.
T. H. MORGAN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
Abriss der Psychologic? H. EBBINGHAUS. Leipzig: Veit und Comp.
1908. Pp. iv + 196.
This book is the original draft, slightly enlarged, of the contribution
of Professor Ebbinghaus to Hinneberg's " Kultur der Gegenwart." It is
introduced by an admirable sketch (pp. 1-17) of the history of psychology.
" Psychology," Ebbinghaus points out, " has a long past, yet only a
short history " ; and with much discrimination, he indicates the obstacles
in the path of the development of a science of psychology, the condi-
tions of the growth of psychology, and the characteristic contributions of
the great makers of modern psychology. His references to Spinoza,
Hobbes, Hume, Herbert, and the physiologists and physicists of the
earlier nineteenth century are especially suggestive.
Following upon this historical chapter comes the first division of the
book, a discussion of " Allgemeine Anschauungen." This contains a
brief but admirable summary of the physiology of the nervous system
and a clear restatement of the doctrine, embodied in Ebbinghaus's
" Grundzuge," of Spinozistic psychophysical parallelism. " Soul and
nervous system," he declares (p. 39), " are not two separated, interacting
[realities] . . . they are one and the same real, on the one hand as it
immediately knows itself and is for itself, on the other hand as it exhibits
itself to other similar reals when it is experienced by them seen or
touched by them, as we say." This familiar doctrine is based upon a very
unconvincing argument. Like so many parallelists, Ebbinghaus assumes
1 A translation by Professor Max Meyer is announced by D. C. Heath, Boston.
106 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
that he has proved his theory when he has shown the objections to the
conception of the brain as " tool " of the soul. He would make his chief
point the methodological advantage of a parallelistic treatment of physi-
ological and psychical facts if, letting metaphysics alone, he laid stress
merely on the empirically observed parallelism of the two classes of
phenomena.
Ebbinghaus insists upon treating psychology as science of the soul,
but he is very careful to define the soul as mere "totality (Gesamtheit)
of ... contents and activities" (pp. 41, et aZ.). In the concrete descrip-
tion of forms of consciousness he obviously, however, conceives the
soul as far more than this mere Gesamtheit, or aggregate. He speaks,
for example (p. 143), of " a characteristic independence of the feeling-
activity of the soul," explains esthetic emotion through " Verinnerlichung
zu meinem eigenen Ich " (p. 173) in a word, he constantly implies the
persistence, uniqueness, and fundamental reality of a soul (better,
perhaps, called " self " or " I ") which is no sum of parts. Indeed, the
only argument of Ebbinghaus, in favor of the Humian theory of soul-as-
aggregate, is based on the misconception that the soul (or I), in any other
sense, must be a being " apart from " and " opposed to " its experiences.
"The soul," he says (p. 41), "has thoughts, sensations, wishes; is at-
tentive, . . . remembers. . . . Yet it is nothing besides the totality
(Gesamtheit) of these contents and activities [it is] not a being which
would remain over if one were to abstract from all its experiences,
or which, as an independent power, could oppose itself to them." By
these words, Ebbinghaus is rightly disclaiming the mischievous Lockean
fiction of an empty or " simple " soul-substance distinct from the self.
But his objection has no force when directed against the conception of
conscious self, or I, as fundamental, yet not opposed to its experiences,
as persistent and unique (and so more than a mere sum of its contents
or activities), yet as inclusive of these contents. In truth, this conception
really underlies Ebbinghaus's own psychology.
The second main division of the book (pp. 43 seq.) discusses the
elemental phenomena of the life of the soul (die Elementarer-
scheinungen des Seelenlel>ens). It presents few important divergences
from the teaching of the " Grundziige," in the successive consideration of
(a) the simplest contents of psychic being (die einfachsten Gebilde des
seelischen Seins), (b) the fundamental laws of psychic becoming (die
Grundgesetze des seelischen Geschehens), (c) the outer effects of psychic
events (die aiisseren WirJcungen der seelischen Vorgange). Under the
second head, Ebbinghaus seems to have grouped together, with a sort
of Kantian heading, all that will not readily fall into his other divisions.
Certainly the four topics, attention, reproduction, practise, and fatigue,
are incompletely coordinated. Under the first head Ebbinghaus enumer-
ates, as elemental contents, (1) sensations (peripherally excited), (2) sen-
sations centrally excited (Vorstellungen), which, he claims, are of radi-
cally different nature, and (3) feelings pleasantness and unpleasantness ;
for he rejects the Wundtian doctrine of the three dimensions. The most
important part of this teaching, in the view of the writer of this notice,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 107
is the admission (pp. 57-60) of certain elemental conscious contents,
which Ebbinghaus calls the general attributes (allgemeine Eigenschaften)
of sensation. In detail, this teaching is open to criticism. Three gen-
eral attributes are named : spatial relation, temporal relation, and " unity
and plurality." But the list is obviously too short it omits not only
two of the " general attributes " which the " Grundziige " recognizes the
consciousness of likeness and of difference but others as well, for ex-
ample, the consciousness of opposition and of degree. Moreover, the
differences between the space-consciousness and the consciousness of tem-
poral relation are insufficiently emphasized.
The physiological conditions of sensation are briefly treated. Ebbing-
haus does not even allude to the complicated modification of Bering's
color theory which he suggested in 1893, but wisely abandoned by the
time of the publication of the " Grundziige." His present preference is
for the von Kries theory (pp. 65, 66).
The third division of the book, " Complications ( VerwicTdungen) of
the Life of the Soul," discusses, on the one hand, perception, memory
and abstraction, speech, thinking and knowing, and believing (Glauben) ;
and, on the other hand, feeling and acting. There is nothing peculiarly
distinctive, here, in the description or classification. The argument
against indeterminism seems inappropriate to a work on psychology.
The closing section on " The Highest Achievements (die hochste Lei-
stungen) of the Soul " presents a brief but very interesting treatment of
religion, art, and morality regarded as the soul's methods of defending
herself against three evils: (1) the unknown future, (2) the inadequate
material environment, and (3) evils that rise from social intercourse.
This basis of classification has, perhaps, the opposite defects of being
uncoordinated and yet a little artificial. For the psychologist, surely,
religion and morality are better distinguished from art as having a
personal, not an impersonal, object; and are better distinguished from
each other in that religion conceives the personal object as divine, whereas
morality is a conscious relation to human society. The gist of these
distinctions is, indeed, embodied by Ebbinghaus in his teaching. With
illuminating emphasis he presses the likeness between the religious and
the every-day human relation. " To gain the help of the gods," he says
(p. 162), "one must approach them just as one approaches men whose
favor one would gain." " The free accomplishment of acts whose ob-
jective result is to further the preservation of the totality these," he says
(p. 183), " are the two basal criteria of morality."
No section of the book is, taken by itself, more admirable than that
which considers the esthetic consciousness. It is described as pure
happiness untouched by desire (reine begehrungslose Freude, pp. 169, 171)
and the work of art is rightly said to tranquilize and to free the soul.
In the detailed discussion of the work of art, the psychological point of
view is not so closely held. The introduction of these closing sections
is to be warmly welcomed as an indication that psychology is coming
back to its own, that the study of sensation and affection, of association
and emotion, is recognized as a necessary basis, not as an alternative,
108 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of the study of the most developed and complex and significant of con-
scious achievements. Thus the little book admirably justifies the sound
conclusion that " through the analytic and abstract study of manifold
particulars " and only through such study one may hope to gain " a
clear vision of, the bewildering riches of the whole " life of the soul.
It is impossible to withhold comment on a bibliography of such hap-
hazard nature as that of the "Abriss." Exclusive of the brief list of
text-books and of the references appended to his historical sections
(pp. 16, 17, 155), Ebbinghaus cites five periodicals (all German) and
about fifty books and articles (three in French, two in English, the
others in German). He makes no allusion to psychologists of the
Meinong school and to writers in English who contend for the disputed
theory upheld in his doctrine of the general attributes of sensation; he
does not refer to Flechsig in his references to writers on the nervous
system; and he cites the earlier instead of the later works of several
writers (cf. p. 17). In so brief a summary it is, of course, unfair to ask
for exhaustive references, but Ebbinghaus's omissions are unaccountable
unless one assume that his bibliography is made on a basis of personal
preference and of accidental acquaintance.
MARY WHITON CALKINS.
WELLESLEY COLLEGE.
Kants kritischer Idealismus als Grundlage von ErJcenntnistheorie und
Ethik. OSCAR EWALD. Berlin: Ernst Hofmann & Co. 1908. Pp.
ix + 314.
The aim of this book is at once critical and constructive. The book
thus falls naturally into two parts. The first part, which covers about
one hundred pages, is a searching criticism of the idealism of Kant. The
criticism, however, is positive in its import and forms the basis for the
second part of the book, in which are stated in some detail the author's
own views concerning the solution of the problems which the critical
philosophy forces upon us.
According to Dr. Ewald, the origin of the categories as Kant tried to
deduce them can not be thought. And the first part of his book under-
takes to point out why this is so. The essence of the discussion seems to
be that Kant's fundamental error lies in his failure to differentiate
sharply between the problem of perception and the problem of knowledge.
Perception is viewed by Kant too much as a creation of the perceiving
subject; the categories of the understanding are superimposed, as it were,
upon the data of sensuous experience. Subjective idealism is the result.
The way around this difficulty is to draw a sharp distinction between the
problem of perception and the problem of knowledge, and to hold fast to
the position that the latter alone forms the proper object of transcendental
criticism. It is by this way that Dr. Ewald hopes to transcend the sub-
jectivism of Kant and to give to the categories, if not complete objectivity,
at least all the objectivity which really belongs to them. And the second
part of his book develops this position in some detail.
The very least that can be said concerning Dr. Ewald's criticism of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 109
Kant is that it is able and suggestive. On this point there can, perhaps,
be no question. The criticism, which is generally fair and sympathetic,
is evidently based upon a thorough familiarity with Kant's philosophy,
and in many respects it is illuminating. It is a criticism which no
student of Kant can afford to neglect.
But when one comes to examine the constructive part of the book, one
is bound to feel that the results are problematic. Whether Dr. Ewald
meets successfully the very difficulty which he justly finds in the system
of Kant is, perhaps, more than questionable. His very sharp distinction
between perception (Anschauung) and knowledge (Erkenntniss), by
means of which he hopes to escape the subjective tendencies that seem to
have engulfed Kant, ultimately proves to be a rather dangerous partition
of experience. The logical result of such a violent division of the process
of knowledge seems to be epistemological dualism ; and whether the author
succeeds in bridging the chasm which he thus makes in the realm of
knowledge is, one is inclined to say, more than doubtful. If it be true
that the problem of knowledge is in toto different from the problem of
perception (p. 16), then it certainly is not easy to see how the categories
of knowledge bear any intelligible relation to the subject-matter of sensu-
ous experience. The position that the categories approximate realization
in the realm of perception (pp. 223, 237, etc.) seems to involve all the
weaknesses of Fichte's doctrine concerning objectivity. It would appear
that Dr. Ewald is logically in the same predicament in which he finds
Kant bound either to subjectivism or to abstract dualism in his epis-
temology.
There is one feature of Dr. Ewald's book which is deserving of especial
emphasis. Whatever may be the actual results of the book, its purpose is
to build upon history. The criticism which the author makes of Kant is
not made solely for the sake of criticism; rather is its aim to bring the
system of Kant into vital and potent relation to contemporaneous prob-
lems, to discover in the system a secure foundation upon which further
to build. And this historical attitude, which is ever anxious to learn
from past thinkers, to assimilate and expand the truth attained by them
and to avoid the errors into which they fell, is an attitude which, in the
field of philosophy at any rate, can hardly be too strongly commended.
If the book before us had no other merit than this one, it would certainly
be worth the while.
G. WATTS CUNNINGHAM.
MlDDLEBtTBY COLLEGE.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE PHILOSOPHICAL KEVIEW. November, 1908. On the
Meaning of Truth (pp. 579-591) : CHARLES M. BAKEWELL. - Truth is con-
ceiving an object in its total context. It is grasping the transient fact
in its transcendent context. The Nature and Criterion of Truth (pp.
692-605) : J. E. CREIGHTON. - Philosophic truth not to be confused with
the conditioned truth of science or practical need. The estimate of facts
110 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
requires a theory of experience, and this is a philosophy. The guide to the
philosophic standpoint is the history of philosophy, whence our instru-
ments for interpreting experience are derived. We can not, as the prag-
matists try to do, define the nature of truth without reference to meta-
physics. Self -Realization and the Criterion of Goodness (pp. 606-618) :
HENRY W. WRIGHT. - Recent criticism of the concept of self-realization as
an ethical ideal proceeds from a failure to define properly the function of
self. Since the self is an organizing agency, the object of supreme worth
is an organized life. The Hegelian Conception of Absolute Knowledge
(pp. 619-642) : G. W. CUNNINGHAM. - Conception is the penetration of the
object, which is thereby appropriated and possessed. When Hegel teaches
that thought is conterminous with the real he states that experience and
reality are one. Reviews of Books : Theodor Elsenhans, Fries und Kant :
ELLEN BLISS TALBOT. W. B. Pillsbury, Attention: CHAS. H. JUDD. A.
Fouillee, Morale des idees-f orces : W. G. EVERETT. Notices of New Books.
Summaries of Articles. Notes.
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. December, 1908. Le souvenir du
present et la fausse reconnaissance (pp. 561-593) : H. BERGSON. - A criti-
cism of current explanations of the illusion that one is reliving some
instants of one's past life, and an interpretation of the phenomenon as a
result of the interplay of perception and memory under conditions of a
lowered tone of attention to life. La triple origine de I'idee de Dieu
(pp. 594-612) : G. BELOT. - The idea of God is the product of religious
tradition, abstract reflection, and ill-defined, unexplained, subjective im-
pressions. La logique de I'analogie (pp. 613-636) : A. CHIDE. - Logicians
are inclined to reduce analogy to second place, but it is involved in the
establishment of all categories of inductive and deductive logic. Revue
generate : F. Picavet, Thomisme et philosophies medievales. Analyses et
comptes rendus : Boutroux, Science et religion dans la philosophic con-
temporaine: F. PILLON. Arnal, La philosophic religi&use de Ch. Renou-
vier: J. BARUZI. Notices bibliographique : R. de Gourmont, Promenades
philosophiques : L. ARREAT. Voivenel, Litterature et folie; Sighele, Lit-
terature et criminalite; Mairet, La simulation de la folie: CH. BLONDEL.
Revue des periodiques etrangers.
Avenarius, Richard. Kritik der reinen Erfahrung. Edited by J. Pet-
zoldt. Band II. Leipzig: O. R. Reisland. 1908. Pp. xii + 536.
Elsee, Charles. Neoplatonism in Relation to Christianity. Cambridge:
The University Press. 1908. Pp. xii + 144.
Joyce, George Hayward. Principles of Logic. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co. 1908. Pp. xx + 431.
Kiilpe, O. Immanuel Kant. Leipzig : B. G. Teubner. 1908. Pp. vi +
163. 1.25 M.
Maclaren, Shaw. What and Why, Being the Philosophy of Things as
They Are. London: Allen. 1908. Pp. xvii + 118.
Piat, Clodius. Insuffisance des philosophies de I' intuition. Paris: Plon-
Nourrit. 1908. Pp. 319.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 111
Pigou, A. C. The Probkm of Theism and Other Essays. London: Long-
mans, Green & Co. 1908. Pp. viii + 139.
Rasmussen, Knud. The People of the Polar North. Compiled from the
Danish originals, and edited by G. Herring. London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner & Co. 1908. Pp. xix 4- 358. 1 Is. net.
Richert, Hans. Schopenhauer. Zweite Auflage. Leipzig : B. G. Teubner.
The Works of Aristotle. Translated into English under the editorship
of J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross. Volume III. Metaphysica. Oxford:
The Clarendon Press. 1908. 7s. 6d. net.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE Pathological Institute, of Wards Island, New York City, has sent
out the following announcement : " The Neurological Institute, in Frank-
furt on Main, in connection with the Frankfurt Special Classes (help
schools) will arrange a two-weeks' course in ' The Problems concerning
Feeble-minded and Psychopathic Children.' This is to be given the latter
part of June, 1909. Scientific research, clinics, psychology, education and
methods, and forensic questions will be the subjects of lectures and
courses by specialists. The course is intended for those who are profes-
sionally engaged in this work, or are interested in it, or who wish to pre-
pare themselves for it. It aims to offer a basis for extended work, a
survey of the whole affair and its practical management. Accordingly
the chief emphasis will be laid on practical presentations and demonstra-
tions (anatomical, pedagogical, experimental, and presentation of patients).
As far as possible all sides of the subject and their bearing on other
branches of knowledge will be considered. The following courses and
demonstrations are planned: normal and pathological anatomy of the
juvenile brain; child psychology; psychopathology of youth; instruction
of the feeble-minded; methods of teaching; organization; hand training;
institutional affairs and care for the inmates; clinic for feeble-minded
children; care and education in institutions and forensic psychiatry;
juvenile courts; social care; speech therapeutics (articulation); hygiene;
care for the deaf-dumb, the blind, and cripples. A series of schools for
feeble-minded, institutions, clinics, and scientific institutes will be visited.
The detailed program will appear in the spring. For particulars address
the Committee: Privatdozent Dr. H. Vogt, Neurologisches Institut,
Gartenstrasse, Frankfurt a. M., or Rector A. Henze, Wiesenhiittenschule,
Frankfurt a. M."
A SERIES of lectures on " Charles Darwin and His Influence on
Science" will be given at Columbia University on Friday afternoons,
from February 12 to April 16, 1909, in 309 Havemeyer Hall, at 4 :10 P.M.,
with the exception of the introductory lecture, which was given at
11:10 A.M., on February 12, the one hundredth anniversary of Darwin's
birth. The lectures, which are open to the public, are as follows:
February 12, "Darwin's Life and Work," by Henry Fairfield Osbora;
112 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
February 19, " Terrestrial Evolution and Paleontology," by William
Berryman Scott; February 26, "Darwin's Influence on Zoology," by
Thomas Hunt Morgan ; March 5, " Darwin in Relation to Anthropology,"
by Franz Boas; March 12, "Darwin's Contribution to Psychology," by
Edward Lee Thorndike; March 19, "Darwin's Influence on Botany," by
Daniel Trembly MacDougal ; March 26, " Darwinism and Modern Philos-
ophy," by John Dewey; April 2 (date subject to change), " Cosmic Evolu-
tion," by George Ellery Hale; April 16, "Darwinism in Relation to the
Evolution of Human Institutions," by Franklin Henry Giddings.
THE Research Club of the University of Michigan celebrated the
Darwin centennial on February 17. The president, Professor Wenley,
of the department of philosophy, gave the eulogy; Professor Reighard,
of the department of zoology, spoke on "Darwin's Contribution to
Zoology " ; Professor Case, of the department of geology, on " Darwin's
Contribution to Geology"; Dr. De Leng-Hus, of the department of
botany, on " Darwin's Contribution to Botany " ; and Professor Pillsbury,.
of the department of philosophy, on " Darwin's Contribution to Psy-
chology." Further, in conjunction with the Michigan Academy of
Science and the Society of Sigma Xi, the club will hold a public com-
memoration meeting on April 2, when the address will be delivered by
Professor Scott, of Princeton University.
THE Darwin anniversary addresses delivered on Darwin Day before
the American Association for the Advancement of Science have all been
assembled and will be published at an early date by Messrs. Henry Holt
& Company. The title of the volume will be " Fifty Years of Darwinism*
Modern Aspects of Evolution and the Various Biological Sciences, Cen-
tennial Addresses in Honor of Charles Darwin before the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, Baltimore, Friday, January
1, 1909."
PROFESSOR HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR has begun a course of nine lectures
on " The Philosophy of the Middle Ages " at the Union Theologicol
Seminary. The program is as follows : February 3, " Greek Philosophy
as an Antecedent " ; February 5, " Intellectual Interests of the Latin
Fathers " ; February 10, " Carolingian Handling of the Patristic Material " ;
February 17, " The Second Stage : Gerbert, Roscellin, William of Cham-
peaux, Abelard " ; February 19, " Reason and Authority : Abelard. Hugo
of St. Victor: Mysticism"; February 24, "Universities: The Mendicant
Orders: Aristotle and the Culmination of Scholasticism"; February 26,
" Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas " ; March 3, " The Whole Schol-
asticism: Thomas Aquinas"; March 5, "The Breach in Scholasticism:
Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, Occam." The lectures are given in the
Adams Chapel at four-thirty o'clock.
THE Society of Anthropology of Paris will celebrate the fiftieth anni-
versary of its foundation on the seventh, eighth, and ninth of the coming-
July.
VOL. VI. No. 5. MARCH 4, 1909.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE MIND'S FAMILIAKITY WITH ITSELF
IT is frequently argued, more frequently asserted, and most fre-
quently taken for granted, that mind is unlike every other
known object in that in order to be known rightly it must know
itself. In an earlier paper I undertook to discuss the mind's hidden-
ness from general observation ; and to show that the difficulty under
certain circumstances of knowing another mind lends no support
to the contention that such knowledge is essentially impossible. 1 In
the present paper I undertake to discuss the accessibility of mind to
itself; and to show that this accessibility, evident and important as
it is, nevertheless lends no support to the contention that mind is
known only in this way. As in the earlier paper, I shall present
positive evidence of mind, and seek to guard it from misconception,
hoping that the results on the whole will be constructive rather than
critical.
Before proceeding to more profitable considerations, I must refer
briefly to the time-honored theory that the essential and indivisible
essence of mind is explicitly discoverable in an introspective intui-
tion. An appeal to intuition can not in the nature of the case be
argued, but it is important to note the logic of such an appeal. It
is not claimed that some observers find such a soul-element within
themselves, but that such an element is universally present under
the conditions of self -consciousness. It is not held to be an aberra-
tion of mind, but the mental constant. The theory thus virtually
rests its case upon concurrence of testimony. But to be convinced
of the absence of such concurrence, it is only necessary to compare
the evidence in this case with that which testifies to the quality of
the color blue, or the relation of the tone to its octave. In so far as
it affects this issue, Hume 's analysis has never been disproved. The
neo-Kantian reply to Hume deals primarily with another issue.
While it is doubtless true, as Kantians maintain, that synthetic cate-
gories condition experience, it is a wholly different matter to affirm
that such categories emanate from a subjective core of activity
known in self-consciousness. The latter proposition appeals to pre-
1 Cf. " The Hiddenness of the Mind," this JOUBNAL, Vol. VI., p. 29.
113
114 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
cisely the introspective experience which Hume denies. Without
rehearsing this ancient controversy, let me conclude simply that I
find all the circumstances in the case to demonstrate a misconception,
and one which I hope largely to account for in what follows. I shall
forthwith devote myself to what empirically and in detail a mind
knows of itself. I shall attempt to show what specific advantages
distinguish the self-knower from the general observer; and to
determine whether these advantages justify the contention that the
mind is really known only by itself.
Common sense is characteristically equivocal in the matter. It
is generally supposed that no one knows me as well as I know myself ;
but also that I am the last person whose judgment in the matter is
to be trusted. Napoleon knew Napoleon better than did any one
else, and yet it is quite possible that the historian is coming to
know him better still. Napoleon may have deceived himself as to
his real motives; or, through intense preoccupation with the matter
in hand, have failed to grasp the contour and unity of his life. We
can gather from such opinion only the tentative conclusion that an
individual mind may be its own best knower in some sense, and at
the same time be characteristically ignorant of itself in another sense.
That such is in fact the case will, I believe, appear in the analysis
that follows. And it will appear at the same time that the self-
knower's characteristic advantage does not lie in his understanding
of what his or any mind really is, but only in the familiarity and
convenience of his access to certain data.
No one is so well acquainted with me as I am with myself.
Primarily this means that whereas I have known myself repeatedly,
and perhaps for considerable intervals continuously, others have
known me only intermittently, or not at all. To myself I am so
much an old story that I may easily weary of myself. I do
weary of myself, however, not because I understand myself so well,
but because I live with myself so much. I may be familiar to the
point of ennui with things I understand scarcely at all. Thus I may
be excessively familiar with a volume in the family library without
having ever looked between the covers. Indeed, degrees of knowl-
edge are as likely to be inversely as directly proportional to degrees
of familiarity. Familiarity is arbitrary like all habit, and there is
nothing to prevent it from fixing and confirming a false or shallow
opinion. The man whom we meet daily on the street is a familiar
object. But we do not tend to know him better. On the contrary,
our opinion tends to be as unalterable as it is accidental and one-sided.
Every one is familiar with a typical facial expression of the Presi-
dent, but who will claim that such familiarity conduces to knowledge
of him? Similarly my familiarity with myself may actually stand
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 115
in the way of my better knowledge. Because of it I may be too easily
satisfied that I know myself, and will almost inevitably believe that
my mind as I commonly know it is my mind in its essence. It can
not be said, then, that the individual mind's extraordinary famil-
iarity with itself necessarily means that its knowledge of itself is
exclusive or even superior.
But let us examine this familiar self in its characteristic aspects.
Weariness of self doubtless arises from the habit of self-consciousness.
But one may also be weary of the company of one's recurrent ideas
and persisting memories; or of the "feel" of one's body, especially
if it be an ailing body. And one may be excessively familiar with
one 's point of view, with the characteristic pettiness or angle of one 's
outlook. Finally, there is a deeper and more fatal weariness that
arises from repeated attempts to solve one's personal problems and
maintain one's high resolves. I propose to examine these familiar
selves in order to discover whether they are in fact anything more
than familiar, and whether any one of them proves to be the only
key to the nature of mind.
1. Self -consciousness. I am inclined to believe that the promi-
nence of this experience in traditional definitions of mind is due to
the fact that it is characteristically habitual with philosophers. What
but bias could have led to the opinion that self-consciousness is gen-
erically typical of mind ? Surely nothing could be farther from the
truth. If self-consciousness means anything, it means mind func-
tioning in an elaborately complicated way. It is a case of mind much
as society is. One does, it is true, test one 's definition by applying it
to complex and derivative forms, but one learns to isolate and iden-
tify the object from a study of its simple forms. It would be con-
sistent with general logical procedure, then, to expect to understand
mind-knowing-itself only after one has an elementary knowledge of
the general nature of mind and the special function of knowing.
Surely in this respect, at least, philosophy has traditionally lacked
the sound instinct that has guided science.
But waiving methodological considerations, what is to be said of
the cognitive value of my experience of self-consciousness ? Suppose
me to be as habitually self-conscious as the most confirmed philos-
opher. Have I on that account an expert knowledge of self-con-
sciousness ? There could not, it seems to me, be a clearer case of the
mistaking of habit for insight. Upon examination my experience of
self-consciousness resolves itself mainly into familiar images, and
familiar phrases containing my name or the first personal pronoun.
If I am sophisticated I may have learned to say, 7 am I, cogito ergo
sum, subject-object relation, or even 7 am my own other. But these
phrases are perfectly typical of the fixed and stereotyped character
116 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
that may be acquired by a confused experience, or, indeed, by an
experience that is nothing more than the verbal formulation of
a problem. And the more fixed and stereotyped such experiences,
the more their confusion or emptiness is neglected. This is the true
explanation, I think, of what is the normal state of mind in the matter
of self-knowledge. Your average man knows himself "of course,"
and grasps eagerly at words and phrases imputing to him an esoteric
knowledge of soul ; but he can render no intelligible account of him-
self. That he has never attempted; he is secure only when among
those as easily satisfied as himself.
Now is this not the very essence of intellectual complacency?
Who is so familiar with farming as the farmer? But he despises
the innovations of the theorist, because routine has warped, lim-
ited, and at the same time intensified his opinions; with the con-
sequence that while no one is more intimately familiar with farm-
ing than he, no one, perhaps, is more hopelessly blinded to its
real principles. Now it is my lot to be a self-conscious mind.
I have practised self-consciousness habitually, and it is certain
that no one is so familiar with my self-consciousness as I. But
I have little to show for it all: the articulatory image of my name,
the visual image of my social presence, and a few poor phrases.
There is a complex state to which I can turn when I will, but it is a
page more thumbed than read. And I am lucky if I have not long
ago become glibly innocent of my ignorance, and joined the ranks of
those who deliver confusion with the unction of profundity, and the
name of the problem with the pride of mastery. No so far I can
not see that the royal road to a knowledge of self-consciousness has
led beyond the slough of complacency. Either appeal is made to
what every one ' ' of course ' ' knows, to the mere dogma of familiarity ;
or stereotyped verbalisms and other confused experiences are solemnly
cherished as though the warmth of the philosophical bosom could
somehow invest them with life. I confidently believe that the prob-
lem of self-consciousness will remain unsolved until the simpler
problem of mind has been solved ; and that this simpler problem will
necessarily carry the investigator beyond his own domestic concerns.
That which follows will, I trust, bear me out. Before proceeding,
however, I must briefly mention two apparent difficulties which in
principle have been already dealt with, but which the reader may
associate primarily with self-consciousness.
In the first place, it is doubtless true that only I can be self-con-
scious of me. Your knowing of me is not self-knowledge. In this
sense, then, you can not know me as I know myself. 2 But the diffi-
2 Can it be this that is troubling Dr. Rashdall when he says : " No knowl-
edge of that person by another, however intimate, can ever efface the distinction
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 117
culty has disappeared in the stating of it ; for it still remains possible
for both of us to know me, and to know me equally well.
In the second place, it is probably true in general, and certainly
true in some cases, that my self-consciousness is more readily detected
by me than by you. Although without knowing what it means, I am
readily acquainted with the fact. For the general observer this is
one of the peculiarly elusive states to which I have referred in an
earlier paper. 8 And it also illustrates the superior convenience of
introspection as a means of collecting mental content. By the autom-
atism of introspection I am always more or less familiar with my
states, and by the deliberate use of it I can verify and tabulate them.
To the general consideration of this topic I shall now turn.
2. Mental content. It is well known that much the most con-
venient method of discovering what is in my mind is to consult me.
I can affirm the fact with superior ease and certainty. At the same
time, of course, I may be absolutely ignorant of the meaning of the
fact. The subject of a psychological experiment is best qualified
when he has no ideas concerning the nature of his mind. He is
called on to affirm or deny knowledge of a given object, to register
the time of his knowledge, or to report the object (not given) which
he does know. The introspective accessibility of mental content
refers, then, to an inventory that is preliminary to the study of mind.
Suppose my mind to be an object of study. In the first place it
is necessary to collect my past experiences. By the method of general
observation this is not an impossible task, but an enormously difficult
and complex one. It would require the patient tracing of my bodily
movements and their environment, an investigation of the capacity
and history of my nervous system, and an analysis of my interests.
Such a study would in the end doubtless throw much light on the
rationale of my experiences; but it is evidently a clumsy manner of
simply collecting these experiences, in view of the much more con-
venient method which is ready at hand. For I have myself been
keeping a record of my experiences automatically, and by virtue of
the capacity of recollection I can recover them at will. You may
know these experiences, but you can not remember them exclusively
and systematically. That method is reserved for the use of the mind
that originally had the experiences. This does not mean that the
facts can not be known except in so far as remembered by me. It
would be absurd to say that the fact that I saw the King of Saxony
between the mind as it is for itself, and the mind as it is for another"? Of.
"Personal Idealism," p. 383. I have discussed this matter in principle in my
paper on " The Hiddenness of Mind."
In that paper I have attempted to show that such data are not hidden
from general observation in any absolute sense. Cf. " The Hiddenness of Mind."
118 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in the year 1903 is lost to knowledge except in so far as I can retro-
spectively recover it. An observant bystander would have known it
at the time; or it may be a matter of general knowledge. But the
convenience afforded by my memory is apparent. For in this way
I may recall and verify the experience in question, and thus secure
something approximately equivalent to its empirical presence; and,
furthermore, my memory preserves not only this, but also other
experiences likewise mine, and so already selected and grouped with
reference to a study of my particular mind.
Or suppose that the study of my mind requires knowledge of its
present content. I, who must in the nature of the case be having
the object in mind, can have before me simultaneously the additional
fact of its being in my mind. Such an introspective experience is
commonly available, and is the simplest record of a complex datum.
It is not a penetrating or definitive knowledge of the fact, but is a
discovery of the fact.
It is doubtless true, then, that the collection of the states of a
mind is most conveniently accessible through introspection. But the
superior or even unique accessibility of certain facts to certain
observers is not unusual; indeed, it is a corollary of the method of
observation. Every natural object has what may be called its cog-
nitive orientation, defining vantage points of observation. Data con-
cerning the surface of the earth are peculiarly accessible to man;
and data concerning the twentieth century to those alive at the time.
This does not mean that man knows the earth best, or that we of the
present day know the twentieth century best. Still less does it mean
that our knowledge is exclusive. It means only that we are so situ-
ated as to enjoy certain inductive advantages. If a man were to add
up his property as he accumulated it, he would always be in a posi-
tion to report promptly on the past and present amount thereof, but
it would not be profitable to argue that property is, therefore, such
as to be known only by its owner. So any individual mind is most
handily acquainted with its own experiences, past and present. The
circumstances of its history and organization are such that without
any exertion, or even any special theoretical interest, it is familiar
with the facts. But this argues nothing unique or momentous. For,
in the first place, introspection is not the only way of getting the
data; in the second place, introspection merely reports these data
without systematizing or defining them; 4 and in the third place, a
similar convenience exists in the case of all objects of observation.
* Introspection almost inevitably obscures the real nature of mind, because
it tends to be distributive, and so to lose sight of the unity or formula of mind.
I propose to return to this point in a later paper.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 119
3. Proprio-ceptive sensations. I have already had occasion to
refer to the general fact that identical objects, without prejudice to
their neutrality in the matter, may be known by different methods
of cognitive approach. That of which I am an eye-witness may in
the end be better known by you who have to be guided by verbal
testimony and circumstantial evidence. We are now to meet with a
most striking illustration of this principle. Concerning certain hap-
penings within my body, I am, so to speak, the only eye-witness.
This circumstance plays a very important part in the unique self-
knowledge imputed to the mind, and in particular, I believe, lends
specious significance to the self-conscious and introspective experi-
ences which have just been examined. Let us first set down the
general facts in the case.
In his ' ' Integrative Action of the Nervous System, ' ' Sherrington
writes as follows: "Bedded in the surface layer of the organism are
numbers of receptor cells constituted in adaptation to the stimuli
delivered by environmental agencies. [These receptors the author
calls extero-ceptors.] But the organism itself, like the world sur-
rounding it, is a field of ceaseless change, where internal energy is
continually being liberated, whence chemical, thermal, mechanical
and electrical effects appear. It is a microcosm in which forces
which can act as stimuli are at work as in the macrocosm around.
The deep tissues . . . have receptors specific to themselves. The
receptors which lie in the depth of the organism are adapted for
excitation consonantly with changes going on in the organism itself,
particularly in its muscles and their accessory organs (tendons,
joints, blood-vessels, etc.). Since in this field the stimuli to the
receptors are given by the organism itself, their field may be called
the proprio-ceptive field." 5
Now my body lies beyond the periphery of every other body, and
can, therefore, be generally observed only by extero-ceptive organs,
such as those of vision, touch, etc. But while I may also observe
myself in this fashion, my proprio-ceptive field enables me alone to
know my body through other means. There is no occult reason
for this ; it is a matter of physiological organization. I am sensible
of interior pressure and strain, or of the motion and muscular control
of my limbs, in a manner impossible for any other observer, simply
because no other observer is nervously connected with them as I am.
I alone can be specifically sensible of loss of equilibrium, because
my semicircular canals, though visible and tangible to others, have a
direct afferent connection with my brain alone. Most important of
all in the present issue is the fact that I am sensible in a very com-
plex way of states and changes in my alimentary, circulatory, and
Pp. 129, 130.
120 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
respiratory systems. Here, again, I am possessed of sensations from
which other observers are cut off for lack of certain nerve fibers which
connect these organs only with my cerebral centers.
Now what is the inference from these facts ? In the first place it is
to be observed that these sensations constitute knowledge of the body,
and not of mind in the traditional sense. I have a species of cognitive
access to the interior of my body from which all other knowers are
excluded. My heart palpitates for me as it palpitates for no one else.
But as it has never been argued that a physical organism is a thing
known only to the mind inhabiting it, let us present the matter in
another way. My mind contains sensations that can not be directly
presented in any other mind. I alone can find these sensations in
the ordinary empirical sense. But does it follow that you can not
know them ? Now, firstly, there is nothing in the sensation that you
can not know. The peculiar quality of heart-palpitation is known
to you in another context, and likewise the bodily locality which
makes it mine. These factors must, it is true, be put together by
you, but the result is nevertheless knowledge. And secondly, there
is nothing about the sensation that you can not know even better
than I. If I were to follow up the mere presentation of the sensa-
tion, and proceed to an adequate knowledge of it, I would necessarily
rely on anatomical and physiological methods that have from the
first been open to you. Indeed, here I am seriously embarrassed ; for
as you are cut off from proprio-ceptive sensations of my bodily in-
terior, so I am largely cut off from the extero-oeptive sensations
which are much more indispensable to a knowledge of sense-structure
and function. In short, there is a portion of my mind that is
presented in a characteristic way to me alone. I alone can have
proprio-ceptive sensations of my own body, and therefore I alone can
be coincidently and simply aware of my having them. In order that
you may know them it is necessary for you to use your imagination,
or some other relatively elaborate process.
Is this what is meant by saying that mind can be known only
by itself ? If so, then that contention loses all of its momentousness.
For this is only a ease of a very common class. It may even be
contended that all existent things are such as to be presented in-
stantly and simply only to a privileged group of knowers. In so
far as spacial, events can be sensibly known only by those who enjoy
a certain definable proximity, and in so far as temporal only by
contemporaries. But this does not withdraw them from the general
field of knowledge. I must use my imagination to know what the
East Indian may know by opening his eyes ; but my knowledge may
none the less exceed his. And furthermore, even if it were granted
that proprio-ceptive sensations can be known only introspectively, I
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 121
can scarcely believe that those who emphasize the uniquely internal
character of mind mean that the mind consists in a confused and
partial knowledge of the interior of the physical body !
A word more is necessary to show the full importance of the
matter. The experiences on which we most rely for a knowledge of
self contain a large admixture of proprio-ceptive sensations. This
is true of the way ' ' I feel, ' ' whether well or ill, and notably of the
deeper emotions. 6 There is likewise a more or less constant experi-
ence of my body in its normal state of vitality. Finally, the very
act of self-consciousness is itself attended by characteristic sensa-
tions due to bodily posture and respiratory changes. The presence
of such sensations, diffused and blended, communicates to experi-
ences of self a peculiar vividness and at the same time a complexity
so bewildering as to be easily mistaken for unity. Thus we may
now more justly understand the general import of self-familiarity.
It is not only a habit, a stereotyped experience, but is also an inti-
mate and, in respect of its given psychological form, an exclusive
experience. But it stands condemned by these very characters. It
is an accidental rather than an illuminating experience. For, on
the one hand, it is arbitrarily fixed, prematurely concluded, as is the
case wherever mere repetition is relied on; and, on the other hand,
it attaches a wholly unwarrantable significance to a partial and rudi-
mentary function of mind, namely, its confused sense-knowledge of
bodily states. 7
4. Point of view. We have already, I believe, dealt in prin-
ciple with the uniqueness possessed by an individual point of view.
* I am making no explicit reference in the present analysis to feeling as a
type of content, believing that I have virtually dealt with it in this paragraph
and in that on desire and purpose.
1 1 have here referred to proprio-ceptive sensations as belonging to one state
with self-consciousness, assuming that the patrons of self-consciousness would
apply that term only to my consciousness of my consciousness, as distinct from
my body. But there is, I believe, a propriety not commonly recognized in
regarding the proprio-ceptive experience as really a knowledge of self. For my
proprio-ceptive experience is largely a knowledge of my organic action on the
environment, and it is this action when construed in a certain manner that
really constitutes my mind. What I mean will appear more clearly in the light
of a paper entitled " The Mind Within and the Mind Without," which I expect
shortly to publish. Cf. Sherrington, op. cit. : " The other character of the stimu-
lations in this field (the proprio-ceptive) we held to be that the stimuli are
given in much greater measure than in the surface field of reception, by actions
of the organism itself, especially by mass movement of its parts. Since these
movements are themselves for the most part reactions to stimuli received by
the animal's free surface from the environment, the proprio-ceptive reactions
themselves are results in large degree habitually secondary to surface stimuli.
The immediate stimulus for the reflex started at the deep receptor is thus sup-
plied by some part of the organism itself as agent" (p. 336).
122 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
A point of view consists, so far as I can see, in a specific cognitive
approach to a field of objects. It is a characteristic order of parts,
belonging rightly to things, but selected by an individual knower's
serial approximation to their full being. Every knower enjoys
initial advantages, or suffers initial disadvantages, that distinguish
his march to truth. Now a point of view in this sense is given
originally only once, and to the knower that defines it. Another
knower must arrive at it mediately, and when thus arrived at it will
be immersed in another like point of view characteristic of the
second knower. Furthermore, mediate knowledge of a point of
view is peculiarly difficult, and in point of precision doubtless
humanly impossible. For these reasons the simultaneous intro-
spective awareness that an individual knower may have of his own
point of view is marked and prized. But no new principle is
involved. The exceptional knowledge which I have of my point of
view reduces to readiness of access. It does not follow that I alone
know my point of view, or even that that I know it well. Indeed,
the very fact that I occupy my point of view, though it promotes
familiarity with it, is otherwise prejudicial to my knowledge of it.
5. Desire and purpose. Finally, I am familiar with my own pro-
pensities. In so far as I am reflective, my impulses and ideals are
repeatedly the objects of my contemplation and scrutiny. They are
defined, adopted, rejected, or reaffirmed in every moral crisis. But
just as certainly as this self -experience is more crucial and profound
than the types already discussed, so certainly is it even less inac-
cessible to the intelligent observer. My interests are the defining
forms of my life. In so far as they move me they can not be hidden
away within me. They mark me among my fellows, and give me
my place, humble or obscure, in the open field of history. It is pos-
sible, doubtless, to emphasize the introspective factor of desire. But
desire in so far as content, has already been dealt with in principle ;
and desire as only content, is not desire at all. Desire as moral, as a
form of determination, belongs not to the domestic mind, but to mind
at large in nature and society.
To these or like factors we may, I think, reduce the mind's cele-
brated knowledge of itself. It appears that the mind is familiar and
intimate with itself to an extraordinary degree ; but this familiarity
and intimacy, once circumstantially accounted for, is as much a
symbol of confusion and bad habit as it is of knowledge. "What
exclusiveness it has it owes not to its insight, but to its incipiency
and arbitrariness so far is it from constituting a final revelation
of truth.
RALPH BARTON PERRY.
HABVABD UNIVERSITY.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 123
INEFFABLE PHILOSOPHIES
nnEMPERAMENT reason: romanticism rationalism these rep-
-*- resent an inevitable dichotomy in the history of human culture.
We have esthetic and artistic activities, and we have the procedure
of natural science and of mathematics, the impartial analysis of
"things as they are." These differences of point of view, far from
being superficial, pervade all provinces of cognitive endeavor, and
even philosophy has to reckon with them. For they are sufficiently
baffling to give rise to the problem of philosophic methodology.
That the method of philosophy is that of logic, of articulate
thought, and of a corresponding coherent formulation, no one, philos-
ophers will say, has ever doubted. The fact is, however, that rep-
utable philosophers have, in practise, often shown themselves blind
to this elementary requirement. Many a philosopher might as well
have called his work a work of art, a lyric poem, or an unfinished
drama, as to have called it a philosophic system. For many a system-
builder has forgotten the simple truth that although various things
in life are neither coherent nor articulate, philosophy can not be one
of those things.
Philosophic systems of to-day are many and varied. The academic
air swarms with isms subjectivism, materialism, monism, pluralism,
idealism, realism, pragmatism. In the presence of this overwhelming
array, how shall we discriminate between good and bad systems?
We must evidently adopt some basis of classification. Accord-
ingly, we shall examine some types of philosophic systems, rather
than distinct "isms," with the aim of testing their logical status.
From this point of view types of philosophy will fall under two
mutually exclusive classes, that we shall name, respectively, the
effable and the ineffable. By the term "ineffable" we shall mean
something much more radical than incoherence or self-contradiction.
For a philosophy that does not logically cohere as a whole may yet
involve a set of fundamental principles or propositions which are
logically unassailable, and may require only the weeding out of a
few supposed deductions in order to become completely coherent.
Even the extreme case of a philosophy, nearly all the propositions of
which are contradictory to its first principle or principles, is still not
in the category of the ineffable, for although each of these proposi-
tions, in order to become a logical deduction from the fundamental
premise or premises, would have to be decidedly remodelled, it may
yet be true that the fundamental premises logically allow of rational
deduction. Not so with the ineffable philosophy. Here we are
denied the pleasure of asking whether any given proposition does or
124 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
does not cohere with the fundamental premises, for it is the essence
of an ineffable system to be based on premises which, for whatsoever
reason, lead to no logical deductions, and which thus render the ques-
tions of coherence, incoherence, consistency, and contradiction alto-
gether meaningless.
It will be observed, then, that in the examination of types of
ineffable philosophy the one thing of prime importance for our in-
vestigation is the fundamental proposition, or set of propositions,
on which such philosophies profess to be based. For until we have
ascertained whether these fundamental propositions allow of any
logical deduction until we have assured ourselves that they are
effable it is idle to inquire whether this or that particular part of
the philosophy coheres with, or contradicts, these fundamental
premises.
Psychologically and physically speaking, we may, to be sure,
"deduce" from ineffable premises all kinds of propositions, and
construct all kinds of systems. Logically, however, such "deduc-
tions" are meaningless; they are voces prceterea, nihil. For an
assemblage of words which, in the strict logical sense, allows of no
deductions, neither is nor contains a proposition, and it is meaning-
less to speak of such an assemblage of words as the basis of any
philosophy. In short, an ineffable philosophy is one which, when
taken with logical seriousness, condemns us to silence. If it is
considered as an appeal to the reason, we find that no appeal has
been made.
To the examination of some broadly representative types of con-
temporaneous ineffable systems we now proceed.
I.- Illusion philosophies. "Vanity of vanities, all knowledge is
vanity. Only in the evanescent immediate is there a glimpse of the
eternally real." This is the cry of the illusion philosophies. With
varying nuances, these illusion types range from the most orthodox
mysticism of the Hindu to the perceptual and subjective philosophies
of the present hour. And of them all out and out mysticism is the
frankest.
For his frankness we must admire the mystic. To him the world
is somehow one ; but this final oneness he can only feel. ' ' Only in
the immediate that has no beyond ... is the reality. . . . Or, to
repeat the Hindu phrase : That art thou. That is the world. That
is the absolute." In other words, "Reality is that which you imme-
diately feel when thought satisfied you cease to think." 1 This
philosophy is thus open and straightforward. The mystic knows
perfectly well that any statement concerning his reality is only
illusion, Maya, an annihilation of that which can not be a matter of
1 Royce, " The World and the Individual," Vol. I., pp. 82, 83.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 125
discourse. In short, mysticism is the frankest case of ineffable
philosophy.
Of other illusion philosophies, far less inclined to face their
inevitably mystical implications, modern theories furnish striking
examples, and with some of those we shall presently deal. For the
moment let us note the confession of an expounder of Hegelianism.
Says McTaggart, in the closing sentence of his "Studies in the
Hegelian Dialectic, " " All philosophy must be mystical, not indeed in
its methods, but in its final conclusions. ' ' And in the last paragraph
of his "Studies in Hegelian Cosmology," we find the complacent
statement that "the conclusions of this chapter are, no doubt, fairly
to be called mystical. ' ' These and numerous other instances demon-
strate that even in highly constructive systems of to-day mysticism
enters as a dominating ingredient.
That the very foundation of such philosophies lies in ineff ability
is too evident to require comment. For, granting the primary
assumption of the illusion philosophies seriously granting that the
realm of discourse is the realm of illusion it follows that from such
a realm nothing articulate follows. No proposition that the illusion
philosopher utters is either consistent with his fundamental postulate
or contradictory to it ; it is meaningless ; it is not a proposition.
II. Transformation philosophies. That reason "transforms"
objects, that processes of thought distort reality, is the underlying
motive of various philosophies.
Of such philosophies neo-Fichteanism and absolute voluntarism
are typical. Reality, these declare, is something which we must feel,
experience, appreciate, evaluate. Reality must be lived; it can not
be described and analyzed. For the world of discourse is only an
"imitation of an imitation." The world of propositions is only a
"transformation" of the real. And the last word of philosophy
must be not a logical proposition, but a conviction, an attitude not
a fact, but an act.
Thus neo-Fichteanism, thus all philosophies for which, as for
that of Rickert, the "ought" is logically prior to all other concepts.
These philosophies imply that as far as possible we must strip our
conceptions of all logical content; that at any point where we are
manipulating things logically, we have not yet reached the heart of
reality. This is the principle of transformation. In addition, these
philosophies generally involve also the doctrine of abstraction, which
declares that objects of discourse are only abstractions from the full
reality, and are thus not true of reality.
Are these theories logically tenable?
When we recollect that, rightly understood, abstraction is a
legitimate process, and means only that not the whole, the totality
126 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of anything, but definite components of it are under consideration,
we perceive how fallacious it is to suppose that because thought is
an abstraction, that is, deals with components of reality in a definite
way, it is, therefore, to be condemned as "mere" abstraction and
transformation, and to be contrasted with truth. Assuredly if this
argument holds for thought, it holds likewise for feeling and volition,
for they, too, are, in the proper sense of the term, abstractions from
the total.
It should furthermore be observed that by abstraction, by logical
isolation, we do obtain truths truths which, to be sure, may in many
cases happen to be quite unimportant. Their unimportance, how-
ever, should not blind us to the fact that qua truths they stand on
the same level as the "highest" moral and religious truths. Or
perhaps these unimportant propositions are not true because they do
not represent the complete truth about an object? In that case, the
principle of abstraction merges with the principle of completion,
which will be examined in the next section.
Apart, however, from the doctrine of abstraction, the key-note
of the philosophies under consideration lies in the principle of trans-
formation. And this principle is so similar to the theory of the
illusion philosophies that, but for the introduction of the factor of
abstraction, the ineffability of the transformation philosophies would
be glaringly manifest. For from their fundamental principle they
reason out the conclusion that reason can never get hold of reality.
They arrive thus at the philosophical assertion that there can be no
philosophy. For to maintain that the last word of philosophy must
be not a proposition, but an attitude, a conviction, is to maintain that
there can be no last word. In other words, it is to revert to a form
of mysticism. And as in the case of the mystic, so in the case of the
transformation philosopher, his ineffable foundation is no foundation.
That the illusion and the transformation types of philosophy are
truly ineffable is patent to all who take sufficient trouble to under-
stand those systems. The transformation philosophy, to be sure, is
far more pretentious than the illusion type, and is equipped with a
subtler technical apparatus. Fundamentally, however, one is as
ineffable as the other.
"Ah, but you do not really understand us," the illusion and the
transformation philosophers will exclaim. And upholders of all sorts
of varieties of ineffable experience will accuse us of a " narrow intel-
lectualism." Mystics and Fichteans alike will warn us that we are
trying in vain to span the continuous and incommunicable reality by
means of discrete and effable reason.
To all such philosophers our rejoinder may be stated in brief:
Just as we can not lift ourselves by our bootstraps, so we can not
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 127
consistently employ reason to prove the viciousness of reason. Hence,
if for these philosophers reason is a solvent of reality, let them hold
to their reality and eschew the unrealities of reason. And relin-
quishing the use of reason, they will necessarily give up all preten-
sions to philosophy. For philosophy, whether good or bad, whether
desirable or undesirable, whatsoever its relation to reality, is forever,
and forever must be, effable.
We have now to examine a type of philosophy which has at the
present moment an enormous prestige, a type which implicitly and
explicitly has proclaimed itself as the very acme of the articulate and
the effable. We hope to show that it, too, is thoroughly ineffable.
III. Completion philosophies. All or none is the motto of
another type of ineffable philosophy, a type which we may call the
completion philosophy. We refer to the well-known theories which
assert that we can not know or understand a component without
knowing and understanding the whole to which it belongs. This is
the tenet of most absolute idealisms.
The essence of the contention of these absolute philosophies is
that facts are so linked together that unless we somehow embrace
the totality of the infinite chain, we have no knowledge at all. For
fact A is logically linked by innumerable relations with fact B, and
B with C, and C with D, and so on, interminably. Knowledge, then,
must be the complete, the entire body of knowledge.
To state the same thesis in another form, we are confronted by
the problem of the nature of knowledge. Is knowledge transmuta-
tive or additive ? Additive knowledge is that which may be perfect
knowledge of a part even though incomplete as knowledge of the
whole. It allows for additions and supplementations without at any
point becoming non-knowledge merely because it has suffered such
addition. At any given stage it consists of a certain amount, and,
at a later stage, of that amount plus a further increment. Trans-
mutative knowledge, on the other hand, is the kind which may at
any moment lose its validity as knowledge that is, which may be
transmuted by some higher point of view into non-knowledge. Ac-
cording to this theory, therefore, inasmuch as we, finite human be-
ings, can not know everything, inasmuch as we can not place our-
selves at the viewpoint of the absolute knower, we do not truly
know anything.
On one or the other of these theories as to the nature of knowl-
edge great philosophic systems have taken their stand; on the op-
posing theory they have generally heaped abuse. Rarely, however,
has either camp recognized the fact that we are involved in a problem
of pure logic a fundamental problem as to the nature of relations.
And the evident failure to cope with the logical difficulties at issue
128 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
is not lessened by the fact that the upholders of transmutative
knowledge have often maintained their theories with all the subtle-
ties of the dialectician.
In our endeavor to understand this crucial epistemological prob-
lem, let us meet the completion philosophers with their own method,
with the same formal logic. 2
The transmutative theory of knowledge asserts that nothing is
wholly true excepting the whole truth ; and therefore isolated truth
for example, any logical proposition can be true only in the sense
that it forms a part of the system which is the whole truth. But,
even in this limited sense, isolated truths can be only more or less
true, for when they are deprived of some aspects which make them
a part of the whole truth they are changed from what they were in
the total system. The truth, then, that a certain partial truth is a
part of the whole truth, is itself a partial truth, and therefore can be
only partially true. Hence we can never say with entire truth, This
is part of a truth. Result: Everything which can be said about a
partial truth is itself only a partial truth. And if no partial truth
is entirely true, it is not even entirely true that no partial truth is
entirely true.
Dropping this extreme formalism, we may say in brief that if we
seriously grant the fundamental premise of the completion phi-
losophers, it follows that on the basis of this premise we can no more
declare of any given proposition that it is true, than we can declare
that it is false. For example, the proposition "A is B" is not
entirely true, since it has been isolated from the total system of
truth. On the other hand, it is not entirely false, since it does find
some place in the total system of truth. It contains, therefore, some
aspects which are partially true and some which are partially false.
Which of its aspects are partially true and which are partially
false only the absolute knower knows. For us, finite beings, the dis-
crimination of these aspects is forever an impossible task. Let us
now consider any other proposition, such as "M is N." Concerning
the truth or the falsehood of this proposition we know, according to
the completion philosophies, precisely as much and precisely as little
as we know in the case of the proposition "A is B." That is, we
know that the proposition "M is N" is not entirely true and is not
entirely false, and that it contains aspects which are partially true
and aspects which are partially false. Which are the partially true
aspects and which the partially false ones, again only the absolute
knows. And this is exactly the extent of our knowledge regard-
2 The following single paragraph is a condensed statement of some of
Bertrand Russell's arguments in his article "On the Nature of Truth." (Pro-
ceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1907, N. S., Vol. VII., pp. 28-49.)
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 129
ing the truth or the falsehood of any other proposition, even in-
cluding the contradictory of our first proposition "A is B," namely,
"A is not B." "With reference to the truth or the falsehood of this
proposition we can again only repeat what we have said with refer-
ence to the proposition "A is B." Neither of these is entirely true
or entirely false, and each of them is partially true and partially
false, and this is all that a strict construction of the completion
principle permits us to say. For in this pair of propositions, as in
any other pair, only the absolute can sift out the partially true
aspects from the partially false ones. To us any proposition is
logically on a par with any other, even including its contradictory.
In fact, on strictly completion grounds we can not validly speak of
the contradictory of a proposition. It follows, therefore, that a
sincere and consistent adherent of the completion philosophy may at
pleasure replace in his system any proposition, such as "A is B,"
by any other, as, for example, "K is L," or by their contradictories,
"A is not B," "K is not L," and be logically not a whit the
worse off.
A philosophy, however, based on a fundamental premise which
permits us to replace indiscriminately any proposition by any other,
or by its contradictory, is strictly a philosophy in which any proposi-
tion is logically as good as any other, and therefore no proposition is
logically good for anything. For where everything can be asserted
indifferently, nothing can be asserted differently. And unable to
assign any meaning to truth and falsehood, such a philosophy can
consequently formulate no true propositions. It is, therefore, in-
effable.
Thus the fundamental premise of the completion philosophies, of
the absolutisms of all shades and varieties, is its own reductio ad
absurdum.
Elusion, transformation, completion these are types of con-
temporaneous systems which are neither mutually exclusive nor
severally exhaustive, for the spirit of ineffability in philosophy is
subtly pervasive. In the very heart of these systems lurks the
repudiation of reason. For on the basis of their own initial prin-
ciples they can formulate no true propositions. They can predicate
with validity neither truth nor falsehood. They are ineffable.
HENRY M. SHEFFER.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
130 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Principles of Secondary Education. CHARLES DE GARMO. Vol. II.
Processes of Instruction. New York: The Macmillan Co. 1908.
Pp. 200.
Education has still to fight for recognition as a subject of serious
scientific study, and the fate of a new book by a leader in the field becomes
in consequence a matter of more than common interest to protagonists
of the cause. I may be pardoned, therefore, if in writing of Professor
De Garmo's original and important undertaking I stray somewhat from
the confines of a conventional review. The god of limits will have his
full due, perhaps, if I first endeavor to present in brief the contents of
the recent volume, and venture a humble opinion of its worth.
A word, however, as to its place and scope. It is the second in a
series of three, which are to cover every phase of secondary education
(the high-school period of our public system). The first volume, which
appeared in 1907, dealt with the studies; the present volume deals 1 with
processes of instruction methods of teaching; the third is to deal with
processes of training. The aim and the plan of the series are admirable ;
and every student of education must rejoice that Professor De Garmo has
set himself to this task. Education is progressing very properly accord-
ing to the Spencerian formula continuous differentiation of function in
a constantly growing unity, and a study which serves to define the work
of a part in its organic relation to the whole is heartily to be welcomed.
This the present volume should help to do, by discussing the special na-
ture and functions of the teaching process in the high-school period.
Professor De Garmo says in his preface : " It is to the new method of
Bacon, refined, corrected, and supplemented by the older method first fully
described by Aristotle, that the world owes its present condition and rate
of progress. By whatever path he may prefer, the teacher must go back
to these primal sources of thought and efficiency for his teaching models,
because there are no others. This volume seeks in due measure to accom-
plish for the young teacher what Mill and Jevons and Mach have done
for the man of science; namely, to impress upon him the few but vital
mental processes that alone lead to enduring results."
The book is in two parts : the first discusses the " Scientific Basis for
High-School Methods " ; the second, " Scientific Method in High-School
Instruction." The first part deals in order with the acquisition of facts,
the explanation of facts, and forms of solution for the problem; it is an
admirably lucid account of the ways in which the mind works in attain-
ing knowledge a purely logical discussion, but enlivened by concrete
instances and well-selected historical illustrations.
The second part deals first with the educational status of the high-
school pupil; here in eight pages Professor De Garmo has stated sig-
nificantly and precisely the conditions which control the teacher in
organizing his material. An immature mind; a body of knowledge
already well authenticated, well developed ; why not simply store the mind
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 131
with the knowledge? Because in adult life men and women must know
how to use their knowledge, and because they must have power to acquire
new knowledge. Hence the pupil must be led constantly to apply what
he has been taught; hence teaching must not be telling, but a process
wherein the pupil gets at his own truth under direction. As the mind of
man must work in the discovery of truth hitherto unknown, so the mind
of the child must work in the personal rediscovery of the truths men have
already mastered. No power of thought can otherwise result. But thus
to rediscover the whole body of known truth is impossible in the time
allowed; therefore in each subject the teacher must select the typical,
important, " developing " facts, concepts, and principles, and direct the
activity of the pupil upon these as upon problems to be solved. I know
of no clearer, simpler, or more cogent presentation of the necessities of
the educative process as they affect its subject-matter. One can only re-
gret that just at this point there is no discussion of how the pupil is to
get at the problems; on the basis of his own motives, or by coercion of
the teacher; as an individual merely, or as a member of a group; to
supplement a lack felt in his own experience, or to get ahead in the course
of study? Professor De Garmo may intend to treat these questions in
his third volume, but he ought here, I think, at least to have foreshadowed
his views, for formal method is but an incident in the teacher's task of
organizing the experience of the pupil, and the way in which the pupil
is to get at his problems, deal with them, and test his results is on every
count more important than the organization of the subject-matter itself.
There are but two methods for the discovery of truth, as the preface
intimated, the inductive and the deductive. In each, as the pupil must
use it, there are three stages: the processes of apperception, or the ac-
quisition of the facts with reference to the problem to be defined; the
processes of thought, or the explanation of the facts the solution of the
problem (as a problem of discovery) ; and the processes of application,
drill in the use of knowledge. The Herbartian " formal steps " are here
plainly indicated ; but Professor De Garmo is not narrowly Herbartian in
insisting that method shall always be inductive. He recognizes distinctly
a " deductive approach " in which facts are acquired to test hypotheses
framed in advance upon principles already known.
A separate chapter is wisely devoted to the application-step in method,
the step most frequently and disastrously ignored in high-school instruc-
tion. A passage from this chapter (p. 157) affords a convenient summary
of Professor De Garmo's formulation of scientific method in the high
school : " Among the most familiar and most practised forms of applica-
tion as a stage of method are those almost universally used in teaching
mathematics and languages. Authority, observation, and experiment,
here as elsewhere, furnish the data; inductive or deductive reasoning
leads to their comprehension in the form of definition, cause, classifica-
tion, or of generalization as seen in the theorem, rule, formula, principle,
or law ; while application tests these conclusions on new data, and extends
them to a multitude of new cases, thus greatly enriching the content of
132 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
knowledge, strengthening the grasp of fundamentals, and most important
of all, lifting insight to the plane of efficiency."
The book closes with an interesting chapter on combinations and
variations of the two fundamental methods. The style is clear and
pleasing; when need be, powerful. The method of the book itself is pre-
dominatingly deductive. The stage of application is provided for by
topics for discussion; but hardly any of the distinctions to be learned are
presented in problem form: the book itself, that is, does not completely
provide for that process of instruction which it recommends.
So far the contents of the book; an opinion of its worth, in the light
of its purpose, will be still within the limits of a review. The young
teacher should find it highly profitable, but difficult. It will give him a
logical basis to which he may refer many problems of class-room pro-
cedure; but he will need to apply himself conscientiously to the topics
for discussion if he is to retain the logical distinctions of the book " for
ready reference," or to make them his, as the preface hopes, to such an
extent that he proceeds upon them instinctively. For the book confines
itself strictly to the logical point of view; it deals with universal precon-
ditions for the sequence, form, and arrangement of subject-matter in a
lesson. The concrete situation which the teacher is to face is used lav-
ishly for illustration, but it does not furnish the point of departure for
discussion of the problems in method; and the book omits too often any
discussion of how differences in aim in different schools and in different
subjects will determine methods and the selection of topics. These things
the young teacher ought to know: if he is to teach physics in a general
high school, German in a commercial high school, or English in a classical
high school, he ought to know how the aims of all education, the aims of
his sort and stage of education, the aims in his subject how they will all
affect his choice of topics and the combination of methods which he must
use. He ought to know, also, how his method is to differ from the
method of the elementary school from which his pupils come; but this, if
I remember right, Professor De Garmo mentions, casually, but once. In
short, the book loses in value because it approaches its subject almost
wholly from the side of the concept: it presents clearly, completely, and
attractively the logical basis of the teaching process wherever that process
becomes in any degree scientific; but the living institution with which
the book is supposedly concerned, the American high school (now so much
the storm-center of educational conflict) is not constantly and concretely
present in its pages, and its mission remains, therefore, partly unfulfilled.
This leads me at length to the digression for which I first sought
sanction. I would urge upon education, namely, that same policy which
Professor James has urged upon philosophy the approach to all its
problems from the side of the concrete conflicts of experience. I am not
enamoured of philosophical programs based on pragmatism; indeed, I
hold that the concept must play a nobler role in the discovery of truth
than the percept; but theoretical problems first become vital issues when
they are crystallized in conflicts of practise, and they are best approached
from the side of those conflicts. This is just now particularly true,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 133
moreover, of education; especially of secondary education; and for two
reasons. It is true in the first place because education has to fight a
tendency, at times almost perverse, towards dogmatic assertion that the
subject offers no material for truly scientific study. College instructors,
who deal with high-school problems constantly (in the matter of entrance
examinations), are often the worst offenders here. They cling to the old
half-truths: Teachers are born, not made; and A teacher need only know
his subject experience will solve all his difficulties in method and man-
agement. They see particularly if they are members of teachers' asso-
ciations for advancement of the work in the several subjects of the high-
school curriculum they see the real problems of high-school method in
process of constant discussion. They do not see that these problems
involve, or lead out into, larger problems of educational theory; they do
not see that the concrete conflict and the theoretical issue must be worked
out together, one in the light of the other. And the academic remoteness
of even worthy pedagogical productions does nothing to enlighten them.
In the second place, educational theory ought to keep close to the prac-
tical issue because the practical issue is just now so momentous. If
theory is worth anything as a guide to conduct in school affairs, now is
her chance to prove it. From the kindergarten through the university
there is educational war, with the battle-center in the high school.
Thoughtful people everywhere are giving earnest consideration to the new
plea for vocational training in adolescence; they look to the educational
expert for light. Men who have never read a page of pedagogy, but who
must shape school policies in great cities, are willing to listen to any one
who can really inform them. Educational theory has nothing to lose, not
even in normal classes, by ceasing to be esoteric and by giving up its own
terminology. Like philosophy and religion, it must speak to all cultivated
men in the language of their common world. Pragmatism has made us
realize this much, at any rate.
I regret, therefore, that so valuable a book as Professor De Garmo's
" Processes of Instruction " should have so little bearing on present issues.
In the preface occur these words : " We should not . . . try to distinguish
between cultural and non-cultural instruction. . . . Culture and discipline
are . . . the inevitable concomitants of all good instruction. . . ." This
I hold to be true, and of great consequence ; but I wish most heartily that
Professor De Garmo had pointed the moral for the American high school.
Miss Susan E. Blow has done for the kindergarten, the most highly pro-
fessionalized department of our public-school system, a service yet to be
done for the elementary school, the high school, and the college: she has
shown in her " Educational Issues in the Kindergarten " how differences
in practise are connected with differences in principle, and how principle
and practise stand or fall together. Educational theory will come into
its own when it tries harder to do what economic theory is beginning to
do apply to the actual issues in every part of its field.
HENRY W. HOLMES.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
134 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
University of Iowa Studies in Psychology, No. V. Edited by CARL EMIL
SEASHORE. Monograph Supplements to Psychological Review, Vol.
IX., No. 2, June, 1908. Whole No. 38. Pp. 148. Baltimore: The
Review Publishing Co.
The latest monograph supplement to the Psychological Review con-
tains a set of studies from the psychological laboratory of the University
of Iowa. First in the volume is an investigation of " The Perimetry of
the Localization of Sound," by Daniel Starch; the second article is on
the " Transference of Training in Memory," by George Cutler Fracker ;
the last, on " The Effect of Practise on Normal Illusions," is by many
hands the measurements having been made by Edward A. Carter, Eva
Crane Farnum, and Raymond W. Gies, the whole investigation planned
and written up by the first of those just named, and the introduction and
summary contributed by C. E. Seashore, the editor of the volume as a
whole.
The study on localization of sound is a continuation of an investiga-
tion published in the " University of Iowa Studies in Psychology," 1905.
It takes up in detail certain problems suggested by that investigation.
A sound objectively uniform in intensity, it had been noticed, seemed
nearer and louder in some directions than in others. To measure the
extent of this variation in apparent intensity and apparent distance is
one of the problems of the present investigation. An apparatus was used
that was capable of producing a sound variable in intensity according to
definite units. The chief parts of the apparatus were an electric fork of
100 v.d., driven by a current of three amperes and three volts which were
kept constant throughout the experiments, and a Seashore audiometer,
an instrument devised for the purpose of controlling and measuring the
intensity of sound. " The scale of intensities, which rises from one to
forty, is based on the psychophysical law, so that the ratio of any two
successive increments on the scale is psychologically the same." With
this apparatus the threshold of hearing was determined for each observer
when the sound came from different directions around his head. The
threshold was taken to measure the apparent intensity, and the apparent
distance was regarded as a function of this intensity. The experiments
were made on eight persons, and 700 determinations were made in each
direction.
The experiments show that sensitiveness of hearing is keener to sounds
coming from the side of the head than to those from front or back.
Sounds of objectively equal strength consequently appear louder and
nearer when coming from a point in the aural axis than when located in
any other direction. The ratio of sensitivity of the side to front or back
is the same, irrespective of the absolute threshold approximately 3 : 4.
The experiments also show that there are two types of observers, those
whose threshold is lower for frontal sounds and those whose threshold is
lower for sounds from behind. There was no marked difference in the
results when the observers heard with only one ear. Discrimination
between different intensities in the same direction is of about the same
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 135
fineness whatever the direction may be, but pitch discrimination is
decidedly poorer at the sides than in front or back.
Another series of experiments was undertaken to determine the influ-
ence of quality of sound upon its localization. The sounds of a singing
flame, Galton whistle, tuning-fork, telephone, mere noises, and the human
voice were used. The richer and more complex sounds, such as the human
voice, noises, and telephone sounds, were localized much more accurately
than the comparatively pure tones of the singing flame and of the fork
and resonator. Localization by one ear was considerably poorer than by
two, the region of greatest accuracy being on the side of the hearing ear,
and the poorest on the opposite side. Angular differences of direction are
overestimated in front and underestimated on the sides. Dr. Starch pro-
poses to amend the accepted intensity theory of localization by recognizing
the part played by quality. Monaural localization would be impossible if
it depended upon the binaural ratio of intensity alone, and binaural local-
ization would be much poorer than it is. " The traditional intensity
theory is in the main correct, but quite inadequate. We must add to it
the qualitative elements and the monaural quantitative elements. These
two have coordinate value with the binaural ratio in the auditory percep-
tion of direction."
The second investigation reported in this volume, by Fracker, has to
do with the question to what extent training of the memory with one sort
of facts improves it for facts of another kind. Eight observers submitted
to the training course, which consisted in memorizing the order in which
four tones of different intensities were given. At the beginning of the
course they were tested for their ability to memorize (1) two stanzas of
poetry, (2) the order of four shades of gray, (3) the order of nine tones,
(4) the order of nine shades of gray, (5) the order of four tones, (6) the
order of nine geometrical figures, (7) the order of nine numbers, (8) the
extent of arm movements. At the close of the course they were again
tested. Four other observers took the tests, but not the training. Mr.
