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THE JOUBXAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AXD SCIENTIFIC METHODS
PSYCHOLOGY
AND
SCIENTIFIC METHODS
EDITED BY
FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE
ASTD
WENDELL T. BUSH
VOLUME XIII
JAXUAKY-DZCEMBEB, 1916
SHEW YORK
THE SCIENCE PRESS
1916
PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
LANCASTER. PA.
VOL. XIII, No. 1. JANUARY 6, 1916
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
A STUDY OF PURPOSE. I
INTRODUCTION: TELEOLOGY AS A SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM
THE tendency to interpret natural phenomena in teleological terms
dates back to the very dawn of human thought. Mythology
and primitive cosmology are largely an attempt to explain history
as a progressive fulfilment of the purposes of the gods. Philosophy
and science till recently laid special emphasis on motive and design.
The earth was believed to have been created expressly for human
habitation. Animals and plants were formed for the sake of min-
istering to human needs. The abundance of air and water, the
great excess of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen over other
less important elements, was believed to have been predetermined
on account of their peculiar utility to life, especially the life of man.
In biology the adaptation of organs to their functions was too ob-
vious not to suggest design and prevision. The periodicity of an-
nual plants and the seasonal modifications of certain animals seemed
prearranged to harmonize with the length of the solar year.
Psychology discovered a pattern for all purposive relations in the
voluntary activity of man. In human purpose the result to be at-
tained is first pictured in consciousness, and the thinker then pro-
ceeds by a series of acts to fulfil his preconceived aim.
The past few decades have seen many of the traditional teleolo-
gical interpretations of nature vigorously challenged. "When cosmic
history came to be read in terms of evolutionary progress, the earlier
anthropomorphic conceptions of stellar and terrestrial creation were
inevitably swept away. More recently, following the acceptance of
biological evolution, the older teleological views concerning adapta-
tion of living forms to their environment and of structure to func-
tion have required drastic revision.
Some biologists still cling to the teleological standpoint in inter-
preting organic evolution, and are seeking to reformulate the old
vitalistic philosophy in modern scientific terms. On the other hand,
not a few earnest investigators, men of rigorously scientific ideals,
5
6 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
are striving to banish the concept of purpose from biology alto-
gether. They aim to interpret the evolution of species and organs
in a strictly mechanistic manner. Among psychologists to-day there
is a similar division into voluntarists and psychophysicists. The
latter seek to minimize the efficiency of volition and to describe all
human acts in terms of psychophysical activity. This would seem,
in the last analysis, to involve an interpretation of purpose in
physiological terms, as a series of physicochemical changes.
These differences in standpoint can scarcely be attributed to
carelessness of observation. They depend rather upon certain un-
derlying concepts and modes of thinking which govern the scientist 's
interpretation of observed facts and determine the character of his
world-view. Among these fundamental logical notions none is more
deep-seated and persistent than the concept of Purpose.
Notwithstanding the vigorous controversy that has recently
waged between vitalists and mechanists, and the forceful argu-
ments put forward in behalf of teleology and against it, neither
side has so far given an adequate account of the nature of purpose
itself. A thorough examination of its fundamental character might
reveal a middle ground on which the two opposing parties could
unite. If we rid teleology of its anthropomorphic accretions, as
Hume removed the anthropomorphic notion of "necessity" from
causation, there is no reason why the most thoroughgoing mechanist
should not accept purposive events as a specific class of natural
processes. It is possible, also, that when the scientific untenability
of the traditional voluntarism is demonstrated, the vitalist will at-
tach more weight to physicochemical processes in biological growth
and activity.
One obstacle to a thorough understanding of the nature of pur-
pose is the present lack of coordination between the various sciences.
Biologists for the most part assume an interpretation of human
volition drawn from the psychology of a bygone generation. Psy-
chologists still lay stress on the unscientific notions of "free will"
and "responsibility" bequeathed to us by medieval philosophy.
The data derived from cosmology, biology, and psychology have not
yet been united into a consistent, scientific interpretation of volun-
tary, teleological action.
A thoroughgoing analysis of purpose is one of the prime needs
of empirical science to-day. Every branch of natural science re-
quires a clarification of this notion. The newer conceptions of
change and growth induced by the evolution theory make it essen-
tial to determine what scientific meaning shall be attached to the
phenomenon of "anticipation" and the judgment of "fitness."
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 7
Psychologists and biologists alike are vitally concerned in the solu-
tion of the teleological problem.
Genetically, the notion of purpose arose from a certain definite
type of human experience. The typical purposive experience con-
sists in a thought of some future occurrence followed by a series of
actions which culminate in the very situation which the original
idea represented. Thus we have a temporal sequence beginning
with an idea and ending with the perception of a situation or event
corresponding to that idea. Whether or not the "idea" produces
the "physical situation" in a causal manner, at least the temporal
succession is a matter of common observation, and this order is the
reverse of the usual sensation-memory sequence. It is experiences
of this type that have given rise to our general notion of purpose,
teleology, volition, means to end, adaptiveness. On historical
grounds, therefore, it seems fitting to begin the study of purpose
with an analysis of purposive consciousness. Whatever the scien-
tific interpretation of the phenomena may be, the occurrence of
conscious "forethought" and its subsequent "fulfilment" through
human acts is not open to question.
The biological problem of purpose is closely related to the psy-
chological problem. Biologists find that certain responses are made
to situations which do not develop fully till after the reaction is
actually begun. In other words, a reaction may in a measure an-
ticipate the situation to which it is a response. But apart from
"conscious anticipations" such reactions are based upon organic
structure which has slowly evolved in the species and developed
in the individual. The biological problem of teleology, then, is to
account if possible for the phylogenetic and ontogenetic rise of an-
ticipatory reactions, and to determine their scientific significance.
A further problem is concerned with the trend of cosmic and
terrestrial evolution. The history of the stellar universe and of
the earth itself may or may not admit of a teleological interpreta-
tion. In the past it has generally been assumed that the universe
was definitely planned from the beginning and that it is working
toward a certain foreordained goal. What attitude shall science
take toward this deep-rooted hypothesis? Can modern research
throw any new light on the trend of cosmic history? Whether or
not a scientific investigation of the problem will lead to a definite
solution, at least it opens up a legitimate field for scientific study.
Science to-day stands face to face with the problem: What is the
place of "purpose" in the universe as a whole?
Three distinct lines of scientific inquiry, then, are indicated:
(1) The psychological analysis of purpose. What are the distinc-
tive features of purposive states of consciousness? (2) The biolo-
8 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
gical history and meaning of purpose. How did purposive be-
havior originate and develop in organisms? Does this type of ac-
tivity harmonize with the physicochemical interpretation of vital
phenomena? (3) The role of purpose in the universe. Is there
scientific evidence of a teleological sequence in the inorganic world?
Shall the scientific thinker adopt a thoroughgoing mechanistic stand-
point as his working hypothesis in interpreting the cosmos? Or,
shall he assume the existence of an underlying entelechy, which di-
rects the course of cosmic evolution ?
PART I. THE PURPOSIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
A human act is said to be purposive when it is preceded by an
idea representing the situation which the act itself brings about.
The antecedent idea is termed the purpose or forethought, and the
resulting situation is called the end or fulfilment. The whole se-
quence from idea to fulfilment constitutes purposive activity. The
peculiarity of purposive activity (as experience) is that the repre-
sentation of the situation precedes the presentation, while in ordi-
nary experience the representation of a situation follows the presen-
tation.
In analyzing the consciousness of purpose it is customary to
select acts which involve a considerable amount of preliminary de-
liberation. But many simple acts which are performed without
deliberation contain the essential features of purpose and are quite
as typical. The analysis is made easier if we select these simpler
acts for study.
For example, I am reading and it grows dark. I think of turn-
ing on the electric light, and without hesitation the action is per-
formed. The act here described is just as purposive as if I had
deliberated and planned out every step in the procedure beforehand.
In psychophysical terms, the experience involves a thought repre-
senting a future situation, followed at once by the appropriate reac-
tion. The characteristic of a conscious experience which distin-
guishes it as purposive, is that the antecedent thought shall picture
or symbolize a situation which subsequent muscular activity brings
about. In psychological terms, the mental picture of the act pre-
cedes the perception of the act as an actual occurrence. Whether
the thought itself is to be regarded as the cause or starting-point
of the chain of physiological events will be considered later.
Purposive consciousness is observed directly only through per-
sonal experience. But its presence in another individual, like the
presence of mental data generally, may be inferred from the charac-
ter of his reaction or from his verbal report. The psychological
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 9
study of purpose is therefore not limited to subjective investiga-
tion.
Upon examining the purposive consciousness we observe a num-
ber of factors, some of which enter into all purposive experiences,
while others occur only in special cases.
1. Every purposive experience begins with an idea of some
future situation. This idea is the fundamental factor in every pur-
posive experience. It may be termed the forethought. A fore-
thought is the starting-point of a series of events which usually cul-
minate in a perception corresponding to the forethought. The pur-
posive character of the experience, however, is usually recognizable
before the series is completed.
2. Another characteristic factor which appears at the beginning
of the purposive experience is variously known as decision, wish, or
assent. Assent distinguishes a purposive series from a sequence in
which the idea is fortuitously fulfilled. An idea may chance to be
followed later on by a sensory situation corresponding to it without
there being any significant relation between the two. Day-dreams
sometimes come true. A forethought is not purposive unless accom-
panied by a consciousness of assent, either as a separate associated
experience or as a feeling-tone of the forethought.
3. A feeling of potency is commonly associated with the fore-
thought. There is a strong tendency to believe that the forethought
itself has power to produce the result foreseen.
4. A further characteristic of purposive events is that the in-
dividual himself is directly concerned in the outcome. One's pur-
poses are not fulfilled by another. The consciousness of self may
or may not be explicitly associated with the forethought; but the
self is always implicitly involved in purpose.
5. During the progress of purposive activity there frequently
appears a thought or feeling that certain thoughts or perceptions
are suitable or fit. In contrast with this a feeling of unfitmss is
associated with other elements in the experience. The fulfilment
itself is marked by a feeling-tone of fitness if the experience is in the
focus of attention.
The mental states which intervene between forethought and ful-
filment may or may not include experiences of a purposive character.
I think of turning on the light and proceed forthwith to perform the
act without further thought of ways and means. This is typical of
habitual actions. Here the intermediate phases of consciousness
are not purposive. I perceive the changed positions of objects as
I rise and move across the room. But these perceptions in no way
tally with my forethought; they are no more purposive than the
10 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
set of experiences which I have when some one else comes in and
walks over to the switch.
Where the act is novel or complex, experiences of a purposive
character frequently occur during its progress. For example, many
years ago I thought of making a life-work of psychology. Mean-
while many thoughts have arisen representing certain phases of
this work. These intervening experiences are purposive. They
are forethoughts of which my professional goal is the fulfilment.
The consciousness of purpose may be greatly syncopated. In
simple, habitual acts, as we have seen, it consists merely of a fore-
thought tinged with assent. Even where the act is very complex
the accompanying experiences, however varied they may be, include
no purpose factors other than the five already mentioned. Let us
examine these characteristic factors in detail.
1. Forethought. The forethought may be simple or complex.
It may be either an image or a symbolic thought. For example,
when I propose to turn on the light, the forethought may consist of
a kinesthetic image of rising, an auditory image of my footfalls, a
visual image of the electric switch, a tactile-kinesthetic image of
turning the switch, a visual image of the flood of light, etc. Any one
of these images may be present alone, or several of them together.
On the other hand, the act of lighting may not be preceded by
any image corresponding to the future sensory experience. Instead
there may be a verbal experience of one type or another ; I may have
either an auditory or a vocal representation of the word "light."
Here there is no resemblance between the forethought and the per-
ceptions which accompany the fulfilment. But the two experiences
correspond through the arbitrary symbolic association between word
and image. To think of lighting in symbolic verbal terms is quite
as purposive as to think of the result in terms of imagery. 1
The precise sensory character of the idea or image constituting
the forethought is of no moment in this analysis. It varies with the
individual, but these variations do not affect the character of the
purpose-consciousness. The distinguishing mark of the forethought
is its reference to some future situation.
Regarded from the psychophysical standpoint, in purposive
events an image or idea is the stimulus which produces the corre-
sponding physical situation, whereas in ordinary events a physical
situation is the stimulus which arouses the corresponding mental
state. From a purely psychological standpoint, the image precedes
i In order to avoid the problem of imageless thought, which is irrelevant to
the present discussion, we may confine the term image to images which resemble
the sense-perception of a situation, and use the term idea to denote symbolic
verbal experience. The vaguer term thought will cover both image and idea.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 11
the sensation in purpose-experiences, while in ordinary experiences
the sensation precedes the image. In other words, the usual tem-
poral order of certain events is reversed. The photographic picture
of a physical situation endures after the situation has passed away ;
the record of an event remains after the event has been completed.
Neither the photograph nor the record anticipates its prototype.
But in purposive phenomena the mental picture or record antici-
pates the primary consciousness which it represents. Anticipation
is the fundamental characteristic of the purposive experience, just
as it is the distinctive feature of objective teleological events.
In the analysis of purpose an attempt is frequently made to dis-
tinguish between the final result and the means which produce this
end. On the psychological side such a distinction does not appear
justified. The idea of the means is a purposive thought of substan-
tially the same sort as the idea of the outcome. I may think of ris-
ing and of turning on the light. Each of these ideas is a fore-
thought. I may think of the entire sequence of events beginning
with rising, then walking across the floor, aiid finally turning the
switch. Each member in the series is a forethought which is ful-
filled in turn. The final outcome is distinguished only as being the
last term in the series which is perceptualized.
Sometimes the original end is transformed into a means for some
ulterior end ; or again, the means may come to be regarded as an end
in itself. In the example given I may think of rising from my chair
because I have finished reading, and without thinking as yet of any
further action. Thus far the thought of rising is the end. But
before starting to rise I may think of turning on the light. The
act of rising then becomes a means and the act of turning on the
light becomes a new end. Or, having thought of rising and turning
on the light, I may rise and then continue pacing to and fro without
completing the act. Here the means has become the end.
Ordinarily we think first of the end, then of the means. In the
example given, the first thought was to continue reading in spite
of the gathering darkness. The next thought was to turn on the
light. Last of all came the thought of getting up from the chair as
a precursory step to the act of lighting.
There is nothing especially unique about the end-thought or final
purpose, as distinct from the idea of the means. Events continue
to succeed one another indefinitely. The final result is not like the
end of a chalk-line which is essentially different from all other points
on the line. It is merely the furthest point that is considered in the
series. In the given instance I may not at the time have a definite
thought of any end beyond the act of continuing to read. But be-
fore I started to read this particular book I had thought of acquir-
12 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ing information on psychology; and many years before that I had
definitely determined to pursue psychological study as an aim in life.
Thus, taking into account not merely my mental state at the time
when I think of turning on the light, but my whole mental history
so far as relevant to the act, we discover certain experiences which
may be considered as both means and end. The thought of reading
the book is not merely an end, but a means to a broader outlook on
life.
Some forethoughts are never completely fulfilled. We have
ideals which constantly attain partial fulfilment through our ac-
tions; but since they do not represent specific acts, we experience
time and again new situations to which they correspond. The con-
ception of one's life-career is perhaps the best instance of a general
purpose. An ideal is analogous to the general notion. But unlike
the ordinary general notion it is not the outgrowth of a number of
particular experiences which have gone before ; an ideal arises before
the particulars to which it corresponds. In the general purpose,
as in the specific purpose, the usual time order is reversed : we par-
ticularize a general experience, instead of generalizing particular
experiences.
The essential feature of the purposive consciousness, then, is the
prevision or forethought of certain future events. We may picture
the whole progress of events in rather minute details; or we may
merely pick out one or more salient parts of the series to image or
symbolize. The latter is more usual. In either case the distinguish-
ing mark of the forethought is its " future reference." This is
analogous to the "past-reference" which characterizes the memory
image.
2. Assent. Not every thought of the future is purposive. An
additional factor, accompanying the purposive forethought, serves
to distinguish it from mere imagination of the future.
When I think of performing some act, such as turning on the
light, my thought is sometimes followed by the act itself or by the
beginning of a series of actions culminating in the result foreseen.
In other cases the act is not initiated, although much the same
thought is present. The fulfilment may be merely delayed, as when
I think of reading Condillac, but take no steps at present to do so.
Or the thought may occur without the slightest intention of putting
the act into realization. For example, one may picture himself
ascending the Matterhorn, and yet have no desire whatever to per-
form the feat. Where the fulfilment is merely delayed, the fore-
thought is still purposive; where there is no intention of actually
accomplishing the result, the purposive character of the experience
is lacking.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 13
The differential mark is a certain conscious datum added to the
forethought. It is a consciousness of intention, decision, or volition,
of wish, desire, or assent. This distinguishing factor occurs in
many different forms and degrees. Usually it is not a separate ex-
perience, but rather a modification of the forethought. The mental
attitude in portraying the coming act is not wholly intellectual. It
is distinctly affective, like the consciousness of "need." 1
The nature of assent is observed by comparing a purposive idea
with a mere imagination. Contrast the thought of perusing this
paper with the thought of a journey to Mars. Each is an idea
which refers to some future activity. But our attitude in the two
cases is quite different. In the former experience there is a feeling
of "actually fulfilling the idea," which is lacking in the latter.
This affective datum distinguishes a purposive forethought from a
non-purposive imagination of future happenings. In purposive ex-
periences an affective element of this sort is observable even where
there is no separate idea of decision.
If we analyze the assent factor we find that it consists of kin-
esthetic and organic data. When we think of an act in a purposive
way there is an incipient tension of the muscles concerned in the
movement, and of the finer muscles which produce an adjustment of
attention. This is often accompanied by modifications of breathing
and circulation. The sensory impulses set up by these kinesthetic
and organic adjustments are usually too weak to arouse definite
sensations; but they combine to produce an indefinite conscious at-
titude. This datum is the assent.
Assent to a future experience corresponds very closely to recog-
nition of a past experience. The recognition element in an image
is traceable to changes in adjustment brought about by repetition and
facilitation; the sensory impulses which these changes arouse do
not produce separate sensations, but form the recognition factor in
memory. The origin of assent is analogous to this ; in each case the
datum is partly affective, partly ideational.
Some psychologists assume that, in addition to assent, another
factor immediately precedes the initiation of activity. This is
known as the fiat. I do not observe any such factor, distinct from
assent, in my own experience. The thought of turning on the light
is followed immediately by rising, walking, etc. Nothing else is ex-
2 The term assent seems to express the meaning of the experience most
nearly. It implies an affective consciousness, with or without a separate idea of
initiating the action. Wish and desire emphasize the affective side overmuch,
while intention lays too great stress on the idea. Decision and volition are used
to designate complex purposes which involve reflection and delayed fulfilment;
they imply certain dynamic experiences not found in simple purposive conscious-
ness. I therefore prefer the term assent.
14 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
perienced meanwhile but the assent. In cases of complex and de-
layed purposes the assent factor is intensified and becomes more
fully separated from the forethought. "I will write this paper."
"I will begin it now." Whereupon my hand slips over to my pocket
and I take out my pen. There is no intervening fiat consciousness.
What distinguishes delayed fulfilment from immediate action?
It is certainly not the degree of desire, for we find all degrees of de-
sire present in each case. There is a minimum degree of desire asso-
ciated both with turning on the light and with reading Condillac.
The former is performed ; the latter is not. There is a high degree
of desire associated with writing this paper, which I am proceeding
to do ; and there has been for years a high degree of desire associated
with making a trip to Japan, which I have taken no steps whatever
to accomplish. The function of desire is only to increase the in-
tensity of the forethought and thus render its accomplishment more
probable.
Nor is the delayed execution due to absence of assent. An act
whose fulfilment is postponed may be assented to quite definitely.
I assent to the thought of reading Condillac in the same way that I
assent to turning on the light, although in the one case I have not
proceeded to the fulfilment of the thought these many years, while
in the other case the fulfilment is accomplished immediately.
Whether or not the act follows immediately upon the assent de-
pends on psychophysical conditions. The beginning of the act may
be delayed by an inappropriate situation, by unforeseen hindrances,
or by a long succession of thoughts while we plan how to act. When
at length the act does begin it is not preceded by a new sort of factor.
There is no magical fiat to squeeze the muscles or start a current
down the motor nerves. The assent factor is the only differentia
between purpose and sheer imagination.
So far we have considered chiefly the purposes which find their
fulfilment in objective situations and expressions of behavior. But
certain purposes are concerned primarily with ideational states. I
endeavor to think of the name of a former student. I propose to
solve a problem in chess, to find the answer of a mathematical prob-
lem, to arrange a schedule of hours, to perfect a laboratory device,
etc. In such cases the solution, the fulfilment of the purpose, is a
thought rather than an act.
I do not propose to empty two real hogsheads by pipes of dif-
ferent diameters, but only to obtain an idea of the result. I may
or may not repeat the chess moves on a real board ; but if I do play
them out, my original purpose has already been fulfilled ; I am now
endeavoring to verify my solution, and this is altogether another
purpose. I perfect my laboratory device in thought and then con-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 15
struct the machine; here there were two purposes in mind one
ideational, the other having an objective sensory fulfilment.
In ideational purpose the forethought does not exactly represent
the outcome. I do not think of the student's name in the fore-
thought of recalling it. The outcome is something more specific
than the forethought. The forethought is a problem; the fulfilment
is its solution. The intervening process frequently involves long-
continued ' ' hard thinking. ' ' So long as this thought-series does not
serve to fulfil the purpose, the forethought remains focal ; I am con-
tinually aware of my purpose to solve the problem.
The assent element usually appears later in subjective purposes
than in motor acts. The formulation of the problem seems to entail
one or more attempts at solution even before we decide to solve it.
It is sometimes difficult at the start to distinguish between a train of
fancy and a purposive thought-train.
Apart from this delay in appearance there seems to be no essen-
tial difference between the assent factor in thought problems and pur-
posive behavior. The two manifest the same characteristics as re-
gards attention. Where the purpose to be attained is something
habitual, the assent becomes marginal whether the fulfilment be a
thought or an act. The problem of determining the value of 2 + 3
is solved as quickly as the problem of rising, and the assent in both
cases is marginal. On the other hand where the purpose is novel,
and especially where it is fulfilled through trial and error, the assent
is apt to remain in the focus of consciousness throughout the process.
In fleeing from a mad dog, the thought of escape is vividly present
during all my movements and is attended by a strong degree of as-
sent, just as the thought of solving a chess problem remains foeally
present throughout the ensuing train of thought. One series is
accompanied by muscular contractions and kinesthetic sensations,
the other by cerebral activity and thought processes. The sensory
basis of the assent consciousness is different in the two cases, but I
find no distinction between the two types of assent so far as their
relation to fulfilment is concerned.
The psychological analysis of purpose has been seriously ham-
pered by the complicated examples that are usually chosen for exam-
ination. In an intricate, complex purpose, such as determining
one's attitude toward a moral issue, there is apt to be a long succes-
sion of thoughts, known as deliberation, and the assent which marks
the final passage from central activity to muscular activity is often
an epoch-making affair involving considerable readjustment of one's
entire attitude toward life. Such crucial experiences are dignified
with the name of decision or volition. I do not find in my own
case that the purposive character of these complex experiences is
16 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
different from that of simple purposes such as turning on the light.
Simple purposive experiences occur hundreds of times in every-day
life, while these complicated instances are rare. It is true the latter
involve more intense consciousness, and the assent feature is sep-
arated out into a distinct and vivid experience. But the assent ele-
ment is the same ; it is merely magnified.