Fracker comes to the conclusion that the trained subjects showed greater
improvement in the final tests than did the untrained. He averages the
gains of the trained eight in each test, and the gains of the untrained
four, and compares average with average, showing a difference in favor
of the trained eight for each test. If, however, record be compared with
record, it is possible to match, from the tables submitted, nearly every low
figure by one of the untrained four with an equally low one for the same
test by one of the trained eight. Another finding of the investigation is
that improvement in the tests was in many cases greater than in the
training series. This would seem to indicate a very great degree of trans-
ference, but the significance of this result is somewhat clouded by the fact
that the four who had no training are also shown to have improved (Table
III.). The introspective notes of his subjects give the author good
ground for observing that transference, in their cases, depended upon
" the nature of the imagery employed in practise, rather than upon any
other factor." These introspections confirm Professor James's remark
136 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
that " all improvement of memory consists in the improvement of one's
habitual methods of recording facts."
The experiments of the last study in this volume were made on the
illusion of the length of a cylinder, the T-illusion, the Mueller-Lyer illu-
sion, and the illusion of distance between circles. The subjects were taken
through a course of training in each illusion with a view to determining
whether continued observation and study of the illusion would cause it to
diminish. The investigation showed that so long as the observer has no
knowledge of the existence of the illusion it persists with undiminished
force. There were no exceptions to this rule. Those who have a knowl-
edge of the illusion are less likely to decrease the illusion by practise if
they are capable of maintaining a " perceptual attitude." One who knows
the illusion can learn to make proper correction for it in a judgment.
" Such correction process is at first focal in consciousness, but soon be-
comes so automatic that the closest introspection may not trace the cor-
rection process involved in the form of an allowance for the illusion."
This study contains many interesting observations of details.
A. LIPSKY.
NEW YOEK CITY.
The Problem of Form in Painting and Sculpture. ADOLF HILDEBRAND.
Translated by Max Meyer and Robert Morris Ogden. New York:
G. E. Stechert & Co. 1907. Pp. 138.
This first English edition of Hildebrand's monograph will make more
accessible to students a famous and valuable contribution to esthetics.
The work is translated into clear and agreeable English. (There is, how-
ever, a serious typographical error on page 61 which makes some seven or
eight lines quite unintelligible.) It contains thirty illustrations and a
portrait of the author, and is prefaced by a short biographical sketch of
the author. Although the first German edition appeared in 1893 and the
English translation is now more than a year old, one may, perhaps, be
forgiven for indicating something of the contents.
The artist must make his composition look, not as a group would in
stereoscopic vision, but as it would look if projected at a distance and
hence flattened into a plane. This is the visual projection or Fernbild
of which Hildebrand makes so much. Further : " The value of a picture
does not depend on the success of a deception, as does the popular value
of a panorama, but on the intensity of the unitary spatial suggestiveness
concentrated in it." " The aim the presentation of a general idea of
space by means of a visual perception is the same for painter and
sculptor, and the work of each is directed by the same subjective require-
ments, however different may be their means of representation." Objects,
he says, must be arranged in unified planes or layers of space as in relief-
work. The third dimension is represented by a series of these layers one
behind the other.
Discussing "Form as Interpretation of Life," he says that a great
many expressive movements or gestures are not available for art because
they do not lend themselves to clear visual impressions. " The artistic
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 137
unity of a group never depends on a relationship of parts resting solely
on the functional or dramatic motive of the piece. What holds it together
is rather its assertion of an ideal spatial unity in contrast with the sur-
rounding space."
The book ends with a chapter on " Sculpture in Stone " which dis-
cusses the difference in the process of artistic imagination which arises
from cutting a statue out of stone instead of modelling it in clay. It is
an interesting addition to the psychology of imagination.
KATE GORDON.
WlNNEBAGO, WlS.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. January, 1909. Change and
the Changeless (pp. 1-22) : H. A. OVERSTREET. - Reality must be conceived
as both changeless and changing. Change as hitherto condemned is of
the type that disintegrates or augments. Creative work (complete self-
expression) is a type of change that gives worth to personality and can
be predicated of a perfect being. The Interpretation of the Apology
(pp. 23-37) : THEODORE DE LAGUNA. - Plato's purpose was not merely to
describe a dramatic episode. The "Apology" is a defense of the philo-
sophical life. It was written at a period of greater maturity than has
generally been supposed. Some Notes on the Evolution of Religion (pp.
3847) : IRVING KING. - The evolution of religion has been supposed to
follow a determinate course through certain stages in a particular order.
There is no reason to take this program seriously. The form of a people's
religion depends on physical conditions and community interests. The
Todas have lost their old religion and are evolving a new one appropriate
to their present occupations. The Third International Congress of Philos-
ophy (pp. 48-58) : A. C. ARMSTRONG. - Philosophy seemed to be no longer
on the defensive. It was generally felt that philosophy has a mission in
connection with the general culture of the age. Especially noteworthy
was the tendency to emphasize the selective, volitional, personal factors in
thought and existence. There was great interest in pragmatism. The
paper of Professor Schiller aroused a heated discussion. Reviews of
Books: James Adam, The Religious Teachers of Greece: PAUL SHOREY
H. Driesch, The Science and Philosophy of the Organism: E. G. SPAULD-
INQ. O. Ewald, Kants kritischer Idealismus als Grundlage von Erkennt-
nistheorie und Ethik: B. H. BODE. E. B. Bax, The Roots of Reality:
A. 0. LOVEJOY. Notices of New Books. Summaries of Articles. Notes.
Bordeau, J. Pragmatisme et modemisme. Paris: Felix Alcan. 1909.
Pp. vii + 236. 2.50 fr.
Crozier, John Beattie. My Inner Life. 2 vols. Longmans, Green & Co.
1908. Pp. xiv + 288 ; ix -f 288-562.
138 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
De Backer, P. Stanislaus. Institutiones Metaphysicae Specialis; tomus
quartus: Theologia Naturalis. Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne & Cie.
1908. Pp. 306.
Hermont, P., et Van de Vaele, A. Les Principale theories de la logique
contemporaine. Paris: Felix Alcan. 1909. Pp. 303. 5 fr.
Hubert, H., et Mauss, M. Melanges d"histoire des religions. Paris :
Felix Alcan. 1909. Pp. xlii + 236. 5 fr.
Leblond, M. A. L'Ideal du xix e siecle. Paris : Felix Alcan. 1909. Pp.
x + 328. 5 fr.
Pratt, James Bissett. What is Pragmatism? New York : The Macmillan
Co. 1909. Pp. xii + 256. $1.25 net.
Tisserand, Pierre. L'anthropologie de Maine de Biran. Paris: Felix
Alcan. 1909. Pp. xi-f 145. 10 fr.
NOTES AND NEWS
The Nation for February 18 prints the following letter concerning
manuscripts and pamphlets bearing on the life and philosophy of Leib-
nitz :
To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION:
SIR : Several years ago the International Association of Academies
commissioned the Academies of Paris and Berlin to prepare a complete
edition of the works of that " mathematician, philosopher and uni-
versal genius, Leibnitz." At that time the academies issued an appeal
to the possessors or administrators of the public and private archives,
libraries and collections of Europe, with the request that they
would search out and calendar and describe all the material in
their hands which might prove to be of value for the projected
edition. It either did not then occur to the scholars concerned that there
might well be hidden in the public and private collections of the United
States a very considerable amount of such material; or else they as-
sumed that there was none. During a long experience as secretary of the
American Oriental Society, I had abundant opportunity to learn that the
number of scattered Oriental manuscripts in the United States was so
large as to be well worth cataloguing, and this wholly apart from the very
important collection of Arabic manuscripts at Yale, and of Sanskrit and
Prakrit manuscripts at Harvard. Considering all this, and also the
American habit of travel, and the readiness and ability of Americans
abroad to buy things of historic interest, it is much more than probable
that well-directed inquiries among American collectors and librarians
would not be unfruitful, if duly made on behalf of the Leibnitz project.
Several days ago there came to me a letter from the secretary of the
Royal Prussian Academy, Professor Hermann Diels, requesting that in-
quiries of the kind just indicated might be set afoot by me. In his name,
accordingly, and on behalf of the academies concerned, I beg that you will
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 139
give due publicity to this letter, which recites their wishes. The ap-
pended list specifies the things that will be useful. Information con-
cerning their existence and whereabouts is what is in the first instance
asked for, and such information may be sent to me, or, if the sender pre-
fers, to the secretary of the Academy, Professor Diels, No. 120 Pots-
damerstrasse, Berlin, W. 35. CHARLES R. LANMAN.
HABVABD UNIVEBSITY, February 5.
LIST OF PAPERS AND PRINTS RELATING TO LEIBNITZ
(1) Manuscript works (essays, memoranda of any kind) which are
known or supposed to be from the hand of Leibnitz. Manuscript letters
known or supposed to be from or to Leibnitz. Manuscript works or let-
ters by or to or from persons who stood in personal relations with Leib-
nitz. (2) Collections of manuscripts of the period 1664-1716, not yet
properly examined or calendared, among which there might well be pieces
falling under head 1. (3) Printed books in which are found manuscript
notes or dedications or the like from the hand of Leibnitz. (4) Other
printed matter of the period 16641716, whether (a) works of which
Leibnitz is the known or supposed author, or (&) letters of which Leibnitz
is the known or supposed sender or receiver (such as 1 those " De la toler-
ance des religions" or the like). (5) Broadsides or pamphlets of the
period 1664-1716.
THE following summary of the meeting of the Aristotelian Society on
February 1 is from the Atherweum for February 13: " The meeting took
the form of a ' Symposium,' to which Dr. Bernard Bosanquet, Mrs. Sophie
Bryant and Mr. G. R. T. Ross contributed papers. The subject discussed
was ' The Place of Experts in Democracy.' Dr. Bosanquet dealt with
Plato's criticism of democracy. The distinction between the specialist
expert and the expert in statesmanship was touched upon. Next the
discrepancy between Plato's caricature of democracy and modern demo-
cratic constitutions was pointed out. There is no reason against finding
the analogue of what we call democracy in the spirit of Plato's perfect
state. That is characterized by three important principles, viz. (1) every
creature in the commonwealth is to have a right and duty that satisfies
its nature; (2) the career open to the talents; (3) the equal utilization of
the abilities of the two sexes in public functions. Democracy, like the
Platonic state, does not forbid a highly autocratic administration by the
right person, but this is not a specialist ; at least he is one whose speciality
is to be a ' consummate artificer of freedom.' Thus the conflict between
the doctrinairism of the mere specialist and the ignorance of the layman
is to be reconciled. Mrs. Bryant divided the experts connected with gov-
ernment into three classes : (1) the rulers, (2) specialist advisers, (3) execu-
tive officials. The conflict between different classes of specialists was dealt
with. Mrs. Bryant preferred to assimilate modern democracy to the type
of the ' mixed State ' in Plato's ' Laws ' ; yet in Plato we miss sufficient
guidance as to the means by which his experts are, in the first instance,
selected for special education. In the modern state selection and train-
140 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ing are, for the most part, phases of a single process. Competition for
distinction in local government paves the way for fitness to enter parlia-
mentary life, and within this sphere selection and education go hand in
hand. Mr. Ross criticized the assumption that the selective experience
which rulers undergo must necessarily produce the hest type of experts
in governing. It is often held that democracy leads to the predominance
of the mediocre. There are reasons, however, for rejecting this doubt, as
no real democracy can survive which does not secure the service of men
of exceptional talent. Democracy also requires the high development of
the political intelligence of the governed. The theory that democracy
means mediocrity is supported by an illusion to which artists are specially
susceptible. The anti-democratic thought of Nietzsche is a case in point."
PROFESSOR W. RIDGEWAY delivered his anniversary address as presi-
dent of the Anthropological Institute on January 26, on the subject " The
Relation of Anthropology to Classical Studies." The following sum-
mary is from the Athenaeum: "Professor Ridgeway pointed out the re-
sults that had followed from the use of the anthropological method in the
study of the classics. Subjects which had long been obscure, or which
had given rise to wild speculations, took upon themselves in the light of
anthropology a clear meaning. For example, Aristotle's account of the
origins of Greek Society an account which had long perplexed scholars
can be explained by comparing it with institutions still surviving
amongst primitive peoples; but it is only of recent years that any such
comparison has been made, or such an explanation given. It is, however,
not only in the domain of sociology or religion that such a comparative
method is of service. The art of the Greeks, for example, can be shown
to have been at one time in a stage comparable to that of the modern
savage, from which it has directly developed. Again, a knowledge of
anthropology will be of great service to an intelligent understanding of
classical literature. The attacks which have been made on classical
studies, and especially on the teaching of Greek, are in great measure due
to the classical scholars themselves, who by their pedantry and their in-
difference to scientific method have caused the reaction which has set in
against these studies. But if ancient literature and history are studied
in the light of anthropology, much that was obscure will be explained,
much that was imagined to be erroneous will be found to be true. To
help to make the classics live is the part of anthropology."
M. HENRI POINCAIRE became a member of the French Academy on Jan-
uary 28, succeeding Sully Prudhomme. The address of welcome, a eulogy
on the new member, was pronounced by M. Frederic Masson. M. Poin-
care replied at equal length.
IT is reported that Eduard Zeller during the last years of his life wrote
out his reminiscences, intended for his intimate friends only, and which
are now to be printed, but not published.
IT is reported that Professor Hugo Miinsterberg will publish this
spring a work entitled " Psychology and Crime."
VOL. VI. No. 6. MARCH 18, 19C9.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE IDEA OF A PHILOSOPHICAL PLATFORM
AT the Baltimore meeting of the American Philosophical Asso-
ciation two papers 1 were presented which emphasized the
advantages that philosophy would derive from the formulation by
its representatives of a body of doctrines and principles that might
be regarded as at least provisionally established. Such a platform,
it was argued, would in several ways promote the interests of philos-
ophy. In the first place, it would remove from philosophy the
standing reproach that it has arrived at no certain conclusions, and
is therefore unworthy to be called a science. And, secondly, it would
enable philosophy to take its place and perform its proper function
in the development of scientific thought and social practise. Philos-
ophy must prove its utility by furnishing principles of guidance and
criticism in both the social and the natural sciences. If the demands
from these sources are to be met, it must be possible to say in philos-
ophy, somewhat as we do in the case of the other sciences, that there
is a body of truths and principles which are accepted, by the com-
petent representatives of the subject, as established. Workers in
other departments, and intelligent outsiders in general, ought to be
able to appeal to the results of philosophical investigation as they
appeal to the conclusions of physics or of biology. Moreover, a
formulation of results and principles would furnish to philosophers
themselves a starting-point for further investigations, and thus pro-
mote unity and continuity of effort.
As only the abstracts of these papers are before me as I write, I
do not wish to attempt any detailed criticism of them. It is to be
noted, however, that both papers maintained that some formulation
of established results is not only desirable, but also possible, and both
proceeded to furnish suggestions as to how this end might be attained.
These suggestions can not be discussed at present, but the general
issue raised by the papers seems important and worthy of consid-
eration.
It is, of course, a notorious fact that philosophers do not agree;
1 " Concerning a Philosophical Platform," by Karl Schmidt, and " The
Doctrine of Histurgy," by Christine Ladd Franklin.
141
142 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
and this is commonly regarded as a proof that no objective certainty
is possible regarding the problems with which they occupy them-
selves. The lack of any established body of results which can be
summed up in a series of definite propositions that the outsider can
directly appropriate and apply in some field of practise, is doubtless
another source of the wide-spread conviction that philosophy neither
bakes bread nor can any longer give us "God, freedom, and immor-
tality." As students 1 and teachers of philosophy we do not, of
course, admit the truth of these charges. They have been adequately
refuted, at least in their popular form, by having been shown to rest
on a fundamental misconception of the nature and function of
philosophy, which is not one of the special sciences, dealing with a
particular field of the phenomenal world, but is an attempt to under-
stand and evaluate the standpoint and results of all the sciences and
the meaning of experience as a whole. Philosophical results can not
then be set down in the form of a statement of" particular facts, and
still less can they be separated from the problems and processes of
which they are the outcome. It is undoubtedly true that in every
science which has attained any considerable degree of organization
the result derives its significance from the context in which it arises,
and, taken by itself, is largely unmeaning; but in philosophy,
for obvious reasons, it is still less possible to regard results as "fruit"
which is external to and separable from the tree which bore it.
Moreover, as has often been pointed out, the special sciences
attain to demonstrative certainty just in proportion to the abstract-
ness of their procedure. The well-established body of facts which
they seem to exhibit rests in every case upon assumptions and hy-
potheses. These, as scientific men know well, are often \ague and
sometimes contradictory. And when these ultimate principles come
up for discussion in science there is found in this field scarcely less
difference of opinion than obtains among the partisans of philosoph-
ical systems. These considerations and others of like nature are
quite familiar to philosophical readers, and do not need to be further
urged in this place. It may seem, however, that they were not suffi-
ciently kept in mind by the authors of the papers to which I have
referred above. Both writers, I venture to think, have had before
them the ideal of established conclusions in philosophy which should
be analogous to the accepted results of the special sciences. From
the very nature of philosophy, it ought to be evident that such a
platform is neither desirable nor possible of attainment.
Nevertheless, though we reject the idea of an officially established
creed in philosophy, we can not deny that some agreement, especially
regarding the nature of the problems that can profitably and signifi-
cantly be raised and the kind of answers which they demand, is an
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 143
essential condition of the existence of the subject as a rational branch
of human inquiry. For without such agreement, more or less ex-
plicitly acknowledged by philosophers, no fruitful cooperation or
discussion would be possible. Anarchy would have come again, and
each man would claim to be the measure of all things. A platform,
then, does, in some sense, exist, and always has existed, in philosophy.
In spite of the popular impression, philosophy is not a mere warring
camp without settled principles or permanent gains. Unity of view
is not lacking in philosophical discussions, but has afforded the basis
which has made criticism possible. In philosophy, one's foes are
frequently of one's own household as is illustrated, for example,
by Aristotle's constant polemic against Plato, or Hegel's reiterated
criticisms of Kant and of Fichte. Criticism is the atmosphere in
which philosophy draws its breadth ; but, in order that this criticism
shall be effective and significant, there must be a common problem
and a large measure of agreement regarding the conceptions that are
applicable in seeking to solve it. Without this, philosophical dis-
cussion tends to degenerate into mere logomachy, a verbal conflict
from which each party emerges without honor or profit.
A philosophical platform, therefore, as we have said, exists neces-
sarily, since philosophy exists as a rational and objective mode of in-
quiry. But it is necessary to go on to ask, In what does this platform
consist and how has it been constituted? There have been no ecu-
menical councils to settle philosophical creeds, or any explicit formu-
lations of comon doctrines on the part of philosophers. Moreover,
when we read the discussions of our own time or of any particular
generation, they seem to present nothing but the differences of indi-
viduals and of parties, and to afford no possible basis of agreement.
This appearance is, however, deceptive. Unity is being achieved in
and through the process of emphasizing differences. Out of the eater
there comes forth meat. This unity often comes to light in a form and
to a degree that can be appreciated as the consequence of the work of
a few years, or a single generation. But it is only when we look to the
history of philosophy as a whole that we become conscious of the
fundamental basis of agreement, the real process that renders philos-
ophy objective and real. For the history of philosophy is not a mere
collection of individual opinions, but a process of development. The
notion of development, however, is conceivable only when it is seen
to involve the continuity of a universal principle which is present in
all stages of the history of philosophical thought, and of which these
stages must be regarded as the progressive determination. Without
such a conception, I do not see how it is possible to speak at all of
the development of philosophy. And if it is impossible to discover
any genuine development in the history of philosophy, if the term
144 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
"development" is only a figure of speech, then the efforts of any
individual to give an objective interpretation of his experience must
forever remain fruitless. So long as the individual believes that
reason and philosophical truth are merely in him, and are not mani-
fest in the world and in the history of thought, his deliverances are
not likely to be of great value. By his own unaided efforts no man
can reach philosophical truth, any more than he can become rational
or moral by isolating himself from the beliefs and practises of society.
To become a philosopher, he must assimilate and reproduce in his own
thinking the development of philosophical problems and answers as
these are shown in the course of history. In this way alone will he
attain objectivity of view and find a platform on which he can unite
with other philosophers.
It may be objected, however, that experience has abundantly
shown that the history of philosophy can furnish no objective
standard of philosophical truth. Of this history it may be well said,
Hie liber est in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisque
Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua,
since there is opportunity for the widest divergence of opinion in the
interpretation and evaluation of the various philosophical systems.
One school, for example, maintains that the philosophy of Kant and
the post-Kantian idealists represents the culmination of modern phi-
losophy, while others tell us that the true line of development runs
around, not through, Kant. Each one, it may be said, will find in the
history of philosophy his own favorite doctrines, or illustrations of
the errors which he is most anxious to combat and expose, and will
thus in the end use his own conceptions as the standard of evaluation.
Hence the study of the history of philosophy can never make a
philosopher : one must reach his conclusions by his own independent
processes of thought, or with the aid of contemporaries who are
occupied with the "vital" problems of the present time.
Now it is unquestionably true that the mere acquaintance with the
facts and external features of the different historical systems is of
no great advantage, and in itself does not make a philosopher. But
to comprehend the development of philosophical thought is to gain
an understanding of the significance of philosophical problems and
the true function and relations of the conceptions that appear in the
course of its history. This involves an active process of philos-
ophizing on one's own part: it requires us to interpret, reconstruct,
and evaluate the historical results through our own thinking. The
process of interpretation and evaluation does not signify, however,
that we have the right arbitrarily to construe these systems in an
external way in accordance with any preconceived notions of our
own. There is a constant process which is at once a giving and a
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 145
receiving. We neither passively assimilate nor arbitrarily construe,
but by following and apprehending the inner movement of the his-
tory of philosophy we are qualified to enter into it, and become a
part of it. If there is any truth in the assertion that the history of
philosophy is a genuine development, then to comprehend this is an
indispensable part of philosophy itself. If, on the other hand, his-
tory presents no real development, it would seem that the opponents
of philosophy are right in their belief that the history of philosoph-
ical opinions has demonstrated the impossibility of philosophy as a
subject of rational human investigation. For what hope is there in
individual effort if the thought of the race has proved totally incom-
petent to its task? And what possibility is there of cooperation, if
the past has given us no platform on which to stand ?
There is, of course, nothing new to philosophical readers in the
views which I have here attempted to express. But they seem to be
of interest in relation to the question of a philosophical platform,
which was brought forward at Baltimore. They also seem to me
important and worthy of consideration in view of the evident lessen-
ing of interest in historical studies among American philosophers
at the present time. If it is true that some agreement as to the
aims and method of philosophy is essential both to the progress of
philosophy itself and to the influence and position of the subject
among the other sciences, and if, further, this agreement can be
attained only by arriving at an understanding of the meaning of
philosophy as it is exhibited in its historical development, can we
afford to neglect historical studies or to regard them as of secondary
importance ? For the continuity of our thought with the past is at
the same time our bond of union and basis of objectivity, and, as
such, it, therefore, is the only thing that insures the reality of phi-
losophy at the present time or that furnishes a guarantee for its
future. J. E. CREIGHTON.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY.
THE TIME PARADOX IN PERCEPTION
THAT the object of perception is temporally present, that its
temporal status is strictly now, seems obviously given in the
fact of perception itself. The neighboring house which I see
through my window apparently presents itself to me at the very
instant of vision. Perceptive experience seems to require by its
very nature that subject and object (whatever facts are indicated by
these terms) shall be precisely simultaneous. If, however, we regard
the matter after the fashion of. naive realism, and hold that a mental
146 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
process called perception knows a real object called a house, and
that both perceptive process and house are included in the real time
order of nature, we soon find a serious difficulty in our view. Pro-
fessor Strong puts it thus: "The time needed for light rays to pass
from the object to the eye and call forth the organic process to which
perception corresponds has this result, that we perceive a slightly
earlier state of the object than that which coexists with the percep-
tion. " An extreme illustration is found in star vision, for "the
starlight I see left the star years and years ago." 1 This tardiness
of the perceptive state belongs universally to all perception of phys-
ical nature; the few thousandths of a second occupied by a nerve
process in tactual perception are logically quite as significant as the
thousands of years of light-transit in the case of a remote star. In
any instance, whereas the object seems temporally present, reflection
tells us that it is really past. The logical difficulty, in Professor
McGilvary's words, is this: "The star that I see, therefore, must
exist in the same state at two different times many years apart, if
the star I see is the same as the real star in the order of nature." 2
This suggestion of inconsistency may appropriately be called the
temporal paradox in perception. 8
The importance of this fact for epistemology is considerable. If
the inconsistency is genuine, it constitutes a final objection to an
essential thesis of naive realism, namely, that consciousness directly
knows the real physical world as it is. And this, indeed, is pre-
cisely the use which Professor Strong makes of it. He says: "But
the demonstrative proof that the object is other than the sensible
appearance, is what may be called the lateness of perception. The
sensible appearance is necessarily synchronous with the perceptive
state, whereas the object (i. e., that phase of it which is perceived)
belongs to an earlier moment. Thus a star which we see in the sky
may have ceased to exist ages and ages ago : a sufficient proof, surely,
that what we now see (I mean the visual phenomenon not that
which the visual phenomenon reveals) is not the object itself."
This conclusion applies, of course, to every bit of the physical world.
It virtually tells us that we directly and immediately perceive only
phenomena, that the real facts of the natural order are never imme-
diately revealed in perception. Such information is so foreign to
our naive beliefs that we need a close examination of its premises.
The nub of the difficulty is contained in the assertion: "The
a This JOURNAL, Vol. I., p. 521.
2 This JOURNAL, Vol. IV., p. 596.
3 Professor McGilvary analyzes the problem and explains that, with proper
qualification of statement, no genuine contradiction remains, but his discussion
does not seem to convince Professor Strong, who restates the point in the James
Festschrift, as quoted below.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 147
sensible appearance is necessarily synchronous with the perceptive
state, whereas the object . . . belongs to an earlier moment." The
obvious ambiguity of the term ' ' sensible appearance ' ' here is trouble-
some. It does not mean identically ' ' the perceptive state, ' ' for that
would be simple tautology; nor does it mean "the real object," for
Professor Strong explicitly distinguishes between the two. Does it
mean the cognitive relation, separated abstractly from the (likewise
abstracted) perceptive state? Apparently not, for it is referred to
as "what we now see." It seems to indicate an apparent object not
identical with the real object, or with the perceptive state, or with
the relation between the two; and to say that this apparent object,
whatever it may be, is of necessity strictly present in a temporal
sense that it is here right now. And it is the discrepancy between
this implied presentness of the apparent object and the real pastness
of the real object that constitutes the difficulty which, as Professor
Strong sees it, prevents us from identifying the real object with the
apparent object.
Now one might object, on empirical grounds, to the interposition
into the perceptive process of such an apparent object which is not
externally real, nor purely subjective, nor yet, strictly speaking,
relational. But since the alleged discrepancy is between two time
characters, present and past, let us go directly to the heart of the
matter by asking, Does perception imply the temporally present
existence of its apparent object? Introspect perception and see
whether it involves objectively the feature of strict temporal present-
ness; or, indeed, whether it locates its object temporally at all.
Some careful discrimination is needful here. What the writer seems
to find in perception is a presence rather than a presentness; the
object is pragmatically present-to-me, but is not perceived as occupy-
ing the strictly present moment in the time order of nature. This
pragmatic presence has all the usefulness of temporal presentness
(except in extraordinary cases), but the two are not obviously
identical. The testimony of introspection is at least ambiguous,
and there is ground for believing that we pass to the temporal judg-
ment by an inferential process which is not logically implicit in
the perception itself.
Perhaps, however, this empirical suggestion is misdirected, for
what Professor Strong says is that the sensible appearance is ' ' neces-
sarily" synchronous with the perceptive state. Against this one
may justly press a persistent Why? Unless we identify the terms
"sensible appearance" and "perceptive state" in a tautology which
is certainly not Professor Strong's meaning, it seems at least possible
that we perceive the object as it was. Why, pray, would perception
be any the less perception if we acknowledged that it is a relation
148 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
to the past ? Only because of the very assumption which is here in
question, namely, that the presence of the object is equivalent to its
temporal presentness. To many, doubtless, it will seem that if the
object is really past, all we now perceive is our mental image or
phenomenon. But this, again, is an uncritical supposition rather
than an observed fact or a logical necessity. From any point of
view the "sensible appearance," or object-as-perceived, if it is not
identical with the psychical state, may be really past. Provided the
regular physical and physiological processes take place, e. g., atmos-
pheric waves, stimulation of end-organs, etc., we genuinely perceive
the real object even though the past has swallowed it.
Upon this view the question whether the object now exists at the
very instant of perception can be settled only pragmatically. In the
fraction of a second occupied by a nerve current as well as in years
of light-transit the object may have ceased to be. But this account
of perception in no way changes the pragmatic presence of the per-
ceived object. Only in cases where more precise temporal definition
is needed would we correct the perception by reference to a mathe-
matically exact "now." To some extent we are learning to do this
with sound. 4 An interesting illustration, also, is furnished by
observation of stars through a meridian telescope. The great diffi-
culty of telling just when the star crosses the thread shows how
uncertain is the simultaneity of sensible appearance and perceptive
state, unless we identify the two a priori. In general, facts of change
and motion are genuinely present-to-us in perception without being
necessarily synchronous with the latter regarded abstractly as a
mental state. Accordingly, if we understand the conditions of the
problem sufficiently to escape being deceived by the "presence" of
* Professor Strong points to this fact as accepted confirmation of the dis-
tinction between sensible appearance and real object. He says : " We are
habituated to the notion that a sound, for instance that of a distant whistle, is
heard at a later moment than that at which its objective cause occurs indeed,
we see the escape of steam several instants before we hear the sound : we should
apply the same analogy to vision. In both cases the perceptive experience can
not be the object itself, but at most the object as perceived; it can not be the
object sensu stricto, but only the content." ("Essays Philosophical and Psy-
chological, in Honor of William James," p. 174.) Against this I would say:
( 1 ) as above, that the auditory experience does not as such locate the objective
sound-as-perceived in the present, or temporally at all. Any temporal feature
is extraneous to the perception as occurring. In the latter we simply hear.
(2) It is not the mental "content" that we hear; the content is itself the
hearing. Any psychological statement which divides consciousness into content
and awareness, mutually exclusive, seems to me fallacious ab initio. " Content "
and "auditory awareness" are two names for the same fact; the former refers
to descriptive structure, the latter to function. (3) If we tenaciously hold to
the point that it is the hearing, not an objective-content-heard, which is now,
the time discrepancy vanishes.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 149
all perceived objects, we see ground for a reasonable debate whether
the alleged contradiction between present and past, as affecting the
naively realistic "object," is genuine. The crux of the matter is
the question as to the temporal location of the "sensible appearance"
or ' ' object-as-perceived. ' ' Since large philosophical differences turn
upon this point, it deserves painstaking analysis and exact statement.
BERNARD C. EWER.
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY.
DISCUSSION
HUMANISM AND FREEDOM
TN Dr. Schiller's "Studies in Humanism" is an interesting dis-
-*- cussion of "Freedom," in which the author proposes a recon-
ciliation of determinism and indeterminism. In the present paper,
I wish to consider the nature and value of this reconciliation.
The problem arises, Dr. Schiller tells us, from the conflict between
two great postulates the scientific postulate of determinism and the
ethical postulate of freedom. "The first demands that all events
shall be conceived as fully determined by their antecedents, in order
that they may be certainly calculable once these are known; the
second demands that our actions shall be so conceived that the ful-
fillment of duty is possible in spite of all temptations, in order that
man shall be responsible and an agent in the full sense of the term." 1
Now freedom, in the sense in which it is required by the ethical pos-
tulate, involves real alternatives. In order that it shall be possible,
the universe must be really evolving, and the course of its evolution
must be, in some degree, indeterminate. There must be moments, in
the experience of every one of us, when either one of two opposed
courses of action is really and completely possible.
To reconcile this conception of real alternatives with the postulate
of determinism is Dr. Schiller's problem. Now all that determinism,
as methodological postulate, requires of reality is a sufficient degree
of calculability to make it worth while for us to continue to calculate
the course of events. A conception of freedom which "allowed us
to calculate the 'free' event" would, then, "be scientifically quite
permissible. ' ' On the other hand, the moralist, with his demand for
freedom, ' ' has no direct objection to the calculableness of moral acts.
. . . He would have as much reason as the determinist to deplore the
irruption into moral conduct of acts of freedom, if they had to be
conceived as destructive of the continuity of moral character: he
1 " Studies in Humanism," 1907, p. 394.
150 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
would agree that if such acts occurred, they could only be regarded
as the irresponsible freaks of insanity." 2 With these concessions
secured from the two parties to the controversy, Dr. Schiller goes on
to consider "our empirical consciousness" of freedom. On inter-
rogating consciousness, we find that "free" choices are "compara-
tively rare events," that most of our decisions are "determined by
habits and circumstances. ' ' We find, further, that even our ' ' free ' '
choices are not unlimited in their nature ; we must always choose
between certain more or less clearly defined alternatives. And
finally, we see that, in order that there may be real choice, both alter-
natives must appeal to us, and hence must be connected with our char-
acters. From this it follows that freedom represents a state inter-
mediate between complete determination for good and complete
determination for evil. It consists in the " indeterminateness of a
character which is not yet fixed in its habits for good or evil, but still
sensitive to the appeals of both. ' ' 3
We are now ready for the theory that is to reconcile our two pos-
tulates. Since, in all real choice, each of the alternatives is connected
with the character, it follows that, whichever one "is chosen, it will
appear to be rationally connected with the antecedent circum-
stances." Hence it will always be possible, after the choice, to say
that it resulted from the character and circumstances. What has
happened will, then, always be intelligible; the error of the deter-
minist is that he supposes that "because it was intelligible, no other
course would have been. ' ' *
Here we have a conception of freedom which admits of the calcu-
lation of the "free" act, and which therefore meets the demands of
science. Assuming the indetermination in a given case " to be real, ' '
we can ' ' calculate the alternative courses to which it can be supposed
to lead." 5 And while, from the nature of the case, we can not be
sure that this possibility, rather than its alternative, will actually be
realized, this uncertainty is precisely what we find in experience.
In short, our theory provides for "far greater success in calculation
than the deficiencies of our knowledge now actually concede to us. " 6
This is Dr. Schiller's proposed reconciliation. There are, it seems
to me, three serious objections to it. The first is that, in spite of
professions to the contrary, it really denies the continuity of moral
character. Although, as we saw above, Dr. Schiller seems to believe
that every deed, in order to be a moral action, must express the char-
acter of the agent, his proposed reconciliation really makes this con-
8 Op. cit., p. 399.
* Hid., pp. 401 ff.
'Ibid., p. 404.
'Ibid., p. 407.
'Ibid., p. 405.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 151
nection between the "free" act and character impossible. We are
all agreed, I suppose, in saying that if there is to be choice, each al-
ternative must appeal to me, and must, therefore, be more or less in
harmony with my nature. But the question at once suggests itself,
If both alternatives appeal to me, how is it that eventually I choose
one rather than the other? The determinist would, of course, reply
that in the actual moment of choice my nature is more in har-
mony with one alternative than with the other, and thus that the two
do not, in this moment, appeal to me equally. 7 And for him who
accepts this explanation, it would follow that in the moment of choice,
the circumstances being what they were and my ' ' nature then ' ' being
what it was, no other course could have been selected than the one
which was actually chosen. Dr. Schiller maintains, however, that
the opposite course could really have been adopted, and thus commits
himself to the view that there are, in the moment of choice, two real
alternatives. But this means, if it means anything, that there is no
reason no reason, even in my own nature for my having chosen
this alternative rather than the other. And to say that there is no
reason for the choice, even in my own nature, is to say that my act
is not the expression of my self, is to deny the continuity of character.
This point is so obvious, and has been urged so many times before,
that it seems scarcely necessary to dwell long upon it. The con-
tinuity of character is preserved only if my deeds are the expression
of that character, if they are what they are because it is what it is.
Now it is quite true that my nature is, on the one hand, complex
rather than simple, and, on the other hand, fluid or changing rather
than rigid or static. Hence, it will follow that a certain act would
express a certain aspect of my nature, and another quite different
act, another aspect ; or, again, that one act would express my "nature
at a given time, ' ' and another act, my ' ' nature at some other time. ' '
But while we freely admit that, for the most part, our characters are
not fixed, but are only becoming more nearly fixed, it remains true
that a deed, in order to be mine, must be an expression of my nature.
Now, at the moment of choice, my nature is something definite.
Whether my attitude at the time be one which is frequent with me
or not, is aside from the question. It is at least real ; and whatever
is real, as Aristotle showed us long ago, has a definite nature. My
self, at the moment of choice, then, is a particular self. And this
particular self can not find its expression in either one of two opposed
actions, which we call a and 6, but only in one let us say, a.
If you declare, after the choice of a, that 6, also, would have ex-
T This, which is the obvious deterministic answer, is alsx> suggested by Mr.
Barker, in his review of Dr. Schiller's book (Philosophical Review, Vol. XVII.,
p. 331).
152 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
pressed my self, this can mean only that 6 would have expressed some
other self of mine, but not the self of that moment. But if you assert
that &, although not expressing the self of that moment, was, none
the less, really possible, you have simply denied the continuity of act
with character. It is true that Dr. Schiller's theory does not reduce
our life to a moral chaos, because most of our acts are still held to
spring from character and circumstances. But in these "free" acts
we have the introduction of an element which tends to produce moral
chaos and would produce it but for the infrequency with which it
appears. We find ourselves, then, in a dilemma. In order to satisfy
the demand of our ethical nature as Dr. Schiller interprets this
demand we are obliged to assume, in the case of certain actions, the
existence of real alternatives ; but this assumption carries with it the
denial of the continuity of act with character, a denial which, as
Dr. Schiller himself seems to recognize, is fatal to the belief in the
morality of the action. The most natural reflection which the
dilemma suggests is that we may be wrong in thinking that our moral
nature requires us to believe in the existence of real alternatives.
My second objection to the "reconciliation" is concerned with a
quite different point. An essential part of the theory is the suggestion
that, after the choice, either one of the two really possible courses of
action would seem to us to be rationally connected with the character.
"Ex post facto/' we are told, "it will always be possible to argue"
that ' ' the actual course of events ... is intelligible because it sprang
from character and circumstances." But we must remember that
"the alternative, had it been adopted, would have seemed equally
intelligible, just because it was such as to be really entertained by
the agent under the circumstances. ' ' 8 In speaking thus, it seems to
me, Dr. Schiller overlooks the vital point of the matter. He assumes
that the choices of men always, or almost always, seem to us in them-
selves intelligible, seem to have proceeded naturally from the char-
acters. But the truth is that, in many cases, the action does not
seem rationally connected with character and that, in spite of this
fact, all of us insist upon believing it to be thus connected. Is not
Dr. Schiller putting the cart before the horse? He speaks as if it
were the seeming intelligibility of our actions, after they have oc-
curred, which makes us declare that action springs from character,
and that, therefore, only one alternative is possible. But the real
movement of our thought explicit, or more commonly, implicit is
quite different. We do not say : I see the connection of this act with
the character; therefore I believe that it has proceeded from the
character and that no other act, at this precise moment, could have
proceeded from it. But we say rather: I believe that all action is
'Op. tit., p. 404.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 153
simply the expression of character, and hence, though I can not see
it, I assume that there is a vital relation between this character and
this choice.* Are we not, as a matter of fact, constantly reinter-
preting character in the light of choices and thus constantly recti-
fying our judgments of the nature of other men and ourselves?
The rational connection of all actions with character is our presup-
position, or, if you like, our postulate; and we refuse to accept any
interpretation which conflicts with it. When, therefore, an action
surprises us, we attribute the apparent discrepancy, not to free will,
but to our lack of complete knowledge of the agent.
My third objection has to do with Dr. Schiller's interpretation
of the scientific postulate of determinism. It seems to me that his
account of it fails to express its real motive. According to him, the
fundamental motive is to be found in man's need of being able to
predict. The assertion that every event is inevitably determined by
its antecedent is simply the expression of our desire to calculate the
future. This interpretation, I think, does not go to the root of the
matter. We do indeed wish to calculate, we find it convenient
to be able to predict; but deeper than this need, more fundamental
than this desire, 10 are the desire and the need to understand. Science
is not primarily the outcome of man's wish to calculate; it is the
outcome of his wish to see the relations of things. The tendency to
interpret the desire to know for the sake of knowing as a mere desire
to know for the sake of some practical consequences, 11 is apparently
deep-rooted in the pragmatists. Their critics have protested against
it more than once; and latterly, some members of the school have
seemed willing to admit the reality of the desire to know for the sake
of knowing. But in Dr. Schiller's account of the postulate of
determinism, we find the old tendency cropping out. That the fun-
damental postulate of science should be interpreted as essentially a
desire to be able to calculate, and thus to satisfy our need for daily
bread, is a striking illustration of the pragmatist tendency to over-
estimate the part which " practical" motives play in the life of the
human spirit.
As I see it, the postulate of determinism is a demand that is made
primarily in the interests of knowledge. Man has the desire to
It is interesting to note that the only cases in which we insist upon seeing
this relation are those in which the characters are artificial constructions. In
the novel and the drama, we criticize the author if he fails to show us how a
given person comes to make a certain choice. But in real life, when we are
once convinced that a deed which surprises us was actually performed, we either
reinterpret the character in the light of it or have recourse to the hypothesis
of insanity.
"Deeper and more fundamental, . e., for science.
11 Both here and a little below, I use " practical " in the narrowest sense
of the word.
154 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
understand as deep, as true, and as natural as the desire to eat.
And we understand things better or at least think that we do if
we are able to relate them one to another. The thing which we can
not in the least understand is the one which seems to be out of all
relation to what we believe ourselves to know. And the fundamental
postulate of science is simply the demand that nothing shall be really
out of all relation, that nothing shall be essentially unintelligible.
Now if this interpretation be correct, it is futile for Dr. Schiller to
say that a certain measure of calculability is all that science needs,
and that his reconciliation, by making "free" acts in some degree
calculable, satisfies all reasonable demands of our intellectual nature.
Science is quite willing to admit that many things are at present
unknowable and incalculable; it ought, I believe, to concede that
many things are, in their very nature, incalculable ; 12 but it is not, and
ought not to be, willing to grant that there are parts of reality which
are absolutely unrelated to the rest of it. We are ready enough to
admit that there are events whose relation to the other parts of our
experience we can not now see, perhaps may never be able to see;
but to admit that they have no such relation is a different matter. 13
These are my three objections to Dr. Schiller's "reconciliation."
If space permitted, I should go on to show what seems to me the
essential truth of the doctrine of determinism, and thus to define my
own attitude toward it. But I must content myself with a very brief
statement. That the assertion of "real possibilities" in human
choice amounts to a denial of the continuity of act with character,
and is, therefore, open to serious objections, both on intellectual and
on moral grounds, seems to me obvious. On the other hand, I believe
that human action can not be infallibly predicted, because every
choice has a unique character. In order to predict, we must have a
situation which is, in its essential respects, identical with some pre-
vious situation; and in everything worthy the name "choice" this
12 This, it seems to me, is involved in the belief, which I myself hold, that
time and change are fundamental aspects of reality, and that every choice is,
strictly speaking, a unique event.
13 We can not avoid the difficulty, as Dr. Schiller tries to do, by distinguish-
ing between "methodological postulate" and "metaphysical dogma" (op. cit.,
pp. 397 ff., 405 ff . ) . If all that science demanded were that it should be able
to calculate, we might say, as Dr. Schiller does, that the requirement might be
met, in considerable measure, even though its metaphysical basis the belief
in the interconnection of all parts of reality could be shown to be false. But,
as we have seen, science requires more than this. It demands that all parts of
reality shall be conceived as interrelated; and this demand must fail of satis-
faction if it can be shown that all parts of reality are not interrelated. More-
over, Dr. Schiller himself forces us to take the metaphysical point of view.
For, as we have seen, the acceptance of his proposed reconciliation would involve
the belief in choices which are unrelated to character, and thus in events that
are not connected with the rest of reality.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 155
sine qua non is wanting. I may add, further, that my theory does
not carry with it a belief in the timelessness of ultimate reality.
I agree with Dr. Schiller in feeling that this belief robs human action
of its deepest significance. But I think that it would be a mistake
to suppose that there is no middle ground between the doctrine of
"real alternatives" and the doctrine of the unchangeableness of
reality.
ELLEN BLISS TALBOT.
MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Mind in the Making. E. J. SWIFT. New York: Chas. Scribner's Sons.
1908. Pp. 329.
Most of the material of the volume consists of papers previously pub-
lished separately in leading scientific and semipopular journals. In each
chapter directly or indirectly the author deprecates the fact that educa-
tional efforts have largely tended to " submerge the individual." The
intricate machinery of American school systems, together with the influ-
ence upon our higher institutions of German university methods, has
obscured the chief function of education. Educators have increasingly
lost sight of positive individual and racial assets, and as a consequence
they have in most part adopted standards which distort rather than
measure normal development. On the other hand, negative assets, seen,
if at all, also from a distorted angle, have not been judiciously curbed
and repressed.
In Chapter I. the author discusses " Standards of Human Power."
After an exhaustive appeal to biographical literature, the conclusion is
reached that the schoolmaster has signally failed in discovering the
geniuses in his charge, has accepted too readily the verdict of school
studies, has presupposed that he possesses some universal standard, and
has on the whole used up "much energy in keeping children of widely
varying endowments in the scholastic trail."
The keynote of Chapter II., on " Criminal Tendencies of Boys ; Their
Cause and Function," is that ideas of sin evolved with social evolution,
that morality is a growth, that psychic recapitulation, as well as physical,
is a fact. Material gathered by the author from a questionnaire sent to
teachers, professors, college students, lawyers, ministers, dentists, mer-
chants, etc., appears to reveal the fact that this early " obedience to racial
instincts " by boys indicates the inevitableness and the naturalness of
larks, adventures, truancy, fights, thefts of all sorts, and various other
miscellaneous escapades formerly denounced as sins. The author further
supports the conviction by copious anthropological and biographical cita-
tions. In the history of society, piracy, even theft and cannibalism, once
ranked high. So in individual life every normal boy must resist or suc-
cumb to these " reverberations of savage life." All semi-criminal acts of
156 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
boyhood indicate how "deeply impressed in the organism are those of
racial instincts." Their existence should not disturb us. The critical
points are that development should never be arrested at these lower stages
and that we should realize the preponderating influence of environment,
the Elmira Reformatory records indicating that about eighty-five per cent,
of the inmates make respectable, self-supporting men. Their offense
record began with those tendencies above noted.
As to the " School and the Individual " treated of in Chapter III., the
author thinks that we " set up a psychical operating-table in every school-
room, and proceed to cut each child according to our measure, forgetful
of our own deficiencies, lopping off one individual trait after another,
until we have made him commonplace enough to fit into the traditional
pedagogical mold." The non-conformists, the gifted, won't fit into the
system, they are objectionable, and biography again shows us that the
school has not performed this individual-making function. The native
tendencies which promote intellectual and moral growth are not, thinks
the author, aroused by the pedagogical brand of interest in disagreeable
work. " The effective line of approach to children is through their racial
instincts and individual dispositions."
Chapter IV. is concerned with " Reflex Neuroses and their Relation
to Development," nervous irritants which disturb and pervert mental
growth. " The school age is the nascent period of the nervous- system."
Most paths are formed, some are not yet functionally active, none fixed
or accustomed to facile and economic response. Waste energy at this
period must interfere with cerebral organization and structural growth.
The beginnings of nervous affection are not easily detected. Recourse to
numerous medical records shows that " one of the most frequent sources
of reflex neuroses is the eyes." Eye-strain is a common cause of central
disturbances. Choreic symptoms often develop, epilepsy not infrequently
results. Indeed, uncorrected ocular defects may result in almost any
pathological organic disease, affecting even the moral nature of the
patient. Some cases are particularly difficult to diagnose because acuity
of vision is often not interfered with. Adenoids, also, should be con-
sidered as a prevalent cause for similar reflex disorders. Here pupils do
brain work under diseased conditions. " Teachers should know the part
that reflex neuroses play in mental hygiene, and in their preparatory
training they should learn to recognize the indications of these affections
in order that the nervous irritation may be relieved before it becomes a
serious menace to brain growth and mental development."
" Some Nervous Disturbances of Development " (Chapter V.) must be
carefully watched in children after their seventh or eighth year. Develop-
ing organs, rudimentary cells, and association paths can not easily resist
disease or the " inroad of bad heredity." Though the periods for different
cerebral developments are unknown, there must be critical times of
arrested growth and stages when functional disturbances result in func-
tional derangements. Chorea, a child's disease, should be watched.
Incoordination of voluntary movements, temperamental changes, etc., are
common and suggestive symptoms. Other disorders of this period of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 157
growth whose natures are less known are tic, migraine, hysteria, and
epilepsy. " Half an hour's observation of pupils at their school work will
convince one skilled in interpreting nerve signs that these maladies have
become so common as to menace our national health." Signs of precocity
in children should also be looked upon with suspicion. Education is not
merely an intellectual process. " The important thing is to detect dis-
ease in its incipiency, and this can be done only by those who are in daily
association with children. The study of the usual signs of approaching
nervous disorders should be a part of the training of teachers. ..."
Problems in " The Psychology of Learning " (topic of Chapter VI.)
are closely related to those of mental development in general. Swift dis-
cusses here results of his investigations into the learning process. Three
types of skill-acquisition are described and discussed; the acquisition of
purely muscular skill (keeping two balls going with one hand, catching
and throwing one while the other is in the air) ; the acquisition of physical
and mental skill combined (typewriting) ; and pure mental acquisition
(beginning a language). Of the first type, results were that rate of
acquisition was at first slow, then more rapid. The progress was by
jumps, automatization appearing in the whole process, with different
approximate levels of skill for different stages. Physical condition and
waning interest affected the rate of acquisition. Slow progress, how-
ever, was only apparent, due to chance emergencies arising in various
unexpected situations. Possible changes of interest came with the vary-
ing aspects of the task which called for new attitudes from the learner.
This learning process furthermore disclosed, just before new adjustments
to the obstacles encountered were devised, a physiological limit of attain-
ment. At such point suggestion could speed the process. These new
adaptations also were unconsciously adopted at first, introspection merely
revealing that they had been acquired. In this complex process, finally,
cooperating movements appeared to have improved separately before
coordination was accomplished. Left-hand training from the first day
in all cases showed a higher degree of skill than the preliminary test
revealed, never dropping to that level. These left-hand curves also ascend
more rapidly. In all cases right-hand training affected left. The author
concludes : " There is no evidence to show that training has general value.
Indeed, it all argues strongly for the influence of content. . . . Skill in
certain lines may be serviceable in other similar processes, but its value
decreases as the difference between the kinds of work increases, and in
many cases it is probably reduced to zero."
This report is followed by very interestingly described investigations
of the author relating to the similar activities and principles involved in
acquiring typewriting skill and in learning Russian. The comments are
illustrated by curves showing rate of progress. The common properties
of all types of curves in these investigations appear to be that the physical
condition is most important (the latest acquisitions, most critical for
progress in learning, feeling decidedly the effects of lowered physical
tone) ; that jumps with stops are inevitable characteristics ; that sudden
advance is a precursor of possible permanent acquisition; that the "no-
158 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
progress " periods occupy the greater portion of the time for the process ;
and that, contrary to other authors, higher and lower orders of habit
develop simultaneously. In school, however, these inevitable plateau
levels are "unnecessarily increased in number and depressingly pro-
longed by the rapidity and looseness with which past work has been gone
over." These periods, further, should indicate a critical time when " the
subject-matter should be reconstructed and reorganized, so that the autom-
atization may not be too mechanical and stereotyped." Since these
periods for different pupils can not coincide, "the disadvantage of class
examinations is obvious." Monotony being an unavoidable obstacle in
all learning, often prolonging too far these periods, diversity of material
and method in indicating new phases for attention to be fixed upon
becomes a demonstrable psychological necessity. Since, also, there is
always the " subconscious utilization of experience," the author further
suggests that " the value of constructive play as a factor in development
is an unworked educational mine." This " utilization of experience may
be accounted for by the organic friction that accompanies unsuccessful
reactions." Further, these investigators seemed to furnish evidence that
fatigue is " disastrous to the finer acquisitions which characterize growth
in skill and knowledge." It is not practise, but successful practise, that
counts for progress, sensitive incipient habits being easily deranged. The
time element is likewise important, and no amount of work can make the
learning process continuous, nor do equal amounts of work produce
equivalent results. These plateau periods, after all, the stage when real
progress is made, are critically important, and any attempt to shorten the
process artificially, as is so often done in classroom work, is almost cer-
tain to bring disaster.
Of the " Racial Brain and Education " (Chapter VII.) Swift, review-
ing various theories of the evolutionary stages of nerve development, con-
cludes that "education from the physiological side seems to consist in
conserving and elaborating the centers for nervous energy and in opening
new paths of discharge." Somehow the organization of nervous centers
and the ramification of fibers make possible the varying responses of the
organism to similar stimuli. Facts significant for education are that in
childhood the middle cortical layer is deficient in association-fibers and
that growth or medullation of these fibers continues longer than was
formerly supposed, perhaps beyond forty years, and that nutritional dis-
turbances interfere with their development. If brain training can not
increase the number of cells, collaterals may be increased and associa-
tional reach may be enlarged. Other standard investigations, the author
thinks, support the view that numerous additional developments upon
which mental power may depend, are clearly possible. " Other things
being equal, the greater the number of intercellular connections, the
greater the intellectual power, and it is beyond question that these inter-
cellular connections increase according to the demand for them in the
environment," the development of nerve elements depending upon the
opportunity to function. "A rightly ordered system of education must
grow out of the physiological requirements of the nervous system. . . .
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 159
Spontaneous and reflex movements produced through the discharge of
lower centers precede conscious movement," and constitute the founda-
tion for consciousness. Willed action is only thus built into the system.
Swift thinks that educationists generally fail to recognize this, and at-
tempt to develop higher centers without regard to the lower. The guiding
maxim shall not be that mental efficiency depends upon amount of nervous
energy available or exerted, but rather, that it is a "matter of nervous
reciprocity, of coordinated impressionability and action." The intel-
lectual helplessness of high school pupils and college students is evidence
of the failure of our tutelary method of education to create habits of
control of nervous discharge.
As to " Experimental Pedagogy," the discussion in Chapter VIII.,
the author laments the scant courtesy given it in education. He reports
here, also, upon investigations in the Yeatman High School, at St. Louis,
upon rates of the learning of pupils, some with and some without foreign
language training, as they acquired knowledge of Spanish. Similarities
to the principles of the above reported studies in acquisition were noted,
and the practicability of his scientific method for actual schoolroom
application is demonstrated. Upon a vital and critical step in university
extension, he comments thus : " Experimental schools should be established
by them, the aim of which should be to solve educational questions that
lend themselves to the experimental method, and there are many prob-
lems of that nature." Such subjects as the minimum difference of ability
may be thus tested. Swift illustrates this by a statistical study of the
records of army and navy students. Wide differences shown here indi-
cate even wider ones in elementary and secondary education, and make
experimental investigation imperative. Certainly in most subjects the
logical order of sequence of studies, too, is not the pedagogical, and the
latter should be carefully tested experimentally for such subjects as
grammar, language, arithmetic, etc. Such work, qualitative as well as
quantitative, furthermore, aside from definite and immediate results,
would enable teachers and students to face more squarely the conditions
of the situation under discussion a desideratum keenly felt by those who
follow most detached and fragmentary educational experiments. Various
sorts of future possible lines of development in scientific pedagogy are
discussed.
From the same point of view the author wakes a rather vigorous
onslaught upon "School-Mastering Education" (Chapter IX.), con-
cluding that material of school studies and method are not chosen from
the learner as a starting-point. Nascent periods are ignored, and
" instead of utilizing these flashes of racial life to kindle a natural enthu-
siasm, the schools have tried to create a superstitious interest," imposing
upon the child the logical fetiah of the adult way of conceiving. Super-
vision is largely responsible for this mechanized instruction. Low sal-
aries for teachers afford another obstacle. Our industrial system is like-
wise antagonistic to the above ideal. Some larger conception of education
must prevail, for " education is not school-mastering." To this larger
conception Swift devotes his concluding chapter, " Man's Educational
160 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Reconstruction of Nature." Here he contrasts types of reaction to imme-
diate and to remote or ideal environment. The intellectual difference
between man and lower animals consists in," the difference between asso-
ciative reasoning . . . and inference in which the connection is obscured,
by time or space, or by the complexity of the elements involved." Man's
versus the animal's environment stretches beyond physical bounds and
embraces the universe. To-day we must, hence, educate for an essen-
tially new universe. Human evolution is not merely biological. This
indicates that while "man has largely inherited the animal method and
only partially adopted the human," his increasing social responsibility
consists in enlarging and keeping plastic the socially reconstructed en-
vironment, which is the law of life. For this reason education should
see and prize the importance of variation in human society. " The func-
tion of education here is to develop a mental attitude that is friendly to
variation, and to train to rightly see and interpret relations." Informa-
tion alone, too much relied upon heretofore, has not fitted us and alone
can not fit us, for modern complex social adjustments. Reconstruction
of society now going on is profound social variation. Education must
foresee and prepare youths for this, and cease to be "engrossed in the
comparatively petty role of teaching lessons." Variation does not mean
destruction, but, instead, it serves to suggest a means for the progressive
guidance of nature's selection.
Swift's book is stimulating, clearly written, interesting, and within
the comprehension of the average reader. Its separate topics afford con-
venient references for students of education, although it is to be regretted
that there is no subject index. On the whole it is a commendable attempt
to state education in socio-psychological terms.
CHARLES HUGHES JOHNSTON.
UNIVEBSITY OF MICHIGAN.
Voltaire philosophe. GEORGES PELLISSIER. Paris : Armand Colin. 1908.
Pp. iii +304.
A book signed by Georges Pellissier is always worth studying carefully.
Sober, clear, conscientious, more than any other modern French critic,
Pellissier may be relied upon to provide both substantial and enjoyable
reading.
These three hundred ^ages on " Voltaire philosophe " are a remarkable
resume, that will render in literature and philosophy an extremely val-
uable service. Voltaire is surely not an obscure writer, nor difficult to
understand; but a book like the one under consideration fills its place;
because, first, it is seldom that people will read him without being preju-
diced either in favor of him or, more frequently, against him; and, sec-
ondly, because he has not by any means held the same opinions invariably,
as is often thought; on the contrary, during his long career as a writer he
has changed his views in several items, and those changes are important
to know in order to reach an adequate appreciation of the thinker. Now,
although many would like to do it, they can not afford the time to read
through the more than forty large volumes of Voltaire's works ; Pellissier
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 161
did it for them (see preface) in a careful and intelligent manner. He
offers us an absolutely thorough book and up to the requirements of
modern criticism and science: not one sentence that can not be traced to
some very distinct passage; all the shades of thought carefully indicated;
many contradictions pointed out and explained; finally, the whole book
written in a style as clear as crystal, with not too many quotations, but
yet enough of them to show how faithfully the exposition is made.
The book is excellent.
There is one aspect of it, however, which I should like to consider
briefly. Pellissier writes in his preface : " Nous n'avons point cru neces-
saire de dissimuler notre sympathie pour un grand nombre des idees que
Voltaire repandit par le monde. On verra qu'elle ne fait aucun tort
-a notre exactitude." It is perfectly true that Pellisier's sympathy ".ne
fait aucun tort a son exactitude." Still it will be wise at times if the
reader keeps in mind the conscientious warning given by the author him-
self, and remembers that the latter chose Voltaire rather than any other
great writer as a subject for his book in part, at least, because he specially
liked Voltaire's attitude towards life. Of course, nobody can be abso-
lutely impersonal and impartial when ideas, and not mere facts, are pre-
sented to the reader; no philosopher ever did it; and it would not be fair
to ask the impossible from Pellissier. But, besides, the case of Voltaire
is a peculiar one; he has always been considered as the representative
par excellence of free thought, of rationalism, of hatred of superstition
in all its forms. And as the antagonism between so-called conservatives
and so-called progressists is always alive among men, Voltaire stands little
chance any way to receive absolutely fair treatment. Moreover, we are
all aware that France is just now passing through a period when Voltaire's
name would be particularly apt to be taken as a sort of password for
liberalism; therefore, if attention is devoted to him, it will not generally
be the artist that will be studied, or his position in the history of French
literature, or even in the history of human culture; the one Voltaire who
appeals to us, either for the sake of admiration or for the sake of con-
demnation, will be precisely Voltaire philosophe. Thus, for those two
reasons, it was to be expected that even had Pellissier not started on his
book out of sympathy for Voltaire, he would hardly have escaped the fate
of taking position in some way. And one who has followed Pellissier's
publications in the last ten years knows of other circumstances which
support the idea that, as a matter of fact, he pursued two distinct aims:
to explain Voltaire, and to create a current of sympathy in the letter's
behalf. The first publications of Pellissier were of a purely objective, or
literary, character ; let us recall here especially his conscientious and solid
works classic books among students of French literature " Le mouve-
ment litteraire au XIXe siecle " and " Le mouvement litteraire contem-
porain." Soon after came the period of trouble in France, when so many
who had cultivated, as much as possible, up till then literature, art and phi-
losophy from a standpoint above human passions, realized that no energy,
no talent, could be wasted in the realm of pure thought when storm raged
on earth. Pellissier did like the others, and when he came out shortly
162 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
after the events with a new collection of essays, he did not call them
" Etudes de litterature contemporaine," as preceding volumes, but
" Etudes de litterature et de morale contemporaine." Not only many
allusions to recent occurrences were found all through the book, but
in the two chief essays inserted which had been delivered as public
speeches he contrasted two thinkers representing the two great parties in
France at the time; and one of them was precisely Voltaire, who fought
obscurantism and freed men from the bonds of many superstitions.
" Voltaire philosophe " develops the same idea, only this time in a whole
book. Pellissier is convinced that as an antidote to obscurantism and
narrowness in all senses, atheism as well as bigotry, nothing is worth the
lesson given by Voltaire over a century ago ; nobody ever spoke so simply,
and therefore so forcibly and so eloquently, the language of common sense
and of toleration.
Several peculiarities of Pellissier's book that may strike the reader are
readily explained when one keeps in mind the foregoing remarks. For
instance, he attacks frequently modern critics who, in his mind, did not
treat Voltaire fairly, Vinet, Brunetiere, even Faguet. For one who simply
wants to explain Voltaire's ideas, this is not especially called for; but one
who claims that Voltaire is one from whom we should learn will naturally
make attempts to correct wrong impressions which the public might gather
from less sympathetic commentators (see e. g., pp. 5, 6, 12, 209, 243, 254) ;
in some cases there is not even disagreement of appreciation, but only a
word that might convey a wrong idea is corrected (e. g., pp. 209-210).
Again, Pellissier discusses a good many really minor points, which only
prejudiced persons (as those of our present generation) could misunder-
stand (e. g., pp. 26, 110) ; this also betrays practical preoccupations.
Finally, it seems that certain discussions which might harm Voltaire as a
modern educator are avoided; for instance, his attitude towards Protest-
antism (pp. 101-104, 146, 229, 259). I am not prepared to maintain that
Voltaire was never disinterested in his appeals to justice for the perse-
cuted Huguenots, but I am inclined to think that the personal feeling of
enjoyment in doing harm to his enemies, the Jesuits, plays a distinctly
greater part than Pellissier allows. Voltaire tells us (cf. pp. 34, 90)
that each year on the day of the anniversary of the St. Bartholomew's
night he fell ill well ! it may true ; still he grew very, very old !
The discussion of the personality of Voltaire, I agree, does not neces-
sarily belong here; still when a man is proposed as a model for his moral
ideas, we can not help inquiring a little bit whether he deserves our
respect. Now I grieve to say that Voltaire does not. I do not allude to
his private life. I do not, moreover, allude to the attacks recently renewed
against him by Churton Collins, denouncing him as a spy in England
I believe those accusations are not true at all; but I refer to his cowardice
as a man of letters, which we can not excuse. If a man wants to express
ideas that will be criticized and that may bring upon him persecution,
let him bear the consequences manfully. This Voltaire hardly ever did.
The true Voltaire is in his correspondence which was not meant to become
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 163
public. Pellissier is too indulgent at times, whether he speaks (pp. 48-49,
94-99, 150, 257, 266-267) or whether he avoids to say anything.
Leaving aside the special purpose for which Pellissier drew his picture
of Voltaire, let us ask a question : Does Voltaire, as a thinker, Voltaire
philosophe, come out from Pellissier's book greater or smaller than we
had him in mind ? That he appears rather smaller is, of course, a merely
personal opinion. When the writer first started reading the book, he said
to himself: How is it possible to summarize Voltaire's philosophy within
three hundred pages? And when he closed the book his idea was rather
the reverse; namely, if one was to drop the detailed explanations, the
minor points accidentally important because they may be made to apply to
special circumstances of the present day, and the refutations of modern
scholars discussing Voltaire, the book would be shorter, and still be per-
fectly fair to the whole bagage philosophique of Vlotaire. As a matter
of fact, Voltaire has the ideas of a man of good sense to-day; good, com-
mon-sense ideas, but ideas which are not sufficient to solve any difficult
problem of life. It would hardly be too much to say that if, by imagina-
tion, one were to remove Voltaire from the history of philosophy, not one
original thought would be lost to humanity; he prepared the way for
thinkers in popularizing useful, common-sense truths, but he has con-
tributed none himself. What remains inimitable in Voltaire is the way
he puts things, so clearly, so cleverly, so wittily: he is far greater by his
art than by his ideas. ALBERT SCHINZ.
BBYN MAWB COLLEGE.
Race Questions and other American Problems. JOSIAH KOYCE. New
York: The Macmillan Co. 1908. Pp. 287.
The five essays in this volume were delivered as popular addresses
before various audiences. As the author states in the preface, this volume
is part of an effort to apply, to some of our American problems, that gen-
eral doctrine about life which he has expounded at length in his book
entitled " The Philosophy of Loyalty." He hopes that the various special
opinions here expressed may be judged in the light of that philosophy.
The present volume he regards as an auxiliary to its more systematic
predecessor. This philosophy of loyalty is the practical aspect and
expression of the author's idealistic philosophy. It is his answer to the
pragmatist's protest that idealism is not a practical philosophy.
The closing essay of the present volume contains a summary of the
theses upon which the philosophy of loyalty is based. The principle is
stated thus : " Be loyal, and be in such wise loyal that, whatever your own
cause, you remain loyal to loyalty. That is, so choose your cause, and so
serve it, that, as a result of your activity, there shall be more of this
common good of loyalty in the world than there would have been had you
not lived and acted. Let your loyalty be such loyalty as helps your neigh-
bor to be loyal. Despite the diversity of the individual causes the
families, countries, professions, friendships to which you and your neigh-
bor are loyal, so act that the devotion of each shall respect and aid the
other's loyalty " (p. 248).
164 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Everywhere that he has given an exposition of the new philosophy,
both in this book and in his "Philosophy of Loyalty," Professor Royce
is keenly aware of the fundamental criticism that will be offered to the
doctrine of loyalty to loyalty. How is the first loyalty to which we are
asked to be loyal determined? The author says: "But I freely admit
that many men who have been enthusiastically and effectually loyal to
various causes, and who in their personal lives have won as mature a
notion of loyalty as they were capable of getting, have nevertheless often
committed, in the name of loyalty, great crimes. And you may well ask
how I explain this fact. You may well wonder how loyalty can be a
central moral principle, when lives that were as loyal as the men in
question knew how to make them have often been morally mischievous
lives. My answer is that our loyalty leads us into moral error only in
so far as we are indeed often blind to what the principle of loyalty actually
means and requires. And such blindness is, as men go, human enough
and common enough. The corrective to such errors, however, is not the
introduction of some other moral principle than that of loyalty, but is
just the discovery of the internal meaning, the true sense of the loyal
principle itself. Whoever is loyal loves loyalty for its own sake " (p. 245).
The author makes the saving distinction for his doctrine between mere
blind loyalty and enlightened loyalty. The former has done mischief in
the past because it is pseudo-loyalty. It is turned into enlightened loyalty
when it reaches the second dimension of loyalty, so to speak the stage of
loyalty to loyalty. The first commandment is: Be loyal. The second:
Be loyal to loyalty. " That is, regard your neighbor's loyalty as some-
thing sacred. Do nothing to make him less loyal. Never despise him
for his loyalty, however little you care for the cause he chooses. If your
cause and his cause come into some inevitable conflict, so that you indeed
have to contend with him, fight, if your loyalty requires you to do so ; but
in your bitterest warfare fight only against what the opponent does.
Thwart his acts where he justly should be thwarted; but do all this in
the very cause of loyalty itself, and never do anything to make your
neighbor disloyal" (p. 253). From these consequences of his central
principle follow all those propositions about the special duties of life
which can be reasonably defined and defended. Justice, kindness, chiv-
alry, charity these are all of them forms of loyalty to loyalty.
In the first essay, on " Race Questions and Prejudices," Professor
Royce finds the solution for our southern race problem by a study of the
English solution of the once serious race question in Jamaica. The
English have solved their problem by the simplest means in the world
by administration and reticence. " When once the sad period of emanci-
pation and of subsequent occasional disorder was passed, the Englishman
did in Jamaica what he has so often and so well done elsewhere. He
organized his colony; he established good local courts, which gained by
square treatment the confidence of the blacks. The judges of such courts
were Englishmen. The English ruler also provided a good country con-
stabulary, in which native blacks also found service, and in which they
could exercise authority over other blacks. Black men, in other words,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 165
were trained, under English management, of course, to police black men "
(p. 22). Therefore Professor Koyce concludes that "The southern race
problem will never be relieved by speech or by practises such as increase
irritation. It will be relieved when administration grows sufficiently
effective, and when the negroes themselves get an increasingly responsible
part in this administration in so far as it relates to their own race " (p. 29).
In the second essay, on " Provincialism," the author maintains that
" in the present state of the world's civilization, and of the life of our
own country, the time has come to emphasize, with new meaning and
intensity, the positive value, the absolute necessity for our welfare, of a
wholesome provincialism, the saving power to which the world in the near
future will need more and more to appeal." The present state of civiliza-
tion the world over is such as defines a new social mission which the
province and not the nation as a whole can fulfill. " False sectionalism,
which disunites, will indeed always remain as great an evil as ever it was.
But the modern world has reached a point where it needs, more than ever
before, the vigorous development of a highly organized provincial life.
Such a life, if wisely guided, will not mean disloyalty to the nation; and
it need not mean narrowness of spirit, nor yet the further development of
jealousies between various communities. . . . But the two tendencies, the
tendency toward national unity and that toward local independence of
spirit, must henceforth grow together. They can not prosper apart. The
national unity must not kill out, nor yet hinder, the provincial self -con-
sciousness. The loyalty to the republic must not lessen the love and the
local pride of the individual community. The man of the future must
love his province more than he does to-day. His provincial customs and
ideals must be more and not less highly developed, more and not less self-
conscious, well established, and earnest" (pp. 64^66).
In the third essay, " On Certain Limitations of the Thoughtful Public
in America," Professor Royce sees "mischief done by an unwise exag-
geration of the tendency among Americans to reason, to argue, to trust
to mere formulas, to seek for the all-solving word; in brief, to bring to
consciousness what for a given individual ought to remain unconscious.
. . . Thought, in any individual, must freely set limits to its own finite
task. And when the thoughtful lovers of ideals forget this fact, they
become mere wranglers, or doctrinaires, or pedants, or, on the other hand,
in the end, through failure in thinking, they become cynics. . . . Now
the human mind, in its present form of consciousness, is simply incapable
of formulating all its practical devices under any one simple rule. . . .
Restless search for the immediate presence of the ideal is often vain, like
the pioneer idealism that burns the forests merely to see what they hide.
Much of the best in human nature simply escapes our present definitions,
is known only by its fruits, and prospers best in the forest shade of uncon-
sciousness. . . . We are primarily creatures of instinct; and instinct is
not merely the part of us that allies us with the lower animals. The
highest in us is also based upon instinct, and only a portion of your
instincts can ever be formulated. You will be able in this life to tell
what they mean in only a few instances. But your life's best work will
166 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
depend upon all of your good instincts together. Hence a great part of
your life's work will never become a matter of your own personal and
private consciousness at all. It is one of the duties of the thoughtful
lover of ideals, then, to know that he can not turn into conscious thinking
all of his ideal activities" (pp. 152-153).
The fourth essay, " The Pacific Coast," will hardly interest students
of philosophy as much as the others, although it contains a very sug-
gestive psychological study of the relations of climate and civilization.
Professor Royce's estimate of the civilization of the Pacific Coast is,
in the opinion of the reviewer, himself a native and a long-time resident
of the state, an entirely just one. Calif ornians are noted for their " inde-
pendence of judgment," " their carelessness about what the outside world
may think of them," " their apparent freedom in choosing what manner
of men they should be," their " confident and somewhat abrupt speech,
particularly in speaking of the boundless future prosperity of their state."
All these characteristics the author believes rest back, in large measure,
on the peculiar climate and geographical isolation of the state.
C. H. RIEBER.
UNIVEBSITY OF CALIFOBNIA.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. January, 1909. Examen critique des
systemes classiques sur I'origine de la pensee religieuse (l er article) (pp.
1-28) : E. DURKHEIM. - A critical demonstration of the insufficiency of
current naturism and animism as explanations of the origin of religious
thought. Comment fonctionne mon cerveau: essai de psychologic intro-
spective (pp. 29-40) : H. BEAUNIS. - The most fruitful ideas come un-
sought and often develop themselves subconsciously. This subconscious
work is done without fatigue. L'analogie scientifique (pp. 41-54) : J.
SAGERET. - Scientific analogy gets its value from coexistent and related
analogies, and scientific certainty surpasses analogy only in the weight of
its associated analogies. Observations et documents. E. GOBLOT: Un cos
d'association latente. Revue generate. F. PICA VET: Thomisme et philos-
ophic medievale (fin). Analyses et comptes rendus: Le Dantec, Science
et conscience.- H. DAUDIN. Vialleton, Un proibleme de I' evolution: F. LE
DANTEC. Petrucci, Essai sur une theorie de la vie: H. DAUDIN. Man-
ville, Les decouvertes modernes en physique: ABEL REY. Bouty, La
verite scientifiques ; sa poursuite: J. SAGERET. P. Souriau, Les conditions
du bonheur.- OSSIP LOURIE. Bayet, Les idees mortes: FR. PAULHAN.
Ch. Lalo, L'esthetique experimental contemporaine : L. ARREAT. Annales
de I'institut international de sociologie: J. DELVAILLE. Berthelot, Evolu-
tionisme et Platonisme: G. H. LUQUET. A. Riehl, Der philosophische
Kritizismus: G. H. LUQUET. Revue des periodiques etrangers.
Book, William Frederick. The Psychology of Skill: with special ref-
erence to its acquisition in typewriting. Missoula: University of
Montana. 1908. Pp. 188.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 167
Costin, William Wilberforce. Introduction to the Genetic Treatment of
the Faith-Consciousness in the Individual. Baltimore: Williams &
Wilkins Co. 1909. Pp. 45.
Gibson, W. R. Boyce. God with Us: a study in religious idealism. Lon-
don: Adam & Charles Black. 1909. Pp. xix+229.
Mauge, Francis. Le Rationalisme comme hypo-these metodologique.
Paris : Felix Alcan. 1909. Pp. xii + 611.
O'Sullivan, John M. Vergleich der Methoden Kants und Hegels auf
Grund ihrer Behandlung der Kategorie der Quantitdt. Berlin:
Reuther & Reichard. 1908. Pp. vi + 129.
Prichard, H. A. Kant's Theory of Knowledge. Oxford: at the Claren-
don Press. 1909. Pp. vi + 324.
NOTES AND NEWS
The following notice is quoted from Nature for February 11 : " The
Physikalische Zeitschrift for January 15 reproduces an address by Pro-
fessor M. Planck to the science students at the University of Leyden on
the unity of natural philosophy, in which he dealt mainly with the recent
tendencies of theoretical physics, and pointed out how marked had been
the absorption by electrodynamics of branches of the subject formerly
distinct. In his own field of work he dwelt at length on the greater pre-
cision which had been introduced into the study of thermodynamics by
the reduction by the late Professor Boltzmann of the idea of entropy to
that of probability. From this, since the entropy of two independent
systems is the sum of their separate entropies, while the probability of the
two systems is the product of their separate probabilities, it follows that
the entropy of a system is proportional to the logarithm of its probability.
Finally, Professor Planck pointed out the directions in which future ad-
vances will be made, and predicted much discussion of these fundamental
questions, for, as he said, ' theorists are many and paper is patient.' He
pleaded above all for conscientiousness in self-criticism and avoidance of
personalities in the controversies which must arise."
WE have received the first number of the Rivista di Filosofia Neo-
Scolastica, which will appear quarterly, each number containing 125-150
pages. The contents of the first number is as follows : 1. " II nostro pro-
gramma." 2. " Le iniziative della Rivista," 3. " Che cosa e la filosofia
neo-scolastica ?" Sentroul. 4. " Le potenze dell'anima esistono ?" Ros-
signoli. 5. " La filosofia neo-scolastica nelle scienze sociali." Deploige.
6. " Sulla teoria somatica delle emozioni." Gemelli. 7. " Gli elementi
di fatto per la soluzione del problema criteriologico fondamentale."
Canella. Note e discussioni : 1. " L'opera del Liberatore dal 1840 al 1850."
Masnovo. 2. " Con quali armi si difendono gli errori logici del Rosmini."
Cevolani. 3. " La questione delle biblioteche pubbliche." Picozzi.
Analisi di opere e note bibliografiche Rivista delle Riviste Notizie
168 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Opere ricevute dalla redazione. The review is published by the Libreria
Editrice Fiorentina. Florence, Via del Corso 3.
Nature for February contains the following: "A curious instance of
the light which may be thrown by anthropology on the system of Egyptian
hieroglyphics is recorded by Mr. A. M. Blackman in the January issue of
Man. The symbol representing the word msy, ' to give birth,' has been in-
terpreted by Dr. Borchardt in the Zeitschrift filr Agyptische Sprache
(December, 1907) to be derived from a fly-flap made of fox skins. Mr.
Blackman has now found in Nubia that dead foxes are hung over the
doors and on the roofs of houses as a charm to protect the women inmates
from malignant influences at the time of childbirth. It follows, there-
fore, that the use of the symbol derived from a fly-flap was a secondary
idea, the primitive conception on which it was based being its use as a
birth amulet."
A WEALTH of new material, presumably of value to anthropologists, is
contained in Rerum ^Ethiopicorum: Scriptores editi a Seculo XVI. ad
XIX., of which Vol. III. has just been published (Rome: C. de Luigi).
The work is to be complete in four volumes and to contain the account of
the work of the Portugese Manuel d' Almeida, who was at the head of the
Jesuit mission in Abyssinia up to 1633.
THE Cambridge University Press will publish Darwin and Modern
Science, a volume of essays prepared by a brilliant group of contributors.
The volume is addressed not so much to the expert in science as to the
layman who wishes to appreciate the range of Darwin's influence.
PROFESSOR LIGHTNER WITHER, of the University of Pennsylvania, is
giving this term a course of lectures on psychology to the fourth year
students of the Medical Department of the University.
THE French Congress of Scientific Societies will be held this year at
Eennes. The subjects proposed for discussion include " the relations of
sociology and anthropology."
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS are about to publish a translation of Eudolph
Eucken's Problems of Human Life.
SHELLEY'S translation of the Banquet of Plato has been republished
by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
VOL. VI. No. 7. APRIL 1, 1909,
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE MIND WITHIN AND THE MIND WITHOUT
A CCOUNTS of mind differ characteristically according as they
-A. are based on the observation of mind in nature and society,
or on introspection. What is said of mind by historians, sociologists,
comparative psychologists, and among technical philosophers most
notably by Plato and Aristotle, is based mainly, if not wholly, on
general observation. Mind lies in the open field of experience ; having
its own typical form and mode of action, but, so far as knowledge of
it is concerned, as generally accessible, as free to all comers as the
motions of stars or the civilization of cities. On the other hand,
what is said of mind by religious teachers, by human psychologists
of the modern school, whether rational or empirical, and among
technical philosophers by such writers as St. Augustine, Descartes,
Berkeley, and Schopenhauer, is based on self-consciousness. The
investigator generalizes the nature of mind from an exclusive exam-
ination of his own.
The results of these two modes of inquiry differ so strikingly as
to appear almost irrelevant; and it is commonly inferred that mind
can not be directly apprehended in both cases. It is assumed, fur-
thermore, that one's own mind, or the mind at home, must be pre-
ferred as more genuine than the mind abroad. The conclusion fol-
lows that the latter is not mind at all, but a mere exterior of mind r
serving only as a ground for inference. Thus we reach the widely
popular view that mind is encased in a non-mental and impenetrable
shell, within which it may cherish the secret of its own essence with-
out ever being disturbed by inquisitive intruders. Now one might
easily ask embarrassing questions. It is curious that, although its
exterior is impenetrable, a mind gives such marked evidence of itself
as to permit the safest inferences as to its presence within. It is
curious, too, that such a mind should forever be making sallies into
the neighborhood without being caught or followed back into its
retreat. It must evidently be supplied with means of egress that
bar ingress, with orifices of outlook that are closed to one who seeks
to look in. But rather than urge these difficulties, I shall attempt
to obviate them. This is possible only through a version of the two
169
170 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
minds, the mind within and the mind without, that shall prove them
to be in reality one. They are not to be united by calling them one ;
whether, after the manner of parallelism, they are called the two
sides of something not designated; or, after the manner of panpsy-
chism, they are called the inside and the outside, respectively, of the
other. To unite them it is necessary to replace them by the whole
mind in which they appear plainly as parts; and to demonstrate
mind, as one might demonstrate any other object whatsoever, in
respect of its circumstantial cognitive access. The traditional shield
looks concave on one side and convex on the other. That this should
be so is entirely intelligible in view of the nature of the entire shield
and the several ways in which it may be sensibly approached. The
whole shield may be known from either side when the initial bias is
overcome. Similarly I propose to describe the mind within and the
mind without as parts of mind, either of which may assume prom-
inence according to the cognitive starting-point; the whole mind by
implication lying in the general field of experience where every initial
one-sidedness may be overcome.
1. The Mind Within. It has long been recognized that mind as
introspectively viewed consists primarily in unorganized content.
If I seek within for my soul, my search is baffled because I find
variety instead of unity, and states instead of substance. The con-
tent thus discovered is also baffling because it is so largely indistin-
guishable from what I have already attributed to the common world,
the other-than-mind. So far as I can clearly specify, even to myself,
what I find within, it is such as sensation of hardness, idea of Jerusa-
lem, etc., where hardness and Jerusalem have already been attributed
to the physical adamant and the biblical Holy Land, and where sen-
sation and idea as yet signify nothing more than the fact that the
content is found introspectively. But although distributively they
belong to various quarters of the other-than-mind, when assembled
and inspected these data present a character that is genuinely anom-
alous. As respects the other-than-mental objects to which distribu-
tively they belong, they are one-sided and abridged; and as respects
their mutual relations, they are peculiarly casual and even incon-
gruous. My idea of Jerusalem does not embrace all of Jerusalem,
nor does it grow more complete, as is the case when I have direct
cognitive dealings with that object; and the within-my-mind relation
between Jerusalem and hardness is in the highest degree arbitrary
the horizontal cross-relation failing to bring them into any sort of
natural, moral, or logical relevance. In short, by introspection I
find a chaotic manifold of fragments of the other-than-mind.
Now is there anything in the nature of introspection that will
serve to account for such a result? Introspection, as I have in an
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 171
earlier paper attempted to point out, consists essentially in a mind's
remarking what it knows. 1 Where memory is called into play,
objects already known are re-known, and thus counted ; where intro-
spection accompanies the original experience, or knowledge of first
intent, the objects are counted as they are known. In either case,
introspection, like the knowledge of first intent, deals with objects,
adding only the bare inductive grouping of them as objects known.
For this reason it is possible for introspection to consist in little
more than the recovery or arrest of experience. It tends to be dis-
tributive, and so useless because merely repetitive. But it is possible,
as we have just seen, that the mind should remark its content in the
aggregate, and thus discover a manifold that does not wholly coincide
with the not-mind. The differences may now be at least partially
understood. Introspection arbitrarily interrupts knowledge of first
intent, and the content which it calls into view is, therefore, frag-
mentary so far as the object is concerned. And when introspection
collects and assembles such fragments, there results a group the ele-
ments of which are merely together. So far as the elements are
discrete, that is, separated by introspective analysis, this loose rela-
tion displaces for the moment such dynamic or other proper relations
as subsist within the object-manifold. I refer here not to the so-
called ' ' transitive relations, ' ' which, if I mistake not, are experiences
of common objective relations such as difference, propinquity, etc.
I refer to the specific relation expressed by the term and, when intro-
spection discovers as content a and b and c, etc., where a, b, and c
may themselves be anything, even relations.
Now what light do such results throw on the nature of mind?
It seems to me clear that they contribute only a preliminary induc-
tion. They doubtless afford unmistakable evidence of a special and
important grouping of objects; but they do not reveal the principle
which defines the group. It is admitted that the content of mind
coincides distributively with, for example, the content of nature. It
is important, then, to show how content of nature becomes content
of mind. Natural objects do not enter wholly into mind. Then
what determines their abridgment ? An individual mind gathers into
itself a characteristic assemblage of fragments of nature. Under
what conditions does this occur f It is a common practise among
contemporary writers, even among those who grant the distributive
identity of mind and nature, to neglect this problem as insoluble or
irrelevant. It is held to be sufficient merely to reiterate the fact
that when the parts of nature lie together within mind they do not
compose as they do within nature. But to make such a proposition
important, not to say adequate, it is necessary to advance further.
1 See " Mind's Familiarity with Itself," this JOURNAL, Vol. VI., No. 5.
172 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
For there remains the momentous fact that mind has both a natural
origin and a natural habitat. The modification of nature that gives
rise to mind, to mind on the whole and to each and every element of
its content, takes place under natural auspices. Therefore it must
be possible to follow the process of nature and mark the modifying
circumstances that define the mind-status taken on by certain of its
parts. And it is strange that this should be so largely ignored by
philosophers, when it is, after all, so familiar a matter. It is popu-
larly conceived that nature gets into mind at the moment when a
physical organism, impelled by its interests and qualified by its
capacities, is brought to notice it. By "notice" I mean no more
than act on in the manner characteristic of any nervous organization.
Such facts are, it is true, not introspective. But they should not be
neglected on that account. It follows from what has been said that
they are not only relevant, but sorely missed. The lack of them is
the characteristic defect of the introspective method. It is possible,
doubtless, to arrive at them in continuation of a study begun intro-
spectively. Having assembled its content, a mind may proceed to
compare it with nature and note its characteristic privation and
incongruity. There might reasonably issue from such a comparison
the conclusion that the inner manifold is selected by cerebral mechan-
isms functioning locally and obeying the interests of the organism.
But such considerations are discontinuous with the introspective atti-
tude ; I am less likely to remark them with reference to my own mind
than with reference to the mind of another.
To conclude, then, the mind within is evidently an incomplete
experience of mind, containing in the foreground the mind's objects
distributively or collectively regarded. The very incompleteness of
this experience points to evidence neglected, evidence which is indis-
pensable to the round knowledge of mind. That evidence, as will
now appear more clearly, lies in the foreground when mind is an
object of general observation.
2. The Mind Without. As mind appears in nature and society, it
consists primarily in behavior. The behavior characteristic of mind
is promptly and almost unerringly distinguished by all save the most
rudimentary intelligences. Indeed, the capacity of making such a
distinction is one of the conditions of survival. Upon the lowest
plane of social intercourse a mind is a potentiality of bodily contact,
and is marked and dealt with accordingly. But even upon a com-
paratively low plane there is recognition of a characteristic difference
between minds and other bodily things. Minds exhibit spontaneity
and waywardness, a certain isolation of control. Individually they
manifest persistent hostility, which is feared in them, or per-
sistent friendliness, which is courted in them. Such a recognition of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 173
mind is already present in a mind's discriminating reaction to anger,
or to a hereditary foe, as denoting a marked or constant source of
danger. Where social relations are more subtle and indirect, the
element of interest tends to supplant the more mechanical element
of mind. In my dealings with my neighbor I am most concerned
with his desires or his consistent plan of action. I can injure him by
checkmating his interests, or profit by him through combining my
interests with his. It is most important for me to know what he
consistently seeks. He is a living policy or purpose which I must
apprehend if I would make either peace or war. Thus far, then,
mind is a bodily complex moved by interests; having unity of con-
trol and consistency of action, in terms of self-seeking.
Now wherein lies the irrelevance of this account of mind to that
based on introspection ? Surely in the fact that, whereas in the intro-
spective experience one at once encounters the objects of mind, in
this account they are thus far wholly neglected. But they do not
necessarily escape general observation. If I am to deal with my
friend or enemy at close range, it is clear that I must think with him,
or always to some extent traverse with him the objects in his field of
view. Upon higher planes of intercourse, in narrative, in straight-
forward and companionable discussion, another's mind consists more
of objects than anything else. Its bodily aspect falls away, and even
its impelling interest tends to be neglected. But grant that as mind
lies before one in nature and society its bodily and desiderative com-
ponents are focal and its objects marginal. Even so, it needs only a
shifting of the attention to correct the perspective. I may deliber-
ately take pains to discover and supply a mind's objects. To do
so I have only to observe what the mind selects from its environment.
Is this not exactly what the student of the animal mind does? We
are told, for example, that the amreba has four general reactions of
the organic type. One of these is described as positive: "a pseudo-
podium is pushed forward in the direction of the stimulus, and the
animal moves toward the solid." The solidity of bodies enters into
this animal's practical economy: "the positive reaction is useful in
securing contact with a support on which to creep." 2 Here is an
element of the environment that is marked and isolated by a response
which expresses the organism's self-preservative impulse. Do we,
then, not know the content of the amoeba's mind? Should I ever
understand the matter better by contracting my own mind to amoaba-
like proportions ? I grant that as I have loosely described the matter,
much doubt exists as to how far the amoaba's discrimination goes,
but in his studies of sensory discrimination the comparative psy-
chologist has himself devised methods which open the way to greater
1 Washbura, " The Animal Mind," p. 40.
174 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
exactness. 3 Conditions may be contrived which make it to the ani-
mal's interest to notice differences, and these may be progressively
refined until the animal is pressed to the limit of his sensibility.
When after such tests the conclusion is reached that the animal feels
the solid or sees blue, what remains to be said by way of ' ' interpreta-
tion"? If we read too much into such a conclusion, we read it not
from the experimental facts, but from that very introspective ana-
logue which is being held in reserve as a means of translating the
results from behavior into mind. 4 The amoeba does not, it is true,
feel the solid as we do. Therefore let us observe the amoeba, and not
undertake to say how we should feel if we were amoeba3. The en-
vironment, as it lies before us and as it is presented to the amoeba,
is distinguished by the amoeba's action, wherever this is clearly
marked.
There exists, I know, a general belief to the effect that mental
content can never be known in this way. But this belief appears to
me to be due to a curiously perverse habit of thought. It is cus-
tomary to look for the object within the body and then solemnly
declare that it is not to be found. Though long since theoretically
discredited, the "subcutaneous" mind still haunts the imagination
of every one who deals with this problem. Now why not look for
the object where it belongs, and where it is easily accessible namely,
in the environment? Is it not in truth the environment which the
amoeba or any other organism is sensing ? If, then, we are in search
of content, why take so much pains to turn our backs on it, and look
for it where by definition it must escape us? I eagerly await that
"interpretation" with Which the animal psychologist proposes to
supply the animal mind with introspective content; but I expect to
wait in vain. I believe that before such an interpretation is offered
to the public it will be recognized by the investigator as only a
muddled version of something which he has already formulated.
Then how are we to account for this distinction between animal
behavior, based on observation, and the animal mind, based on an
introspective analogy which, since the discovery of exact methods in
this branch of research, no one has had either the time or the will to
carry out? It is due, I think, simply to a failure to group together
behavior and those elements of the environment selected by the
* Cf. op. tit., Ch. IV.
* I have reference here to such statements of method as the following:
" Knowledge regarding the animal mind, like knowledge of human minds other
than our own, must come by way of inference from behavior. Two fundamental
questions then confront the comparative psychologist. First, by what method
shall he find out how an animal behaves? Second, how shall he interpret the
conscious aspect of that behavior?" (The italics are mine.) Washburn, "The
Animal Mind," p. 4.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 175
behavior, the reaction and the stimulus. It is true that neither
behavior nor even conduct is mind; but only because mind is be-
havior, or conduct, together with the objects which these employ
and isolate.
Precisely, then, as introspection obscures the instrumental and
motive factors of mind, so general observation obscures its objective
factor. And when these factors are united, they compose a whole
mind, having a structure and a function that may be known by any
knower, whatever his initial bias.
In conclusion let me briefly summarize the parts of mind which
the analysis has revealed.
1. In the first place, a mind is a complex so organized as to pro-
ceed desideratively or interestedly. I mean here to indicate that
character which distinguishes the living organism, having originally
the instinct of self-preservation and acquiring in the course of its
development a variety of special interests. I use the term interest
primarily in its biological rather than in its psychological sense.
Certain natural processes act consistently in such wise as to isolate,
protect, and review themselves.
2. But such processes, interested in their general form, possess
characteristic instrumentalities, notably a bodily nervous system
which localizes the interest and conditions its intercourse with a
physical environment.
3. Finally, a mind embraces certain objects, or parts of the en-
vironment, with which it deals in its own behalf.
The natural mind, or mind as here and now existing, is thus an
organization possessing as distinguishable, but complementary, as-
pects, interest, body, and objects.
RALPH BARTON PERRY.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
THE EXISTENTIAL UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE
IF things are to become objects of knowledge or the subject-matter
of problems, they must at least reveal the fact that they exist.
They must touch experience at some point, make a difference some-
where in the world that gets observed ; if they do not, there is no clue
anywhere to them, no possibility of knowing either what they are
or that they are. Human judgments about existence must accord-
ingly be directed upon a subject-matter which has been revealed
within the horizon of human experience. The empirical world
which has thus far been brought under observation includes the sub-
ject-matter of all problems about existence which can at present
176 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
arise, and all the evidence upon which the solutions of those prob-
lems can at present be based. This is a situation which defines the
limits of the subject-matter of all existential judgments and all ex-
istential problems, and which functions, therefore, as a universe of
discourse, as the ultimate universe of discourse for all judgments
and inquiries concerning existence. It need hardly be pointed out
that the universe of discourse which we use to-day has been grad-
ually achieved. It represents the labor of many centuries, and we
may trust that its content will be enriched and modified by the labor
of many more. But the fact that there is a universe of discourse
can not constitute a problem under that universe of discourse.
There are many problems of astronomy, but the fact that there is the
science of astronomy can not be an astronomical problem. Anthro-
pology is particularly rich in problems, but the existence of their
subject-matter can not be an anthropological problem. In general,
the subject-matter of problems is the precondition of having prob-
lems about that subject-matter. And if, as I have maintained
above, the subject-matter of every judgment which affirms existence
must be something which has betrayed its existence in the only
possible way, the fact that we have such a subject-matter, i. e., that
we have the necessary precondition of any inquiry into existence,
can not be a problem in that inquiry. We can not go behind or be-
yond our ultimate existential universe of discourse ; and to say that
something has been observed is, accordingly, simply to say that it is
a member of the universe of discourse above referred to, and vice
versa. Given this membership, given, that is, its discovered exist-
ence, an object may become the subject-matter of problems, and
knowledge of it may be accumulated; but the object must be dis-
covered before it can be studied, and the fact that there is a subject-
matter can not constitute a problem about that subject-matter. Of
course the fact that there is the science of chemistry may generate
a problem, but not a problem of chemistry. The fact that things
are observed may generate a problem on condition that their uni-
verse of discourse can be referred to a more comprehensive existen-
tial one. If, however, an object must be discovered before it can
become the subject-matter of speculation which concerns existence,
we have already reached the ultimate universe of discourse in predi-
cating of objects only that they are observed, discovered or per-
ceived ; which is no more than to say that there is an existential sub-
ject-matter, or that there is an existential universe of discourse.
The term "problem about existence" or "existential problem"
may suggest an inquiry as to whether or not the subject-matter of the
problem exists. And then to say that the subject-matter must re-
veal its own existence before it can become the subject-matter of an
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 177
existential problem, would contradict this meaning of the term.
This line of criticism would be natural to many who were brought
up on the problem of the "outer world." Here was a problem of
which the subject-matter was apparently, The outer-world, does it
exist? How, if its existence was revealed, should we have been in
such dialectical straits about it? And yet, could its existence
have been revealed any more clearly than it was? Nature seemed
to be doing her part, while we did our best to baffle nature's excellent
intentions. This digression is not so irrelevant as it may appear,
for it is important to realize that existential discussions must start
with existence and proceed to the investigation of that existence,
following up whatever ramifications may be discovered. One
reaches continually new starting-points and thus new subject-mat-
ter; but always our subject-matter must be the material we are
investigating, and that would seem to be the existence we last started
in to investigate, and not the existence we shall, with good fortune,
arrive at. Thus, while an existential problem may be an inquiry
whether something exists, it can never be an inquiry whether the
subject-matter of the discussion exists.
However awkward the above statement of the case may be, the
thing itself is extremely simple. It follows, however, that knowl-
edge can not be defined in terms of perception. I do not know a
thing when I perceive it unless I do more than perceive it. Knowl-
edge of existence presumes and depends upon whatever existential
universe of discourse we are provided with. The one at our disposal
is, of course, widely different from the one men had to use before
the middle of the fifteenth century ; the alteration, however, has been
brought about by the natural process of research and discovery, a
process which there is no reason to suppose is going to cease in this
generation or the next.
II.
Knowledge of existing things has to do, then, with members in the
above-described universe of discourse. Without attempting a
complete or a dialetical statement on this point, it can fairly be said
that the kind of thing called knowledge is as conveniently provided
for our inspection as any other kind of thing. Chemistry, biology,
engineering, agriculture, astronomy, are bodies of knowledge that
have been accumulated about portions of discovered existence.
Such a formula as NaCl = salt signifies knowledge of a particularly
important type, knowledge of the way determinate things combine
to produce determinate results. If now the word knowledge is to be
used to mean uniformly the same sort of thing, it ought to be il-
lustrated as well by one specimen as by another; and the symbol
NaCl is a convenient illustration.
178 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Accordingly as we are interested in contemporaneous existence,
or in relations of before and after, we can say salt = NaCl, or
Na + Cl produce salt. I shall use the latter form of statement, for
it is the genesis of results in time that is here kept in view, the way
determinate things happen upon a basis of particular conditions.
But what is going to happen has got to be learned by experience of
the factors that enter into the situation. The potentialities in things
are greater than appear on the surface ; accordingly, it is natural for
age to expatiate to youth on the capacities for good and evil which
lie hidden in things, and which only experience can find out. Com-
mon sense thus distinguishes what we may call the inside and the
outside of things. But common sense does not, like much philosophy,
take one aspect and forget all about the other. Every one will
understand what is meant if we call these two aspects ' ' appearance ' '
and "causality," or "immediacy" and "causality." The lesson
that wisdom and maturity seek to instill into inexperience and youth
is that things cooperate as factors to produce determinate results and
that these results seem to have so little to do with the "appearance"
of the factors which combine to produce them. If now we use the let-
ters I and C to signify immediacy and causality, we can let Ixa stand
for the immediacy of sodium and CN& for the causality of sodium.
We might then express by the symbol iNaCNawhat we mean by the
word sodium. In the same way, the symbol Cl may be expanded to
IciCci- And now substituting these analytic symbols for the usual
ones of chemical notation, we can rewrite the formula for sodium
chloride as follows: lNaCNa + IciCci produce salt. All that has been
done in the expanded formula is to exhibit the distinction between
what was called above the inside and the outside of things, and to
symbolize the two chemical elements sodium and chlorine as having
an "inside" and an "outside." However, in the operation of these
factors which results in the genesis of salt we are concerned only with
their causality. In this efficacious relation, the immediacy of each
of the causal factors is an irrelevant accretion, which can be there-
fore omitted from the formula, giving us C Na + Cci produce salt.
The product NaCl has, however, its own immediacy, for the fact is
not merely that something with a certain causality exists but that
the thing in question has come under observation, i. e., it has co-
operated in generating a perception. If we let P stand for the or-
gan of perception, Ip will signify its immediacy and Cp its causality
or productivity or capacity for making differences. And now view-
ing our product salt as something having both causality and immedi-
acy, we are able to write Cxa + Cci+ Cp produce salt ; for, unless Cp
enters into the factor combination, the product can not emerge into
the existential universe of discourse. It must be understood that the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 179
letter P stands for more than sense organ in the restricted physio-
logical sense; it means the organ of apperception as well as of per-
ception, and it signifies, accordingly, temperament, idiosyncrasy,
and all the complexity of organization which contributes to the
generation of experience, i. e., to the generation of whatever product
finally emerges. So much by way of preliminary illustration, using
a simple formula from chemistry.
Let us now make the formula general, and write Y -}- Z -f- P pro-
duce X, in which X is any determinate product, whether thing or
sensation; P, the organ of perception, and Y and Z, the causes co-
operating with P to produce X. Omitting immediacy, we get
Cy + Cz + Cp produce X. X is the empirically total product and
could be represented by IxCx if there were any occasion to do so.
The formula CY + Cz -f- Cp produce X symbolizes the way things
are pregnant with determinate possibilities. It means that things
go together in determinate ways to yield determinate results, that
the results are unaffected by the immediacy attached to the causes,
and that the results must make observable differences somewhere if
there is to be any clue to their existence. Whatever may be true of
things which have not cooperated with Cp, the things that can be ob-
jects of science or of any genuine reference have entered the universe
of discourse by making some difference which organs of observation
can detect. The fact that human judgments about existence have to
be made under the control of this universe of discourse is what is
meant by insistance upon experience and empirical evidence.
I have sought thus far to avoid raising the question whether or
not things are transformed by the cooperation of Cp. Without the
cooperation of Cp, there is no explanation of immediacy belonging to
the product X. It may be said that no explanation is necessary.
To say this is to say that Cp = is a more natural assumption than
Cp > 0, and that the demand for an explanation of the immediacy
of X must itself be justified. Besides, to make such a demand seems
very much like going back on the position thus far defended, that the
world as observed and experienced is our ultimate existential universe
of discourse. It is, however, not the present writer who raises the
question. The interest in formulating a doctrine of realism that
shall be both critical and reasonable is a sufficient motive for con-
sidering that ' ' naive realism ' ' which holds that things when unper-
ceived have the same complement of secondary qualities that they
have when perceived. The naive realist evidently asserts Cp = 0,
in so far as we are concerned with genesis of anything character-
istic of X. It is a question of empirical evidence, and the evidence
is that Cp does contribute its quota to the product, and that the
quota is the immediacy aspect without which there might be a uni-
180 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
verse, but no universe of discourse. In any case the evidence has
to be gathered from a world that has been observed; that is, the
nai've realist has to use the same universe of discourse as the em-
piricist. The world of observed and noted things, of physiology and
experiment, is a world where the constitution of Cp does, apparently,
make a difference. This universe of discourse can not possibly con-
tain the information that another and less determinate class of
things has the same immediacy characteristics as the class of experi-
enced things. The question which the naive realist attempts to
answer would seem to be a logically futile one upon the assumption
Cp = 0, which has to be made in order to save the reduplication of
secondary qualities outside the empirical universe of discourse.
How does the case stand if we make the other assumption, Cp > ?
This assumption regards the organ of observation as a factor which
really cooperates, not in determining "reality," but in determining
experience. From this point of view, to ask what things are like
outside of experience is like asking how a sonata sounds to a man
totally deaf, or whether a man would pronounce French and German
the more correctly if he had no organs of speech ; it is to ask what is
the content of a product when we deny the conditions necessary to
generate the product. To write Cp = is to say there is
mo experience. The naive realist need not deny that. This is
the first step in the idealistic argument, but the next step that
thereby material existence disappears, can not be taken. To
take again our formula CY + Cz + Cp = X, it is evident that
all that happens when Cp is eliminated is that the other factors
are unable to reveal their existence. They do not thereby, however,
cease to exist as conditions which, when the cooperation of C p is
obtained, will produce a determinate X. To say that we can not
know things as they are because we must know them under the con-
ditions of our universe of discourse, reveals a curious conception of
' ' reality. ' ' It is like saying we can not hear the real music because
we have to hear it. A thing is as real in one relation as in another.
The factors Cy and Cz are not less real when they cooperate with Cp
than when they do not. The product X = IxCx, is not less real
than a product Cx, forbidden ever to reveal its presence. But to ask
further concerning the factors that cooperate with Cp, to ask what
they may be in addition to being conditions for the functional opera-
tion of Cp, is to ask an artificial question. The realist, the idealist,
and the empiricist must all start with the same ultimate universe of
discourse, the world with which we have thus far become acquainted.
Whatever the "real universe" has been about, the universe of dis-
course has not stood still through the interval from Thales to Lord
Kelvin. It has been a creature of distinctly radical habits and has
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 181
often enough brought shrill lamentation from its conservative cus-
todians. A more unsatisfactory exponent of eternal verities can
hardly be imagined.
Ill
The above considerations are not favorable to "naive realism,"
using that term in the sense above indicated. They should, however,
encourage a type of realism characterized by a scientific temper and
a spirit of this-worldliness. For after all, ' ' nai've realism " is a kind
of other-worldliness. The realist of the type here advocated will
work within the limits of his natural universe of discourse. It is a
pity that he must be called a realist, for such terms have meaning
only in the setting of polemical alternatives which express issues that
are as good as dead. Such a "realist" who pursues inquiries about
existence will ask his questions and frame his answers in terms of his
empirical subject-matter. What does the problem of perception 1 now
become ? There is no longer any meaning in such a phrase as ' ' the
problem of perception." Perception is one of the processes in the
natural world and its investigation is like the investigation of any
other natural process. There must be various problems of percep-
tion as there are various problems of digestion. What those problems
are depends upon the progress already made, the resources for in-
vestigation, and the difficulties encountered. The problems of percep-
tion will be inquiries into the operations of natural factors, and the
solutions of those problems will be the discovery of how the things in
question go together. The knowledge thus obtained will be a case
of the type of thing symbolized by the expression "Na -f- Cl produce
salt. ' ' If now we recognize that the world of our acquaintance con-
tains the subject-matter of all inquiry about existence and all the
evidence with which to meet the demands of such inquiry, we seem
entitled to say that experience is the ultimate existential universe of
discourse. The term experience does not here mean anything dif-
ferent from empirical fact. It is the content of X generated by
Cy, Cz, and Cp in combination. Experience may not be an altogether
satisfactory name for that product, but there is no particular reason
why it should not be understood, even by those who devote them-
selves to the confusion of pragmatists.
But why, then, use the word experience if we mean the empirical
aggregate thus far envisaged ? I wish a better word were available,
but it should be a word that would keep us reminded that the subject-
matter of existential theory is apperceived as well as perceived, and
1 1 may refer here to the article " Perception and Epistemology " by
Professor F. J. E. Woodbridge in " Essays Philosophical and Psychological in
Honor of William James " for such an account of this question as would be
here in place.
182 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
that the apperceptive factors included in the reference of Cp influ-
ence in a very decisive way the judgments of philosophy. These
judgments often lead to new perceptions and modify existing apper-
ceptions, and so the existential universe of discourse grows. In gen-
erating the subject-matter of human judgments, the human factor
plays a part that can not be overlooked.
WENDELL T. BUSH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
DISCUSSION
MOTOR PROCESSES AND MENTAL UNITY
IN Professor Judd's interesting article on "Motor Processes and
Consciousness" in the issue of this JOURNAL for February 18,
he sets forth his own view with a contrasting background of earlier
theories which make use of ' ' motor processes. ' ' He speaks of Dewey
(1896) and McDougal (1898) as "among the first writers to em-
phasize the importance of motor processes as general conditions of
consciousness"; but says they fail to apply the theory to specific
cases. On the other hand, Miinsterberg, Royce, and I are cited as
dealing with specific cases (the case of the "general idea" being that
selected in my own instance), and as not giving an account of the
"relation of all motor processes to consciousness"; our "formulas
are not comprehensive enough. ' ' The theory of Professor Judd, on
the contrary, repairs these defects in both directions : he accounts for
mental "organization" of all kinds, with the resulting "unity," in
terms of motor processes, and also applies it to specific cases, such as
recognition of particular degrees of unity, of ' ' likeness, ' ' etc.
It is not, then, a question of the details of any theory of either the
general or specific operations of the motor processes, that Professor
Judd speaks of, but the question of the utilization of such processes
for purposes of theory, either of general or of specific organization
in consciousness. This gives his points a certain vagueness; but at
the same time it makes his restrictions more comprehensive and de-
cided, for all the writers cited. Have I, for one, not announced a
general motor theory of mental organization and unity, and not
applied it to other specific cases than just the one Professor Judd
attributes to me ?
Speaking only for myself, I may say that his allusion to my posi-
tion is, in respect to the one problem to which he limits it, in a large
sense correct, but that the limitations he sets upon it are altogether
incorrect; and this bears upon the two matters in which Professor
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 183
Judd finds his own views in advance of those of the other writers
named. I have gone into the questions of mental organization and
recognition of unity through motor processes, both in general and in
reference to particular eases, with results in many respects similar
to those of Professor Judd, as he recognizes for the one case of the
"general idea," The views (1) that mental organization and unity
are always motor in character, and (2) that recognition both of the
"general" and of all other sorts of objects, percepts, or ideas, is
due to distinctive motor processes, are points explicitly taught in
my book "Mental Development" (first edition, March, 1 1895: the
quotations that follow being from that edition). Further, (3) these
are only instances of very varied specific applications made in my
books. To wit: "The assimilation of any one element (of content) to
another, or the assimilation of any two or more such elements tq. a
third, is due to the unifying of their motor discharges in the single
larger discharge, which stands for the apperceived result" (p. 309).
All associations of ideas are explained in the context of this passage
as cases of relative assimilation, due to "synergy" of motor processes.
"Among these elements (motor), the attention strains are of the first
importance: they constitute largely the sense of activity in mental
synthesis or apperception everywhere" 2 (pp. 309-10).
Again, as to perception, which Professor Judd very rightly em-
phasizes "All perception is a case of (such) assimilation. The
motor contribution to each presented object is just beginning to be
recognized" (This in 1895: it is illustrated by cases of "apraxia,"
etc.) : in apraxia, "the central link by which the object is made com-
plete, the synthesis which made the whole complex content a thing
for recognition and for use, this is gone" (pp. 311-12).
As to the employment of this for consciousness generally a
thing which Professor Judd also rightly values; "Every two ele-
ments whatever, connected in consciousness, are so only because they
have motor effects in common" (italics in the original, p. 315). "In
recognition, they have so much in common that they are presented
as one" (p. 315). In the same connection an analysis of attention
is made which distinguishes the motor processes for individual recog-
nition from those of " class- recognition " or "generalization," the
*And summarized still earlier in an article in Mind, January, 1894. (See
"Fragments in Philosophy and Science," especially, pp. 181 ff.)
* Professor James recognizes and quite adequately describes my view as the
" synergy " theory of unity in his Princeton address, " The Knowing of Things
Together" (see Psychological Review, II., 1895, p. 118). As to the actual
working of the interaction of sensory and motor factors as a universal thing,
it is discussed in the section on " Sensori-Motor Association," " Mental Devel-
opment," Chapter XV., No. 3.
184 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
latter proceeding upon the differences of motor processes of the dif-
ferent senses.
As to unity and identity: "the mental demand for identity is
really a demand, i. e., a tendency to act in one way upon a variety
of experiences" (italics in the original, p. 323 ). 3 In the chapter in
which the motor theory of generalization is developed, that theory
is not limited to one application, as Professor Judd supposes; the
following summary from p. 329 is to the point: "Apperception is
genetically the simple fact of motor habit, with the assimilations and
associations to which it gives rise. Motor habit is the great devour-
ing thing that throws its arms around all mental details and unifies
them in its embrace. The most refined and subtle forms of it take
place in the attention. Attention supplies the form to every con-
tent. Attention, representing as it does the most refined forms of
motor reaction upon revived mental content, its adjustments are the
medium of conception, thought, reasoning, of all possible groupings
and arrangings in the mind. Thought exhibits, therefore, a new
stage in motor accommodation. It shows the organism 's adjustments
to the relationships of truth, as memory, perception, sensation show
its adjustments to those of fact."
Many such passages might be cited, showing the application of
the theory to specific cases; 4 but it is not necessary; for the whole
book ("Mental Development") is so saturated with the motor
theory, both in general and in its detailed applications, that it stands
3 Cf. Judd, article cited, p. 89.
4 As to other specific instances: in my address on "Selective Thinking"
(Psychological Review, January, 1898), reprinted in "Development and Evolu-
tion," the motor theory is applied to " selective thinking," or " the systematic
determination of contents as true " ( " Movements' it is which, by their synergy
or union, give unity and organization to the mental life," " Development and
Evolution," p. 248 ; " novelty, variety, detail of experience, can be organized in
the mental life only in so far as it can be accommodated to by action; if this
can not take place, it must remain a brute and unmeaning shock, however oft-
repeated the experience may be," ibid., p. 249 ) . See also " Social and Ethical
Interpretations," 1897, chapter III., 3. In the work "Thought and Things,"
Vol. I., chapter III., the construction of the simplest mental objects is shown
to be due to the development of special interests and dispositions fundamentally
motor in character; and in Vol. II. of the same work, theories are worked out
in which contradiction and negation, as well as identity and consistency, are
considered as meanings possible only through variations in motor organization
and inhibition. So, too, in the same work, the " inner control " factor which
constitutes the " self," is found to be a segregation of motor tendencies and
dispositions 1 ; while the " individuation " of objects, at every stage of mental
development the treatment of contents as in any sense individual units, with
the concepts of unity, plurality, group, etc. is found to involve fundamental
motor organization. Surely, no lack of attempts, at any rate, to work out
specific cases!
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 185
out almost in every section. I have no interest in calling attention
to this save that of being accurately represented. Indeed, when
Professor Judd's excellent "Psychology" came out, a cursory read-
ing showed me that our respective views went well together on this
point. : but as he had not noticed it, it seemed unnecessary for me to
speak of it, especially as I had then no time to read his work with
care. Since, however, he now cites my views, himself finding the
same position in principle common to his work and mine, and yet
represents me as failing to see its generality and also to give it
special applications, I think it only proper to say that in this he is
mistaken. Of course we "motor-men" 5 welcome so able a coadjutor,
and I do not mean for an instant to imply that Professor Judd has
intentionally misrepresented me. But I have now for a decade so
"harped" upon the motor factor, both in my publications and in
my lectures, that I had begun to fear that I might be called a crank
on the subject.
J. MARK BALDWIN.
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVEBSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Essays on Evolution, 1889-1907. EDWARD BAGNALL POULTON. Oxford:
Clarendon Press. 1908.
Professor Poulton is already known to many readers through his
instructive little book on " The Colors of Animals " (International Scien-
tific Series, 1890). To the zoologist his name is chiefly identified with
important work upon protective coloration and " mimicry " among insects.
The present collection of essays will be of interest alike to the general
reader and to the special student of evolutionary problems. An ardent
champion of the doctrine of natural selection in its most uncompromising
form, Poulton remains faithful, throughout these days of hostile criti-
cism, to the orthodox interpretations of " mimicry," " warning coloration,"
etc. His opening chapter, the introduction, is largely devoted to a protest
against those twin fads of the hour, mutation and Mendelism; 1 and more
particularly against the influence of Bateson upon current English biology.
That active critic and investigator, and with him his school, are indicted
under six heads, of which the last three are : " The exaggerated estimate
of the importance for evolution of, first, Bateson's work on variation,
secondly, Mendel's interesting discovery " ; " The contemptuous deprecia-
1 1 recall the remark made to me in conversation by Professor Mtinsterberg
about a decade ago to the effect " You and I are the motor-men on the psy-
chological electric car! " We are glad to have other motor-men with us, but
we don't want to lose our own job!
1 One may speak thus without calling in question the genuineness of certain
important and well-attested facts.
186 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tion of other lines of investigation directly inspired by the work and
teaching of Darwin and Wallace " ; and " The natural consequence of the
last: a wide-spread belief among the ill-informed that the teachings of
the founders of modern biology are abandoned." By zoologists of this
school Professor Poulton's protest will doubtless be regarded as the ful-
mination of a hopeless reactionary; but we believe that the unbiased
reader will have a good deal of sympathy with it. And those, at least,
who have seen many of their youthful idols thrown down by these same
ruthless hands, will take considerable personal satisfaction in this spirited
counter-attack upon the destroyers.
It is interesting to note that while Morgan 2 finds strong support for
the mutation hypothesis in the phenomena of protective and mimetic
resemblance, it is precisely in this field that Poulton believes its operation
to be utterly excluded. " It is as unlikely that a key could be made to
fit a complicated lock by a number of chance blows upon a blank piece of
metal, as that the elaborate pattern on the wings of a butterfly should
have been reproduced on those of its mimic by Mutation" (p. xxiii). In
a later chapter, after reciting the various methods by which transparency
is brought about in the wings of those butterflies which are said to
" mimic " hymenoptera, he feels warranted in declaring : " The compari-
son of these details is almost a demonstration of the operation of the
Darwinian theory." Granting the facts as stated, they certainly do offer
strong evidence for the view that the usefulness of the end to be attained
has stood in some causal relation to its realization. And natural selection
is the only (scientific) hypothesis extant which is consistent with this
assumption in the present case. Is there not just a bit of overconfidence,
however, in the claim (p. 267) " that, even if the theories which have been
proposed as substitutes for Natural Selection have not been destroyed in
single Sections of this essay and I confidently believe that they have been
thus destroyed over and over again their most convinced supporters will
admit that they must yield to the accumulated pressure of all the argu-
ments here brought forward"? Our opponents do not commonly obey u
summons to surrender as promptly as all that !
Even suppose, however, that the main contention of de Vries and the
mutationists be granted, and that we admit the inability of the selection
of ordinary individual or quantitative variations to raise permanently the
mean of the species, " it is obvious that the variational material for evolu-
tion would be reinforced by no new category. The only effect would be
to reduce the old category. The power which Darwin and others believed
to reside in minute variations generally would be shown to exist in a part
and not the whole of these" (p. xxxix). This criticism would evidently
not apply to mutations of considerable magnitude, for the occurrence of
great and abrupt modifications might obviate the acknowledged difficulty
regarding the " pre-usef ul " stages of organs. It is true, we have no
satisfactory evidence for such a sudden method of acquiring useful
structures.
2 " Evolution and Adaptation."
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 187
After a brief discussion of the phenomena of Mendelism and the
claims of the Mendelians, he writes : " I should be the last to undervalue
these results, but their true worth is not enhanced by such astonishing
exaggeration as that which appears in the passage I have quoted. . . . The
human mind is so constituted that a touch of megalomania is to be ex-
pected, is even to be regarded with sympathy, in the first flush of a new
victory over the unknown. . . . But to suppose that the problem of evolu-
tion is thereby solved, or is likely to be solved, is unreasonable" (p.
xxxiii). And again: "It is probable that the part played by Mendel's
principle in evolution is limited to the prevention, in certain cases, of the
supposed ' swamping effect of intercrossing' " (p. xxxiv).
The succeeding chapters (the "essays" proper) are ten in number,
dealing, respectively, with " A Naturalist's Contribution to the Discussion
upon the Age of the Earth"; " What is a Species? "; " Theories of Evolu-
tion " ; " Theories of Heredity " ; " The Bearing of the Study of Insects
upon the Question ' Are Acquired Characters Hereditary ? ' " ; "A Re-
markable Anticipation of Modern Views on Evolution " ; " Thomas Henry
Huxley and the Theory of Natural Selection " ; " Natural Selection the
Cause of Mimetic Resemblance and Common Warning Colors " ; " Mim-
icry and Natural Selection " ; and " The Place of Mimicry in a Scheme
of Protective Coloration." They are arranged in a logical, rather than a
chronological, order. Only one (the last) was written for the present
volume, though many have been revised and modified. The essays are of
very unequal value, and there is, as would be expected, considerable over-
lapping and repetition.
The author's own standpoint, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, is
"straight" natural selection. Lamarckism is rejected after considerable
discussion and the presentation of some very forceful, if not wholly new,
objections. The treatment throughout the volume is that of a partisan
rather than of a judicial critic, though, on the whole, it is moderate in
tone. The following sentence will doubtless arouse instant dissent in the
minds of many biologists : " The more we study the characters of animals
in general, even though we at first can see no utility, the more we come
to admit this principle, and to believe that either now or in some past
time the characters have been useful" (p. 106). He means, apparently,
all characters. Had he said most characters, or the fundamental char-
acters, there would have been no room for difference of opinion. Such
claims, moreover, are not necessary to the theory of natural selection, nor
do we grant that " if inutility could be proved for any large class of
characters, the theory would certainly be destroyed as a wide-reaching and
significant process" (p. 107). It may well be that the superficial "diag-
nostic " characters of the taxonomist are largely useless to the organism,
as has been frequently asserted of late. We must concede, nevertheless,
that in matters of bionomics the opinion of a well-trained naturalist,
having a " speaking acquaintance " with a myriad of living forms, is
worth vastly more than that of the average paraffin-imbedding, section-
cutting, oil-immersion type of biologist, who is not over-particular as to
just what species he borrows his material from, and who does not always
188 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
V
seem to bear in mind that living organisms are just as much realities as
are (stained) cells and nuclei.
Essay number VI. deals with little-known and extremely interesting
facts in regard to an English anthropologist, James Cowles Prichard,
who, more than eighty years ago, 8 anticipated the now dominant views
regarding the inheritance of acquired characters. Indeed, his utterances
on this subject have such a distinctly modern sound that I can not for-
bear following Poulton in quoting from them. " It appears to be a gen-
eral fact," writes Prichard, "that all connate varieties of structure, or
peculiarities which are congenital, or which form a part of the natural
constitution impressed on an individual from his birth, or rather from
the commencement of his organization, whether they happen to descend
to him from a long inheritance or to spring up for the first time in his
own person for this is, perhaps, altogether different are apt to reappear
in his offspring. It may be said, in other words, that the organization of
the offspring is always modeled according to the type of the original
structure of the parent.
" On the other hand, changes produced by external causes in the ap-
pearance or constitution of the individual are temporary, and, in general,
acquired characters are transient ; they terminate with the individual and
have no influence on the progeny."
And these theoretic statements are supported by some of the well-
known arguments. It must be added, however, that Prichard was not
consistent in his adherence to these views and that the latter, together
with some interesting foreshadowings of the evolution theory, were sup-
pressed in later editions of his work.
Naturally the various phenomena of protective coloration and mimetic
resemblance take a leading place in the volume at hand. The author re-
gards the original " mimicry " theory of Bates as largely (but not wholly)
supplanted by the theory of " common warning coloration " (" synapose-
matic coloration," in Poulton's language) originated by Fritz Miiller.
The former recognized only the imitation of offensive, and therefore
" warningly " colored, insects by supposedly inoffensive and edible ones.
According to the latter hypothesis, the " mimics " may be, and commonly
are, likewise offensive. The ill-flavored, or otherwise repellant, insects
of a given region so the theory runs adopt a common type of warning
coloration. Thus the insect-eating animals of this geographical section
learn to distinguish objectionable forms more readily than if a different
"danger signal" had to be learned anew for each species encountered.
It is needless to add that all these color patterns are supposed to have
been acquired through the natural selection of advantageously colored
individuals, without any conscious efforts on the part of the insects.
It is well to note, however, that the very existence of "warning"
coloration has recently been called in question, and that by no meana
all biologists agree as to the significance of the facts of mimetic resemb-
lance. Poulton and those of his manner of thinking have the advantage
8 " Researches into the Physical History of Mankind," 2d edition, 1826.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 189
of offering an explanation which is at least intelligible, however great a
tax it may impose on the imagination. And they have the advantage
and a great one! of a first-hand acquaintance with the facts in question.
It is easy enough to write with flawless logic against the existence of one
or another type of protective resemblance, while seated in the seclusion
of one's study; but in this case, as elsewhere, it is apt to be true that
"seeing is believing."
It would seem futile, however, in the present uncertain condition of
our knowledge in this field, to draw up such an elaborate classification of
adaptive colors as Poulton here offers us. Some four types and ten sub-
types are distinguished, according to their hypothetical significance in
the bionomics of the animal, each distinguished by a descriptive name of
Greek origin. This strikes us as a little premature. Who can tell but
many of these rather uncouth words will prove to be stillborn? We also
wonder whether Poulton has always been duly critical in accepting the
statements and interpretations of others. Many alleged illustrations are
offered us of one or another of the phenomena under discussion, for which
one more sceptical on this subject would certainly have demanded better
evidence than is here offered us. We have in mind, for example, that
remarkable lepidopterous larvae (p. 253) the front part of whose body
has been moulded by natural selection into close resemblance to an ant,
while the remainder of the body represents some burden which the hypo-
thetical ant is dragging after it! We should like 'to know, also, whether
the current statement (cited by Poulton) as to the existence of a phos-
phorescent " lure " in the case of certain deep-sea fishes is anything more
than a surmise. Experiment, or even direct observation, showing the
real function of this organ, is, of course, out of the question, and it is
more than possible that even the phosphorescence of the tentacle has
merely been inferred from its structure. (The reviewer does not have
access to the original descriptions.) Nevertheless it is stated, without any
qualification, that the fishes in question " have a phosphorescent lure at-
tractive to the other fish on which they feed" (p. 378). Perhaps they do,
but is this anything more than a plausible surmise? In general, we
think that, throughout the volume, the distinction has not always been
carefully drawn between fact and interpretation. We are disappointed,
too, by the slight mention of such experimental evidence as exists for
the reality of warning coloration among animals.
Now and then we meet with what sounds like a bit of vicious teleology,
though the author would doubtless repudiate such an interpretation of his
words. Referring to the faithfully figured " fungus spots " upon the
wing of the leaf butterfly (Kallima), he tells us that "these tall, black
scales doubtless represent [tc], in form as well as in colour, the fructifi-
cation in the centre of a patch of leaf -attacking fungus, perhaps the very
kind which at a later stage of development produce the holes suggested
by the 'windows' on another part of the wing surface" (p. 206). The
endeavor to translate this statement into terms of natural selection, re-
garded merely as the survival of the fittest, eeems to the reviewer to
190 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
reveal grave difficulties, either in that theory itself or in Poulton's inter-
pretation of these particular facts.
FRANCIS B. SUMNER.
WOODS HOLE, MASS.
The Psychology of Advertizing: A Simple Exposition of the Principles
of Psychology in Their Relation to Successful Advertizing. WALTER
DILL SCOTT. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. 1908. Pp. 269.
This handsome book, whose mechanical make-up illustrates Professor
Scott's theory of advertizing, is dedicated to " that increasing number of
American business men who successfully apply science where their pre-
decessors were confined to custom." The publishers advertize the book
as " an indispensable business-building book." The first eleven chapters
give a simple outline of such processes as memory, feelings, instincts,
suggestion, will, habit, laws of progressive thinking. The next four chap-
ters are more special: XII., "Attention Value of Small and of Large
Spaces"; XIII., "Mortality Kate of Advertizing"; XIV., "The Psychol-
ogy of Food Advertizing " ; XV., " The Unconscious Influence in Street
Railway Advertizing." Chapter XVI. discusses the " Questionnaire
Method, Illustrated by an Investigation upon Newspapers." Chapter
XVII. concludes the book with a useful bibliography. The book has no
index, but includes a list of illustrations, which are mostly facsimiles of
actual advertisements.
Professor Scott writes interestingly, and it is not unlikely that some
business men may be attracted to psychology by a practical study that
appeals to a strong practical interest. The illustrations of advertizing
are drawn for the most part from the advertizing sections of popular
illustrated magazines of the better sort. It is to be hoped that Professor
Scott's interest in applied psychology will stimulate other psychologists
to test the value of their theories by means of practical observation and
experiment. Since 1900 our author has been writing, not only on the
theory and psychology of advertizing, but also on such subjects as the
psychology of impulse and the psychology of public speaking.
As a rather surprising sign of the times, one notes that the author
marshals a " selected list of the best books on advertizing " that includes
forty titles in English and mentions twenty-three American magazines
devoted to advertizing. Psychologists would be interested in correspond-
ing lists for England, France, Germany, Japan, and other countries that
believe " it pays to advertize." The bibliography also gives us twenty-
two titles of "books on psychology which are most helpful to business
men." This particular list would most likely undergo some revision if it
were voted on by psychologists and business men generally. For instance,
Wundt's " Outlines of Psychology " can hardly be considered popular
enough for the average man interested in plain-sailing applied psychology.
Over a hundred titles of articles on advertizing found in non-technical
journals add to our impression that there is a wide-spread interest in
advertizing and its psychology. Inquiry about business men's actual
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 191
psychological reading, however, would show, at least in some parts of the
country, that great store is set by such books as Hudson's " Psychic Law "
(and other weird psychic things). Perhaps books like Professor Scott's
will do their part in pointing out to the laity the clearer paths of psy-
chological progress.
Perhaps the most interesting chapter to psychologists is the study of
the advertizing value of large, as compared with small, spaces. The gen-
eral reader may find most food for thought in the last chapter, where
newspaper reading is studied. And yet, such is the irony of fate in much
that is called applied psychology, that we must confess to finding the least
psychology in the most valuable chapters! However, we can hardly
charge that to Professor Scott's account. His work is somewhat of the
pioneering stripe, and we must be thankful for what he has given us and
continue to hope that applied psychology will soon come to its own.
This and other like books point out the advisability of cultivating the
field of ethology, the psychology of character, in such wise that we may
come to understand something about which the votaries of eugenics
care much what things go together and work together in practical con-
duct and character.
It may give point to the last remark to instance a few cases in which
Professor Scott's interpretation of the average man's reaction is rather
doubtful. (1) In discussing how memory is keen in the case of facts
exciting our feelings, the author says (p. 17) : " The advertizement of
Gold Dust pleases me and convinces me that the product is good. The
advertizement of Rough on Rate amuses me because it is so excessively
silly. It does not please me, does not convince me of the desirability of
the goods." Trying these advertizements on others as well as on myself,
I can not corroborate Professor Scott's conclusion. To me (and others)
the Rough on Rats advertizement, exaggerated as it is, conveys the idea
that one had better invest in Rough on Rats so as to avoid the household
confvsion brought about by the impetuous chase after a rat. On the
other hand, the Gold Dust Twins do not seem as " cute " to those familiar
with pickaninnies as to those who seldom see them. Both advertizements
are funny and silly, and neither convinces me of the " desirability of the
goods." Nevertheless at this moment I can not think of a single rat
poison except Rough on Rats, and I can recall the name of Pearline and
other washing powders. Were I obliged to purchase rat poison in a
hurry, I should undoubtedly get Rough on Rats, little as I am convinced
of its desirability. (2) The importance of individual differences and the
danger of generalization from a subjective basis are illustrated by the
author's statement about the most pleasing among a number of bisected
lines (p. 27). We are told that " if a straight vertical line is to be
divided into two unequal parts, you prefer to have the division come above
the middle" (doubtless many estheticians would agree with this state-
ment). I tried the experiment of "pleased choice" on four persons,
with the following result: The mother of a family sided with Professor
Scott, " because the line looked blacker and sturdier ! " Her sister and
192 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the negro man-servant chose the line cut in the middle, because it is
"even." I chose (instinctively, while first glancing over the book) the
line cut nearest the bottom, because when I was a child a slender stiletto
always aroused my imaginative enthusiasm. (3) In discussing the adver-
tizement of a lady suffering from obesity, our author says (p. 43), " I feel
sorry for her and sympathize with her in her affliction. She certainly
feels about the matter just as I should, and consequently it is easy for
me to imagine myself in her stead and to feel the need for relief from
obesity and to take the necessary steps to secure such relief." Now, cer-
tain people of my acquaintance are assuredly not affected in any such
fashion. " Washing fat away " by the use of an " external remedy " does
not appeal to them, nor do they feel sorry for the very comfortable-looking
lady in the picture. Perhaps their " advertizing" sympathy is ill-developed.
(4) The advertizement of the New York Central, on page 177, is labeled as
having " weak attention value in any size." It is headed " 5 Pointers,"
and the numerals, 1 to 5, appear in succession on the left-hand side of
the page. In spite of the fact that none of Professor Scott's fifty sub-
jects mentioned this full-page advertizement, I am inclined to think that
further investigation would show that travelers intending to visit the
territory covered by the New York Central, while they might not notice
the advertizement in a rapid scanning of advertizements for experimental
purposes, would read the advertizement when their prevailing interest was
connected with the attitude of "travel." Much depends on prevailing
attitude and interest, and advertizements overlooked in one mood may be
carefully read in another. The present writer, who travels a great deal,
was struck by this advertizement and read it through carefully. In short,
this advertizement may serve the specific purpose for which it was in-
tended, and that is just about what an advertizement ought to do.
Professor Scott has an interesting table, on page 236, wherein it is
shown that interest in local news, political news, and financial news far
exceeds that in the other items of news. A thorough-going ethological
treatment would connect these results with the author's chapter on in-
stincts. In any scheme of applied psychology the appropriative, gregari-
ous, and expressive instincts would have a large treatment. These news-
paper results would connect together the fundamental informational or
sensational instincts in a very suggestive manner.
The book is decidedly worth reading, especially by the increasing
number of hard-headed folk who believe that a science, like a soul, is
known unto all men by its fruits. Unquestionably one of the fruits of
the study of psychology in any of its phases is general culture, another ia
increase of analytic power and there are other admirable fruits. But, in
the long run, the public in general will judge the science of mind by its
practical explanatory and suggestive power. Books like this deserve to be
welcomed on all hands.
THOMAS P. BAILEY.
UNIVEBSITY OF MISSISSIPPI.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 193
The Fragments of Empedocles. Translated into English verse by WILLIAM
ELLERY LEONARD. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co. 1908.
Pp. viii -f 92.
This translation of the " Fragments of Empedocles " deserves credit
for the extent to which it preserves the exact meaning, together with the
beauty and power of the original. The translator is primarily a literary
workman attracted to Empedocles as poet. Yet a careful study of Em-
pedocles as philosopher is made the basis of the work, and in a general
introduction and explanatory notes following the text the needs of stu-
dents of philosophy are sufficiently kept in view so that the book will be
a useful manual for the study of Empedocles.
A poetic rendering of the fragments, if ably executed, is, in an impor-
tant respect, a better basis for their interpretation than the most pains-
taking prose translation. If, by the retention of the poetic form in which
the writings " On Nature " and " The Purifications " were originally cast,
the translator enables us to fall imaginatively into the spirit of their con-
ception, he has given a considerable aid towards their correct appreciation.
Apart from the general inadequacy of translations, we discover in the
best prose versions of the fragments an ineffectiveness due to our recog-
nition that the texture of Empedocles's thought is poetic. The philos-
opher brings to view a world drama, with love and strife in alternate
ascendancy; a panorama of cosmic activities, where organic life arises
under striking, almost spectacular conditions. Empedocles has a method
of explanation that is essentially poetic. In exact reasoning he is not
the equal of other early Greek thinkers, while he excels in the variety
and vital quality of his thought. Even his so-called anticipations of
science attest the daring imagination of one temperamentally a poet. It is
for this reason that by producing a strong and dignified rendering of the
fragments in English verse, Dr. Leonard has performed a more significant
service for the study of Empedocles than the translator ordinarily achieves.
The general fidelity to the original is closer than would be foreseen as
possible under the conditions of metrical form. The Greek text of each
fragment accompanying its translation offers a ready means of check
where departures have been necessary for clearness or adaptation to poetic
requirements. Besides unessential variances by which the meaning is
not affected, in a few important passages a free rendering is made which
might give rise to misconception. But literal translations are usually
given in the notes. In Fragment 6, rlaaapa fap ndvrtov ^cufiara appears in
translation, " the fourfold root of all things." rdura, by which Empedocles
makes facile reference to the primordial four, ia rendered " the elements,"
by supplying arot^t'ta, a term nowhere used by Empedocles. In the trans-
lation of Fragment 21, there is an obscurity not occasioned by a difficulty
of the text in the line " Aught that behooves the elemental forms."
EDITH HENRY JOHNSON.
AUSTIN, TEXAS.
194 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Prodi Diadochi in Platonis Cratylum Commentaria. Edidit GEORGIUS
PASQUALI. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. 1908. Pp. xiii + 149.
The present edition is clearly superior to its predecessors, and we may
be grateful alike to editor and publisher for a product which may be used
with confidence along with Kroll's edition of "Proclus on Plato's Re-
public " and Diehl's edition of his " Commentary on the TimaBus." In
addition to the text and the apparatus criticus at the foot of the page the
editor has provided four indices, dealing, respectively, with authors quoted
or referred to, with noteworthy words, with etymologies and glosses, and
with neo-platonic elucidations and comments to the Cratylus. The last-
mentioned index, though occupying less than two pages, is invaluable.
The index of noteworthy words is good ; but one wishes to have a complete
list if any is to be given.
Intrinsically the commentary or rather the extracts, for only such
survive of Proclus on the Cratylus does not compare favorably with those
which he supplied to the Republic and to TimaBus; but, even so, there are
nuggets of much value, though relatively few, to be found in the deposit
of the neo-platonic stream of criticism and elucidation, which flowed gen-
erously about the Cratylus. Occasionally a commentator had the insight
to perceive that Plato was indulging in a frolic, but in general what he
says is taken as if meant in all seriousness. To be sure, Plato had a
serious purpose even in his jesting, and now and then Proclus helps us to
a better appreciation of his thought and argument.
W. A. HEIDEL.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE DE METAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE. January,
1909. Correspondance inedite de Ch. Renouvier et de Ch. Secretan (pp.
1-47). -A set of letters concerning many philosophical opinions and
writings of the authors, enlivened by personal and human touches.
L' experience morale (pp. 48-51) : F. RAUH. - The preface to a second edi-
tion of M. Rauh's book of this title. Le premier systeme de Nietzsche ou
philosophic de I'illusion (pp. 52-86) : CH. ANDLER. - A study of Nietzsche's
first period in which his philosophy is not a theory but a psychology of
knowledge, derived from Schopenhauerian and Darwinian sources.
Etudes critiques. Sur de recents travaux de philosophie physique d'ATiel
Eey: H. MICAULT. Enseignement. Psychologic et pedagogic ou science
et art: L. DUGAS. Questions pratiques. Conditions dfune doctrine morale
educative (suite) : J. DELVOLVE. Supplement.
ANNALEN DER NATURPHILOSOPHIE. Band 7, Heft 4. De-
cember, 1908. Zur Regulierungsfunktion im Zentralnerv encyst em (pp.
353-372) : F. SIMBRIGER. - An inconclusive consideration of the problem
of the unitary action of the cortex from the physiological side. Die
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 195
Begrundung der Energetik durch Leibniz (pp. 373-386) : A. E. HAAS. -
Leibniz first clearly expressed the fact that in transformations of energy
there is no loss or gain, and he marks the climax reached up to the time
of Kobert Mayer and Joule. Zur Entstehung der Arten (pp. 387-392) :
O. NAGEL. - Mechanismus oder Vitalismus (pp. 393-409) : P. FRANK. -
Neither mechanism nor vitalism may stand upon " parsimony of causes,"
since the former escapes the " constants " of the other only through the
introduction of hypotheses which the latter does not need. The questions
they discuss are three. Die historische Analyse des Energieprinzips (pp.
410-416) : A. E. HAAS. - The principle of energetics is compensation, which
satisfies both of the old philosophical demands for permanence and for
unity. Politische Okonomie und Energetik (pp. 417-428) : O. NAGEL. -
An attempt to apply mechanical terminology to social phenomena. Eine
Revision der Grundgesetze der Materie und der Energie (pp. 429-443) :
G. N. LEWIS. -A new system of mechanics proposed to unify modern
conceptions, in which mass shall be dependent upon velocity, the moment
equal mv, and kinetic energy vary between \mv and mv, as the velocity
varies between and the velocity of light. Dedekind und Bolzano (pp.
411 149) : J. BAUMANN. - Their theories of infinity. Von Cyons neue
Grundlegung der Mathematik (pp. 450458) : J. BAUMANN. - A discussion
of the theory that the labyrinths are the seat of the mathematical sense
for space and time. Psychographischen Studien. II. Julius Robert
Mayer (pp. 459498) : W. OSTWALD. - The contrast between Mayer and
Davy emphasized in the unhappy disposition, narrow sympathies, and bad
fortune of the former. Mayer's peculiar freedom from attachment to
established ways of thinking. Neue Bucher (pp. 499-525): W. O. -W.
Pollack, Die philosophischen Grundlagen der wissenschaftlichen Forsch-
ung. E. Becher, Philosophische Voraussetzungen der exakten Natur-
wissenschaften. H. Witte, fiber den gegenwartigen Stand der Frage
einer mechanischen Erklarung der elektrischen Erscheinungen. E. Rig-
nano, Uber die Vererbung erworbener Eigenschaften. R. Goldschied,
Entwicklungswerttheorie. Entwicklungsokonomie. Menschendkonomie.
C. Wenzig, Die Weltanschauung en der Gegenwart im Gegensatz und
Ausgleich. H. Driesmans, Damon Auslese. W. James, Der Prag-
matismus. E. Hormeffer, Wege um Leben. A. Wagner, Streifzuge
durch des Gebiet der modernen Pflanzenkunde. R. Sleeswijk, Uber die
Bedeutung des psychologischen Denkens in der Medizin. C. Siegel,
Herder als Philosoph. G. F. Lipps, Mythenbildung und Erkenntniss.
Die Philosophic im Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Festschrift
fur Kuno Fischer, herausgegeben von W. Windelband. M. Verworn, Die
Mechanik des Geisteslebens. E. A. Boucke, Goethe's Weltanschauung
auf historischer Grundlage.
Ktilpe, Oswald. Immanuel Kant: Darstellung und Wiirdigung. Leip-
zig: B. G. Teubner. 1909. Pp. vi -f 163.
Mauge, Francis. Le Rationalisme comme hypothese methodologique.
Paris : Felix Alcan. 1909. Pp. xii + 606.
Richert, Hans. Schopenhauer; Seine Personlichkeit, seine Lehre, seine
Bedeutung. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. 1909. Pp. 114.