Volition has proved a serious stumbling-block in psychological
analysis. The vague connotation of this term has too often led to
mystical interpretations of mental phenomena. The notion of as-
sent derived from simple types of purpose is less open to objection.
It is readily freed from anthropomorphic excrescences. There ap-
pear to be no difficulties in the way of applying it to the most com-
plex purposive experiences. The usual connotation of assent em-
braces the essential characters of "decision" as a psychological
datum. On the other hand it does not include the dynamic factor,
the feeling of potency in the forethought, which analysis shows to
be a distinct element in the purposive experience. The failure to
distinguish "assent" from the "feeling of potency" is largely re-
sponsible for the unscientific character of the traditional theory of
volition. The importance of this distinction will appear when we
examine the third factor in purposive consciousness.
3. Potency-feeling. In complex purposes which involve delib-
eration, a certain dynamic feeling accompanies the assent. We feel
that conscious volition initiates the activity itself that the decision
innervates the muscles.
A generation ago certain states of consciousness were termed
"innervation-feelings"; they seemed to demonstrate the power of
thought to bring about an action which is conceived and desired.
More recently these so-called innervation feelings have been traced
to incoming excitations from the muscles. They prove to be kin-
esthetic sensations due (a) to the state of the muscles prior to action,
or (&) to changes in muscular tension during the activity itself; 01
(c) to memory images of such kinesthetic sensations. That these
dynamic experiences are really of peripheral origin, that they are
the result and not the antecedent of muscular activity, was demon-
strated most convincingly by Professor Miinsterberg in his "Willens-
handlung." Psychophysical investigation and introspective anal-
ysis both lead to this conclusion.
These dynamic experiences are closely related to the assent atti-
tude. In motor activity the assent attitude is found to be an in-
cipient kinesthetic sensation which is aroused when our muscles
begin to be tense for the movement. When thought is succeeded by
actual movement, this kinesthetic sensation becomes stronger. It
appears as a sensation of power or force. A corresponding sense
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 17
of power is associated with the forethought even before the motor
activity begins. This is found to be a memory image of former kin-
esthetic sensations, which is aroused by association when the mus-
cular activity is represented. Observation of the experience indi-
cates that the data are the same at every stage. In other words, the
feeling of potency or efficiency in volition is really a kinesthetic sen-
sation or memory. Its presence does not guarantee that the motor
consciousness is really efficient that the thought of an action actu-
ally has power to call forth the corresponding action.
According to the ideomotor theory of action a motor idea tends
to produce the corresponding act ; it has an inherent power to select
the appropriate activity from among all other possible modes. Pro-
fessor Thorndike in his presidential address before the American
Psychological Association 3 argues forcefully against this view.
There is no more reason, he maintains, that a mental image should
be followed by an action which resembles it, than that the thought of
an earthquake should be followed by an earthquake. His strictures
apply to all purposive acts. There is no inherent reason why the
thought of rising should be followed by the act of rising, or the
thought of taking out a pen by that action itself. Nevertheless, it is
a matter of observation that the thought of a specific act is fre-
quently followed by the performance of the corresponding act.
The sequence of a thought and the corresponding perception
constitutes the fulfilment of purpose. How has this tendency toward
fulfilment come to be, if not through some selective power in the
forethought? Speaking in psychophysical terms, by that means
does the thought of a situation tend to start physiological processes
which lead to the actual production of that situation? Professor
Thorndike explains this tendency solely on the ground of utility. A
.thought tends to be followed by the act which it resembles because
such a sequence has proved biologically useful.
The genesis of purposive behavior will be considered more fully
in the second part of this paper. Our present analysis is concerned
with the conscious accompaniments of purposive behavior. Here
the problem appears in a slightly different form : How comes it that
the purposive thought tends to be followed by the perception of its
fulfilment, rather than by any one of a thousand other dissimilar
perceptions? I believe that Professor Thorndike 's answer applies
equally well to this aspect of the problem.
Mental association is based upon frequency and intensity. The
associations between a forethought and the corresponding motor
perception are strengthened through repetition and through the in-
terest which attaches to them. If a sensation of seeing or smelling
s ' ' Ideomotor Action, ' ' Psychol. Eeview, March, 1913.
18 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
food happens to be succeeded by a series of kinesthetic sensations,
followed by a pleasant taste, the next time a similar visual or ol-
factory sensation occurs it will tend to the same motor expression,
and at the same time it will tend to recall the kinesthetic memories
and the pleasant gustatory memory of the former experience. By
repetition, then, not only is the association between the food-percep-
tion and the food-getting act (with kinesthetic accompaniment)
strengthened, but an association is built up between the food-getting
thought (gustatory and kinesthetic memories) and the food-getting
act, which is pleasurable; and each repetition serves to strengthen
this association. That the original association is not due to any
ideomotor potency is shown by our inability to produce a sneeze,
however vividly we recall its motor sensations. That a motor asso-
ciation requires some "cue" is shown by the fact that in certain in-
dividuals the thought of moving the ears may be followed by the act
(and its perception), while in most persons this thought, however
vivid, never leads to fulfilment.
The examples cited by Professor Thorndike seem to refute con-
clusively the view that the forethought possesses an autonomic selec-
tive power over kinesthetic experiences. If the thought of an action
leads to the production of that particular action with all its kines-
thetic sensory accompaniments, rather than to any one of the
thousands of other kinesthetic experiences, the reason is that a defi-
nite association has been already formed between this particular
thought and this particular motor impulse. The origin and growth
of such an association may be attributed to chance concurrence, fre-
quent repetition, and value; it is not due to some mysterious and
magical potency residing in the thought. The thought of a mus-
cular action has no more power per se to produce the corresponding
kinesthetic sensations than the thought of an earthquake has power
to produce the sensation of an earthquake.
A conscious purpose, as we have seen, may consist in the formula-
tion of a problem which is to be solved in thought rather than action.
Professor Thorndike does not examine this case specifically; but
it is quite analogous to the other. Just as in the case of ideomo-
tor activity, most of us have a very deep-rooted belief that the
thought of solving a problem has a directive power which guides us
to its solution. Does the evidence justify this belief?
"When I propose to recall a forgotten name, I sometimes suc-
ceed in recalling it immediately, while at other times I fail com-
pletely. In the latter case it frequently happens that if I abandon
my purpose definitely after the vain attempt, the name sought for
suddenly "comes to consciousness" in some apparently irrelevant
connection. A conscious purpose to recall thought, so far from hav-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 19
ing the power to accomplish the end desired, is often quite powerless
to do so; indeed it sometimes seems to have an inhibitory effect.
Forethought and afterthought are thus seen to be connected only
through ordinary associative processes. not by some directing po-
tency. The result proposed may be attained, or again it may not be
fulfilled in spite of our most earnest endeavors.
Take a higher type of thought, where the result involves a
process of reasoning. Let one endeavor to find the next prime num-
ber greater than 47. Here the thinker's training in mathematics
leads him to form certain associations. He examines in turn 48,
49, 50, etc. One number after another is discarded as its divisors are
discovered, till the right one is reached. Perhaps the operator in-
advertently omits one test and reaches the conclusion that 51 ful-
fils the conditions. Here the purposive thought has led to a mistaken
end. Such erroneous conclusions are by no means rare. Even the
experienced mathematician and logician blunder occasionally. The
ordinary man finds that time after time he has been satisfied with a
conclusion which subsequent tests prove false. It appears then that
the associations which follow a rational purpose may or may not
lead to the result proposed. Kational thought, like any other
thought, is capable of forming only the associations which experience
has given. There is no inherent power in the forethought to induce
a rational conclusion.
Again, take the case of so-called creative thought, or invention.
I propose to devise a laboratory apparatus which will record a
choice reaction when the subject presses the right key, but will fail
to complete the circuit and stop the chronoseope when he presses
any one of the three other keys. I think of various ways of wiring
the circuits, and find (in thought) several which will work for
most combinations; but all these arrangements fail to work for at
least one type of false reaction to one of the signals. I put the
problem to my assistants and graduate students. "We all work
with the same end in view. One of the group solves the problem,
but finds that in certain cases the clock will record when the sub-
ject presses a right and wrong key together. Finally one of the
group obtains a complete and satisfactory solution to the problem.
In this example has the forethought been effective in producing
the result? Obviously not for most of the group engaged in the
test. One man did fulfill the inventive purpose; but his solution
was reached only after a great number of erroneous conceptions,
all of which represented combinations of experiences familiar to
him. ' Shall we say that this particular man's forethought was effi-
cient while that of the others was not? Shall we not rather at-
tribute his success to a greater facility in combining familiar ele-
20 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ments into new complexes ? If instead of the given problem he had
proposed to himself the problem of squaring a circle, might he not
still be engaged in the search for a solution?
The only real potency that can be attributed to a purpose-
thought is a strong tendency to continue thinking about the problem.
To say that a vivid thought has the effect of inducing continued as-
sociative thinking, may be a restatement of the traditional laws of
association; or it may be mere tautology.
The presence of a feeling of potency in any purposive experience
does not insure the fulfilment of the purpose. Whatever the char-
acter of the forethought, whether it refers to a motor act or to the
solution of a mental problem, our belief that it actually has power
to produce the result is an anthropomorphic interpretation of a
psychological datum. The potency-feeling, like the assent factor,
is a kinesthetic sensation or memory. Where the fulfilment is a
motor act it may be traced to sensations of tension in the muscles
concerned ; where the fulfilment is a thought it is traceable to the finer
tensions which accompany the attention process.
This dynamic feeling attains peculiar strength and vividness in
certain instances. In my own case the strongest sense of ' ' volitional
potency" which can be experimentally induced is observed when I
lie in bed in the morning preparing to get up. The longer I lie the more
I feel the effort and the power of my will to overcome the inertia. I
tingle all over with the sense of dynamic potency. Yet when I focus
the attention here and there, I discover no element but the kines-
thetic data ; the intense dynamic experience is due to the high degree
of muscular tension all over the body as I prepare to spring up. At
other times, when I jump out of bed immediately after waking with-
out stopping to reflect, no feeling of potency is noted. The fore-
thought passes over into action without the slightest dynamic sensa-
tion. But in such cases there is no period of muscular tension before
the act takes place.
Examination of all classes of experiences indicates, then, that the
feeling of power in a purposive thought to bring about the situation
which it portrays is a datum derived from kinesthetic sensations.
This feeling does not attach to every purposive experience, but only
to vivid and rather complex forethoughts. It is most noticeable
where considerable deliberation precedes the assent. The potency-
feeling does not guarantee the actual efficiency of the forethought.
A purpose may not be fulfilled in spite of the strongest feeling of
potency; and it may be fulfilled equally well when the feeling of
potency is altogether lacking. 4
4 A word in regard to the implications of this view. It is objected that in
denying "potency" (and with it "directive selection") to the forethought we
21
4. The Self-Factor. The thought of an act is not purposive
unless the thinker himself is concerned in accomplishing it. When
I think of a friend's coming trip to Canada, no matter how detailed
the representation, it lacks the character of purpose.
I think of the completion of the Cape-to-Cairo railroad as an end
to be accomplished ; I may desire its completion. If I consider the
future of the project merely as an outsider, my thought is not pur-
posive. But if I think of some act of my own as concerned in the
building of the road (if, for example, I desire to suggest a change
of route), then there is a purpose on my part, provided I assent to
the thought. We attribute a purposive thought to Cecil Rhodes
in the Cape-to-Cairo project on account of the bequest provided in
his will, though he died before the purpose was fulfilled. The be-
quest is an objective indication of the self -factor.
Again, if we endeavor to trace the steps that must be taken in
order to complete the railroad, the thought series may involve a sub-
jective ideational purpose on our part, like the solution of any mental
problem. The purpose here is not to build an actual road in Africa,
but to understand how it can be built.
In every case the situation to which a purposive forethought
refers involves the thinker himself. The fulfilment of one 's purpose
always includes an act on his part, or an objective situation in which
he is concerned, or a subsequent thought of his own.
The self-element does not usually appear as a separate factor in
the experience. Only in complex cases of deliberation and so-called
volition is there an explicit experience of self associated with the
reduce consciousness to the role of an epiphenomenon. If purposive thought is
not effective in producing mental or muscular activity, of what value is con-
sciousness in the universe? Is it anything more than a passive spectator of the
physical changes which constitute real activity and form the basis of history?
The objection may hold as against the traditional parallelistic world-view,
but it loses force if we adopt the double-aspect standpoint. According to this
interpretation our thoughts and purposes are only our way of experiencing what
an independent observer might perceive as physiological activity. One set of
occurrences is as "real" as the other. Neither physicochemical changes nor con-
scious activity is due to ' ' compulsion, ' ' and in neither case is there indeterminate
"selection" or arbitrary "direction."
If the only "value" of phenomena were to "initiate" something apart
from the orderly sequence of changes, then physical phenomena would seem
to be quite as epiphenomenal and useless as mental phenomena; for they too
are mere recombinations of preexisting elements.
The criticism is really based upon an unscientific conception of natural
events. We still incline to interpret nature anthropomorphieally. We attribute
power to causation and selective potency to purpose. These are distinctly
' ' psychomorphic ' ' interpretations which have no basis in the phenomena them-
selves. We shall refer again to this psychomorphie tendency in the second part
of the paper.
22 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
forethought. But a self-factor is always implicitly present in pur-
pose.
The explicit self-factor may be traced to kinesthetic elements
which arise during the process of fulfilment. It is something more
than the mere fact that the purposive experience is my own. For
this is true of every experience, whether purposive or not. I ob-
serve the successive motions of a leaf wafted down to the ground;
this series of perceptions forms a part of my experience, but they
are not purposive. Neither is a train of fancy purposive, though it
forms a closely united group of personal experiences.
In every purposive act the motor functions of the individual or-
ganism play a part. In every purposive consciousness some kin-
esthetic data are present between the forethought and its fulfilment.
The purposive self is based on these kinesthetic data.
In ideational purpose the self-elements are merely successive ad-
justments of attention, and are indistinguishable from the assent.
In objective purpose, though more intense, they may fail also to
appear as separate data, since the attention is usually centered else-
where. When I rise and turn the switch my thoughts are focused
on my reading, not on my movements. When I write, my thoughts
are chiefly on the meaning of the words, not on the muscular con-
tractions of my fingers. Yet in every case these kinesthetic elements
appear to tinge the experience. This tone value is observed most
clearly when we compare purposive with non-purposive experiences.
There is a personal tone to the former which is lacking in the latter.
The self-datum is the least important factor in the purposive ex-
perience. It is less characteristic than the assent, less vivid than
the potency-feeling. Still it should not be ignored in the study of
purpose, since in some form or other there is always a kinesthetic
self-reference in the fulfilment of every purposive thought.
5. Sense of Fitness and Unfitness. When the purpose is fulfilled
a feeling of satisfaction is frequently associated with the perception
of the completed situation. This feeling is based upon our recogni-
tion of the forethought in the fulfilment-experience. I propose to
think of a forgotten name; when I do recall it I am pleased or re-
lieved. I propose to find the word "purpose" in the dictionary;
when I find it I recognize it with satisfaction as the word I was look-
ing for. The feeling-element by itself does not seem to be in any
way characteristic of the purposive consciousness ; it is the same sort
of experience as occurs in the satisfaction of any want or need.
Neither is the recognition-element in itself anything different from
that which attaches to a memory image.
There is, however, a combination of recognition and satisfaction
which is peculiar to the fulfilment of a purpose idea. When I meet
23
a friend whom I have not thought of for years I may recognize him
and be glad to see him ; but the attitude is different from that which
I experience in meeting a friend whom I have been endeavoring to
find for some special reason. In the latter case a peculiar feeling
attaches to the fulfilment of the forethought. It attaches not so
much to the perception as to the judgment of correspondence be-
tween forethought and realization. It is a judgment of relation
with an affective tone attached. This judgment, in which the affec-
tive element is prominent, may be called the sense of fitness. The
absence of fulfilment may in like manner be attended by an opposite
feeling, which attaches to the judgment of dissimilarity between the
forethought and the actual outcome. This is the sense of unfitness.
In simple acts the sense of fitness is seldom present. "When I
turn on the light I do not experience the feeling at all. But the
sense of unfitness is apt to arise if the fulfilment is hindered, even
when the act is simple. I turn the switch, but the light does not
appear. The lack of correspondence between my forethought of the
light and the actual outcome is accompanied by a distinct feeling of
dissatisfaction. In this example the act is habitual. I think only
of the light and not of my muscular contractions; the kinesthetie
sensations of turning the switch follow the forethought, but the
visual sensations pictured in the forethought are lacking. The ab-
sence of the anticipated visual sensations in the experience is the
basis of the judgment. The feeling of unfitness is here associated
with a certain portion of the experience, namely, the visual sensa-
tions which accompany the kinesthetie data.
The tendency of the sense of fitness and unfitness to appear in
connection with both fulfilment and intermediate states is more
noticeable in complex purposes. When I am in a strange room and
think of turning on the light, the forethought is likely to be elab-
orated: I think of some of the intervening processes, such as walk-
ing to the center table or to the control switch near the door.
Whichever action I perform first, if the result of this intermediate
step is successful the final situation is apt to be accompanied by a
sense of fitness if unsuccessful it is accompanied by a sense of un-
fitness. In either case the judgment and feeling may attach to the
act of finding (or failing to find) the switch, as well as to the out-
come. When I start to read Professor X's latest book on Telepathy,
I am immediately conscious of its unfitness to furnish me with any
useful information on psychological problems. On the other hand
upon taking up Professor Y's Psychology, I judge and feel at once
its fitness to broaden my psychological outlook. The point to notice
in these cases is that the feeling, whether of fitness or unfitness, may
attach to an intermediate experience as well as to the fulfilment.
24 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Further, it should be noted that the feeling attaches in every case to
the present perceptual or ideal experiences not to the forethought,
which is already a thing of the past.
The most striking occurrence of the fitness and unfitness ex-
perience is in connection with subjective purposes, such as the solu-
tion of a mathematical problem. Take the example already men-
tioned : What is the next prime number above 47 ? Following the
habitual numerical sequence my first thought is 48. That is even,
and therefore unfit. 49? That is divisible by 7. 50 is a ten; 51
is divisible by 3 ; 52 is even. An even number is judged unfit imme-
diately ; the process is so rapid that it is sometimes mistaken for an
intuition or a self-evident, a priori judgment. The discovery of
divisibility by 3 is nearly as rapid ; the digits 4 and 8 added together
are obviously a multiple of 3. The division by seven is a longer
process. What about 53? I divide it successively by 3, 7, 11, 13,
17, 19, and 23 ; all of these divisors are unfit ; the next eligible factor
is 29, which is more than half of 53. Hence I conclude that 53 is
prime, and the sense of fitness arises with the solution of the problem.
Another person might proceed by some other process, attempting,
for instance, to divide 53 by 5 or 9, which I should consider useless ;
a third might refer at once to a memorized table of prime numbers,
which in my own case is not available.
This example, however we set about to solve it, is typical of
problem- working. The procedure is this: First, we set forth the
problem; that is, we experience the forethought of the principal
result. Next, we think in turn of certain associated steps, with each
of which is connected the sense of fitness or unfitness. Finally,
when a result is obtained in thought which tallies with the fore-
thought, it is accompanied by a judgment of correspondence and a
feeling of fitness.
The fitness experience is both a judgment and a feeling. The
judgment, like all judgments, arises through association. If the
experience corresponds to our memory of the forethought, the asso-
ciation produces a judgment of fitness. The accompanying feeling
is due to the facilitation of reaction which this association brings
about.
The judgment of unfitness occurs only when the forethought re-
mains in consciousness (or is recalled) and becomes associated with a
different act of sensations. If the act goes wrong, the perceptions
attending the performance no longer tally with the forethought.
When a memory of the forethought is associated with these disparate
perceptions the association produces a judgment of unfitness. The
resulting inhibition of reaction produces certain physiological modi-
fications which serve as a basis for the feeling of unfitness. Irrelevant
25
acts are not associated with the forethought they are not judged
unfit and are therefore not inhibited. My morning bath is not ger-
mane to my pursuit of psychology it is judged neither fit nor unfit
to that end.
In subjective purposes the distinction between judgments of fit-
ness and unfitness is not easy to account for. In mental problems
the forethought does not represent the solution, but merely some
characteristic of solution. How do we come to judge certain steps
fit and others unfit? This problem hinges on the nature of rational
thought.
Reasoning is a particular kind of association of ideas, more re-
stricted than casual association. The succession of thoughts in a
logical train corresponds so closely to the succession of processes
in nature, that the conclusion tallies with reality time and time
again; in other words, ''rational" thinking is a type which leads
continually to fulfilment of the forethought, while chance associa-
tions may or may not lead to such fulfilment. This persistent cor-
respondence tends to build up cumulatively, in connection with
' ' rational ' ' thinking, a judgment of fitness which we have no oppor-
tunity to build up in the ordinary hit-or-miss associations.
Compare the judgments 51 = 17 X 3 and 51 = 16 X 4. The latter
is a random association and has no objective significance, whereas
the rational association 51 = 17 X 3 means that 51 objects may
be separated into 17 groups of 3 objects, or into 3 groups of 17 ob-
jects. To the adult this is so certain from past observations of na-
ture that he does not actually stop to perform the operation. In in-
tricate problems, such as the solution of a chess problem, one is
more likely to spend time in "verifying the solution" by objective
observation, to make sure that the association has been rational
throughout.
When we form an association of the rational type the resulting
ideas (conclusions) tally with nature. If, however, we happen to
make a mistake, that is, form a non-rational association, we sooner
or later come upon some unexpected inconsistency. In subjective
purpose, so long as the associative process is rational or consistent,
it is accompanied by a judgment of fitness. When we lapse into
casual association we may still experience the same judgment of
fitness ; but as soon as an inconsistency appears the disparity trans-
forms it into a judgment of unfitness. This occurs, for example,
when we endeavor to separate our 51 objects into 16 groups of 4 each.
Our examination of the fitness factor indicates the following as
its characteristics :
1. The sense of fitness or the sense of unfitness attaches to the
26 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
final outcome and to certain intermediate steps in purposive ex-
periences, both objective and subjective.
2. The sense of fitness or unfitness does not appear in all pur-
posive experiences. In simple purposes I assent to the forethought
and the act proceeds to its fulfilment, usually with no judgment
concerning the correspondence between forethought and outcome.
It is only in complicated situations, or where attention is focused
on the experience for the sake of psychological or ethical analysis,
that the sense of fitness becomes explicit. To read it into all cases
of purposive action is an instance of the psychologist's fallacy.
Similarly, the sense of unfitness appears only when the fulfilment
is impeded. But an implicit "fitness" or "unfitness" appears to
characterize purposive experiences generally.
3. The fitness factor is psychologically distinct from the fore-
thought. The characteristic mark of the forethought is its future
reference, while the fitness-unfitness experience involves a sense of
correspondence or disparity. It is not merely a judgment, but in-
volves an hedonic element as well.
This completes our analysis of the purposive consciousness. So
far as the present writer can discover no other mental data enter
into the experience. Certain elements, which at first sight seem
to present distinct characters, on closer examination reduce to one
or other of the five factors already noted. In particular, the sense
of choice, volition, or fiat is really nothing more than assent rein-
forced by the feeling of personal dynamic efficiency.
The distinctive feature of the purposive consciousness is thus
seen to be an inversion of the usual temporal order of certain
members in a series of experiences. In the purposive consciousness
the idea precedes the perception, the general precedes the par-
ticular. The extent of this inversion is recognized in the judg-
ment of fitness.
HOWARD C. WARREN.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.
(To be continued.)
EEVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Art in Education and Life. HENRY DA VIES. Columbus, O. : R. G. Adams
and Company. 1914. Pp. xii + 324.
The value of a book is obviously relative to the audience to which it
is addressed. Dr. Davies tells us that his work is " intended for the gen-
eral public, or that portion of it that is interested in the discussion of
education, as well as for those actively engaged in education." For such
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 27
persons teachers in the public schools and the active molders of public
school policies his book should prove of value. Partly a tract his
subtitle is " a plea for the more systematic culture of the sense of beauty,"
partly a manual of the resources and opportunities of the schools in the
field of esthetic training, a general view of the whole subject is given
which we should rejoice to see widely assimilated. The chapters on " the
Esthetic Eesources of the Schools," " Methods of Developing Taste," and
" the Educational Value of the Drama," contain much that is pedagogic-
ally good. But along with this good there is not a little that bears the coun-
tenance of perversity. For example, such a statement as that " the gram-
matical and prosodical study of language should never be based on lit-
erary works," would naturally suggest the question, What under the
skies is such study to be based on ? And when we are told that by it " the
taste is likely to be vitiated for what is beautiful," we can only wonder
what can be Dr. Davies's conception of a "literary work" and its func-
tion. Nor are we reassured in regard to his theories of taste by his own
literary practise. It may seem unreasonable to expect a more than com-
mon literary excellence in a work on esthetics, though the reviewer must
confess to such an expectation, in the case of Dr. Davies grievously
disappointed; wordiness of the most laborious type is his obsessing qual-
ity. But it is to be assumed that the readers to whom Dr. Davies's book
is addressed will possess native powers of discrimination.
H. B. ALEXANDER.
UNIVERSITY OP NEBRASKA.
A Class-Room Logic. GEORGE HASTINGS McKAm. Nyack, New York:
The Ethlas Press. 1914. Pp. vii + 500.
This new text-book in logic, like a great many others, finds its chief
justification in the fact that a teacher of logic is likely to find his own
book better suited to his needs than that of any other author.
The present book is definite, clear, and formally systematic in the
extreme. It is very complete as regards the topics in deductive logic. The
paragraphing and the typography are such that no student who can keep
his mind on the matter can fail to see the relation of topics, and if he
should fail, the outline, the summary, and the review questions at the
close of each chapter would make his ultimate escape impossible. The
problems for original thought and investigation which close each chapter
are frequently helpful and suggestive.
Only three chapters of the twenty-one deal with inductive logic and
scientific methods. The last two chapters have to do with logic in the
class-room and logic and life. Throughout the book there are many sug-
gestions for practical applications which should be of use to teachers in
the schools. The author is a member of the staff of the City Training
School for Teachers in Jamaica, Xew York.
ADAM LEROY JONES.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
28 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
LA CIENCIA TOMISTA. August, 1915. jPorque hay tan pocos
contempativos? (pp. 337-362): J. G. ARINTERO. - The number of mystics
is decreasing every day because we lack the two essential qualities of
Christian abnegation and perseverance. La homogeneidad de la doctrina
catolica (pp. 363-387) : F. MARTIN-SOLA. - There is progress or develop-
ment in Catholic theology; but this development is homogeneous with
regard to its matter or objectivity, because it is deduced from revealed
truth by means of a reasoning of real identity. La ensenanza de Santo
Tomds en la Compania de Jesus durante el primer siglo de su existencia
(pp. 388-408) : V. B. DE HEREDIA. - The following of St. Thomas's doc-
trine was made a precept by the founders of the Jesuit order. Their suc-
cessors, however, did not imitate them; and, by the publication of the
" Ratio Studiorum " gave a fatal blow to the authority of St. Thomas
in the Society. Boletin de Cosmologia. Boletin de Etica. Bibliografia.
Givler, R. C. The " Conscious Cross- Section." Seattle : University of
Washington Press. 1915. Pp. vi + 412.
Hess, Herbert W. Productive Advertising. Philadelphia and London:
J. B. Lippincott Company. 1915. Pp. xv -f- 358.
NOTES AND NEWS
" THE FitzPatrick lectures recently delivered by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers
before the Royal Society of Physicians dealt with the relations between
medicine, magic, and religion. Magic he defined to be a group of processes
in which man used rites which depended on his own power, or on powers
believed to be inherent in, or the attributes of, certain objects and proc-
esses which were used in these rites. Religion, on the contrary, dealt with
processes dependent on a higher power, whose intervention was sought by
rites of supplication or propitiation. But the savage mind distinguishes
with difficulty between these two groups of ideas. Savage philosophy
attributes disease to human agency, to some spiritual being, or to what we
ordinarily call natural causes. He dwelt on the important part played by
suggestion in the causation of disease among the Papuans and Mela-
nesians, and he remarked that from the physiological point of view the
difference between their rude methods and our medicine was not one of
kind, but only of degree. They practised an art of medicine in some
respects more rational than our own, for diagnosis and treatment followed
more directly their ideas of causation. There were examples of leech-
craft, such as the use of bleeding and massage in JSTew Guinea, which did
not follow a system so strictly logical and consistent. This led to another
set of problems, the transformation of medical beliefs and practises as a
result of contact and blending of peoples." Nature.
VOL. XIII, No. 2. JANUARY 20, 1916
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
A STUDY OF PURPOSE. H
PURPOSIVE ACTIVITY IN ORGANISMS
IN the first paper we examined the nature of purposive conscious-
ness. "We shall now consider purpose as a biological phenomenon.
Certain acts of living creatures serve as a preparation for future
situations ; that is, an act may be determined or conditioned by some
subsequent situation in much the same way as ordinary events are
' ' causally ' ' determined by preceding situations. For example, when
I pause in reading at twilight to switch on the electric light, the act
of turning the switch is in a measure conditioned by the ensuing
illumination and by the fact that I subsequently renew my reading,
though it is also causally determined by antecedent physiological
circumstances. In the same way the actions which a dog performs
while pursuing a rabbit are in a measure conditioned by the subse-
quent act of catching and eating his prey as well as by the antecedent
stimuli visual and olfactory.
Objections may be raised to the use of such terms as conditioned
and determined in this connection. They seem to imply that the
future situation forces or compels the act which precedes it an in-
terpretation of the relationship which will scarcely be admitted.
Yet the scientist frequently describes the causal relation in these
very terms. "We say that a cause determines or conditions its effect,
but we do not mean that it uses some overpowering force in the
process. It is in fact an anthropomorphic interpretation of natural
phenomena to conceive of the antecedent terms in a causal series as
exerting compulsion upon subsequent events. The transformation
of a quantity of hydrogen and a quantity of oxygen into water is due
to their nature and to circumstances in the environment. The scien-
tist does not picture some compelling force or entity directing the
activity of the H and O atoms, putting them together, or threatening
them with dire consequences unless they unite ; in short, he does not
believe that they are ' ' forced ' ' to undergo the change. Some writers,
it is true, speak of "laws" as determining occurrences; but this
interpretation is a case of the cart pushing the horse, for the "law"
29
30 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
is merely a generalized description of repeatedly observed facts.
"We formulate a law on the basis of observation ; it is scarcely scien-
tific to say that the law determines or compels the particular event.
What the scientist understands by an event conditioning or de-
termining another, then, is not compulsion from without or within ;
he means simply that the former event uniformly and in the nature
of things leads to the latter, as shown by repeated observation. An
"effect" is the observed aftermath of the "cause": we have every
reason to believe that event A will be followed by event B ; that in
the nature of things the two belong in sequence. If we use the terms
condition and determine in studying causal relations, they imply no
more than a general temporal relation of before and after. The
same is true of purposive relations.
In purposive acts the temporal order noted in causation in some
way becomes inverted. The dog certainly does not eat the rabbit
before he catches it. Nevertheless, the act of eating is begun before
the appropriate food stimulus appears. The later act (eating) is a
condition of the various acts of pursuit and capture which precede
it. In such a series of acts the present "hangs upon" the future,
or is ' ' determined by ' ' it. The relation of terms in such a series is
radically different from that in the ordinary causal series, the dis-
tinctive feature being a partial inversion of temporal order. 1 This
temporal inversion is just the sort of phenomenon which was noticed
as the distinguishing mark of the purposive consciousness. We may,
therefore, properly extend the notion of purpose to include the type
of behavior characterized by anticipation.
When we scan the field of biological phenomena we are struck by
the overwhelming number of events which may be classed as pur-
i It should be understood once for all that this ' ' inversion of temporal
order" is not a reversal of the "flow of time," or any other mystical paradox.
I mean merely that certain events which usually occur in the order A, B, C, D,
come to occur in the order A, C, B, D. In such cases we may say that G
anticipates B.
A philosophical colleague objects to the illustrations given in Part I., insist-
ing that the B and the C are not the same in the purposive consciousness as in
the memory consciousness. I admit freely that no event whatsoever is twice
repeated. Scientific generalizations rest on similar transformations of similar
data, not on identity of terms.
A biological colleague, whose criticisms of this part of the paper have been
most helpful, objects to the notion of inverted order in biological events. He
interprets life and phylogeny as a series of cycles. The notion of a " life-cycle ' '
is useful as a figurative description; but it is not exact none of these ''cycles"
is completed. On the other hand, we do find countless examples of "anticipa-
tion" in both behavior and growth processes. The concept of anticipation gives
a biological meaning to the physicochemical transformations that occur in the
organism.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 31
posive. First of all, acts which are acquired as the result of repeti-
tion so-called habits and intelligent acts belong in this category.
When the raccoon has learned to thread the maze, his act of travers-
ing the passages and reaching the food-box is conditioned by his
subsequent act of seizing the food.
Similarly, instinctive acts exhibit a purposive character when
viewed as complete biological series. The nest-building activity of
birds, the mating proclivities of all sexually differentiated creatures,
the food-getting reactions of medusae all such functions appear to
be conditioned in part by the future outcome. Nest-building is partly
conditioned by the eggs which afterwards occupy the nest; mating
by the offspring which develop after fertilization ; food reactions by
the metabolic changes which follow the reception of food.
Finally, the phenomena of individual growth and phylogeny may
be included in the list of purposive events. The various stages of
cell-cleavage and development in the embryo are conditioned by the
full-grown individual which finally appears, as well as by the physio-
logical and morphological conditions in the fertilized egg. Individ-
ual variations are conditioned by the "varieties" and new species to
which they give rise.
There are two sharply distinct modes of interpreting all these pur-
posive activities, the mechanistic and the vitalistic. The mechanists
believe that all modes of activity, organic and inorganic, are ulti-
mately identical that all may be formulated in the same general
terms. The simplest modes of activity known to us are the physical
and the chemical. Hence, the ideal of the mechanist in biology at
present is to express all the activities of organisms in "physico-
chemical" terms. Biochemistry and physiology have advanced far
in this direction, though for some biologists purposive activity re-
mains an insuperable obstacle to the complete acceptance of the
mechanistic standpoint.
The vitalists, on the other hand, assert that a physicochemical
description is inadequate to account for organic growth if not for
behavior in general. They assert that a non-mechanistic factor, an
"entelechy," is needed in order to explain the peculiar inversion of
the causal time-order which we discover in purposive phenomena.
Now it may or may not be true that such a factor is present ; but
its existence is certainly not to be assumed a priori. Indeed, if
entelechy is viewed as something which vitiates the orderly sequence
of chemical and physical processes, the scientist will regard it as an
admissible assumption only after the inadequacy of the mechanistic
interpretation is made clear. According to the norm of parsimony,
if a mechanistic process will serve as well as entelechy to explain any
type of activity, it is preferable to the latter interpretation. The
32 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
movements of the planets may be explained equally well by the re-
lations of gravity or by the controlling guidance of mysterious
spirits; we accept the former interpretation in accordance with
Occam's principle of parsimony. Similarly, if it can be shown that
the purposiveness which is manifest in the evolution of species, in
individual development, in instinctive activity, and in intelligent
actions can be explained as well on mechanistic grounds as by the
controlling guidance of entelechy, it would seem preferable to adopt
the former viewpoint.
It remains to be seen whether the mechanistic interpretation is
adequate to account for the purposive character of behavior and
growth. The question is ultimately one of fact. But our interpre-
tation of facts is often influenced by fundamental presuppositions.
Thus the vitalists' attitude is determined largely by an uncritical
conception of purpose. They carry over into biology a certain psy-
chological datum, "directive potency," which appears from our
earlier analysis to be an unessential factor in purpose. They tend
to picture this entelechy as an intelligence, merely because in con-
sciousness anticipation is experienced in the form of a thought.
The present study assumes the mechanistic standpoint as a work-
ing basis, though it admits the possible need of mending this view
in the light of further evidence. We shall reject the implication of
"potency" in the purposive sequence unless it be definitely demon-
strated. We shall not admit the ' ' conscious ' ' character of biological
anticipation in the absence of proof. The concept of purpose in the
biological sphere is founded primarily upon an observed type of fact
a certain inversion of the usual temporal order of events. The pre-
cise cause of this inversion is a problem for scientific investigation.
Our analysis of purposive consciousness disclosed five factors:
(1) A forethought of some future occurrence; (2) an attitude of
assent; (3) a feeling of potency in the thought-process; that is, a
belief that the thought has power to produce the foreseen result;
(4) an associated self-notion; (5) a sense of the fitness or unfitness
of the outcome or of certain intermediate steps. How far does pur-
posive behavior include factors corresponding to these?
1. ANTICIPATION. The fundamental factor in purposive conscious-
ness is the forethought. In purposive activity the corresponding
factor is preparation, or anticipation of a future situation. We have
already alluded to the wide prevalence of anticipation in the organic
world. It is found in all the higher types of behavior, instinctive as
well as intelligent. Even tropisms exhibit it. It appears in the
phenomena of growth, both individual and phylogenetic. Let us
first examine the nature of anticipation in these various types of
activity. We shall then be in a position to discuss the mechanism of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 33
anticipation, and the genesis of anticipatory events in the organic
world.
(1) Nature of Intelligent Reactions. "When I see a ball coming
toward me and raise my hands to catch it, the reaction to contact is
prepared in advance of the contact stimulus. The visual stimulus
from the approaching ball initiates a set of movements which form a
reaction to the contact stimulus that follows. When a raccoon is
placed in a familiar maze and starts to traverse it, his locomotor
adjustments are in part a reaction to the subsequent taste stimuli of
the food lying at the far end. These are typical examples of reac-
tions acquired by practise. The anticipation consists in an act which
is begun in advance of a certain stimulus of taste or touch, but which,
refers to the future occurrence of such a stimulus. It is the biolog-
ical analogue of the forethought, whether forethought or conscious-
ness of the coming event be actually present or not.
Instinctive Reactions. Anticipation of the coming situation
is found in many reflexes and instinctive responses. Take a case
very low in the scale of organic life. A medusa is stimulated by
juices, emanating from food particles near by, which permeate the
water. Acting on this chemical stimulus, the creature moves its ten-
tacles to and fro, and thus prepares to gather in the nutritious sub-
stance. The reaction is anticipatory in that it serves to bring the
creature into contact with the food sooner than if such movement did
not occur.
The anticipation of a future situation shown in this reaction of a
medusa is typical of instinctive behavior generally. The feeding and
reproductive instincts are all anticipatory. When a chicken pecks
at a grain of corn it is starting the food-assimilating reaction before
the food is touched. In the human infant the suckling act involves
a chain of reflexes, seeking the breast, grasping the nipple, sucking,
swallowing. The biological meaning of these separate acts is not
fully understood till we study the feeding behavior as a whole. The
very first stage, seeking the breast, has reference to the final outcome,
swallowing and digesting. So in the reproductive functions, the bi-
ological meaning of sexual union is found in the production of the
young. All these forms of behavior are anticipatory ; they are re-
actions to food, to offspring, before the stimulus is wholly present.
Growth Processes. If the reproductive functions are antici-
patory, the stages of growth in the embryo manifest even more
clearly the same characteristics. The organs appear in rudimentary
form, they gradually shape themselves, till at length they attain the
size and form of the corresponding organs in the parents. To study
embryonic development as a mere causal succession of chemical re-
actions is not sufficient. Its biological meaning is dependent on the
outcome.
34 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
So too in the functions of regulation and regeneration the signifi-
cance of the process lies in the result. Healing is a reaction to the
restored structure ; it has a different biological significance from loss
of blood when an artery is severed ; this depends merely on the ante-
cedent wound. The autonomic regulation of bodily heat is a reaction
to the higher or lower temperature which will result not merely to
the antecedent fluctuations.
The metabolic changes involved in nutrition and general main-
tenance anticipate the subsequent condition of the creature in the
same way. All the vital functions, in fact, are anticipatory; they
prepare the organism for future conditions.
Phylogenesis. The evolution of new species shows a similar
anticipatory character. Variations assist in the maintenance of the
phyletic chain biologically speaking they are reactions to the future
of the species. Hence, the differences which occur from generation
to generation and between individual and individual are not merely
causal, but anticipatory. They are adaptations to the future condi-
tion of the species or generic group. The reproductive functions may
also be interpreted in a phylogenetic way. They are reactions to the
future of the species, as well as to the future individual.
(2) Mechanism of Anticipatory Behavior. The presence of anti-
cipation in behavior and growth is evident. It is one of the phe-
nomena which science is called upon to investigate. For the function
of science is to study all observable relations. If we consider not
merely detached facts, but series of events in nature, the relation of
future events to the present is as much a problem for scientific in-
vestigation as the relation of past to present.
This does not imply that the purposive relation supplants causa-
tion. It is possible that if the anticipatory acts of behavior and
growth were traced through from start to finish, each would be shown
to be fully determined by its antecedents according to known physico-
chemical processes. One science or scientific viewpoint usually serves
to supplement another ; it does not contradict or supersede it. When
a drowning man cries for help, the physiological antecedents of his
vocal cries may be completely determined in a causal way by his past
history ; yet the significance of the act lies partly in the future. The
purposive relation ' ' overlies ' ' the causal relation.
The vitalists assume that the causal succession is in some way
altered by the phenomenon of anticipation that the natural course
of physical motion and chemical transformation is modified, directed,
by the future outcome. The mechanists believe, on the other hand,
that the physicochemical processes which constitute anticipatory re-
actions are of themselves adequate to account for the inversion of
temporal order.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 35
Two types of organic mechanism in animals serve especially to
bring about anticipatory movements. These are the reflex mechan-
isms of the distant-receptors 2 and the central coordinating system.
Both of these mechanisms are physicochemical structures. So far as
observation goes they function in a physicochemical manner.
The distant-receptors are organs capable of being stimulated by
more or less distant objects. The different types vary greatly in this
respect. The eye is stimulated by waves generated by objects which
are often at very great distances ; the visual reaction may occur long
before the object itself could reach the creature. The physical vibra-
tions which serve as auditory stimuli have a more limited range. The
emanations which serve as olfactory stimuli have still greater limita-
tions and their velocity is so low that the object from which they
originate may under favorable conditions arrive at nearly the same
time. If we examine a creature 's reactions to a given object, we note
that some of these reactions occur earlier than others, depending
among other circumstances upon the type of receptor stimulated. In
the case of the flying ball my reaction to the visual stimulus precedes
my reaction to the contact ; in the medusa 's behavior toward food the
response to chemical stimulation precedes the response to contact-
plus-chemical. The sequence of stimulation and response is fairly
constant; but the lapse of time between the starting of stimulatory
impulses from an object and the beginning of the response varies
according to the character of the stimulus.
The central nervous mechanism serves to unite the various stimuli
as well as to coordinate the response. In a plastic nervous system
new combinations of stimuli lead to new responses, and repetitions of
these combinations strengthen the mode of responses so obtained.
The after-effect of past stimulation which is called "mnemonic" is
due to the persistence of nervous paths or dispositions. One effect of
this persistence is that a portion of the stimulus may initiate a reac-
tion which on former occasions was started by the entire stimulus
group. Thus a reaction which was formerly due to a succession of
visual and contact stimuli, may come to be initiated by the visual
stimulus alone when that stimulus occurs first. For example, when
the flying ball is, say, fifty feet away, a reaction is started similar to
that which was formerly brought about by the entire series of visual
and contact stimuli. Thus I begin to respond not merely to the pres-
ent visual stimulus, but to the future visual and contact stimuli.
The raccoon in the familiar maze responds not only to the present
visual, kinesthetic, and tactual stimuli, but to the coming gustatory
2 This term seems preferable to the usual expression, "distance-receptors."
The receptor is affected by stimuli from distant objects; it is not always differ-
entially affected by the distance.
36 FEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
stimuli which formed part of the original stimulus-group. All in-
telligent anticipations are due to these central and distant-sense
mechanisms.
It seems established that the elementary reflexes which enter into
reactions of every type are purely physicochemical processes. Re-
sponses of the ''intelligent" type are complex; they are character-
ized by a great number of alternative nerve-paths, of which the im-
pulse follows now one, now another. According to mechanistic prin-
ciples the nerve impulse always follows the line of least resistance.
But the vitalist asserts that the path followed in intelligent reactions
is determined not by the line of least resistance, but by a directing
entelechy. In the present state of science surely the burden of proof
rests upon his shoulders. It would be difficult in complex phenomena
for the mechanist to demonstrate that every single alteration in be-
havior was due to a change in the neural tension. But he may very
properly challenge the vitalist to demonstrate any specific instance in
which the nervous impulse does not follow the path of least resist-
ance. Till that is demonstrated we are justified in adopting the
mechanistic interpretation of intelligent behavior as a working hy-
pothesis.
In lower species, whose nervous systems lack plasticity, and in
certain types of fixed reactions among higher species, the anticipatory
mechanism is due to inherited structure. The succession of reflexes
which form the suckling instinct in the human infant is not due to
the persistent effects of past stimulation upon the nerve paths, but to
the growth of neurones in certain directions and into certain mutual
relations. The complex nest-building instinct and the simpler food-
gathering reflex of the medusae depend similarly upon growth of
structural mechanisms. Each reflex is a "machine" constructed by
the growth process. Separately they may exhibit no more antici-
patory character than the patellar reflex; but in their combination
the first motor impulse serves as an anticipation of the final situation.
The structural mechanism which serves to bring about antici-
patory behavior, both intelligent and instinctive, is thus in a measure
the result of growth. We shall therefore turn to consider the antici-
patory character of development and its mechanism.
The Mechanism of Growth. The real crux of anticipatory activ-
ity appears to lie in the growth processes. According to Driesch,
who has developed the vitalistic theory most systematically, the most
conclusive objection to a mechanistic explanation of purposive phe-
nomena is found in the processes of biological growth and repair.
How, says Driesch in effect, can a mechanism provide for its own
reconstitution ? No machine known to us is able to construct another
machine like itself, nor can it repair any of its own parts.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 37
The function of reproducing new organisms by growth appears
less formidable to the mechanist than the problem of repairing inci-
dental injuries. The germ cell in its first stage of development
divides into two ; one of these cells after several subsequent divisions
generates a germ cell, with all the functions of the original germ cell
from which it is derived. The other derivative cells specialize ; they
undergo various transformations which determine the shape and po-
sition of the members and organs in the mature organism.
Just what chemical changes are involved in growth metabolism is
a problem for the biochemist to discover. Our knowledge is still very
incomplete; but enough is known already to indicate that the pro-
cesses concerned in development are real chemical transformations of
colloidal compounds. Is it not for the vitalist, then, to demonstrate
that a directive agent is involved in addition to the chemical changes
themselves that growth can not be fully explained without such an
agent ? Is it not a more natural presumption that the growth process
is strictly chemical and physical? Why should we assume a non-
mechanical factor unless some crucial test has demonstrated that
chemicophysical factors are insufficient to account for the process ?
There is no question but that the animal organism is different
from any type of machine so far devised by man. But it may yet
prove to be a machine or mechanism of some type peculiar to itself.