196 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Vial, Louis Charles Emile. Les Erreurs de la Science. Paris: chez
1'auteur. 1908. Pp. iii + 446.
Voss, Dr. A. Uber das Wesen der Mathematik. Leipzig und Berlin:
Druck und Verlag von B. G. Teubner. 1908. Pp. 98.
NOTES AND NEWS
To THE EDITORS OF THE JOURNAL OP PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND SCI-
ENTIFIC METHODS
GENTLEMEN: THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY reported in its issue of
March 4 that I am about to publish this spring a new book entitled
"Psychology and Crime." I beg to say that it is a misunderstanding.
The book which has appeared under this title is a London edition of my
little volume called "On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and
Crime," which appeared here last spring. The English publisher has
made this change of title without my consent and without my previous
knowledge. The only books which I am to publish this spring are " Psy-
chotherapy " (Moffat, Yard & Co., New York) and " The Eternal Values "
(Houghton, Mifflin, Boston). The latter volume is in its chief parts an
English version of my " Philosophic der Werte."
Very sincerely yours,
HUGO MUNSTERBERG.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,
March 13, 1909.
THE next meeting of the Western Philosophical Association will occur
in St. Louis, the 9th and 10th of April. The meeting is held in St. Louis
to commemorate the semi-centennial of the history of philosophy in the
West, which had St. Louis for its early center. It is proposed that those
who contribute papers keep in mind the different phases of the philosophy
emphasized by this early movement, especially Hegelianism. Informa-
tion regarding the subjects of these papers may be had by addressing the
secretary, Professor John E. Boodin, University of Kansas, Lawrence,
Kansas.
THE Rivista Filosofica and the Rivista di Filosofica e Scienze Affini
have been merged. The new journal is to be called the Rivista di Filosofia.
Communications should be addressed to Professor B. Varisco at the Uni-
versity of Rome.
THE death of Dr. Simon Summerville Laurie, professor emeritus in
the University of Edinburgh, is announced. Professor Laurie wrote
much on the subjects of ethics and education.
THE Society of Anthropology of Paris celebrates the fiftieth anni-
versary of its foundation on the seventh, eighth, and ninth of the
coming July.
THE death has been reported of Dr. Herman Ebbinghaus, Professor
of Psychology at the University of Halle.
VOL. VI. No. 8. APRIL 15, 1909.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE MYSTICAL AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPT
/CURRENT usage of the term "mysticism" is imprecise and in-
^-^ consistent except at one point. Speculative or epistemolog-
ical mysticism is well understood as a theory of immediacy, and
specifically such immediacy as causes the finite search to cease because
the other is no longer another. Professor Royce has given
us a searching analysis of this epistemology, 1 but his plan did
not require an investigation of the genesis of the experiences out of
which speculative mysticism grows. Professor James names four
marks of the mystical state ineffability, noetic quality, transiency,
and passivity 2 but his attention, in turn, was upon the value rather
than upon the genesis of the experience, and consequently the marks
that he enumerates are borrowed without thorough criticism from the
unscientific introspection of the mystic himself. Leuba, Murisier,.
Delacroix, and others have worked out either special aspects of
mysticism or the psychology of a particular group of mystics, and
in these studies there are many illuminating glimpses into the broad
field of mysticism as a whole. Yet I know of no attempt to run a
line around this broad field so as to determine its boundaries, nor
have we, so to speak, a general physiography of it. The content
and value of the mystical experience rather than its form and
genesis have been the favorite topics of investigation. 3 As a result,
psychologists feel free to use the term mysticism in any sense that
suits their incidental purposes, 4 and even careful writers on religion
define it with an arbitrariness that practically ignores both psychol-
1 " The World and the Individual," Vol. I., Lectures II., IV., V.
* " Varieties of Religious Experience," pp. 380 ff.
* I have attempted elsewhere to show that the merely formal conditions of
ecstasy have much to do with its content. See " The Sources of the Mystical
Revelation," Hibbert Journal, January, 1908, pp. 359-372.
4 For example, mysticism is denned as " the doctrine that events in the
object-world, physical events as well as psychical, are not always subject to
natural law, but are sometimes influenced in a manner that is fundamentally
inexplicable from the standpoint of the causal conception of nature." Mtlnster-
berg, " GrundzOge der Psychologic," I., pp. 170 ff.
197
198 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ogy and history. 5 No wonder that popular speech plays fast and
loose with the term, and that the religious world is in confusion as
to the whole notion of religious experience.
How can we hope to make any approach toward precision in the
use of this term, or secure a basis for a general evaluation of relig-
ious mysticism, unless we first make a general survey of the facts
that seem to call for a common name? Such a survey ought to
show whether or not any definite psychological fact or notion lies at
the basis of the problem, and it will certainly do this if it reveals
the genetic relationships of different types of mysticism.
As a rough attempt at such a survey, a tabular view of "the
mystical" is herewith submitted. In the main it will explain
itself. It takes its start from what is universally recognized as com-
pletely mystical, namely, religious ecstasy, together with the theory
of it and the practise that seeks to realize it. In the next place,
certain less extreme experiences, common to the great mystics on the
road toward ecstasy, and to a multitude of those who never reach
ecstasy at all, fall into place as mystical in the same sense as ecstasy
itself. A convenient name for them is "inspirations." These, in
turn, give rise to a belief and a practise. We next notice that ex-
periences of the same psychological type take place outside of what
is conventionally called religion. We might, indeed, extend the
term inspiration beyond the religious usage. For spiritism gives
us supposed inspiration by a deceased human being, telepathy by a
living one, and clairvoyance and premonition by, perhaps, the na-
ture of things. A common term for the phenomena in this field
has, however, come into general use, namely, "psychical phe-
nomena." For the practise of non-religious inspirations we have
the general term "mediumship." Finally, looking to the historical
genesis of these practises, we come upon the primitive root of the
whole in automatic experiences interpreted as "possession," and
cultivated by the "medicine man," the shaman, or the "witch
doctor."
Complete enumeration is, of course, not intended, but only sug-
gestion of the whole through typical classes. Nor is the table in-
tended as an exhaustive division into mutually exclusive classes.
The table does, however, group together phenomena, beliefs, and
practises that are psychologically coherent, and it indicates the true
psychical and historical genesis of the more developed practises.
The psychical genesis of the whole is the duality, which is yet im-
8 Mysticism is the " attitude of mind which divines and moves toward the
spiritual in the common things of life." F. Granger, " The Soul of a Christian,"
p. 41. " Mysticism is the love of God." W. R. Inge, " Studies of English
Mystics," p. 37.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 199
mediacy, that appears when automatic control occurs,
psychical root of the whole of mysticism. 7
A SURVEY OF THE MYSTICAL
Here is the
THE EXPERIENCE
SUPPOSED
SOUBCE
OB CONTENT
THE DELIBERATE PBACTISE
The supreme mystical state
The attempt to realize God
(religious) :
as the all:
Either Ecstasy or Permanent
Yoga
Automatism
The Christian " Via Negativa "
Supposed form: Complete ab-
sorption or loss of person-
God
Tendency
Christian Science and New
Thought
ality.
Supposed content: Either zero
or infinity.
io\V3.rd
pantheistic
conception
The method: Narrowing of
attention and auto-sugges-
tion.
But these are only limiting
notions.
Incomplete mystical states
Attempts to realize the God
(religious) :
on special occasions or
Inspirations
for special ends:
The experience of the seer;
Oracles and Other Methods of
Sense of guidance or of
Penetrating the Unknown
illumination;' Assurance or
Some Forms of Revivalism
the witness of the spirit;
Pnrl
Holiness Movements and
Sense of divine communion;
\JUCL
Allied Practises
" Sense of presence " ; " An-
esthetic revelation " ; " Cos-
mic consciousness."
or
Gods
Generally
Divine Healing
Transubstantiation
The form: Partial abeyance of
self-control in mental func-
tions. Occasionally, loss of
conceived
as
transcendent
The method: Surrender or
quiescence of will, sugges-
tion (largely social).
muscular control also.
The content: Somewhat spe-
cific ideas which commonly
seem to be self-evidently or
infallibly true.
Incomplete mystical states
Attempts to take advantage of
other than religious:
supposed occult connections:
" Psychic Phenomena "
A Spirit,
Mediumship in its Various
This term includes supposed
A Living Man,
Forms
spirit-communication, telep-
or
athy, clairvoyance, premoni-
The Nature
tion, etc.
of Things
The primitive root of the
Attempts to control spirits:
whole:
Certain Parts .of Magic
Automatic Experiences Inter-
Spirits
Shamanism
preted as Possession
Here belong conversion experiences in which the subject feels that hia
questions are decided for him, or that his attitudes and decisions are wrought
within him by God, or Christ, or the Holy Spirit.
' It is not necessary for my purpose to maintain that a sense of immediacy
to an other appears in connection with all automatisms, as, for instance, mul-
200 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Leaving the details of the survey to explain themselves, I shall
now offer some comments with a view to rendering still more pre-
cise the general character of the whole mystical movement.
1. The contrast between the mystical and the non-mystical upon
which attention has chiefly centered concerns cognition. But cer-
tain phases of this contrast have been neglected. In the intellectual
analysis that we call science, the mind is highly self-controlled
(whatever self-control may ultimately be) ; it is thus that science
seeks to reduce the less known to terms of the better known, the
extraordinary to the ordinary, the complex and obscure to the
simple and obvious. Mysticism, on the other hand, tends to reverse
this process at every point. Having surrendered self-control, the
mystical consciousness can not be analytical or critical. It deals
with wholes rather than their elements, with conclusions rather than
grounds; it reads the ordinary and simple in terms of the extraor-
dinary, the complex, the undefined; in general it affirms, but does
not deny. It is in strict accord with this, that when a mystic under-
takes to philosophize, he is almost certain to pursue an a priori
method and to seek alliance with one or other of the great specula-
tive systems which find it easy to understand being in its totality,
but hard to grasp its parts.
2. While the debate between the mystic and his opponent has
almost always moved within the sphere of epistemology toward the
concept of substance, another aspect of mysticism, and a not less
debatable one, has been relatively unnoticed. Corresponding to the
contrast between self-control and automatic control in cognition,
there is a radical opposition in the sphere of values and purposes.
On the one hand, we have values analyzed, approved, worked for in
the full light of the individualized consciousness ; on the other hand,
we have values hit upon more or less fitfully in conditions of auto-
matic control.
3. If we ask what valuation attitudes are, as a matter of fact,
characteristic of automatic control, we come upon what appears to
be a paradox. At first thought we should expect a reversion toward
primitive instinctive evaluations. In demon-possession, in fact, we
have such a reversion at times, and it is well known that the primal
instinct of sex plays a prominent part in Christian mysticism. It
is likewise true that the mystical state is less differentiated than
the self-controlled state. In spite of all this, however, the practises
tiple personality. Yet such a thesis could make out a better case for itself than
is commonly supposed. The investigation of multiple personality, post-hypnotic
suggestion, hypnotic amnesia, etc., has naturally fixed attention first of all upon
the contrast, the apparent duality. But it would be easy to show that, ordi-
narily, and perhaps always, this duality does not involve psychic discontinuity,
but, on the contrary, involves a sense of immediacy to an other.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 201
included in our survey make, all in all, for the maintenance of ac-
quired moral standards. This is one chief source of their attractive-
ness, as it is also a ground of defense. How is it, then, that
practises that surrender self-control are nevertheless so morally
controlled? The reason is, that when self-conscious or rational con-
trol, with its tendency toward variation from type, ceases, its place
is taken by social control. The habitual, the commonplace, the
socially expected, is what ordinarily comes to the surface. The
oracle, the yogi, the revivalist, all stand for the conservation of
ethical standards. Thus, in spite of the fact that the method of
mysticism is antithetical to moral self-guidance, its product is
ethically conservative.
4. This fact has had momentous historical consequences. When-
ever a rationalistic or scientific movement is seen to be undermining
dogma, religion takes refuge in mysticism. This is not at all be-
cause mysticism has any peculiar competency in the interpretation
of anything, but because it can be relied upon to conserve socially
approved values, and because it promises an immediate experience
of the values that are threatened. Here is the deepest root of super-
naturalism. Its strength lies not in any articulate inspirations that
it has to offer for the most part it has at present no fresh inspira-
tions of its own, but relies upon the inspirations of thousands of
years ago but in its promise of protection against threatened
changes in moral values. For moral progress, therefore, we have to
look elsewhere than to mysticism. Between mysticism and reflective
morality, with its ever-repeated break with customary standards,
there is a fundamental antithesis, namely, that between the highly
individualized, self-controlled ethical will and automatic control
which, as far as it goes, is preindividual and subindividual. When,
therefore, religion becomes strongly ethical, mysticism becomes a
hindrance, and at last, corresponding to the religious reaction from
rationalism toward mysticism, we have a religious reaction from
mysticism toward some sort of ethically progressive faith. Paul
himself, mystic as he was, was able to point out ' ' a still more excel-
lent way," and the churches of to-day are moving out of mysticism
toward this way of socially regenerating love.
5. Therefore, the identification of mysticism with religiousness in
general goes astray. It is false at many points. For not only does
ethically progressive religion break with the authority claimed for
automatic inspirations; and not only is the development of individ-
uality opposed to automatic control; but also, between religious
mysticism, on the one hand, and spiritism, telepathy, and medium-
ship in general, there is no dividing line. The psychical process is
the same, the ground of certainty is the same, the whole forms a
202 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
unit which constitutes the only distinctive basis for a definition of
mysticism.
6. The mystical, then, is simply the automatic in general inter-
preted as ontological immediacy to any being whatever, divine,
human, or subhuman. In strictness, the mystical is not a psycholog-
ical term at all, since ontological interpretation is of its essence.
Perhaps only a few psychologists are incautious at this point, but
certainly the world of culture at the present day does sorely need to
understand: First, That there is no distinctive " mystical ex-
perience, ' ' because the psychical factor in mysticism, the automatic,
is entirely general, and not a kind of experience with distinctive
content of its own. Second, That mysticism is not to be identified
with religion or with any part of it. It is not true that all religion
is mystical, or that all mysticism is religious.
GEORGE A. COE.
NOBTHWESTEBN UNIVEBSITY.
THE BASES FOR GENERALIZATIONS IN SCIENTIFIC
METHODS
IN that all true induction involves generalizing on the basis of
particulars, the question of the conditions under which various
numbers of particulars are required for a generalization stands as a
fundamental question in discussing inductive methods. There is no
doubt that at times we are justified in making ''sweeping state-
ments" on small evidence, statements as to the quality of a certain
brand of note-paper, for instance, on the evidence of a single small
square ; whereas at other times we ask for a more complete test, for
a sample, perhaps, from the middle, the top, and the bottom of a
barrel of apples, or for the examination of some hundreds of Italian
immigrants, before we are ready to come to a conclusion. Several
considerations seem to affect the investigator's judgment of the
sufficient evidence for a generalization. The following classification
attempts to group these in such wise as to suggest the questions one
might well ask oneself before undertaking an investigation or criti-
cizing a piece of work :
A. Only part of the field discussed is investigated.
I. The field shows uniformity
1. Over the field as a whole.
a. Absolute.
(1) Complete isolation possible by direct means.
(2) Complete isolation possible by indirect means.
(3) Delicate technique calls for repetition of experiments.
6. General uniformity.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 203
(1), (2), (3), as under c.
2. Within the several distinct portions of the field.
a and 6, as under 1.
II. The field investigated shows relatively no uniformity.
1. Standard conditions, variations quantitive.
2. Conditions non-standard, or variations non-quantitive.
B. Whole field investigated.
When the total field B, is tested, either descriptions or complete
inductions are drawn up. In such a case no real generalization is
made ; thus the interest of this paper centers in class A.
The most marked contrast within the field of generalization is
between those cases where we draw our conclusions with apparently
reckless trust in a few examples and those where we build our foun-
dations very nearly as wide as the superstructure. Roughly, the dif-
ference is between the more exact sciences and the use of statistical
methods. The difference itself seems to rest on the presence or ab-
sence of our confidence in the representative character of the dif-
ferent examples. When the field of investigation is uniform, as in
the instance of the note-paper mentioned above, a small piece is
enough to test, for we believe all paper will take the ink in the same
way. On the other hand, if the field is as various as the physical
condition of the school children of New York city, a conclusion to be
of real value must rest on the study of some "quorum" of cases,
the more the better.
There may be uniformity over the field investigated as a whole,
or within the several distinct portions of it; that is, we may work
with representatives at large or by districts. Number 2 under I.
covers the latter case, that where we work with classes showing dis-
tinct kinds within them. We then select one example or a group of
examples of each kind to test. The single example is no longer
enough, but the group tested represents all divisions of the total
field. Pasteur used this method in the first of his work with the
disease pebrine. 1 One part of scientific investigation which calls
most for judgment and wide knowledge centers around the ques-
tion of the place of uniformity, the parts to be sampled, if one
is to win a fair idea of the quality of, let us say, a boatload
of grain. Sometimes this method of using a carefully selected
group is called into play where the investigator's interest is in
pointing out or studying the very variation itself, in showing,
for instance, that air in the Alps has fewer germs than air in the
country, and that again than air in the city streets; or in determin-
ing the relative virulence of a medula oblongata infected with rabies,
'"The Life of Pasteur," R. Vallary-Raelot (McClure, Phillips, & Co., New
York, 1906), pp. 118, 120.
204 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
as it dries one, two, or three days. In all these cases, a group of ex-
amples representing each of the different kinds found in the class
as a whole gives the material to work upon.
Where such uniformity as is found belongs to the field as a whole
(I., 1), it is true that we also sometimes call for a small group in-
stead of a single example in testing for the nature of that field, but
such a group is very different, from a logical point of view, from
the selected group. Where complexity of condition, or ignorance,
makes it impossible to be certain of discriminating the eccentric
individual, several are tested three, ten, or twenty guinea-pigs are
inoculated instead of only one. There is no selection here, varia-
tion is generally and vaguely accepted as possible, not specifically
placed. Each example is believed representative of the whole, if a
few examples agree. The headings a and & indicate the distinction
in method between taking one example and such a small group. In
testing the kinds of a field (I., 2), either of the two methods will be
applied to the test for each kind, according to conditions. That is,
we have subheadings a and & under 2 also.
The lowest subdivisions under I., the bracketed numerals, draw
distinctions of method on a new basis, that of the character of the
technique used in experimenting. It is frequently necessary to
bring into play a number of examples of a field in question, not
because no one of them is representative of the field, but because we
have at our command only very complicated means for learning
what we want to learn. In determining the charge of an electric
corpuscle, for instance, it would be satisfactory to rest with the evi-
dence of a single corpuscle, could it be gained directly. As things
are, it is necessary to pass a charge of some strength through moist
air, measure the quantity of water precipitated and the size of a
single drop, and so compute the charge of a single corpuscle. 2 The
reason for bringing into play in this case a much larger amount of
electricity than is necessary to represent the field is that our instru-
ments are not fine enough to deal with less. In biological work the
number of animals used is multiplied similarly. A normal dog is
inoculated with the virus every time that a refractory one is tested,
because we have no other means of being sure of the condition of the
virus. The conditions that lead to this use of a larger portion of the
field because of imperfect technique, I have called those for indirect
isolation. The conditions grouped under (3) are similar. Here we
multiply our tests, perhaps because of the chance of breakage
through a long experiment, or of some slip on our part in very delicate
measurements or tests. Most experiments are, apparently, repeated
2 " The New Knowledge," R. K. Duncan, Part III., Chap. VII.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 205
for this reason before they are announced. In Pasteur's life, how-
ever, one instance is given where a single test was enough, that is,
one instance of the method (I). 3 So far as I can understand it, the
term ' ' control experiment ' ' is used not only for the side test called for
under (2) and (3), but also for the multiple experiment, b. For
the purposes of logic,' we might wish it were kept for these subsid-
iary experiments required by the nature of the technique, for cer-
tainly that brings a new factor into play. This element enters, of
course, to complicate the methods that fall under 6 and under 2 also.
When the field shows relatively no uniformity, the methods are
quite different. The only distinction that I can find to note there
is that which gives rise to the use of an arbitrarily created repre-
sentative or a kind of lay figure, such as an average, or a mean.
These are used where the ground of variation is quantitative and
the conditions that lead to it relatively standard (II., 1). Much of
the work done in computing the mean is, indeed, concerned with
making the conditions standard. The nature and difficulties of this
method are shown in the investigations of the effect of overcrowding
upon the development of the school children of New York. So long
as the conditions that determine variation are believed standard,
that is, in play in all the groups compared, the use of averages to
represent the different groups is legitimate, but under the sugges-
tion that difference in race varied those conditions in part, belief in
the genuineness of that representation withers away.
In such a case (II., 2) the methods left to use are those under
B, with an important addition. Graphs, classifications (such as this
tries to be), and tables are often drawn up for a whole field on the
basis of a portion, usually a large portion, of that field. A step be-
yond complete induction is thus taken, a step such as Mendeleef took
when he predicted that any chemical elements found later would fit
into his table of the periodic law.
It will be wholly false to the facts to give the impression that I
find the methods used in scientific investigations slip unquestionably
and invariably under some one of these headings. There are what
may be called transition methods at play; as, perhaps, where one
may be but half satisfied with the method of selected groups is to
be abandoned for a representative at large, one tests two or three
only, and not all the "kinds" within the field. Still I find that the
distinctions noted here mark the main points to consider in forming
a judgment of the amount of evidence needed if one is to general-
ize safely about a given field.
FRANCES H. ROUSMANIEKE.
SMITH COLLEGE.
Loo. ct*., p. 39.
206 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
DISCUSSION
REPLY TO PROFESSOR FRAME
A C CURATE criticism is an invaluable safeguard and often can
-j- be received profitably in silence. Perhaps silence is a safe
resort also where criticism is contrary to fact and tinged with preju-
dice, in accordance with a principle enunciated by Henry Ward
Beecher that upon meeting in the road an animal of the species
mephitis mephitica it is the better part of valor to go around him
and surrender the middle of the road.
I wish, however, to make this belated protest against the state-
ments of Professor J. A. Frame 1 regarding the writer's "Education
and Problems of the Protestant Ministry" ; the latter is a reprint of
a condensed series of articles which it is hoped may appear eventu-
ally in more elaborate and carefully edited form. This delayed
protest is written at the suggestion of friends, who urge that the
matter should not be ignored. More than one of these friends are
progressive seminarians.
Professor Frame is exercised with reference to the incompetency
of persons called upon to give their judgment regarding the duties
and ideals of ministers. After the manner of disputants who rely
upon humor rather than fact when cornered, he dubs these persons
"experts" (his interpolation), and then proceeds to show that they
are not experts. The reviewer totally failed to grasp the writer's
evaluation of these witnesses, since a leading argument of the whole
discussion is that the minister's activity is often circumscribed by
the opinions and demands of conventional church-goers rather than
by experts ; that the unreasonable demands, whims, and theories rep-
resented by this group of church-goers, who are informed upon the
subject in the conventional sense, usually handicap even a well-
equipped and honest pastor. For such a minister the writer re-
peatedly expresses his respect and sympathy.
With fitting sarcasm our reviewer writes:
In the treatment of the first point, there is a running comment upon the
replies received from a hundred or more persons whose opinions were solicited
in reference to the qualifications of the minister intellectual, moral, and the
like and in reference to his pastoral duties the matter of sermons, prayer,
-communion, baptism, marriage, etc. The suspicions one might have as to the
competency of the witnesses are allayed in advance by the assurance that the
persons "are informed upon this subject" (p. 9). It is interesting to note the
disagreement among these experts. . . . While the reader who is actually engaged
in the business of training college graduates for the pastorate is grateful for
the opinions of these experts, he would have been still more grateful to them
had they bothered to give reasons for their opinions.
1 This JOUBNAL, October 8, 1908, pp. 580, 582.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 207
Our critic and philological judge affirms that he is engaged in
the "business of training college graduates for the pastorate"; of
course there are the hypercritical persons outside of seminaries who
might affirm, in view of the enormous sums of money wasted in
seminary endowments and property (which altogether are greater
than law and medical endowments and property combined, and yet
benefit only one fifth as many students, p. 58), as well as because of
the mechanized methods of some seminaries, that his is a very poor
kind of "business." Neglecting this digression, it is interesting to
contrast with the statements above quoted the actual paragraphs
referred to in the "Education and Problems of the Protestant Min-
istry," and some of the context, which I understand seminary ex-
perts in hermeneutics say it is not safe to omit in honest exegesis:
" Custom, that monster, custom, who all sense doth eat," feeds the minister ;
when unkind custom can not be ignored, it must be rebuked or conciliated. The
whims of the populace, the unwritten code which places the minister at the
service of the people day and night, the conventions regarding his habits, the
conversation, amusements, dress, sermons, as well as the formal vows and creed,
offer formidable influences for the lover of spiritual freedom to meet. Whether
in the atmosphere of a self assured radicalism or of iron-clad orthodoxy the
minister must suffer where these factors exist; spontaneity crushed in him
leaves little power to stimulate those who hear, and there results in the field
of organized religion arid wastes of uniformity (p. 8). As constituted in age,
sex, nationality, occupation, and religious preference, the group is fairly repre-
sentative of American church-goers. A more than average type of intelligence
is represented; numerous highly representative men, strangers to the author,
responded with surprising promptness and care (p. 12). If an objector holds
up his own ideal in contradiction to the content of this chapter, let him remember
until he can bring to bear upon the problem more numerous testimonies than
are presented in our small group, that the voices of more than a hundred per-
sons, informed upon this subject, remain more instructive than the voice of but
one man (p. 9). It is desirable to ascertain the individual experiences, ideas,
and the conventional attitude of church-goers regarding the minister and the
church, for these are the mental factors with which he actually deals. We can
not cipher out all this a priori, and must collect it in burdensome, inductive
fashion from persons to whom the problems are matters of living interest (p. 10) .
Another parallel comparison of the review and the reviewed is
relevant.
Says Mr. Frame :
The conclusion which the author draws from the possession of what he calls
" a rude cross-section of the minds of a small group " amounts to little more
than this: that the pastor is a valuable man in the social group and that he
should be better trained.
Here are the actual conclusions, referred to in the above lines:
Abstracting and repeating the conclusions suggested by the material in thia
chapter we recapitulate in a few words:
(a) The ministerial profession has high present value and possibilities as a
social group.
208 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
(&) The minister theoretically embodies the highest human ideals.
(c) In practise, he is forced to drudgery and humiliating restrictions.
(d) Abandonment of trivial, exacting, and of poverty -breeding labors im-
posed solely by custom and organizations should be undertaken by pastors, but
with assumption of the burdens of new issues laid bare by science.
(e) Educational methods to promote intellectual longevity are demanded.
Continued varied interests are equally important for efficiency and happiness.
(f) Admission to the ranks of religious' and moral specialists should be
made impossible to weaklings and parasites. The newly revealed responsibilities
of the ministry require the best of men and better methods than now exist for
their training (p. 53).
The undersigned returns thanks for the references mentioned
with such delicacy and hesitancy ; perhaps it might be profitable for
him also to review the elusive details of philology, a modicum of
which he once knew when he taught dead languages. In regard
to the designation of his modest essay as a "book," the author re-
grets that a slip of the pen must have caused him to neglect the
substitution of a proper word in place of ~book, when condensing for
the printer the seven original chapters. He must decline the invita-
tion of Mr. Frame for ' ' a real discussion of the function of the min-
ister and the nature of his method before plunging into a critique
of the methods and work of existing seminaries. ' ' A priori discus-
sions of such problems do not offer attraction, and besides, fossilized
seminarians can be found who already are dogmatically certain of
that function and method. It is somewhat surprising to the author
that a message smacking suspiciously of that old, traditional hostil-
ity of theologians to the investigation of religious problems should
emanate from a seminary so progressive as the Union Theological
Seminary. The writer even contemplates embodying the whole of
Mr. Frame 's review in his book as an interesting modern illustration
of the survival in high places of a certain well-known attitude of
mind that has sometimes characterized theologians in the ancient
conflict of ecclesiasticism and science.
DAVID SPENCE HILL.
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE.
SOCIETIES
SECTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF
THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
A JOINT meeting with the New York Branch of the American
Psychological Association occurred on February 22, 1909.
An afternoon session was held in the Psychological Laboratory of
Columbia University, and, after dinner at the Faculty Club of this
university, an evening session was held at the American Museum of
Natural History. The scientific program was as follows:
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 209
Professor Edward L. Thorndike, speaking on the "Correlation
of Sensory Discrimination and Intellect," reported measurements
of the relation of (1) the factor common to accuracy in drawing
lines and making up weights, to (2) the factor common to efficiency
in scholarship and ability to gain a high rating for intellect from
fellow pupils and teachers. This was found to be, not 1.00, as
stated by Spearman (1904), but between 0.17 and 0.30. Other facts
were given contradicting that author's hypothesis that whatever
community there is between mental functions is due to one same
core of identity present in all.
Professor T. L. Bolton reported "Some Observations with the
Tapping Test." These observations were made to determine the
value of different lengths of rest between successive trials with the
tapping apparatus, and also to discover the effect of different pauses
upon the daily practise gain in a series of tests. Five trials at tap-
ping were taken with five, ten, and twenty seconds rest between suc-
cessive trials; both hands were used and the tests were continued
for twelve to sixteen days with the three reagents and two classes of
students of thirty each. The rest pauses for five successive trials
were favorable to the amount of work in the order of twenty, ten,
and five. The right hand responded more favorably than the left.
The average daily gain was greater for trials with five seconds rest
than for ten or twenty. The amount of practise gain seems to de-
pend upon the amount of fatigue which the work engenders. The
practise gain for the second half of the tests was greater than for
the first half, which seems to mean that practise at first consists in
overcoming the inhibiting effects of fatigue. The fact that the five-
second rest shows a greater average daily gain than the ten or
twenty would seem to indicate that in a long series the five seconds
rest must prove the more favorable to work. When use is made of
this test to make comparisons between high and low types of intel-
lect and of normal with abnormal subjects, account must be taken
of the degree of practise efficiency in which the normal class of
subjects finds itself. Professor Kraepelin's proposition that com-
parisons must be made between the various rates of practise gain or
loss seems to hold good. (These observations were taken and col-
lated by Miss Batty, of the University of Nebraska. )
Professor Robert MacDougall presented a paper on "An Appli-
cation of the Concept of Space Dimension to Experience in Time."
Experience in time is sometimes illustrated by the form of one-
dimensional space. The latter concept involves, directly or in-
directly, such implications as motion in a right line ; modification in
the rate of such motion and reversibility in its direction ; the deter-
minateness of each point in the system, and continuity of direction
210 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
among all pairs of points. The paper was concerned with the de-
velopment of some of the consequences which would follow from
applying this spatial conception to human experience.
Free motion, projected in terms of time, would make any point
of past or future realizable at will ; while the conditions of a right line
require that each intervening event find place in the series by which
that point is reached. Modification of rate appears in intensive
variations of experience as well as in primary acceleration or retarda-
tion. Reversal of direction calls for a change in the affective sign
of experience. The conception of a right line requires a determin-
istic theory of conduct, but the relation of each new point to the
direction of the preceding series represents the sense of inner con-
sistency, or subjective free-will. The form of experience in time
thus realizes, in part, the requirements of the spatial conception, but,
in part, its order radically departs therefrom.
Professor D. S. Miller spoke on "The Knowledge of Tempera-
ment from Within and from Without. ' ' In every-day life there are
two ways of alluding to a man's knowledge of himself; favorable and
unfavorable. We say ' ' only the man himself can answer that ques-
tion, " some question about his motives or thoughts; on the other
hand, we say "that it would be well if a man could see himself as
others see him." To these two attitudes there correspond a philo-
sophical theory and a psychological theory. The philosophical theory
is that in the case of consciousness, appearance and reality coincide :
therefore everybody is by the nature of the case acquainted with
the contents of his present consciousness. The psychological theory
(set forth by Mr. Santayana) is that it is instinct and habit, the
constitutional, which determines a man's action and forms his na-
ture; that these can better be observed by the external spectator;
that the play of consciousness matters little in comparison.
As regards all these it is clear that the philosophical theory is
right. A man is acquainted with the contents of his consciousness.
But the important thing in knowing his temperament is not what his
consciousness is at any moment, but what further consciousness
and what acts it will lead to. Thus a man is acquainted with his
consciousness, but generally fails to "know himself."
As for the psychological theory, it can not be true that conscious-
ness matters nothing, or even matters little. All consciousness is
"impulsive," or motor. All consciousness is, therefore, a force
toward action. Consciousness which is prevented by circumstances
or stronger impulses from being realized is still a force, though a
defeated and buried force. Were the circumstances changed or the
paramount impulses altered, the defeated consciousness would have
its way. Thus a person who knows his consciousness knows real
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 211
forces making for action. A person may also observe his own acts
and life as truly as an external spectator may observe them.
The conclusion is, then, that as between the observer from within
and the observer from without it is the inner observer who can see
everything. The difficulty for him lies in the many false emphases
of consciousness. It is a difficult art for the inner observer really
to read the prognostic signs of his consciousness and acts. The ad-
vantage of the outer observer is in simplification; all the baffled
forces are omitted from his view. But on that very account the
outer observer lacks the full material for judgment. It is the inner
observer who has them all, could he but master the art of reading
the tokens correctly.
A discussion on the ''Concept of a Sensation" was opened by
Professor John Dewey, who distinguished the following meanings
of the term:
1. The anatomical for so it must be called according to which
the sense organ and its central connections are thought of as if
dissected out, isolated from the rest of the system, and acting alone.
The isolation is unreal; the activity of any part is interlinked with
simultaneous activities in other parts, and preceding and follow-
ing activities in the same and other parts. There is never
a state of rest, which might serve to isolate the subsequent activity,
but everything is really a process of readjustment throughout the
system.
2. The physiological or biological conception of a sensori-motor
reaction, as frequently stated, is subject to the same criticism : the
reaction is not isolated, nor is the stimulus exclusively peripheral,
for the existing condition of the central organs is part cause of the
reaction, and this reaction helps determine the stimulus finally
operative.
3. A sensation is often conceived in psychology as a "sensory
quality," and these qualities are assumed to be primitive and to
correspond with elementary processes in the sense organs. This is
a good deal of an assumption, since the qualities are known to us
only as the apex of a whole system of physiological functioning.
We see the color of an object rather than the color itself ; we do not
start with the sensory qualities and build up the object by putting
them together, but we begin with the object, and only reach the sen-
sory quality by an elaborate process of differentiation. The sensory
quality is a late achievement, not a primary datum. The "ele-
ments" of structural psychology are the last terms of intellectual
discrimination.
4. The sensory qualities as equivalent to Locke's simple ideas
are thought of as the units of knowledge, as the irreducible mini-
212 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
mum which can not be torn off by any amount of criticism of the
percept. Locke, however, does not mean, nor would it be true, that
all apparent knowledge is made up of single ideas. He was in-
terested not in tracing the genetic psychology of knowledge, but in
providing a logical device for testing knowledge and for appealing
against prejudice, dogma, and authority. His sensations were not
elements of composition, but ultimate, and hence elementary, criteria
and tests of assurance.
5. The every-day use of the term sensation is illustrated by the
phrase "sensational newspaper." Here the sensation is not an ele-
ment, but a total concrete experience, the essential fact about which
is that it is a shock, an interruption of an adjustment which had
been running smoothly. While the "sensory qualities" are thor-
oughly objective, these shock experiences have the true subjective
quality, since they have, for the instant, no meaning or objective
reference. Their character as sensations is exhausted by this ab-
sence of reference ; there is but one true sensory quality the quality
of shock. From the point of view of logic, the shock experience is
valuable, since a state of suspended reference is the basis of the in-
ductive method. Dogmatism, on the contrary, consists in the prompt
interpretation of every new shock into terms of some well-established
habit. In its true sense, the mental state, or the subjective, is the
conscious starting-point of a qualitatively new habit.
Professor F. J. E. Woodbridge, in following up the discussion,
first distinguished two meanings of the term sensation: (1) a reac-
tion of the organism by means of the sense organs; and (2) the
sensory qualities of objects. These meanings do not lead to eon-
fusion. The confusion arises when we pass to epistemology, and
inquire into the relation between the sensation and the thing sensed.
We first distinguish between the organism and its environment, and
then ask at what particular point the sensation arises. We
find it impossible to fix the point, and are driven to conclude either
that there is no sensation, or that all is sensation conclusions which
virtually coincide, since they both leave no meaning to the term. It
is clear from this that the term should be banished from epistemology
and limited to the empirical uses mentioned above.
Professor W. P. Montague offered the following objections to the
destructive criticisms of Professor Dewey. Though a sensation does
not occur in isolation, yet every perceptual experience has a distin-
guishable sensory side. We have the same right to distinguish it as
we have to distinguish the form and the color of objects, which also
never occur in isolation from each other. There is this objection to
regarding the sensory qualities as the apex of a long process of de-
velopment : that, instead of being complex, they seem to be simple in
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 213
their nature and their external causes seem to be simple processes.
It is likely that to simple processes in the external world should cor-
respond simple effects in the organism, such correspondence being
relatively independent of evolutionary development. It is also true
that the shock experience arises very often from stimuli which are
simple, so that there is reason for relating the experience of shock
to the sensory qualities, as is done in the conventional use of the term
sensation to cover both sorts of fact. The speaker also called atten-
tion to a metaphysically puzzling feature of sensation, namely, its
' ' specious present, ' ' or seeming occupancy of a segment of past time
at each moment of its existence ; but this, he thought, was accounted
for in the concept of sensation as a form of potential energy into
which the kinetic energy of the neural current is transformed at the
moment of its redirection in the central nervous system, or even at
the moments of its transit through all the various synapses traversed
by it.
Professor R. S. Woodworth advanced the concept of sensory as
distinguished from perceptual centers in the cortex, the sensory
centers being those which first received the incoming stimuli from
the sense organs. According to this neurological conception, there
should be a difference in time between the sensation and the percept,
but it must be admitted that it is usually impossible to detect, intro-
spectively, an interval between the first reception of the stimulus and
the percept of some object, or process. This introspective difficulty
has led Professor Pillsbury, in a recent and still unpublished lec-
ture, to the conclusion that there is nothing in consciousness except
meanings. From this point of view, it would be honest to give up
the concept of sensation in psychology, and to speak simply of the
stimulus and of the percept. Though these two would be sufficient
for most instances of perception, there remain certain objections to
giving up the concept of sensation altogether. There are the patho-
logical cases, in which perception is lost, though sensation remains.
There are the shock experiences, in which there is an interval between
the first consciousness of the stimulus and the consciousness of its
meaning. And there are ambiguous stimuli, like the staircase figure,
where, in spite of the alternating percepts, there persists throughout
the experience an irreducible conscious minimum, which may best be
called sensation.
Professor T. L. Bolton inferred, from observations upon animals
at certain moments, that they distinguish by their bodily attitudes
and general conduct differences between the various objects of their
environments that have practical bearings for their lives. The atti-
tude assumed in the presence of the object is characteristic of the
object. A similar phenomenon may be observed in human beings.
214 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
This is the fundamental fact in perception, which becomes the feel-
ing of these bodily attitudes that are evoked by an object's presence.
Again, we see both animals and human beings acting in the same
manner upon objects alike in some respect, but very different in
others. This likeness is the objective stimulus for, let us say, a sen-
sation of color. Here then is an activity that is characteristic of the
objective stimulus of sensation. This resolves the sensation into
essentially the same thing as the perception. In the case of the con-
ventional sensation, the stimulus is merely a part of the objective
thing which is present and which, in its totality, might elicit an atti-
tude of the kind Avhich we have called perceptual. The sensation
and perception both become the feelings of bodily conduct. In per-
ception the whole object is effective in evoking the attitude. The
difference is, then, one not in the mental effect, but rather in the
part of the objective fact that is operative in exciting reactions.
They are alike in being mental states of bodily changes, and neither
is the direct effect of incoming afferent currents.
R. S. WOODWORTH,
Secretary.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Einfiihrung in die Philosophie. RAOUL RICHTER. Leipzig : B. G. Teubner,
1907. Pp. 128.
Six lectures on the problems of knowledge, reality, and religious and
ethical value make up this little book. Of these lectures, the first deals
with the nature of philosophy ; the second, with the concept of knowledge,
and the third, with its object, degrees, and limits; the fourth treats of the
metaphysical nature of reality, and the fifth, of its final unity; the sixth
examines the nature of religious and ethical value.
In general the author stands for the sharp separation and mutual inde-
pendence of knowledge and value, for the priority of epistemology, for
the idealistic nature of reality and pantheism as the expression of its
final unity, and for the individual as the source of determination of all
values.
Philosophy is a struggle, no final attainment. It is a struggle after
knowledge, the knowledge of the real, whether factual merely or worthful.
Its test is satisfaction of the demands of the intellect, not of heart and
feeling. The knowledge it seeks is that of the total system of reality.
It is neither a mechanical summary of the various sciences nor a sub-
stitute for any or all of them. The business of philosophy is critically to
examine the presuppositions of the various sciences, and on the basis
of their special laws to discover the universal. Religion is to be dis-
tinguished from philosophy in that the former is the reaction of feeling
and will to the total system of reality as revealed by the latter. But the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 215
world-view does not necessarily determine the world-evaluation. Were
our knowing functions freed from their limitations, there would be but
one philosophy, but there would probably be many reactions, many
religious attitudes, to the nature of reality so revealed.
A criticism of knowledge must be undertaken before the knowing
functions are applied to the problem of the ultimate nature of reality.
Philosophy deals with the fundamental assumptions and most general
results of the special sciences. As stated, these are in most cases shot
through with unrecognized, false, or half-true assumptions regarding
the nature of knowledge and the knowing functions. Furthermore, the
object with which philosophy deals is no less than the total system of
reality. The fundamental disagreement between philosophers as to
central problems shows that there must be limitations in our knowing
functions in reference to such an object.
The term " truth " is applicable not to mere existents, whether phys-
ical or mental, not to isolated or connected contents, but to the connection
of mental contents as established in the judging process of a conscious
individual. The marks of a true judging process are : the feeling of con-
viction, harmony with thought and experience, self-conscious clearness of
the connection of the mental contents and of their harmony with thought
and experience, and the agreement of all subjects. Since the existence of
other conscious subjects besides the judging consciousness is neither a
matter of immediate experience nor a thought necessity of that judging
consciousness, the last point strictly reduces to a special case of the
second, harmony with experience, reference being made to that portion of
experience usually designated as expressions of assent from others.
Richter takes as illustrations of true judgments the propositions of
formal logic and mathematics, which he calls subjective, and statements
of immediate experience, such as " in this room a light is burning " and
" I trace pleasure on the faces of the audience," which he calls objective.
Judgments as to causal connections within experience, such as that
acid turns litmus paper red, have only probability, not truth, and com-
mand a lower grade of conviction. A third and still lower degree of
knowledge and belief accrues to judgments concerning that which is by
nature beyond experience, e. g., the ultimate nature of the litmus paper
when unperceived.
The judgments of mathematics and logic are mutually characterized
by the inconceivability of the opposite and by absolute universality.
They are distinguished in that the former are " synthetic " and the latter
merely " analytic." Richter has emphasized the necessity of taking
judgment as a process, but one wonders how significant that emphasis
may be when the " process " may typically consist of the mere repetition
of the subject in the predicate. If a live judging process be intended
and if by " harmony with thought " a reference to other judging processes
be involved, it would seem that causation would be necessarily implicated
in the process. If an experience be one thing and the judgment about
it another, there would seem to be room for error, and the test of
216 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
"harmony with experience" would involve, again, the belief in causa-
tion and a reference to a series of checks. On the above assumptions,
the absolute rigidity of the distinction between the first two classes would
thus be in question. Otherwise, the first class would seem to approach
the. vanishing-point and hardly deserve to be taken as representative of
the meaning of the term truth.
Truth involves a judging process, an event in time, but a judgment
once true is always true. If it is once in harmony with thought and
experience, according to Richter, it can never be contradicted by either.
The growth of knowledge affects error only, not truth. Truth is not a
matter of connection between conscious experience and something out-
side of it. It is relative to the conscious subject and has to do with
relations within his experience, but, as said above, the true connection
once formed is eternal. If " harmony with thought and experience " in-
cludes harmony with all future thought and experience, this absolute
truth within experience would not seem to possess surpassing advantage
over the absolute truth of the supra-experiential type.
The third and lowest type of knowledge and belief has to do, as stated
above, with the existence and nature of the noumenal, or extra-experi-
ential world, nature, God, the soul. Proof of the existence of the object
or of its non-existence is impossible here. The tests are consistency with
thought, lack of inconsistency with experience, positive explanation of
experience by assumptions as simple as possible and as closely related
to experience as possible.
Are there objects corresponding to my sense-perceptions and inde-
pendent of them? Are such objects themselves inner experiences, or not?
Precisely what is their real nature? For extreme realism independent
objects exist, and their nature is exactly what it appears to be in sense-
perception. For extreme idealism there are no independent objects. For
moderate realism independent objects exist, but only with the temporo-
spatial, not the qualitative characteristics of our sense experience. For
moderate idealism independent objects exist, but they are either of the
nature of our inner experience or of an inexperienceable nature. In
criticism of this division one might suggest that it would be simpler to
divide first on the basis of independence of the given sense experience, and
then as to the nature of the object. Closely connected with this question
of the object in sense perception is that of the nature of the ultimate
elements of reality. As Richter treats this problem, the actual division
is made not so much on the basis of content as of causality. Materialism
reduces consciousness to a form or function of matter. Spiritualism
looks upon matter as a product of thought. Dualism recognizes them as
of coordinate character, and monism, neutralism, views them as expressions
of a higher and single nature. The four forms of philosophy just men-
tioned are realistic. On the idealistic basis there are three forms:
solipsism, polypsychism and panpsychism.
On the basis of lack of harmony with thought or with experience, or of
lack of simplicity, or of close analogy with experience, Richter eliminates
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 217
the first six of these solutions and chooses panpsychism as the least ob-
jectionable. Sense-perceptions arise from the interaction of conscious
subjects. The body is one psychical unity, the soul another. The soul is
not a substance, but a symphony of processes, and of " inner " rather than
" outer " experiences. If no hard and fast line can be drawn between
" inner " and " outer " experience, it is difficult to see how interactions of
two or more systems of inner experiences suffice to produce sense-percep-
tion. Richter gives no criterion for individuality in sense-perception.
For Richter, no philosophic sin is greater than to allow one's own
heart's demands or those of the race to influence the results of our think-
ing, and yet he comes out strongly for voluntarism. The primacy of will
and feelings over intellect is not merely a mattter of temporal origin,
but of actual relationship. Will and feeling make use of intellect merely
as a tool in carrying out their purposes. Richter gives no discussion of
this apparent conflict, nor any detailed analysis of the intimate relations
of these processes in concrete cases. In practise, the work of the will
seems to consist in setting the intellectual processes to work en bloc and
then in reacting in some way to the final product, not in any sense
determining it.
The stuff or reality is, then, consciousness, and the latter is essentially
of a volitional character. Two questions concerning its nature remain.
What sort of laws does this material exhibit in its behavior, mechanical
or teleological ? Is there an ultimate unity, and, if so, what is its nature ?
The question concerning the laws is not discussed. Atheism, theism, and
pantheism are the possible solutions of the second question. The exist-
ence of God is given neither as a matter of thought necessity nor as a
fact of experience. It is a metaphysical problem. In his discussion of
pantheism, Richter recognizes as one form of it the view that God is an
unfinished, developing organism in whose upbuilding we may have a part.
He includes under atheism the view of the world as an unending evolu-
tion or ascent into higher forms, but without a final aim toward which
the process is directed. Apparently, then, in the form of pantheism men-
tioned, the aim is already laid down, and the growth process is merely one
of accretion. It would appear also that some forms of pragmatism would
be classed as atheism on this basis. Richter adopts as his own view a
form of pantheism in which God, the final unity, is conceived not as the
totality of things, complete or incomplete, nor as a giant organism, but as
the eternally upspringing source of all that exists. " Gott . . . ist nicht
Umkreis, sondern Mittelpunkt in der Wirklichkeit." This, then, seems to
be a qualitative rather than a quantitative matter after all, and if so,
one questions why no room should be found for God within experience.
Value is a matter of volition or feeling, and so presupposes a conscious
subject. Religious and ethical values are found in volitional reactions to
the presented object. Religious valuation is this reaction directed at the
final unity of things, whereas ethical valuation is concerned with the
minor phases of reality. There is no universality in either ends or means.
The only universal thing is that, if the end is willed, the means must be
218 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
also. The ethical situation consists in a conflict of our deep-lying and
our superficial wills or natures. The practical problem is to avoid mere
imitations, to find out our true nature and let it be dominant.
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche bear witness to the fact that religious
attitudes, optimism, and pessimism, are not mechanically determined by
metaphysical views, but are matters of individual reaction.
HENRY A. RUGER.
COLOBADO COLLEGE.
Nicolas de Beguelin. Fragment de I'histoire des idees philosophiques en
Allemagne dans la seconde moitie du XVIII me siecle. PAUL DUMONT.
Paris : Felix Alcan. 1908. Pp. 210.
Nicolas de Beguelin is one of the minor philosophers of the uninterest-
ing period which extended from 1754, the year of Wolff's death, until
1781, the year of the publication of the " Critique of Pure Reason." He
was born in 1714, in Courtelary, French Switzerland, but spent his life as
a scholar in Berlin; there, with Merian and Sulzer (the esthetician) he
formed the Swiss trio famous in the annals of the Academic Royale de
Berlin at that time. His independence of character brought about some
trouble with Frederic the Great; still, at the end of his life he reached
the honorable position of " Directeur de la classe de philosophic " of the
Academic. He wrote no large work, but a great number of memoires, all
published in the Annales of the Academie between 1750 and 1787. He
was somewhat of a poet. He did his most solid research work in the
domains of mathematics and physics (d'Alembert spoke highly of him),
and his most original work in the domain of metaphysics.
His philosophy is inspired chiefly by Leibnitz, Wolff, Newton, Locke
and Reid.
He was a man of extremely peaceful disposition in his thought; what-
ever originality is found in his writings is in his attempts to conciliate
the dissenting views of the above-named philosophers.
The author of the book under consideration, M. Dumont (1908),
has very conscientiously reflected those various attempts. One might
wish that he had been, perhaps, less exclusively objective, and that he
had pointed out of what interest the ideas of such a man as Beguelin can
be for the student of the history of philosophy. Beguelin treats almost
everything from a metaphysical standpoint, and we have seldom been given
the occasion to realize so well the remarkable advance which was made
possible in philosophy, thanks to the work of Hume and Kant; the vanity
of old-time metaphysics appears here so evident that no better object-
lesson could be offered to a student than a few examples from the phi-
losophy of which Beguelin is so typical a representative. For instance,
the problem was to reconcile the theories of the Newtonians, who believed
in the existence of a vacuum in space, and of Leibnitz, who did not.
Beguelin agreed that in discussing the problem on the grounds of physics
both had such strong arguments in their favor that nothing could be
done to bring about a reconciliation; but on metaphysical grounds he
thought the case was not so hopeless. The Newtonions admitted the exist-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 219
ence of a vacuum in the universe, because their reason could not conceive
of the possibility of motion in plenum; while Leibnitz thought that the
principle of sufficient reason required the non-existence of a vacuum. Now
Beguelin simply proposes to distinguish between a physical vacuum and
a metaphysical vacuum; both Leibnitz and Newton could accept the exist-
ence of a physical vacuum; at the same time both Newton and Leibnitz
could agree that a metaphysical vacuum could not exist, as contrary to
God's "loi supreme de convenance"; thus, the vacuum (physical) exists,
and the vacuum (metaphysical) does not exist.
The whole philosophy of Beguelin practically consists of such " con-
ciliations." Whether, in physics, he discusses the true cause of weight,
impulsion according to Leibnitz, attraction according to Newton (p. 56) ;
or whether the origin of motion is emission, according to Newton, or
pression and undulation, according to Leibnitz; or whether, taking up
logic, he arbitrates between the same two men as to the essence and bear-
ing of the principle of sufficient reason (p. 71), or between Leibnitz and
Locke as to the empirical or innate origin of the same principle of suf-
ficient reason (pp. 75-8), or between Leibnitz, the determinist according
to the theory of the " monads," and Leibnitz, the free-willist according to
the " Theodicee " (pp. 82, 118) ; or, again, when he proposes his own
theory of the " unites de la nature " to mediate between the cosmology of
Wolff, with his physical " atomi naturae " leading to a dualism of matter
and mind, and that of Leibnitz, who, with his " monadology," divides
matter ad infinitum into forces that are neither physical nor spiritual
(p. 101) (not to speak of the questions directly and indirectly related to
that one, as " apperception " or " appetition ") ; or whether the problem
before him is the difference between human and animal mind (p. 117) or
the relations of body and mind, Leibnitz proposing preestablished
harmony, and Wolff maintaining that there is interaction, while Beguelin
suggests that, matter and mind being not " essentially " different, there is
no real problem to solve (p. 122) ; or whether the source of our knowledge
is inneity (Leibnitz), or sensation (Locke) ; or, finally, when he takes
up the discussion of the agreement between reason and faith (pp. 130 ff.),
between free will and divine prescience (p. 130), between morality of
duty (Leibnitz) and morality of happiness, or eudaimonism (Locke)
(pp. 144 ff.) it is always and ever the same tendency to make every one
agree with everybody else. He believes with Leibnitz : " les systemes ont
raison dans ce qu'ils affirment, et tort dans ce qu'ils nient." Even in his
methods, Beguelin is in turn favorable to aprioristic methods and to em-
pirical methods ; although, in the latter case, he shows always fear of losing
contact with metaphysics. Reid's theories of " common sense " constitute
for him a most valuable instrument in his generous effort to conciliate
everything; and when it comes to reconciling the data of common sense
with those of pure reason, Beguelin formulates philosophical principles
which bear a very striking resemblance to those of modern pragmatiste.
Whoever is interested in pragmatism ought to read pages 94 and 98 of
Dumont's book.
220 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Nothing shows better than this need of adaptation and mediation and
reconciliation everywhere, how shaky the whole edifice of philosophy was
at that time, and how circumstances called imperatively for a man who
would start thinkers on a new path : Kant.
The chapter on the relations of Beguelin with the principal men of
the Academic Royale of Berlin is neither very interesting nor very im-
portant, but that on Beguelin and Kant is the one which shows best the
critical abilities of Dumont.
In fine, I should say that the book is by no means worthless. Beguelin's
philosophy has hardly much value in itself, but as illustrating the spirit of
a period it is worth studying. A small philosopher reflects just as faith-
fully as a great thinker his own time ; only he reflects it more naively.
ALBERT SCHINZ
BBYN MAWE COLLEGE.
The Limits of Educability in Paramecium. STEVENSON SMITH. The
Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 1908, Vol. XVIII.,
No. 5.
Students of comparative psychology will welcome this excellent piece
of experimentation as a real contribution to the field of adaptive behavior
of microorganisms. It is argued here that careful animal studies reveal
an adaptive phylogenetic development from unicellular organisms up-
wards without involving consciousness in the description. Even memory,
which has been held by some to be a conscious adaptation, may involve no
consciousness whatever, even though it may possess for the organism
strong selective qualities. Inorganic manifolds portray some of the
same memory characters that we find in the organic.
An adaptive behavior in organisms must develop of necessity if the
ordinary laws of evolution are granted. It is true that we have memory
here, but there is no evidence that it is conscious.
The criterion of consciousness assumed by Morgan and others, namely, .
that the organism shall be able to profit by past experience, is rejected by
Professor Smith as being inadequate on the ground that much profit by
experience in man is not at all a conscious adaptation. For example,
muscular adaptation which is profitable to new conditions does not make
the muscle a " conscious mechanism," but is simply the establishment in
it of more ready reactive tendencies. Aside from the development of
facility, there is the acquirement of selective movements by animals.
This may be explained by the selection of overproduced movements, and
the author offers a formula describing this selection in terms of chance
and habit.
The teleological aspect of vital reactions has led some speculators to
fix upon regulation as the criterion of consciousness, involving, as it
usually does, choice of conditions. But upon analysis it is shown that
" we may call behavior regulatory when a process having proceeded too
far is the cause of its own remedy." In demonstration of this, certain
examples are given of regulation in the field of inorganic manifolds. The
regulation of living things differs from inorganic self -regulatory actions
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 221
in that after the action is completed, the reversion to the normal state in
the former is more perfect, which renders the organism ready at once
for a fresh corrective adaptation, should the need arise. This definition
becomes at once a contribution, as the outline of an adequate description
of regulatory behavior is suggested which involves no super-organic terms.
The experiments cited in this paper were made upon paramecium to
determine the character of the modifiability of action when recurring
stimuli of the same kind were given. They fall into three groups: (1)
Those in which the animal was stimulated by touch (the meniscus of a
capillary tube), the conditions being such that it could react in but two
ways in order to escape. (2) Those in which the animal was stimulated
by change in temperature. (3) Those in which the animal was fre-
quently made to experience two conditions, which at first occurred simul-
taneously, and later made to experience one alone, any difference being
noted between the reactions to the first and the second conditions.
These experiments seem to have been performed with great care and
accuracy. In the first experiment the animal was placed in a capillary
tube of a bore less than the length of the paramecium and greater than
its width. In time the animal acquires the ability to twist around and
to reverse its direction in the tube. This aptitude, under optimum con-
ditions, progresses until the paramecium may reduce the time for making
the turn from four or five minutes to a couple of seconds. The second
and third groups of experiments, which were performed as a test for
associative memory, gave entirely negative results.
In conclusion the author says : " Paramecium is educable in that its
behavior may be modified to show the results of practise, both in a reduc-
tion of the time involved in performing a movement and in the increase
in suitability of the movement to accomplish the appropriate result.
In so far as the above tests apply, there is no evidence of associative
memory in paramecium. The reversing movement above described is in
the nature of a positive reaction.*'
ELMER E. JONES.
INDIANA UNTVEBSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. March, 1909. Naturalisme, hu~
manisme et philosophic des valeurs (pp. 225-255) : A CHIAPPELLI. - Mod-
ern philosophy exhibits a great Idealistic regeneration in which philosophy
is differentiating itself from science, not by degree of generality, but by
a difference of its object an historical conception of universal nature, at
once ideal and evaluative. L'antipathie dans ses rapports avec le char-
actere (pp. 156-275) : L. DUGAS. - A development of Ribot's idea that
antipathy is a form of the instinct of self-preservation. L'idee de dieu et
le principe d'assimilaiion intellectuelle pp. (276-284) : A. LALANDE. - A
criticism of a paper by M. Belot on La triple origine de I'idee de dieu in
the December number of this JOURNAL. Revue generale. Philosophic du
222 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Droit: la contrainte sociale et la valeur du droit subjectif, G. RICHARD.
Notices bibliographiques, H. Maier, Psychologie des emotionalen Denk-
ens: M. SOLOVINE. H. Marty, Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der
Grammatik: B. BOURDON. Urban, The Application of Statistical Methods
to Psychophysics : B. BOURDON. Ossip Lourie, Croyance religieuse et
croyance intellectuelle : L. ARREAT. Benett, The Ethical Aspects of Evo-
lution: G.-L. DUPRAT. Schlesinger, Der Begriff des Ideals: L. ARREAT.
Pascal, (Euvres completes, t. II et III: L. ARREAT. Rzewuski, L'op-
timisme de Schopenhauer: L. ARREAT. Kowalewski, Schopenhauer und
seine Weltanschauung: L. ARREAT. Schelling, Werke: J. SECOND. Schel-
ling. Sistema dell' idealismo transcendentale : J. SECOND. Revue des
periodiques.
Bohn, Georges. La Naissance de I'Intelligence. Paris: Ernest Flam-
marion. 1909. Pp. 345.
Cooley, Charles Horton. Social Organization: A Study of the Larger
Mind. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1909. Pp. xvii + 419.
Mumford, Eben. The Origins of Leadership. Chicago: The University
Press. 1909. Pp. 87. $0.54.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE following obituary notice of James Hutchinson Stirling is from
The London Times: " Serious students of philosophy and the philosoph-
ical aspects of theology will learn with regret of the death from acute
pneumonia of the veteran metaphysician Dr. James Hutchinson Stirling,
which occurred at his residence at Trinity, near Edinburgh yesterday
morning. He had been in failing health for some time, but his mind
remained clear to the end. About six weeks ago he was visited by
Emeritus-Professor Campbell Eraser, who is now in his ninetieth year.
Born in Glasgow on June 22, 1820, he began to attend the winter classes
at Glasgow University in 1833, and completed the course in arts and medi-
cine in 1842, in which year he became a licentiate of the Royal College of
Surgeons, Edinburgh. He early showed a remarkable aptitude for logical
and metaphysical inquiries, and in 1838, at the suggestion of the moral
philosophy professor, Dr. Fleming, made trial of his critical powers by a
thesis in examination of St. Anselm's a priori argument for theism, which
he had then no hesitation in pronouncing a mere sophism, though he lived
to regard it as ' the first word of modern philosophy.' He also distin-
guished himself in chemistry and dabbled in literature. In 1842 he sent
one of his poems to Carlyle, who dipped into it here and there, pronounced
it unpublishable, and advised him to stick to medicine. For some years he
followed the advice, settling in 1843 at Hirwain, Glamorganshire, whence
he removed to Glyn Neath, in the same county. Meanwhile he contributed
a few trifles in prose and verse to Douglas Jerrold's Magazine, Leigh
Hunt's Journal, and other periodicals. These fugitive pieces, which attest
the soundness of Carlyle's judgment, appeared in collective form, with an
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 223
imaginary dialogue in which Burns is the chief speaker, under the title
' Burns in Drama, together with Saved Leaves/ Edinburgh, 1878, 8vo.
In 1851 Stirling retired from practise and went abroad. For nearly two
years he resided in Paris, studying chemistry under Dumas, toxicology
under Orfila, physiology under Milne Edwards, and French literature
under Ampere. Migrating to Germany about 1854, he devoted himself to
the serious study of transcendentalism, particularly of Kant and Hegel.
He resided at Heidelberg, and attended the lectures of Schenkel, but
formed independent philosophical views. He also visited Bonn and Stutt-
gart, and returned to this country in 1857. Having, as he believed, pene-
trated intq the inmost spirit of the Hegelian philosophy, and seen the idea
rise from the Kantian categories like Venus from the sea, Stirling desired
his countrymen to share the same august vision. He settled accordingly
in Edinburgh, and, while engaged in casting the results of his German
studies into shape, submitted the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton,
which then lay like an incubus on the North British mind, to the critical
scalpel. The result was a volume of strictures, no less damaging than
those of John Stuart Mill, and published in the same year (1865) under
the title * Sir William Hamilton; being the Philosophy of Perception, an
Analysis' (London, 8vo). His principal work, also published in 1865,
' The Secret of Hegel' (London, two vols., 8vo), hardly fulfilled the prom-
ise of the title, but did much to correct prevalent misconceptions. (A
new edition came out in 1898.) It was followed in 1881 by one which
should in logic have preceded it viz., ' Text-book to Kant : The Critique
of Pure B>eason ' (Edinburgh, 8vo) a work intended to exhibit the affilia-
tion of the Hegelian to the Kantian system, and condensing the results of
many years of intense study. The value of both works is seriously im-
paired by the uncouth mannerism of their style. In 1889-90 Stirling
delivered the first course of lectures in Edinburgh on the Gifford Founda-
tion, in which, with much discursiveness and multifarious learning, not
all of it relevant, he weighed the arguments for and against theism.
They were published under the title 'Philosophy and Theology' (Edin-
burgh, 1890, 8vo). In 1894 appeared his ' Darwinianism : Workmen and
Work' (Edinburgh, 8vo), an investigation into the origin of the ' Origin
of Species.' Stirling also translated and annotated a valuable text-book
Schwegler's ' History of Philosophy ' of which a twelfth edition ap-
peared in 1893, and published, among other lectures, a course on ' The
Philosophy of Law,' delivered before the Juridical Society of Edinburgh
in November, 1871. His latest published volumes were: 'What is
Thought, or The Problem of Philosophy: by way of a General Conclusion
so far,' 1900; and ' The Categories,' 1903. The University of Edinburgh
conferred upon Stirling the degree of LL.D. in 1867, and the Philosophical
Society of Berlin elected him a foreign member in 1872. He was also
created later an honorary LL.D. of Glasgow University. He stood for the
chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh in 1868, and is said never to have
quite forgiven the university for preferring Dr. Calderwood. In politics
he was a strong Tory; in theology his views were supposed to be broad,
but he always considered himself a member of the Kirk, and maintained
224
the incompatibility of the Christian faith with the Hegelian philosophy.
He was an omnivorous reader and a precocious conversationalist."
THE Association of Teachers of Psychology in the Colleges and Nor-
mal School of the North Central States met on April 3 at the University
of Chicago, with the following program : " Simplifying the Introductory
Course in Psychology": Rowland Haynes; "The Value of Psychology to
the Teacher " : Miss Hazel Ackley ; " The Course in Psychology for the
Eural Teacher " : Mrs. L. Pitmann ; " Teaching the Organic Conception
in the Introductory Course": J. B. Miner; "A Device by which Physi-
ological Concepts may be Employed in Teaching Psychological Processes":
N. A. Harvey ; " Conflicting Ideals in the Teaching of Psychology " :
James Rowland Angell ; " The Written .Recitation and the Participating
Demonstration " : Carl E. Seashore ; " Relearning an Act of Skill " : Edgar
James Swift; "Art and Conduct": Miss Kate Gordon; "The Value of
Social Psychology": E. L. Talbert; "Elementary Psychology and the
Elementary Teacher " : Walter S. Athearn ; " A Course of Applied Psy-
chology for School Teachers " : Frank C. Bruner ; " Social Psychology " :
Charles H. Judd.
THE Popular Science Monthly for April is devoted entirely to Darwin.
The contents are as follows: "Life and Works of Darwin": Dr. Henry
Fairfield Osborn ; " The Individuality of Charles Darwin " : Charles F.
Cox ; " Darwin and Geology " : Professor John James Stevenson ; " Darwin
and Botany " : Dr. Nathaniel Lord Britton ; " Darwin and Zoology " :
Dr. Herman C. Bumpus; "For Darwin": Professor T. H. Morgan;
" Predarwinian and Postdarwinian Biology " : Professor William Morton
Wheeler ; " The Halo of a Hundred Years " : Professor R. M. Wenley ;
" The Origin of the Theory of Natural Selection " : Dr. Alfred Russell
Wallace; " The First Presentation of the Theory of Natural Selection":
Sir Joseph Hooker ; " The Progress of Science " : Darwin Manuscripts :
Portraits of Darwin: Celebrations in Honor of Darwin.
RUDOLF EUCKEN'S "Die Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker,"
etc., will shortly appear in English translation under the title " The
Problem of Human Life as Viewed by the Great Thinkers from Plato to
the Present Time." The translators are Professor Williston S. Hough,
of The George Washington University, and W. R. Boyce Gibson, of the
University of London. Professor Eucken was awarded the Nobel Prize
for Literature last year, and the above work is his best known and most
popular book.
THE Oxford University Press announces for spring publication
Hobbes's "Leviathan," edited by W. G. Pogson Smith; "Plato's Theory
of Ideas," by J. A. Stewart ; " Theophrastus," edited by H. Diels ; and
" Aristotle's Criticism of Plato," by J. M. Watson.
PROFESSOR SIMON SOMERVILLE LAURIE, of the University of Edinburgh,
died on March 2, at the age of seventy-nine years. Professor Laurie was
known for his writing in the fields both of education and of general
philosophy.
VOL. VI. No. 9. APRIL 29, 1909
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
EXPERIENCE AND ITS INNER DUPLICITY
IT has been suggested that were "the use of the term consciousness
to be forbidden for a season, contemporary thought would be
set the wholesome task of discovering more definite terms with which
to replace it, and a very considerable amount of convenient mystery
would be dissipated." 1 But surely "consciousness" should not be
asked to rusticate alone when "experience" has been its partner in
all the pranks it has played. 2 Indeed, it is much to be feared that
Professor Perry's disciplinary zeal, if allowed full swing and con-
sistent indulgence, would leave the halls of philosophy silent. At
any rate, it would be very interesting to observe the results of such
an experiment ; but some of us might prefer to have it tried at a dis-
tance, say in New Zealand, before adopting it ourselves. Meanwhile,
however, it would be worth our while to set ourselves the task of dis-
covering and identifying the facts that our philosophical terms should
severally designate, rather than forswear the use of these terms
altogether. In this paper I shall attempt to state the results of my
efforts to ascertain what experience is, and whether within experi-
ence there is anything entitled to the name consciousness.
It is notoriously difficult to get a satisfactory starting-point in
philosophy. Almost any statement that one philosopher may lay
down as self-evident and therefore qualified to furnish a basis for a
philosophical system is challenged by some fellow philosopher. I
shall, therefore, not seek to build on any self-evident principle. I
shall merely begin with what seems to be a universally conceded fact.
Every intelligent being acknowledges, at least occasionally, that at
any and every moment of what he calls his experience there are many
things lying beyond his experience. The only alleged exceptions
to this gratifying unanimity of belief are solipsists and absolutes,
and without raising the question whether there are any such beings
and whether if there are they are intelligent, I propose in this dis-
1 Prof essor Perry, Psychological Review, Vol. 11, p. 282.
'Professor Dewey, this JOUBNAL, Vol. VI., p. 21: "Again, would not a
' clear and unambiguous ' definition of experience be both a boon in general
and a prerequisite to a clear and unambiguous answer to the question asked T "
225
226 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
eussion to leave such problematic personages out of account. 8 I do
this because, so far as solipsists are concerned, tit for tat is fair play ;
while, as regards absolutes, they have never seen fit to speak for
themselves in philosophical matters, and second-hand information
about absolute experience is hardly satisfactory as a basis for the
scientific study of actual experience. Solipsists and absolutes apart,
then, the rest of us who show any interest in philosophical questions
treat our respective experiences as if they were carved out of a
larger, more comprehensive world of things. Not only is it true
that the material objects in any one's field of vision are treated by
us as being ' ' a collection of physical things cut out from an environ-
ing world of other physical things with which these physical things
have actual or potential relations"; 4 even what in our experience
we call mental is treated by us as being only a part of a larger world
of mental and physical things, and as having actual or potential
relations to some of these other mental and physical things. In other
words, the physical and the mental things of our several experiences
are considered by each of us as selections, choice samples from real-
ity's inexhaustible store only a measure of sliding sand from under
the feet of the years. When it comes to the making of reality, some
things are taken and others are left.
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that unt raveled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
Now, as I understand it, the problem of defining experience is
the problem of identifying the nature of this arch through which
vistas open, but which at the same time shuts out the greater part of
the panorama. Or, to make my position clearer by antithesis, I
should say that what is meant by experience can never be ascertained
by saying lo here, and lo there, meanwhile always pointing to ex-
perienced things. That experience is a concrete something, will
* Sometimes believers in the Absolute speak as if they had acquired from
their Absolute the habit of actually denying the existence of anything beyond
their experience. For instance, Professor Royce writes : " Ignorance always
means inattention to details," and the context seems to imply that the details
neglected by attention " though lost in the background of consciousness " are
nevertheless "present" ("The World and the Individual," Vol. II., p. 57).