A locomotive is a very different sort of machine from a printing
press, and a gasoline engine represents a different type of mechanism
from either. There are machines and other machines; and our
knowledge of mechanical possibilities is not yet complete.
The functions of repair and regeneration constitute, in Driesch 's
opinion, the most striking argument in favor of vitalism. He be-
lieves that they demonstrate conclusively the action of a directive
agent. His experiments show that in certain lower organisms, even
when more than one half of the body is destroyed, the creature is able
to reconstitute the missing parts. Driesch found in the two-cell stage
of the sea-urchin's egg, for example, that if one cell be removed the
other cell will develop into a complete embryo of one half of the usual
size ; and that in the four-cell stage, if one cell be isolated, it develops
into a complete embryo of very small size. 3 In the blastula stage of
the same species, if the blastula be cut with scissors in any direction,
"each part so obtained will go on developing provided it is not
smaller than one quarter of the whole and will form a complete
larva of small size" (p. 11). No machine, Driesch argues, is "equi-
potential" in all its parts. "A machine is a specific arrangement of
parts, and it does not remain what it was if you remove from it any
portion you like" (p. 18).
s ' ' Problem of Individuality, ' ' page 10.
38 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
There are two objections to this line of argument :
1. Driesch's definition of a machine is determined quite arbi-
trarily. It is certainly not impossible to imagine a multiple machine,
any part of which would function like the whole if the remainder
were removed. Given a machine whose function is to construct a
certain other machine, it is quite conceivable that if some portion of
the constructed machine were destroyed the constructing machine
would restore it. It is possible that the germ is such a constructing
machine and the body such a constructed machine. Certainly the
hypothesis of a vitalistic factor is not to be settled by a narrow and
arbitrary definition of machine.
2. The actual facts of cell-cleavage do not lead necessarily to
Driesch 's conclusion in the tests which he describes. The process of
mitosis demonstrates that the germ plasm possesses a double func-
tion; it produces germ cells and somatic cells. Now if the original
cell possesses this double function, it is neither "unthinkable" nor
1 ' impossible " that cells resulting from later divisions should possess
the same function also. Thus when one cell is removed in the two-
cell stage, or part of the blastula is isolated at a later stage, the re-
moval of the cell or cells which operate to modify the direction of
growth may lead to a renewal of the original generating function in
the cell or cells which remain. In other words, the germ cell is known
to possess the generating function at the outset ; quite possibly this
function is not lost after cleavage, but is modified in each cell as
multiplication proceeds, by the cells which surround it.
According to the mechanistic interpretation of the phenomena
described by Driesch, the original "equipotentiality" of the cell is
merely held in check by the activity of neighboring cells and by the
specialization of certain cells in the growing organism. Regenera-
tion occurs when the inhibitory factors are removed. We need not
assume a " personal conductor" to direct the process of regeneration
along its proper path ; rather, the pathway opens up of itself through
the removal of certain barriers.
Driesch's crucial test apparently reduces to a problem of what
produces the initial division of the fertilized egg cell. Is this cleav-
age a physicochemical process, or can it be explained only by positing
an indwelling entelechy? Here again we must await the verdict of
the biochemist. But observations of crystal formation and other
kindred phenomena are in line with a mechanistic explanation of
mitosis. The scientist will therefore naturally assume the sufficiency
of physicochemical processes as a working basis; it rests with the
vitalist to demonstrate that the mechanistic explanation is inadequate
to explain every step in the development and regeneration of or-
ganisms.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 39
The Mechanism of Pliylogeny. The mechanism of phylogenetic
anticipation is fundamentally the same as that of individual growth.
The separation of an egg cell from the parent and its fertilization are
the first stage in the growth of a new organism. Certain physico-
chemical changes are observed in this process and the burden rests
upon the vitalist to point out any additional entelechial agency.
But in phylogeny the anticipation reaches further into the future.
Its ' ' fulfilment ' ' is the continuance of the species or line of individ-
uals through countless generations. This involves both a mechanism
for reproducing offspring similar to the parents and means for vary-
ing the offspring. A species which reproduced only exact replicas
of the parents would manifest a static sort of phylogenetic anticipa-
tion. But as a matter of observation offspring are not exactly like
the parents and their variations from parental type form the basis of
phylogenetic evolution, which makes it possible for more species and
more individuals to coexist. Hence, variation also is anticipatory,
and we have to inquire what mechanism produces it.
The experimental and statistical study of breeding beginning with
Mendel's work has already carried us a considerable way toward
understanding both heredity and variation. So far as these results
admit of generalization, reproduction is mechanistic in character.
The investigations do not, however, indicate the existence of a mech-
anism for directing the line of variation toward the goal most favor-
able to the species. They do not show how anticipatory results have
been reached.
(3) Genesis of Anticipation. This brings us to the last strong-
hold of vitalism, the problem of the ultimate genesis of organic antici-
pations. The problem is twofold : (1) How comes it that anticipatory
behavior mechanisms have actually been evolved rather than mech-
anisms which do not refer to the future of the creature (or species)
and do not yield beneficial reactions? (2) How comes it that growth
and evolution themselves are anticipatory in character, as contrasted
with the general purposelessness of inorganic activity? These two
problems may be treated as one: Can the origin of anticipation in
behavior and growth be explained under the mechanistic hypothesis,
or does it imply the action of an entelechy ?
Until Darwin 's time the hypothesis of a creative or directive force
seemed the only admissible explanation of the origin of different spe-
cies, each with organs and functions adapted to its own particular
environment. It was absurd to attribute to chance these countless
devices for anticipating the needs of various creatures. To recall a
pre-Darwinian illustration, how many trials must be made before the
poem of Paradise Lost would be built up word for word, by drawing
letters at random from a bag? In those days the burden of proof
rested on the biological mechanist.
40 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Darwin 's greatest claim to fame lies in his discovery of a new sci-
entific canon. Before his time the only alternatives for explaining
progress were "design" and "chance." He pointed out an inter-
mediate alternative in "natural selection. " It is to be regretted that
biologists have recently shown a tendency to minimize its importance.
For while Darwin's description of the process may require revision,
the canon itself underlies the whole structure of modern evolution.
Without it we are thrown back on a magic of chance or a mystery of
entelechy. Up to the present, at least, no biologist has discovered a
substitute for "natural selection."
The concept of natural selection is too familiar to require any
special discussion. Let us examine its bearing on anticipation. In
the case of behavior our problem is to explain the origin of beneficial
mechanisms, such as the distant-receptors and the central nervous
system.
The rise of a distant-receptor through strictly physicochemical
processes is quite comprehensible if we take into account the working
of natural selection. If, through some chance variation, a peripheral
organ appears in some creature, which is capable of being stimulated
by the juices emanating from food, the creature possessing that vari-
ation is at an advantage over his fellows and is more likely to survive
and have offspring than the rest of the species. A pigment spot
which receives light stimulations is likewise an advantage, and so in
higher species is the organ for receiving auditory impressions. Such
variations therefore tend to "persist," while thousands of less favor-
able variations tend to "perish."
Just so the evolution of a central nervous mechanism is explicable
through chance variation and natural selection. The creature in
whom even a rudimentary nervous pathway has been formed, will
perform his reactions more readily and precisely than his fellows in
whom the afferent and efferent impulses must be diffused through the
whole body substance.
In general, given a multitude of individuals in any species and
given the possibility of variation in many directions, the creature
whose variations give him an advantage over others is more likely to
survive, so that his favorable variations persist. Purposive charac-
ters are favorable to life. It would seem probable, therefore, that the
physical and chemical processes in organisms will tend to take on a
purposive character whenever variation offers an opportunity, even
without the special intervention of an entelechy.
So too in phylogeny. Whether the variations in the germ cells are
minute or of a mutative character is a question for investigation ; in
any case we may presume that they originate mechanistically and not
through a directive entelechy. But while species tend to vary in
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 41
many directions, only those new types tend to persist which in their
general organization meet the conditions of the environment. The
evolution of species directs itself; it prepares for the future environ-
ment by means of physicochemical processes.
Anticipatory activity of every sort, growth as well as behavior,
thus appears to be explicable along mechanistic lines. (1) Organ-
isms by means of chemical and mechanical processes tend to redupli-
cate themselves and at the same time to vary in countless directions.
(2) The variations in structure tend to persist despite changes of
substance. (3) Certain of these structures and their functions, by
reason of the general uniformity of natural conditions, are especially
useful for the life of the organism, while other acts and growth vari-
ations are useless or even harmful. Preeminent among the former
are anticipatory acts and growth processes. (4) Natural selection
results in weeding out those modes of behavior and lines of growth
which are harmful to the organism, and in establishing those which
possess a life value. This takes place through the survival of indi-
viduals whose variations in form and mechanism are in the main
beneficial to their possessors. These principles, taken together, seem
adequate to account for the presence of the anticipation factor in
organic growth and behavior. It appears unnecessary to posit, in
addition, a vital force.
2. FITNESS AND ADAPTATION. The fitness-consciousness is associ-
ated with fulfilment of conscious purpose. The sense of fitness at-
taches to acts or thoughts which fulfil the forethought; the sense of
unfit ness attaches to those which do not tally with the situation pic-
tured beforehand. Now, just as there is a well-marked biological
analogue to forethought namely, anticipation so we find in be-
havior an analogue to the sense of fitness and unfitness. "When the
preparation-state of the muscles passes over into activity, if the reac-
tion conform to that which is anticipated, the biologist and behavior-
ist consider the result a fulfilment of the anticipated act ; if the action
be checked or imperfectly formed, the result is an unfulfilled pur-
posive act. The fulfilled act is termed fit in all its parts, while the
non-conforming factors in the unfulfilled act are called unfit.
When we examine a complicated action, such as catching a ball,
we find that a great number of simple muscular movements and ad-
justments enter into the total act. The arms are raised, the elbows
flexed, the palms and fingers bent, the head and eyes directed
toward the ball, etc. All these movements and tensions cooperate to
produce the result of catching the ball. Each is fit or suitable to the
total situation. If, however, the player loses his balance, if his arms
are raised too late, if the hands are placed too far to one side, or if
the eyes are withdrawn for an instant, the anticipated result fails.
42 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Any movement or inhibition which mars the coordination of the total
action is said to be unfit or unsuitable to the situation.
The genetic explanation of fulfilment presents no special diffi-
culty. It may be accounted for in the same way as anticipation.
The two are parts of one and the same continuous process. Past
experience, persistence of nerve paths, and coordination of motor
activities bring about both the muscular preparation and the action
which follows. Through natural selection those coordinations which
are most useful tend to survive and supplant less useful movements.
Purposive actions, anticipated and fulfilled, tend to survive because
of their special utility in the life of organisms.
But the completion of an act does not always mean fitness. In
the sphere of behavior, especially, the concept of fitness offers some
difficulty of interpretation. Every combination of muscular adjust-
ments in a coordinated movement produces some result. If I slip
and fail to catch the ball, I do not perform the act anticipated ; but
I do perform some other coordinated act. When I try in vain to
recall a forgotten name, or when I endeavor to construct 'a labora-
tory device and fail, I live along in some fashion in spite of my
failure. Even if I seek food in vain on a desert island and eventually
die of starvation, I have fulfilled my life career such as it is, and the
world moves merrily on without me. Is there any room in biology,
then, for such a notion as unfitness ? I believe there is.
Biological organisms may be regarded not merely from the phys-
ical and chemical point of view, but from a higher standpoint also.
The living creature is a complex organization. The parts working
together produce results which they would not yield separately.
The growth from germ cell to adult creature means a succession of
cooperative transformations. If a gross injury occurs or if the nour-
ishment is insufficient, the usual growth processes are checked and
the creature dies. The biological result is not attained, though the
physicochemical transformations continue indefinitely. Hence, the
biologist distinguishes between certain metabolic changes which pro-
long the life of a creature and certain others which reduce him to a
lifeless congeries of atoms. The former changes are fit or appropri-
ate from the biological standpoint ; the latter are biologically unfit.
In the science of animal behavior a similar distinction holds.
Certain muscular adjustments and movements produce results which
maintain the normal life-processes others result in a deviation from
the normal. The former are classed as fit, the latter as unfit. In
the lowest creatures the modes of behavior are relatively few. When
a medusa moves its tentacles to and fro as the food approaches, this
mode of activity serves to maintain the life processes; it is a "fit"
mode of reaction.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 43
As we ascend the scale of organic life the receptor and motor
functions become more complex, and the modes of activity are more
varied. When the dog snaps at an insect, the movement is deemed
fit if it is adjusted to the conditions so that the insect is caught and
swallowed; otherwise it is pronounced unfit. So with negative re-
actions. The act of the rabbit in running away from the dog is fit
so long as it results in the rabbit's escape; if the act does not accom-
plish the anticipated result it is an unfit mode of behavior.
The behavior of man is most varied of all. His modes of main-
taining life are complex and often very indirect. Katabolism and
anabolism present intricate 'variations in the countless forms of
human work and recreation. Foresight and forethought play an
exceedingly important role in man's activity. Thus the switching
on of the electric light, in the example given, is part of a long and
intricate process in my life. My life-sustenance is conditioned by
the fact that years ago I took steps toward a professional career in
psychology ; that I am now reading a work which will promote this
career ; that the act of reading depends upon light ; and that at the
present moment light is to be obtained by turning the switch. The
present act is judged fit in so far as it promotes the whole life process.
The notion of fitness assumes a slightly different meaning in each
of the evolutionary sciences. The behaviorist deals with more spe-
cialized processes than the biologist. He narrows the norm of fitness
from mere growth and maintenance of life to special types of ac-
tivity. For example, in the case of the dog snapping at an object,
the behaviorist regards the act of snapping as fit, or appropriately
accomplished, if the thing snapped at is caught, whether it prove to
be a nutritious object, such as an insect, or an indigestible lump of
earth. Fitness, according to the behaviorist, is the completion of a
typical act, the performance of a specific set of movements from
start to finish.
The psychologist narrows the meaning of fitness still further.
The forethought is followed by a series of actions or thoughts. If
the outcome corresponds to the forethought, the psychologist re-
gards it as fit; or if the successive steps up to a certain point corre-
spond to the progressive stages of fulfilment, he regards them as fit
to this extent, whether they serve to prolong life or not.
The notion of fitness, then, is based upon one fundamental cri-
terion : A later event is deemed fit if it conforms in some way to a
preceding forethought or anticipatory situation; and this "conform-
ity" is like that in the causal relation. In other words, the final step
or any intermediate step in a purposive series is judged fit or appro-
priate when its functional relation to the first step is similar to that
in a causal series, but with the time order of "initial" and "final"
steps inverted.
44 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The interpretation of unfitness is a corollary to this. In psycho-
logical purpose forethoughts may occur which, owing to one or more
unfavorable circumstances, are not fulfilled beyond a certain point.
In such cases the succeeding steps are all said to be unfit. When we
pass to the biological sphere, the forethought is either absent or can
not be identified by the observer. Hence, in the realm of behavior
and growth the criterion of unfitness is altered. Any stage in a
process of behavior or growth is deemed unfit when it does not con-
form to the typical purposive behavior or growth of the given -species.
In other words, if any coordinated activity of any species ordinarily
fulfils the norm of fitness, then a deviation which leads to another
outcome is called unfit so far as that particular norm is concerned.
A practical difficulty in determining fitness arises here. Since
"forethought" is not in evidence in growth and behavior processes,
our only criterion of their fitness is the harmony or lack of harmony
between some initial stage of preparation and the result which fol-
lows. Now practically every creature differs from every other, and
every individual act is slightly different from corresponding ones of
the creature himself and his fellows. Yet these slight deviations do
not always render the creature or the act unfit ; on the contrary, we
often consider the results more fit on account of these slight modi-
fications.
This apparent inconsistency is due to our inveterate habit of
considering activity as a fixed, determinate process. We are apt to
forget that modes of behavior are evolutionary products. It is con-
venient to study an instinct or habit as a definite series of move-
ments, conforming to a fixed type, just as we group together a lot of
similar creatures and call them a species. But the concept of evo-
lution leads to a modification of the static interpretation of species,
and in just the same way we are driven to modify our static inter-
pretation of action-types.
The purpose of any given action is a certain typical result. For
example, the purpose of the sucking reaction in the human infant is
to transport nutritious substances into the digestive system ; the pur-
pose of fertilization is to initiate the growth of a new individual.
But from the evolutionary standpoint the general purpose of organic
activity is to prolong the life of the individual or the existence of the
race. The whole mass of biological functions, both reactive and de-
velopmental, are purposive, in the sense that they work toward this
general outcome.
The concept of fitness is to be interpreted, then, in a broad evolu-
tionary sense. An outcome which prolongs life is "fit." If an act
differs from the average in such a way as to be more advantageous to
the individual, it is judged to be "fitter" than the type. Fitness,
45
in short, is a judgment made by the scientist, and not a quality in-
herent in creatures and activities. The ultimate criterion of fitness
in behavior is not the repetition of a stereotyped act ; it is that the
act in question leads to the prolongation of life. Similarly, the cri-
terion of fitness in growth is that the process shall prolong the life
of the organism or promote the continuance of the species.* We
have not merely two alternatives, fit and unfit, but a series of de-
grees in fitness.
Each variety of behavior (locomotion, grasping, swallowing,
etc.) contributes something toward prolonging the creature's life;
the life of the creature depends upon the cooperation of these func-
tions. Thus one dog may be swifter of foot than another and catch
the rabbit; but if his digestive organs are not so efficient as the
other's, he obtains less nourishment from a given amount of food.
The relative fitness of radically different types of behavior is diffi-
cult to determine, for they yield no specific result in common. But
individual differences in the same function are comparable ; swifter
locomotion, keener visual discrimination represent higher degrees of
fitness, in general, than slower speed and poorer vision.
It may assist our interpretation of purpose if we consider the
relation of fitness to adaptation and organization. The term adap-
tation has been used in several different senses : it sometimes means
a "modification" of type, it is sometimes synonymous with "fitness."
The most fruitful conception seems to be a combination of these two.
An adaptation is a modification of form, etc., which renders the out-
come more fit. Thus we may regard a given action (e. g., a certain
dog pursuing a rabbit at a particular time) as adapted if it is modi-
fied from his previous mode of behavior in such a way as to accom-
plish the result more effectually. Yet we should not forget that the
ultimate criterion is life-value. If the same dog is chasing a skunk,
any modification which will prevent him from attaining the prey is
an adaptation, since the capture entails disastrous consequences.
The notion of organization is to be interpreted in the same way.
In general, the more highly organized a process, the fitter it is to
accomplish the typical result. But at times a modification in the
direction of simplicity proves fitter. Thus the adaptations of para-
sites in structure and functions are generally in the direction of
greater simplicity. If we consider the course of biological evolution
as one ever-continuing purposive process, we may say that in the
main it tends towards greater complexity because more highly or-
4 Spencer 's phrase, ' ' survival of the fittest, ' ' reverses this criterion. We
measure the fitness of a creature to his environment by his capacity to survive.
Spencer starts with an abstract quality of fitness and then argues that one who
possesses it is more apt to survive.
46 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ganized activities generally prove fitter. But complexity is not a
11 necessary" correlate of evolution. Purpose may work toward sim-
plicity as well as toward complexity.
3. ASSENT, POTENCY, SELF. In our analysis of purposive con-
sciousness we found three other factors associated with the fore-
thought: the attitude of assent, the feeling of potency in the fore-
thought, and the notion of self. The feeling of potency was traced
to kinesthetic sensations which accompany the purposive act, while
the assent consciousness was found to be based on kinesthetic mem-
ories. The associated self-notion proved least characteristic of pur-
pose ; it arises only from the circumstance that purposive conscious-
ness always involves personal activity and kinesthetic sensations.
Have these three factors any significance in the objective study of
behavior ?
The self factor may be found in behavior generally and for the
most part in growth. The anticipation and fulfilment characters
of behavior are phenomena of the same individual organism. If by
the self factor, then, we mean merely the fact that purposive reac-
tions are carried out from start to finish by one and the same individ-
ual creature, we do recognize an objective factor analogous to the
self -notion in conscious purpose. But if we go further and assume
that there is a center of activity from which all purposive behavior
is generated, there is nothing in the objective processes to justify the
assumption. Just as we found that self-consciousness is not a uni-
versal characteristic of purposive experiences, that it is a late product
of reflection, so the presence of a guiding self is not traceable in the
process of anticipatory reactions.
As for the growth processes, they are concerned with the indi-
vidual organism during every stage; but they involve assimilation
of material from outside the organism and dissociation of waste
products from the organism. The very beginning of growth in-
volves the separation of a cell from the original organism to form
another individual. Thus the anticipatory character of growth is
not entirely a phenomenon of the individual organism.
When we examine the assent and potency data of purposive con-
sciousness, we find it difficult to discover anything objective corre-
sponding to them. Both of these data of consciousness rest on kines-
thetic experiences. The memory of muscular contractions is an ele-
ment in the state of consciousness which precedes purposive activity,
as indicated by subjective report. In human behavior, therefore,
an objective factor corresponding to assent may be assumed. The
mental image is now generally admitted to have a physical basis in
the disposition of cerebral structure. We may therefore conclude
that anticipatory reaction in mankind is accompanied by stimulation
47
of kinesthetic traces in the brain centers. Whether any correspond-
ing central antecedent is uniformly present in the behavior of lower
creatures it is not easy to determine. Even in man we do not find
an assent factor in consciousness accompanying the growth processes.
On the whole, then, there is nothing in the data to justify us in con-
cluding that assent is a characteristic mark of purpose.
The sense of potency in the forethought is a vivid factor in cer-
tain conscious purposive experiences. But it does not accompany
simple purposive acts, and there is no consciousness of our power to
grow or to heal ourselves. Hence, we may assume that the sense of
potency is not characteristic of purposive phenomena.
All three of these factors, then, appear to be adventitious accom-
paniments of the forethought not essential features of purposive
consciousness. Regarded from the objective standpoint, the same
conclusion is reached. Purposive behavior and growth do not de-
pend on a guiding self, nor on a potent voluntary factor, nor on
a special entelechial force. That even mechanistic biologists some-
times unwittingly use these terms may be attributed to the promi-
nence of kinesthetic data in human experiences of activity. But these
data, as we have seen, are merely accessory elements in the purposive
consciousness. The assumption that a dynamic self plays an effective
part in purposive activity is based entirely on unessential features
which appear in the human consciousness of purpose. This anthro-
pomorphic or rather psychomorphic interpretation of teleology has
served to cloud the problem of behavior by suggesting certain com-
plicated hypotheses regarding a subconscious directive force.
It is worth while in this connection to call attention to the in-
veterate tendency of the human race to read kinesthetic elements
into physical phenomena. Our usual conception of "physical force"
is kinesthetic. Few of us can relinquish altogether the notion of a
sensible accompaniment to force and energy. The physicist's con-
cept of force and energy implies only a functional change of rela-
tions. But our actual sensible experiences of force and energy are
kinesthetic. Hence the tendency to a psychomorphic interpretation
of force. When one billiard ball strikes another we feel that a kin-
esthetic factor accompanies the impact that one ball compels the
other to move. But is not the mathematical formula of functional
change a sufficient account of the event?
A similar psychomorphic tendency appears in our interpretation
of space and time. "When we observe the interrelated masses of
matter which form the physical universe, we add in thought a psy-
chomorphic construct called space, in which these masses and their
constituent atoms or electrons are supposed to be "contained." So,
too, when we observe objects changing their relations, we add in
48 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
thought a psychomorphic construct called time, in which these
changes are supposed to occur.
It is in line with this general psychomorphic interpretation of
physical events that we represent the kinesthetic accompaniment of
thought as a dynamic factor capable of initiating new thoughts and
acts in a manner independent of the well-known associative pro-
cesses that we add to the process of successive association the psycho-
morphic construct of volition or entelechy.
One further variation of this psychomorphic tendency should be
noticed. It is often assumed that the fulfilment of a purpose is due
to intelligence. If by intelligence we mean trial and error pro-
cedure, it is certainly true that intelligence is an important factor in
attaining the end foreseen. But if we conceive of intelligence as an
autonomic revealer of truth, our interpretation clashes with the
actual succession of mental and physical phenomena as observed
through scientific investigation.
Intelligence is a function of the plasticity of nervous structure
which enables a great variety of associations to be formed. This
plasticity may be accounted for genetically through variations in
nervous structure which have survived on account of their value in
the lives of organisms. In each individual, from among the many
alternative associations which this nervous plasticity renders pos-
sible, those associations are established which best accord with the
conditions of environment. In other words, the more intelligent or
plastic a man is, the more his purposive thoughts are likely to be
fulfilled. The fulfilment is not due to a directive agent within.
In a certain chess problem I "see" that the inevitable result is
checkmate for black in five moves. A novice at the game will fail
utterly to see this result. Now while I discover the outcome only
after considerable study, a chess master sees the solution at a glance.
The master rejects certain alternatives at once, and reaches the re-
sult of other alternatives instantly. But it is his experience that
shortens the thought process, not a peculiar "insight." He may
"jump" to the conclusion and so indeed might I, though with far
less assurance. Even after long study I may overlook certain vari-
ations and possibly the master himself may overlook one alternative
and hand in a faulty solution. In every case an ' ' oversight ' ' is due to
a failure to associate, just as the representation of the successful
outcome is due to the formation of the requisite associations. The
central nervous structure of the chess master, and his repeated prac-
tise in forming the chessboard associations, seem sufficient to account
for his greater speed and accuracy in reaching the conclusion. Is it
not redundant to assume a psychomorphic factor of intelligence, and
attribute to it some mysterious efficiency in bringing about the result ?
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 49
We conclude, then, that purpose is a real phenomenon of organic
activity. There are acts which anticipate or prepare for future sit-
uations. The adequacy of this objective anticipation is expressed
by the biologist in a judgment of fitness, the ultimate "end" or ful-
filment being the prolongation of life or the maintenance of the
organic series.
So far as science can determine at present the inversion of tem-
poral order which marks purposive activity and growth can be ex-
plained mechanistically. The assumption of an entelechy is both
gratuitous and contrary to the general evidence.
HOWARD C. WARREN.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.
(To ~be continued.)
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Soul of America: A Constructive Essay in the Sociology of Religion.
STANTON COIT. New York : The Macmillan Company. 1914. Pp. 405.
This book, according to the author, is a definite prospectus for the
development of the spiritual resources of America, a prospectus, the aim
of which is to enlist the interest, the time, and the money of men and
women in a specific plan of religious evolution. The religion of a people,
Dr. Coit maintains, must be an expression of the people's life and it must
be developed with specific and conscious reference to the actual spiritual
and moral potencies of that people. This was preeminently true of all
ancient religions, typically of the religion of the Hebrews. Modern na-
tions are suffering from a failure to gather up and interpret in religious
form the fine qualities of their national life. In the case of the Jews
these qualities flowered out in their national religion. " My propositions,"
Dr. Coit says, " assume that it would be possible to develop almost infinitely
the spiritual potencies of the nation by organizing them and lifting them
into self-consciousness and that, when so developed, they would be able to
sweep away rapidly and forever national defects and wrongs and causes of
suffering and disease which now alarm every true statesman and patriot."
Each modern nation, and specifically America, is as much the chosen
people of the Lord as ancient Israel ever was. " Who dare suggest that
America is merely an ordinary nation ? " The need is that Americans
shall realize this fact and act upon it in the development of a national
religion rather than as now suffering their religious impulses to atrophy
by allowing them no expression except in the forms of an age, long past.
In the support of this view, the author discusses most suggestively the
cultural unity of America, insisting that the essence of the American spirit
is not materialistic, but is rather a fine idealism which is ample basis for a
national religion. America herself is " the living church of which every
citizen, whether he will or not, is an active member. He may be a bad
50 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
member and the church, itself may be far from perfection; but the fact
that every citizen is spiritually dependent for his character and for his
standards of manhood upon the psychic influence of his nation is un-
deniable." The stamp of the nation upon the character of the individual
is always definite and unmistakable, far more so than that of any partic-
ular religious sect.
The essence of religion is in its' social phases rather than in its indi-
vidualistic or purely psychological phases, as has been assumed by Pro-
fessor James and others. From this point of view religion must therefore
be interpreted. After outlining his conception of a national church and
pointing out that all religious phenomena are essentially social phenomena,
the author proceeds to point out the meaning in terms of humanistic reli-
gion of the various traditional religious conflicts. He finds that all tradi-
tional concepts express definite values which the advocate of a humanistic
religion should wish to preserve. God is defined as the indwelling moral
genius of a people, the Holy Ghost has always been the socializing power
that quickens individual men and women into glad self-sacrifice and serv-
ice. His interpretation of such concepts as sin, devil, hell, redemption,
salvation, eternal, infinite, prayer, etc., is most suggestive. The humanis-
tic view of prayer is one of the most interesting sections of the book.
The last section of the book deals with the need of religious ritual and
symbolism in humanistic as well as in traditional religion.
It is impossible in the space of a review to give a connected and com-
plete account of this most stimulating interpretation of humanistic reli-
gion. As a piece of literature alone it ranks high because of the felicity
of the style and the general human interest of the thought which it pre-
sents. The religious leader of even the orthodox type can not fail to be
charmed and stimulated by this remarkable book.
IRVING KING.
STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE PHILOSOPHICAL EEVIEW. July, 1915. The Existence
of the World as a Problem (pp. 357-370) : JOHN DEWEY. - An examina-
tion of the problem of the existence of an external world as treated in Rus-
sell's " Our Knowledge of the External World as a Eield for Scientific
Method in Philosophy." The question can be asked only after it is sur-
reptitiously answered. The solution of the problem consists "simply in
making explicit the assumptions which have tacitly been made in stating
the problem subject to the conditions involved in failure to recognize
that they have been made." The Psychological Element (pp. 371-385) :
GRACE A. DELAGUNA. - How shall the psychologist conceive his subject-
matter if psychology is to be a natural science ? " If there are such
things as psychical complexes at all, they must be composed of elements,
and these elements must be such things as are capable of forming com-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 51
plexes, namely, existents conceived after the analogy of physical entities.
If psychology is not willing to adopt this conception, it must give up the
claim to be a natural science." The Metaphysics of Nietzsche's Im-
moralism (pp. 386-418) : BERTRAM A. LANG. - No systematic effort has
been made to state the metaphysics presupposed by Nietzsche's ethics.
His position is a product of Schopenhauer and biology. Much is not
new, but for his time the point of view characterized by biological prag-
matism, and conceptions of organization, creation, freedom, optimism,
and atheism was new and distinctive. Nietzsche may be supposed to de-
fend instinct and spontaneity against the intellectualistic organization
of the German state. The Development of Berkeley's Ethical Theory (pp.
418-430) : G. A. JOHNSTON. - Berkeley's writings contain many anticipa-
tions of a theory of ethics. He was hampered at first by supposing that
ethics would, like metaphysics, proceed from Locke. Berkeley should have
been and might have been the first of the utilitarians. Reviews of Books:
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for
Scientific Method in Philosophy: BERNARD BOSANQUET. Annales de I'lnsti-
tut superieur de Philosophie, Universite de Louvain. Tome III. Annee
1914: ARCHIBALD A. BOWMAN. Woodbridge Riley, American Thought:
H. B. ALEXANDER. Notices of New Books. Summaries of Articles.
Notes.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. September 1915. On Intoler-
ables : A Study in the Logic of Valuation (pp. 477-500) : WILBUR M.
URBAN. - As the inconceivability of the opposite has been the test of intel-
lectual philosophy, so the intolerability of the opposite is made the test of
" value " philosophy. Intolerables, both for sensibility and ultimately for
will, exist. From the intolerability of its opposite as a principle, implica-
tions about reality are said to follow, chiefly that there is a necessary con-
nection between reality and value, namely, that the essence of value is
conservation. Personality and the Suprapersonal (pp. 501-525) : R. M.
MAC!VER. - Setting out from the axiom that all values are values for " per-
sons," maintains that there is a unified world of persons as a coherent
system of ultimate values, criticizes false conceptions of this unity, re-
views the facts of Suprapersonal unity, and concludes that "these facts
do reveal the reality and the nature of a coherent spirtual world, regarded
as a whole of values." Kant's Method of Composing the Critique of Pure
Reason (pp. 526-532) : NORMAN KEMP SMITH. - Forms a portion of an
introduction to a Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Em-
phasizes the inconsistencies, the mechanical construction, and the patch-
work method of the Critique. Discussion: Bertrand Russell on Neo-
Realism (pp. 533-537) : MARY WHITON CALKINS. - Reviews Mr. Russell's
papers published in the Monist for 1914-15. The writer wonders, in the
light of admissions there made, that Mr. Russell remains a neo-realist, and
also regards Mr. Russell's criticism of the non-realistic position as super-
ficial. Reviews of Books: Theodore De Laguna, Introduction to th# Science
of Ethics: WARNER FITE. John Dewey, German Philosophy and Politics:
FRANK THILLY. Bernardino Varisco, Know Thyself: G. W. CUNNINGHAM.
52 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
F. Pillon, L'annee philosophique : R. A. TSANOFF. Notices of New Books.
Summaries of Articles. Notes.
Aster, E. Einfiihrung in die Psychologic. Leipzig und Berlin: Verlag
von B. G. Teubner. 1915. Pp. iv + 119. 1.25 M.
Campagnac, E. T. Studies Introductory to a Theory of Education.
Cambridge : University Press. 1915. Pp. ix -(- 133. 90 cents.
Conway, Sir Martin. The Crowd in Peace and War. London and New
York: Longmans, Green, and Company. 1915. Pp. 332. $1.75.
Frischeisen-Kohler, Max. Thomas Hobbes. Grandzuge der Philosophie.
Erster Teil, Lehre vom Korper. Leipzig: Yerlag von Felix Meiner.
1915. Pp. 210. 5 M.
Hasse, Karl Paul. Marcilius Ficinus TJeber die Liebe oder Platons Gast-
mahl. Leipzig : Verlag von Felix Meiner. 1914. Pp. viii + 259. 6 M.
Titchener, E. B. A Beginner's Psychology. New York: The Macmillan
Company. 1915. Pp. xvi + 362.
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FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE COMMITTEE 1
As a result of invitations extended by the American Society of Mechan-
ical Engineers a number of associations of national scope have appointed
representatives on a Joint Committee on Standards for Graphic Presenta-
tion. Below are the names of the members of the committee and of the
associations which have cooperated in its formation.
WILLARD C. BRINTON, Chairman, American Society of Mechanical Engi-
neers. [7 East 42d Street, New York City.]
LEONARD P. ATRES, Secretary, American Statistical Association. [130
East 22d Street, New York City.]
N. A. CARLE, American Institute of Electrical Engineers.
ROBERT E. CHADDOCK, American Association for the Advancement of
Science.
FREDERICK A. CLEVELAND, American Academy of Political and Social
Science.
H. E. CRAMPTON, American Genetic Association.
WALTER S. GIFFORD, American Economic Association.
J. ARTHUR HARRIS, American Society of Naturalists.
H. E. HAWKES, American Mathematical Society.
JOSEPH A. HILL, United States Census Bureau.
i Copies may be had from The American Society of Mechanical Engineers,
29 West 39th St., New York: 5 cents to members; 10 cents to non-members.
Discount in quantities.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
53
HENRY D. HUBBARD, United States Bureau of Standards.
ROBERT H. MONTGOMERY, American Association of Public Accountants.
HENRY H. NORRIS, Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education.
ALEXANDER SMITH, American Chemical Society.
JUDD STEWART, American Institute of Mining Engineers.
WENDALL M. STRONG, Actuarial Society of America.
EDWARD L. THORNDIKE, American Psychological Association.
The committee is making a study of the methods used in different fields
of endeavor for presenting statistical and quantitative date in graphic
form. As civilization advances there is being brought to the attention of
the average individual a constantly increasing volume of comparative
figures and general data of a scientific, technical, and statistical nature.
The graphic method permits the presentation of such figures and data with
a great saving of time and also with more clearness than would otherwise
be obtained. If simple and convenient standards can be found and made
generally known, there will be possible a more universal use of graphic
methods with a consequent gain to mankind because of the greater speed
and accuracy with which complex information may be imparted and
interpreted.
THE FOLLOWING ARE SUGGESTIONS WHICH THE COMMITTEE HAS THUS FAR CON-
SIDERED AS REPRESENTING THE MORE GENERALLY APPLICABLE PRINCIPLES
OF ELEMENTARY GRAPHIC PRESENTATION
1. The general arrangement of a diagram should
proceed from left to right.
FIG. 1
Year Tons
1900 270,588
1914 555,031
n
OG)
FIG. 2
2. Where possible represent quantities by linear magnitudes as areas or
volumes are more likely to be misinterpreted.
L
3. For a curve the vertical scale, whenever prac-
ticable, should be so selected that the zero line will
appear on the diagram.
FIG. 3
54
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
4. If the zero line of the vertical scale will not
. normally appear on the curve diagram the zero line
-4-^ should be shown by the use of a horizontal break in
the diagram.
FIG. 5A
FIG. 5B
!3 S 3 3 8 g S,
Year "
FIG. 50
5. The zero lines of the scales for a curve should be sharply distin-
guished from the other coordinate lines.
ftt Cent
Utilized
s ssssgessg
Per Cent of Income
FIG. 6C
6. For curves having a scale representing percentages, it is usually
desirable to emphasize in some distinctive way the 100 per cent, line or
other line used as a basis of comparison.
7. When the scale of a diagram refers to dates,
^^ and the period represented is not a complete
^ unit, it is better not to emphasize the first and
last ordinates, since such a diagram does not
represent the beginning or end of time.
8. When curves are drawn on logarithmic coordi-
nates the limiting lines of the diagram should each
be at some power of ten on the logarithmic scales.
Population
100.000.000
FIG. 8
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 56
I ? 9 f ? f ?
Y "
FIG. 9A
YC
FIG. 9B
9. It is advisable not to show any more coordinate lines than necessary
to guide the eye in reading the diagram.
10. The curve lines of a diagram should be
Yk sharply distinguished from the ruling.
FIG. 10
1 ? r ? ? I f
Year
FIG. 11A
.. ~' i -i >
Djr
FIG. 11B
5g
3?^"
S?MI8J.IL "
FIG. 11C
11. In curves representing a series of observations it is advisable when-
ever possible, to indicate clearly on the diagram aU the points representing
the separate observations.
V"
^ *MMH
I n.m.m
I rn.tm.tK
.".
12. The horizontal scale for curves should usu-
ally read from left to right and the vertical scale
from bottom to top.
FIG. 12
FIG. 13A
| s s a s s s
Ywr
FIG. 13B
FIG. 13C
13. Figures for the scales of a diagram should be placed at the left and
at the bottom or along the respective axes.
66
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
13 !?
FIG. 140
14. It is often desirable to include in the diagram the numerical data
or formula represented.
FIG. 15
15. If numerical data are not included in the diagram it is desirable
to give the data in tabular form accompanying the diagram.
FIG. 16
16. All lettering and all figures on a diagram
should be placed so as to be easily read from the
base as the bottom or from the right-hand edge
of the diagram as the bottom.
FIG. 17. ALUMINUM CASTINGS OUTPUT OF PLANT No. 2, BY MONTHS, 1914.
Output is given in short tons. Sales of scrap aluminum are not included.
17. The title of a diagram should be made as clear and complete as
possible. Sub-titles or descriptions should be added if necessary to insure
clearness.
VOL. XIII, No. 3. FEBRUARY 3, 1916
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
A STUDY OF PURPOSE. Ill
THE ROLE OF PURPOSE IN NATURE
WE have seen that the concept of purpose is based on a certain
conscious experience. The distinctive feature of the purpo-
sive experience is that the usual order of sequence between presenta-
tion and representation is inverted. The ideational experience which
forms the first stage of purpose is termed forethought; the progress
and fulfilment of the purpose are accompanied by a feeling of fitness,
or by a contrary feeling if the fulfilment is impeded.
Our study of objective purpose indicates the presence of corre-
sponding factors in behavior and growth. The analogue of fore-
thought is an anticipatory reaction; the analogue of the fitness-sense
is a judgment by the observer: when the outcome conforms to the
scientist's ideal he judges it fit, when it fails to tally with this ideal
he deems it unfit. On the basis of this similarity we are justified in
extending the notion of purpose to certain biological phenomena, in
which an inversion of temporal order is observed.
It remains to consider whether the category of purpose may be
carried over into the inorganic sphere. Do any transformations or
motions of physical things (apart from those pertaining to biological
organisms) anticipate the future? This in turn suggests a still more
fundamental question : Does science find any substantial indications
that the constructive make-up of nature as a whole is purposive and
that the succession of events in cosmic history constitutes a purposive
series ?
The scientist 's problem is this : So far as we know at present the
constitution of nature is quite empirical. It might have been quite
different in many respects. The chemical elements might have been
different, or the existing quantity of each might have been more or
less than it actually is. The physical laws might have been different,
or the grouping of masses into worlds and the material composition
of these worlds might have been otherwise. If all physical nature is
empirical, we may ask, (1) Does the actual constitution of nature give
57
58 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
evidence of a purposive origin? In other words, may we conclude on
scientific grounds that its actual formation was anticipatory of the
stages which evolution has undergone and will undergo? (2) Does
the evolution process itself furnish evidence of anticipation and pur-
pose ? The problem of origin seems to involve an entelechy, since the
beginning of the physicochemical series, if there was such a beginning,
could scarcely itself be expressed in mechanistic terms. The problem
of evolution is merely a generalization of the biological problem. If
cosmic evolution as a whole should prove to be purposive, the pur-
posive relation involved might be either entelechial or mechanistic.
We find, then, three fairly distinct problems confronting us: (1)
The existence of purpose in inorganic processes similar to that which
clearly occurs in the organic realm. (2) The purposive origin of the
universe. (3) The purposive character of cosmic evolution as a
whole.
It may be well at the outset to justify the attempt to examine these
problems from a purely scientific standpoint. For, owing to the ab-
sence of any very clear empirical evidence on the subject, scientists
are generally inclined to avoid the teleological problem as applied to
inorganic nature. Some investigators hold that the problem is in-
soluble that the answer is really "unknowable." Others insist that
its solution transcends the bounds of scientific procedure and that an
answer may only be obtained by non-scientific means, through the
medium of philosophy and theology.
Neither of these seems the proper attitude for the scientist to take.
(1) To hold that any phenomena are unknowable is distinctly un-
scientific. In many cases science has discovered new paths leading to
the solution of seemingly insoluble problems. Spectral analysis re-
vealed the chemical composition of distant stars, which had been
assumed to be beyond the range of human knowledge. The most that
the scientist may venture to say of any problem is that the answer is
unknown. It is provincial if not paleolithic to declare any truth
unknowable.
(2) To relegate the problem of teleology to philosophy and theol-
ogy was a defensible attitude in pre-Darwinian times. There was
then no scientific means of explaining the mechanism of purpose,
whereas both of these branches claimed to possess a master-key to
certain obscure problems of the universe. Now that biological science
offers a definite explanation of purposive behavior, the relation of
purpose to cosmic progress becomes an actual scientific problem.
"Whether or not the attempt prove successful in throwing new light on
the trend of the universe, science seems called upon to investigate the
problem of purpose to the very foundations according to its own
methods.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 59
Before beginning this study it would be well to recall once more
the distinction between the mechanistic and vitalistic conceptions of
purpose. The mechanist regards the purposive relation as supple-
menting the causal relation. Purposive phenomena, according to his
view, are also causal phenomena. The succession of physicochemical
processes in purpose is continuous, just as it is in pure causation.
There is merely an additional relation between certain terms, which
is the inverse of causal antecedence and consequence.
The vitalist, on the other hand, regards the purposive relation as
counteracting or superseding the causal relation. According to his
view there are in purposive phenomena one or more "uncaused"
terms. Either the future in some way changes the present; or else
some agency outside the series of events exerts a guiding influence
upon their succession, so that events take a different course from that
brought about by physical causation. The latter interpretation I
understand to be Driesch's position. The supposed guiding agent,
entelechy, may be part and parcel of the "material substance" or
intimately associated with it; but one of its distinctive features is
that it lies ' ' outside the causal series. ' '
It is somewhat difficult for a mind trained in the study of physical
and chemical relations to picture such an entelechy or to understand
the nature of its activity. But inasmuch as some earnest and well-
trained observers do accept it, the hypothesis deserves serious con-
sideration by scientific thinkers. Its validity should be determined
by evidence, not by the test of conceivability. It is not sufficient to
waive entelechy aside on the ground of inconceivability; for certain
inconceivable hypotheses have ultimately worked their way into gen-
eral scientific acceptance. 1
The chief stumbling-block to the mechanistic interpretation of
mental and biological purpose has been the potent, directive factor.
We found reason to believe that this is only a psychomorphic adjunct
to purpose. In the organic realm the mechanistic view, which rejects
this factor, seems to be supported by the weight of evidence. The
issue between vitalism and mechanism in the inorganic world should
likewise be determined according to scientific evidence.
1. Purpose in the Inorganic Processes. Our first problem is to
determine whether any inorganic transformation gives evidence of
possessing a purposive character. We shall base our inquiry upon the
two distinctive factors discovered in purposive behavior, anticipation
and fitness, and begin with an examination of the former.
(a) Anticipation. Do inorganic activities in any way anticipate
the future ? Do they ever prepare for or refer to later situations ?
1 One leading aim of these papers is to urge a serious consideration of the
entelechy hypothesis and its rejection on the evidence.
60 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Physical events in general constitute an irreversible series or,
more exactly, a "non-reversing" succession. The motion of a mate-
rial body tends to continue in the same direction indefinitely. When
a moving body is deflected by some force or obstacle, it seldom retraces
its course in precisely the opposite direction. When a mass of earth
or rock disintegrates, its particles scatter far and wide and never
return to reconstitute the original mass.
Certain physical phenomena indeed are rhythmic; this is partic-
ularly the case with simple motions, such as light and sound waves or
the swing of a pendulum. The tides furnish an example of a
rhythmic series on an unusually large scale. Closer examination, how-
ever, demonstrates that tidal rhythm is not a perfect reversal of
events; winds and reefs often alter the course of the flow and trans-
form tidal action into a succession of progressive changes. The same
is true of the simpler rhythmic motions. Friction, atmospheric dis-
turbances, and other influences modify sound vibrations and pendular
movement.
Instances of simple reversal occur in the transformations of bodies
from one state to another and in chemical activity. Water is trans-
formed into steam or ice, and these bodies may return again to the
liquid state. Chemical compounds are formed, and under certain con-
ditions the compounds are transformed back into their elements. But
the reversal seldom brings about an exact reconstitution of the orig-
inal situation in every particular. Some of the ice evaporates before
the rest is transformed into water. Part of the chemical compound
unites with some other substance to form a new compound before the
remainder has been resolved back into its elements.
A cyclic form of motion occurs in certain physical phenomena,
such as the revolution and rotation of planets. But here, too. the
recurrence of phases is imperfect. The rotation of the earth is sub-
ject to constant alterations; the earth's orbit is forever contracting.
The more closely we examine nature, the less evidence do we discover
of any complete reversal of serial order, or any exact cyclic repetition
of events in the inorganic sphere. The general pattern of physical
change appears to be a progressive, .non-reversing series of trans-
formations.