But in other parts of his work he makes it clear that the things of which he is
ignorant are not actually present in his consciousness in any other way than as
involved in the " internal meaning " of his ideas. His Gifford Lectures, in
fact, are full of most emphatic assertions of the " fragmentariness " of finite
experiences. By such assertions he of course places himself, as contrasted
with his Absolute, sociably along with the rest of us in believing that our
experiences are not all-comprehensive.
* Professor James, this JOUBNAL, Vol. L, p. 481.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 227
appear from the sequel to be my view ; and, as concrete, experience
is of course not capable of being defined without reference to the
things experienced. But things and sensible natures and what-not
must be experienced before they can be used to define experience,
because experience is constituted by the fact that these things and
these sensible natures are experienced. The question then is, What
is meant by "being experienced"?
When anything is experienced it is in a unique kind of together-
ness urith certain other things. 6 Now things are together with each
other in all kinds of ways : they may be together in the same part of
space or at the same moment of time or even in the same genus, or
family, or order, as when we say that whales belong together with
land mammals and not with fishes. Professor James has enumerated
some of these different ways of togetherness in his article ' ' A World
of Pure Experience," 6 where he calls them conjunctive relations,
and he has duly stressed the truth that these kinds of togetherness
are as much facts as the things that are together in these different
ways, 7 and also that each of these conjunctive relations must be
8 The term " thing " is here used in a very inclusive sense. For instance,
it denotes space, flatness, brownness, heaviness, and what not (James,
JOUBNAL, Vol. I., p. 487). It denotes these things whether the psychologist
would subclassify them as percepts or as images. It denotes also emotions,
pleasantness, volition, and anything else that may be mentioned either in
psychology or in the physical sciences, provided these things are together in
the unique way referred to in the text. The only exception to this inclusive-
ness of denotation is to be found in what I have called " a unique kind of
togetherness " ; or, to use more familiar phraseology, thing here may be any-
thing except the thing called experiencing. While the term includes " idea "
and thus my account of experience in this paper is intended to refer to
ideational as well as to perceptual experience, it will be seen that the nature
of ideational experience as distinct from perceptual experience is not dis-
cussed here. I hope to take that matter up before long; meanwhile I may
only say rather dogmatically that in ideational experience the idea is experi-
enced, but not the object of the idea. The idea, therefore, is in this case one
of the things united in experiential togetherness. I wish to add here that
I have tried to make clear by my formulation the fact that experiencing is a
temporal event. The expression " experienced " is extremely ambiguous : it
may be applied to things which have been; but no longer are experienced, and
even to things which have never been, but presumably may be experienced in
the future. I think it makes for clearness to recognize that a thing is not
experienced when it is not experienced, even though it may have been or may
in future be experienced.
JOUBNAL, Vol. I., pp. 535 ff.
T However, in the article referred to, I fail to find any explicit mention
of the unique kind of togetherness which, obtaining between things, makes
them into experienced things. There is indeed one passage in a preceding
article where he implies that to be experienced is to be together with other
things in experience : " Here as elsewhere the relations are of course experienced
228 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
" taken at its face value, neither less nor more." Now the experi-
ential togetherness of which I am speaking is entirely distinct from
any and all of the conjunctive relations he registers. Its uniqueness
becomes evident when we try to define it merely in terms of some of
these conjunctive relations. If we should say that experiential
togetherness is a local affair we should find it difficult to reconcile
this statement with the fact that not all the things locally together
within some definite limits are together in any verifiable experience
at any one time. It is quite true that to a certain extent, or rather
in a certain sense, experiential togetherness is a matter of spatial
metes and bounds. If you are in New York City you can not im-
mediately experience the ruins of Messina and Eeggio or the Falls of
Niagara. Without turning your head you can not see even what is
in your immediate neighborhood behind your back. In this sense
the limitations of experience, that is to say, its exclusions and its
inclusions, are geographical. Your field of experience is only a
part of the indefinite range of space. But even within that part
of space which lies within your experience there is we know not
how much that is not experienced. The microscope brings some of
the occupants of this region within your experiential reach, al-
though in doing this it does not of course necessarily bring them
into any part of space : they may have been there already. Now if
experiential togetherness were the same as spatial togetherness, all
things spatially together would also be experientially together, and
things not spatially together would not be experientially together.
Such, of course, is not the case ; so we may confidently say that to be
experienced does not mean to be spatially together or to be with cer-
tain other things within certain geometrical limits, although what is
experientially together with something else may also be spatially to-
gether with that something.
Neither is experiential togetherness to be identified with temporal
togetherness. The very same time within which the things of my
experience are occurring may also contain many other things not in
my experience. In other words, things may be synchronous without
being experientially together. In the same way in which I have
shown the distinction between experiential togetherness on the one
hand and spatial and temporal togetherness on the other hand, I
could go on to show that experiential togetherness is distinct from
any and every other kind of togetherness which has been recognized
relations, members of the same originally chaotic manifold of non-perceptual
experience of which the related terms are parts " ( JOUBNAL, Vol. I., p. 483,
foot-note ) . But neither in the context of this statement nor elsewhere, so far
as I can discover, has Professor James developed the thought implied in thia
definition of " experienced."
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 229
and classified as a relation. 8 None of the relations, whether they be
taken singly or together in any other way of togetherness than the
experiential way, can make themselves into experience ; and, in like
manner, no quality or combination of qualities except the combina-
tion which is experiential togetherness can turn itself into an experi-
ence. Even any cooperation of qualities and relations would prove
ineffectual for this purpose unless the cooperation were the peculiar
kind of cooperation that I have called experiential togtherness.
Qualities and relations in a conspiracy of a peculiar kind, from the
charmed circle of which other qualities and relations are for the
time at least excluded this and all this is what any experience is.
It is as absurdly inadequate to attempt to describe experience and
leave out the experiential confederacy in which the contents of
experience are banded together, as it was for Hume to attempt to
describe extension as a collocation of minima sensibUia without recog-
nizing the peculiarity of the kind of collocation concerned. If the
truth of associationism and the mind-dust theory would mean "the
general pulverization of all Experience, ' ' 9 because their truth would
involve the non-existence of relational factors in experience, so the
truth of any radical empiricism which should decline to recognize
this experiential togetherness as sui generis and as the supreme in-
tegrating factor of experience would mean that there is no experi-
ence to base empiricism upon.
When, however, this experiential togetherness is spoken of as the
supreme integrating factor of experience, it is not meant that it
exists as a thing apart, supervening from some transcendental Utopia
upon the things it integrates. What is meant is something com-
parable with what Professor James means when he speaks of rela-
tions as uniting terms, 10 or of one experience supervening upon an-
other. 11 What supervenes and in supervening unites other things is
not a preexistent entity. In fact it is not an entity at all, if by this
This statement differentiates the view here advocated from that which
Professor Woodbridge has published: according to Professor Woodbridge's view,
to be experienced, or, at least, to be the object of consciousness, is to be in the
relation of meaning. According to my view, meaning is one of the many rela-
tions experienced ; it stands in the same relation to experience as does any other
object of experience, and is thus to be distinguished from what I have called
experiential togetherness.
JOURNAL, Vol. I., p. 534.
10 " Radical empiricism takes conjunctive relations at their face value,
holding them to be as real as the terms united by them" (JOURNAL, Vol. II.,
p. 35; italics are mine).
u " 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 ia just what
happens when the appropriative experience supervenes " ( JOURNAL, Vol. II.,
p. 180).
230 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
term is meant something that can exist alone. But while not an
entity it exists when it does exist. Its supervention makes the objects
of its incidence into experienced objects; the concrete whole thus
arising, namely, objects-experientially-together, is what is properly
called experience, when this latter term is used concretely. 12 Or, to
put the matter controversially, in order that there should be an
experience, it is not sufficient that qualities and relations should be
or be there; it is likewise necessary that they should be in a recog-
nizable and identifiable synthesis; and this synthesis is not "in-
voked" to explain the fact of experience or the fact of knowing.
The synthesis is an actual factor of experience, and is as obvious and
patent to whosoever may look for it as are the qualities and the rela-
tions which radical empiricism takes justifiable pleasure in enumera-
ting and championing. 18
Having explained what is meant by experience, namely, a unique
togetherness of things, we may next inquire whether this together-
ness is a relation. The answer is that while in some respects it is
similar to relations, yet there is very good reason why it should not
be unreservedly and unqualifiedly classed with relations; and this
reason is not connected with a priori considerations, but is of a piece
with the reasons which have impelled thinkers to distinguish between
qualities and relations. It is well known that some psychologists
prefer to call relations form-qualities (Gestaltqualitaten) . There is
no great harm in this, because the defining term "form" serves to
differentiate between these "qualities" and other qualities. So if
any one should prefer to call experiential togetherness a relation
between things, no serious calamity would thereby befall philosophy,
provided that the word "relation" is not treated as a leveler of
distinctions that actually exist between the things to which the term
u The term is frequently used abstractly and then as practically synonymous
with experiencing. Some thinkers at the present time seem to use it as
synonymous with things experienced. The very fact, however, that the
adjective " experienced " has to be added here shows that not things, but
things-as-experienced, is always the meaning of the term experience when it
is used concretely. No concrete thing as such is experience except the concrete
thing whose fundamentum concretionis is experiential togetherness. It may
well be that any particular thing, even when not in experiential togetherness
with something else, is still a concrete something, but it is not a concrete
experience. I can not but think that much confusion has resulted from the
habit of calling anything experience, whether it is experienced or not.
18 1 can not well pause here to discuss with " the belated drinkers at the
Kantian spring " the question whether what I here call experiential together-
ness or experiential synthesis is what Kant in his chemical analysis of these
waters called the synthetic unity of apperception. Even if it should prove
to be the same thing, it must be remembered that Kant's chemistry was some-
what alchemistic and recognized in elements some magical properties which can
no longer be identified.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 231
is applied ; and to prevent this leveling process it is desirable, in case
experiential togetherness is called a relation, to call it the experien-
tial relation of things. But by whatever term any one may choose
to name it, it is of supreme importance to take the thing " at its face
value, neither less nor more." We must mark the part it plays in
the concrete whole it constitutes; and if we do so, I think that we
shall see that it treats relations in exactly the same way in which it
treats qualities. It binds them together with each other and with
qualities into a peculiar whole, and the analysis of that whole reveals
the togetherness as a factor distinct from the things thus together.
In this togetherness, relations do not seem to stand any closer to the
togetherness than qualities do. The fact that relations are relations
does not seem to give them any special prerogative or precedence in
experiential society. The terms of their admission and their standing
after admission are the same as those of qualities. Just as particular
qualities may or may not be within the scope of any particular ex-
periential togetherness, so it is with relations. Relations may even
obtain between qualities that are in experience and yet not be them-
selves in that experience. The togetherness of things in experience
is no more a matter of relations than of qualities; if it is distinct
from the latter, it is likewise distinct from the former. Indeed it is
distinguishable from both relation and quality in very much the same
way in which relation is distinguishable from its two or more terms.
We may therefore say that quality and relation are the "terms" of
the "experiential relation"; but to avoid the confusion involved in
the use of relation in two senses in the same sentence, it is preferable
to follow current usage and group together quality and relation
as contents, and to distinguish them as contents from the form of
experiential togetherness which functions identically in the various
contents, whether relational or qualitative. The analysis of experi-
ence if thoroughly carried out will, I believe, always reveal in addi-
tion to the content of experience another factor, namely, the unique
togetherness of the content which makes it into experiential content.
This last remark is of course an assertion of an ' ' inner duplicity ' '
of experience. Whatever upon analysis shows factors of different
kinds is not simple, but complex. Experience is duplex in character,
disclosing upon analysis two factors, phases, aspects, call them what
you will; namely, contents and their peculiar mode of experiential
integration. This latter factor is called by various names. It is
"experiencing," "feeling," "consciousness," and "awareness." It
may be true that neither the "plain man" nor the philosopher de-
fines these terms in this way, but I think that the fact which these
terms designate, when divested of all that fancy has clothed this fact
232 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
with, will be found to be just the fact of a unique togetherness of
things, which makes these things into experienced things.
While not wishing to make too much capital out of it, still I think
that some corroboration is given to the above description of the
nature of experience by the fact so often noticed, that there is no
consciousness or feeling or experiencing of just one single indis-
tinguishable thing. Why is this so? Is it not because the very
nature of experience is that it is a peculiar synthesis of different
contents?
In this paper I have refrained from raising many questions that
should be answered in any, even sketchy, philosophical account of
experience. I have done so, not because I think that these questions
should not be answered, but because I have not wished to complicate
the problem of stating the general nature of experience with specific
problems which might distract our attention from the main problem
of the paper; and the main contention of this paper is twofold:
first, that experienced things are, when experienced, together in a
unique way; and secondly, that this unique way of togetherness is
not the result or the by-product of their being experienced, but is
what is meant by their being experienced. The first part of the
thesis will perhaps not be seriously questioned by any one. A man
has merely to move his eyes in any direction to find certain objects
entering into a context and others departing from that context; the
whole mass of things experienced forms a certain Zusammensein or
Zusammenhang. In the same way ideas enter into this federal union
of things and then secede, whether in doing so they perish or no.
So long as they are in the alliance they have an experiential fellow-
ship with whatever else is also in that alliance. All this I venture
to hope will be allowed to pass without challenge. The real issue
arises when it is said that to be experienced means nothing else than
to be within such an association of things. Such a statement can
not be proved a priori; it purports to be only a description of facts ;
and must be tested as any such description is tested. Is there any
other fact in the constitution of experience which has been overlooked
in this description ? If so, what is it ? If not, then the description
must stand, at least till it is bettered. In answering this question
I beg the reader not to allow the term "togetherness" as I have
employed it to prejudice him. Like every general term, it empha-
sizes common features and slurs over peculiar features. The real
question is whether all the peculiar features of "consciousness,"
"feeling," "experiencing," etc., are not differentiating peculiarities
of a unique way of togetherness of things.
EVANDER BRADLEY McGiLVARY.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 233
THE TRUE, THE GOOD, AND THE BEAUTIFUL FROM A
PRAGMATIC STANDPOINT 1
BY the pragmatic standpoint I shall here mean the disposition
to reinterpret the logical, ethical, and esthetic values of experi-
ence in the light of their relation to the life processes of the organism.
From this standpoint, human experience may be viewed as a series
of efforts to bring about a harmonious adjustment or vital equi-
librium between the private experience of the individual and the
incomparably broader experience of an environing nature. Every
experience, whether it be predominantly cognitive, conative, or af-
fective, involves in some way this demand of the organism for an
adjustment of internal to external relations. To offer a defense of
this view-point would be superfluous. The new life which has come
into psychology by the adoption of the functional or biological
method of investigation is a sufficient vindication of that method. I
wish rather to call attention to the fact that this new pragmatic
method does not justify some of those who call themselves prag-
matists in identifying or confounding together the types of value
which we call the true, the good, and the beautiful ; but that on the
contrary it provides a new and firmer basis for distinguishing sharply
between these values. In other words, granting the right of the
pragmatist to regard truth and beauty no less than goodness as forms
of organic adjustment or equilibrium, I would deny the conclusion
that truth and beauty are therefore mere forms of goodness.
By way of preliminary justification of this position, we may
observe that there are obviously three ways in which an individual
element and its environing context may attain to harmony or equi-
librium. First, the element may undergo whatever alteration of its
nature is demanded by the context, the context itself remaining
unaltered; or second, the context may undergo whatever alteration
is demanded by the element, the latter remaining unaltered ; or third,
the element and its context may each of them spontaneously, and
without compulsion from one another, attain to harmony or equi-
librium.
Let us first consider which of these three kinds of equilibrium
may be interpreted to constitute cognitive value or truth. Truth is a
quality belonging primarily to judgments, and whatever our views
as to its ultimate nature, I think we might all agree that a judgment
is true when and only when it states a fact. What a judgment states
may be called the judgment-content in distinction from the mere act
of making the judgment. For example, in the judgment A is B,
the judgment-content is the complex idea ' ' A-a-case-of-B " or
"A-standing-in-the-subsumptive-relation-to-B." Truth applies to a
'Read before the American Philosophical Association, December, 1908.
234 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
judgment only in respect to the judgment-content, not in respect to
the judgment-act. If the content of the judgment is a fact, then
the judgment is called true ; if its content is not a fact, it is called
false. When we say that truth is the agreement of a judgment with
fact we mean no more than this: that the relation which the judg-
ment asserts shall have the status of fact. The problem of defining
truth then reduces to the problem of defining fact. Now most of us,
I suppose, would be willing to admit, first, that the only facts that
we can know anything about are those that are either perceptually or
conceptually experienced and, second, that we distinguish a fact from
an appearance not by an impossible comparison of it with a standard
outside of experience, but by observing whether it be consistent or
inconsistent with the totality of other experience. Thus the objects
and events of a dream are called appearances rather than facts not
because of any internal inconsistency, but because they are incon-
sistent with the broader and more inclusive experience of waking
life. The crookedness of the stick partly immersed in water is
regarded as mere appearance because it is incompatible with the
general system of experiences which relate to the stick. May we not
say then that a judgment is true when what it asserts is consistent
with the totality of experience contents? The cognitive interest or
the interest in attaining truth will then be neither more nor less than
the attempt to make the contents of individual judgments consistent
with the contents of other judgments previously verified, and so indi-
rectly with the general system of the things and relations given in
experience. As long as there is conflict or lack of consistency be-
tween any judgment and the general system, there is to the rational
mind a condition of instability and dissatisfaction. The cognitive
situation demands that the judgment content be so altered as to
make it harmonious with that general system of which it is a part;
when this is done equilibrium results, and we have the experience
of cognitive value or truth.
The type of equilibrium here evidenced would seem to be the
first of the three types mentioned above, for when we are testing the
truth of a judgment it is essential to the success of the process that
we make the judgment accord with the environing facts. This point
will come out more clearly, however, if we compare judgment with
desire and conation.
Now a judgment and a desire are alike, first in that both are ele-
ments in an individual consciousness. They are alike, secondly, in
that the occurrence of each implies a demand for a certain end or
goal. And they are alike, thirdly, in that this end or goal is a con-
dition of equilibrium between the element and the total context.
Alike in these three respects, the judgment and the desire differ in
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 235
the manner in which the common goal, i. e., harmony with the en-
vironment, is to be attained. The briefest and most familiar way of
stating this difference is to say that a judgment is satisfied when its
content conforms to the environment of fact, while a desire is satis-
fied when the environment of fact conforms to it. In both cognition
and conation an effort is made to adjust the individual to his environ-
ment, but in cognition the adjustment is brought about by manipu-
lating ideas in such a way as to make them conform to the environ-
ment, while in conation the adjustment is brought about in the
opposite way, namely, by manipulating the environment in such a
way as to make it conform to the needs and desires of the individual.
And there is a second difference between judgments and desires that
is bound up with this contrast in their methods of realization. They
differ in origin. The judgment-content is something given to the
individual, the desire springs from the indivdual. The environment
presents its demands to the individual as facts, while the individual
presents his demands to the environment as desires. When the indi-
vidual conforms to the cognitive demands of the environment he
affirms them in judgments that are true. "When the environment
conforms to or gratifies the conative demands of the individual the
resulting equilibrium is called good; thus we see that as truth, or cog-
nitive value, corresponds to the first of the three possible types of
equilibrium, so goodness or conative value corresponds to the second
of these types. But cognition and conation are not merely different
in method and in origin, they are different also in their temporal
outlook or attitude. The conative attitude is essentially prospective ;
one can not will anything except it be regarded as a possibility, and
a possibility is always future. The cognitive attitude, on the other
hand, is essentially retrospective for it addresses itself to a realm of
facts and every fact is a factum, a fait accompli, something done
and therefore past.
It is curious that in the face of these contrasts between the cog-
nitive interest in truth and the conative interest in goodness, cer-
tain pragmatists, notably Dr. Shiller in his philosophy of humanism,
should attempt to reduce the true to a form of the good. The reason
for this error lies, I think, in the similar, though opposite, error of
very-thorough-going British absolutism, for Schiller's humanism is,
after all, scarcely more than very thorough-going inversion of Brad-
ley's absolutism. Now the temper of Mr. Bradley 's system is essen-
tially Spinozistic and, except for his phraseology, there is little to
remind us of Fichte and the other right wing idealists from whom he
is descended. Spinozistic absolutism is, of course, monistic and sub-
ordinates the individual to the environing system or absolute.
Regarded merely as a mode or appearance of the latter, the individual
236 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
and all the contents of his consciousness (desires as well as judg-
ments) can achieve value or equilibrium in only one way by con-
forming humbly and in toto to the demands of an eternal and immu-
table order. Because whatever is, is true, the absolutist assumes that
whatever is, is right. The good is reduced to a form of the true, and
the plastic and indeterminate future which is the sphere of the will
is subordinated to the timeless order of truth. Absolutism may
indeed be defined as the attempt to view reality under the fixed and
immutable form of the past, and humanism is the answering attempt
to view all things under the form of the plastic and changeable future.
It was inevitable that the former should call forth the latter as
its appropriate reaction. The best antidote for the intellectualistic
ethic of Mr. Bradley was the voluntaristic logic of Mr. Schiller.
But why neglect the middle ground of common sense? Why do
both absolutists and humanists overlook the fact that reality, with
its past and its future, is comprehensive enough to include the fixed
order of fact demanded by the truth-seeker and also the plastic
realm of opportunity presupposed in all pursuit of the good. It is
doubtless true that these two phases of experience never occur in
complete isolation from each other. No experience is so purely
conative as not to have a cognitive aspect, and none is so purely
cognitive as to be free from the element of conation. But despite
their inseparability, the conative and the cognitive types of value
are as distinct from one another as north and south and to seek to
identify them or to reduce either to a form of the other is sheer
confusion.
And now that we have seen in what way the true and the good
correspond respectively to the first and the second of the three
general types of adjustment by means of which the individual may
attain to equilibrium with his environment, it remains to inquire
whether there be an analogous correspondence between the remain-
ing type of adjustment and the experience of beauty. At the out-
set of this final portion of our inquiry we must take into considera-
tion that the beautiful is not the only kind of value applicable to
feeling. The pleasant is equally with the beautiful descriptive of
affective value, and it is necessary before going farther to adopt
some conception of their relation. If we revert for a moment to the
concept of cognitive value or truth, we may note that truths are of
two grades, particular and universal. In a particular judgment the
relation constituting the judgment-content is a transitory and not
a permanent fact. The judgment, "some dogs are black" asserts
that the quality of black occurs at some times, but not necessarily at
all times, in coexistence with the qualities connoted by the term dog.
But the judgment "all dogs are animals" asserts that at each and
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 237
every time that we might experience the qualities connoted by the
term dog, we should also experience in coexistence with them the
qualities connoted by the term animal. Now corresponding to this
division of the objects of cognition into particular and universal
truths is a quite similar division of the objects of conation and de-
sire. There are the goods that satisfy our casual and temporary
desires and there is that higher grade of good which consists in the
satisfaction of wants that are permanent and universal necessary
to our very existence as social and spiritual beings. The two classes
of desires are often found at variance with one another and the term
good is sometimes used in the ethical and restricted sense to desig-
nate only things which possess this higher form of conative value:
the things which, as we say, ought to be desired. Returning now to
a consideration of the distinction between the beautiful and the
merely pleasant, I think we shall find that it is the same sort of dis-
tinction as that between the particular and the universal truths, or as
that between the merely desired and the ethically desirable or good.
Writers on esthetics seem to differ sharply on this point, but their
differences are, after all, more apparent than real. Compare, for
example, the views of Marshall, Santayana, and Kant. The beauti-
ful, says Dr. Marshall, is the permanently pleasant; Professor
Santayana defines beauty as pleasure objectified or externalized.
Now it goes without saying that if an object is a permanent source
of pleasure the pleasantness will be localized in the object, for the
same reason that sweetness is localized in sugar, or that any quality
is localized in the object which regularly or permanently evokes it.
And conversely, if the pleasure aroused by an object be fleeting, irreg-
ular, and variable, dependent on our passing mood rather than on the
nature of the object, why then we shall not tend to localize the
pleasantness in the object, but only in ourselves, and we shall regard
the object as being merely pleasant, not as being beautiful. To de-
fine beauty with Marshall as the permanent in pleasure, or, with
Santayana, as pleasure objectified, actually and pragmatically
amounts to the same thing. For Kant, the important phase of the
relation between beauty and pleasantness lies in the element of uni-
versality which distinguishes the esthetic from the merely hedonic
experience. But here again we have a conception quite in accord
with the two just considered. For if the pleasantness of anything
is due primarily to the permanent nature of the object rather than
to the changing mood of the conscious subject, it will normally be
aroused in a^l similar subjects, will be, that is, a universal or public
pleasure concerning which all should be able to agree. The beauti-
ful then would seem to be neither more nor less than the perma-
nently, objectively, and universally pleasurable. The further defi-
238 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
nition of beauty will thus depend upon the definition of pleasure.
Pleasure, like most of the ultimate types of experience, is difficult
to define. It may be, but is not necessarily, an object of desire. It
usually, though not invariably, attends the satisfaction of a desire.
It resembles the objects of cognition in that it may be given to the
individual without any anticipation or effort on his part, but it differs
from a fact of cognition in that it is never forced upon the the indi-
vidual against his desire. It seems, indeed, to be somewhat between
the cognitive and the conative forms of experience. In cognition it is
the environment which primarily determines our experience, while in
volitional activity our experience is primarily determined by ourselves.
But whether we shall feel pleasure or not, depends neither on the
nature of the environment nor on the nature of the individual, but
solely on the particular relation at the moment of one to the other.
When the environment happens to accord with the organism, or with
any part of it, in such a way as to accelerate or facilitate its processes,
then, and only then, does pleasure result. Thus the essential feature
of affective value, distinguishing it from the values of cognition and
conation, is that it is neither enforced nor achieved, but simply
happens. Indeed, much that Kant says of the freedom and spon-
taneity characterizing the experience of beauty, might, it seems to
me, with even more obvious truth, be applied to the experience of
mere pleasure.
The type of equilibrium or adjustment between organism and en-
vironment that is demanded for the realization of esthetic and he-
donic values is one in which individual and environment each inde-
pendently or spontaneously accords with the other.
To conclude: I have tried to show that corresponding to the
three great types of human value which are called the true, the good,
and the beautiful, there are three processes of adjustment through
which the human organism may attain to equilibrium with its en-
vironment: these are, first, the adapting of the individual percep-
tions and judgments to the facts of the environment, which gives the
cognitive value of truth; second, the adapting of the facts of the
environment to the desires of the individual, which gives the conative
value of good ; and, third, the spontaneous and unenf orced adaptation
of individual needs and environing facts to one another, which gives
the affective value of beauty or pleasure. The pragmatic method
as thus applied to the analysis of values by no means confirms the
conclusion adopted by the humanistic pragmatists that cognition and
feeling are reducible to conation, but seems rather to provide addi-
tional reasons for regarding these three types of experience as
severally distinct and irreducible. W. P. MONTAGUE.
COLUMBIA UNIVEBSITY.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 239
A NOTE ON THE SPECIALIZATION OF MENTAL
FUNCTIONS WITH VARYING CONTENT
SINCE Spearman 1 showed the inadequacy ofi correlations calcu-
lated from original measures subject to chance variations, re-
visions of all previous results, such as those of Wissler 2 and Thorn-
dike, 3 have been needed to decide how far the extraordinary
specialization of mental functions to which the earlier researches
bore witness holds true when the reducing influence of chance varia-
tions in the original measures upon these intercorrelations has been
removed or allowed for.
I have recently made such a revision in the case of the relation
between (1) accuracy in drawing a line to equal a 100 mm. line and
(2) accuracy in drawing a line to equal a 50 mm. line. Wissler,
using a single trial with a 50 mm. line and its bisection, found a cor-
relation (Pearson coefficient) of only -j- .38. My records comprise
30 trials for each length with 37 individuals, young women from 19
to 23 years old, all in the same class in the New York City Training
School and so all of very closely the same degree of mental maturity.
I use the deviation from the standard as the measure of inaccuracy.
I obtain as the probable true correlation + .77. The obtained cor-
relations from which the -}-.!! is estimated by the Spearman form-
ulas are ^Pearson coefficients) :
Av. Error of 1st 15 100 mm. lines with Av. Error of 1st 15 50 mm. lines + .655
" 2d " " + .533
1st " " + .432
2d " " +.471
2d 15 100 mm. " + .642
" 2d " 50 " " + .642
Average Error of 30 100 mm. lines with Average Error of 30 50 mm. lines + .582
The importance of this result lies in the failure, even after correc-
tion of perfect correlation between the function of equaling a 100 mm.
line and that of equaling a 50 mm. line. The resemblance de-
noted by r = .77 is not very close. For instance, we may say that a
man's ability to equal 100 mm. lines is little or no more like his own
ability to equal 50 mm. lines than it is like his twin brother's ability
to equal 100 mm. lines. Such a state of affairs seems preposterous.
But the fact remains and, until more elaborate measures are made,
it must apparently be accepted. Nor is it without corroboration.
Woodworth and Thorndike* found that training in estimating short
lines ( to 1 inches) did not spread at all readily to estimating
1 American Journal of Psychology, 1904.
'Monograph Supplement No. 16 to the Psychological Review, 1901.
"Heredity, Correlation and Sex Differences," 1903.
* Psychological Review, July, 1901.
1st
2d
2d
1st
1st 15 50 mm.
240 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
long lines (6-24 inches). Recent studies of the behavior of the eye
give the possibility that the physiological events may be more dif-
ferent in the two cases than has been supposed.
But if accuracy of discrimination of length means something
radically different when the length is 50 mm. from what it means
when the length is 100 mm., does it not appear that our descriptive
names for mental functions are very inadequate? If the variations
with content of the processes to which we give the same name are
so great as this sample case would make them out, should not the
psychologist make content a matter of prime importance for study 1
The case just quoted shows content as far more influential than it
has been supposed to be, but I could also quote cases where it is less
influential than it has been supposed to be. Our traditional psychol-
ogy has been unable to deduce even very simple relations, 5 and this
inability implies that it does not know what the functions are which
it names and pretends to describe.
EDWARD L. THORNDIKE.
TEACHEBS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVEBSITY.
DISCUSSION
CONCERNING A PHILOSOPHICAL PLATFORM: A REPLY
TO PROFESSOR CREIGHTON
VERY rational discussion rests necessarily on the assumption
that an agreement on the points under inquiry is both de-
sirable and possible. This assumption every worker in any depart-
ment of knowledge tacitly makes, except the radical sceptic alone.
His position may be unassailable, but it is so merely because he places
himself outside of any generating problem whatsoever. His thesis
remains therefore an absolutely barren speculative possibility. In
order formally to exclude him, we could state our own problem in
the hypothetical form: Assuming an agreement on some philosoph-
ical questions and their answers to be both desirable and possible,
required to find them and to devise methods by which agreement
on them can be obtained. The critic who wishes to assail this assump-
tion may try with the opposite hypothesis.
6 For instance, who of my readers will, in ignorance of direct experimental
data, venture to estimate the coefficients of correlation between:
1. Ability in addition and ability in writing the opposites of words.
2. Ability in addition and ability in marking A's on a sheet of capitals.
3. Ability in addition and ability in doing arithmetical " problems."
4. Ability in division and ability in doing arithmetical problems.
5. Ability in drawing lines to equal a 100mm. line and ability in judging
which of two lines both about 100 mm. long is greater.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 241
I am moved to make these remarks, because the key-note of the
criticism of my paper "Concerning a Philosophical Platform" at the
meeting of the Association in Baltimore was that such an agreement
was "neither desirable nor possible"; and now Professor Creighton
in his article "The Idea of a Philosophical Platform" in this JOUR-
NAL (Vol. VI., p. 141) takes the same position. He states : ' ' From the
very nature of philosophy it ought to be evident that such a platform
is neither desirable nor possible of attainment" (p. 142). On the
contrary, I still think that the only fruitful way of treating the
question of a philosophical platform is, by a study of the philosoph-
ical needs of other departments of inquiry, to convince one's self of
the necessity of an agreement, to assume its possibility, and to go to
work. But Professor Creighton, whilst denying the possibility or
even desirability of "such a platform," maintains, at the same time,
that a platform in some sense already exists : "A platform, then, does,
in some sense, exist, and always has existed, in philosophy" (p. 143)
and "we can not deny that some agreement, especially regarding the
nature of the problems that can profitably and significantly be raised
and the kind of answers which they demand, is an essential condi-
tion of the existence of the subject as a rational branch of human
inquiry" (pp. 142-143). Professor Creighton seems to include in
this platform which he considers as already existing, first, a defini-
tion of philosophy, and secondly, an ideal of philosophy, both of
which I urged in my paper as essential parts of a platform on which
we philosophers ought to agree, at least for the time being, until we
are ready, for specific reasons, to change this part of our platform.
I do not know what the definition of philosophy is which Professor
Creighton had in mind, when he made such a definite conclusion from
its "very nature," but a preceding sentence at least implies a defi-
nition: "The nature and function of philosophy ... is an attempt
to understand and evaluate the standpoint and results of all the
sciences and the meaning of experience as a whole" (p. 142). Does
Professor Creighton mean to say that on this definition there is any-
thing like an agreement among the experts ? Or is he, at least, will-
ing to offer it as a possible definition for criticism, or would he prefer
to restate it more formally ? The sentence seems also to imply some
ideal of philosophy, the "kind of answers" which we may expect;
namely, that philosophy is critique.
But I do not wish to criticize these points which seem to me of
supreme importance, as long as they are stated merely incidentally
and implicitly in a paper with the main contention of which I am in
hearty agreement. For purposes of further discussion, I therefore
ask Professor Creighton, first, to state what he considers a good
definition of philosophy. By this I do not necessarily mean a new
242 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
attempt to comprise in a statement the common characteristics of
existing philosophies, past and present, but merely a proposition
that may serve as a working basis and which, therefore, will be defi-
nite, consistent, distinctive, and comprehensive. Secondly, I ask
Professor Creighton to state what he considers to be the proper
form of solution which we can expect of the generating problem im-
plied in the definition of philosophy aforementioned. If philosophy
is to be merely critique, then what kind of critique 1 If it is to be a
constructive system, what kind of a system ? Are its propositions to
be proved; then what kinds of proof are demanded? On these
points at least he must consider an agreement possible, as he seems
to imply that it already exists.
KARL SCHMIDT.
PEQUAKET, N. H.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
La notion de valeur; sa nature psychique, son importance en theologie.
GEORGES BERGUER. Geneve: Georg & Co. 1908. Pp. 365.
The author of this work, Georges Berguer, was born in Geneva on
September 9, 1873. After studying in the college of his native town, he
entered, in 1891, the faculty of theology of the university. He also
studied in the universities of Edinburgh and Strassburg. Since the com-
pletion of his studies, he has been employed as a minister in the Lutheran
church of Montbeliard, and later in Lyons and in Geneva. He has also
been given charge of the cbair of religious psychology in the faculty of
theology of Geneva.
Mr. Berguer is already known for the following works : " L'education
de la conscience de Pierre par Jesus de Nazareth," a contribution to tbe
study of the pedagogy of Christ; " Le jardin clos," poems; "L'applica-
tion de la methode scientifique a la theologie"; " L'agnosticisme relig-
ieux," an answer to Professor Frommel, in Revue de theologie et de phi-
losophie de Lausanne, 1905 ; " L'autorite religieuse et la valeur de la
Bible" (with tbe cooperation of Aug. Gampert).
In " L' application de la methode scientifique a la theologie" Mr.
Berguer has shown what can be understood by a "scientific theology."
He bad made a study of tbe scientifically observable phenomenal mani-
festations of religious facts, leaving out of account tbeir importance in
tbe intimate life of tbe subject. It is the other aspect of theology tbat
be now studies; tbat aspect which is not concerned with the grouping of
facts, but witb the justification of beliefs. On approaching tbis aspect
of theology, he finds tbe notion of value in tbe foreground.
" La notion de valeur " was written as a dissertation for tbe doctor's
degree in theology at tbe University of Geneva. It consists of three
parts. Tbe first part studies tbe problem of value in itself; the second
and tbe third corroborate tbe results obtained, (a) by a study of the fact
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 243
of conversion, (&) by the consideration of a case of subverted values; the
case of Nietzsche.
The first character of value, says the author, is its objectivity. Value
appears to us as a specific quality of the objects, which leads us to pass
a favorable or an unfavorable judgment upon them. It is on account of
its nutritive properties that bread has value for us. It is through her
external appearance or her mental endowments that our beloved has won
our heart (Chapter 2).
But value also depends on the subject and on the general circum-
stances in which he is placed. Gold is most valuable in our eyes. It
has no value for yon savage tribe which the irresistible spread of our
civilization has not yet reached. It is despised by the monk who, by
the vow of poverty, has raised an impassable barrier between himself and
the world (Chapter 3).
At first blush, continues the author, there seems to be a contradiction
in these results. The only means of solving the difficulty is to recognize
that value belongs to the subject and to the object at the same time;
that it is neither a quality of the object, nor a state of the subject, but
a relation, susceptible of unceasing, multitudinous modifications
(Chapter 4).
What is the exact nature of this relation? The author admits with
Lotze that it belongs to the affective order and is akin to pleasure. This
pleasure is nothing but the feeling of harmony which a being experiences
in its environment. It is not, therefore, a pleasure of a lower nature.
Its moral character is more or less elevated according to the nature of
the subject (p. 70).
It follows therefrom that any modification of the affective nature of
an individual will be followed by concomitant modifications of his
whole set of values. The more we ascend in the scale of being, the more
complicated will these modifications become. Groups of values will
arise, each of which will rest upon its own merit, and will claim the
priority with regard to the other groups. And where shall the priority
be? Of the various independent, unconnected value groups, which shall
conquer? which shall perish? We find ourselves face to face with the
need of a value criterion.
We discover in human beings, the author continues, a value relation
of a new kind. It asserts itself with an imperative character, with a
claim of absolute right to victory. This new relation is moral obliga-
tion, which thus becomes the capital problem, the point in which the
question of value is centered. This feeling of moral obligation, which
makes man a moral being, constitutes, as it were, the scientific character
of humanity as such.
In spite of their imperative character, the relations of moral obliga-
tion do not always obtain the victory to which they are entitled. They
are opposed by the affective relations which had previously obtained in
the race and in the individual. There thus arises a rending asunder of
our intimate self, the tragic moral misery which theologians call sin.
The author is thus in perfect agreement with Kant in so far as the
244 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
imperative and absolute character of the moral law is concerned. He
believes, however, that Kant has erred 1 in regarding the fact of moral
obligation as an ultimate fact, susceptible of no further analysis. And
Kant has thus failed to explain why the sentiment of respect which may
be described as the subjective aspect of moral obligation does not par-
take of the character of absolute necessity of the categorical imperative;
or, in other words, why man does not always act in agreement with the
voice of the moral law.
Moral obligation possesses a twofold character. On the one hand, it
asserts itself as closely connected with our intimate self, as an essential
constituent of our own being. On the other hand, it imposes itself with
absolute authority, as the expression of a will which differs from our own.
And 1 even when we try to elude its precepts, it remains in us and con-
demns us, appearing as the undying testimony of a higher being whom
we are bound to obey.
This plain, undeniable fact of our experience leads us to regard moral
obligation as a relation between our finite will and the will of God. It is
the result of the unconditional and absolute action of the Divine Being
on the subconscious principle of human personality. And it follows
therefrom that the same fact a religious fact constitutes the specific
nature of man and enables him to assign value to things. Man can as-
sign values because he is a religious being. The problem of values is
thus essentially a religious problem.
It is, however, a terrible truth, a monstrous fact, that we disobey the
voice of the moral law a voice which is the privilege of our race. Pos-
sessors of an absolute norm of value, we blindly follow the impulses of
our vilest passions. There is in us a continual struggle, an abnormal
condition in which our own nature is at war with itself, a combat in
which we are at the same time the aggressor and the victim. It is here
that the problem of redemption and of conversion appears.
The second part of Mr. Berguer's work is devoted to an analysis of the
experience of conversion.
From the psychologists' point of view, to say that a man is converted
means "that religious ideas, previously peripheral in his consciousness,
now take a central place, and that religious aims form the habitual
center of his energy" (William James).
According to Mr. Berguer, this explanation, correct so far as it goes,
is not, however, ultimate. Conversion is undoubtedly what the psychol-
ogists tell us; but it is also something else. On the whole, the psychol-
ogists' explanation presents two blemishes: (1) it does not account for
the essential and distinctive character of conversion, nor for the perma-
nence of the moral modifications it produces in the subject; (2) it is in-
capable of finding the causes of the displacement of the fields of con-
sciousness, and of the permanent impression) left in the convert by one
of these fields (p. 198).
Moreover, if it is true that all psychologists are very accurate with
regard to the conditions which precede conversion, and to the results by
which the fact of conversion is followed, it is also true that they fail to
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 245
explain the "turning-point" which is conversion itself. James tells us
that conversion is a change of place in the fields of consciousness; but
how and why this change of place occurs, he does not tell us.
In the process of conversion there enters an element foreign to the
will of the subject. There takes place a kind of self-abandonment which
may be compared to that singular strategem by which we succeed in re-
membering a forgotten word; we leave the word out of consideration and
concentrate our attention upon something else, and lo! all at once the
word is there before us. Something similar happens in conversion be-
cause the field of consciousness is then occupied by sin, towards which
all voluntary efforts naturally converge. There is, however, a subcon-
scious field in which opposite elements are at play. In order that these
elements may possibly come to the surface, the " sinful ego " must forget
itself for a while. It must sink below the conscious field and leave the
space free for the " regenerated ego." There takes place then a sub-
conscious work to which is due that transformation of the judgments of
value which is the immediate antecedent of conversion.
How is that subconscious work effected? Not by the will of the sub-
ject, but by an external force acting upon his soul. We are bound to
admit the presence of an agent, of a mysterious action at work within
our subconscious field. The obligatory character of the results produced
compels us to regard it as the action of a personal will. It is the action
of a being endowed with an absolute right upon me, the action of the
being on whom I depend, the all-powerful God.
Let it be well understood, however, that these results by no means
contradict the theories of the psychologists. They belong to a field the
field of values which psychology does not and can not enter. And Mr.
Berguer here proclaims the principle of psychoreligious parallelism,
which may be enunciated thus: In religious phenomena, to every psych-
ical state there corresponds a process of value; and to every process of
value there corresponds a psychical state. These two elements are irre-
ducible to each other (p. 283).
In the third part of his work the author points to Nietzsche's moral
nihilism as to a sad example of the results we are liable to obtain when
we neglect the moral and religious factors, or subordinate them to in-
tellectual principles. The preposterous consequences of Nietzsche's
system, the absolute ruin of morality to which it leads, show how absurd
is the attempt to base a theory of value on anything but moral obliga-
tion.
Such is Mr. Berguer's account of the nature of value. His theory,
always very interesting, is, in my opinion, assailable in some points.
He maintains, in the first place, that value, being neither entirely sub-
jective nor entirely objective, must be regarded as a relation between the
subject and the object. Thus far, I believe, no objection can be raised.
It may be, however, parenthetically observed, that this property is far
from being peculiar to value alone. It is a constituent of all the facts,
of all the elements, of all the truths, of this world. Whenever we per-
ceive, whenever we feel, whenever we know, we are in the presence of
246 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
an objective reality which we translate in terms of our own mind; of a
reality which is outside ourselves; which would, however, be quite dif-
ferent for us if we were constituted otherwise. The chair on which I am
sitting is certainly not a creation of my mind. A carpenter made it and
brought it to my room. And yet, if I were an angel, deprived of the
senses of sight and touch, although my chair might continue to exist for
me, it would not be what I now call a chair. And it is, therefore, sub-
jective to that extent.
After having traced the relational character of value, Mr. Berguer
invokes the testimony of some writers on the subject, and, from their
unanimous consent, concludes that value belongs to our affective nature.
This conclusion seems very questionable. Value is proportional to desire ;
but desire is caused by intellectual factors. When we regard gold as
valuable, our judgment is grounded upon the intellectual knowledge of
the commodities gold may enable us to get. And value seems thus to be
connected with our intellectual as well as with our affective nature. As a
great metaphysician of our day, Desire Mercier, has so clearly shown,
" a thing is not good because it is desirable ; it is desirable because it is
good; and it is good because it answers to the exigencies or to the con-
veniences of the subject for which it is good." * In the whole of Mr. Ber-
guer's work, a superiority is thus unduly assigned to emotional and moral
which are resolved into emotional over intellectual factors.
In a being like man, in which so many relations of value are struggling
for victory, there must undoubtedly be a definite criterion. But, is this
criterion proved to be moral obligation by saying that moral obligation is
in us, that it works even before we suspect its necessity; that it naturally
imposes itself upon our conscience (p. 104) ; that, since it imposes itself
upon our conscience with an absolute immediacy, its authority is the
authority of God (p. 156) ? Do not intellectual truths possess a character
exactly similar?
That the objective and absolute character of truth and goodness may
lead us to believe in a Divine Being which contains all truth and good-
ness within himself, has been maintained by eminent philosophers, such
as St. Augustine and Professor Royce. I would not assert that they are
wrong, although the force of their argument is not clear to my mind.
But what I would maintain is that moral truth does not possess any
superiority over intellectual truth; and that, accordingly, the absolute
character of the moral law can not lead us to God any more directly than
the absolute character of mathematical science. We must act according
to duty ; our conscience tells us eloquently, and we can not stifle her voice.
But our intellect also tells us, and with equal force, that the sum of the
three angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles, and we are unable
to rebel against its authority. If we see God behind the categorical
imperative, why should we not see him also behind the geometrical figure ?
The author's theory of conversion gives likewise to a moral and re-
ligious fact a superiority which it does not seem to deserve. In his
opinion, conversion possesses two distinctive characteristics : first, it does
1 Mercier, " Metaphysique g4n6rale ou ontologie," p. 229.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 247
not leave the subject as he was, but produces in him something decisive
and permanent; secondly, it is due to a sudden displacement of the fields
of consciousness, which psychology is unable to explain. We readily
admit that conversion is a fact of the utmost importance; that it trans-
forms the whole field of values in man. A sudden, decisive, and perma-
nent transformation may, however, be due to other than religious causes.
I will mention, in the first place, the complete overthrow of all past values
and the new meaning imparted to our whole life by the passion of love.
Love may work an absolute change in a man's life; a change which
will remold his whole self, give new values to the things he had despised,
perhaps remove forever from his field of consciousness the objects he had
hitherto cherished. How many young men are there not in whom the
passion of love has even been powerful enough to make them renounce the
religion of their ancestors and embrace a doctrine they had hitherto
despised! I have known one who descended from the old settlers of
Maryland. Proud of his family he had always been , proud of his religion
also. He abjured his faith, abandoned his parents, gave up his glorious
name for the blue eyes of a Protestant factory girl. All the ideals of his
youth were forsaken and have never been able to come to the front again.
Thirteen years have elapsed; and the youth, now a man, still lies at her
feet, a slave to love and to human frailty. She makes his life miserable ;
he knows it and he tells her; but he is unable to reform. And when the
ideals of his youth assert themselves again, the simple words, " Jack, my
darling," and a pat on the shoulder suffice to drive them away.
Mr. Berguer will no doubt answer me, that in such a case as this we
do not feel an impression of obligation, but of necessity; and I will grant
him that it may be so; although, even on this point, much might be said.
The question, however, was to point out that conversion does not present
any marked character which unmistakably sets it apart from other trans-
formations of our field of values. At all events, even impressions of
obligation may easily be adduced against Mr. Berguer's theory. Remark-
able cases of such impressions are furnished us by those counter-conver-
sions of which Nietzsche appears to the author as the most striking
example; cases in which the intellectual factor has been predominant and
has driven away the religious value. It is unnecessary to say that
Nietzsche is far from being an isolated case. Although few men have
gone so far as to reverse the field of value altogether, there have been
numerous examples of lovers of truth who, like Nietzsche, have been led
to reject the religious beliefs of their tender years. Victor Hugo and
Ernest Renan are memorable examples. Their intellect led them
erroneously, perhaps, but this is not the question now to abandon their
religious faith. It asserted its right in the most authoritative manner.
It imposed its conclusions with a character of absolute obligation. The
counter-conversion of these men was followed by the most decisive and
permanent results, by results which have changed the whole course of their
lives. Why should we affirm that conversion points to the immediate
action of God on our soul, if other processes, endowed with the same
248 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
characters, evidently do not point to such an action? Would it not be
better, after all, to take the pragmatist point of view and to judge of the
tree by its fruit ?
Mr. Berguer's work, however, points to a great truth. It shows us
that science can not tell all about human life and human values; that
facts and laws of facts do not solve the enigma of man's destiny; that
there exists a whole region of human experience about which science is
silent, because it falls without science's realm. And this is probably what
a great French writer meant when, a few years ago, he proclaimed the
bankruptcy of science. Science is sacred. It increases almost indefinitely
our knowledge of the world. There is, however, a field which science does
not enter. It is into this field that Mr. Berguer leads us in his work ; and,
although we may fail to agree with some of his conclusions, we can not
but heartily praise him for his noble undertaking.
JOSEPH Louis PERBIER.
NEW YOBK CITY.
The Development of the Senses in the First Three Years of Childhood.
MILLICENT WASHBURN SHINN. University of California Publications
in Education, Vol. IV. Berkeley: University Press. 1908. Pp. 258.
The contents of this volume form a continuation of the studies by
the same author, published in 1893-99 under the title " Notes on the
Development of a Child" as Volume I. of the University of California
Studies, and is designated on the title-page as Volume II. of this earlier
work.
The novelty and the value of this latest study of Miss Shinn's consist
in the fact that it is avowedly a summary and interpretation not only of
her own recorded observations, but also of all observations, published or
in manuscript, which were available on the subject of child development,
thus having rather complete data from twenty or more cases. Copious
foot-notes allow many observations to be introduced as illustrative ma-
terial which substantiates or corrects the records of the author. The
book is written in a very scholarly and systematic style, so that its con-
clusions form a real contribution to child psychology and point the way
to some organization of the mass of unrelated reports on child nature.
The biographical, rather than the experimental, method has been followed,
and the material is arranged somewhat chronologically, although under
the following captions : Part I., " Sensibility of the Newborn " ; Part II.,
"The Synthesis of Sense Experience"; Part HI., "Development in
Discrimination and Intelligence."
In Part I. Miss Shinn discusses the sensibility of the child as to the
usual eight classes of sensations, and concludes as follows : " The child at
birth is capable of receiving impressions in every department of sense (un-
less for a short delay in the case of hearing). These impressions are feeble,
but have from the first the quality of pleasantness or unpleasantness, and
to a certain extent at least their own specific qualities, so that they give
a varied experience. But the sense condition differs totally from that of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 249
the adult, in that central connections are wanting; each sensation is a
wholly isolated experience; there can be no proper perception, discrimina-
tion or recognition, no consciousness of space, of objects, or of externality."
It is on account of the lack of connections in the nervous processes that
the author finds small resemblance between ontogenetic and phylogenetic
psychical functions, the latter depending on this very connectedness for
the preservative 1 power.
Part II. takes the child through the first half-year when, as the author
believes, it has in rough outline the same phenomenal world as that of
adults. The grouping and fusion of sense experience takes place wherever
two or more sensations occur together, and are treated of in six series:
namely, visual-motor, tactile-motor, visual-motor and tactile-motor, au-
ditory and visual associations, associations of the minor special senses,
and feelings of a bodily self. Her inference from watching this process
is that the child is not born into "a big, blooming, buzzing confusion."
"Kather does the babe drift softly in among phenomena, wrapped away
from their impact in a dim cloud of unconsciousness, through which but
the simplest and faintest gleams make their way to him. Then month
after month the multiplex vision without clears itself from the back-
ground of cloud, bit by bit, everything grouped and ordered for him in
the very process of coming to his consciousness a wonder and a joy to
him, and the most beautiful of all unfoldings to see."
At the end of six months the child enters upon a more active explora-
tion of the world and seems to have cooperation of the senses. Contrary
to the old doctrine that the lower senses are the first which enter into
the conscious experience, the higher senses are the first to develop and
hold the baby's attention, according to the author's observations. Sight,
touch, and the feelings connected with muscular activity develop before
taste, smell, temperature, or pain. Organic sensations such as hunger,
thirst, and organic discomfort are in the background of consciousness
with infants as much as with adults, and also have probably the same
relation to the feeling of self. Two specific conclusions which the author
states are peculiarly interesting:
" 1. Glitter and chiascuro interest more and earlier than color. Plane
form is discriminated earlier, and interests more than color. The first
picture books should be in black and white outline. No certain evidence
has been found of the existence of full color perception till well on in the
second year, but I found it completely developed by the last quarter of
that year.
" 2. The mouth is at first the chief organ of touch and prehension, and
is preferred for touch months after the hand has taken its place in pre-
hension. It is for purposes of touch, not on account of taste associations,
that objects are so persistently carried to the mouth."
A fourth part deals with pedagogical results, but no special program
for sense training is laid out. Care must be taken to furnish the child
with objects to grasp and suck in the first months, to show him pictures,
colors, plane forms and to say over to him rhymes and jingles a little later.
250 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
In the third year the letters may be learned, and simple songs and
rhythmic steps. On the other hand, one must never break in on the
self-activity of the child who is satisfied at his play, since it is this dis-
traction and frittering of the child's energy that causes fatigue more
than sustained effort. The most important factor in the child's develop-
ment is the presence of human beings, who furnish him the most varied
and interesting experiences of any objects in his environment. This
study more than any other, perhaps, shows how all activity, except the
first reflexes, is at first a vague and unsuccessful attempt at movements
which shortly become so skilled that they have long been called instinctive.
It shows how everything in experience is attained through practise, and
not by sporadic bursts.
Nineteen tables and numerous summaries orientate the reader very
well, but still the omission of a table of contents seems 1 inexcusable.
L. PEARL BOGGS.
UBBANA, ILL.
National Idealism and the Boole of Common Prayer. STANTON Corr.
London: Williams and Norgate. 1908. Pp. xxv-f-467.
Dr. Coit's latest book represents an attempt to overhaul the " Book
of Common Prayer" in the interest of a Christian humanism. The
whole concern of religion, in the author's view, is with the establishment
of a social justice here upon earth. The sense of the identity of true
religion with devotion to social causes is, he thinks, sweeping through the
souls of men to-day as did in George Fox's time the thought of the inner
light, and in John Wesley's the thought of the immediate experience
of Jesus Christ in the heart. The identity of righteousness with God is
becoming the steady vision of a universal principle, so that the test that
any man is living for God, for Christ, for the Holy Spirit, is his readiness
to die rather than wring money from the poor, or commit any other form
of social injustice. Effective social service makes necessary those pre-
paratory acts of spiritual discipline which store up motive power within
our minds and make us ready for occasions of heroic energy. In the
" Book of Common Prayer " Dr. Coit finds a ritual which, when freed
from its supernaturalistic elements and enriched with some adequately
ethical modern expressions, can well serve the purposes of the Church of
England regarded as a national ethical society. Even in its present form
the " Prayer Book " witnesses to a bold move in the Anglicanism of the
sixteenth century away from supernaturalism and toward social democ-
racy; and its emphasis on the doctrine of personal immortality is much
lighter than the average worshipper might imagine. The God who speaks
in the Ten Commandments need be thought of as no transcendent being,
but as the unifying will of the community; and it is to this same com-
munal will that we address the petitions of the Lord's Prayer. The es-
sence of the substance of the Litany in its present form is the love of
social justice, so that it would need only slight modifications to meet the
specifications of a national idealism. Thus the petition, " That it may
please Thee to grant unto all thy people increase of grace to hear meekly
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 251
Thy Word," etc., could be amended to read : " That all our people may
become willing to hear new truth and receive it with pure affection, and
may bring forth the fruits of wisdom, We most earnestly desire."
In identifying religion with the passion for social justice, Dr. Coit
has to ignore some important tracts of human experience. Of religion as
a sense of dependence on a power, not ourselves, beyond a communal will,
he makes scant reckoning; and as for Destiny, he would seem to leave us
to intimidate it when possible, but to worship it never. How the unifying
will of the community is to become a sufficient God for moral life is not
evident when one reflects that if the communal will registers ethical ad-
vancement, it evokes no martyrdoms in behalf of such moral good as yet
remains to be made communal. Nor is it at all apparent that worshippers
taking on their lips the abstract terms of the improved " Prayer Book "
would have an advantage over those for whom devotion to duty is " in-
tensified in intellectual clearness and an emotional strength by the con-
viction that its aim is also that of a great personality."
In providing material for the reformed manual of devotion, Dr. Coit
draws on the writings of the illuminati and he makes happy selections
from Shelley, Swinburne, Whitman, and Henley. Only, we are moved to
inquire, what, in the name of social democracy, is to become of " honest
John Tompkins, the hedger and ditcher," when he goes to church and is
confronted with such liturgical caviare?
DAVID BAINES-GRIFFITHS.
NEW YORK.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
MIND. January, 1909. The Logical Foundations of Mathematics
(pp. 1-39) : R. B. HALDANE. - A reply to a criticism by Mr. Russell.
Mathematics depends upon the concept of quantity, and not upon a formal
logic with no a priori reference to existence. Mr. Russell's epistemology
suffers from ignoring the idealists. On Our Knowledge of Immediate
Experience (pp. 40-64) : F. H. BRADLEY. - How can immediate experience
know itself? By becoming merged in the all-inclusive, non-relational
reality which includes all that we experience. Psychical Process (pp. 65-
83) : HAROLD H. JOACHIM. - To sever the object known from the processes
of knowing deprives the process of factual content. "Psychical facts,
we might say, as so interpreted, are a contradiction in terms; for qua
' psychical,' they can not be ' facts ' ; and qua ' facts,' they have lost
the characteristic in virtue of which they were ' psychical.' " A Modern
Basis for Educational Theory (pp. 84-104) : W. H. WINCH. - Turn less to
the teachers of the past and more to the thinkers of to-day. Cease to
think of philosophy of education as something independent of the general
philosophy of our own time. Above all, quantify knowledge. Professor
Watson on Personal Idealism: A Reply (pp. 105-107): H. RASHDALE. -
A protest against alleged misrepresentation by Professor Watson in his
work "The Philosophical Basis of Religion." Note on Plato's Vision
of the Ideas (pp. 118-124) : A. E. TAYLOR. - Criticizes and rejects a theory
252 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of Mr. Temple published in Mind, N. S., 68, pp. 502-517. Humanism and
Intuitionalism (pp. 125-128) : F. C. S. SCHILLER. - A reply to an article
by Mr. Walker in Mind, N. S., 67. Critical Notices: E. Belfort Bax,
The Roots of Reality ; HENRY BARKER. Graham Wallas, Human Nature
in Politics: W. H. WINCH. New Books. Philosophical Periodical Notes.
James, William. "A Pluralistic Universe: HiUbert Lectures at Man-
chester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy." New York :
Longmans, Green & Co. 1909. Pp. vi + 399. $1.50.
Jungmann, K. "Rene DesCartes: Eine Einfiihrung in seine Werke."
Leipzig: Fritz Erkardt. 1908. Pp. viii + 234. 6.50 M.
Wundt, Max. " Geschichte der Oriechischen EthiJc." Bandi I. Die
Entstehung der Griechischen Ethik. Leipzig: Wilhelm Englemann.
1908. Pp. 530. 13 M.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE Western Philosophical Association met at Washington University,
St. Louis, on April 9 and 10. The program was as follows: "Religious
Implications of Current Realism," Bernard C. Ewer; " The Relation of
Schiller to Post-Kantian Idealism," E. C. Wilm ; " Hegel's Conception of
an Introduction to Philosophy," J. W. Hudson ; " Earlier Hegelianism in
St. Louis," William Schuyler; "What Kant and Hegel meant to the
Earlier Enthusiasts of the Movement," F. E. Cook ; " A Psychological
Study of the Motives and Reasons for the Vogue of German Idealism in
America," J. R. Dodson ; " Evolution and Metaphysics : The Obsolescence
of the Eternal," A. O. Lovejoy; "Religious Truth of Hegelianism," W.
M. Bryant; "The Ethical Significance of the Hegelian Dialect," Henry
W. Wright ; " Some Features of the Social Aspects of Hegelianism,"
James H. Tufts ; " Realism and Idealism : An Attempt at an Agreement
on Terms," introduced by J. E. Boodin. The following officers were
elected: Professor Carl E. Seashore, University of Iowa, president; Pro-
fessor G. A. Tawney, Cincinnati University, vice-president; Professor
Bernard C. Ewer, Northwestern University, secretary-treasurer; Professor
A. O. Lovejoy, of the University of Missouri, and Professor F. C. Sharp,
of the University of Wisconsin, additional members of the executive com-
mittee.
PROFESSOR HENRY JONES, on behalf of a committee, appeals for funds
toward a memorial of the late Dr. Edward Caird in the University of
Glascow to place an inscribed tablet in the moral philosophy class-room,
and to supplement the endowment of the lectureship in political philos-
ophy.
DR. R. S. WOODWORTH, adjunct professor of psychology at Columbia
University has been made professor of psychology at the same university.
MR. H. H. WOODROW has been appointed tutor in psychology at Bar-
nard College.
VOL. VI. No. 10. MAY 13, MM 9
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
HERMANN EBBINGHAUS
rpHE sudden death, on February 26, at the age of fifty-nine years,
-L of Dr. Hermann Ebbinghaus, professor of philosophy at Halle,
is felt as a severe loss throughout the psychological world, for few
psychologists were more international in their reputation and sym-
pathies. Nowhere, perhaps, will the loss be keener felt than on this
side of the water, where his work has long been held in high esteem,
and where his great book, the "Grundziige der Psychologie, " is by
many regarded as the best general treatment of the subject. It is
specially to be regretted that his untimely death should interrupt this
work in its midst.
Hermann Ebbinghaus was born on January 24, 1850, son of a
merchant of the town of Barmen. His preliminary education was
obtained at the gymnasium of his native town, and at the age of
seventeen he entered on university studies at Bonn, later migrating
to Halle and to Berlin. His studies were interrupted by the Franco-
Prussian war, at the outbreak of which he entered the German army.
At its close he returned to Bonn, and continued his studies there for
two years more, receiving the degree of doctor of philosophy in 1873.
At the outset of his university career, his interests had lain in history
and philology, but he was gradually led over into philosophy, and the
subject of his doctor's dissertation was "Hartmann's Philosophy of
the Unconscious," a work which he discussed in severely critical
fashion. Among his teachers of philosophy had been Erdmann,
Trendelenburg, and J. B. Meyer.
In those very early years of the development of experimental
psychology, it is not strange to find that one who was to take his
place among its greatest representatives did not, in his student days,
come into personal contact with any one who professed the subject.
Yet we have evidence that Ebbinghaus already had advanced ideas
regarding the proper scope of psychology the evidence being
contained in two of the "theses" which he' undertook to defend
in his doctor's examination. These were, that "psychology, in
the widest sense, belongs under philosophy in no more intimate
way than natural philosophy belongs there"; and that "exist-
253
254 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ing psychology consists more of logical abstractions and verbal
classifications than of knowledge of the real elements of mind."
Ebbinghaus should indeed be counted among the pioneers of ex-
perimental psychology ; he belongs to that second generation which
followed close on Helmholtz and Fechner, and which included,
in Germany, Miiller and Stumpf as well as the older and earlier
Wundt. It was apparently by Helmholtz and Fechner that he was
most influenced; largely also by Hering and by the English associa-
tionists. During the years following the attainment of his doctorate
the years in which Wundt published the first edition of his "Physi-
ological Psychology," and established, at Leipzig, the first psycholog-
ical laboratory Ebbinghaus also, with characteristic independence,
was bringing together in his mind the various lines of work which
contributed to the establishment of an independent science of psy-
chology on an empirical basis. In 1880, he became "privat Dozent"
of philosophy in the University of Berlin, and offered courses in
physiological and experimental psychology, as well as in the history
of philosophy. Already, before this date, he had conceived and
begun to work out his principal original contribution to the progress
of empirical psychology. He had devised a method by which quan-
titative experiment could be extended, beyond the sphere of sense
impressions and reaction times to which it had mainly been confined,
to the memory, and by which so apparently inaccessible a thing as
the degree of retention of matter which had once been learned but
passed beyond recall could be measured. His demonstration that so
central a process as memory could be studied by exact methods added
greatly to the courage of the young science, and his work was the
starting-point for a large and steadily increasing literature.
Appointed extraordinary professor of philosophy at Berlin in
1886, he remained in that position till 1894, when he became regular
professor of philosophy at Breslau ; there he remained till called in
1905 to a similar post in Halle, which position he held till his death.
The one course which he constantly offered, at Berlin, at Breslau, and
at Halle, was a seminar in experimental psychology. Besides this,
he offered, at various times, courses in general psychology, in intro-
duction to philosophy, in the history of philosophy, in the philosophy
of Kant and of Schopenhauer, in logic and theory of knowledge, in
esthetics, and in the history of pedagogy. His lectures on philosoph-
ical subjects are reported to have been highly acceptable, but he has
probably made no original contributions to philosophy, his own field
being distinctly psychology.
In 1890, in cooperation with Arthur Konig, he established the
Zeitschrift fur Psychologie und Physiologic der Sinnesorgane, the
first psychological journal of wide scope to be published in Germany,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 255
though antedated in America by Stanley Hall's journal. The Zeit-
schrift had completed its fiftieth volume at the time of its editor's
death, and had probably more fully represented the progress of psy-
chology during these twenty years than any other one journal, though
many have followed in its steps.
A bibliography of Ebbinghaus's work would not contain very
numerous titles. He was by no means prone to rush into print.
He presents his point of view in this matter in a certain passage,
where he says that "the individual has to make innumerable studies
for his own sake. He tests and rejects, tests once more and once more
rejects. For certainly not every happy thought, bolstered up per-
haps by a few rough-and-ready experiments, should be brought before
the public. But sometimes the individual reaches a point where he
is permanently clear and satisfied with his interpretation. Then the
matter belongs to the scientific public for their further judgment."
In accordance with these principles, we find that his first experiments
on memory, completed in 1880, were held back and repeated entire
over three years later, and not published till 1885.
A nearly complete bibliography of Ebbinghaus's work follows:
" Ueber die Hartmannsche Philosophic des Unbewussten." Inaug. Disserta-
tion, Bonn, 1873. Pp. 67.
" tjber das Gedachtnis. Untersuchungen zur experimentellen Psychologic."
Leipzig, 1885. Pp. ix, 169.
" Die Gesetztmassigkeit des Helligkeitscontrastes." Sitzungsberichte der
K. pr. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1887, 995-1009. (A quantita-
tive study of brightness contrast, leading to the formulation of two simple laws,
with application to the consideration of Weber's law.)
" Uber den Grand der Abweichungen von dem Weber'schen Gesetz."
Pfliiger's Archiv fiir die gesamte Physiologic, 45: 113. 1889.
" Uber negative Empfindungswerte." Zeitschrift fur Psychologic, etc., 1 :
320-334; 463-485. 1890. (Here he follows up Delboeuf's conception of the
measurement of sensation as in reality a measurement of sense-distances.)
" Theorie des Farbensehens." Zeitschrift fiir Psychologic, etc., 5 : 145-238.
1893. (A thorough discussion of the Helmholtz and Hering theories, with an
attempt to add an explanation of the facts which are not readily accounted for
by them.)
" liber erklarende und beschreibende Psychologic." Zeitschrift fur Psy-
chologic, etc., 9: 161-205. 1896. (A justification of hypotheses, analysis, and
causal explanation in psychology, in opposition to the criticisms of W. Dilthey.)
" Uber eine neue Methode zur Prufung geistiger Fahigkeiten und ihre
Anwendung bei Schulkindern." Zeitschrift fur Psychologic, etc., 13: 401-459.
1897. (The "Combination method" of testing intelligence, and the application
of this and other methods to the problem of school fatigue.)
" Die Psychologic jetzt und vor hundert Jahren." C. R. IV, Congres inter-
national de Psychologic (Paris, 1900), Paris, 1901. Pp. 49-60.
" Ein neuer Fallapparat zur Controle des Chronoscops." Zeitschrift fur
Psychologic, etc., 30: 292-305. 1902.
"Grundztige der Psychologic." Band I., first half, 1897, completed 1902.
256 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Second edition of the first volume, 1905. Pp. xvi, 732. Band II., 1. Lieferung,
1908. Pp. 96.
" Abriss der Psychologie." 1907. Translated into English by M. Meyer,
1908. Pp. 214.
The most important of these papers as new contributions to psy-
chology are, no doubt, the study of memory, already mentioned, and
the "combination method" of testing mental ability. This test
has been widely used, and has probably greater claims to be re-
garded as a test of intelligence than any other single test that has
been introduced.
Ebbinghaus, like James, whose work he regarded very highly, was
one of the early biological psychologists. He insisted that the prob-
lems and methods of psychology were of the same general sort as
those of natural science. Only, they were more closely allied to those
of biology than to those of physics and chemistry, and the analogies
of psychology with biology were much more sound and fruitful than
the analogies with physics and chemistry. Such atomistic analyses
of mental life as were put forth by the Mills, and such conceptions
as those of Helmholtz in his theory of color vision and of Wundt in
his theory of space perception, would, he says, have been impossible
to any one who approached psychology from the side of biology.
He supported the nativistic view of the perception of time and of
two-dimensional space, and found their basis in sensation. Move-
ment and change, likeness and difference, unity and multiplicity also
inhere in sensation, and do not need, fundamentally, to be constructed
by any process of association or mental activity.
All his work gives evidence of breadth of view and well-matured
judgment. He possessed a good historical sense, and on several occa-
sions has given illuminating sketches of the history of psychological
progress. His clear and engaging style is enriched by a vein of
humor and by a multitude of apt illustrations. Perhaps because the
best years of his life were passed somewhat outside the main current
of German university life, his personal disciples can not be counted
in large numbers; they include A. Wreschner, L. W. Stern and 0.
Lipmann. It is through his writings that his influence has mostly
been felt, and this influence seems destined to continue.
R. S. WOOD WORTH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 257
THE FIELD OF PROPOSITIONS THAT HAVE FULL
FACTUAL WARRANT 1
IN a paper 2 read before this association at the Cornell meeting I
adopted the following division of propositions made on the
basis of the source of their warrant: Those propositions are primi-
tive which are not inferences from other propositions used as prem-
ises, in short, that are ultimate premises ; whereas those propositions
which are inferred or can be inferred from others are secondary.
Primitive propositions, in turn, are of three types: (1) axioms, or
postulates; (2) logical leaps, or guesses; (3) propositions that have
full factual warrant. Further, I endeavored to prove that there
are, underlying our knowledge, these propositions that have full
factual warrant. Following tradition, we may call them also self-
evident truths, or synthetic judgments a priori based upon intuition.
If we adopt as our definition of a proposition, a relation obtaining
between terms, those propositions are intuitions in which the terms
and their relation are actually present in the apprehended content,
that is, are all factual. Finally, this class of propositions we found
to be different from all others in that it does not come under the
laws of formal logic. Thus these propositions rank logically higher
even than the sufficient and necessary postulates of some parts of
science, such as geometry; for though such postulates are logically
independent so far as their particular science is concerned, they
come under logical laws when brought into relation to other systems
of science.
The purpose of the present paper is to sketch a map, but only a
rough one, of the field of these self-evident propositions. Much
that I have to say has been said in part by others, but not, it seems
to me, as a whole, bearing upon the one problem.