So far from raising an initial presumption against the teleological
hypothesis, however, this general irreversibility of physical events is
quite consistent with a purposive interpretation. For the reversal of
events which characterizes purpose is not a complete retracing of the
process step by step in the opposite direction. Anticipation is only
an inversion of the order of certain events in the series. In the ordi-
nary causal sequence represented by A, B, C, D . . . L, M, N, 0, the
event B is the usual antecedent of L, M, N, 0. In purposive activity
PSYCHOLOGY AXD SCIEXTIFIC METHODS 61
certain of these events, M, N, come to be antecedents of B ; the series
becomes A, M, N, B, C. D . . . L, 0. When the medusa, acting upon
an olfactory stimulus (A), begins its food-getting reactions (M, N)
before the food is grasped (B), this reversal of order stamps the act
as purposive.
Are there indications of such anticipations in the inorganic world?
Do we find any chemical or physical activities which begin before
their antecedent conditions are completely established? Up to the
present I have been unable to discover, outside of the organic sphere,
any unquestionable example of anticipation. In popular language
the sun "struggles" to pierce the clouds and pour its warm rays on
the earth. Even were all the sun 's rays concentrated on the earth, in-
stead of an infinitesimal portion, it would be difficult to discern any-
thing anticipatory in the ' ' act. ' '
The relation between clouds and rivers furnishes a less fanciful
example. The sun's heat evaporates water from the sea, the tempera-
ture cools and precipitates rain, which gathers in springs and streams
and passes at length into the great rivers. The formation of clouds,
then, is in a way an anticipation of the river's flow. It serves to main-
tain the streams at a fairly constant level.
We may cite also the successive formation of strata in the earth 's
crust by precipitation of lime, basalt, and other substances. The older
teleology would interpret the stages in the process as "means" to an
"end," namely, the production of the solid earth. But does it in-
volve real anticipation ? Does not the causal relation describe it fully ?
In such cases does the future outcome add any new meaning to
the successive stages of the process ?
Certain mechanical devices of human origin manifest anticipation.
The governor on a wheel keeps the speed constant. If the wheel
begins to rotate faster the weight flies out and checks it ; if the wheel
slackens the weight is lowered and the diminished friction causes the
speed to increase. There is no doubt but that the presence of the
governor anticipates the irregularities of the wheel's motion. In cer-
tain motor engines immediately after combustion a valve open 4 *
through which the waste products pass out. The opening of the valve
is anticipatory to the discharge.
Numerous examples of this sort might be mentioned, but they are
scarcely relevant here, since they all originate in the activities of
human organisms. They do serve, however, to demonstrate one fact,
namely, that mechanistic processes may fall into the purposive
type. One would scarcely attribute a resident entelechy to the regu-
lator. On the other hand, in all these cases the purposive type of
activity is built up through the interaction of organisms with these
inorganic bodies. The inorganic bodies do not of themselves assume
62 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the purposive type of activity. Clerk-Maxwell suggested that a guid-
ing " demon" might enable heat to pass from a colder to a warmer
body ; but he pointed out at the same time that the heat activity does
not of itself accomplish this reversal.
In living matter we find abundant instances of anticipation, as
already indicated. It should be noticed also that in the course of
evolution, taken as a whole, so-called intermediate forms appear
rudimentary organs and transitional species, which seem explicable
only through references to other forms which appear later. Antici-
pation is so marked a characteristic of biological phenomena, that the
most mechanistically inclined biologist finds it difficult to dispense
altogether with teleological language in discussing growth and be-
havior. On the other hand, when we study the "behavior" of chem-
ical elements, the evolution of the stellar universe, and the formation
of the earth's crust, it is difficult to discover a single indisputable in-
stance of anticipatory activity. Does this indicate that anticipation is
a phenomenon which belongs exclusively to biological organization?
I am not sure that so sweeping a conclusion is justified. (1) The
anticipatory behavior of organisms depends on complex structure.
Outside of the organic realm we have little opportunity to observe
very complex colloidal compounds. If anticipatory activity depends
upon complexity (and upon organization in the broad sense of orderly
complexity) , is there any but negative evidence to warrant us in limit-
ing the sphere of anticipation to biological organization, i. e., to the
orderly complexity of carbon compounds ?
(2) It appears from observation of organisms that the greater the
degree of organization, the further-reaching and more detailed is the
anticipation. This in itself would lead us to expect only rare and
crude instances, if any, among simple inorganic phenomena.
(3) The example of the mechanical governor would seem to refute
the assumption ; for a crude speed regulator might conceivably come
into existence by some fortuitous combination of substances. A nat-
ural dam may approximate a type of water-gauge. 2 The complex
interworking of cloud-formation and river-flow may also serve as an
argument for anticipation in the inorganic sphere. One single excep-
tion destroys the generalization.
(&) Fitness. In the activity of organisms the fitness factor is a
judgment by the observer that the outcome of the activity conforms
to a type or to a general ideal. The dog's food-getting reaction is fit
when it results in his capturing and devouring the prey. Or, in the
2 These two illustrations were suggested by Professor R. S. Lillie's reference
to the safety-valve in his admirable paper on ' ' Purposive and Intelligent Behav-
ior " (this JOURNAL, XII., page 604). The first two parts of the present paper
were completed and the third part outlined before the writer was acquainted with
Professor Lillie's article.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 63
broader aspect, it is fit when it serves to maintain the dog's life.
From this broader viewpoint we would not judge the devouring act
to be fit if the prey devoured is poisonous.
The physical sciences proceed on the assumption of uniformity.
So far as conditions are the same the mechanical activity is exactly
the same ; and so far as they differ the activity does not conform to
the assumed type it is not "fit" in that sense. We are accustomed
in experimental work to solve the question of conformity by mathe-
matical criteria. Take the problem of the atomic weight of hydrogen
in relation to oxygen. Based on O = 16, a number of independent
tests give values for H varying between 1.0075 and 1.0085. The in-
vestigator assumes the average or median as type, and estimates the
relative fitness of the particular tests according as they approach this
standard.
The criterion of fitness may be used to determine the purposive-
ness of an activity where its anticipatory character is in doubt. For
example, take the sequence of evaporation from the sea and the flow
of rivers. If we regard a certain height of water in the river as the
type, then a given amount of evaporation and rainfall leads to a fit
outcome. A greater or lesser amount of evaporation is to this extent
unfit. But how are we to determine the "standard" height of water?
In animal behavior we found difficulty in setting particular norms,
for the reason that behavior different from the norm was sometimes
judged fitter than that which conformed. In the river-level problem
it is far more difficult to select a norm. Is the norm a steady level, or
an average level with fluctuations, or a progressive lowering of level
as the stream cuts its way deeper into the bed ? If the river breaks
its banks and floods a marsh-land, is this outcome fitter or more unfit?
It is difficult in studying such activities to form any solid judgment
of fitness with reference to a particular norm.
How is it with general norms or ideals ? The ultimate criterion of
fitness in the organic sphere proved to be the maintenance of the
individual life or the persistence of the phyletic chain. The nearest
approach to this among inorganic phenomena is the maintenance of
an object's form despite changes of substance. Thus a river main-
tains itself, although the water is constantly replaced by other water.
There is a seductive analogy between this and the maintenance of
organic life through all the creature 's metabolic changes. If we con-
sider the maintenance of water in river-beds as a general norm and
the evaporation from the ocean as an anticipatory action, we may
attach a judgment of greater or less fitness to the rainfall in wet and
droughty seasons, respectively.
The scientific physiographer would probably adopt this interpre-
tation. If physiography is a real science, it would seem possible to
64 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
extend the notion of purposive activity to such phenomena as these.
We may even find in physiography examples of "adaptation" that
is, modifications which render the activity more fit.
A volcano builds itself up by means of its own activity. The lava
which it throws out collects in a cone, while the continual passage
of material from the inside keeps open a vent and maintains a funnel-
shaped passage. This passage is lengthened more and more as the
mountain grows higher. In the nature of the case more material
flows to the base than collects at the summit, so that the sides of the
volcano maintain a curved slope which forms a suitable incline for
the flow of lava. The action at any moment is fit, but the modifica-
tions render it more fit. In other words, the activity "adapts" itself
to each phase of the changing conditions.
Again, a river gradually wears away its bed. The swifter cur-
rent in mid-stream makes that part deeper ; the banks are cut down
so as to give clearly marked limits to the channel. The general ac-
tion of erosion is anticipatory, in that it prepares the river bed for
the continued flow of the river. Each step in the erosive process is
also an adaptation; it renders the river-bed more fit for the flow of
the current.
Should activities of which the above are instances be included
under the concept of purpose? From the physiographer's stand-
point this extension of purpose is legitimate, for they bear the dis-
tinctive marks of purpose anticipation and fitness. The biologist
may object that the river and the volcano are not unitary things in
the sense that organisms are units. But are not the cell and the or-
ganism also groups of particles from the physicist's standpoint and
groups of atoms from the chemist's?
If biology has a right to adopt an arbitrary unit which suits its
needs, can it refuse to recognize the right of another science to adopt
the unit which its data justify? Each science is the best judge of
its own requirements. The real question is whether physiography
is a science or rather, whether its data admit of scientific treat-
ment. It would be difficult for the biologist to defend his own science
against the physicist and at the same time combat the claims of
physiography. I believe there is some ground, then, for extending
the concept of fitness into the inorganic realm, though little progress
has actually been made in this direction.
This extension, however, serves only to emphasize the mechan-
istic interpretation of purpose. For it is doubtful whether any sci-
entific physiographer would seek to account for the process of river-
maintenance and volcanic action by the directive agency of an
entelechy.
We may conclude, then, that there are some few scientific indi-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 65
cations of "purpose" in the inorganic realm, and that the evidence
certainly precludes a sweeping denial of its possibility in that sphere.
So far as the actual evidence goes, however, the indications favor the
mechanistic interpretation rather than the vitalistic.
2. Purposive Origin of the Cosmos. So far we have considered
only specific types of inorganic activity. Quite a different problem
arises when we examine the character of the ultimate data which
compose the inorganic world. Do the make-up of atoms and elec-
trons, their spatial relations and "forces," their modes of composi-
tion, their actual distribution, etc., indicate a preexisting "plan"?
We have only the later terms of the series to go upon. If an antici-
pation stage existed, we have not observed it. I see no way of
studying this phase of purpose from the standpoint of anticipation ;
our only avenue of approach, apparently, is from the side of fitness.
The question of entelecky stands on quite a different footing in
the explanation of origins from its place in the explanation of
changes. In the latter it seems to be wholly discredited. In the
problem of origins, however, the issue between entelechy and mechan-
ism is still open so far as our present survey is concerned. Even
though there be no directive potency in consciousness or in organ-
isms, a directive factor may prove requisite to account for the begin-
ning of the things which are.
Certain writers have recently endeavored to reinstate the earlier
cosmic teleology, and to demonstrate that the actual constitution of
the universe is peculiarly harmonious, a conclusion which seems to
indicate a preconceived design. For example, the existing range of
temperature on the earth is favorable to rainfall, which produces the
streams, which cause erosion, which renders the soil favorable for
vegetation. Similarly they conclude that initial prevision is evi-
denced by the great abundance of those elements which are most im-
portant for the preservation of life. In each of these instances, as in
almost all that are brought forward to sustain the contention, there
is some reference to life. But the purpose here considered is not a
biological act it is rather the fitness of inorganic conditions to pro-
duce and maintain vital organization. Such examples of the peculiar
fitness of inorganic conditions might be multiplied. Several writers
have traced them out in great detail. 3
There is, however, a fundamental scientific objection to this mode
s See especially the recent work by L. J. Henderson on "The Fitness of the
Environment." Professor Henderson holds that the cosmic process is strictly
mechanistic, but that there may be a tendency which works "parallel with mech-
anism without interfering with it" (p, 306) this tendency being located "at the
very origin of things, just before mechanism begins to act" (p. 308). It is in-
teresting to note that Professor Henderson assigns teleology to a realm outside
the domain of science (p. 311).
66 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of reasoning. Admitting that inorganic conditions are peculiarly
suitable to the maintenance of life as actually constituted, it may
nevertheless be argued that under a different set of inorganic con-
ditions a different type of organism might have arisen for which
those alternative conditions would have proved just as favorable. It
is not reasonable to infer design from the fitness of present condi-
tions, unless at the same time we can show that any other conditions
would have resulted in hopeless chaos. At present there are no
means of demonstrating this. On the contrary we do find certain
inorganic phenomena, such as the properties of silicon compounds,
which suggest that on a planet where carbon was scarce a different
type of organism might well have arisen based upon some other
element.
The attempt to infer design from the peculiar fitness of actual
physicochemical conditions rests mainly upon enumeration of par-
ticulars. In the interest of fairness the evidence for the other side
should be presented. Unfortunately no one has undertaken, so far
as I am aware, to enumerate systematically the points of unfitness
which inhere in the actual constitution of matter, its properties, and
its relations. 4 It is not easy for us to imagine a universe of other
sorts of atoms with other properties and relations. The scientist
may concede his own inability to picture things as they might be,
without being at all convinced that they might not be different, and
that the constitution of such hypothetical things might not be better
fitted to secure an harmoniously working universe. In short, the
arguments so far advanced for "peculiar fitness" lead merely to
the meaningless conclusion that the fitness of things is what it is.
The attempt to read purpose into origins by such arguments as
this is merely an extension of the vitalistic conception of purpose
from the biological sphere to the problem of cosmic origins. At any
given instant (it is argued) the position of events would "nat-
urally ' ' be so-and-so ; but at certain critical moments entelechy steps
in as a directing force and alters the "natural" sequence of phe-
nomena. So too it is assumed that at the origin of things their con-
stitution might have been this, that, or the other ; an entelechy steps
in and directs what they shall be. We have seen, however, that there
is no empirical ground for the belief that at any instant a directing
force alters the mechanistic course of events. Why then should the
scientist carry this discredited notion over into the sphere of origins,
about which he knows far less ?
* According to all indications, in the actual physical universe the dissipation
of energy will ultimately reduce any given world to a cold, solid mass, on which
life as we know it will cease to exist. Surely this is a supremely unfit character
in the constitution of things !
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 67
The philosopher will obtain scant hearing among scientists if,
after conceding the mechanistic character of biological events, he
attempts to smuggle entelechy in at the beginning of things. A no-
tion accepted in one sphere may be carried over by analogy into
another with some plausibility. But if it afterward prove false in
the former sphere, one should demand independent evidence if it is
to stand in the latter. If the action of a directing agency during
the course of events is unsupported by evidence, there is no a priori
ground for assuring such a directive agency at the beginning of
events.
The present findings of science, however, indicate rather a world
without beginning in time. If the succession of physical changes
has proceeded from all time, there is surely no question of a directive
agency at the beginning. The scientist will not go so far as to assert
the impossibility or inconceivability of a beginning, or of an entelechy
in that beginning. He will merely note the entire absence at present
of evidence to support the hypothesis.
3. Purpose in Cosmic Evolution,. It remains for us to consider
the relation of purpose to the progress of events in the universe
taken as a whole or rather in that fragment of time and space open
to modern scientific observation. The notion of evolution in its
broadest aspects covers the growth of stellar systems, the integration
of single worlds like the earth, the chain of living species, and social
organization. This dynamic concept is to-day firmly established in
science. It points to a progressive change, rather than an ebb and
flow of events to new stages of organization and novel results at-
tained in the course of history. The evolution concept per se in-
volves nothing which may not be stated in purely causal terms. But
the occurrence of anticipation and prevision in certain portions of
the general system is definitely established. Can this notion of pur-
pose be extended to the course of cosmic history regarded as a single
interwoven plexus of events?
So far as the vitalistic interpretation of purpose is concerned, it
is difficult to find any warrant for such an assumption. The facts
in biology on which the notion of a directive entelechy are based
have been shown to lend themselves readily to a mechanistic expla-
nation. Inorganic phenomena require even less the support of an
entelechial hypothesis. Natural selection seems an adequate substi-
tute for prevision in the interpretation of organic evolution, and we
find nothing in the processes of inorganic evolution which indicates
the action of a directive force outside of the causal chain. Scientific
evidence, then, leads clearly to the rejection of the entelechial as-
sumption in interpreting the course of cosmic evolution.
There remains, however, the possibility of extending the mechan-
68 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
istic interpretation of purpose to the cosmic process. "We have en-
deavored in these papers to work out a scientific conception of pur-
pose which avoids the implication of a potent, directive agency.
Purpose in the last scientific analysis implies only anticipation and
fitness. Do we find evidence of these factors in the cosmic process
as a whole ?
The mechanistic standpoint is an attempt to explain organic phe-
nomena in physicochemical terms. In so far as this attempt is suc-
cessful, the gap between inorganic and organic processes is bridged.
When, therefore, the mechanist comes to consider the role of pur-
pose in the universe, his fundamental assumption makes it feasible
for him to group the organic with the inorganic. That is to say, the
mechanist finds no ground for setting organic phenomena off by
themselves. He regards the entire course of evolution as a single
graduated process.
The only scientific basis, in our present state of knowledge, for
the extension of the category of purpose to the course of cosmic evo-
lution seems to be the general orderly interweaving of natural proc-
esses in their mutual interplay, and their progress toward a pre-
conceivable goal. The physical universe, even apart from organic
life, is a cosmos, not a chaos. The uniformity of nature, the preva-
lence of the same chemical and physical "laws" throughout the vast
extent of space and time which are within scientific observation, the
conservation of energy, the wide reach of light, gravity, etc., all
these empirical generalizations testify to a general unity of compo-
sition and unity of action in nature. There is present something
more than fitness there is evidence of harmony of all processes.
Science can not infer with certainty that this general harmony
implies anticipation. But there is apparently a certain trend of
events which may be noted even with' our present limited knowledge.
With the further advance of knowledge it seems likely that the
direction of this trend will become more clearly evident. In other
words, it seems possible that the fulfilment of the cosmic process may
be anticipated or foreseen in human knowledge.
Unfortunately this type of prevision does not meet the condi-
tions of purpose according to the mechanistic interpretation. For
the anticipation of events implied in mental and biological purpose
is a temporal inversion in the series of events themselves, not in a
separate thought-series. Our thoughts, or their physical bases, form
part of a world-wide causal sequence, it is true, but they constitute
only a minute portion of the vast complex sequence which embraces
the whole course of cosmic evolution. Without insisting too dog-
matically on the parity between antecedent and consequent, we may
nevertheless hesitate to call any individual man's knowledge a "prep-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 69
aration" for the vast future course of the world's evolutionary prog-
ress. The successive steps in the general cosmic evolution, according
to all present scientific knowledge, do not anticipate future steps, in
the sense of preparing for them. Whether an extension of knowl-
edge will reveal any such preparatory or anticipatory action in the
process itself, it is beyond the province of this study to suggest.
In the absence of direct evidence for anticipation, we can only
point to a substitute conception, trend. There does appear to be a
general trend of events toward more complex organization, better
adaptation, and moral improvement. "What we know of stellar evo-
lution points to a trend in the direction of complexity and har-
monious organization. The evidence from the organic world is far
more significant. The trend of organic evolution appears to be a
steady advance ; the later forms are more complex, fitter, better, than
the earlier. Despite the "struggle for existence" there is a general
cooperation of action among species an interworking of the several
processes of multiplication, destruction, and variation. The organic
world is apparently working out its own destiny in a well-rounded
manner.
The real value of this evidence it is difficult to estimate accu-
rately. One is prone to attach undue weight to particular phases of
evolution. The appearance of plant life on the earth, the rise of man,
the defeat of a barbarian horde, impress the student of certain sci-
ences as being crucial events. They do not seem especially signifi-
cant, however, when we consider the aeons of time and the vast
stretches of the stellar universe. The only conclusion of universal
importance which science yields in this matter is that there is a gen-
eral trend of cosmic evolution ' ' upward. ' '
To the exact scientist, as Bertrand Russell suggests, 5 the evolu-
tion of biological forms seems trivial compared with the immutable
laws of inorganic matter. The history of higher intelligence and
social organization on one minute planet for some 10.000 solar years
seems but a single tremor in the pulse of time. The conquests of
Alexander or any other terrestrial event look small in perspective.
On the other hand, from the standpoint of values the appearance on
the scene of rational beings, capable of ethical judgments, seems to
mark a tremendous leap in advance.
Allowing for the natural bias of both parties, I believe we may
grant the existence of a "trend" of some sort in cosmic history, to
which the judgment of "harmony" is attached. Harmony may be
only a broader conception of fitness, but trend is not equivalent to
anticipation or preparation. Unless the meaning of purpose be con-
6 ' ' Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method
in Philosophy," pages 11 ff.
70 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
siderably revised, it does not seem applicable to the general course
of cosmic events.
It is one thing to quibble over terms, and quite another matter
to attach clear and definite meanings to the terms which are em-
ployed. We have endeavored to attach a definite scientific meaning
to the vague popular notion of purpose. Our analysis fixed upon
the "reversal of sequences" as the fundamental characteristic of
scientific teleology, the adequacy of the inversion being estimated in
the judgment of fitness. The notion of a trend appears to be some-
what different from this. It would only becloud the issue to include
it under the idea of purpose. For this reason, while we may conclude,
on the basis of empirical evidence, that ' ' history ' ' in its widest sense
shows a trend, our present scientific knowledge does not indicate
that it manifests a purpose. Whether scientific investigation will
ultimately succeed in discovering a teleological character in cosmic
evolution, is for the future to determine. We should reserve judg-
ment till crucial evidence is at hand.
Up to the present, science has discovered only meager data for
the extension of the purpose category below the organic realm.
While the concept proves extremely useful in biology and psychol-
ogy, the causal category is the all-important mode of interpreting
inorganic phenomena. Philosophy and primitive science, starting
as usual at the wrong end of the series, have read the higher into the
lower. They have overestimated the importance of purpose in cosmic
events, just as they have overestimated the importance of the kines-
thetic factors in purpose itself. The voluntaristic philosophy of
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the entelechial philosophy of Driesch,
are but exaggerated instances of this widespread tendency.
Mechanistic science finds a place for teleology in the world. But
the purpose which mechanistic scientists recognize is not the en-
telechy of the vitalist ; it is a principle of transformation which co-
operates with causation, not an efficient agent which plays havoc
with causal transformation.
SUMMARY
Our study of purpose covers three separate fields: the conscious
experience, the "objective" biological phenomenon, and the role of
purpose in the general scheme of nature. We considered the psycho-
logical problem first, since the notion of purpose is found to be based
on a certain conscious experience.
1. Purposive Consciousness. The distinctive feature of the pur-
posive experience is the inversion of the usual time order of certain
events. Representation precedes presentation, the general precedes
the particular.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 71
Our analysis of the purposive consciousness brought to light five
factors. (1) Forethought, the most characteristic factor, is an idea
or image which carries with it a reference to the future. (2) Assent,
which attaches to every forethought, is based on certain kinesthetic
memories. (3) Potency-feeling, the feeling of an efficient force in the
forethought, is based on the kinesthetic sensations which accompany
muscular tension in movement. (4) The self-notion, or personal
reference in purposive acts, is based upon the kinesthetic data which
attend all personal activity. (5) The sense of fitness accompanies the
fulfilment of the forethought and certain intermediate steps; it is a
judgment that the experience corresponds to the forethought. Its
opposite form, the sense of unfitness, is a judgment of non-corre-
spondence. This factor, like the first, is very characteristic of pur-
posive experiences.
The three kinesthetic data assent, potency-feeling, and self-
notion are incidental accompaniments. They have all acquired un-
due importance in the psychological analysis of purpose. In partic-
ular, the overestimation of the potency-feeling is responsible for the
common theory that the forethought has power to effect its own ful-
filment by an autonomic selection and guidance of events. It has led
to unscientific and mystical interpretations of volition, which closer
analysis fails to justify. The fiat is only assent reinforced by a feel-
ing of dynamic efficiency.
2. Purposive Activity. Our study of purposive activity in organ-
isms included both behavior and growth. Purposive activity as ob-
served in organisms is characterized by only two of the factors noticed
in the conscious experience anticipation or preparation, and fitness
or adaptation.
(1) Anticipation is a real biological phenomenon. Behavior and
growth are actually conditioned by the future as well as by the past.
A later event is the basis of some earlier event, not merely its effect.
That is, the usual temporal order of events observed in ordinary
causal sequences is partly reversed in purposive activity. The em-
bryo's growth has reference to the future adult state; a responsive
act may begin before the situation to which it is a response is fully
present.
Anticipatory behavior depends upon a set of mechanisms, espe-
cially the distant-receptors and the central nervous system. The
phylogenetic acquisition of these mechanisms and their functions by
organisms is sufficiently accounted for historically by chance varia-
tions and natural selection, since anticipation is generally beneficial
to the creature.
(2) Fitness, the second factor, is not so much an observed phe-
nomenon as a judgment by the observer. Scientists judge the fulfil-
72 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
merit of a purposive act by its correspondence with a type. In the
final analysis a reaction or growth process is judged " fit " if it tends
to prolong the individual's life or to preserve the species. An act or
process which tends to end the creature's life or destroy the species
is deemed "unfit." Between these extremes we find a graduated
scale of fitness.
(3) The other factors which occur as accessories in the conscious
experience of purpose have no counterpart in purposive activity.
There is nothing in behavior or growth corresponding to the con-
sciousness of ' ' assent, " " self, " or ' ' dynamic potency. ' ' Nevertheless
these factors, particularly the sense of power in consciousness, have
greatly influenced the scientific interpretation of purposive activity.
They are largely responsible for the psychomorphic view of instinct
and intelligence which characterized the earlier biology. The vital-
ist's entelechy is, in fact, an impersonation of these psychomorphic
factors.
The extension of such notions as volition, indeterminism, and com-
pulsion to the sphere of biological processes in the form of a guiding
entelechy seems an assumption unwarranted by present evidence.
The whole sequence of events in growth and behavior appears capable
of explanation in mechanistic terms.
3. Purpose in Nature. The role of purpose in the cosmos is a
legitimate problem for science to face. (1) In the inorganic sphere
there is no clear evidence of anticipation that is, preparation
though a few facts, notably among physiographical processes, seem to
indicate its presence. To these processes the judgment of fitness may
be attached.
(2) When we consider the origin of the cosmos, the older pur-
posive interpretation, founded upon entelechy, finds no support. For
the entelechy theory rests upon a biological and psychological anal-
ogy, and scientific evidence in these two spheres is against the assump-
tion on which the analogy rests. Entelechy, regarded as a potent,
guiding agency, appears to be merely a psychomorphic element added
to the notion of purpose. Without entelechy the very problem of
origins vanishes, for science finds no other ground for assuming a
beginning in the chain of natural events.
(3) Finally, if we seek for evidences of purpose in the general
scheme of cosmic history, we find indications of a trend, but not of
purpose. Science so far has observed no clear signs of anticipation
in the general course of evolution, but only of a tendency toward
greater complexity and harmonious interworking. What the future
will discover remains to be seen. Present indications at least would
lead us to judge that purpose is not a fundamental category in the
scientific explanation of cosmic evolution. HOWARD C. WARREN.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 73
SOCIETIES
THE TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
twenty-fourth annual meeting of the American Psycholog-
JL ical Association was held in Chicago on December 28, 29, 30,
at the University of Chicago. About one hundred were registered
as in attendance and a somewhat larger number were present at the
annual banquet and the president's address. Among the special
features, in addition to the programme of papers, were the discus-
sion of the relation of psychology, philosophy, science, and peda-
gogy in the academic curriculum; the report of the committee on
the status of psychology in normal schools; the unusually full and
well-arranged apparatus exhibit, in charge of Professor H. A. Carr ;
the address of the president, Professor John B. Watson ; the annual
dinner and smoker ; the luncheon at Hull House, as the guests of Dr.
William Healy ; the visit to the Detention Home of the Cook County
Juvenile Court; and the exceptional opportunities afforded for gen-
eral sociability and acquaintance.
At the annual business meeting Professor Raymond Dodge was
elected president of the association for the ensuing year, and Pro-
fessors H. A. Carr and K. Dunlap were elected to the council. The
various committees reported their activities during the year, and
several administrative items, of interest only to members of the as-
sociation, were considered.' The committees on psychology and med-
icine and on prizes were discharged. The committee on the aca-
demic status of psychology reported a study of the teaching of psy-
chology in normal schools. This report, prepared by Professors Mar-
garet Washburn and Bird T. Baldwin, has been printed in full and
copies were distributed at the business session. Professor Yerkes
gave a brief account of the San Francisco meeting. Steps were taken
to reduce the number of papers placed on future programmes and
Professors Bentley, Whipple, and Ogden were appointed as pro-
gramme committee. A committee on terminology was arranged for.
Nineteen new members were elected.
The following resolution, presented by Professor Whipple, was
adopted by the association :
WHEREAS, psychological diagnosis requires thorough technical training in all
phases of mental testing, thorough acquaintance with the facts of mental develop-
ment, and with the various degrees of mental retardation;
AND WHEREAS, there is evident a tendency to appoint for this work persons
whose training in clinical psychology and acquaintance with genetic and educa-
tional psychology are inadequate;
74 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Be it resolved, that this association discourages the use of mental tests for
practical psychological diagnosis by individuals psychologically unqualified for
this work.
The association was invited to hold its next meeting at Columbia
University, and this invitation was accepted. It is intended at this
meeting to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the association
by appropriate special programme features.
At the apparatus exhibit were demonstrated an exposure appa-
ratus (C. L. Hull), a chronoscope (K. Dunlap), a constructive abil-
ity test (T. L. Kelley), a recorder for tapping and a portable
tachistoscope and memory apparatus (H. S. Langfeld), a new learn-
ing apparatus (W. H. Pyle), two spatial relations tests and a learn-
ing test (W. V. Bingham), peg form boards (J. E. W. Wallin),
multiple choice apparatus (R. M. Yerkes), various instruments and
charts (M. Bentley), and a class-room stop-watch (G. M. Whipple).
C. E. Stoelting Company had on display numerous psychological in-
struments and materials and demonstrated many of these. J. F.
Shepard exhibited blue prints of the new psychological laboratory
at the University of Michigan and gave a detailed description of
the plans.
The programme of papers comprised some seventy reports, with
considerable informal discussion. Nearly one third of the papers
were on the standardization and results of mental tests and their
use in clinical, educational, and vocational psychology.
J. W. Hayes reported comparisons of the Binet scale, the Yerkea
point scale, various selected tests, and school grading. B. M. Yerkes
and C. Bossy reported progress on the formulation of a point scale
for adolescents and adults, following the plan of the preadolescent
point scale. B. Pintner has begun preliminary work on the construc-
tion of a scale of performance tests for deaf mutes and those with
imperfect language. T. L. Kelley presented a constructive ability
test, in which the manipulation of building blocks affords indications
of various important traits in terms which admit of objective grad-
ing. W. H. Pyle, using a new device for testing learning capacity,
finds that colored children studied have three fourths to four fifths
the learning capacity of white children. E. S. Jones gave a detailed
account of the standardization of certain familiar test blanks. He
also reported from the Vocation Bureau of Cincinnati numerous
correlations of mental measurements among themselves, with school
grade, physique, average weekly earnings, and job tenure. The re-
sults suggested that, under the present haphazard methods of place-
ment, mental measurements furnish but little basis on which to fore-
cast either earnings or permanency of position during the first two
years in industry. W. D. Scott reported correlations of 50 to 90 per
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 75
cent, between the results of mental tests of adults and (1) firm
ratings of these adults for efficiency and (2) the later achievements
of the individuals in the field, suggesting the immediate applicabil-
ity of tests for vocational selection. K. T. "Waugh described the re-
sults of mental tests of college students as freshmen and as seniors,
exhibited devices for transforming measurements into comparable
scales, and urged cooperative attention to the mental examination of
college freshmen. Elsie Murray was not present and her paper on
"Psychological Tests as Diagnostic of Certain Individual Differences
in College Students" was omitted. Jean Weidensall reported prog-
ress in an investigation designed to establish mental and physical
norms for law-abiding efficient saleswomen, waitresses, factory
operators, and housemaids, in tests previously used with criminal
women. Helen T. Woolley offered a series of norms for school chil-
dren of the same age as the working children for whom norms have
been published. The school children are superior in every respect.
A scale combining the two groups is soon to be ready for use. H. H.
Woodrow described and illustrated an association-frequency table
for children, suggesting interesting differences in association reac-
tion between children and adults. W. V. Bingham described a test
intended to give indication of ability to think spatial relations in-
volving three dimensions, a "spatial inference" test employing syl-
logisms regarding spatial relations, and a learning test based on the
substitution principle. D. A. MacMillan proposed the use of tests
of perceptual transformation, as contrasted with the more usual
performance tests. D. Starch exhibited and described a scale for
measuring ability in arithmetic, composed of a series of twelve prob-
lems graded in difficulty. Augusta F. Bronner stressed the impor-
tance of attitude in relation to performance, with special reference
to concrete cases of clinical examination by means of tests. Typical
attitudinal factors were enumerated and illustrated. This paper
provoked wholesome discussion of the non-rational features of clin-
ical procedure.
A number of papers bore more directly on questions of abnormal
and clinical psychology. D. G. Paterson had studied the visual
memory for digits of deaf and hearing children, finding the former
inferior. The greater the number of years of auditory experience
before becoming deaf the greater was the efficiency of the individual.
J. E. W. Wallin criticized "the tendency to play fast and loose"
with various concepts such as ' ' feeble-minded, ' ' and emphasized the
many varieties of mental defect. He also gave preliminary results
of a census of speech defectives among public school children in
St. Louis. S. C. Kohs brought together a large number of cases of
mental deficiency in order to present in graphic form their distribu-
76 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tion by mental age and the relation of this distribution to the normal
curve of frequency. J. B. Miner advocated a percentage definition
of intellectual deficiency and urged more careful description of the
border lines of social fitness. Tentative percentage formulae were
proposed and various definitions, coefficients, and boundaries com-
pared with this quantitative expression. S. I. Franz reported cases
of recovery of voluntary control in cerebral paralysis, and success-
ful attempts to reeducate several aphasic patients, commenting on
the implications of such cases with reference to the function of brain
regions and the neural adjustments involved in relearning. After
pointing out the unsatisfactoriness of the various theories concern-
ing the etiology of Mongolian idiocy, H. C. Stevens reported an in-
vestigation, the results of which suggest that the condition is
caused by parental syphilis.
Animal psychology was represented by several papers. K. S.
Lashley described the effects of strychnine and caffeine on habit
formation (maze learning) in the case of albino rats. A. H. Arlitt
has made a similar study of the effects of alcohol, and reported re-
sults. H. A. Carr has studied the adaptation of white rats to such
factors as degree of hunger, cleanliness of paths, illumination, posi-
tion of maze and experimenter, handling, etc. R. M. Yerkes de-
scribed the advantages of a multiple-choice apparatus which makes
possible the use of various important methods of procedure in the
study of ideational behavior. He also advocated the establishment
of an experiment station for the study of monkeys and apes. W. S.
Hunter's paper on interference of auditory habits in the white rat
reaffirmed the insensitivity of this animal to a certain tone. J. B.
Watson had found that delayed feeding seemed to have no effect on
rate of learning, and pointed out the important bearing of such
results on the "pleasure" theory of learning. H. M. Johnson pre-
sented evidence indicating that the dog is not sensitive to gross detail
in visual objects.
At the session for general psychology C. A. Ruckmich discussed
the present status of psychology as indicated by a quantitative and
qualitative analysis of its literature during the last ten years. C.
Rahn discussed the definitions of sensation in their historical and
systematic aspects. J. R. Angell reviewed the various early and re-
cent criticisms of James's theory of emotion, pointing out that no
evidence has yet been brought forward successfully to combat the
positive parts of that doctrine. H. S. Langfeld defended the image
by the enumeration of situations in which it occurs and by the sug-
gestion of its possible utility. M. Bentley reviewed the psychological
antecedents of phrenology and pointed out the influence of Gall on
the subsequent doctrine of localized functions. G. V. N. Dearborn
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 77
urged psychologists to devote more attention to movement and
coenesthesia as explanatory of mental process.
Most of the remaining papers were on specific experimental prob-
lems, some of them having direct educational bearing. K. M. Dallen-
bach is attempting to measure attention in terms of attributive clear-
ness of cutaneous sensations. G. F. Arps reported a study aiming to
determine the efficiency of perception of differences in length of
areas, and to analyze the various factors involved in such judgments.
M. F. Meyer described an unusual case of color-blindness. J. Peter-
son described binaural beats as but a shifting of the apparent source
of the sound, to be explained on the same principle as is the percep-
tion of phase differences. Stella B. Vincent reported the results of
the examination of a tongue rendered partially insensitive after loss
of the clwrda tympana, suggesting various explanations. E. K.
Strong concludes, on the basis of experimental data, that recognition
is based on the ease of nervous discharge over old associational paths,
and that this ease is measurable in terms of reaction time. Florence
E. Richardson described a dramatic class experiment in perception,
in which bystanders, drivers, and traffic policemen estimated the
speed of passing automobiles. Cecile White reported the results of
studies of the ability to solve a graded series of puzzles, disclosing
learning types, individual differences, etc. Helen Clark presented in
concrete and objective terms some of the characteristics of a "crowd."
J. Jastrow's paper on the study of judgments dealt mainly with indi-
vidual differences and variability in accuracy, consistency, and con-
fidence in judging varied sorts of material. C. L. Hull described and
illustrated the quantitative methods he is using in recording and
analyzing the evolution of concepts. M. E. Haggerty, in his analysis
of type-writing, is attempting to identify the specific and general
habits and to rank them in order of importance for increasing the effi-
ciency of learning. F. N. Freeman is analyzing handwriting coordi-
nation of writers of different degrees of development and proficiency,
in order to distinguish the characteristics of efficient and inefficient
types. Three papers bore on the question of transfer in learning.
Freeman is using in this connection a modified form of mirror draw-
ing. H. H. Wylie is using white rats in a problem box. E. A. Cowan
is experimenting on the influence of training in concentration on
memory for objects. C. T. Gray is studying the differences between
good and poor readers, in the endeavor to provide corrective meas-
ures for the latter class. H. A. Peterson had measured the effect
of reviews under conditions similar to those of school work. G. "W. A.
Luckey emphasized the importance of properly directed research as a
means of teacher training. F. L. Wells stressed the importance of
the quantitative study of such significant facts as birth, breeding,
78 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
home-environment, education, sexual adjustments, income, and vari-
ous factors of success factors which laboratory experiments fail to
take into account.
In the symposium on the academic relations of psychology, H. N.
Gardiner and R. M. Ogden presented papers on "Psychology and
Philosophy ' ' ; Max F. Meyer a paper on ' ' Psychology and Science ' ' ;
C. H. Judd and M. E. Haggerty on "Psychology and Pedagogy."
These papers were followed by informal discussion by Swift, Tufts,
Dearborn, Ruckmich, White, and others.
The presidential address by Professor John B. Watson, was on
' ' The Place of the Conditioned Reflex in Psychology. ' ' The speaker
described the nature of the conditioned reflex, its employment in the
study of animal reactions, and its feasibility as an instrument in the
study of discrimination, learning, and similar problems in the case
of the human being. Lantern slides were displayed showing the
methods and apparatus in use at the Johns Hopkins laboratory.
Brief account was given of a number of studies there under way, in
which the conditioned reflex is the principal instrument of research.
H. L. HOLLINGWORTH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Buddhist Psychology: An Inquiry into the Analysis and Theory of Mind
in Pali Literature. MRS. C. A. F. RHYS DAVIDS. The Quest Series,
edited by G. R. S. Mead. London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. New York:
The Macmillan Company. Pp. x + 212.
To the long and great work conducted by Dr. T. W. Rhys Davids in
opening up the riches of the Pali Buddhist canon an equal enthusiasm is
brought by his pupil and wife, the authoress of this manual a trifle in
size only. Though like her husband placing pure scholarship first, Mrs.
Rhys Davids finds time amid the editing of texts for occasional transla-
tions and other writings not to be set down as "popularizations," but as
interpretations for the non-specialist. It is well that this necessary work
be done by one who can write with highest authority.
With all the libraries that have been printed about Buddhism since it
first reached the West, it still awaits its rightful place in the histories of
the sciences. Jurisprudence, medicine, and the psychology of religious
experience could long ago have drawn from it interesting material for
comparative studies. As a philosophy it might be taught together with the
Greek systems and in the same dispassionate way. Especially important,
however, is the contribution that it can make to the history of general
psychology, for Buddhism consists of psychology, both in its premises and
in the dreary lucubrations of its schoolmen. While other religions specu-
late upon theology, this concerns itself with the mind of man primarily
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 79
what he is not, and incidentally, but very elaborately, what he is. Buddha's
chief polemic against the Brahmins was his denial of the atman, or self, an
inlet from the ocean of Atman or World Soul and thus superior to the laws
of causation, evil, and impennanence. Mrs. Rhys Davids suggests that
Buddha might have found a place in his system for the soul if it had
meant to him only an erant, fluttering sprite according to the classical
European notion.
In regarding mind and its properties as ever-changing compounded
functions, the Buddhist sages so anticipated many of our recent psychol-
ogists that curiosity may well be aroused to compare their theories
minutely.
Many persons probably suppose that Buddhist philosophy is idealistic.
That is true enough of certain sects, found notably in Japan and influ-
enced perhaps by the Vedanta, but idealism does not rule the primitive
doctrines which are held by the Theravada, or Southern Buddhist school,
and are contained in the Pali canon. Here the natural elements are con-
sidered real, although in flux, and the object, if not very substantial, is less
unsubstantial than the subject. External things are the " food " or stimuli
which cause flashes of intelligence in us. Mind or consciousness after the
Buddhist theory is defined by the authoress as " intermittent series of
psychic throbs associated with a living organism beating out their coming-
to-know through one brief span of life."
Man is divided into five classes of properties and qualities called the
Ichandhas, or aggregates. First come the material, rupas, a group wherein
are brought together various things more or less concrete, but which a
westerner would hardly think of coordinating. Second are the feelings,
vedands, comprising the five physical sensations with memory as a sixth;
all may be pleasant, painful, or indifferent. Third come the perceptions,
sanflas. The fourth class, sankhdras, forms a large and important group.
Thg term is of constant use in Buddhistic literature. It literally means
confections or compounds, but practically denotes tendencies or potentiali-
ties and includes many kinds of mental activity as against the passive
states of consciousness already considered. Fifth is vinndna, which must
be translated consciousness; its distinction from sannd is hazy. To give
a full inventory of items under these five heads as they are catalogued in
some Buddhist books, although not in this manual, would reveal duplica-
tion and confusion, according to our way of thinking, but on the whole an
admirable insight and power of analysis.
The Tchandha-s as such are discussed by Mrs. Rhys Davids in her
chapter on Consciousness. In the preceding one she has studied the dif-
ferent Pali words for Mind. The chapter on Feeling touches a vital spot
in Buddhist philosophy, which is deeply hedonistic, although not in a bad
sense. Ramified ways are followed in the two chapters on Ideation, wherein
the mysteries of jhana, or ecstatic trance, receive a share of attention.
From early authorities primarily, the authoress has collected her ma-
terial. About half of her space is devoted to the Nikayas, homiletical
books which fill the Sutta " Basket " of the Pali canon. A chapter is given
to the scholasticism of the Abhidhamma Basket, which the late Professor
80 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Warren, of Harvard, compared to the Desert of Sahara, respectable for
immensity; while another is based on the " Questions of King Milinda," a
helpful patristic writing. A dictum from the last asserts that animals are
capable of reasoned thinking (yoniso-manasikara) , but not of insight
(pannd). Mrs. Rhys Davids elsewhere expresses surprise that Buddhism,
for all its sympathetic understanding of animals, has given little study to
their psychology.
Finally, comparisons are made with a few medieval developments, not-
ably Anuruddha's Abhidhamattha-sangaha, already published in English
by S. Z. Aung and Mrs. Rhy Davids as " The Compendium of Philosophy."
This and her "Buddhist Psychological Ethics," translated from the
Dhamma-sangani book of the Abhidhamma Basket, should not be over-
looked by students of the subject before us.
Buddhist psychology does not recognize the brain as the organ of in-
telligence, but it postulates a special seat for each of the senses and later
commentators have apparently focused these in the heart. There come to
mind in this connection two curious passages in the Vinaya Basket (older
presumably than the Nikayas) to which Mrs. Rhys Davids might have
alluded. In one of these a boy's parents object to his learning arithmetic
lest his breast become diseased. In the other, Buddha's physician JTvaka
removes from a man's head two worms and prevents their reaching the
brain, thus recognizing it as a vital region if not the habitat of thought.
" For Buddhists," says our authoress, " the dissolution of the factors
of a living individual at death was complete : body ' broke up ' and mind,
or the incorporeal, ceased. But if, in the final flickerings of mind or
vinnana, there was a coefficient of the desire to enjoy, involving a clinging
to, or grasping after life wherewith to enjoy, then those dying pulsations,
as cause or condition, produced their effect, not in the corpse, but in some
embryo wakening elsewhere at that moment to life, it might be in the next
house, it might be in some heaven or puratorgy." This is interesting
because it explains as a definite telekinetic action that self-reproduction
which our Buddhistic students have often perhaps looked upon as more
vague in its working.
Besides the scholastic questions to which Mrs. Rhys Davids confines
herself in discussing the Buddhist theory of personality is one phase which,
for readers of a certain class, should prove far deeper. It shows the possi-
bility of reasoning from the premises of materialistic monism to a belief
in immortality. To some thinkers, who have seen no alternative between
monistic negations and the difficulties of dualism, to them insuperable,
this plea of "confession and avoidance" may be a way of escape. This
will, of course, be through suggestion, not through credence in detail.
The spirit is thus regarded, not as a flitting bird, but as a force or, we may
say, an unspringing seed. Socrates might not have meant this, but he
hinted at it when, in the " Pha?do," he said that the soul, passing from the
body, quickly falls into another and " grows up as if it were sown." Here,
after all, we find ourselves coming around to St. Paul's ideas on the grain
of wheat ; we discover that the Buddhist notion has much in common with
the Hebrew doctrine of physical resurrection, as against the usual Greek
81
concept of discarnate spirit life. That seed, that link in the chain of
being which Buddhists call kamma (karma), seems too slight a thing
to carry much individuality, but so does every germ. If there be no con-
tinuity of historical memory, still an inferential memory, so to speak, may
fill the moral requirements.
The statement of facts regarding Buddhist psychology contained in
this review is no epitome of Mrs. Khys Davids's manual, but is rather the
starting-point from which she enters the jungle of ideas. She is a path-
breaker rather than a clearer of the ground ; no wonder if we find it hard to
see the forest for the trees. A reader will lose his way hopelessly unless
he enter equipped either with the rudiments of Buddhist philosophy or
with such knowledge of general psychology as will enable him to grasp
the ideas, aided by Mrs. Rhys Davids's broad scholarship and command of
technical language. Elementary students should use the book under guid-
ance. To advantage, the matter might have been more clearly arranged
or at least summarized in tables. For lack of this the book may well be
read with some simpler account of Buddhist psychology as an introduction.