First, we can limit the field of intuition by excluding from it
whatever is made necessary by the foregoing classification of propo-
sitions. That is, any proposition which proves upon analysis to be
secondary, or to be either a postulate or axiom or a logical leap, is
by definition not an intuition. This excludes at least two important
types, causal and existential propositions.
Under causal propositions I do not mean to include the so-called
causal relation of theoretical mechanics; for, as Russell has shown, 8
this relation, as it appears in mechanics, is simply mathematical im-
plication. Nor do I include the results of any attempt to reduce
1 A paper read before the American Philosophical Association, in Baltimore,
December, 1908.
'"The Factual," the Philosophical Review, May, 1908.
1 " Principles of Mathematics," Vol. I., Chap. LV.
258 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
causation to an identity. I refer simply to the causal relation as
understood by Hume and Kant. It is that relation through which
a term at one time implies a term at another time, and in which this
implication is either a logical leap or presupposes a logical leap.
Hence it does not belong to the field of intuition.
Moreover, intuitions seem to be non-existential. Some meta-
physicians use the word "to exist" in the sense that I use the word
"fact"; but it is important to keep the two distinct. That is, I
should say, the factual is immediately revealed to us, but the exist-
ent is always inferred. Thus interpreted there appear to be two
remaining uses of the word "to exist"; although few recent writers
help us by giving a formal definition of this most important rela-
tion. First, an existential proposition implies some possible future
percept, and is, therefore, a rather complex causal relation. As
such it falls without the field of intuition. Secondly, an existential
judgment is one in which we apply our knowledge. If we accept
this meaning, all pure science is to be regarded as strictly non-exis-
tential and as becoming existential only when we apply it to the
facts. So the most primitive form of an existential judgment is the
reaction accompanying any of our percepts, or rather its implica-
tions. The word "apply" in this sense seems equivalent to Royce's
expression, the "external meaning of an idea," and is, perhaps, in-
definable. However, our present problem raises only the question:
Can we apply knowledge without assuming axioms, postulates, or
logical leaps, and especially without asserting some causal relation?
It seems to me, we can not ; and therefore, although factual propo-
sitions may be involved, yes, are involved, no existential proposition
is merely a factual proposition or even a primitive proposition.
How shall we describe affirmatively this field that we have so far
limited by exclusion ? We can do so by answering three questions :
First, what fundamental relations do these judgments assert as ob-
taining between their terms? Second, how far is generalization
possible within their field? Third, what place do these propositions
occupy in the several branches of knowledge?
What fundamental relations obtain between the terms of propo-
sitions that have full factual warrant? If I mistake not, these can
be put under four main headings. First, the apprehension of like-
ness or difference between terms. This includes, of course, not only
those instances where we apprehend the respect in which the terms
are alike or different, but also those instances where we are aware of
mere likeness or difference. Secondly, there are the various rela-
tions apprehended between a whole and its parts. Here, too, we
are dealing with a vast array of instances varying from cases such
as Ebbinghaus's illustration a cumulus cloud with its massive parts
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 259
heaped together, all standing out against a clear summer sky all
the way to cases such as we have in our attempts to intuit the ab-
stract laws of the logic of classes. Thirdly, there are intuitions of
order and of magnitude. Here, too, we are dealing with numberless
instances: so far as they can be intuited, numerical, spatial and
temporal order and magnitude, the orders of the colors and of notes,
the order and magnitude of the so-called intensities, order of values,
and so on. Fourthly, there should be added to these three those
instances where we apprehend the presence or absence of some term
in the factual field. Perhaps this group is reducible to the first, but
its importance and distinctness justify making of it a separate class.
In the first place, it comprises those instances where we fail to find
a certain term in the field under scrutiny: for example, the loco-
motive engineer looking from his cab window at night and finding
no red light in his field of vision. In the second place, this class
comprises those instances where we do find in the factual field that
for which we are looking, and again where we apprehend exhaust-
ively all the terms of a given sort that are present. Many of the
experiments in which we are testing the number of objects that can
be attended to at once give illustrations of the latter class, as does
also any one of numerous other cases, such as when we can see
at a glance how many people are in the room, or how many fingers
are held up, or how many lamps stand on a table.
This list of four types may seem to many altogether too short.
We might try to lengthen it by seeking evidence in factual contents
that are vague and obscure ; for example, in vague feelings of tend-
ency, in the vague drift of passing time, or in the fringe of the field.
In them we are usually aware of the presence of relations without
explicitly apprehending the relations themselves. But our question
asks only what explicit relations does analytic attention discover,
and I have thus far failed to find additional types.
I pass now to the second question: How far is generalization
possible within the field of the factual ? From Kant until the pres-
ent day the traditional place in which to seek for an answer is the
foundations of mathematics and, above all, of the Euclidean geom-
etry. Here, it has been said, we get intuitions that are high gener-
alizations. Unfortunately Kant does not show us in detail the
manner of these intuitions. Equally unfortunate is it that those
mathematicians who still maintain that intuition plays an essential
role in mathematical progress do not seem to understand precisely
what the word intuition ought to mean. For example, Borel 4 means
by intuition those remarkable insights of the mathematical genius
* " La logique et 1'intuition en math&natiques," Revue de Mftaphysique et
de Morale, 1907.
260 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in which he seizes upon some formula and beholds in it a premise
with highly important implications. Such insights are logically
complex and often contain logical leaps. They belong to the class
of lucky hits, or guesses, made usually after many an unsuccessful
one, so characteristic of genius in every field of investigation. Poin-
care 6 argues that the mind, after making a certain construction, can
intuit its ability to make similar ones ad infinitum, and so "by re-
currence ' ' get truths holding good of a class with infinite members.
As we shall argue presently, the mind can approach such insights
and by way of suggestion can give us such a postulate, but it can
not literally intuit infinite repetitions of its own acts or any other
class with a large number of members.
But is it possible to generalize at all without going beyond the
intuited field? Psychology has shown that we can intuit small
groups, but not large ones; hence it is possible to generalize highly,
if at all, not through extensive, but through intensive judgments.
If the field intuited is quite simple, and if the terms and their rela-
tion are essential to a number of similar cases and are readily seen to
be such, then by apprehending this relation we get a proposition
warranted by the factual and holding possibly of a vast number of
cases beyond the present intuition. In such a case we have, it is
true, an intuition which is general, but not one which makes evident
how far new cases will contain the same terms and their relation.
Looking at a piece of scarlet paper and at a piece of vivid green
paper, we are aware that they differ. Further, if we see a series of
reds we are aware that they are somewhat alike, though we are un-
able to picture this red in abstracto. The corresponding truth holds
regarding a series of greens. Now our question is, Can we be aware
intuitively that this red in abstracto differs from the green in ab-
stracto? Certainly we can, and therefore we have an intensive propo-
sition that is a generalization. However, there is no guarantee that
there are not reds and greens so different from the ones which we
are beholding that they would fail to differ as do these; for we
might have taken a series of blues and of greens and have inferred
that blues and greens are never alike, not having seen the blue-
greens and the green-blues. Thus in asserting that fairly high in-
tensive generalization is possible in the field of intuition we look
for justification to those statements of introspective and analytic
psychology in which we are told that our attention can be concen-
trated upon features, elements, or relations common to several men-
tal states, even when it is quite impossible to picture them abstracted
from their context.
That intuition has played a role in the history of mathematics
" Science and Hypothesis," Chap. I.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 261
is beyond doubt ; but it is by no means easy to determine just where
intuition leaves off and the use of postulates begins. In fact, it
probably differs markedly for different minds. I believe, as prob-
ably do most, that the intuitions underlying mathematics are far
rougher, that is, less general than, for example, the axioms of Euclid
often referred to as intuitions. That a straight line is the shortest
distance between two points, and that only one line can pass through
two points, are intuitions if limited to such cases as can be literally
apprehended by the mind. If, however, they are generalized to the
extent necessary for geometry, they get beyond anything intuitable
and, although suggested by what we can intuit, pass over into the
field of postulates or deductions from postulates.
A similar situation confronts us in logic. Are any or all of the
foundations of logic intuitions? Intuition certainly underlies some
of them in the sense that it gives us generalizations of limited scope,
and thereby suggests the generalizations of greater scope. For ex-
ample, the law of the syllogism as interpreted in the logic of classes
(a<&, &<c, .'. a<c) can certainly be intuited in a less general form;
but that it can be intuited in the highly abstract form required by
formal logic is quite doubtful.
Thus we conclude: we have propositions with full factual war-
rant that are generalizations; the most general of these are inten-
sive, not extensive generalizations; and they all are less general
than the propositions used in the foundations of logic and mathe-
matics.
Some metaphysicians may urge as an objection that what is not
possible if we restrict our cases to the field of sensation and imagi-
nation, is possible if we include imageless, or naked, thought grant-
ing with Stout, "Woodworth, and others that we have such thought.
Unfortunately the field of thought is an exceedingly difficult one
to examine from the standpoint of our present problem. Most in-
stances of thinking, even the simplest instances, are epistemolog-
ically more complicated than perceptions, that is, involve more
logical leaps; for these at least I should interpret the results of such
experiments as thus of Professor Frank Angell 6 on the discrimina-
tion of two grays viewed at an interval varying from fifteen to
sixty seconds. In the case of these particular reagents the discrimi-
nation was not based upon visual imagery, but sometimes upon
habitual verbal standards for the shades of gray, and often upon
other non-visual, if not purely neural, associations. It certainly
looks as though the whole field of thinking is, to a far greater extent
" Discrimination of Shades of Gray for Different Intervals of Time,"
Philoaophische Studien, XIX.
262 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
than the field of perception, one solely of neural processes; and
whatever is neural process has to be interpreted epistemologically
as not intuition.
We admit, of course, that such thought gives us genuine new dis-
criminations and other insights into relationships, and that often,
when it is imageless, it is the more efficient. But are these discov-
eries intuitions or assumptions? Certainly most of them are of the
trial and error or experimental type, in short, are tentative as-
sumptions; and it seems inconceivable that they could be anything
else. This is not a proposition to be argued. One can simply say,
Produce the instances. This, of course, does not mean that they are
not often correct and true strokes of genius, for they are often well
protected from being mere wild guesses by a wealth of other associ-
ated information, and also by a quick perception of some of their
implications.
Turning from the question of generalization, let us consider the
third question : What place do these propositions having full factual
warrant occupy in the several branches of science? The most com-
plete answer to this question has been given by Meinong 7 in recent
articles. I think his answer somewhat mistaken and incomplete,
due perhaps to his strong tendency toward subjective idealism, but
especially due, it appears to me, to the fact that he seems not yet to
have adopted the view that mathematics and mechanics are entirely
deductive as well as non-existential sciences, and that the pure
causal sciences also tend to become deductive and non-existential as
they, too, become more and more exact.
The sciences which come nearest to falling entirely within the
field of factual propositions are those which come nearest to being
purely descriptive, which, of course, no body of knowledge actually
is. In short, descriptive science, including introspective psychology,
is densely populated with factual propositions.
Next in this respect to pure description comes the pure doctrine
of values, including ethical values ; for this science is non-existential
and, when we exclude the hypothetical imperatives or derivative
values, is also non-causal. Moreover, it is not based upon such
high abstractions as is mathematics, nor does it carry on such exten-
sive deductions. Next come the empirical beginnings of mathe-
matics, for, as we have said, intuition has played an important part
in the history of mathematics. Finally, we must add, the empirical
basis of all the causal sciences is the factual. But the place of the
factual propositions in their logical relation to mathematics and to
7 " Uber die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres Wissens," Berlin, 1906. " Uber
die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften," Zeitschrift
fur Philosophic und philosophische Kritik, Bde. 129 u. 130.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 263
the pure causal sciences needs a much more careful statement than
the foregoing. As already said, I hold the view not only that math-
ematics is non-existential, but also that the pure causal sciences tend
to become such as they progress. If this view be correct, the office
filled by factual propositions in relation to these sciences can be
stated with considerable precision.
Their work is twofold. First, they form the logical bridge be-
tween non-existential science and the body of our existential propo-
sitions. In short, we make use of them in applying science to the
facts. Second, they bear two important relations to pure science
itself. They suggest to science the vast array of her premises.
Then, by continually suggesting further premises as science pro-
gresses they hold her consistent with numberless factual proposi-
tions, and thus they keep the path of her development close to fact.
But all of this is simply another way of saying that all inference
is deductive, that inductive inference, robbed of its deductive ele-
ments, is a mere logical leap; not an inference, but a suggested
premise. In short, intuitions do not give us premises from which
causal propositions can be inferred or deduced. They are simply
standards with which causal assumptions must be kept consistent.
WALTER T. MARVIN.
PBINCETON UNIVERSITY.
TRANSCENDENTALISM AND PRAGMATISM:
A COMPARATIVE STUDY
"OETWEEN New England transcendentalism and New England
A-l pragmatism there are some striking parallels. Confining our
attention to the Emersonian and the Jacobite varieties of these
respective movements, we find in each a revolt against tradition and
intellectualism and a revival of individualism and emotional re-
sponsiveness. 1 The revolt against tradition is an apparent paradox
when, along with William James's definition of pragmatism as a new
name for some old ways of thinking, we recall these words of Emer-
son in his essay "The Transcendentalist " : "The first thing we have
to say respecting what are called new views here in New England,
at the present time, is, that they are not new, but the very oldest of
thoughts cast into the mould of these new times." Nevertheless
this common reference to the past by the two representatives of the
J A. C. Goddard: "Studies in New England Transcendentalism," New York,
1908, p. 5; cf. "Pragmatism in its Relation to the History of Philosophy," a
paper read at the Baltimore meeting of the American Philosophical Association,
December 30, 1908, by James Gibson Hume; cf. also James Bissett Pratt:
"What is Pragmatism?" New York, 1909, p. 37.
264 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
New England way of thinking is no paradox, for both refer to
others not so much as authorities as corroborators of their individ-
ual opinions. If the pragmatist refers to Heraclitus and his flow-
ing philosophy, and the transcendentalist to Plato and his intui-
tional method, it does not mean, in either case, adherence to dogma.
Just as James deprecates absolutism and its lack of adaptation to a
plastic world, so does Emerson confess to a "distrust of that com-
pleteness of system which metaphysicians are apt to affect."
And this parallelism may be carried into the positive field as well
as the negative. Besides the common dislike of tradition and intel-
lectualism as a kind of speculative reinforced concrete, there is a
common revival of individualism and emotional responsiveness.
Here arises a striking instance of historic repetition. In the suc-
cessive generations there is a recurring cycle of thought. The gen-
eration before the transcendentalists was emotionally starved; that
before the pragmatists was intellectually over-fed. Given in the
one case Calvinism, and in the other Hegelianism, and a common
result was brought about. The rigid determinism of the one, and
the monotonous dialectic of the other issued in a common revolt of
the will and of the feelings. In a word, against a kindred absolutism
there was a kindred insurrection of individualism. Notice how
closely allied is the attitude of the transcendentalists towards
eighteenth-century rationalism with the attitude of the pragmatists
towards the a priori method of pure reason. The pragmatists, says
Dr. Hume, assert that their psychological appeal is to direct and
unimpeachable experience, more fundamental, primary, certain, and
essential than any theory. But in addition to a peculiar psycholog-
ical content they have their own logical method. They unfold their
logic, no longer a ratiocinative process, but an emotional responsive-
ness that locates and feels the result just as surely. 2 Compare with
this interpretation of the pragmatic theory of knowledge that "in-
tuition" which is the method of the transcendental philosophy, an
"intuition" which declares that no truth is worth the knowing that
is susceptible of logical demonstration.
At this juncture the critic may object to the method of paral-
lelism as procrustean, and ask if there does not exist between these
two epistemologies the vital difference between subjective and ob-
jective idealism. In a measure the difference does exist. A former
generation took transcendental to mean transcending common sense.
This was true in the case of many of the Brook farmers who vainly
attempted the simultaneous cultivation of Platonism and potatoes.
Yet even that "tedious archangel," Bronson Alcott, sought to put
his theories into practise in his communistic settlement of Fruitlands,
a " Pragmatism in its Relation to the History of Philosophy."
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 265
while Margaret Fuller, charged with being emotional and ethereal,
did much work for convicts, paupers, and outcast women. These
social endeavors were the answer to the world that transcendentalism
did not mean a selfish solipsism; they were the response to the warn-
ing of Emerson : ' ' Metaphysic is dangerous as a single pursuit. The
inward analysis must be corrected by rough experience. Metaphysics
must be perpetually reinforced by life. ' '
But the criterion of usefulness can not be used as a means of
comparison between transcendentalists and pragmatists until the
latter found some communistic system or otherwise put their tenets
into larger practise. Nevertheless there remains another side of the
pragmatic epistemology for comparative study. The pragmatic cog-
nition of truth is described as possessing, besides convictions of use-
fulness, certain appreciations of satisfaction, which ultimately afford
rest or exhilaration to the soul. Here arises a most curious and
unexpected similarity between the two schools. The transcendent-
alists hold to pure belief; the pragmatists to the will to believe; and
both verge toward the mystical in their theory of knowledge.
Taking the first two marks of mysticism as ineffability and the noetic
quality, there is manifest the paradox that both sides have something
to say, but find it hard to say it. So recourse is had by each to an
organ or faculty beyond the ordinary, in the one case the over-soul,
in the other the subconscious. Thus Emerson and the lesser tran-
scendentalists find themselves allied to the mystics of the past, while
towards the pragmatists there is a gravitation on the part of those
who are at present inclined to sublimate the subliminal. This sim-
ilarity between the pragmatists and the "New Thoughters" is a topic
that needs investigation. The academic pragmatists might repudiate
the relationship, yet in many cases there seems a common bond. As
for the popular subliminalists, a psychic census might exhibit an
intellectual heredity going back to primitive Christian Science, to
Swedenborgianism and to Quakerism. As for the wider spread of
American pragmatism an added strain is demanded. That appears
to be furnished by the suppressed mystical element among the
descendants of Puritans. So if one were to seek the geographical
distribution of this form of thought one might say that in general
the intuitional isothermal line starts in Boston, drops down to New
York, and runs on through Chicago. If westward the course of prag-
matism takes its way, expressed in the broader terms of the migration
of population, the movement appears to follow the original path of
Puritanism. New England is the original hive, then in turn come
New York, Ohio, and the western prolongation of the Western Re-
serve. This is but a tentative suggestion ; we need a more accurate
pragmatic map of the United States.
266 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The comparison might be further elaborated, for in summing up
the characteristics of transcendentalism Professor Goddard gives
as its essentials, a disregard for all external authority and tradition,
a doctrine of self-reliance and individualism, an unshakable faith in
insight, instinct, impulse, intuition and, lastly, a pronounced opti-
mism. In conclusion it might be shown how with this optimism there
arises, in the case of both transcendentalism and pragmatism, a com-
mon doctrine of evil. To both movements evil is not so much moral
or physical as metaphysical, a limitation of so negative a sort as to be
a negligible quantity in the stupendous whole. It is, finally, such a
relative belief that makes Emerson disregard the dark side of the
world and leads James to incline to a doctrine of meliorism, a pro-
found confidence in the future of the cosmos.
I. WOODBRIDGE RlLEY.
VASSAB COLLEGE.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Contributions to Psychopathology. VASCHIDE, VIOLLET, MARIE, LUBO-
MIRSKA, MEUNIER, LAURES. Paris: Bloud et Cie. 1908. Pp. 97, 120,
124, 87, 114, 94.
No. 1. Les hallucinations telepathiques. N. VASCHIDE.
This volume is the first of a series, somewhat unpromisingly entitled
" Bibliotheque de psychologic experimental et de metapsychie." They
are all of a rather non-technical character, and the detail with which the
subjects are presented is often somewhat out of proportion to the actually
assured knowledge of the subject, just as the authors themselves are of
widely varying psychological recognition. " Les hallucinations telepath-
iques " deals with the hallucinatory experiences coinciding with the death
or some crisis in the life of an immediate connection. The genuineness
of these phenomena is not at present accepted in the scientific world, and
the sympathetic attitude with which the book opens is somewhat sur-
prising. From certain observations of his own, as well as from the studies
of previous investigators as Gurney, Myers, and Podmore, the author
reaches in the end, however, a rather half-way conclusion, granting that
veridical hallucinations are more than chance coincidences, without yet
committing himself to their telepathic origin. It is not, therefore, a book
that is likely to turn the reader from any previous way of regarding the
phenomena in question. In the last chapter we have the author in his
more critical vein, but, as a whole, one rather regrets the material's pub-
lication, which it is difficult to believe would have occurred in this form
but for its gifted author's untimely death.
No. 2. Le spiritisme dans ses rapports avec la folie. VIOLLET.
This is among the more critical of the volumes. The morbid psychic
phenomena associated with spiritualism the author classifies into two
groups ; the first of which run their course in predisposed individuals, and
have spiritualistic associations for their immediately exciting, if not their
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 267
sufficient, cause; while the remainder progress independently of spiritual-
istic influences, which may only on occasion color the clinical picture.
The significance of such a classification obviously depends to a great
extent upon one's attitude toward the subject of mental causes in general,
which to the author, at least, seems to be an ultra-liberal one; he devotes
something over half the volume to the first group, and a scant ten pages
to the second. Illustrative cases are practically absent, and we have no
certain indication of the criteria upon which to classify a case as deter-
mined or merely colored by spiritualistic influences. Certain it is that he
describes under the first group clinical pictures that are perfectly well
recognized members of the second. The upshot of the matter is, that
Viollet hardly describes a disease state in which it would not be exceed-
ingly difficult to say that spiritualistic associations played an essential
role, or that if it had not been spiritualism it would not have been some-
thing else. For, as he well points out at the opening of the volume, we
are dealing here with fundamentally psychopathic personalities, unstable,
impressionable, suggestible, neurotic individuals, ill-fitted to bear severe
affective experiences of any nature whatever. To translate freely:
" They really require the most simple and disciplined of lives ; but a
fatal perversion of curiosity impels them toward all occasions for mental
conflict, towards the most unnatural of affects, and the most disquieting
of experiences. By this token, they are ardent in spiritualistic activity.
. . . Life is for them replete with difficulties and complications from
which they may scarcely escape. . . . They betake themselves to spiritual-
ism as to a comforting religion, and there find new motives for anxiety
and disquietude, because of the intensity of their faith, their feeble
judgment which prevents a proper analysis. . . . Others, of more elevated
intellect, are yet marked by an excess of susceptible pride. . . . They
possess in a supreme degree the tendency to undermine the supports of
friendship. . . . Their pride flatters them with the 'splendid isolation*
which results from this state of things . . . but it is just the consequent
ennui which turns them to spiritualism, to the sombre halls where they
may preserve, incognito, the contacts with their personal pride, and a
susceptibility which spirits do not offend.
" Still others are the over-conscientious and melancholy. There is
much of the timid about them. With little confidence in themselves,
fully persuaded of this inferiority and unworthiness, they tend to an
immediate regret of all actions and all words. They prefer to remain
inactive for fear of doing wrong, to be silent for fear of appearing dis-
courteous or indelicate. . . . They are often of abstemious life, through
timorousness, but people the world with platonic amours that never avow
themselves. . . . Sentimental, by no means unintelligent, capable of sin-
cere friendships, especially if dominated in them, but haunted by the con-
tinual fear of saying or doing something wrong . . . they gather in the
obscure corners of the darkened halls where the spirits are manifested,
motionless and silent, tranquil only when unobserved" (pp. 10-13). *
1 These types are somewhat the same as those described by Kraepelin,
" Psychiatric " (7th edition), II., pp. 742-757.
268 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
We thus have spiritualism playing the role of a " substitutive reac-
tion " of the most pernicious character, but whether the individuals who
resort to this species of relief would be constitutionally capable of hand-
ling any other reaction in a healthier way, is open to grave question.
There is one especially evil influence of the spiritualistic seance of which
Viollet makes some mention here, to which attention was, however, called
some years ago by Tuttle, 2 also suggested by certain observations of Sea-
shore. Hallucinosis is especially favored under the conditions of ex-
pectant attention produced in the seance, and this would be especially true
of the unstable individuals from whom its frequenters are so largely
selected. It is possible that persons actually train themselves to hallu-
cinate under such conditions, and thus bring about a state of grave mental
disequilibrium. So it often happens that those most interested in phe-
nomena of this sort may be among the temperamentally least fitted to give
a scientific account of them.
No. 3. L'audition morbide. A. MARIE.
This is also a creditable volume of the series. Dr. Marie treats of
various morbid psychic phenomena connected with the sense of hearing.
As a matter of fact, however, his point of view is a very general one, and
most of his remarks would, mutatis mutandis, apply to sensation in gen-
eral. Hearing is rather selected as the paradigma because of its being the
" sense intellectuel par excellence," " presque sense du langage articule,"
" la sentinelle de notre personnalite." " Hearing," he quotes Itard, " is,
of all senses, that which responds most promptly to morbid cerebral condi-
tions. . . . Few of the deaf fail to observe the emotional influences of their
disability. We know the great distraction of this sense in profound
meditations and preoccupations, and it may also be remarked that hearing
is more affected by apoplectic attacks than sight, taste, or smell."
The abnormalities with which the writer deals, therefore, are less con-
cerned with the condition of the peripheral organ than with central pro-
cesses. " Hypoacousie," the title of the first chapter, does not deal with
derangements of hearing brought about by disease of the ear, but with the
associative disturbances that stand in the way of a proper teleological
reaction. Here, and indeed throughout, he adheres very strictly to a
physiological conception of the disturbances described. The auditory
reaction of infants and idiots, the genesis of language, and disturbances
in the perception of pitch are among the topics discussed in this chapter.
The chapter on " Hyperacousie," in like manner, is not concerned with a
more refined auditory sensibility, but with morbid exaggerations and
perversions of the response. Perverted reactions to specific auditory
stimuli have received a certain recognition as degenerative stigmata.
There is a considerable and on the whole commendable treatment of the
phenomena of synesthesia; though it should, perhaps, be mentioned that
neither this book nor that of Laures in the same series makes any men-
tion of the important contribution of Pierce. According to the authori-
ties noted, the phenomena are probably more frequent than is commonly
3 American Journal of Insanity, January, 1902, pp. 464 ff.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 269
bupposed. The section on auditory hallucinations again emphasizes the
physiological point of view, and gives some rather non-committal space
to the present situation in aphasia, with special reference to Pierre Marie.
The subjoined reference is taken literatum from the bibliography :
Bezold, Die Hoerpriifung mit Stimmgabeln beie inseiliger Traubheit
und die Schlusse, welche sich dorans fur die " Kuochenleitung " und fur
die Funktion des Schalllcitungs apparates zichen lassen: Zeitschrift f.
Ohrenheilhunde. XLV., 262-274, 1903. A. Marie; L' Audition Morbide.
Paris : Blond et Cie, p. 127.
No. 4. Les prejuges sur la folie. PRINCESS LUBOMIRSKA. Avec une
preface du M. le Dr. Jules Voisin.
From the point of view of the general reader, and it is largely from
this point of view that the series must be judged, this volume is, perhaps,
the most interesting of the group. The five prejuges are the supernat-
ural origin, the appearance, the contagiousness, the incurability, and the
dangers of insanity. Under the guiding hand of an experienced clinician,
the author endeavors to present the truth about each of these in a brief
and readable form. Under the earlier social and religious systems the
insane appeared less likely to become objects of aversion, being rather
regarded as having through no fault of their own incurred the anger of
all too human gods, whom, so far as might be, it was now the duty of
their fellow men to appease. And through the very fact of this sympa-
thetic attitude the insane may have been in earlier times less of a social
problem than they later became. Strangely, but perhaps not altogether
inconsistently, the insane did not always fare so happily under the
Christian regime. This was doubtless partly because advancing civiliza-
tion served to emphasize more strongly the extra-social character of the
insane, but mainly, perhaps, as the author points out, that there was now
a tendency often to regard the insane as divinely cursed, or having sold
themselves to evil spirits, which must be driven out by prayer and exor-
cism, if possible; if not, by torture and death. Delusional ideas of the
sufferers themselves may well have lent color to such beliefs. But from
the seventeenth century onward the disease conception of insanity gradu-
ally comes into its own, and this first prejuge is to-day, perhaps, the one
we have least to fear, at least for its consequences to its objects.
The author further describes such experiences as any ordinarily in-
formed person might expect upon a first visit to a well-ordered insane
hospital. " Madame," says her cicerone, " there are no more violent
insane; or at least it is only exceptionally that we see them in the hos-
pitals. ... In earlier times, indeed, their manner of existence often led
to acts of violence only too well motivized . . . the insane ceased to be
violent the day that Pinel struck off their chains and replaced abuse and
coercion with hygienic surroundings and kind treatment." A suggestion,
of doubtful value, is here and later thrown out regarding atelier-asiles
in which practically recovered cases might resume their proper employ-
ments until complete stability is attained. It is, of course, recognized
that the psychoses are not contagious, save in so far as imitation and
suggestion may effect their pernicious work upon fundamentally psy-
270 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
chopathic soil. Nor, when we remember that we must not judge by the
most rigid of standards the psychiatry of such a book as this, need any
extended criticism be passed on the fourth chapter, regarding the " in-
curability" of the psychoses. Speaking generally, the manic-depressive
group and the toxic deliria are of good prognosis, while the dementias
and the congenital states are not; and this is about the impression that
the author gives. On page 56 Marie is quoted to the effect that the per-
sistence of memory in manic excitements is an important symptom for
its differentiation from other excitements; but though generalization is
at best hazardous, surely the opposite is nearer the truth.
The fifth question, of the insane as public dangers, can be outlined in
only a general way according to clinical varieties. Cases of dementia
prsecox and general paralysis may indeed execute during the prodromal
period acts of violence wholly out of proportion to the general character
of the symptoms thus far evident. The course of the disease lessens this
danger more in general paralysis than in dementia prsecox. Paranoias,
on the other hand, will through complaints to the authorities often give
warning of sinister designs. Impulsive acts of a criminal nature are also
liable to occur in the high-grade imbecile and the remainder of the con-
genital psychopathies. The gravest dangers are from the psychoses of
alcoholism, as we should probably all admit.
Altogether it is an appealing little book, and 1 the author takes a liberal
point of view; in the last chapter a more liberal one, perhaps, than would
be borne out in clinical experience. The question of criminal responsi-
bility is not touched upon, and beyond the above generalizations it is not
easy to lay down any rule for the necessity of supervision; the liability
of each individual to become dangerous, as well as its criminal responsi-
bility, is best determined on its own merits by those best qualified to
form an opinion through their clinical experience and scientific judgment.
No. 5. La pathologic de I'attention. N. VASCHIDE et RAYMOND
MEUNIER.
This book promises somewhat better than it performs. There is, in-
deed, in the opening paragraphs a refreshingly healthy recognition of the
physiological point of view, but in their consequent desire to adhere
strictly to experimental data the authors often tend to lose sight of the
original object of the inquiry and to gather together, under the subject of
" attention," researches that can not but deal with very different psycho-
logical processes. There are brief and rather unfavorable criticisms of
Pillsbury and of Nayrac, with an extended expose of the views of Ribot.
For the rest we are occupied with an account of experimental researches
of which one, of course, does not expect completeness, but which might
well be better proportioned. In fact, this portion of the book is mainly
devoted to the reaction-time investigations of Buccola, Tschisch, Wal-
itzky, Remond, Janet, and Marie. To give unequivocal data regarding
attention in any technical sense, however, reaction-time researches must
be executed under very special experimental conditions, and with con-
siderable refinement in the treatment of the results. Mention is made of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 271
the observation of Janet, repeated by Sante de Sanctis, that under con-
centration of attention the field of vision contracts much more in hyster-
ias than in normal individuals. The researches of Wiersma have but
scant attention, and the whole discussion of fluctuations is practically
ignored. The general summary is again excellent in its point of view,
but the material is altogether too one-sided for an elementary presenta-
tion, and not sufficiently critical for a scientific treatise.
No. 6. Les synesthesies. HENRY LAURES.
The subject-matter of this book deals mainly with illustrative cases,
and is quite suggestive, though at times elementary. The author divides
the synesthesias, broadly considered, into three classes; first, the spon-
taneous and persistent synesthesias of the type of the simple colored
hearing; next those which are brought about unconsciously through the
similarity of their affective tone; and, thirdly, those which are nothing
more than a studied comparison of two sensations of different orders ; but
among these last even the figures of speech are sometimes included, and
it is doubtful whether they ought to be classed as true synesthesias at all.
A distinction ought, perhaps, also to be drawn between the synesthesias
that can and those that can not be traced in the psychogenesis of the
individual; the latter may often be purely chance associations (as the
child associates a with red because he learned the letter a on a red alpha-
bet block), and, strictly speaking, only the former should have the status
of true synesthesias. But it seems supererogatory to speak at once of
physiological and psychological explanations of these phenomena. As-
sociation paths may vary congenitally in their degree of excitability, and
in the synesthesias we probably have, through some chance neurological
disposition, certain hyperexcitable paths between different sense areas.
The true synesthesia, such as any other association process, may be
described in entirely recognized physiological terms, save only for its
occasional hallucinatory character. The important point that such ob-
servations bring home to us is the continuum between the idea and the
hallucination, between the imaginary and the objectified. Upon what
factors the externalization depends in these cases, whether it is purely a
matter of greater vividness, and upon what factors this vividness depends,
the release of neural tension by inwardly accumulated energy (James),
or the reactive power of the situation (Cattell) is not the least acces-
sible phase of a time-honored psychological problem.
FREDERIC LYMAN WELLS.
MCLEAN HOSPITAL, WAVEBLEY, MASS.
The Nervous Correlate of Pleasantness and Unpleasantness. MAX MEYER.
Psychological Review, Vol. XV., Nos. 4 and 5, July and September,
1908. Pp. 201-216, 292-322.
Professor Meyer, after reviewing nine contradictory views of feeling,
elaborates an original hypothesis of the structure and function of the
nervous system which, among the purposes it subserves, may enable us
to fix upon the nervous correlate of the common dimension of affective
states.
272 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Theories which confuse pleasantness and unpleasantness with emotion
are, in the opinion of the author, doomed to failure. The emotion of
anger can, for example, be either pleasant or unpleasant. Temperament
seems to account for this.
Lagorberg speaks of pleasure and pain nerves, of mechanical stimula-
tion arousing sexual pleasures, etc., and of nutritive processes in action
giving rise to the vague pleasantness and unpleasantness sensations.
This theory fails to distinguish between pain and unpleasantness, and is
based upon the hypothetical existence of algedonic afferent nerves. Mar-
shall denies the existence of such nerves, and does make the above
distinction between feeling states and sensations. For him pleasantness
and unpleasantness never result from direct mechanical stimulation.
Stumpf agrees with Lagorberg in this identification of pleasantness with
sensation of itch or those aroused from stimulation of the sexual organs.
These sensations are Gefiihlsempfindungen or Gefuhlssinnesvorstellungen,
" algedonic," or " emotional " sensations. All pleasantness and un-
pleasantness are less intense derivatives from sexual sensation and pain,
pain being always identical with unpleasantness. Marshall denies the
existence of algedonic nerves; Stumpf insists that they must be found
eventually. Feilchenfeld disagrees with Stumpf in that pain is not
identical with unpleasantness. Fite has advanced the theory that feel-
ings, represented as sensations by Stumpf, are not sensational in char-
acter, but represent a high, not a low degree of mentality, and that they
result from conflict always. " They are not causes in mental life."
Lipps's view here is substantially the same. Alechsieff concludes, from
experimental results, that feelings have no direct relation to peripheral
stimulation, and, further, that pleasantness and unpleasantness can not
coexist. Calkins, distinguishing between unpleasantness and painfulness,
finds for the former a central nervous correlate. She, however, contrary
to the present writer, identifies pleasantness-unpleasantness and the " emo-
tional life." Pikler deserves the distinction of having attempted to posit
for these pleasant-unpleasant states a nervous correlate differing in
"kind from the concomitant sensory process. This he states as a dis-
tinctive functional property of the nervous system. Sensations depend
on local differences of special nervous activity. " Pleasantness and un-
pleasantness are unlocalized because their nervous correlate is not the
local difference of equal or opposite processes, but the fact of equal or
opposite direction itself."
There is, hence, a need for a clear and comprehensive theory of nervous
function which may correspond with already determined introspective
differences in mental states. This the author now constructs. By in-
genious diagrams a theory of brain structure and function is formulated
which will satisfactorily explain the phenomena of sensory condensation,
motor condensation, and variation of response. A nerve center means
anywhere an accumulation of functionally related connecting neurones;
it is a " higher center," or a still higher, according to the number of
neurones by which we could reach it from either a sensory or motor point
of the body. This system of connections is essentially the same in all
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 273
orders of nervous systems. The difference is not in the number of lower,
but in the existence of grades of higher, nerve centers. This hypothesis
of its structure is consistent with the growing tendency in higher nervous
systems toward " centralization," and also with the fact that relative body
and brain weight alone is, without reference to body surface, not in itself
a sign of greater intellectual power. By then representing this interplay
of nerve currents mechanically the nervous correlates for instinct, varia-
tion of instinct, " sensory condensation " habit, " motor condensation "
habit, and inhibition are shown.
The attempt next is made to show on such an hypothesis what would
be the natural nervous correlate for consciousness, and particularly for
pleasantness and unpleasantness, as the author understands the nature
of these feeling processes. No definite line can be drawn between higher
and lower centers, but in general consciousness, sensation, imagery, feel-
ing, etc., accompany the functioning of centers of relatively great com-
plexity of connections, being the more elaborate as the nervous paths
become more indirect and the motor response consequently more delayed.
Now if pleasantness and unpleasantness are merely weak kinds of
sexual sensations and of pain, as many psychologists above mentioned and
others hold, the answer will have been given already. The author, how-
ever, as opposed to Titchener, for example, in one respect, views these
states of feeling as differing in kind, and also as products of a relatively
high development of conscious* life. As they differ in kind, the author
here, agreeing with Pikler, is inclined to seek for them a nervous correlate
which shall similarly differ in kind from sensory correlates. Thus
(p. 307) " while the correlate of sensation is the nervous current itself,
the correlate of pleasantness and unpleasantness is the increase or decrease
of the intensity of a previously constant current if the increase or
decrease is caused by a force acting at a point other than the point of
sensory stimulation."
This hypothesis will explain how such feeling states can not occur
without sensory or ideational contents, and also how these latter can
occur without feeling. It explains how such aspects of experience are
not localized. In this way, also, the advantage over the Stumpf theory
is evident. One can account for the fact that some sensations are
usually unpleasant, as pain, for example; and it can further explain how
pain can at times be pleasant. Likewise we can understand the usually
pleasant, but occasionally unpleasant sensations, such as sweet, etc.
Again, the relatively richer and more various affective tones in adult
life accompanying intellectual states, as compared with those of sensory
pleasures, is explained; for the processes passing very indirectly through
the " highest centers " have more occasion to meet and to interfere with
each other. With such an interplay of complex nervous correlates we
can readily see how usually, in unified response, pleasantness or un-
pleasantness prevails; but their possible and often actual coexistence in
a single state can in the same manner be physiologically a possibility.
All introspective evidence goes to show that they are not merely positive
or negative quantities of the same ideational content
274 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Other complex aspects of these states under discussion can also be
thus most satisfactorily dealt with. Emotions, for example, indicate wide
distribution of nervous currents. On this theory they need never, how-
ever, be identical with the " unanalyzed complex of organic sensations,"
as has so often been the method of disposal. So in the case of acquired
attention, the innumerable higher centers involved explain how interest,
or continued pleasantness, is a possible and natural accompaniment. As
" causes of action," clearly sensations, imagery, and ideas so function, at
least as ultimate causes always. The intensification of an already started
nervous process, the correlate of the feeling, may be a secondary cause
in the sense that the incipient action already imminent may thus not be
inhibited by other sensory stimulation. As to affective imagery, this
conception of nervous action makes impossible such a mental condition.
Lastly, it makes most plausible the genetic view that such feeling aspects
of experience, which are complex, most frequent, varied, and intense in
adult and in civilized life, are the latest, not the first, and unfinished
product of mental evolution. Only the direct, not the functionally in-
direct, causality is denied them.
Such a theory will not, of course, satisfy all psychologists. The
trouble will be not so much with the conception of nervous activity as
with the introspective conclusions for which the theory is formulated.
Titchener 1 has recently exploited pretty fully all these introspective claims
and a great wealth of others not here mentioned. The two authors on
the most fundamental issues, coexistence of feelings, external localization
of certain feelings, relation to organic sensations (in one important par-
ticular), and their genetic history, are diametrically opposed. They are
in essential agreement in their criticisms of James, of Stumpf, of cortex
speculators, of the adherents to the theory of affective imagery, of multi-
dimensionality (this is an inference from Meyer), and pretty nearly, I
should judge, in their ideas of the relation of feeling to attention a one-
sided dependence here.
The theory is exceedingly interesting and intricate, but no theory of
nervous action, after all, can settle the great introspective problems which
at present hinder advance. The author is accounting for many aspects
of affective life which others can not believe exist. The discussion, on
the whole, would have made greater and more permanent appeal had its
author depended less upon general casual personal opinions as to what
are the introspective phenomena which most urgently call for a revision,
of our physiological postulates. We can't start with assumed coexistence,
etc. The reviewer is in substantial agreement himself with most of the
author's introspections, but he knows of a great host of constructive
psychologists who are at present pursuing, from introspective convictions,
an entirely different line of attack. It would, or will, if the author con-
templates it, be profitable to have a more extended discussion in thia
connection, showing specifically how the most popular objections to his
introspective positions, stated and implied, can be met. The genuine
psychological question of the relation between sense feelings, pleasantness-
1 " The Psychology of Feeling and Attention."
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 275
unpleasantness and emotions generally, is somewhat oversimplified.
This thesis likewise calls for further elaboration.
If, furthermore, it should be decided that feelings themselves are
multi-dimensional and have other attributes, such, for example, as a
peculiar kind of vividness, and degrees of distinction, not identical with
mere degrees of intensity which are here accounted for, a more compli-
cated nervous correlate must be postulated. Such a possible contingency
the reviewer has attempted elsewhere to discuss.*
CHARLES HUGHES JOHNSTON.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
Studies in New England Transcendentalism. HAROLD CLARKE GODDARD.
New York: Columbia University Press. 1908. Pp. x + 217.
Professor Goddard's " Studies in New England Transcendentalism "
furnish a valuable contribution to the history of American thinking.
Originally a thesis for the doctorate in the department of English at
Columbia University, the book has the advantage of a clear and at times
brilliant style. Despite its disclaimer of being an investigation of the
philosophy of the New England transcendentalists, the work throws much
light on the historical setting and the speculative opinions of that group
of men.
Two questions confront the author, one speculative, the other practical :
whence came this transcendentalism? and how far justified, as applied to
the leaders of this movement, is the popular definition of transcendental,
" transcending common sense " ? As to the sources of transcendentalism,
it is alleged that no answer really has been given, since a complete study
of these early currents of influence would amount to little less than a his-
tory of the entire political, philosophical, and religious thought of the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Up to June, 1907, when this
work was completed, this statement held good, for the only account of
the movement was that of Octavius Brooks Frothingham, and that ac-
count, as is justly observed, was more expository and biographical than
systematic. Hence the need of this book, which utilizes in most thorough
fashion the biographies and literary remains of the chief characters in
the movement. For the purpose of affording a proper historical setting,
the first chapter is devoted to a short summary of the streams of tendency,
domestic and foreign, leading to the American transcendentalism. In
general, this chapter is a compromise between those who look upon tran-
scendentalism as simply a New England importation from abroad, and
those who have found in it a strictly indigeneous product. Here a study
of the relations of unitarianism to transcendentalism exhibits the sound-
ness of this mediating view. The typical Unitarian is represented as a
cold-blooded animal, a creature of intellect, lacking warmth of emotion.
A prominent representative like William Ellery Channing proves this in
* " Feeling Analysis and Experimentation," this JOUBNAJL, Vol. IV., pp.
209-215. " Combination of Feelings," Harvard Psychological Studies, Vol. II.,
especially pp. 188-191.
276 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
a negative way. If he was a Unitarian, he was one of an entirely new
type, in whom the continuity of Unitarian development seems almost
broken. The orthodox Unitarians, it is acutely observed, had carried
over into the nineteenth century the temper of the eighteenth. They
were chill exponents of the age of reason, but, as Channing himself
remarked, in place of their heart-withering philosophy men desired
excitement. This the transcendentalists furnished. In place of the
regular, elaborate, harmonious strains of the Augustan age, they gave
forth the " thoughts which thrill us."
Going farther afield, the writer now traces the heredity of New Eng-
land thought. Among the Puritans he finds only such exceptional
anticipators of transcendentalism as Jonathan Edwards and his remark-
able wife. Among their descendants', whether orthodox or Unitarian
Calvinists, there was manifest a similar emotional starvation. To the
former the religious revivals made but a transient appeal, but upon the
latter, when a real philosophy of the feelings was offered, there was made
a deep and lasting impression. These were transcendentalists proper,
by whom the English romanticism, French sentimentalism, and German
idealism, in turn, were welcomed with enthusiasm.
Professor Goddard's diagram of the early American religious an-
cestry is extremely informing. It shows how the New England tran-
scendentalists both repudiated and transformed with new life the "pale
negations of Boston unitarianism " ; it also explains how it was hard for
others than Unitarians to become transcendentalists. The Unitarians had
been for two generations pronounced advocates of rationality, hence it
was easy for their children to be tolerant of new systems.
The author's description of the eighteenth century as the age of reason
is rather conventional, for in that century there was another influence at
work which, though less palpable, was most pervasive. Besides the ration-
alistic, there was the idealistic heritage in New England. Before the
coming of Bishop Berkeley, whose personal influence was unfortunately
confined to the Anglican church in the colonies, there was a wide reading
of the English platonists. The writer allows that Emerson was probably
acquainted with Plato through the " Intellectual System of the Universe."
He does not mention how the same thing occurred in the case of the
Puritan transcendentalist, Jonathan Edwards. Erom Cudworth it is
implied that Emerson derived his earliest acquaintance with the sym-
bolism of natura But the same symbolism occurs in other familiar
writers of Old and New England, such as Quarles in his "Divine Em-
blems," and Cotton Mather in his " Christian Philosopher."
But the search for the sources of transcendentalism is not to be con-
fined to mere book lists, such as are given in the useful appendix on " Ger-
man Literature in New England in the Early Part of the Nineteenth
Century." Besides the objective literature, there was the subjective reac-
tion, without which there could not have arisen such a prevalent spirit of
receptivity. There could scarcely have come the keen desire for the
"method of spiritual intuition," and at the same time the "easy disre-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 277
gard for all tradition," unless there had been a previous preparation and
a previous rejection of unsatisfying notions. Here the author justly
enumerates the negative reactions against Calvinistic determinism, deistic
rationalism, and Lockean sensationalism.
In his treatment of foreign transcendentalism, Professor Goddard con-
fines himself largely to England. Leaving aside the difficult problem
of the first reading of the critiques of Kant in the United States, 1 he
gives as examples of the demand for a new standard of truth, Coleridge's
exaltation of reason over the understanding, Wordsworth's nature worship,
the mysticism of Shelley, and Carlyle's gospel of work. With the excep-
tion of Shelley, these were the writers upon whom, according to Emerson,
kindred spirits fell with pleasure and sympathy. Yet it was not until
1836 that there was formed the germ of an organization that later became
known as the Transcendental Club. Out of the score of members in this
club there are now selected for special study Channing, Alcott, Emerson,
Theodore Parker, and Margaret Fuller. To the intellectual and literary
influences affecting these variant characters a thorough and painstaking
chapter is devoted. Examining both the general and technical philosoph-
ical readings of these persons, this judicious answer is given to the
widely accepted theory that New England transcendentalism was a Ger-
man importation : " The extent of the admissible generalization seems to
be this. The original stimulus to the strictly metaphysical part of tran-
scendental thought came fairly largely (but by no means exclusively)
from Germany. Of the various channels which brought this thought from
Germany to America, England was considerably the most important, and
France next." Among the English interpreters of the critical philos-
ophy Coleridge is given first place; among the French, are mentioned
Mme. De Stael, Cousin, and Jouffroy.
And yet that neither the " Aids to Reflection " nor positivism gave the
initial impulse to transcendentalism is justly acknowledged, at least in
the case of Channing, when it is said that he " drew much of his inspira-
tion from a point fairly high up in the stream of eighteenth-century
tendency, at a place where, or close to where, the current of influence was
still predominantly from England to the continent rather than in the
reverse direction." But why this direct English current ending in tran-
scendentalism should be called a relatively slender stream it is hard to
see, when an adjacent passage mentions Emerson's enumeration of the
forces and men that undermined the traditional religion of New England
as the Armenians, the followers of Locke, and Hartley and Priestley.
In conclusion, then, it may be said that this work may have certain
avowed limitations, as the problems of philosophic sources; yet as a con-
tribution to the understanding of an earlier phase of American thinking
1 Among the first sympathetic readers were the Pennsylvanians, F. A.
Rauch, president of Marshall College, and S. S. Schmucker, professor in the
Theological Seminary, Gettysburg. For a review of Rauch, compare James
Murdock, " Sketches of Modern Philosophy, especially among the Germans,"
Hartford, Conn., 1842, pp. 189 seq.
278 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
from the literary side, these " Studies " are of great interest and im-
portance.
I. WOODBRIDGE KlLEY.
VASSAB COLLEGE.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. February, 1909. Les deux erreurs de la
metaphysique (113-141) : J. DE GAULTIER. - The two errors of metaphysics
are (1) assuming itself to have practical value as a science of the good in-
stead of remaining purely speculative, and (2) attributing objective being
to time, space, and matter. Examen critique des systemes classiques sur
les origines de la pensee religieuse (2 e et dernier article pp. 142162) : E.
DURKHEIM. -As neither Naturalism nor Animism is adequate to explain
the origin of religion, this must be sought in a more fundamental and
primitive cult. De la connection des idees (pp. 163-179) : E. TASSY. - An
application of the author's " ideative erethism " to complete the present
inadequate theories of the association of ideas. F. Pillon, L'Annee phi-
losophique (1907) : J. DELVAILLE. In Honour of W. James, Essays Phi-
losophical and Psychological: A. PEN JON. Morselli, Introduzione alia
filosofia moderna: J. PERES. R. Manzoni, Essais de philosophic positive
(trad, franc.) : F. PAULHAN. F. Thomas, L'education dans la famille : les
peches des parents: G. COMPAYRE. E. Mach, La connaissance et I'erreur:
A. LALANDE. L. Robin, La theorie platonicienne des idees et des nombres
d'apres Aristote: C. HOIT. R. Picard, La philosophic sociale de Renou-
vier: G. L. DUPRAT. Kinkel, Geschichte der Philosophic als Einleitung:
C. HUIT. Gilbert, Die meteorologischen Theorien der Griechischen Al-
terthums: C. HUIT. J. Adam, The Religious Teachers of Greece: C.
HUIT. Kant, Gesammelte Schriften: J. SEGOND. Revue des periodiques
Strangers.
Cramanssel, E. " Le Premier eveil intellectuel de I 'enfant." Paris:
Felix Alcan. 1909. Pp. 192.
Croce, Benedetto. "Filosofia della practica." Bari: Gius, Laterza, e
Figli. 1909. xix + 415.
Enrignes, Frederic. "Les problems de la science et de la logique"
Paris : Felix Alcan. 1909. Pp. 256. 3 fr. $0.75.
Joussain, A. " Le fondement psycliologique de la morale." Paris : Felix
Alcan. 1909. Pp. viii + 144.
Kronenberg, M. " Geschichte des deutschen Idealismus." Erster Band :
die idealistische Ideen-Entwicklung von ihren Aufangen bis Kant.
Munich: Oscar Beck. 1909. Pp. xii+428. M. 11.
Maticvic, Von S. " Zur Grundlegung die LogiTc." Wien und Leipzig:
Wilhelm Braumiiller. 1909. Pp. 192.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 279
Offner, Max. "Das Oeddchtniss. Die Ergebnisse der experimentellen
Psychologic und ihrer Anwendung in Unterricht und Erziehung"
Berlin: Reuter und Eeichard. 1909. Pp. vi-f275. M. 4.50.
Perrier, Joseph Louis. "The Revival of Scholastic Philosophy in the
Nineteenth Century" New York: The Columbia University Press.
1909. Pp. viii-f 344.
Prezzolini, Guiseppe. "Benedetto Croce" Napoli: Riccardo Riccardi.
1909. Pp. 118.
Urban, Wilbur Marshall. " Valuation: Its Nature and its Laws Being
an Introduction to the General Theory of Value." London: Swan
Sonnenschein & Co. New York. The Macmillan Co. 1909. Pp.
xviii+433. $2.75.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE following abstract of the paper read by Dr. Hubert Poston on
" The Mutual Symbolism of Intelligence and Activity " before the Aris-
totelian Society on April 5, is from the Athenaeum: "Intelligence and
activity are not so much names of two different facts as indications of two
ultimately distinct points of view for considering fact. Intelligence im-
plies procedure by way of definition; but definition can never be com-
pletely closed, because experience is continually subject to change. This
subjection to change is, from an active point of view, the key to oppor-
tunity; it involves a plasticity in fact which leaves room for hope and
effort. All definiteness in experience involves the intellectual point of
view; all consciousness of process involves an active basis-continu-
ous process being recognized only through active expectation. As
neither complete definiteness free from change, nor pure change or move-
ment without form, affords a possible start for interpreting experience,
we can not avoid in philosophy a double point of view, at once intellectual
and active. This double point of view can not actually be reduced to
theoretical unity, since there is really no comparison possible between
intelligence and activity, as if they were two kinds of fact. Neither is
there any contradiction between them for contradiction can only be
asserted where two matters conflict when seen from a unitary point of
view. Since, however, intellect and activity are always mutually implied,
reference to the one comes ambiguously to symbolize a reference to
the other; and there thus arises the philosophical illusion of a unitary
point of view. While intelligence and activity can never fall for us into
a unity of comprehension, they do fall into a unity of conspiracy
conspiring to suggest an ideal aim. All that can be known by beings
such as ourselves suggests an ideal, either of amelioration or of continu-
ance. But the suggestion of an ideal is not a matter of pure intelligence.
We can entertain it as such only because we are active beings. Our
activity must be taken seriously. The intellectualist analysis of it by
reference to the expansion of an idea against limits, owes its apparent
.success to our being stirred to be sympathetically active in the very inter-
280 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
preting of the word " expansion " ; and thus the whole problem of activity
is given back to us unanalyzed in the use of the phrase. On the other
hand, an ideal aim implies more than pure activity. Ideal method can
not be deduced from our activity, abstractly regarded, and the ideality
must be taken as a constitutional datum. If it be such in us, and not
essentially of our active " making," there remains no scotch for our prag-
matist denial of it as an original datum also in the facts which appear in
so suggestive and educative a shape about us. Pragmatism is unreasonably
exclusive here, and is tainted with the characteristic activist fallacy of
making process as active account for the structural form of process which
it implies. For us, as beings constitutionally committed to a life of ideal
aim, ultimate reality is synonymous with ultimate trustworthiness. It is
a business of philosophy to interpret the relative trustworthiness which
we find in experience, alike in its aspects to thought and its warrant for
practise."
A PSYCHOLOGICAL conference was held at the University of Minnesota
on April 9. A leading purpose of the conference was to acquaint the
managers and teachers of public schools with results that have been
reached in the psychology of teaching. The program was as follows:
" The Psychology of Moral Instruction," Rowland Haynes ; " A Pre-
liminary Study of Retarded Children," F. E. Lurton ; " Psychology Ap-
plied to Education," Joseph S. Gaylord ; " The Psychology of Word
Learning: A Practical Study," Isabel Lawrence; "Introductory Class
Work in Psychology": (a.) "Matter and Methods," J. A. Hancock; (6)
"The Use of Experiments," J. B. Miner; (c) "Some Experimental Evi-
dence on the Doctrine of Formal Discipline," L. W. Kline ; " The
Recent Discussion of Imageless Thought," David F. Swenson.
UNDER the auspices of the Department of Physics of Columbia Uni-
versity a course of lectures on "The Present State of the System of
Theoretical Physics," have been given by Max Planck, Ph.D., professor
of mathematical physics in the University of Berlin, lecturer in mathe-
matical physics in Columbia University, 1908-09. The subjects of the
several lectures have been as follows : " Reversibility and Irreversibility " ;
" Kinetic Theory of Matter " ; " Radiation of Heat " ; General Dynamics ;
the Relativity Principle."
PROFESSOR A. W. MOORE, of the University of Chicago, and Professor
H. W. Stuart, of Leland Stanford University, have been made full pro-
fessors of philosophy at their respective universities.
DR. W. F. DEARBORN, assistant professor of educational psychology at
the University of Wisconsin, has accepted a corresponding position at the
University of Chicago.
DR. B. H. BODE, assistant professor of philosophy at the University
of Wisconsin, has accepted a professorship of philosophy at the Univer-
sity of Illinois.
PROFESSOR S. P. HAYES has been made professor of psychology at
Mount Holyoke College.
VOL. VI. No. 11. MAY 27, 1909
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
CRITIQUE OF COGNITION AND ITS PRINCIPLES 1
THE German philosophical terminology distinguishes between
' ' Erkenntnis " and "Kenntnis, Wissen"; this distinction,
though varying with the different authors, has been of high impor-
tance in the development of idealism; yet there seems to be no ac-
cepted fixation in the English language for these two concepts. I
shall in this paper use cognition for Erkenntnis, as knowledge already
stands for Kenntnis, and shall place the distinction between cogni-
tion and knowledge in the concept of system. Knowledge that satis-
fies the group of conditions for which the concept of system stands,
is cognition. This group of conditions and therewith the definition
of cognition I shall not give here, but instead point out particular
instances of cognition: mathematics, mechanics stand as examples
and also as parts of cognition. It seems advisable, in order to give
determinateness and stability to the concept of cognition, to restrict
it at first and to relate it to mathematics and mechanics only, with
the provision, however, of properly extending it afterwards.
Whether such an extension is possible, and what the scientific meth-
ods of such an extension are, is the subject of a special investigation ;
but whatever the decision of such an investigation may be, it will not
affect the inquiry we are concerned in, which is independently neces-
sary. Systems in this paper, therefore, are always systems of mathe-
matics or of mechanics.
By "logic of cognition" I understand the systematic construction
of the foundations of cognition from the true origin. This logical
origin is the concept of ' ' problem. ' ' Inasmuch as the problem may
be conceived as generating a system, I call it the "generating prob-
lem." The construction of the foundations may be considered as the
positing of the conditions necessary and sufficient for the solution of
the problem of cognition. These conditions are the axioms or prin-
ciples; they are not arbitrary (mere "conventions"), as some take it,
but necessary though in a sense of the word different from the
necessity of a theorem : theorems derive their necessity from axioms,
1 Read before the American Philosophical Association in 1902; published
with several additions.
281
282 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
they are necessary from; axioms derive their necessity from the gen-
erating problem, they are necessary for, namely, for the solution of
the problem. There is no necessity beyond the problem.
Logic of cognition is purely constructive; it posits nothing as
given but its problem; and whilst it thus appears as the true basis
of the system of cognition, which it makes possible, it requires a new
discipline preliminary to it which establishes its problem, determines
its method, and prepares its material. For construction is not gen-
eration out of nothing, nor is the logical origin a psychologically new
beginning. This preliminary discipline establishes the true inter-
relation between logic of cognition and cognition as it is represented
in its literature; and in this interrelation the advance toward the
ideal of cognition is accomplished.
By "critique of cognition" I understand the examination of the
actual, or possible, systematic solutions of the problem of cognition
according to principles. This critique is the required preliminary
discipline and is established with reference to a possible system of
logic of cognition. "Critique of cognition" posits cognition as given.
The distinction between a critique of cognition and a logic of cogni-
tion consists, therefore, in this: the first examines, the second
constructs.
All criticizing is measuring and therefore presupposes a standard.
According to the standard taken, there are three kinds of ' ' critique ' '
possible: the external, the internal (or immanent), and the sys-
tematic. The external takes as standard any other system and meas-
ures the agreement or disagreement with it. The internal measures
a system by itself in the agreement or disagreement of its parts.
The systematic takes as standard a complete set of critical principles
to determine the objective value of the system. ' ' Critique of cogni-
tion" is, by definition, of the third kind.
It is our task to exhibit such a set of principles. We are guided
by the idea with which we started, that cognition is essentially sys-
tematic; the principles by which any system may be criticized are,
therefore, the principles of "critique of cognition," and we obtain
them if we consider a particular instance and remove the specializing
conditions.
In the introduction to his ' ' Prinzipien der Mechanik, ' ' Heinrich
Hertz has given such a set of principles and applied them to systems
of principles of mechanics. But they are based on a metaphysical
assumption of which "critique of cognition" can, and therefore
ought to, be free.
The principles by which the value of a system may be judged
seem to me to form four groups of conditions; I call them: the
conditions of logical purity, of logical completeness, of logical sim-
plicity and of logical truth.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 283
CONDITIONS OF LOGICAL PURITY
1. The concepts must be well determined) Derived concepts are
determined in their definitions. Fundamental concepts can not be
defined; methods must be indicated in the system for their determi-
nation and it is not sufficient to enumerate them in the beginning as
"primitive concepts," as Peano and his school have done.
2. The definitions must be good. A definition is the establish-
ment of a group of conditions between certain elements. The intro-
duction of a new name for this group of conditions and therefore
the form of an equation which Peano 2 and others have declared as
essential, does not concern the true nature of a definition.
A definition is good if it satisfies the following conditions: (a)
Its elements must be well determined; (6) the conditions to which
the elements are submitted, must be independent, i. e., they must all
be necessary (indispensable) ; (c) all independent conditions must
be stated, i. e., the conditions must be sufficient; (d) the conditions
must be consistent. If we take, e. g., the definition: A circle is a
curved line whose points are equidistant from one point, it may sat-
isfy condition (a), and it does satisfy condition (d) (because we
can construct lines which satisfy the definition) ; but it does not
satisfy conditions (&) and (c), because the condition "curved" is
deducible from the others (therefore not independent), and the
condition "equidistant" is not sufficient to determine a circle, since
it includes, besides, each part of a circle and all curves on a sphere
in the definition.
3. The fundamental as well as the special condition-s of the
system must be consistent.
4. The conclusions must be correct. This condition comprises:
(a) That the conclusions satisfy the rules of the syllogism, which,
using symbolical notations, have been summed up in one formula, the
"argument of inconsistency," by Mrs. Ladd-Franklin ; 3 (&) that the
limiting conditions, under which the premises are valid, are ob-
served; (c) that no principles are used except those which are ex-
plicitly presupposed, or proven as theorems.
These four conditions determine the logical purity of the system
with respect to its generating problem; they apply, with obvious
modifications, as well to the generating problem itself. In particu-
lar, the non-satisfaction of the condition of consistency (3) leads to
so-called null-systems.
* See " Lea Definitions Mathe"matiques, Bibliotheque du Congres Interna-
tional de Philosophic," Vol. III. (1900), p. 279. See alsx>: " Formulaire," Vol. I.
(1895), p. iv.
' See " Studies in Logic," by members of the Johns Hopkins University,
p. 40.
284 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
CONDITIONS OF LOGICAL COMPLETENESS
1. The fundamental conditions of the system itself, as well as the
special conditions of each theorem, must be sufficient; i. e., all spe-
cial problems (called "facts" in physics) within the realm of the
generating problem must be deducible from the system. The method
of ascertaining the satisfaction of this condition is the method of
the constructed exception (called "experiment" in physics). This
method will indicate sufficiently the importance of the condition for
physics ; it is equally great in mathematics, and closely allied to the
' ' spirit of exactness. ' '
This first condition determines the completeness 1 of the system
with respect to its generating problem. A second condition requires
the completeness of the generating problem itself and may be formu-
lated thus:
2. All special problems which belong to the realm of the gener-
ating problem must be contained in this realm of the generating
problem. The difficulty of the condition lies in this: How can we
determine that a special problem belongs to a realm unless it is
actually contained in it ? It is the same difficulty as the following :
How can we determine that a definition is not complete? Whilst
this condition has shown its influence in the history of science, it is
not so evident for the reason that the generating problems are but
rarely explicitly stated. Yet the definition of the science will al-
ways contain it. Take, e. g., "geometry is that part of mathematics
which is concerned with spatial magnitudes." This generating
problem violates our condition because it does not contain the prob-
lems of modern projective geometry. Or, if we should formulate the
generating problem of geometry, with modern geometers, purely pro-
jectively, and accept Mr. Bertrand Russell's proof that the projective
definition of distance only superficially contains the Euclidean, then
we should maintain that the special problems of Euclid's geometry
are not all contained in the realm of our generating problem. In
both cases the system might be complete so far as our first condition
of completeness is concerned. It is evident that the method of test-
ing the satisfaction of this second condition is the same as that of
the first.
Another method of testing the satisfaction of these conditions of
completeness is to show that the system embraces another system
which has already been tested. One system embraces another if the
content of the second can be deduced from the first; e. g., to show
that a set of axioms is complete for metrical geometry, it is sufficient
to show that from the set an established set can be deduced. 4 The
* E. g., Professor J. Royce's paper : " The Relation of the Principles of Logic
to the Foundations of Geometry," in Transactions of the American Mathe-
matical Society, Vol. 6 (1905), No. 3, pp. 410ff.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 285
method is, however, applicable only under certain restrictions which
can not be discussed here. It has sometimes, though mistakenly,
been used to prove the possibility of a system. 5
CONDITIONS OF LOGICAL, SIMPLICITY
1. Hie fundamental conditions must be simple. The work of
modern mathematicians has shown that an interchange between
principles and propositions is possible, so that different solutions
of the same generating problem can be obtained by a proper change
in the choice of theorems as principles. However, there seems to
exist between the principles (and the concepts to which these prin-
ciples correspond) a definite relation such that we call the one
simpler, the other more complex. It must be possible to determine
this relation in the various concrete cases, though it is hard to state
it in general. If it is found, our condition gives preference to the
system which has the simpler principles and concepts; so that it is
not of equal value for the system, though it may be logically indiffer-
ent, which is made the foundation and which the derived. As an
illustration note Heinrich Hertz's objection to Hamilton's principle
as a fundamental principle of mechanics. 6
2. The fundamental conditions must be few. Either the number
of principles may be different in the different selections of principles
referred to in the preceding condition, (1), or auxiliary principles
may be required ; preference is given by our condition to the smaller
number, unless it is in opposition to the preceding condition. As an
illustration see Professor E. Y. Huntington's definition of a group, 7
as compared with the one given by H. Weber in his "Lehrbuch der
Algebra," 8 or v. Helmholtz's objections to "W. Weber's theory of
electrodynamics. 9
3. The fundamental conditions must be mutually independent
("necessary"). The method of ascertaining the satisfaction of this
condition consists in the construction of a system which satisfies all
' See H. Hertz, " Prinzipien der Mechanik," p. xxiv : " Dass aber die
gegebene Zusammenstellung in jeder Hinsicht eine mogliche ist, beweise ich
dadurch, dass ich ihre Folgen entwickle und zeige, dass bei roller Entfaltung
sie den Inhalt der gewohnlichen Mechanik aufzunehmen vermag. . . ." It is,
however, clear, firstly, that therewith the possibility of one system is merely
set in relation to that of another; secondly, that for this a special principle
would be required, which may be formulated thus: if from a set of conditions
we can deduce possible results, the set is itself possible; and thirdly, that the
real question at issue is not the possibility but the relative completeness of the
two systems.
" Prinzipien der Mechanik," p. 27.
1 Bulletin of the Am. Math. Society (1902), second series, Vol. VIII., No. 7,
pp. 296-300.
Vol. II. (1899), pp. 3-4.
H. Hertz, " Mechanik," Vorwort, pp. x-xi.
286 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the conditions with the exception of the one whose independence is
in question. The application of this condition to Euclid's axioms
of geometry has led to new systems of geometry and to a revision of
the foundations of Euclidean geometry.
The first three conditions of this group determine the simplicity
of the system with respect to the generating problem. A fourth con-
dition requires the simplicity of the generating problem itself, and
may be formulated thus:
4. The realm of the generating problem must contain only those
special problems which belong to it. The difficulty of the condition
lies in this: How can we determine that a special problem does not
belong to a realm unless it is actually not contained in it ? It is the
same difficulty as the following: How can we determine that a defi-
nition is too broad ?
This group of conditions has been of the utmost importance in the
development of science. If we consider that any system can be made
complete by the addition of auxiliary hypotheses (conditions), it will
be evident that this group is the necessary correlate to the preceding
group (of completeness), and not merely the satisfaction of an
esthetic demand, as some hold.
CONDITIONS OF LOGICAL TRUTH
1. The system must be a solution of its generating problem such
that the preceding groups of conditions are satisfied.
2. The generating problem of the system must be a special case of
the general problem of cognition, i. e., each special system must be a
special problem within the realm of the generating problem of
cognition.
It is evident from these conditions that truth is the highest of all
the critical conditions, and that the problem of " critique of cogni-
tion" could be formulated as the determination of the truth-value of
a system. It follows further (from 2) that it is not the task of the
single disciplines to determine the truth of their systems. This con-
clusion is so paradoxical and is liable to meet so strong an opposition,
especially from the physicists, that it is necessary to consider it from
another point of view.
"Whatever these conditions may be, the proper method of deter-
mining truth, at least in physics, seems to be the experiment. It can
easily be shown, however, that the experiment, whilst it is indeed the
most powerful means of convincing us of the possible truth of a
system, is nothing but the method of the conditions of completeness.
In so far, and in so far only, as their satisfaction is required by the
condition that "the system must be a solution of its generating prob-
lem" (1) can the experiment be considered as a negative criterion
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 287
of truth. Foucault's experiments to determine the velocity of light
in water left no doubt about the superiority of the undulation theory.
They did not, however, prove the truth of Huyghens's theory, but
only the incompleteness of Newton's; or, as Foucault himself ex-
presses it, "The last conclusion which I draw from my experiment,
is, therefore, the proof that the emission hypothesis is not in harmony
with the phenomena of light. ' ' -Again Presnel 's experiments in the
interference of rays of light, as they were a direct consequence of the
undulation theory, strongly increased our conviction of the truth
of this hypothesis; but what they proved is the completeness of
Huyghens's system with respect to a certain group of special
problems.
This granted, the conclusion might be drawn that the conditions
of completeness are the conditions of truth. 10 It is obvious, however,
that this would mean to ignore the other conditions. But we are
thus led to the question : Is the set of conditions that we have given
complete, is it simple, pure, etc.? In other words: this set of con-
ditions 11 can itself be considered as a system and therefore be exam-
ined by its own principles. I call it the "self critique" of the
critical principles.
KARL SCHMIDT.
PEQUAKET, N. H.
CLEARNESS, INTENSITY, AND ATTENTION
MUCH has been made in late years of the distinction between
intensity and vividness, or clearness, which attracts our
notice in the study of attention. But it appears clear to the writer
that the distinction is one merely between intensities of different
types. Most of the studies of our psycho-physicists in this direction
are given to sensational intensities, and in this field they observe in-
tensity as contrasted with clearness, vividness, distinctness, but fail
to take sufficient note of the fact that this contrast appears in other
realms than the sensational.
Titchener tells us 1 that "the problem of attention centers in the
fact of sensible clearness": and 2 that "clearness is an independent
attribute of sensation" which "may vary independently of inten-
sity"; although "change of clearness always involves a change of
intensity as well. ' ' One can not but hesitate to question so positive
a statement of so thoroughly equipped and thoughtful a psychol-
* This is essentially, if I understand him correctly, Professor James's theory
in his book on " Pragmatism."
u As was first pointed out to me by Mrs. Schmidt.
1 " The Psychology of Feeling and Attention," p. 182.
*0p. tit., p. 219.
288 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ogist ; and yet one is naturally led to note the limitation of his view,
as thus stated, to sensational considerations, and to recall that a
large part of our attention experiences are within the realm of
thought and, therefore, in our view non-sensational. One who does
so must at once concede that the distinction is one that is most com-
monly and very frequently observed in cases where sensations are
compared with ideational presentations, and that the sensations
which, in distinction from the sensations called intense, are called
vivid (e. g., those located in the retinal margin) are closely allied
with ideational presentations. It seems clear that the frequent ex-
periences of this comparison between sensational and ideational
presentations in every-day life give the basis for the distinction
considered when careful laboratory tests are made.
Where intensities of diverse types of presentations appear co-
incidently we should surely not be surprised to find them contrasted
and given different names. An elemental intensity corresponds with
an emphasis of activity within a part of the nervous system, and
such emphases are more likely to be distinctly marked in those parts
of the nervous system which receive stimuli directly from the en-
vironment than in parts which receive their stimuli from within the
system itself. As the emphatic activities in the nervous parts which
are in direct relation to the environment correspond with our sen-
sations, we should expect to make note of intensities most frequently
in connection with sensations as is evidently the case; and we
should find ourselves naturally considering sensational intensities
when the thought of the meaning of the word intensity occurs. If
then we are inclined to give special names to intensities as attached
to special classes of presentations, we should naturally use the word
intensity to refer to sensation, and choose a special name to apply
to the intensities of a less narrow nature which are due to action
within the mass of the psychic system, when the two forms are
placed in contradistinction. And this, in my view, we do in setting
"intensity" over against "vividness," or "clearness."
The meaning of this may be more clearly seen if we consider in
some detail the contrast between sensational and ideational intensi-
ties. An intense presentation appears within some minor psychic
system. This minor psychic system may be of greater or less
breadth. It is to be expected, therefore, that comparison will at
times be made between an intensity within a narrow minor psychic
system (let us call this intensity N} and an intensity within a broad
minor psychic system (let us call this intensity B). It may well
happen also that the intensity N, which is related with the narrow
system, may be one which is strongly influenced by the action of
physical stimuli and not markedly affected by the reaction of the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 289
related psychic system as a whole : while, on the other hand, the in-
tensity B, which is related with the broad system, may be one which
exists as such almost entirely because of the reaction upon it, as a
whole, of the psychic system with which it is related. N, that re-
lated with the narrow system, may well be a marked case of what
men usually, but without great accuracy, speak of as involuntary
attention, e. g., the light of the candle upon which my eyes are fixed
the twinge of neuralgic toothache caused by the stimulation of an
exposed nerve. B, that related with the broad system, may well be
a marked case of what we all agree to call marked voluntary atten-
tion, provided the intensity is related with, and supported by, the
broad mass of the psychic system as a whole, i. e., by the self.
Now two such intensities may well appear at what seems to be
one and the same moment ; and we should not be surprised to find
their contrast leading us occasionally to give them different names
as we have seen that we do, using the term intensity to refer to the
narrower sensational intensity, and the word vividness to refer to the
broader ideational intensity.
Vivid B and intense N as differentiated from 5, are both partial
presentations. The characteristic of the vivid B is this, that at the
moment observed it persists in attention notwithstanding the fact
that, when both N and B are held in reflection and compared, B is
appreciated as less intense than N, so that we speak then of the in-
tense content N as contrasted with the vivid content B. What we
note in this moment of comparison in reflection is the fact that atten-
tion becomes fixed upon N (the so-called intense element) as more
emphatic than B (the so-called vivid element), and that in that
moment B tends to disappear from attention, while N tends to per-
sist. But at the same time we also note that apart from this moment
of reflective comparison the reverse is the case, i. e., the "vivid" B
holds attention as against the "intense" N.
We often experience cases where attention to partial presenta-
tion N becomes approximately equivalent to attention to partial pres-
entation B. It is in such cases of balanced attention that the
psychic system is appreciated as reacting to fasten B in attention to
the exclusion of N, or, in other words, to sustain the "vividness" of
B to the exclusion of the importance of the "intense" N.
The actor on the stage may have a sharp neuralgic toothache
which he may experience during the whole time given to his acting,
but the relatively unimportant psychic systems involved with the
apprehension of the toothache, as compared with the very broad
and important psychic systems involved in the acting of his part in
the play, may lead him to say that while the toothache was more
intense, the conception of his part in the play was more vivid. In
290 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the one case the intensity was due to a physical stimulus and in-
volved relations with relatively narrow psychic systems ; in the other
case it was the reaction of the mass of the whole psychic system that
gave the importance to the psychic element and gave to it its inten-
sity, which in such cases we call its vividness, or clearness, as you will.
It thus appears that the facts upon which Titchener bases his
statements, above quoted, may all be interpreted in terms of the
shifting of attention.
When we look upon the clearness of a sensation as distinct from
its intensity we are considering the relation of the sensation to a very
different psychic field than that involved when we consider what we
call the intensity of the sensation as such.
Clearness, I take it, is but another name for vividness or distinct-
ness. Both of these are terms employed to describe intensity in
fields of a broader nature than those in which the typical intensity,
viz., sensational intensity, appears. When we consider clearness or
vividness or distinctness we are dealing with attention in a field of
broader significance than when we consider intensity; in the latter
case we deal with attention in a field of narrower significance.
That no such distinction as that made by Titchener will hold
seems clear in the very fact which he asks us to note, viz., that
"change of clearness always involves a change of intensity as well."
This in my view is but another way of saying that what in one field
appears as a change of what we commonly call clearness or vividness,
in another field appears as a change of what we commonly call in-
tensity.
If we thus agree that intensity and clearness are names for the
same characteristic in different settings, then we find no difficulty
in accepting Pillsbury's statement, 3 that "attention is fundamen-
tally a change in clearness of some one phase or aspect of a mental
process."
If we thus use the word intensity as the generic term, we may
then say that attention experience appears as not identical with in-
tensity, although it involves intensity ; it is intensity as related to the
manifoldness of all the rest of the field which makes the total pre-
sentation of the moment of consideration. Both the focus and the
rest of the field of attention are noted as involved in the whole com-
plex presentation of the moment, the focus being the center of most
marked intensity.
HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL.
NEW YOBK CITY.
*0p. cit., 1, 11.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 291
DISCUSSION
' ' ANTI-PRAGMATISME ' n
TT is the contention of some pragmatists that the social and ethical
! implications of extreme intellectualism are essentially undemo-
cratic and hierarchical. They insist that the conception of thought
as a totally distinct species of activity, complete and sufficient unto
itself, capable even of ' ' furnishing its own material, ' ' leads in social
theory to the notion of thinkers as constituting a distinct and
"privileged" social class, a sort of priestly "caste" (employing the
term frankly used by the author of "Anti-Pragmatisme") whose
function is to keep the fires burning on the altar of ' ' Pure Truth. ' '
They believe that a ' ' caste ' ' system of psychology and logic involves,
both as antecedent and consequent, a "caste" system of society.
And it is to be noted, they add, that this view of thought and the
thinker can not plead in its defense the principle of "division of
labor." Division of labor means an interdependent differentiation
of function in a common process working toward a common end.
But by hypothesis pure thought pursues only its own end, by its own
method, and acknowledges no dependence upon, nor cooperation with
anything else. The thinking class, as such, is a law unto itself. It
need render no account to the others. But the others must render an
account to the thinker. For the thinker finds it no less difficult to
live by thought alone than by bread alone. And somebody must
furnish the bread. It has always been the boast of the intellectualist
that pure thought "bakes no bread," and many are beginning to
doubt whether it procures for us either God, freedom, or immortality.
However, these doubters recognize that thought has its part in baking
bread and in procuring God, freedom, and immortality.
But usually when pragmatists point out these reactionary social
"consequences" of extreme intellectualism, they are promptly repu-
diated. And the vehemence of these rejections would seem to imply
that if such "consequences" did follow they would constitute a suffi-
cient refutation (rather "pragmatic" in character to be sure) of the
doctrine.
In view of this, it is interesting to open a volume on "Anti-prag-
matism" and find that these reactionary social implications are
frankly, not to say naively, accepted at the outset and preached
throughout with evangelical fervor as the only gospel of social
salvation.
"La these qui a preside a la composition de ce livre, a savoir qu'il
y aun conftit entre la verite intellectuelle et la verite morale, conflit
1 " Anti-Pragmatisme," by Professor Albert Schinz. Paris : Felix Alcan,
1909. Pp. 309.
292 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
que toutes les ratiocinations du monde ne supprimeront pas, car il est
irreductible." (p. 6.)
"La verite n'a rien a faire avec la vie." (p. 195.)
The subtitle of the volume is : ' ' Examen des Droits Kespectifs de
L 'Aristocratic Intellectuelle et de la Democratic Sociale. ' ' And the
reader is not left long in doubt about the author's view of these
"Droits Respectifs." The legend for the introduction is: "Odi
profanum vulgus et arceo." Of another chapter (p. 195) the pro-
logue is: "La civilisation a etc de tout temps une ceuvre aristo-
cratique, maintenue par un petit nombre. " Again: "1 'ideal demo-
cratique. . . . Condamne le race Humaine a se couper la tete."
(p. 219.)
If, in these days of mixed motives and crossed wires in philo-
sophic thinking, such simple consistency were found in the premises
of a volume by a professor of philosophy it would be regarded with
suspicion. The reader would fear a trap. But there is no question
of Professor Schinz 's ingenuousness. And the pragmatic critic might
make short work of comments by saying "Very well, if you want a
'caste' system of society, that's the kind of theory to hold."
This charming absence of "the art of philosophic dissimmula-
tion" further appears in much of Professor Schinz 's defense of in-
tellectualism, which is openly (what the pragmatist would insist it
must be implicitly) pragmatic in its method. Intellectualism is to
save us from the "consequences" of pragmatism especially the
American brand of pragmatism which are: a crass materialism, a
charlatanistic "opportunism," and philistinism in general, in which
all moral control breaks down, and which is to end in "humanity
cutting off its own head."
With a cheerful and jaunty pessimism Professor Schinz confesses
that he believes that his defense of pure thought is a forlorn hope.
He, too, is persuaded that "pragmatism has come to stay"; not be-
cause it is true, "but precisely because it is false," for "from the
social standpoint, the false is preferable"! (p. 195 ff.) "The
victory is not to him who has the better order of syllogisms, but
to him who has the best vitality." (p. 209.) "What a beautiful
reductio ad absurdum of pure thought!" the pragmatic reader will
exclaim. "Is falsehood then more vital than truth? Will hu-
manity have more vitality with its head off than on? Is the
syllogism a symptom of general debility? And what of the author's
plea for happiness? Is the syllogism the archetype of human bliss?
And what shall we say: 'Better fifty years of pure intellect, than
a cycle of social-comradeship?' " (Though doubtless the syllogism
plays a part in social-comradeship.)
As for the general issue of democracy versus aristocracy, the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 293
democratic reader will probably say that most of Professor Schinz's
case for aristocracy rests upon a very antiquated conception of dem-
ocracy, viz., as "the intellectual and social equality of all individ-
uals. ' ' Also they will say that in his analysis of the evils of democ-
racy ; e. g., bossism, as due to the persistent, but ignored, and there-
fore mutilated, working of the principle of aristocracy under an at-
tempt at democracy, the author seems blissfully unaware that by the
same token these evils, especially that of bossism, might be the symp-
tom of a handicapped and mutilated working of democracy ; that by
the same logic, bossism might be diagnosed as social appendicitis due
to the survival in the body politic of the hypertrophied veriform of
an aristocratic regime. And they will add, that the cure for this
trouble is now fortunately well recognized.
Of the more technical presentation of the author's standpoint
many will not only fail to find anything new advanced in support
of intellectualism, but are pretty sure to complain of a lack of any-
thing like an adequate appreciation of the real issue. And in sup-
port of this they will cite that the only exposition of the nature and
meaning of purely "intellectual" and "scientific" truth as opposed
to "social" or "moral" truth, is an appeal to the formal law of con-
tradiction and to Kant's "irreducible" antinomies of space, time and
causation. (Though many think that even Hegel made a pretty good
"stagger" at their reduction.) But this appeal to the law of contra-
diction and the antinomies which the author regards as sufficient
support for intellectualism brings us only in sight of the real prob-
lem, which concerns precisely the nature and functions of this law of
contradiction and of the antinomies. And doubtless some blase
intellectualists whose minds have been "debauched by learning"
may be surprised to find that the discovery of "certain laws of
heredity with their fatal consequences," exemplifies the conflict
between scientific and moral utility ! ' ' Dans de tels cas ca Science
est mauvaise, et n'est plus utile que dans le sens scientifique " !
;<P. so.)
The author attempts to make a test case for his central thesis of
Professor Dewey's monograph on "Logical Conditions of a Scien^
tific Treatment of Morality." And here again the author's capacity
for getting at the problems involved may be judged from the fact
that many of his points are based on alleged quotations which com-
pletely reverse the meaning of the original. For instance we read
on page 86 of Anti-Pragmatisme : "If Dewey declares that while
psychology shows that the moral judgment is determined by con-
tingencies, psychology tells us nothing of the content of the moral
ideal, and that therefore we must have recourse to transcendental
considerations of metaphysics," etc. The original in the mono-
294 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
graph of Dewey (p. 21), reads: "Hence it is futile to insist that
psychology can not give the moral ideal and that consequently there
must be recourse, etc. ' ' Another illustration : ' ' Anti-Pragmatisme ' '
L (p. 80) reads: "He (Dewey) tells us that when the action of char-
acter (or of subjectivism) becomes preferential in its effect, then the
judgment by this fact becomes logical. But what then? As this
character is not preferential in the scientific judgment, is the scien-
tific judgment no longer logical?" But what Professor Dewey
is very careful to tell us in the paragraph (The Monograph,
p. 16) referred to in these quotations, is: (1) That character
becomes preferential in effect when the situation is such that
the part which character plays in the judgment has "to be rec-
ognized"; when it is such that it "is necessary to take notice of
it." (2) That, when the influence of character does thus become
"preferential in effect," character (not the "judgment"), "as
a practical condition, becomes logical." (Italics mine.) And
here "becomes logical" means passes into, becomes the subject of
judgment. Obviously the substitution of the term "judgment" for
"character" makes a very pretty case of "contradiction" over
which the author grows merry. As a fully guaranteed device
for "discovering" contradictions and as a source of self -entertain-
ment for one who enjoys them as much as does the author of Anti-
Pragmatisme, this method is commended.
Into the issue itself we can not go. Suffice it to say that Pro-
fessor Dewey is showing both the connection and the distinction, or
rather the connection through the distinction, between logic and
ethics. But his critic's method of thinking can not follow this.
For him, if logic and ethics are different, they must be independent,
or even "opposed."
This lack of recognition of connection and continuity in and
through distinctions continues, of course, throughout the discussion
of James and Schiller, to whom most attention is given, and ac-
counts for the "captious" character of the criticism. Apparently
the author regards it impossible for a pragmatist to use the terms
"intellectual," "logical," or "scientific" without "fatal contradic-
tion. ' ' But Professor Schinz does not distinguish between ' ' intellec-
tual" and intellectualism, between "rational" and rationalism. In-
tellectualism or rationalism is the doctrine of an independent self-
enclosed and self-sufficient world of pure thought. That pragma-
tism opposes intellectualism and rationalism does not mean that it
is opposed to intellect or to reason ; nor that is it a substitution of
faith, or will or feeling, or anything else for thinking for "ab-
stract," "logical" thinking. On the contrary it holds that "ab-
stract" thinking is one of the necessary constituents of a rich and
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 295
efficient type of experience; and that the higher the degree of ab-
straction of which thought is capable, the richer the possibility of the
experience in which it functions. But pragmatism does teach that
whatever heights or depths of abstraction thought reaches, it can not
finally cut loose from the world of immediate impulse, instinct and
feeling, and set up an independent, self-enclosed empire of pure
intellect.
A. W. MOORE.
UNIVERSITY or CHICAGO.
SOCIETIES
REPORT OP THE SECRETARY
A MEETING of the North Central Association of Teachers of
Psychology in Normal Schools and Colleges, was held at the
University of Chicago, April 3, 1909. The sessions were held in
Emmons Elaine Hall, the School of Education. About forty teach-
ers of psychology from normal schools and colleges in seven of the
North Central States were in attendance.
ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS
A Way of Simplifying the Introductory Course in Psychology:
ROWLAND HAYNES.
The purpose of the introductory course is the formation in the
student of habits of observation, explanation, and application to
daily life of the facts observed. Hence the course may be simplified
by grouping around the topics of description of consciousness,
states and processes, explanation and function for present adult life.
In the study of explanation the student should come to see that an
explanation is the pointing out of the relation of invariable ante-
cedent to consequent between the group of facts to be explained and
certain other groups of facts. Hence the course may be further
simplified by arranging the favorite groups of facts to which psy-
chology goes in explanation thus: (1) Psychological facts of other
conscious states and processes, (2) physiological facts of the make-up
and growth of the nervous system, (3) facts of child life, (4) facts
of race history, etc. This indicates the use to be made of the func-
tional view of consciousness in explanation. Pointing out the need
for adjustment or the value of certain processes for adjustment,
gives no explanation. It is necessary to point out the invariable
296 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
antecedents in the situations in race, or individual history which
caused the adjustment.
Teaching the Organic Conception in an Introductory Course: J. B.
MINER.
The paper called attention to the inadequate summaries of the
organic conception of the mind to be found even in text-books which
emphasize the functional and genetic points of view. The writer
suggested that the difficulty which the students have in grasping the
organic conception when applied to the mind might be partially
overcome by paying more attention to a carefully summarized de-
scription of the organic nature of consciousness. He set forth, by
way of illustration, the four features which he had used in defining
the conception and the examples of mental facts which he had
found most serviceable under each. The characteristics were the
following: First, that the mind is made up of processes, each of
which has its specific purpose in adapting the organism to its en-
vironment ; second, that these functions are mutually dependent and
organized into unified conduct ; third, that the mind develops during
the individual life; fourth, that the mind through inheritance is
related to the past activities of the race. It was further sug-
gested that it might be wise to point out the striking difference be-
tween the mind and physical organisms in that consciousness does
not have a continuous observable existence. This makes it desirable
to describe man scientifically as a psychophysical organism, and
speak of the organic nature of the mind rather than of the mental
organism. The writer suggested that he had found that this sum-
mary might well be introduced late in the course, for example, after
the treatment of the cognitive functions.
A Device By which Physiological Concepts may ~be Employed in
Teaching Psychological Processes: N. A. HARVEY.
Every mental process is accompanied by a corresponding physio-
logical change. This change always, or nearly always, takes the
form of the transmission of a nervous impulse through a nervous
arc. This nervous impulse may be discussed in terms of a current.
Every current, whether it be a current of water, of electricity, or a
nervous current, has certain elements that make it a current. In
every current there must be a conductor, some means of insulation ;
the current always encounters resistance, it is directed in its course
by some means, it exercises some kind of an influence upon the sur-
rounding space, it is caused to flow by some kind of a force, and it is
capable of doing some kind of work. In the case of the nervous
current we shall be able to identify every element of the current
with its psychological concomitant.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 297
As there is one word, current, to express all the physiological
elements discoverable in the nervous impulse, so we may employ a
single word, psychon, to express all the concomitants of the physio-
logical current elements. It is preferable to use a new word, to
express this new idea, rather than to use the term "states of con-
sciousness," or "consciousness," or "stream of consciousness," or
"mind." It is believed that every relation that psychology has yet
discovered between the various mental processes can be described in
terms of the psychon, or in terms of their physiological concomitants.
It is impossible from the very nature of the case to prove directly
the propositions here advanced, and it is probable that what actually
occurs is a hundred times as complex as what has been indicated
here. But the value of an hypothesis does not depend upon the
possibility of demonstrating its truth. " It enables us to picture in
luminous terms the relation existing between mental processes.
Conflicting Ideals in the Teaching of Psychology: JAMES R. ANGELL.
(This paper will be published in the Educational Bi-Monthly.)
A Written Recitation and a Class Experiment: C. E. SEASHORE.
An explanation was given of a method of conducting a written
recitation by which large classes may be handled. "There are,"
Professor Seashore stated, "at least three advantages in this mode
of recitation; it encourages and secures systematic analysis of the
text by the student when he is at ease in his room; it leaves the
class-hour for lectures, demonstration, experiments, and discussion;
it secures full and specific recitation from every student every day,
and develops logical presentation." He then described a form of
class experiment which complies with the following principles:
"(1) Every individual student shall take active and responsible
part in the experiment; (2) the experiment shall be sufficiently in-
tensive to make it vital, and (3) each step in the experiment shall be
explained and interpreted in a printed leaflet. ' '
It was recommended that psychologists cooperate in producing
a series of such experiments, each to be printed separately in six-
teen-page leaflet edited by a representative committee. An illus-
tration of such an experiment was given.
Relearning a Skillful Act: An Experimental Study in N euro-Mus-
cular Memory: EDGAR JAMES SWIFT.
The experiment consisted in relearning the muscular feat of
keeping two balls going with one hand, catching one and tossing it
while the other was in the air. The original investigation, in which
the skill was first acquired, was completed six years before this
memory study was undertaken. It was found that the subject had
lost a large part of his former skill, but the process of relearning was
298 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
rapid, requiring only eleven days against forty-two in the regular
learning practice six years previously. Educational applications
were suggested.
The Value of Social Psychology: ERNEST TAIJBERT.
An adequate social psychology must proceed from the analysis
of fundamental instincts, "dispositions" and sentiments, showing
how they work out in the life of groups. Our prevalent procedure,
with over-emphasis upon cognition, exaggeration of the possibilities
of laboratory experiment, the ignoring of the place of feeling, and an
individualistic attitude, has not been altogether satisfactory, and
the failure of analysis and application shows itself in a crude pleas-
ure-pain political economy, individualistic political and legal theory,
and considerable chaos in educational practice.
For college students the study of social psychology has some
points of advantage over the conventional treatment of individual
psychology. A discussion of public opinion, instincts and their
working, suggestibility, the mob, custom, conventionality, the imi-
tation cycle theory, etc., with reference to and criticism of such
representative writers as "Wundt, Tarde, Baldwin, Ross, and Mc-
Dougall, seems to give much of the introspective practice of the
"pure" psychology, combined with a measure of objectivity and an
appreciation of the relation of the individual to the group. With
its group-background it gives greater significance to the individual-
izing forces, creates a sense of the importance of the educational
process as the technique of carrying over the psychical inheritance
from generation to generation, and, as regards religious implications,
acts as an antidote to a worship of the group excesses peculiar to
' ' revivals. ' '
It is not a thoroughgoing statement to say that we must now
proceed to the stage of application of our psychological technique.
There has always been some application: the problem is to de-
termine in what directions the use shall be put. In so far as we
do apply its findings, psychology is reconstructed in content and
standards. The need is to enlarge the scope of its reaction upon
social life.
A Course in Applied Psychology for Teachers: FRANK G-. BRUNER.
The experience of those associated with teachers in an adminis-
trative and professional way has led to the conviction that the stock
courses in psychology, those which treat of it in a systematic, an-
alytic or genetic way, have been, in general, strikingly barren of
practical results. "What teachers require is a more detailed study of
certain mental processes involved in the acquisition of the ordinary
schoolroom arts. And this study, too, needs to be pursued from the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 299
view-point of the child's mental processes rather than from those of
the adult.
In keeping with this point of view, there was then outlined a
course in applied psychology which the writer projected and had pur-
sued with some teachers in the Chicago public schools. The course
consisted of a discussion and elaboration of data which the teachers
collected in their own schoolrooms as a result of directed observa-
tions and experimentations, with reference to the ways in which chil-
dren learn to read, grow into a number consciousness, can acquire
accurate spelling habits most effectively, etc. These observations and
experimentations were supplemented by readings and reports of
published experimental results on the topics in question. The sig-
nificant outcome of the course was this that as a result of noting
the seeming antagonism between the teacher's introspective method
of getting results, and the child's observed method, there was gen-
erated a truer and more systematic teaching insight and intuition.
Social Psychology: CHARLES H. JUDD.
Psychology has reached the stage of applications. Its earlier
work was the development of methods and the collection of material.
The most fruitful line of application which can be developed at the
present time is that which makes psychology the explanatory basis of
the social sciences. Illustrations of the possibility of thus utilizing
psychological material were given in full by taking up such problems
from political economy as the history of credit. The earliest stages
of barter are due to the fact that primitive man is purely perceptual
in his intellectual process. Later he developed more and more elab-
orate systems of ideas which have their corresponding social institu-
tions in our modern type of credit.
The use of tools is a second line of mental development which can
be clearly traced. The earliest tools were made in a purely imitative
way because the range of comprehension of primitive man was lim-
ited. As the ability to concentrate attention upon material and upon
principles of construction grew, the complexity of the tool also in-
creased and a complexity of the process of manipulation reached the
stage which appears in modern industrial life.
The recognition of such explanations of human civilization as are
suggested by the two examples above given, make it clear that a prin-
ciple of evolution different from that of the biological sciences is
necessary to account for human progress. The higher forms of intel-
ligence are distinct factors in the forms of evolution. The ability to
have ideas and to enlarge upon them is a distinctive human trait
which the animals do not possess. The recognition of an intellectual
type of evolution gives to educational practise a larger foundation
than that which it can derive from any purely biological theory of
evolution. THE SECRETARY OF THE ASSOCIATION.
300 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
What is Pragmatism? JAMES BISSET PRATT, Ph.D. New York: The
Macmillan Co. 1909. Pp. xii + 254.
Professor Pratt's book is a most welcome and timely contribution to
the discussion of pragmatism. It is an excellent summary of the cur-
rent arguments against pragmatism, written in a very attractive style.
The book fulfills the purpose stated by the author in his preface : " For
though I have nowhere allowed the desire for simplicity and popularity
to interfere with thoroughness of treatment, and though I have used
technical language where exactness demands it, my aim has been through-
out to give an exposition and critique of pragmatism which the general
reader could follow without too much effort." Both the general reader
and the technical one will be well rewarded by giving the book a reading,
not only because, whether he is in sympathy with the author's standpoint
or not, it will help to focus the discussion of the subject, but also because
it has a spicy flavor of its own which makes the reading of it a pleasure.
The book is in the form of six lectures with the following titles:
" Meaning and Method in Pragmatism," " The Ambiguity of Truth,"
" The Pragmatic View of the Truth Relation," " Pragmatism and Knowl-
edge," " Pragmatism and Religion," " The Practical Point of View."
In each lecture the author shows at what points pragmatism, to hig mind,
contains inadequacies or inner contradictions in dealing with the problem
indicated by the title.
Professor Pratt selects three writers on pragmatism as spokesmen for
the doctrine, Professor James, Professor Dewey and Dr. Schiller. He
considers Professor Dewey's formulation of the standpoint the most
logical and consistent of the three a view that, of course, for Professor
Pratt, makes Professor Dewey's pragmatism also the most reprehensible.
It is obviously impossible within the limits of a book review to give an
adequate summary of arguments, or refutation of them, even if one
could ! I shall content myself with pointing out where, on a few funda-
mental questions, Professor Pratt's discussion seems to me to fail in
being convincing.
In the first place, most of the serious difficulties with pragmatism
which Professor Pratt encounters, seem to me to arise from a funda-
mental difference of opinion with regard to a problem which receives no
explicit discussion in the book the problem of reality. Professor Pratt's
excuse for not discussing it is that it is " as yet in so embryonic and
unformed a condition that it would be premature and unfair for a non-
pragmatist to try to state it" (p. 178). Although most of the problems
which Professor Pratt discusses hinge upon one's view of the relation of
the idea to reality, he approaches them, nevertheless, with a preconceived
conviction that reality, in order to be anything more than mere subjective
experience, must have its existence independent of the thought which
knows it. The contention of pragmatism is that we may regard reality
as constructed in the knowledge process, and yet may distinguish it
sharply from the mere subjective experience which is the instrument of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 301
its construction. Professor Pratt is willing to admit that an existence
postulated as independent of the knowledge process can never itself get
into knowledge, but he insists that the only way we can keep from
" lifting ourselves by our boot straps " is at least to mean such a reality
a proceeding in which he can see no difficulties but manufactured ones.
I do not feel that I should be any more flippant than Professor Pratt
is at times if I should forthwith accuse him of being, after all, a pragma-
tist in his fundamental assumption, for his only justification for assum-
ing a reality whose existence is independent of the thought which knows
it, is the pragmatic one that he can not see how to make his universe
work without it.
The deadlock between Professor Pratt and the pragmatists on the
subject of truth is only another manifestation of their opposed views of
reality. For Professor Pratt, of course, truth is correspondence between
an idea and an already existing reality. The difficulties with this view of
truth which the pragmatist points out do not seem to him genuine. He
is quite undaunted by the impossibility of ever testing that kind of cor-
respondence. To him there is no insuperable difficulty in holding that
the " trueness " of an idea lies in its correspondence with an already
existing reality, while the test of its truth is the consequences to which
it leads. He accuses the pragmatist of committing a logical error when
he identifies the trueness of an idea with the process which tests it. But
surely it is within the logical possibilities that the trueness of an idea
should be constituted by its successful functioning, or that, in Professor
Pratt's words, its " trueness " and its " truth " should coincide. The
view seems illogical only to one who is already committed to the convic-
tion that trueness must exist before it can be tested. Nor is it a damning
admission to the pragmatist to agree that a given content of thought may
be truth under one set of circumstances and falsehood under another,
because for him truth is never inherent in the content of an idea, but
always in its function. One is tempted to feel that Professor Pratt's
refutation of the pragmatic view of truth consists in showing that the
conclusions to be drawn from it are not in accord with a metaphysics
which pragmatism expressly repudiates.
In dealing with the problems of meaning and method, Professor Pratt
seems to me to have failed to interpret pragmatism correctly in two
respects. When he makes the statement that " the distinction between
a red house and a green house does not consist in a difference of practise "
(p. 18), he is implying that the ultimate qualities of sensation are parts
of meaning, a view which is certainly not that of the pragmatist. The
sensory qualities he accepts as the ultimate given content of experience
behind which we can not go. In and of themselves, redness and green-
ness have no meaning. It is only as they serve to guide action that they
acquire it. There is no absurdity in the statement that the difference in
meaning between a red house and a green one does, as a matter of fact,
go back to a difference in practise.
Secondly, Professor Pratt's failure to find the pragmatic view of
meaning as inherent in anticipated consequences satisfactory, is due, at
302 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
least in part, to a failure to follow the pragmatic method to the extent
of selecting a total concrete situation from actual experience as a basis
for reasoning. An enlightening distinction may be made between " dead "
and "live" judgments. A dead judgment is the mere statement of the
outcome of some completed process of thought. One can not draw re-
liable conclusions about the thought process from these shells which are
left behind after the animal is dead and gone. The judgment must be
resuscitated in imagination, and regarded as it was when it was made.
The illustration taken from Professor James of the meaning attaching
to ideas at the last moment of existence is for this reason an unfortunate
one. But if Professor Pratt would sit down and really try to imagine
with the utmost vividness possible what his state of consciousness would
be if he were knowingly facing the last moment of existence, I think he
would be almost willing to admit that the meaning would have evapo-
rated from all ideas, except in so far as he could forget the state of
affairs sufficiently to adopt the habitual attitude of future reference. No
man under those circumstances would be reflecting on the problem as to
whether Mr. James or Mr. Bradley wrote " Pragmatism." Professor
Pratt constructs a situation which is impossible, and then argues most
improbably about what would happen if it were true. Moreover, if he
were really putting himself for the moment into the pragmatist's shoes,
he would not talk about the past consequences of an idea. The pragma-
tist insists that one must take the idea at the moment of its existence,
and in its actual setting, in order to judge wherein its meaning lies. At
the moment of its existence, an idea has no past consequences, it can have
only anticipations of future ones anticipations derived, to be sure, from
past experience, but whose present importance is that of a guide in deal-
ing with the situation at hand.
Finally, bearing in mind the criticism just made, I can not see why
the pragmatist should object to as broad an interpretation of his doc-
trine as Professor Pratt wishes. The pragmatist does not contend that
his theory of meaning is entirely new in the history of thought, but
merely that it has never before been consistently elaborated. Professor
Pratt is quite right in saying that one can find passages in Mr. Bradley's
writings which state it excellently. The point the pragmatist makes is
that a philosophy which regards reality as independent (in its exist-
ence at least) of thought, as Mr. Bradley does, can not consistently
hold the view that meaning is inherent in consequences. Just as truth
from such a standpoint must consist in correspondence with " reality,"
so meaning must logically be regarded as reference to " reality " a con-
cept quite distinct from that of meaning as constituted by consequences.
The pragmatist's quarrel with Mr. Bradley is that he finds both concepts
of meaning unreconciled and, as he believes, unreconcilable, in Mr.
Bradley's writings. The problem of meaning, like that of truth, brings
us back to the opposed views of the metaphysics of reality, and on this
ground, it seems to me, the battle must be fought out.
HELEN THOMPSON WOOLLEY.
OMAHA, NEBRASKA.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 303
The Problem of Logic. BOYCE GIPSON. New York: The Macmillan Co.
1908. Pp. ix + 500.
Mr. Gibson tells us in his preface that the work under consideration
has " grown up and taken shape under the chastening influence of college
teaching." It is, therefore, not to be expected that the volume should be
a contribution to the advancement of logical thought, but the reader may
demand of it a clear and consistent point of view with respect to the
matter involved, and in this he will not be disappointed. It is a work
preeminently suited to the needs of the teacher of logic who is annoyed
by the lack of precision and consistency in most contemporary works and
who lacks either the time or the interest to reorganize thoroughly his own
opinions.
It is impossible to consider a book such as this in detail, but there are
certain general features that at once warm our hearts : for example, while
current formal logic does not loudly demand a philosophic background,
the need is nevertheless implicit, and it is refreshing to find it frankly
recognized : " I am, indeed, persuaded that the drift of the present work
is convergent with the line of the Pragmatic Reformation, and that the
stress laid on relevancy is a vital bond of union between ourselves and
the pragmatists." The author's philosophy is not thoroughly pragmatic,
but its idealistic elements do not bear weightily on logic. Mr. Gibson
offers the following provisional definition of truth : " Truth is the unity
of ideas as systematically organized through the control exercised by
relevant fact," and, throughout, the constant references to this control are
of primary importance.
From a reviewer's point of view the book falls into four parts:
( I.-II.) the relation of logic to language, i. e., the function of words,
definition, the predicables, division, classification, scientific terminology
and nomenclature, connotation and denotation, concrete and abstract
terms; ( III.-IV.) the logical proposition, its forms, meanings, and rela-
tions to the laws of thought; ( V.-IX) formal deduction and its falla-
cies; (X.-XIV.) induction.
The first part is developed under the concept of meaning, or that
which tells us what an object is in relation to a specified interest or
purpose. Its details might well be the grounds of considerable comment,
but such comment would be in the interest of greater simplicity and
propriety in the use of language only. For example, is it necessary or
expedient to define intension so that intension equals connotation -\-
denotation (p. 72) ? Mr. Gibson has at least expressed himself clearly,
although he seems to us to have been everywhere too anxious to make a
place for traditional expressions instead of meditating on the utility of
Occam's razor.
The concept of meaning dominates the second part of this work also.
The most interesting feature here is the treatment of the principle of
identity as an Hegelian identity- in-difference (p. 97), in which form, the
author seems to think, this law may be the Zaw of thought, although he
adds, as a concession, the laws of contradiction and of excluded middle.
To Professor Stout is attributed an important section disclaiming, on
304 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
excellent and sound grounds, the relating of these laws to time. The
forms of the traditional analyses of propositions are retained and given
meaning in rather satisfactory fashion, considering that modern symbolic
logic is wholly ignored; this appears, for example, in the emphasis of
"genuine logical denial," and in the assertion of the irreducibility of
hypothetical to categoricals (p. 139) which assertion has meaning, but
probably not within the purpose of formalism.
Formal inference is introduced as a substitution of the validity in-
terest for the truth interest, and the extensive point of view is " selected
as most adequately meeting the requirements of a formal logical treat-
ment." Existential questions which threaten the validity of Darapti,
Fesapo, and Bramintip, are entirely untouched, and the short section
devoted to unorthodox syllogisms, such as " X is greater than Y, Y is
greater than Z, etc.," is inadequate and somewhat inaccurate : for example,
the copula in the simple categorical syllogism is stated as == (p. 251)
an absurdity when the extensive point of view has been adopted. The
examples are excellent and especially so in the well-classified treatment of
fallacies, which includes detailed formal discussion of such classic argu-
ments as Zeno's paradoxes (p. 290), and the Litigiosus (p. 293). Infer-
ence is justified against Mill's criticisms because its end is not novelty
but logical irresistibility.
The section devoted to induction is most touched by the pragmatic
wand. Fidelity to relevant fact is the expression of the truth interest,
and therefore induction proper includes Mill's induction, deduction, and
verification. Why might not the book have had a better form and ex-
pressed this in its order of exposition? Again, the working out of the
examples is most commendable (cf. the development of astronomical
theory, pp. 329-333, and especially, Ch. XLVL, pp. 422-144). The in-
ductive postulate is determinism.
The author promises a sequel that shall deal " with the logical problem
in its more philosophical aspects" (p. viii) and which may discuss the
principles of mathematics in their logical bearing. But while not con-
testing the interest and importance of symbolic logic, the incorporation
of it into the massive promised system is looked upon as improbable, or
impossible, and if the incorporation of it were to mean a new and ex-
haustive statement of its results in their details the reviewer would
heartily say Amen! but when symbolic logic, moved by the consistency
interest, seems able to do away with the distinction between positive and
negative propositions, and when Mrs. Ladd-Franklin has demonstrated
that one simple form underlies all syllogistic, it is unfortunate that those
whose interest moves them to undertake such exhaustive treatments of
logic should not try to incorporate some of these results in their systems,
and so make way with at least a part of that cumbrous machinery in-
herited from antiquity, which logicians still accept, patch up, and transmit
to the next generation.
HAROLD CHAPMAN BROWN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 305
The Relations of Comparative Anatomy to Comparative Psychology.
LUDWIG EDINGER. Translated from the German by H. W. HAND. The
Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, November, 1908.
The aim of this article is to point out how comparative anatomy
studied in connection with the observation of the organism may be of
service to comparative psychology.
The author divides the brain into the pala?encephalon and the neen-
cephalon. The former, which is the oldest part of the brain, is present
in all forms of life from the cyclostomes to man. Its general type remains
unchanged throughout the evolutionary scale although the different parts
may vary greatly in size. That a knowledge of the palseencephalon is of
value to the sense psychologist is shown by a study of that part of it
which has to do with the sense of smell. The anatomy of this portion of
the brain reveals a constant arrangement and microscopic structure in all
vertebrates from man to the cyclostomes. Because of this fact we may
infer that all animals which possess this structure smell, even when we
can not infer anything very definite from their behavior.
In the next place, a knowledge of anatomy reveals new problems for
the sense psychologist. For example, in birds we find a large fiber tract
which leads from the nucleus of the trigeminus, and terminates in a
field known as the lobus parolfactorius. In fact, in all vertebrates up to
mammals there evidently exists a sense which is localized about the
mouth and has its center in the lobus parolfactorius. This lobe which is
well developed in birds and certain lizards, and also in those animals in
which the snout plays an important part, has almost entirely disappeared
in man. Here we have an oral sense which is of the greatest importance
to certain forms of life, yet it is a sense about which we, as yet, know
almost nothing.
The study of the bony fishes is especially important because in them
the palaeencephalon alone is present. By a careful study of their be-
havior we can determine the activities which are characteristic of the
palaeencephalon. And "since it is certain that the palaeencephalon per-
sists quite unchanged even after a well-developed neencephalon has been
added to it, there is no ground for regarding those activities which we
recognize as palaeencephalic in one class of animals as anything else, or
as otherwise localized in higher animals. Furthermore, we may regard
an entire series of activities as common to all vertebrates, and we may
then seek to ascertain how other activities are added to those when a new
structure is added to the palaeencephalon. All sense impressions and
movement combinations belong to the palaeencephalon. It is able to estab-
lish simple relations between the two, but it is not able to form associa-
tions, to construct memory images out of several components. It is the
bearer of all reflexes and instincts." If the palaeencephalon can not form
associations, then it is clear why animals which possess only the palaeen-
cephalon do not respond to certain sense stimuli, for these stimuli can
not mean anything to them. It is the biological stimuli alone which
arouse them to action. It is evident that here is an inviting field for the
psychologist.
306 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The neencephalon, the bearer of the cortex, is present as a rudiment
even in the selachians, and becomes more and more conspicuous in the
amphibians, and especially in the reptiles. It is in the neencephalon of
reptiles that there appears for the first time a mechanism which provides
for the possibility of association. We can now " declare with certainty
that the oldest cortex becomes connected with those parts of the palseen-
cephalon which serve the sense of smell and the oral sense, and subse-
quently other cortex regions are gradually superadded to this."
With the appearance of the neencephalon occur marked changes in the
behavior of the organism. These changes as they appear in the reptiles
may be summarized as follows: They are no longer dependent on the
sense impressions of the moment but are influenced by earlier impressions ;
they learn more easily than fishes and amphibians; they associate certain
sense impressions which are connected with the olfactory and oral senses;
to a certain extent they foresee, and they exhibit individual differences.
These facts are without doubt due to the appearance of the neencephalon.
It is here that the true psychological states make their appearance.
From the brain of the reptiles two types of brain are evolved. One,
the type found in the lower mammals, develops through an increase in the
size of the cortex; the other type, found in birds, is characterized by a
marked increase in the size of the palseencephalon. Because of this
marked increase in the size of the palseencephalon we find that the in-
stinctive activities of birds are much more varied and complex than those
of amphibians and reptiles. In fact, in birds the instincts are so complex
that it is difficult to tell which activities are dependent upon the palseen-
cephalon, and which upon the neencephalon. It suggests the possibility
of there being neencephalic instincts. The fact that birds make more use
of sight than reptiles is easily accounted for, as birds are the first to
possess an optic tract leading from the palseencephalon to the cortex.
This means that through association these optic impressions are capable
of being utilized later, which is not possible in the case of reptiles.
In the mammals we find a brain which has so large a neencephalon
that we may expect a subordination of the reflexes and instincts to asso-
ciative and intelligent action. And this seems to be the case with those
mammals in which the neencephalon includes more than half the bulk of
the entire brain.
Although our knowledge of the mammalian brain is by no means com-
plete yet it is sufficient to establish the point that man does not possess
the greatest associative power in all fields, for the " degree of development
of certain parts of the cortex makes it appear highly probable that many
mammals far excel man in their capacity for observation and association
in certain fields."
This article contains valuable suggestions for the comparative psy-
chologist. In the first place, it shows that much useless work has been
done because of the psychologist's ignorance of brain anatomy. For
example, what folly to spend time in devising experiments to test associa-
tion in animals which do not possess the associative structure !
In the second place, the article suggests the importance of choosing
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 307
certain animals for experimentation, not simply because they are easy to
study, but because they represent important stages in evolution. It is
evident that a careful study of the bony fishes which possess the palseen-
cephalon alone, and the reptiles which possess a very simple neencephalon
will be of marked value when it comes to analyzing the activities of the
higher mammals.
But in order for the comparative psychologist to profit by these sug-
gestions it is necessary for him to have a thorough knowledge of brain
anatomy. This means that our students of comparative psychology can
advantageously spend more time in the study of biology and anatomy than
they have been doing.
In a field as new and as broad as that of comparative psychology it is
highly essential that the work should be done on those animals where it
will count for the most as a basis for subsequent investigations.
CHARLES SCOTT BERRY.
UNIVEBSITY OF MICHIGAN.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
AKCHIV FUR GESCHICHTE DER PHILOSOPHIE. Band 15,
Heft 2. January, 1909. Aristoteles' Urteile uber die pythagoreische
Lehre (pp. 145-165) : O. GILBERT. -An argument to show that the Pytha-
goreans identified number not with things, but with what Aristotle would
call the form of things, existing not apart from but in the things. Die
Entwicklungslinie der Philosophic im Kulturbereiche des Islam (pp. 166-
177) : M. HORTEN. - In Gazali, A.D. 1111, the Thomas Aquinas of Moham-
medanism, the four tendencies of early Islamic philosophy, blended. Then
advance ceased till modern science invaded Islam in 1850. Ein entschied-
ener Verfechter des Indeterminismus W. King (pp. 178191) : A. SEIBT.
-King, a predecessor of Leibniz, found the will to be free in that it is
not determined by the nature of its object, being able to choose the indif-
ferent or the disagreeable. Herder und Kant, Philosophieren und Philos-
opher (pp. 192-196) : G. E. BURCKHARDT. - Die Kosmologie des Rauch-
opfers nach Heracleits fr. 67. (pp. 197-229) : W. SCHULTZ. - This frag-
ment is an interpretation of the burnt offering, and in the words used and
their arrangement is hid much numerical symbolism here first unraveled.
Aristote et le Traite des Categories (pp. 230-251): E. DUPREEL. - " The
Categories" is post- Aristotelian, and contains nothing good except that
which is found elsewhere in Aristotle's own works. Die Tendenzen der
platonischen Dialoge Theaitetos Sophistes Politikos (pp. 252-263) : J.
EBERZ. - The last dialogue of this trilogy examined especially in reference
to Plato's Syracusan experiences. Jahresbericht uber die Philosophic im
Islam (pp. 264-287): M. HORTEN. - Summaries of recent books and
articles, such as to give the names of a multitude of writers and their
works in metaphysics, ethics, logic, etc., from the early days of Islam to
the present. Die neuesten Erscheinungen. Historische Abhandlungen
in den Zeitschriften.
308 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Bonilla y, San Martin Adolfo. Historia de la Filosofia Espanola (desde
los tiempos primitives hasta el siglo xii). Madrid: Libreria General
de Victoriano Suarez. 1908. Pp. liv + 463.
Dickinson, G. Lowes. Is Immortality Desirable? The Ingersoll Lecture,
1908. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin Co. 1909. Pp. 63.
$0.75 net.
Jones, Rufus M. Studies in Mystical Religion. London: Macmillan &
Co. 1909. Pp. xxxviii + 518. $3.50 net.
Spinoza's Short Treatise on God, Man, and Human Welfare. Translated
from the Dutch by Lydia Gillingham Eobinson. Chicago : The Open
Court Publishing Co. 1909. Pp. xxiv + 178.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE May number of the Psychological Review is devoted to the influ-
ence of Darwin. The contents are as follows : " The Influence of Charles
Darwin upon Historical and Political Thought": Arthur Twining Had-
ley; "The Influence of Darwin on Psychology": James Rowland Angell;
" Darwin and Logic " : J. E. Creighton ; " The Influence of Darwin on
Sociology": Charles A. Ellwood; "Darwin and Evolutionary Ethics":
James H. Tufts ; " The Influence of Darwin on Theory of Knowledge
and Philosophy " : J. Mark Baldwin.
DR. A. MULLER, director of the astronomical observatory on the Jani-
culum in Rome, is making use of the ofiicial papers in the case of Galileo,
recently published, to prepare two works : " Galileo Galilei und das koperi-
kanische Weltsystem " and " Der Galilei Prozess nach Ursprung Verlauf
und Folgen." Dr. Miiller presents the point of view of the Catholic
Church.
PROFESSOR JAMES MARK BALDWIN addressed the superior board of edu-
cation in the City of Mexico on April 30 on the functions and ideals of a
university.
M. MILHAUD, professor of philosophy at the University of Montpellier,
has been appointed professor of the history of philosophy in relation to
the sciences at the University of Paris.
THE next meeting of the American Psychological Association will be
held in Boston in affiliation with the American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science.
PROFESSOR WILHELM WUNDT, of the University of Leipzig, has been
elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences at
Washington.
ANTONIO HERMANDEZ FAJARNES, professor of logic and psychology at
the University of Madrid, died on March 27.
MAX MEYER, professor of experimental psychology at the University of
Missouri, will go in the latter, part of May to Europe on a year's leave
of absence.
DR. J. F. MESSENGER, professor of psychology and education at the
State Normal School, Farmville, Virginia, has been called to the Uni-
versity of Vermont.
VOL. VI. No. 12. JUNE 10, 1909
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE COSMIC CHARACTER
IN two earlier articles in this JOURNAL 1 the writer worked to grub
out the roots of the pragmatic tree of knowledge. The tap-
root he found to be a bare function, an universal activity, in its
primal nature subpersonal and subconscious. In this paper I pre-
sume to deal with the apparent disparity between this God, as blind,
subvegetable, metaphysical first cause, and the cosmic character, the
God alive, upon which religious experience seems to depend.
I
First of all we must disabuse our minds of the notion that the
cosmic character is substantial. The function in which life,
whether human or cosmic, has its primal cause is practically uni-
versal and eternal ; but only practically. The function is so long as
life is; conscious activity (sum cogitans) is indubitable so long as
the living doubt continues, but no longer. It is theoretically con-
ceivable that all life, cosmic as well as human, should cease to be.
In this catastrophic event the allegedly everlasting water-springs
would have run dry, the tap-root of being would wither and dry up
into nothing, the world-soul would flicker out in black death.
But there is in all this no occasion for pausing. Tested prag-
matically, death and nothing are unthinkable concepts. Reflection
upon them could not further, but only retard life. Their sole
reality consists in their devilish power to defeat at every point the
lust of rationalism, the senseless passion for absolute certainty.
Meanwhile I find no thinkable connection between this absolute cer-
tainty and that practical certainty upon which active life depends.
The cosmic function is indeed conceivably perishable. But its
decadence into death and nothing is practically unthinkable. Just
because the cosmic life would in such an event flicker out into noth-
ing, no one could possibly prepare his person for such a catastrophic
end. The very last assumption with which our practical reason can
get on is that of a functional activity, which, as active, is practically
absolute and imperishable; and this no matter what disease, human
/Vol. IV., pp. 176-183, and Vol. VI., pp. 57-64.
309
310 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
or cometary, may assault its universal life. Let one be purely
humanitarian in his humanism after the manner of the positivists.
Even so, he must assume that energy in one form or another of
human activity is unassailable. This is the live nub of the school-
man's insistence upon an eternal as existent. There simply must be
an ai:ipov ) he thinks a That in its root impractical, but in its poten-
tialities inexhaustible and practically absolute. 2
There has got to be an universal energy on which the phenomenal
life of God and of men may draw endlessly. Of course men and
God may not have this limitless credit in the great vault beyond.
There is a certain speculative risk in all life, for that is the condi-
tion of life. Our lives, human and cosmic, depend upon taking the
cash here and now and letting the credit go on so long as it will. It
could only be after God and we were eternally dead and nothing,
that the default of universal energy could reduce us to destitution
and starvation; i. e., never so long as we know ourselves.
In action the universal energy does function radically. It
sloughs off dead parts from the cosmic organism and renews its
withered members. The cosmic environment here and now is all on
the side of health and perpetuity for those who are fit. And this is
the first datum of the cosmic character: its inherent ability to pre-
serve itself alive, its practical assumption that the energy within
and without is everlastingly real and subject to all the drafts which
can possibly be made upon it in the interest of life.
II
The implication of this first datum is that the cosmic character is
an achievement. The universal energy must be drawn upon. In
itself it is in the last degree impersonal, impractical, indifferent.
The etymologists confirm this in their account of the verb of being.
"To be" in its root-meaning is "to stand forth." The world-
energy, I dare say, genuinely is only when it stands forth. The
root-meaning of life is exclamatory, assertive, the will-to-power. I
am: that I am.
Too often cosmic life has been conceived as an energy which must
needs function in the form of a phenomenal, universal life : its stand-
ing forth is a necessary function of its eternal being. The Eternal
thus unconsciously and without effort creates and maintains the best
possible world: the world-soul does not actively draw upon, but is
poured in upon, fti/the universal energy. But this postulate of willy-
nilly creative energy goes against the grain of human experience.
The fact is that the pouring-in process implies a certain suction on
3 Poincare" says some clever things of this " something " as it stands in
theoretical physics. See his " Science and Hypothesis," e. g., p. 166.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 311
the part of the living organism. The receiving of power from on
high or from within implies a will-to-power. The first-class pessi-
mists are wanting in this will ; for them there is agony in the grow-
ing-pains of life's processes. They accordingly refuse to suckle
themselves at the breast of being. They would sink back into the
tireless, senseless That they set out from. It is not inherently
impossible that one should in the end utterly dam the inlets of the
universal energy.
We must remark in this a second datum of the cosmic character.
The will-to-power implies a will-to-impotence. This ingrained fea-
ture of the human organism must be transcribed into the cosmic
life as well. There is an energy circumpressing both within and
without. Upon this the cosmic life draws at all times and places of
its eventual life. The drawing-in process is not necessary, but
optional. Merely to be, to stand forth, is in itself an unconscious
symptom of health and character. For the universal life, like the
human in its morbid moods, may genuinely prefer dissolution to
further organization, death to life. The world-organism is thus an
achievement. The tirelessness, persistency, and continuity of its
being are symptomatic of a certain sanity, a congenital, tempera-
mental healthy-mindedness in the living soul of things.
There are cases, individual and racial, of apparently incurable
insanity: the inlets of the universal life with its unconscious sanity
seem hopelessly dammed up. Such evil is radical. Its cure, I
imagine, can only be effected, if by any means, by a painful, con-
scious operation within the universal life itself. Certainly in its
case the unconscious remedial agency of the cosmic life has miserably
failed. But in any event the existence here and there of diseased
parts in the world-organism does not argue that the whole is incom-
petent or likely to degenerate into the amorphous energy the cosmic
infancy it set out from. The evidence weighs heavily on the side of
the general sanity of the cosmic life.
A third datum of the cosmic character, therefore, is its animal
efficiency and unconscious sanity. It achieves being, it draws upon
the universal energy by a natural instinct-to-be.
Ill
In these prime data, however, the cosmic character is subcon-
scious and subpersonal. So far, the cosmic life is strictly animal:
it grows instinctively in the virgin womb of being. The human life
is suckled, fortified and sanified within this cosmic animal. 3
* One feels secure and willing to function naturally within cosmos's great
organism. But I wonder if our cosmic emotion at this level is not really com-
parable with the gratitude we might feel toward a great animal that has
instinctively saved our own skin and bones from the grave?
312 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
This, too, is religion of a certain type and its proper emotions
are in a profound degree theophanic. Meanwhile it is arch-pessi-
misma religion based upon the experience of personal life as a dis-
ease of consciousness to be remedied by anesthesis and analgesis, a
return to the subconscious organism of which personal feeling-will
is but an inflamed member. Cosmic character, so the argument goes,
is only weakened and diseased by these germs of personality.
The writer agrees that a person is an inflammation of cosmic
being. But this disease of personality is a condition in which
alone such terms as ''purpose," "value," "worth," "morality,"
gain genuine meaning. Religious pessimism has always aimed at so-
called unconscious purpose, instinctive worth, animal morality. But
really these are all contradictions in terms. They would reduce
ends to unconscious, instinctive, animal functions, whereas the
quintessential meaning of an end requires that it be consciously
felt, aimed at, controlled; in a word, that it prepossess and be con-
sciously acknowledged by some person. I grant that this condition
is hard. Each fulfillment wherein a conscious purpose becomes a
part of the organism 's unconscious character is but the progenitor of
another newly-felt purpose; and so on endlessly. But this consti-
tutes conscious as distinguished from unconscious character. In
personality there is an indispensable, endless challenge to unful-
filled being, a "standing forth" which, on the one hand, will not
permit the human life to sink back into the unconscious bliss of
animal activity it has risen above, and which, on the other hand, can
never raise that human life to a haven of supraconscious rest.
Fichte found this inner anstoss a challenge for all time. Carlyle
leapt under it as under a cosmic lash. Poor Nietzsche lost his sanity
under the pressure of its ceaseless will-to-power.
At all events, the cosmic life has in us taken on a conspicuous per-
sonal character. In us its present ends are genuinely felt. In us
its ends are unthinkable, endless, as the pessimists are everlastingly
reminding us ; but they are none-the-less conscious imperatives. We
may risk disease, lose the sanity of our pure reason in gaining the
sanity of our practical, but if we turn back we are as salt which has
lost its savor: we lose the very flavor and essence of character. In
us, then, the blind character of the cosmic impulses has become
endlessly conscious. Henceforth we must aim at being, we must
control our ends even to the point where the abysmal possibilities of
being blind us with a new kind of blindness; the blindness of one
whose pupils strain to take in the invisible.
"But this is positivism, pure and simple," some one will say.
"This is human character, very good while it lasts! but it makes
out no such case for the universal life. It means merely that a cer-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 313
tain animal has evolved into conscious self-possession. Man, so far,
sports above his cosmic progenitor. Like positivism, your cosmic
humanism is really an ungodding (Entgottung) of the universal life,
a surreptitious deification of human being. Is God, then, merely a
' crowd-consciousness ' ? "
To all this cosmic humanism must reply imperturbably : God, if
not merely human, is at any rate essentially just that. Our human-
ism has practically all its active interests in common with scientific
positivism. 4 In its description of the universal life there is no taint
of magic religion nor of overleapng metaphysics. The world-ground
as the incomparably fecund matrix of the present cosmos is in our
view identical with the ether-strains of experimental physics.
Cosmos is a system of countless straining relations, a complex of
Energie-stromen. Psychophysically the cosmic character appears,
so far, as an organism of vital activities risen to the level of animal
subconsciousness. In us this cosmic animal has varied to the high
level of personal consciousness.
But then, the ' ' eternal ' ' of rationalism is an unnecessary hypoth-
esis, if only human character be allowed cosmic application and
sweep. If conscious aiming is now and practically universal in the
cosmic life, to say that it has been eternally so adds nothing signifi-
cant to the present facts and life of the world-soul. The fact is that
the hypothesis of an eternal, infinite character unconsciously seeks
to remedy the one glaring defect in positivism ; namely, its inveter-
ate thinking of man apart from cosmos. But the human organism
is continuous with the unthinkably limpid stuff of which the uni-
versal life itself is a function. In a most important and literal
sense the character of any part of the world-life is in its degree the
character of the whole. The universal energy which all life draws
upon is practically a perfect, limpid fluid. If I tap my desk here
with my pen the world-ground is moved gelatinously throughout its
whole being. Now, I permit in my person impulses of conscious
purpose ; these aims are like my pen-taps of a moment ago ; whenever
they hit the truth in the bull's-eye, they ring their reality into the
whole cosmic life ; and this by physical necessity, if you please. The
cosmic life in us and through us has become in all its physical
energies a personal animal. Should it turn back from the endless
Person it now aims to become, should it seek to reduce or prevent
the inflammation which in us brings it to conscious possession of all
its own latent energies, it would surely degenerate into the blind,
witless being it once was.
An infinite appetite for personal being is thus a third datum of
the cosmic character.
4 1 mean " scientific " as distinguished from the more passionate but shal-
lower ethical positivism.
314 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
IV
Once we entertain the notion that the cosmic life is moved
through and through by the birth of men within its being there
remains only the task of ascribing to the cosmic character the
ineradicable forms and passions of the human organism. For the
religion of humanism will turn out to be in the highest degree anthro-
pomorphic and anthropopathic in its experience of the divine life.
As to the anthropomorphic character of the cosmic life. The
cosmic physique obviously is free from the parts and organs we com-
monly remark in the frames of animals; it has no systems, circula-
tory, skeletal, urinogenital, and the like. It has not the blue eyes and
fair hair of its Thracian idolator, nor the flat nose of the Ethiopian.
It is as it were "all eye," "all ear," and "all thought." If it be
physical at all, it would seem to have the quality of sensuous experi-
ence without the visible end-organs thereof.
Is, then, the cosmic life completely amorphous? This we can
hardly say; for there is in fact a cosmic physique planets, stars,
earths, comets, all more or less harmoniously adjusted by this time
into a systematic whole. Our thought of the cosmic life may thus
in one point be psychophysical., and anthropomorp/iw). It is of
course a figure to speak of the universal life as "all eye" and "all
ear." Regarding its gross anatomy, one would be nearer the literal
truth in thinking of the cosmic physique as all brain. The stellar
universe, once more in its gross anatomy, is not unlike the cellular
structure of a human cerebrum. 5 Of all our animal psychophysical
functions it is the cerebral which the cosmic life most nearly dupli-
cates.
It would seem that we can dispense with every other form of
physique save the nervous. Let idealism operate to remove that,
and the remaining reality is in the last degree unreal and imprac-
tical. Thus the cosmic life, like the human, may be conceived as
indefinitely changing the form of its neural physique, constantly re-
fining its centers and perhaps generating new (astral) nervous
systems ad libitum. But the neural gist must persist if the life,
human or cosmic, is to be real and practical in its impulses and ideas.
Cosmic humanism is thus anthropomorphic in its religious inten-
tion. In its essential terms it gratifies men's ingrained passion for
human form in the divine life ; i. e., by establishing in the place of
the overturned God of hands and feet a real community of cerebral
experience between man and the universal life. The physique of the
cosmic life touches the physique of man in his most sensitive organ,
6 If a cerebrum were magnified to be proportionate with the stellar universe,
I imagine the individual neurons would present a spectacle not unlike that of
the stars and planets of the elliptoid universe.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 315
the brain. Physical functioning of the highest order (ideal coordi-
nations, associations, intracortical strains, and the like) is the same
in both. The fourth datum of the cosmic life is thus brain-character.
If now we determine what this cerebral function is when void of
all the more external organic sensations and functions of the human
frame, we shall have some sense of the anthropopathic character of
the cosmic life.
V
The elements left in our conscious processes after the elision of
all sensory and organic qualities we are permitted to transcribe into
the psychophysical life of the world-soul. We exclude at once all
the base constituents of our human experience, all organic and sen-
sory processes. The cosmic brain exposes no lobes ; nor is it attached
sympathetically to the "systems" which enliven our human frames.
What, then, is this pure, cerebral experience?
1. There is in our human system a certain grossness of psycho-
physical experience. But we aim always to submit our muscle and
joint strains, visceral sensations and all that, to the control of our
higher, cerebral energies. Now, we may suppose that this subor-
dination of lower under higher centers is furthered and affirmed by
the cosmic life, for the excellent reason that in the universal life the
lower centers are not central and indeed do not exist : all its energies
are physically, practically ideal. I dare say, the exquisite energiz-
ing of the human organism when the cerebral function is uppermost
is due to the fact that its energy is then directly in the stream of the
cosmic life's cerebral energy. The human brain duplicates in its
measure the physical harmonies of the celestial spheres.
2. Now, if the cosmic life is cerebral, it has more in common
with the human than either mystic ecstasy or pessimistic coma has
yet dreamed of in their philosophies of escape from phenomenal
being. There is a dash of insanity in each of these extremes : mania
in the one instance and melancholia with terminal coma in the other.
The cosmic character, above all, must be well balanced ; it must not
blink the facts of its experience in an unbroken, maniacal ecstasy,
nor must it wear itself out in the currents of being till it seeks relief
in the unconscious silence in which its articulate purposes are set.
Just here, I think, we uncover the supreme datum of the cosinic
character its conscious sanity. The cosmic life on its conscious
side may well be assaulted by world-weariness. It is indeed in the
highest degree probable that the energy-strains of the universal life
should become fearfully fatiguing. In such an event the planets
would continue on their unbroken course just as our neurons remain
in their proper places even while wearing themselves out toward
weariness and unconsciousness. Cosmic health and sanity is an
316 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
achievement, as we have already remarked. To balance its world-
soul between these extremes of endless, senseless ecstasy, on the one
hand and endless, vegetative subconsciousness, on the other, I con-
ceive to be the supreme achievement of the cosmic character.
These, then, are the congenital feelings in the cosmic life : strain
and haul, now ecstatic and again depressant, but with a practical
intelligence that maintains the cosmic sanity.
3. The emotions in particular which characterize this balancing
process are in the human case the feelings of patience and hopeful-
ness. These melioristic feelings lie just between the extremes of
world-pain and world-joy. In their pure form they are, we may
suppose, non-sensuous, intracortical. Meanwhile, or perhaps just
because they are cerebral, they are emotions which simply reek with
character. They alone, I fancy, are the emotions which on second
thought our anthropopathic religion would be willing to transcribe
into the cosmic character. On first thought we select unbroken joy
as the pathetic datum of the divine life. But such a gift, as we
have seen, cheapens and indeed cancels all the other virtues of con-
scious life. Accepting it one's life becomes at once supraconscious
and impractical. The desideratum of conscious, practical life would
be to face eternity hopefully and patiently. And now this enduring
patience and hopefulness are literal data of the cosmic character.
They are congenital and ineradicable in the well-balanced mind.
Sanity is indeed just practical intelligence, buoyancy, rebounding
energy in a word patience and hopefulness, the ability to await
patiently the returning of life's energies and buoyant confidence in
life's outcome. Our postulate of the cosmic sanity involves these
emotions as its necessary data.
FRANK C. DOAN.
MEADVILLE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL.
COMMON SENSE AND ATTITUDES
IN a recent article in this JOURNAL on "Ineffable Philosophies,"
Dr. Henry M. Sheffer, with a truly Chestertonian sense for the
paradoxical, writes as follows: "To maintain that the last word
of philosophy must not be a proposition, but an attitude, a con-
viction, is to maintain that there can be no last word." And any
such philosophies, in which the "last word" is an attitude or con-
viction, are promptly condemned as being essentially unphilosoph-
ical. To do this, of course, presupposes very decided views as to
what is and is not philosophy. I agree quite thoroughly with Dr.
Sheffer in his conclusion that an element of tne inarticulate and
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 317
ineffable lurks within all systems of idealism. But in the following
paper, leaving unbiased the question as to what is or is not the
proper method for philosophy, I have tried to carry out, in a purely
critical spirit, the distinction between the "ineffable" and "effable"
habits of thought, and have endeavored to show that this distinction
is a fundamental one, which may be detected in other departments
of human culture, as well as in the history of philosophy.
There are some things which no one doubts. We never dispute
about the location of the streets, and if we want the fire to keep over-
night we bank it up accordingly. Here we are fairly well agreed,
and this I shall call the region of common sense. In this region
lie the things that are the same for all. Plutarch, speaking of the
first appearance of authentic history, says, "Beyond this there is
nothing but prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants are the
poets and inventors of fables; there is no credit, or certainty any
further. ' ' The thither-land situated on the other side of the region
of common sense might be characterized in a similar manner. Be-
yond the democratic realm in which all men are equal and unanimity
reigns supreme, there lies another region in which law and order
are lacking and where parity of opinion is not. This I shall call
the region of attitudes.
At a certain level of experience all men inhabit about the same
world, and no idiosyncrasies are tolerated. This element of com-
monalty makes cooperation in the ordinary affairs of life possible.
Aside, however, from the world which is common to all, every one
branches off on a line of experience that is more or less private and
unsharable. The essence of this kind of experience is well sug-
gested in Whitman's lines:
Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
People indulge in this esoteric side of life to different degrees.
Some have little to do with it, and refuse to venture far from the
world of common sense. Others cultivate it more extensively, and
such persons develop attitudes. This individual attitude, once at-
tained, is the point of departure from which any artistic, religious,
or philosophical enterprise or system emanates, and the standard ac-
cording to which any such affair, proposed by others, is judged and
valued.
I
A proposition in mechanics is good on any occasion and will meet
with a uniform reception the world over, while your (?) favorite
passage from Walt Whitman may do a variety of things. It may
fall completely flat, or bring on a storm of protest. An artist has an
318 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
attitude of his own. This is the ineffable something about his work
which defies description, and constitutes the charm for those who
understand. Happen not to sympathize with this attitude, either
by entertaining a different one or by remaining at the level of com-
mon sense, and what he is saying will be gibberish and jargon ; but
fall in with his attitude, and his work is yours by right of pre-
established harmony. What is said doesn't count so much as what
lies inarticulate under the words. All that your soul has been
conserving in its deepest recesses, what was divined but never formu-
lated, has found a socius and something like expression.
This way of viewing art as expression of personality is, of course,
only a part of the story. In poetry, for instance, there is to be
reckoned with the sonant effect of rhyme, words and rhythm, the
decorative element. But in every case, perhaps, the aim to produce
something which merely sounds well or looks well is interwoven
with a more fundamental motive which impels the artist to indicate
his meaning and reveal it to others.
Nothing defeats itself like words, and the last word of expres-
sion is that it can not be expressed. When expression has reached
a certain magnitude it fades into the ineffable, and casting aside
logic and common sense the poet lapses into paradox.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.
Here in this twilight region where fancy merges into the fantastic,
and thought hesitates between sense and nonsense, belong such
utterances as, say, Goethe's:
Was ich besitze, seh' ich wie im Weiten;
and Ibsen 's lines :
What we win is ours never,
What we lose we gain forever;
and innumerable statements, such as:
Cold morns are fringed with fire.
However, articulate expression is the artist's business, and to state
in plain language that "words fail me" is highly unsatisfactory.
It is, indeed, the "literary" rather than the decorative element
of art which involves an attitude. The side of art which has a more
direct physiological basis may be depended upon to produce its re-
sults pretty much beyond peradventure. Even here, however, the
difference between human beings in regard to sensorial equipment
is such as to make judgments on these matters fall short of univer-
sality. Nor does the element in literature which merely conveys
information involve anything attitudinal. It is only when there
is a significance to be accepted or rejected, a meaning to be appreci-
ated, that the attitude comes into play.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 319
There are enough facts extant somewhere in the universe, I
suppose, to contradict every effect a poet ever produced. Taken all
in all, the manifold of fact as the world presents it is a rather in-
different affair. From the dead level of common-sense fact en-
thusiasm is unjustifiable, and nothing is worth the trouble of men-
tioning. The poet, however, dispels at a stroke the irrelevant, and
out of the chaos spins an effect centering around his personal atti-
tude. He says, / celebrate this. And you assent, and join in the
chorus, or not. The artist transcends the level of common sense,
otherwise he would have nothing worth expressing.
The method of art is the method of life. The question which
art asks is, How does it seem to you? That at last is the method
we live by and are glad, the frame of mind in which we walk down
the street and look into the faces. "Persons are love's world."
Not only love's world, but the world of art, and of religion and
philosophy, is persons. With science, however, it is different, for
the world of science is essentially impersonal.
There is in this vicinity a line of cleavage which divides the
whole of mankind into two more or less distinct classes. The same
sunset clouds that thrill the poet with subtle meanings and sug-
gestions serve as data for the meteorologist ; but by a strange irony
of fate these two aspects of the world do not, as a rule, dwell in the
same tenement of clay. That part of mankind in whose lives per-
sons and meanings are central have as possibilities art, religion,
and philosophy. Those, however, who inhabit a world in which
the emphasis is placed on things have open to them, in the main,
whatever does not transcend the realm of common sense.
II
The classic warfare which science and religion carry on is a
phase of the universal conflict between people who are accustomed
to dwelling on opposite sides of the boundary which separates the
region of common sense from that of attitudes. Of course, not all
church members are actual combatants in the warfare against
science. The majority of people neither develop radical attitudes
nor clarify their minds on the implications of their life in the world
of common sense. But once these two tendencies become pronounced,
they are so incompatible that their respective devotees can only
regard each other as having no reason for existence whatsoever.
At a low grade of culture man has the notion of cause and effect,
but the conception of necessity, of nature as a rigid and ironclad
system, is a much rarer possession, and historically a later acquisi-
tion. From this conception exact science takes its departure. The
French astronomer Laplace, in his famous essay on probabilities,
320 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
speaks of a calculator, a hypothetical intelligence, which being
properly equipped with formulas and data should be able to prog-
nosticate the movement of every atom in the universe for all time
to come. With the accomplishment of this, science would have
solved the riddle of the universe to its own satisfaction. Science
means the increasing extension of the province of matter and neces-
sity, and the banishment, as Huxley said, ' ' of what we call spirit and
spontaneity. ' ' Never to have been overdrawn by the reign of law is
to miss the main current of modern thinking.
The importance of science in showing man what in detail the
world is, and in giving him a plan for dealing with the things of
nature to his own advantage, can scarcely be over-rated. This same
knowledge, however, which furnishes the means of living, brings us
no enlightenment about the end and goal of life. Concerning such
matters, the purpose and meaning of life and the world, men have
always been inclined to wonder and speculate ; and while science has
nothing positive to offer in this direction, it does in general lead to
a view of the world which militates against and contradicts that de-
manded by the "higher" nature of man.
Science and religion in fact are not so much opposed as disparate.
They do, indeed, in the case of the individual, tend to crowd each
other out; but the real historical opposition is not between two
hostile entities, science and religion, but between two groups of
minds in which these tendencies have become exclusively embodied.
Hostilities between these two classes of minds are opened when
the religionist, intrenched behind an attitude, sets up statements
concerning matters of fact. Religion itself is a frame of mind
rather than a body of propositions, yet all religions tend to ossify
into theology, and thus collide with science. But in the world of
time and space the scientist is on his own ground, and the religionist
is routed from one statement after another. Then the scientist
grows arrogant, solves the riddle of the universe in terms of matter,
motion and force, and dismisses the whole religious Weltanschauung
as illegitimate.
Science postulates necessity in its world, and with that postulate
religion has no concern. Where religion is, statements as to par-
ticulars are in abeyance, and to be informed that this or that is
impossible sounds strangely impertinent. Science is suspended.
The feeling, indeed, that somehow every day is a miracle might,
even to the scientist, be perfectly unobjectionable. It is too diffused
and indefinite to challenge contradiction. But once the postulate of
necessity is suspended, all discussion concerning matters of fact
ceases indeed to be edifying. Whenever there is a deus ex machina
waiting behind the scenes to be introduced as the exigencies of the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 321
case may dictate, facts are subject to change without notice and
inference is stultified. Science is in possession of the facts; while
religion guards the rear of "spirit and spontaneity."
Ill
The conflict which we have been tracing is twofold ; not only do
the common-sense people oppose the attitudinal spirits, and this is
by far the more fundamental phase of the conflict; but the latter
also wage war among themselves. Common sense is one; while
attitudes, personalities, ideals of what life and the world ought to
be, are many and diverse. In no department of the human mind is
this twofold conflict better illustrated than in philosophy. The
kind of philosophy which results from giving prominence to the
common-sense tendency, which may be classed rather inadequately
as ' ' materialistic realism, ' ' is, in its main features, pretty much the
same whether we find it in Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Gas-
sendi, Hobbes, or Spencer; while the other sort of philosophy-
that growing out of radical attitudes, which may be classed as
"idealistic," and which suggests such names as Plato, Plotinus,
Eckhart, Malebranohe, Fichte, Hegel, etc., presents numberless
varieties in suo genere, and countless possibilities.
What distinguishes philosophers of the Herbert Spencer type is,
indeed, not so much an attitude as a refusal to deal in that sort of
thing. They are objective, impersonal, and scientific; and regard
any other way of philosophizing as yielding merely subjective im-
pressions and vagaries of the imagination. We do not feel that
there is back of them any unsounded or inarticulate depths; their
distinctive feature is simply a habit of mind which excludes, so far
as it can, anything savoring of the personal or spiritual. And were
they completely successful in this they would cease to be philosoph-
ical at all. No philosophy reports facts merely as they come; for
the philosopher, like the artist, composes his world; he emphasizes
this aspect and subordinates that, in order thus to attain some sort
of a unified world-view, and this act of emphasis and selection is
essentially personal. Although, for instance, Spencer's system may
seem as if ' ' knocked together out of hemlock boards, " it is none the
less true that it was Spencer himself who chose to build with boards
rather than something else.
The character of any philosophy is determined by two factors,
attitude and technique, or insight and method. With one class of
philosophers, as we have seen, the attitude consists in denying all
attitudes,; the insight is just that there is no insight. With the
majority of philosophers, however, insights have played a large and
conspicuous part. This matter of insight is the pou sto, the starting-
322 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
point which determines the general direction that the philosophy
is going to take ; while the technique, on the other hand, lies in the
linking of the various steps of reflection, in accordance, for the most
part, with the so given direction. Technique, method, logical ap-
paratus, is powerless of itself to produce a philosophy; there must
be something to give direction, emphasis, selection, impulse, and
life.
The conflicts and disputes in the history of philosophy are
largely concerning the insights involved; and the peculiar futility
of discussion in this region is notorious. A man 's attitude takes form,
if at all, through a lifelong process, and to reconstruct it suddenly
is quite out of the question. The fact that an attitude cannot be
taught has been made the basis of many libels against pedagogy,
setting forth that wisdom anyhow is incommunicable. Regarding
differences of attitude as final, when such matters are in question,
we either praise or damn at first sight, and like Emerson can not
spend the day in explanation.
In making their ascent into the region of attitudes men carry
different amounts of common-sense ballast. Those more heavily
freighted appear as utilitarians in ethics, or classicists in art, or
materialistic realists in metaphysics. Among those who slip the
moorings more completely are the intuitionalists who petition for a
' ' few fancy virtues, ' ' the romanticists who long for fantastic thrills,
and the idealists who have been known to conclude that being and
not-being are the same.
Once fairly launched on the metaphysical sea, for the particular
drift which a man's speculations will assume the character of his
private attitude is in the main responsible. Says Vernon Lee:
"Such an ineffable central mystery exists in the thought of many
philosophers; ... a whirlpool explaining everything, but never
itself explained; called as the case may be, 'Higher Law,' 'Truth,'
'Good,' sometimes merely 'Nature,' and, in the remoter Past, most
frequently called by the name of 'God." There is in the philoso-
pher's mind "something round which his system has grown, but
which is far more essential and vital to him than his system : some-
thing continually alluded to, constantly immanent, round which he
perpetually hovers, into which he frequently plunges : . . . but which
remains undefined, a vague It." Imagine the vast comedie phi-
losophique which has been enacted upon this planet! each par-
ticipant drawing to defend to the death his philosophic ultima,
when, after all has been said and done, what he took to be final was
very largely a matter of taste. The spectacle of men fighting for
their attitudes, each in the firm belief that his is the final and in-
evitable one, is most likely a huge comedy when viewed from the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 323
heights of Olympus; but the fight, let us say, is good, and as we
are assured by Zarathustra "der gute Krieg ist es, der jede Sache
heiligt."
In its historical development philosophy resembles art more
than science. The sophomore who takes "Philosophy 4" soon learns
just what Descartes said and Hume opined; while the student of
physics may have heard of Newton, or perhaps not, Newton him-
self being a perfectly negligible quantity. A system of philosophy
is a personal product, and when the man who made it is through,
the system is finished and closed forever, like a poem. Each phi-
losopher starts anew and cuts his system out of the whole cloth of
his own life-experience. In this region there is nothing to corre-
spond with the continuous accretive accumulation of science. The
scientist takes the work of his predecessors, and after assigning to
oblivion whatever is unverifiable, he adds his own contribution to
the residue. In the process the personality of the workers is elim-
inated and dropped by the wayside.
Philosophy has a great show of logic, yet fancy Hegel and Her-
bert Spencer trying to convince each other: Hegel the devotee to
Heraclitus the Obscure, and Spencer the civil engineer. The dif-
ference between their philosophies was rooted in the deeper differ-
ence of the two lives. The man who habitually centers on facts,
things and dimensions will make a realist in metaphysics. On the
other hand, the man who views the world as persons and meanings
will find his way into the idealistic camp. These two chronic
methods of envisaging the world underlie the respective philosoph-
ical positions at a point farther down than their logic begins.
DONALD FISHER.
HABVABD UNIVEBSITY.
CAUSALITY
FACTS seem to have distanced the growth of our categories.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of causation.
It is not too much to maintain that naturalism demands a reinter-
pretation and deepening of this category that will enable it to ac-
count adequately for the development and presence of organic forms
and social institutions in the same universe with nebula? and dark
stars. Can a formula for causation be found comprehensive enough
to cover these varied conditions? This is undoubtedly one of the
crucial questions of contemporary metaphysics. Its solution should
give tremendous impetus to the advance of a more plastic
naturalism.
Some time ago I sought to indicate a solution of the time problem
324 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
with much the same judgment of the situation in mind. 1 I wish
now to set forth in outline a view of causality which is in harmony
with the position there presented. Since the conception to be de-
veloped in the present article has been reached inductively in large
measure, and hence as independently as possible of the other field,
the fact that the two categories, time and causality, interpenetrate
and harmonize in so luminous a way serves as a mutual confirma-
tion. One conspicuous divergence from the usual treatment will
be found in the connection of causality with the spatial character of
reality. Time and space will be lifted from their separateness and
be shown to involve one another. Causality will, in brief, "be proven
to mediate space and time in a process view of reality. The en-
deavor to establish the intimate union of these three categories will,
at any rate, be suggestive.
Causation may be regarded as empirical or as ontological. This
distinction corresponds to that between time as a construction within
the individual's experience and time as change in the reality-proc-
ess, and it has its roots in the relation of the individual's experi-
encing to the world-process of which he is a part.
As is well known, the cause was for a long time identified with
the "ground" or sufficient reason. Hume it was who brought into
general recognition its temporal and empirical, as against its ration-
alistic character. Of late years there has been on the part of the
absolute idealists a strong tendency to swing back to the earlier
position. This is an outgrowth of their aversion to time. As
I have defended the reality of time as change, it is evident
that I must regard as erroneous the identification of the cause
with the reason or the explanation. Exact definition and discrim-
ination must be called in to aid in the avoidance of ambiguity, since
the word cause is sometimes used with the signification of reason,
i. e., the ''why" in the Aristotelian sense.
Strictly speaking, a cause is never repeated. Cosmic history,
like human history, is unique. Venn, among others, has well shown
this unrepeatable character of a cause when taken in the strict scien-
tific sense, that is, in its complete particularity, and has deduced
therefrom its hypothetical character with reference to succeeding
events. This is evidently in line with the identification of time with
change.
The similarity of causal processes, which forms the basis for gen-
eralization and for the practical application of past experience to the
present, is dependent on existential repetition, i. e., on the simultane-
ity or spatial side of reality. Like substances under like conditions
give like results. The chemist who has a small quantity of a hard-
1 This JOTJBNAL, Vol. V., Nos. 20 and 22.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 325
won substance realizes this acutely. If he uses all in one experiment
he can not repeat until he secures his factors again. There are two
kinds of uniformities, the temporal and the spatial; and only the
first has received adequate emphasis in theory.
Another distinction must be made to prevent confusion. The
term cause must be differentiated not only from that of ground, but
also from what may be designated the "occasion" or force of de-
tent. A lighted match is the occasion for the explosion of a flask of
powder, but is not the cause in the strict scientific sense. As a re-
sult of this distinction, the quantitative equivalence of cause and
effect as interpreted in terms of energy need not be denied. ' ' Noth-
ing occurs without equivalent transformation of one or more forms
of energy into other forms. ' ' This is really only the assertion of the
principle of the conservation of energy and concerns the temporal
aspect of causality. Energy is predominantly a temporal category.
Finally, we must not fail to recollect the arbitrary character of
what is selected as the cause by popular thought in any causal proc-
ess. Such selection is the function of some interest. For meta-
physics we must hold clearly in mind the fact of a continuous process
of change in some system and must not be led into mental quagmires
by the inadequacies and confusions of popular terminology.
When time is identified with change the problem of the continuity
of cause and effect no longer exists. Causality is immanent. If we
so desire, we may call the state of equilibrium the effect. A change
in any causal system thrown into the form of time as a construction
within the individual's experience with its distinctions of past,
present, and future, gives the temporal expression of causality
found in both Hume and Kant. With the preceding cautions duly
noted, no difficulty need be found in empirical causation which good
logic will not solve. Let us, then, regard the uses of the terms cause
and effect as a methodological question and concern ourselves with
causality.
Upon studying causality more closely by means of the analysis
of concrete cases of change, we become aware that past theory was
not empirical enough. The examination of the "when," "in what
manner," and "for how long," characteristics which differentiate
unique causal processes, did not receive adequate recognition. As
Ostwald sees, the structure of the interacting factors determines the
time variable, *. e., the rate of change, and the end result. Manifold
illustration of this fact could be given. The interdependence of struc-
ture and function in the organic realm would furnish numerous in-
stances alone. Organization must then be acknowledged as essential
to the nature of any causal process.
Now, if organization is a factor in the causal process at present,
326 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
it must always have been a factor, or the nature of causality
must have abruptly changed at some remote time in the past.
There is no reason to assume the discontinuity of a passage from the
homogeneous to the heterogenous. Such terms are essentially rela-
tive. But the complexity of organization may well have increased
in parts of reality. Not only is there no a, priori reason against such
a proposition, but science in its evolutionary outlook is everywhere in
its favor. It must be understood, however, that I am not advocating
a linear evolution for the universe as a whole. When the universe is
regarded as stereometrical and time is identified with change within
such a process, what holds for one or more subsystems need not apply
to all subsystems at once. Organization is, then, a variant in the
universe, but an effective variant which determines immanently its
own change.
For some centuries 1 we have been asked to choose between two
juxtaposed forms of causality, mechanism and teleology. This has
seemed to me a harsh and unreal disjunction resulting from clumsy
thinking which did not approach, or even seek to approach, the
subtlety of nature. Organization enables us to surmount this antith-
esis just as in the consideration of time it was shown to mediate
between flux and permanence. The result is the doctrine of grades
of causal relation and activity dependent on, the organization of the
interacting parts of a caudal system. With this view granted, the
qualitative at last receives recognition, and the real presence of
variety, which evolution demands, is faced. What other agent to
account for directed change seems thinkable except organization?
It has at least three obvious merits 1 : First, that of accounting for
the conservation of past activity; secondly, that of furnishing a
pivot for development; thirdly, the merit of control. Only when
these three aspects are understood in their interrelation can evolu-
tion be grasped. A very good example of this 1 method of advance
mediated by organization can be taken from psychology. Habits
are the precipitate of activity, they furnish the means for the de-
velopment of new habits and they also control the kind of habits to
be formed, at least in part why only in part is another story which
involves the spatial side.
The best approach to the spatial side of causality can be made by
a study of what I should call causal systems. An example may be
given in lieu of a detailed description. An organism and its envi-
ronment would together compose a causal system. These systems
may be of all grades of complexity and may involve one another in
the most intricate fashion. Such a system may be dichotomized and
the interaction between the parts so obtained will be seen to be se-
lective or controlled by the "form" of the parts. In lower grades
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 327
of causality a dichotomy can not be made with the same ease, or
need not even be sought if individualization of some part of the
system has not proceeded far enough. Let us take for analysis the
reaction of an amoeba to a stimulus. Suppose the reaction to be
positive. We have immediately a system in process of transforma-
tion. No matter what the result, experiment can prove neither loss
nor gain of energy. But when we look at this system spatially, we
find that the two main objects in interaction, the stimulus and the
amoeba, play different roles. The selection appears on the side of the
amoeba and not on that of the object stimulating the amoeba. Selec-
tion involves this spatial or simultaneity aspect, not the temporal
aspect of the transformation within the system as a whole. More-
over, it must be noted that by spatial I do not mean merely a cross-
section view, but a stereometrical view, i. e., the massing of co-exist-
ent factors as organized and in relation to one another.
I stated in a previous article that time would be understood
completely only after causality had been conquered. The reason
for this statement is now apparent. Change has its Innigkeit in
causality and directed change is comprehended only when it is seen
that causality controls itself by organization. Quite obviously, it
seems to me, our analysis has proven that causality mediates space
and time. This is the first time to my knowledge that the intimacy
of these categories has been grasped.
The relation between the "occasion" or force of detent and the
doctrine of grades of causal activity deserves mention. Selective-
ness in man's conquest of nature and in his employment of machines
consists largely in his ability to control the occasion. He becomes a
factor in a larger system, but his function is to disturb the compen-
sation in definite subsystems. Man thus chooses the "when," the
"where," and the "manner." In all this selective activity there is
no violation of energetics or of conservation; yet, because of his
selectiveness and his employment of machines, man changes the face
of nature. The concerted action of numbers of men socially organ-
ized carries us to a height of selectiveness which physics is unable to
conceive, but which is nevertheless real, for in such activity we are
every-day participators. Since we have decided to hold unswerv-
ingly to continuity and to naturalism these facts must also be reck-
oned with.
I will close with a statement of what still remains to be expli-
cated. First, causal systems are only relatively self-determining.
The degree of their self-determination depends usually on the grade
of their organization. This problem can be worked out only by
the sciences. It can be seen that the principle of continuity needs
reinterpretation in the light of this new view of causality. It will
328 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
lead, I think, to a mediation of monism and pluralism. Secondly,
man dominates the causal systems into which he enters. This is the
meaning of his relative freedom or autonomy. This fact also has
bearing on the principle of continuity. Thirdly, grades of causal
activity may be simultaneous in a system. A man falls like a stone,
but if he sees a rope near he will grasp it, which it is needless to say
the stone will not do. Fourthly, the idea of the quantitative and the
qualitative requires entire overhauling.
It is evident that I am seeking to attain a stereoscopic view of
reality. Of the ideal I have little doubt ; my success must be left to
the readers for judgment.
ROY WOOD SELLARS.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. New Series, VoL Vill. (1907-
08). London: Williams and Norgate. 1908. Pp. 268.
It is difficult, if not impossible, for a philosopher to admire a paper
whose results are repugnant to him, or to appreciate the weaknesses of one
that accords with his sympathies; nevertheless, I shall try in this notice
to distinguish good and bad reasoning from welcome and unwelcome
theory. Thus Mr. Haldane's paper, " The Methods of Modern Logic and
the Conception of Infinity," welcome as must be bis repetition of tbe argu-
ment against tbe " bad " infinite, yet considered as a criticism of the
modern logic of infinity seems to me to be an ignoratio elenchi. The
important question is, how far is tbe genuine infinite consistent with the
definitions of infinity given by pure or exact logic? Professor Taylor, at
least, in his criticism of Royce's discussion of infinity, has set a better
example tban this one, for, though his results are not to me as agreeable
as Mr. Haldane's, yet he does take up the infinite of logic and mathe-
matics.
Mr. Latta's paper on " Purpose " seems to me to suffer from lack of a
well-defined metbod. Tbere are at least three possible ways of investi-
gating the meaning of a concept. One may start with a definition (taken
from tbe dictionary, perhaps) and develop, by a priori implication, all
tbat can be deduced from that definition. This would be the natural
method in mathematics; it may be called the deductive metbod. Or one
may seek a definition inductively, by marking out a certain circle of facts
as tbe denotation of the concept he investigates*, and by trying to discover
the essential attributes of those facts as the material of the definition.
Tbis is tbe metbod of tbe inductive sciences. Or, finally, one may seek
tbe ways in which the term is used by men, and try to patch up one con-
sistent definition out of them all. This means the consulting of diction-
aries, text-books, and men. It may be called the linguistic metbod; it
does not directly enlarge our knowledge, but settles questions of termin-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 329
ology. Now each of these is doubtless good in its way, but they should
neither be confused nor indiscriminately combined, and Mr. Latta's in-
vestigation, I think, does this. For the most part it is the linguistic
method. Thus he begins with the definition of Baldwin's Dictionary (p.
17) and modifies it (p. 18) to accord with popular usage, comparing it
with the definitions of Taylor and Schiller. Cases are considered, how-
ever (pp. 22 and 24), though rather incidentally. Also the popular
attribution of purpose to organic beings is used as an argument (p. 25).
For the rest, excepting some metaphysical presuppositions, we cordially
admire the paper. Certainly a careful examination of this concept is
greatly needed, though we could wish a more clear-cut definition than
" systematic relation " (p. 27), or " systematic unity " (p. 30).
One of the best papers seems to me that by Mr. G. E. Moore on " Pro-
fessor James's Pragmatism." He criticizes three points : (1) truth coin-
cides with verification and utility, (2) truth is mutable, and (3) " to an
unascertainable extent our truths are man-made products." As to the
first point, Mr. Moore finds many truths which are not verified, e. g., that
at a certain game a player with a bad memory held a certain card, yet
could not recollect it no evidence being possible to anybody (p. 37).
This we think is unfair to James, who might (and we think would) hold
that if one called the idea of his holding that card true, one would mean that
it was there as terminus of a possible complete investigation. Mr. Moore's
realism is evidently conflicting here with the pragmatic idealism. Equally
unfair is the criticism of the utility of truth. " Men do sometimes dwell
on their faults and blemishes, when it is not useful for them to do so "
(p. 44). James, of course, means utility in the following sense: the idea
is useful in that when one is in the environment denoted by the idea, he
is by entertaining the idea enabled better to adapt himself to that envi-
ronment. And James speaks of the " long run " because, in the long run,
one is sooner or later likely to be brought into the environment in ques-
tion. When a man dwells on his (real) faults without advantage from the
dwelling, there is no question of the relation of idea to fact, and no
question of truth raised at all, in this connection. These misunderstand-
ings of James are comparable only to the perennial misunderstanding of
idealism by realists. However, it does seem that James might have de-
fined the meaning of " utility " a bit more fully, so as explicitly to exclude
the misconception about useful lies (p. 47). Mr. Moore candidly enough,
indeed, says (p. 49), " I certainly hope he would say that these statements,
to which I have objected, are silly," and " if he and other pragmatists
would admit even as much as this, I think a good deal would be gained."
Since James, for one, has insisted on it already, we do not see what would
be gained by repetition. Doubtless, indeed, James spoke carelessly in
saying that a belief is true "so long as to believe it is profitable to our
lives" (quoted on p. 53).
His second criticism seems to me more just. There are truths that are
not mutable. Any idea of a present fact is in a sense eternally true
(p. 69). If James means to assert that some facts change or that some
sentences are true when they are uttered and later or earlier false, this is
330 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
obvious but trivial (p. 70). "It seems to me impossible that he could
speak as he does, if he meant nothing more than these two things."
" Does he hold that the idea that Julius Caesar was murdered in the Senate
House, though true now, may, at some future time, cease to be true, if it
should be more profitable to the lives of future generations to believe that
he died in his bed ?" . . . " If he does hold that truths like this are not
mutable, he never tries to tell us to what kind of truths he would limit
mutability, nor how they differ from such as this " (p. 70). I am not aware
that James has anywhere met this demand for the limits of mutability;
the criticism seems to me, therefore, to rest on a perfectly fair interpre-
tation.
The third criticism, of the " man-made " character of truths, is, I
think, equally sound. Is this 1 really only a theory of how this or that
man came to have this or that belief (p. 71), or only the statement that we
entertain our beliefs and thus allow them to exist as mental facts, and so
" make " them in a sense (p. 72) ? If so, it is obviously true and trivial.
But " we should never say that we had made a belief true merely because
we had made the belief" (p. 73). Undoubtedly James has been am-
biguous on this point, and it is probably these hints of mutability and
man-made-ness that have given rise to the misconceptions of his doctrines
of utility and verifiability. Mr. Moore has, I think, neatly laid his finger
on two sore spots, and one would like to see a definite reply to these two
accusations, from James or some other " pragmatist."
Dr. Caldecott's paper, " The Religious Sentiment : an Inductive In-
quiry," is small in scope, but clear and logically arranged. It is an em-
pirical study of religious experiences taken from " a small group of thirty-
four autobiographies of Wesley's early Methodist Preachers" (p. 78).
" These young men . . . were not of ill-balanced nervous systems " (p. 78).
" The elementary fear of suffering, the dread of the torments of punish-
ment, is referred to less frequently than might be supposed " (p. 80) .
Relief from " the misery of self-reproach " is sought at any cost. This
seems to be a " central constituent emotion " (p. 82) which " proceeds to
draw together the other emotions, and to establish a control over them "
(p. 83). Thus, the social sentiments were strong and thoroughly organ-
ized, and " in the field which interested them their thinking was vigorous,
in some cases notably so" (p. 85), while, on the other hand, "to the at-
tractions of the Fine Arts they were insensible, for the most part " (p. 84).
As an essential factor in their religious sentiment " we see a joy un-
equaled, so far as they can testify, by any other which they knew"
(p. 90). Altogether the writer comes 1 to a rather optimistic conclusion,
comforting to those who love religion : " that the sentiment included an
inner factor which touched the very center of the mental nature ; that this
central emotion had succeeded in acquiring control over the emotions 1 :
. . . and in completely organizing them; and that it was by these means
associated with the attainment of an intellectual ' fixed idea/ and with
the principal activities of the mind" (p. 93). How can we tell whether
the author has proved his point ? So much depends on selective emphasis,
that one can not be sure, except with great fullness of detail in the evi-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 331
denee. We must know the greater part, if not all, of what is contained
in the documents used, in order to judge whether the author has laid his
emphases in the right places.
Dr. Hodgson's paper on " The Idea of Totality " opens with ten pages
of introduction, which insists on making fundamental and thoroughgoing
the distinction of known and existent; and in accordance with that dis-
tinction separating the concept of totality from the percept. The concept
" implies completeness, limitation, and finitude " (p. 105). But there may
be perpetual data beyond any whole we can conceive : time and space, v as
given, are given as exceeding the percepts in which they are co-elements,
that is, as given elements which we find, in thinking of them, to be in
contrast with the completeness of purely logical concepts, and name, in
consequence of that contrast, incomplete, unlimited, and infinite" (pp.
106-7). A realistic metaphysic is partly outlined in the rest of the paper;
the paper is, in fact, a short essay in metaphysic, of which the title gives
but a faint idea. As such it can scarcely be fittingly discussed in this
connection. But I must make one objection : namely, to the definition of
" strict idealism " implied in the phrase " its denial that anything which
is not-consciousness can be real" (p. 112). Is there any idealist to-day
who would be willing to have strict idealism thus characterized? I
doubt it.
" Impressions and Ideas : The Problem of Idealism," by H. W. Carr,
contains a beautiful illustration of the distinction with which we began
this notice, between logically sound reasoning and welcome doctrine.
Idealism to Mr. Carr is unwelcome doctrine, though logically sound and
irrefutable. " The premises of idealism are undesirable. . . . Idealism
pressed to its conclusion involves solipsism" (p. 124), which is incredible
and absurd, while yet " I have never met with an attempt to refute
solipsism by a direct logical answer" (p. 126). Again: "even a philoso-
pher only gives an intellectual assent [to idealism] ; in practical life he
thinks as other men" (p. 130). Mr. Carr, therefore, can not logically ac-
cept realism and is forced to a sceptical position. Temperamentally this
paper is to me delightful, because it reveals so clearly the humor of the
issue between idealism and realism. The former is irrefutable, the latter
is (apparently) believed by both schools. The humor is none the less,
that the situation is much the same as when Berkeley wrote. Mr. Can-
is to be congratulated on a frank, clear, and unusually honest statement
of the arguments.
Mr. Nunn's paper " On the Concept of Epistemological Levels," is an
essay in genetic psychology. The analytical unit of development is con-
ative process (p. 143) : mental development consists in increasing rich-
ness of content and in systematizing various processes into wholes. So
far there is nothing new ; but now we read that " the ' stream of conscious-
ness ' of the modern psychologist is, strictly speaking, not . . . even one
of the data which he must accept and deal with " (p. 148). As an hypoth-
esis " it has become a hindrance rather than an aid to progress" (p. 149).
We should postulate instead " the realistic doctrine which takes as ulti-
mate data a psychic monad opposed to a universe of independent objects "
332 PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
(p. 149). This genetic postulate, comparable in some ways with Pro-
fessor Baldwin's dualistic standpoint, is interesting as a reaction upon
those monistic views (Schiller, Dewey, James and others) of " experi-
ence " as the matrix of all distinctions. All this, however, is but getting
ready to work: as actual fruit of study we are offered the doctrine of
" three characteristic moments in the development of the conative sys-
tems which we call the sciences" (p. 156). The first is initiated by
intuition of the striking, the beautiful, and the novel (p. 155) (really
pre-scientific), the second is knowledge " aiming at practical control over
nature" (p. 155), and the third, "the disinterested 'passion' which aims
at ... the theoretical sway of some system of ideas over the province of
primary facts which it claims to rule" (p. 156). At all these levels,
knowledge has the same general phases, yet in each level is adapted to that
stage. This last is no doubt a useful suggestion though it has been al-
ready fully worked out by Baldwin in " Thoughts and Things." " The
admission that the precise form and value of the deductive phase must vary
with the epistemological level under consideration would, I believe, resolve
many apparent contradictions between the views of eminent logicians
upon such methods as definition and the syllogism" (p. 158). This in-
sistence on the growth of logical categories is no doubt good, but it must
not be strained into the dogma (quite without proof) that the laws of
logic are " merely [italics mine] the terminal forms of what is essentially
a developmental process" (p. 159). Origin and validity, though interde-
pendent, are not identical aspects. Otherwise, Mr. Nunn's paper seems to
me a very useful rough survey of the growth of thinking.
Perhaps the best paper is that of G. Dawes Hicks, on " The Relation
of Subject and Object from the Point of View of Psychological Develop-
ment." We have space for but a few points: the paper is as a whole in-
dispensable to the student of cognition. Mr. Hicks first condemns the
psychology of cognition apart from philosophy; partly, I think, because
he includes under psychology certain problems that many logicians might
consider philosophical problems, and partly (must I say?) from lack of
psychology. Thus he says, " Considered as mere events . . . states of per-
ceiving, imagining, thinking, desiring, would exhibit no marks by which
we could distinguish them" (p. 168). I had thought that perceiving
differed from imagining and desiring, for one thing, in the presence of a
unique process called belief; again that imagining contains but little, if
any, of the feelings of strain which mark the presence of desire, etc.
As to " thinking," so vague a term should not be used in such an illus-
tration. Mr. Hicks's main problem is the question: Is the subject-object
relation original or derived? And the answer is, for all intents and pur-
poses, " derived," i. e., neither consciousness nor attention is rightly con-
ceived as an inner eye, the objects of which are presentations furnished
to the mind " (p. 181). There is, indeed, some relation primitively present,
but not this one of subject-object. All we can say is, that consciousness
" is from the first an apprehending activity, and is not rightly described
in terms of mere 'feeling'" (p. 188). I do not quite see what "appre-
hending activity " can mean here, as distinguished from feeling, unless it
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 333
includes a real (though not at the time known) distinction of subject and
object. Mr. Hicks goes on to derive the relation from the " mass of cor-
poreal feeling which . . . may be wholly, and certainly is largely, absent
when a content identical in kind 1 is ideally represented in imagination"
(pp. 190-1). He has argued this point in a preceding paper (Proc.
Arist. Soc., I., p. 200) and it is too large a question to be discussed here.
Mr. Hicks is here forced to defend a presentative theory of memory:
" The so-called ' memory-image ' is, then, just as little as the percept a
construction made up of psychical material: it is not something that
serves as a substitute for the real object" (p. 193). I agree that "too
much stress has ... in this connection, been laid upon " intersubjective
intercourse " (p. 195) and " certainly the primitive subject can have no
intuitive apprehension of other minds" (pp. 195-6). The author must
here put in the customary defense of realism, as the doctrine of a real
world existing before we become aware of it (p. 201). As if the idealist
denied this ! His misapprehension of idealism is shown here : " So far
from consciousness starting with an awareness of subjective states and
advancing thence to an awareness of what it takes to be objective, there
would seem to be stronger grounds psychologically for exactly the oppo-
site contention " (p. 201). He admits, however (pp. 2023), that this may
be unfair to idealism, though he still accuses it of somehow violating
common sense. Returning to the subject, we find that on looking back
to primitive cognition " we seem to arrive at length at an elementary
condition of consciousness in which there would be but obscure and con-
fused awareness of sense-qualities, barely and imperfectly discriminated,
and not apprehended as belonging either to an independent world of fact
or to the modes of the subject's inner life " (pp. 203 4) . There is, how-
ever, no generic distinction between such simple apprehension and appre-
hension mediated by thought (p. 207). "The theory according to which
objects apprehended are either wholly or in part mental constructs is de-
void of logical justification " (p. 213). Whether or not we like Mr. Hicks's
results, we must admit that his treatment is thorough and suggestive.
The symposium on the " Nature of Mental Activity " seems to me not
what the author's known abilities would lead us to expect: a rather de-
sultory affair, devoted to much mutual criticism. Professor Alexander
distinguishes between mental activity in a wider and a narrower sense,
and defends rather obscurely a relational view of consciousness (p. 221 ff.).
Dr. Ward criticizes this and Bradley's view, while Professor Read
defends idealism a refreshing change while Dr. Stout agrees largely
with Ward's criticisms.
As a whole the volume maintains the high standard set by the past
numbers. W. H. SHELDON.
PBINCETON UNIVERSITY.
The "Perceptive Problem" in the ^Esthetic Appreciation of Single
Colours. EDWARD BULLOUGH. British Journal of Psychology, Oc-
tober, 1908, pp. 406-463.
The esthetic judgments and the introspective accounts of thirty-five
subjects (32 men and 3 women) upon a series of colored papers are
334 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
recorded by the author. There were, in all, thirty-five colors exposed one
at a time in a dark room under controlled illumination. The subjects
were instructed to give " single judgments," not " preference judgments " ;
for, the author says : " The method of comparison has been taken over
wholesale from purely psychological experiments, where it served special
purposes, into esthetic experiments, where it destroys the pre-adaptation
of the subject to esthetic experiences, and thereby vitiates his whole
mental attitude towards the objects to be offered to his appreciation. It is
precisely characteristic of the esthetic appreciation to be non-comparative,
individualizing, isolating, and, in a sense, absolute." He tends, there-
fore, to discredit the results (those of Cohn, for example) which have been
obtained by methods involving comparison.
In his analysis of the records Bullough distinguishes four main
"aspects" of color. These are: (1) the objective aspect, (2) the physi-
ological, (3) the associative, and (4) the character aspect. The objective
and the physiological aspects are at first discussed together, and the various
qualities which, under these heads, are ascribed to colors are classified
and treated under the sub-heads (1) purity, (2) stimulating or soothing
power, (3) temperature, (4) strength, (5) purity in the sense of satura-
tion, (6) weight, (Y) brightness. Qualities like purity, brightness, and
strength are attributed to the color itself and are, hence, " objective " ;
whereas qualities like warmth, coolness, oppressiveness, seem indicative
of an effect upon the organism of the observer, and are called " physiolog-
ical." The associative aspect emphasizes the suggestive value of colors.
The most complex and important feature of color is, the author considers,
the character aspect. He says, " By ' character ' or ' temperament ' of a
color I mean the appearance in a color or the expression by a color of
what, in the case of a human being, would be called his character, or
mood, or temperament; the manifestation of a special, more or less defi-
nitely developed personality. . . . 'The surprising subtlety of distinctions
existing between the temperaments of but slightly different colors and the
many-sided richness of these characters is such as to cast occasionally
some doubt on the genuineness of this aspect in the mind of persons who
themselves are insensible to it. Many are, in fact, inclined to consider
it as a kind of mystic nonsense, as imaginative romancing or poetic fancy,
or as t reading things into a color.' The criticism is as valuable as that
of a deaf person on a musical composition." This character aspect seems
at first to be a special case of the associative aspect, but we read : " In the
case of associative features except in those of the most objective type
even the subjects themselves have the latent feeling that it is they, and
only they, who impart its meaning to the color. Compared to this exclu-
sively subjective significance of color, the character-aspect exhibits a
surprising quasi-objectivity. . . . the temperaments attributed to colors
by various and perfectly independent observers agree fundamentally to
an astonishing degree, in spite of various most interesting divergences
in minor points of richness and elaboration."
The following account of blue and red illustrates the type of descrip-
tion which individual colors receive : " The character of a red or of a
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 335
tone tinged with red is usually of a sympathetic, affectionate kind; it
appears to come out to you with openness and frankness, while blues are
of more reserved, distant, even unaccessible temperament, somewhat like
individuals described as ' difficult to know.' This temperament is not by
any means repellent; on the contrary, it has an attraction of its own, by
the promise of more thoughtfulness and greater depth than red in its
expansiveness seems to offer. A similar opposition is to be noticed also
in other respects: red is by far the most active color; blue, on the other
hand, tends to contemplation and reflexion. Red exhibits degrees of
energy which are sometimjes almost overwhelming; it was once not inaptly
described to me as 'gushing/ whereas in blue there is always some
measure of coldness and distant state, which to some persons gives it an
almost haughty appearance. While red is impressive by reason of its
irresistible strength and power, blue has something monumental in itd
dignified repose and its peculiar spaciousness."
Corresponding to the four aspects of color the author distinguishes
four " perceptive types " among his subjects ; of these the physiological
and the associative types are most numerous.
KATE GORDON.
WlNNEBAGO, WlS.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. March, 1909. The Problem
of Beauty (pp. 121-146) : HUGO MUNSTERBERG. - The beautiful is not
beautiful because it is agreeable ; it depends not upon my individual taste,
but upon a suprapersonal will to have a harmoniously self-assertng world.
The objective satisfaction resulting from the will to have such a perfect
self-agreeing world is the only esthetic attitude. Experience presents
three spheres : a world of outer objects, a world of other subjects, a world
of inner personality. To these correspond, respectively, the visible arts,
the literary arts, and music. The Idealism of Edward Caird (pp. 147-
163) : JOHN WATSON. - A sketch of Caird's career, and a characterization
of his philosophy. Caird was much influenced by Carlyle, later by Goethe,
and, subsequently, most by Green. Caird found in Hegel a principle of
reconciliation not before appreciated. Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Association The Eighth Annual Meeting, Johns Hopkins
University, December 29-31, 1908 (pp. 164-190) : Abstracts of papers by
SCHMIDT, ROUSMANIERE, HAYES, STEELE, EWER, ALBEE, CREIGHTON, MARVIN,
SHELDON, DOAN, MONTAGUE, MOORE, HUME, HUSIK, SINGER, COHEN, MECK-
LIN, FRANKLIN ; discussion of realism and idealism by DEWEY, WOODBRIDGE,
BAKEWELL, SMITH. Reviews of Books: Hugo Miinsterberg, Philosophie
der Werte: A. E. TAYLOR. G. S. Fullerton and others, Essays in Honor
of William James: H. A. OVERSTREET. W. Dilthey and others, Sys-
tematische Philosophic: J. A. LEIGHTON. John Dewey and J. H. Tufts,
Ethics: W. CALDWELL. Notices of New Books. Summaries of Articles.
Notes.
336 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Claparede, Ed. Psychologic de I'Enfant et Pedagogic experimental.
Geneve : Librairie Kiindig. 1909. Pp. viii + 282.
Fifty Years of Darwinism: Modern Aspects of Evolution. Centennial
Addresses in honor of Charles Darwin. New York : Henry Holt & Co.
1909. Pp. 274. $2.00.
Miinsterberg, Hugo. The Eternal Values. Boston and New York:
Houghton Mifflin Co. The Kiverside Press: Cambridge. 1909. Pp.
xv 4-436. $2.50.
Stewart, J. A. Plato's Doctrine of Ideas. Oxford: at the Clarendon
Press. 1909. Pp. 206.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE Philosophical Society of Berlin is completing arrangements for
the dedication this coming year of a monument to Fichte. This event
will crown the centenary of the opening of the University of Berlin, and
will celebrate the achievement of Fichte, who was the first Rector of the
University and, in great measure, its founder. Professor Gabriel Camp-
bell, of Dartmouth, is the representative in this country of the Philosoph-
ical Society of Berlin. Associated with him are Professor Hugo Miinster-
berg, of Harvard; President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University; and
W. T. Harris, of Washington, ex-Commissioner of Education. These
representatives of the Society are receiving and forwarding contributions
for the Fichte monument.
IN the review of Miss Shinn's book entitled " The Development of the
Senses in the First Three Years of Childhood," which appeared in this
JOURNAL (Vol. VI., No. 9), the reviewer noted that the book was not
furnished with a table of contents. In justice to the author and to the
reviewer, announcement should be made that the table of contents was
accidentally omitted by the printers in the first 200 copies of the book.
MR. WALTER B. PITKIN, formerly assistant in philosophy in Columbia
University, and during the past two years connected with the editorial
staffs of the New York Tribune and the New York Evening Post, has been
appointed lecturer in philosophy in Columbia University for the year
1909-1910, in place of Professor G. S. Fullerton, who will be absent
on leave.
DR. BOYD H. BODE, assistant professor in philosophy in the University
of Wisconsin, has been appointed professor in philosophy in the Univer-
sity of Illinois.
VOL. VI. No. 13. JUNE 24, 1909
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
AN INTERPRETATION OF THE ST. LOUIS PHILOSOPH-
ICAL MOVEMENT
WHAT were the elements in Kant and Hegel which made them
appeal to a group of western Americans in the middle de-
cade of the nineteenth century? Why did a number of men of
ability in this country find a sort of gospel in Hegel at a time when
his philosophy was discredited and neglected in the land of its birth ?
Why did their propaganda have so considerable a measure of suc-
cess, and why were these enthusiastic students of idealistic philoso-
phy themselves so successful in practical affairs? To answer these
questions is to give a psychological interpretation of the remarkable
philosophical movement in St. Louis which began in 1859, when the
systematic study of Hegel was taken up by Henry C. Brockmeyer,
Wm. T. Harris, and a few others, and which may be said to have
ended in 1893, when the Journal of Speculative Philosophy ceased
to be published.
Investigations, as a rule, turn out to be more difficult than they
at first appear, and for this reason I entered upon this with some
reluctance. But for once I have been pleasantly disappointed. For
the answer to these questions lies almost on the surface, and con-
tinued investigation only confirms the first impression. In the first
place, why is it that any philosophical or religious movement suc-
ceeds? To this the psychologist can give a definite answer. The
reason is that the philosophy or religion in question satisfies yearn-
ings, cravings, and profound needs. It is true, as Spinoza says, that
the good is that which satisfies desire, that we do not want it because
it is good, but that we call it good because we want it. Behind these
felt needs the psychologist does not go, and possibly this is as far as
anyone can go. These cravings may be a sort of ultimate vital
reaction to be accepted as data. And certainly when they have been
shown to be the source and support of any religious, philosophical,
or social movement, the requirements of a psychological interpre-
tation of that movement have been met. This principle obviously
applies in the case of Christianity. Thus, Harnack, dealing with
337
338 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
this very question, says that one of the causes of the success of this
religion was "the irruption of the Syrian and Persian religions into
the empire, dating especially from the reign of Antoninus Pius.
These had certain traits in common with Christianity, and although
the spread of the church was at first handicapped by them, any such
loss was amply made up for by the new religious cravings which
they stirred within the minds of men cravings which could not
finally be satisfied apart from Christianity." He also speaks of
"the craving for some form of revelation" and "the yearning for
redemption" as being at that time widespread and general. Why
men then had these religious longings is another question, but that
they did have them and that Christianity best satisfied them is cer-
tainly one of the chief reasons why this religion triumphed over its
competitors.
Turn now to Volume L, Number 1, of the Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, and you will find on the first page the leading motive of
the St. Louis philosophical movement clearly stated by its leader.
"There is no need," he says, "to speak of the immense religious
movements now going on in this country and in England. The
tendency to break with the traditional, and to accept only what
bears for the soul its own justification, is widely active, and can end
only in the demand that Reason shall find and establish a philosoph-
ical basis for all those great ideas which are taught as religious
dogmas. Thus it is that side by side with the naturalism of such
men as Renan, a school of mystics is beginning to spring up who
prefer to ignore utterly all historical wrappages, and cleave only to
the speculative kernel itself. The vortex between the traditional
faith and the intellectual conviction can not be closed by renouncing
the latter, but only by deepening it to speculative insight." That
is, neither mysticism nor naturalism satisfies. While we can not ac-
cept tradition unmodified, our instinct for history will not allow us
to break with it altogether, and the need is felt of something more
than Emersonian insight into spiritual laws. On the other hand,
while Comte, Mill, and Spencer are valuable allies in intellectual
emancipation, their positivism does not satisfy, and indeed seems to
negate persistent and deep-seated demands of human nature.
The philosopher's passionate longing for truth is only one of the
many desires of our complex nature, and it is, therefore, not at all
strange that men whose soul-life has been nourished on Christian
conceptions should seek for an interpretation which would make it
possible for them, without losing their intellectual integrity, both to
accept the facts of science and to maintain their hold on a spiritual
movement in which they feel there is a treasure of immeasurable
value. The problem is thus stated by Harris in the second volume of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 339
the Journal: "This absolute truth, embodied in such a form as to be
lived and felt as religion, should also be thought as pure truth."
The craving for science is strong, and the perception that it is indis-
pensable is clear, but men who yearn to believe in God, freedom, and
immortality inevitably seek to escape the philosophy of naturalism
which science is often supposed to involve. Indeed, even those who
feel no interest in saving Christian doctrines, and who can not be
accused of seeking in Hegelianism an excuse for continuing to be-
lieve what they know, or strongly suspect, to be untrue, are op-
pressed by the conception that our lives are parts of a rigid order
and unimportant incidents in a great natural process. There is a
deep craving in most men for some view according to which our life
can be regarded as something more than "a mere item in a natural
world," more than a bubble poured by the eternal Sake, for some
world-view in which humanity shall appear* significant. Any phi-
losophy which even promises this, which seems to offer a way of es-
cape from the view that man is a mere phenomenon, is sure to be
welcomed as a gospel. This is one of the reasons why a number of
citizens of St. Louis were looking to Kant and Hegel for help a third
of a century ago, i. e., at a time when Herbert Spencer was the phi-
losopher most read by the American people. Whether satisfaction
was really to be found where the St. Louis students of German
thought looked for it is an entirely different question. In such
cases it is enough to offer a plausible promise to satisfy. I merely
remark here that it seems significant that in America, as in Germany,
those who begin with Kantian views tend to make the transition to
the Hegelian. For while it is interesting at first to be told that mind
is the condition of space and time and that it gives laws to nature,
in the end such ideas are likely to seem more or less fantastic, and
dissatisfaction inevitably arises with the view that our thoughts
merely play about over the surface of things without ever reaching
the truth. In the Hegelian scheme, we at least seem to be delivered
from a narrow, subjective human world, and to have a significant
place as phases of a great developmental scheme in which something
is being achieved, in which even that which is "annulled" is taken
up and preserved, and in which the individual shares the life of the
universe. The individual feels that so far as his thoughts are true,
they are not his merely ; and even his aspirations, if they are in the
direction of the world-process, are not an individual peculiarity.
The world-life is thus conceived to be living, thinking, working,
aspiring in the personal human life. Hegel was welcomed because
he enabled men to think nobly of themselves, and to satisfy the age-
long and well-nigh universal craving for a conception of human life
340 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
as significant because united and cooperating with and sharing the
life of reality.
This is not, however, the whole story. There was something more
in Hegel for the St. Louis philosophers than the apparent satisfac-
tion of religious needs. While some minds are content with empir-
ical methods, others seem to have a constitutional yearning toward
the deductive ideal. Of the latter, Plato is the great prototype.
His philosophy is a quest for a supreme principle, for the idea of the
good, from which, if it could only be discovered, he conceived that all
science might be deduced. Brockmeyer and Harris, especially, of
the St. Louis group, were minds of this temper. It is interesting in
this connection to note the former's statement that it was a sugges-
tion of Plato's that determined him to the study of philosophy.
"The more I thought of it," he says, "the more it seemed to be the
only thing to follow. It was the path of pure thought. While I
was at Brown I searched for some philosopher among the moderns
who carried this out. Happening upon Hedge's 'German Prose
Writers,' I was directed to Hegel, and found that his 'Unabridged
Logic' was the greatest modern effort in the direction of pure
thought. The world since the classic days has made its chief prog-
ress in the conquest of material nature. And why? Simply be-
cause mankind has been furnished by the Greeks and Arabs with a
perfect instrument mathematics, the basis of mechanics and of all
the physical sciences. By means of this perfect instrument all the
advances have been made. And they have been so rapid because it
is so perfect. What professor of mathematics has to justify his
science before his scholars? But how is it with the higher modes
of human activity? We are little if anything ahead of the Greeks,
simply because the instrument for the transmission of pure thought
logic made practically no progress towards perfection from the
days of Aristotle to those of Hegel. And though Hegel has by no
means done all, he has accomplished more than anyone else."
The deductive ideal cherished by these men is even more clearly
stated by Harris. Introduced to Hegel's philosophy by Broekmeyer,
this vigorous mind immediately realized that it had found its affin-
ity. And although, like all the great thinker's disciples, he differs
in particulars from his master, he is one with him on essential points.
In his critical exposition of Hegel's Logic, he says that he struggled
for a long time with the question ' ' How to convey to a neophyte an
idea of the province of such a system of pure thought how, in short,
to demonstrate the necessary existence of pure thought and show
its significance in solving all problems. Such pure thought, could
one demonstrate its existence as an element in all concrete problems,
would furnish the formulae for the solution of all questions. . . .
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 341
This process, with the pure forms of experience that is to say, with
the categories underlying experience gives us a sort of organon,
or logic of ontology, containing in general formulae all the solutions
to be found in experience. Just as in the case of mathematics,
the analytical solution given in the algebraic formula? is a general
one and furnishes the pure form for all concrete or applied solu-
tions ; so the pure-thought solution, according to this logic, develops
what is essential in all solutions of particular cases; for these par-
ticular cases are only applications of the pure-thought elements to
limited spheres of conditions. Once master of the general solution,
one can solve the practical questions that fall under it."
This general or pure-thought solution of the problems of life
the leaders of the St. Louis movement thought they had found in
the Hegelian dialectic, and they proceeded at once to the application.
In this line of their activity, Brockmeyer seems to have been the
leader. Harris speaks admiringly of him in this wise: "He im-
pressed us with the practicality of philosophy, inasmuch as he could
flash into the questions of the day, or even into the questions of the
moment, the highest insight of philosophy and solve their problems.
Even the hunting of wild turkeys or squirrels was the occasion for
the use of philosophy. Philosophy came to mean with us, therefore,
the most practical of all species of knowledge. We used it to solve
all problems connected with school-teaching and school-management.
We studied the dialectic of politics and political parties and under-
stood how measures and men might be combined by its light."
"Fantastic!" do you say? Perhaps not so fantastic as it seems.
For these men were successful in their several lines, in political,
business and professional life. Governor Brockmeyer rendered
great service to his state, while Dr. Harris attained a distinguished
place in the educational world, becoming United States Commis-
sioner of Education, known and honored both at home and abroad.
Other members of this group became men of distinction, among
whom may be mentioned Thomas Davidson, Denton J. Snider,
George H. Howison, and F. Louis Soldan.
But it may be said that these men were successful not because of,
but in spite of, their philosophy. I am of the opinion, however,
that in some cases these men were not entirely mistaken in attribu-
ting their success in part to the employment of Hegelian concepts.
When the matter is well considered, this opinion will be found far
less strange than it may at first seem. For what is a concept but a
mental instrument? And even at the fearful risk of being sus-
pected of holding pragmatist views of the nature of truth, I further
ask, how are the fruitfulness and value of a concept to be tested ex-
cept by its results, by the way it works ? Take, for instance, the con-
342 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
cept of evolution : in scientific study it has proved not only valuable,
but indispensable. John Fiske said of it: "Whether planets or
mountains or mollusks or subjunctive modes or tribal confederacies
be the things studied, the scholars who have studied them most
fruitfully were those who studied them as phases of development.
Their work has directed the current of thought : all other work has
died." This concept is, moreover, proving to be one of the strong-
est psychic factors of civilization making for social stability and
orderly progress. It is the antitoxine for revolution. For those
who thoroughly understand that social institutions are products of
ages of growth, and not of manufacture, realize the futility of
schemes for social reconstruction which might otherwise seem plaus-
ible and be really dangerous. The idea of evolution is, therefore, a
potent factor in social evolution, since it tends both to stability and
order, and to the flexibility and modifiability which the conditions
of life demand.
The value of such a mental instrument as this is, of course, easily
and quickly perceived. Not so, however, with the Hegelian concepts :
of these the average American student makes sport that is, when
he considers them at all. Having been brought up in an atmosphere
of love for the practical and of contempt for the speculative, and
having heard and read caricatures of Hegelianism, he is inclined to
despair of all who take this philosophy seriously as of those who have
parted company with reality, who have left the road to truth and are
lost to all sane thinking forevermore. But it is a curious fact that
some who for any reason have been led to study Hegel, although
approaching him in this spirit, have found awaiting them a great
surprise. Like Moliere's delightful fool who was being coached for
a social career, and who on learning the distinction between prose
and poetry was overjoyed to find that he had been speaking prose
without knowing it, the intensely practical American mind is aston-
ished to find that the reviled dialectic of Hegel is simply a quaint
statement of the principles which he knows and applies intuitively,
and to which in large measure he owes his practical success.
For life is an art, and as such it is more complex than any science.
It is never the expression of a single principle, but always funda-
mentally a conciliation of interests. To live well, successfully, and
happily, it is necessary to recognize and do justice to the egoistic and
the altruistic tendencies, to the spirit of self-sacrifice and the spirit
of self-development. As the human mind is the theater of an im-
mense number of impulses, instincts, desires, and needs which are the
raw material of life and which become a personality only when they
are organized, when each is given due recognition and assigned its
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 343
proper place ; so society is an organization of many interests, none of
which is without significance. The unsuccessful man often owes his
failure to his tendency to take the social oppositions with which he
has to deal as absolute rather than as complementary. He is not
conciliatory, for he denies all reason to those who differ from him,
and so begets irreconcilable antagonisms that defeat his own aims.
If a reformer, he is apt to be a fanatic, and regard those who do not
fall in with his plans as the incarnation of evil. And he can only
see hypocrisy in those who refuse to take a principle and run away
with it, but are wise enough to secure for it as extended an applica-
tion as the circumstances permit.
For such unpractical and futile fanaticism the vision of Hegel is
an effective cure. That Hegel had a vision of the truth is explicitly
admitted even by Professor James. He speaks of him as " a naively
observant man," and says that ''Merely as a reporter of certain
aspects of the actual, Hegel is great and true. . . . There is a dialectic
movement in things, if such you please to call it, one that the whole
institution of concrete life establishes. Hegel's vision agrees with
countless facts. His dialectic picture is a fair account of a good
deal of the world. . . . Somehow life does out of its total resources
find a way of satisfying opposites at once." Hegel saw that this is
a living world, and understood that to see anything truly we must
see it in its relations, that all that is finite is provisional, that the
objects and institutions by which we set such store are but phases of
a process, and that no antagonisms are absolute. Now says James,
' ' Hegel 's originality lay in transporting the process from the sphere
of percepts to that of concepts. ' '
But herein lay not only his originality, but his service. For
entirely aside from the inferences that Hegel drew, aside from his
peculiar formulae, his mistakes and errors of every kind, the great
fact remains that Hegelian concepts are very useful instruments in a
world in which things are dialectic. All successful leaders and
managers of men are in a sense unconscious Hegelians. The art of
life consists in knowing how to conciliate interests, in making the
compromises which efficiency demands. It is, of course, easy to
caricature this philosophy, but it seems clear that a certain amount
of it is conducive to moral integrity as well as to practical success.
For it legitimates the compromises which success in practical life
requires, which we are all compelled to make, but which, when we
have no philosophy which gives this legitimation, make us reproach
ourselves with inconsistency and each other with hypocrisy. The man
who is accustomed to regard adherents of other religions and political
parties as representing views which are rather the supplements or
344 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
complements of his own than their absolute negation, who knows that
the whole truth about a matter can never be stated in a single propo-
sition, may make an honest and efficient fight for the truth that he
thinks timely and important, and yet with perfect sincerity recognize
that those who are opposed to him are probably not entirely without
some right and reason on their side.
These principles were illustrated in the case of the leader of the
St. Louis movement in philosophy. It is recorded that when, in
1867, "William T. Harris became superintendent of the St. Louis
public schools, the wisdom of the appointment was questioned.
What could a speculative philosopher, a spinner of theories and a
devotee of the unpractical, do in a position which called for practical
wisdom and the power of managing men ? Yet it was soon clear that
no mistake had been made. The dialectician knew how to apply his
concepts, and although the school board was composed largely of
ward politicians, he was so far able to win and keep their support
for his progressive measures that the St. Louis schools were soon
recognized as among the best in the country. The St. Louis philos-
ophers also devoted much time to the study of masterpieces of litera-
ture and art, and, in their own opinion at least, found Hegelian con-
cepts very helpful in their interpretative efforts. We to-day can
not share their enthusiasm. We can but feel that their interpreta-
tions consisted too largely in ascribing to the great poets and artists
of the past an elaborate philosophical view of which they were wholly
innocent. Yet the movement was productive of good to the extent
that it led busy westerners to study classics in which they might not
otherwise have been interested. Nor can it be maintained that the
Hegelian concepts are entirely unfruitful in literary study. For the
great writers are like the complex world they portray in that they
are not the representatives of a single idea or tendency, their great-
ness consisting partly in their ability to do justice to the oppositions
which we find in experience. The result is that the greater the
writer, the more adequately he reflects life, the greater seem his
inconsistencies to narrow minds, and the more frequently is he claimed
as an authority by contending parties. Thus, the New Testament is
regarded by some as a socialistic book, and by others as a classic
expression of the gospel of individualism. So it has been also with
Plato, Shakespeare, and Goethe.
This episode in the history of our western life can hardly be
regarded by men of intellectual interests without a considerable
degree of sympathy. One of the simplest facts of observation is
that in spite of all that is said of the practical minds of Americans,
they can not do without philosophy. And now that many are no
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 345
longer satisfied with the traditional religious view of life, they are
restless and unsatisfied till they find another. They run here and
there, and it is pathetic to see in what pitiful and fantastic theories
they sometimes put their trust. Forty years ago men and women in
this city seeking guidance for their thoughts and lives turned to the
romantic philosophy of Germany. That they did so is greatly to
their credit, for, whatever the defects of the thought-systems they
looked to for help, they were at least intellectually respectable.
The pity is that this interesting philosophical movement proved
so temporary, that it was a mere episode or exception, that the fan-
tastic and unintelligible elements of a philosophy which contains so
many fruitful thoughts should have led to wholesale condemnation
and general neglect. For in our western civilization we still need
the service that Hegel has shown himself able to render. We need
to keep clear the distinctions which it is the business of the mind to
make, and yet to remember that things that are conceptually distin-
guished are not thereby separated in fact, and that our classifications
have a practical and not a metaphysical validity. In the difficult
task of living together and of reconstructing our ideas and institu-
tions, it would lessen the friction and promote cooperation if the
eager promoters of special interests could learn the great German
philosopher's secret that to overemphasize any aspect of truth is to
get into a false position, that other standpoints have their relative
justification, that one may be conciliatory and yet sincere, that the
absolute tone in us mortals is out of place, and that large-mindedness
is as important and necessary in moral and political life as in
philosophy.
G. R. DODSON.
ST. Louis, Mo.
HEGEL'S CONCEPTION OF AN INTRODUCTION TO
PHILOSOPHY
notes were suggested by the rumor that philosophy is
-*- becoming popular. It may soon become the fashion for every-
body who is anybody to have his Weltanschauung. Popular science,
Christian and unchristian, not excluding psychical research, are in-
teresting symptoms. However secluded is the academic hall, its
students come from a modern world of just such symptoms.
With the rapid increase of students seeking and needing an in-
troduction to philosophy, is emphasized this question: How shall
a man with merely common sense be introduced? The question is
pedagogical, but it is more : it is itself a philosophical problem.
346 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
That some definitely special introduction is considered necessary
is imade apparent by the increased attention of teachers to introduc-
tion courses, and by the large number of printed introductions ap-
pearing within a few years. On my shelf is a score of such texts,
expressing widely varying conceptions of what it means to introduce
people to philosophy.
It would be fascinating, even if entangling, to consider these con-
ceptions severally, and, especially, together. But, on the shelf with
these books, is a worn and cherished volume over a century old, a
book until recently out of print, a translation of which from the
German nobody has ever taken the trouble to publish, a little book
which it took a literary detective months to procure for me, and for
which I then paid the hard-earned but cheerfully surrendered sum
of seventeen dollars. It is Hegel's introduction to philosophy, in-
tended by him as the introduction to the philosophy his philosophy.
I refer to his early writing, the ' ' Phanomenologie des Geistes. ' '
One does not have to pay seventeen dollars for it since the new
editions have appeared. The Hegelian revival has been nowhere
more fruitful than in the critical study of the neglected Jugend-
schriften. In the light of the revelations of these earlier writings,
new and pronounced interest has been awakened in the "Phanom-
enologie ' ' ; and a better understanding of it is immanent.
I propose cursorily to examine this work to discover what, in
general, is Hegel's conception of an introduction to philosophy.
First of all, there are certain well defined problems which any
adequate introduction to philosophy must meet. To ask of what
sort is Hegel 's conception, is to ask him how he solves these problems.
An introduction to anything is a transition from something rela-
tively known to something relatively unknown. Arising out of this
very definition are three classes of problems : First, What is it that
the philosophically uninitiated with whom we have to do may be
assumed relatively to know? Second, What is the relatively un-
known thing to which we are especially trying to give him the
transition? Third, Just what shall be the nature of the transition
itself?
Now, that which our philosophically uninitiated may be pre-
sumed relatively to know includes at least the current verdicts of
the common sense attitudes toward life, together with something of
literature, of science, of art, of religion, of history, of human institu-
tionshowever little of these, something more of each of these than of
technical philosophy. From these things the transition to philosophy
must be made : and I insist that it is obvious that any true introduction
to philosophy is bound to relate philosophy in a specially solved man-
ner to just these things in order to effect any transition at all. And an
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 347
introducer to philosophy must determine just to what he is trying
to introduce the student. Is it to a sort of philosophical dictionary?
Some seem to think so. Is it to a realization of the problems of
philosophy? To their definite solution as well? To typical solu-
tions? There are those who think each of these things. Is it to
historic systems? To some special system which the introducer
holds? To the power of spontaneous philosophic thinking? To all
of these? "Yes" is the answer to each of these queries if you ask
the right book.
It is demanding a solution to these three definite classes of prob-
lems that I approach Hegel's ' ' Phanomenologie. " I hope to indi-
cate that Hegel's conception of an introduction to philosophy
(however he may be said to have worked it out) is highly definite,
generally commendable, and infinitely suggestive to the teacher who
wishes to meet present-day needs.
It were supererogatory here to review the plan and scope of a
so well known work as the "Phanomenologie." It is sufficient to
remind ourselves that it was undoubtedly inspired by a class of
literary creations in vogue at the time. There were current several
romances of a sort whose hero is a type rather than a concrete per-
sonality. In such romances, stress was laid upon significant proc-
esses of development through which the type-hero passes. "Wil-
helm Meister" is an excellent instance of this type-fiction. Such
works suggested to Hegel the idea of writing a biography, not of this
or of that type, but of the type of types, the Weltgeist: more defi-
nitely, the story of the self as it proceeds on its way through the
typical dialectical stages through which ordinary knowledge passes
to philosophical insight.
Here, then, first of all, we have a suggestion of an introduction
to philosophy intended for every man, which is itself the story of
the phases through which, indeed, Everyman passes in achieving
philosophy.
And, now, since every man begins with the common sense atti-
tudes, we have here an introduction that proposes to relate itself
very vitally to common sense. For instance, in the very first section
of the book, a typical common sense attitude toward experience is
subtly and accurately depicted under the head, "Die sinnliche
Gewissheit." We all recognize the unreflective point of view where
one is naively certain of the truth, but is not aware of the process by
which certainty is won. So one makes the familiar appeal to his
immediate experiences as of ultimate and decisive significance.
One lays great stress upon "facts," and refers with absolute assur-
ance to the "face-value" of facts.
348 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Now, how does one make the transition from this na'ive attitude
to the philosophic point of view?
Well, in the first place, Hegel tacitly insists that any attitude
of common sense is itself already philosophy of an undeveloped sort.
However crude he is, a man's life is the practical expression of a
theory. And not only is his life a theory, but his theory is a life.
But, just because common sense is both a philosophy and a crude
one, and also a life, must it have its own inner law of process or
dialectic, which leads it out of itself to a viewpoint more self-sus-
taining, that is, more philosophical. For instance, "Die sinnliche
Gewissheit" soon discovers that this vaunted immediate "fact" in
the flux of facts refuses to mean anything just by itself that
"meaning" is some invariant of the flow of experience.
So far then, Hegel's conception of the introduction of common
sense to a philosophical viewpoint suggests: First, that for the be-
ginner, philosophy were better viewed not merely as a theory about
life, but as an attitude toward life; second, that common sense is a
real attitude not alien to philosophy, and so is responsible for main-
taining itself when serious, it does not, as a matter of fact, hesi-
tate to accept this responsibility; third, that thus the transition or
introduction to philosophy is to be depicted as an inner development
of common sense itself a development which does not say that com-
mon sense was wrong and philosophy right, but which sublates the
undeniable truth of common sense in the larger view.
This is not all of Hegel's conception, but before going farther
let us ask how effective this much might conceivably be made, from a
pedagogical standpoint.
Suppose that he who has thus far attained only the common sense
attitude mentioned studies the well-told story of its self -defeat and
ultimate triumph in a larger view; would that larger view remain
but a pretty fiction on the page? Or, would the reader too have
been moved along by the logic of this drama of his own spirit so that
he himself would share in the triumph of the larger view? And,
finding this new-won view, in turn, meeting its tragedy and relative
triumph: and so carried on through the gradual stages which lie
between common sense and philosophic insight, would not such a
reader, I say, be effectually introduced to philosophy provided the
dramatist of the world-spirit had done his work well ? How can one
better induce common sense to approach philosophy, and, more, to
approach it philosophically, than to depict the way common sense
has to approach philosophy as soon as ever it tries to defend itself ?
I have taken one definite common sense attitude as an instance:
but Hegel does the same for most of the widely prevalent attitudes
toward life from which the transition to philosophy must be made.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 349
For instance, how acutely does Hegel depict an episode of the
scientific point of view, or ' ' Beobachtende Vernunf t, ' ' together with
its self-defeat if it is taken as self-sufficient ! Not through mere ob-
servation, but through action shall the self win its world. And so
with other partial attitudes of the human spirit.
Thus does Hegel seek, first, to relate philosophy to every so-
called unphilosophical stage of thought; and, second, to make the
transition from these stages always by an inner dialectic. But,
third, to just what, in such a conception, has one been introduced?
First, the reader is introduced to most of the typical philosophies.
This is in the nature of the attempt to depict successively the typical
attitudes of the individual toward his world. And, further, each
possible philosophical attitude is made to realize itself and experi-
ment with itself to the utmost, as, indeed, in the ultimate history of
philosophic systems, it actually does. Each philosophy is made in-
toxicated with assurance. Hegel shall make truth a kind of Bac-
chantic festival, where each GestaLt of truth is drunk with revelry
'(Vorrede). If objection is made that the stages do not really occur
in the precise order in which Hegel depicts them, no great point is
made : at least, the typical stages are there. Do you seek idealism ?
Here it is, in about all its conceivable forms, from the nai've practical
idealism of the primitive savage to the critical idealism of Kant, and
the absolute idealism which shall later develop into the synonym of
Hegel. Idealism is not flung at you as a dogmatic tract; it grows
up as a life, consciously emerging at all only as the demand of cer-
tain realistic assumptions.
Some of our introductions to philosophy seek to introduce us by
way of the concrete history of philosophy. Others bring in con-
crete examples from that history. Hegel does neither. To my own
mind, he suggests the true relation of an introduction to the material
of historic systems. Throughout the " Phanomenologie, " not one
philosopher's name is mentioned. The student is not to be diverted
from his absorption in the drama of the possible attitudes toward
the world by the names of those who happen to have held these atti-
tudes, together with their highly contingent modifications. That
belongs to the history of philosophy proper. Yet Hegel, a consum-
mate master of the history of philosophy, has that history in mind
all the time. The world-views depicted are those that have histor-
ically occurred, but divested of the merely accidental, the chrono-
logical, and presented in their logical reality and natural relations.
There is the kind of thing at each stage that might occur at any
time.
One is here truly getting ready for historic systems ; in the only
real sense, is being introduced to them. Let me illustrate: impor-
350 >* THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tant aspects of the ethical doctrine of Kant are richly portrayed in
the section on the "Moralische Weltanschauung" but more, made
strangely alive and related as a life to other attitudes, not submitted
as a mere name, or as a categorical teaching. The essential view of
positivists like Pearson and Mach you discover at the eloquent close
of the section on "Kraft und Verstand," where it is revealed that
what you took for reality "out yonder," for the "nature of things,"
is really your own construct. Would you have the student antici-
pate pragmatism? Well, you will find most of the thirteen vari-
eties; and more, motives which underlie them all. For instance,
Hegel will make you understand, yea, live to the full, the attitude
that truth can not be appreciated by looking at any final system of
categories, that truth must be lived to be appreciated. You will
find even Tolstoi, yes, and Nietzsche, peering out at you from the
marvellous pages devoted to the Aufklarung. And so, from first
to last, with other typical historic attitudes.
But not only is the student introduced to the typical systems
which he shall afterwards find embodied in historic philosophies : he
is taught to realize the problems of which these systems are to be
regarded as solutions. Each successive view arises, indeed, only as
the result of the realization of problems ; and, as the solution of such,
will itself, in turn, conjure up its own problems for which, again,
solution must be sought. Thus, for instance, is realized the prob-
lem of the one and the many, which appears through the book on
successively higher levels. The student is not told, "Here is a prob-
lem," but he discovers that he has helped to create a problem. It
develops before his very eyes, and he watches it and partakes in it
with the interest and participation with which he watches the grow-
ing complications of an attention-compelling play.
It may be that your doctrine is that the sort of philosophy to
which the modern youth most needs to be introduced is actual and
spontaneous philosophic thinking, not so much to a system as to a
philosophic mode of mind. Well, nowhere is Hegel didactic. You
achieve these successive world-views yourself, or you understand
them not at all. Meanings are successively elicited by your coopera-
tionnot proclaimed.
It may be your doctrine that an introduction should perform the
office of a technical philosophical dictionary, that it furnishes the
tyro with his tools. I think that Hegel's conception of the use of
philosophical terms in a merely introductory treatment is at least
suggestively correct. They are nowhere to be used falsely: yet are
they nowhere to be used with the forbidding rigidity of the technical
system. Hegel himself is, in this regard, more or less sinful. I
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 351
should say that in an introduction terminology should grow more
definite as problems and solutions become more definite, until, at
the end, one is quite ready for an approximate crystallization of
meanings.
But the ever persistent query arises : Should an introduction pur-
pose to lead the reader to some final system of the introducer's own?
Well, yes: and no. Surely, the introducer must, as a philosopher
dealing with the explication of the real meaning and more or less
correct interrelations of 