Such is Chapter IV of T. W. Rhys Davids's " Buddhism," a little volume
published in London as one of the " Xon-Christian Religious Systems"
series and not to be confused with his American Lectures of the same title.
As a final judgment, the existence of Mrs. Rhys Davids's new manual
removes all excuse hereafter for absence of the Buddhist theory from a
place in any curriculum that pretends to set psychology in its historical
relations.
EDWARD P. BUFFET.
JERSEY CITY, N. J.
The Social Problem: A Constructive Analysis. CHARLES A. ELLWOOD.
New York. The Macmillan Company. 1915. Pp. 225.
On its negative side, " the problem before us is not how to avoid
political revolution, but rather how to avoid the decay and disintegration
of society itself." Positively speaking, the problem is simply that of
"human living together." To this end society must control "heredity,
social environment, and personal education." For the first the means is to
be found in eugenics. For the second, so far as the economic environment
is concerned, the author favors, not socialism, but the intermediate pro-
gramme of social reforms, including labor insurance, minimum wage,
free employment bureaus, " free justice," and, finally, with special em-
phasis, the scientific reform of taxation, which shall make " findings "
rather than earnings carry the main burdens. These " findings " include
bequests, the unearned increment in land values, and " speculative profits."
In regard to social environment on its spritual side, we must have a
"revaluation, in a thoroughly social and humanitarian sense," of family
life, government, religion, and morality. For this the author looks chiefly
to personal education, which is to stimulate the rational and altruistic
sides of human nature and to repress mere instinct and mere egoism. To
procure the social organization which will promote these ends we require
82 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
trained social experts or efficient social leaders. " The universities pro-
duce experts in law and medicine and agriculture and engineering, but
experts in the problem of human living together, very rarely; yet these
experts are the ones most needed at the present time if western civilization
is not to perish through its failure to solve the social problem."
The general tendency of the book is against a material or economic
view of the foundations of society, views which the author calls " nega-
tive," because they omit the vital spiritual factor. The work hardly calls
for much comment. The titles of chapters raise hopes of a somewhat more
specific solution than the author is in a position to furnish. There are
stretches of the book in which he is hardly successful in keeping his head
above the waters of utter commonplace. The references at the close to
trained leaders and to the university as the institution which is to train
them interestingly recall the principle laid down in J. S. Mill's early
essays, the principle which went so far to shape the whole production of
his life, a principle, however, which seems no nearer realization in our
time than his. Yet Mill was more specific in the steps he recommended
than our author in the present idealistic and amiable volume.
DICKINSON S. MILLER.
GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,
NEW YORK CITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE JOURNAL OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY. August-Sep-
tember, 1915. Constructive Delusions (pp. 153-184) : JOHN T. MAcCuRDY
and WALTER L. TREADWELL. - Three cases are analyzed and an endeavor
made " to establish the claim that delusions in dementia praecox which take
the form of objective speculations rather than subjective experiences are an
evidence of a milder psychotic reaction and hence warrant a prognosis of
chronicity rather than deterioration." The " scattering of thought arises
from a failure to formulate underlying fancies in an objective way." In-
sanity of ideas depends " on the critical judgment of the age which produces
them," and there are "essential psychological differences between creeds
and religious delusions." Socrates in the Light of Modern Psychopathology
(pp. 185-200) : MORRIS J. KARPAS. Socrates is considered the father of
psychology and the grandfather of modern psychopathology. Many quota-
tions are made and a bibliography given which illustrate the author's point.
" The Socratic conception of the unconscious conforms in many respects
with our present knowledge of it, especially in so far as our psychoana-
lytic experience shows us conclusively what a potent factor is exercised by
the unconscious in the determination of psychotic and neurotic phenomena.
Indeed in the Socratic sense such manifestations are anti-social and can
not be identified with virtue, hence they are not conscious. Or^ may say
Socrates unconsciously conceived the modern idea of the dynamics of the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 83
unconscious." Psychoneuroses among Primitive Tribes (pp. 201-208) :
ISADOB H. CORIAT. -To understand clearly the mental traits of Indian
tribes as a source from which curious nervous attacks develop, a study of
their dreams, their system of taboos, and their myths is made. The dreams
of these primitive races strongly resemble the dreams of children. The
myths are the savages' day -dreams. The primitive people resemble children,
and their attacks of violence or furor are sudden emotional reactions, per-
haps hysterical. Two Interesting Cases of Illusion of Perception (pp.
209-212) : GEORGE F. ARPS. A description of two interesting cases, a boy
aged nine and a girl aged six who experience illusions of perception, is pre-
sented. Reviews: H.H. Goddard, Feeble-mindedness, Its Causes and Conse-
quences: W. E. CASTLE. J. B. Hannay, Christianity: The Sources of its
Teaching and Symbolism: ERNEST JONES. Henri Bergson, Laughter: An
Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (Translation) : ERNEST JOXES. Ad-
dresses and Papers at the Opening of the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, Johns
Hopkins Hospital: The American Journal of Insanity, Special Number,
Vol. LXLX, No. 5: MEYER SOLOMOX. Books received.
Krakowski, Edouard. Les Sources Medievales de la Philosophic de Locke.
Paris: Jouvre et Cie. 1915. Pp. 215.
Mach, Ernest. The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Ac-
count of Its Development. Supplement to the Third English Edition,
containing the Author's Additions to the Seventh German Edition.
Tr. and annotated by Philip E. B. Jourdain. Chicago and London:
Open Court Publishing Company. 1915. Pp. vii + 106.
NOTES AND NEWS
A MEETING of the Aristotelian Society was held on January 6. Lord
Haldane delivered an address on "Progress in Philosophical Research."
After giving an account of the doctrine of the New Realism and the gain
to philosophical inquiry as a result of the discussions it had initiated, he
said that those phases of experience which find expression in art, mor-
tality, and religion are as real as the phases of which logical atomism takes
account, yet neither logical atomism nor the more comprehensive forms
of the New Realism are capable of doing them justice. Preeminently in
these higher phases of experience the universal is nothing apart from the
particular, and the particular, as such, is, taken by itself, equally unreal.
The only real actuality is the individual fact, the essence of which is
identity-in-difference. It was one of Hegel's services to philosophy that
he strenuously resisted the abstraction of universal from particular, dis-
cerned in individuality the form characteristic of the object world, and
showed that individuality implies a subject -object relation.
Idealism of the type of which Dr. Bosanquet is a representative, he
maintained, approaches the New Realism, but whilst adherents to the
latter assert that, like other objects of knowledge, universals are extra-
84 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
mental and exist after the fashion of substances apart from the subject-
object relation, adherents of the former take them to be aspects within a
whole, the conception of which becomes increasingly organized as knowl-
edge extends. It seemed to Lord Haldane that the mind, when it is ade-
quately conceived, evinces itself as that which envelops the world, and
not as a thing alongside of other things in that world. If universals are to
be thought of as existing in an extra-mental world and apart from mind,
then physical reality becomes so transformed from the old-fashioned way
of regarding it as to exhibit a logical vitality impossible to dissociate
from continuity with a psychical system. Either you throw the work of
mind on the shoulders of a physical reality, and thereby transform the
latter fundamentally, or you connect it with the nature of mind as living
in the contents, and then you have abandoned the doctrine of petrified
universals. Your Realism, in short, ceases to be Realism, for Idealism
is let into the fortress from the back.
In the discussion which followed Dr. Carr pointed out that there was
an ambiguity in the term " mind " as employed by the New Realists. Pro-
fessor Nunn criticized the address from the point of view of the New
Realism stating that while consciousness is in one sense a part of a thing,
it is not itself a thing; that it is not the emergence of a new thing. Pro-
fessor J. A. Smith, on the other hand, argued that it was impossible to
suppose that the mind could be regarded as having the character of a
thing along with other things. Speaking from the point of view of the
New Idealism, Professor J. S. Mackenzie agreed that the emphasis laid
upon the subject-object relation was a mistake, that the essential doctrine
of Idealism was that all reality must be interpreted by means of univer-
sals, and thus it approached the New Realism. Professor Hicks urged that
there had emerged from the discussion the mischief of employing such
vague terms as idealism and realism in philosophy at all.
THE president of Columbia University has nominated the following
professors of the faculty of education to be members of a department of
educational research, which department is charged with the work of in-
struction and research leading to the degree of doctor of philosophy for all
candidates for that degree who elect education as their major subject;
Professors Russell, McMurry, Monroe, E. L. Thorndike, Sachs, Dewey,
and Strayer.
DR. FRANK ANGELL, professor of psychology at Stanford University, has
sailed for England to take part in Belgian relief work. During his ab-
sence Professor Lillien J. Martin will act as executive head of the depart-
ment of psychology.
AT Yale University, Dr. Douglas Clyde Macintosh has been advanced
from assistant professor of theology in the school of religion to professor
of theology.
VOL. XIII, No. 4. FEBRUARY 17, 1916
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE 1
HEGELIANWISE, we can not avoid the temptation that bids us
make our state a unity. It is to be all-absorptive. All groups
within itself are to be but the ministrants to its life ; their reality is
the outcome of its sovereignty, since without it they could have no
existence. Their goodness is gained only through the overshadowing
power of its presence. It alone, so to speak, eternally is ; while they
exist but to the extent to which its being implies them. The All,
America, includes, "implicates" in James's phrase, its constituent
states. They are one with it and of it one and indivisible. Each
has its assigned place and function in the great Whole which gives
them life. This is essential ; for otherwise we should have what ^Ir.
Bradley calls "a plurality of reals"; which is to destroy the predi-
cated unity.
Of the exaltation of such unity a long history could be written.
To speak only of medieval times, it would have to tell of Dante with
his maxime unum as the maxime 'bonum; nor dare we repaint the pic-
ture he drew of that world state which is One because its law is one
and its spirit also. State must be, Gregory VII. will tell us, absorbed
in Church ; and so the eighth Boniface, perhaps with some lingering
thought of Aquinas in his mind, will declare the heresy of dualism
and straightway make claim to the lordship of the world. Binarius
numerus infamis so it was Aquinas wrote; and so it is that your
pope must have the plenitudo potestatis and your emperor be legibiis
sohttus. Thus will they embody all and transcend the shifting vari-
ety of an inconvenient multiplicity.
Your medieval thinker deals in worlds; with the Renaissance is
born the national State. But only the perspective is altered. Still
the problem is this monistic reduction. How to make of many one
was surely the problem Henry VIII. confronted when he declared the
realm of England to be an empire ; for if it is capable of such pro-
motion then is its king imperial, and he may work his will with
i Head at the Fourth Conference on Legal and Social Philosophy, at Colum-
bia University, November 27, 1915.
85
86 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
recalcitrant chancellors who look vainly Homewards. So, too, with
the Stuart. He mistakes the popular basis of the Tudor throne^and
thinks a sovereignty in practise theoretical also. It is his, he urges,
by a right divine. Like another Richard II. he feels that the laws
are in his own breast ; while non-juring Hickes will preach solemnly
of the Stuart rectitude as he lays down the gospel of non-resistance.
It seems far off ; yet in truth it is very near to us. It would be no
inapt definition of politics in our time to term it the search for social
unity. Whatever political problems we may consider upon this fun-
damental question, we shall always ultimately be driven back. How
far, and in what way, is our society one ? How far is there an inter-
est of the Whole, a monistic interest, which transcends the interests
of the Many who compose that whole ? It is a fundamental question ;
therefore as the ' ' Parmenides ' ' bears witness it is amazingly subtle
and difficult. We shall find, I think, that there is one best method of
considering our problem. Suppose that on the one hand we adopt the
monist solution, what concrete difference will that make to our polit-
ical life? If we are pluralists, how does that affect our activities?
What, in short, are the consequences of our attitude ? It is from them
we may deduce its truth.
And at the outset, let us note that we tend, in our political think-
ing, to adopt a sort of mystic monism as the true path of thought.
We represent a State as a vast series of concentric circles, each one
enveloping the other, as we move from individual to family, from
family to village, from village to city, to county, thence to the all-
embracing State. We talk of England, Greece, Rome, as single per-
sonal forces, transcending the men and women who compose them.
We personalize, that is to say, the collective body. "Rome," writes
Lord Bryce, "sacrificed her domestic freedom that she might become
the mistress of others." Here is a Rome beyond her citizens, a woman
terrible in the askepticism of her supreme sacrifice.
Clearly the reality of the State's personality is a compulsion we
may not resist. But the habit is common to other things also. To the
American, New York has a personality no less real than that of the
Republic. To the shipowner, Lloyds is not the mere sum of its
individual underwriters. When we take any group of people leading
a common life, to whom some kindred purpose may be ascribed, we
seem to evolve from it a thing, a personality, that is beyond the per-
sonalities of its constituent parts. For us that personality is^ real.
Slowly its reality has compelled the law, when dealing with associa-
tions, to abandon the theory of fiction. A man who looks at the
battlefield of Europe will assuredly not deny that certain personal-
ities, England, France, Germany, are real to the soldiers who die for
them. A man who would remain cold to an appeal to stand by Eng-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 87
lishmen waxes eloquent over the splendor of England; from all
Englishmen he synthesizes a thing greater than they. Think of the
momentous consequences of such personalizing and then ask if we
dare attribute fiction to its nature. "Our fellowship," wrote Mait-
land, "is no fiction, no symbol, no piece of the State's machinery, but
a living organism and a real person, with body and members and
will of its own. ' ' If this be true, there are within the state enough of
these monistic entities, club, trade-union, church, society, town,
county, university, each with a group-life, a group-will, to enrich the
imagination. Their significance assuredly we may not deny.
Yet, so we are told, the State itself, the society of which they form
part, is mysteriously One above them. "Everywhere the One comes
before the Many. All Manyness has its origin in Oneness and to One-
ness it returns. Therefore all order consists in the subordination of
Plurality to Unity, and never and nowhere can a purpose that is
common to Many be effectual unless the One rules over the Many and
directs the Many to the goal. . . . Unity is the root of all, and there-
fore of all social existence." Here is no mystic thought from the
East, but a sober German jurist dealing with the essential political
thought of the medieval world. Unity, it is clear, there finds lauda-
tion enough. And the State as the expression of that unity enjoys a
similar benediction. It, too, must be one and indivisible. Trade-
unionists and capitab'sts alike must surrender the interests of their
smaller and antithetic group-persons to the larger demands of that
all-embracing One. the State. Of that One it is first that you are
part ; only in secondary fashion do you belong to church or class or
race. In the One differences become harmonized, disappear. There
are no rich or poor, Protestants or Catholics, Kepublicans or Demo-
crats, but all are members of the state. The greatest of ideas takes
all others to itself. "All Manyness has its origin in Oneness, and to
Oneness it returns. ' '
So may be described the monistic theory of the State. It is a
theory of which the importance may not be minimized in our time.
That this view largely perhaps from its evident relation to the domi-
nant philosophy of Hegel has triumphed not only in modern Ger-
many, but also, in some lesser degree, in modern Europe, is the
merest platitude in a world where Treitschke furnishes the theme of
drawing-room conversation. A time of crisis unifies everywhere what
before bore the appearance of severalty. The exclusive State makes
an easy triumph.
We have to admit, so your monist philosopher tells us, that all
parts of the State are woven together to make one harmonious whole.
"What the Absolute is to metaphysics, that is the State to political
theory. The unity is logically necessary, for were there independ-
88 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ence, one group, as Lotze argued, could never act upon another.
"Were there independence there would be impenetrability. Yet noth-
ing is so evident as the supreme fact of mutual influence. Pluralism,
in an ultimate sense, is therefore impossible; for it would make un-
intelligible any rational interpretation of society.
Certain implications of this doctrine are worth noting before we
attempt any criticism of it. If it be conceded that the analogy of
State and Absolute be justified, clearly just as in metaphysics we can
condemn the world as a whole, or praise it as a whole, so must the
State be good or bad as a totality. It can not be good or bad in its
separate parts. Pessimistic or optimistic, you may be in regard to it,
but melioristic you have no right to feel so far as the State is con-
cerned. For that which distinguishes your State must be implied in
its parts, however various, is in its parts, could we but see it, and an
evil part is evil, be it capitalist or labor agitator, only if the State as
a totality is evil. We bridge over, in fact, the distinction between
right and wrong, between good and bad. It is due only to the limita-
tions of our finite political intelligence. It is not, so to speak, in the
State-in-itself. It is only the appearance below which we must pene-
trate if we would grasp political reality. That is why Mr. Bradley
can regard his Absolute for us the State as the richer for every
disharmony ; for that seeming pain is in truth but a minister to joy.
And here clearly enough Sovereignty emerges. The State must
triumph and has need of some organ whereby its end may be attained.
If we anywhere preach a gospel of non-resistance it is here. "We go to
war. We must fight with the State whether or no we feel the justice
of its cause. When in 1870 the Vatican Council defined papal infal-
libility Mr. Gladstone was quick to observe that Roman Catholic
loyalty was endangered. Did not Sir Robert Peel oppose Catholic
emancipation because that sect could not in his view unify its alle-
giance? Was not the Kulturkampf but the expression of Bismarck's
conviction that your sovereign must be one and know no fellow?
When M. Combes aids in the separation of Church and State, on what
other grounds does he base his attack than this, that only State-
rights are real ? Corporations wormlike Hobbes called them cause
but troublesome disease. Forthwith let them disappear that the sov-
ereignty of the State may be unique.
What for us is here of deepest significance is the claim that what
the State wills has therefore moral preeminence. We pass, if I may
be old-fashioned and use Rousseau's terms, from the Will of All to
the General Will, and assume their identity. So that force gains
a moral sanction because the roevtfv is thereby to be achieved.
What the State ordains begins to possess for you a special moral sanc-
tion superior in authority to the claim of group or individual. You
89
must surrender your personality before its demands. You must fuse
your will into its own. It is, may we not without paradox say, right
whether it be right or wrong. It is lack of patriotism in a great war
to venture criticism of it. It has the right, as in this sovereign view
it has the power, to bind your will into its own. They who act as its
organ of government and enforce its will can alone interpret its needs.
They dictate ; for the parts -there is no function save silent acquies-
cence.
For practical politics there seems no moral rightness in such an
attitude as this. "We have, in fact, to deem acts right and wrong.
We do point to groups within the State, or parallel to it, and urge
that they are really harmful and really beneficent. We judge them
in reference to themselves. We take what may be appearance as
actually constituting reality. We credit, in short, human knowledge.
We say that there is something in appearance. If we can not credit
it, assuredly there is nothing in which belief is at all possible. Its
finite character we freely admit. We can not know all things. We
have to be content with a certain specialism, leaving omniscience to
the Absolute.
If, as I urge, we know not all things, but some things, if we
know not America and Germany, but England and France, nothing
of Julius Csesar, but much of Napoleon, then we claim the right to
make judgments upon them. They stand by themselves, can be
known, that is to say, independently. I do not mean that Julius
Csesar is not ultimately connected with Napoleon or that there is no
relation between England and America, but simply that there is no
necessary relevance between them. Applying this to politics, I mean
that we do not proceed from the State to the parts of the State on
the ground that the State is more fundamentally unified than its
parts, but we, on the contrary, admit that the parts are as real and
as self-sufficient as the whole. I do not know England before I know,
say, Berkeley Square and London ; from Berkeley Square and London
I come to know England. But in James's phrase, "everything you
can think of, however vast or inclusive, has, on the pluralistic view,
a genuinely 'external' environment of some sort or amount. Things
are 'with' one another in many ways, but nothing includes every-
thing or dominates everything. The word 'and' trails along after
every sentence. Something always escapes . . . the pluralistic
world is thus more like a federal republic than an empire or a king-
dom. However much may be collected, however much may report
itself as present at any effective center of consciousness something
else is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity."
We are urging that because a group or an individual is related
to some other group or individual it is not thereby forced to enter
90 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
into relations with every other part of the body politic. When a
trade-union ejects one of its members for refusing to pay a political
levy it is not thereby bringing itself into relations with the Mormon
Church. A trade-union as such has no connection with the Mormon
Church ; it stands self-sufficient on its own legs. It may work with
the State, but it need not do so of necessity. It may be in relations
with the State, but it is one with it and not of it. The State, to use
James's terms once more, is "distributive" and not "collective."
There are no essential connections.
We are not taking up the position that the State has no relations
with these groups. We are simply denying that the parts must be
judged by the State, the individual German, let us say, by the con-
duct of Germany. We have not to judge of all things in their State-
context. Such a relation is a forced relation. It is charging to the
account of your individual German things which are really ac-
countable to Germany. We judge his conduct in life in reference to
himself and not in reference to the State of which he is part. In the
monistic theory of the State he derives his meaning from his rela-
tions ; in the pluralistic theory, while his relations may be of the deep-
est significance, it is denied that they are the sole criterion by which
a man ought to be judged. So in the pluralistic view of the State,
there are, as James said of the pluralist world, "real losses and real
losers," in the clashing of its parts; nor do these add mysteriously
to the splendor of the whole.
How, then, it will be asked, is the will of the State to be made
manifest? If the State is but one of the groups to which the indi-
vidual belongs, there is no thought of unity in his allegiance. The
answer to that is the sufficiently simple answer that our allegiance is
not as a fact unified. In the event of a great war, for example, as a
member of the State you may be called upon to fight ; as a member of
another group, the Quakers, you may be called upon to resist that
demand. It seems clear that little is gained by talk of "over-riding
demands," of saying, for instance, that the demands of the State are
all-important. They are all-important only to the State. The his-
tory of societies fatally contradicts the view that in a crisis only the
State will have power of compulsion. What of certain miners in
South Wales? What of certain Unionists in Ulster? Of militant
suffragists? Did not to them the wills of certain groups other than
the State conflict with it and prove more intense in their demand?
Such marginal cases will in all probability be rare, but there is no
sort of guarantee that they will not occur.
Then, it will be protested, you will abolish what lawyers mean by
sovereignty. You justify resistance to the State. You deny that
each state must possess a legally determinate superior whose will is
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 91
certain of acceptance. But it is surely evident that no such instru-
ment does exist. We have nowhere the assurance that any rule of
conduct can be enforced. For that rule will depend for its validity
upon the opinion of the members of the State, and they belong to
other groups to which such rule may be obnoxious. If, for example,
Parliament chose to enact that no Englishman should be a Koman
Catholic, it would certainly fail to carry the statute into effect. We
have, therefore, to find the true meaning of sovereignty not in the
coercive power possessed by its instrument, but in the fused good-will
for which it stands. Men accept its dictates either because their own
will finds part expression there or because, assuming the goodness of
intention which lies behind it, they are content, usually, not to resist
its imposition. But then law clearly is not a command. It is simply
a rule of convenience. Its goodness consists in its consequences. It
has to prove itself. It does not, therefore, seem wise to argue that
Parliament, for example, is omnipotent in a special sense. The power
Parliament exerts is situate in it not by law, but by consent, and that
consent is, as certain famous instances have shown, liable to suspension.
An omnipotence that Cardinal Wiseman can overthrow in 1851, that
J. H. Newman can smilingly dissolve in 1870, that constitutes in the
judicial committee of the privy council a tribunal for ecclesiastical
causes which clergymen of repute will regard as of no authority, and,
therefore, neglect, seems to represent an abstraction of the facts.
Where sovereignty prevails, where the State acts, it acts by the con-
sent of men.
What guarantee have we, then, in the pluralist view that the will
of the State will prevail ? It may seem that this view gives a handle
to anarchy. It does not. I believe, give any more handle to anarchy
than it at present possesses. If we become inductive-minded and
make our principles grow out of the facts of social life we shall admit
that the sanction for the will of the State is going to depend largely
on the persons who interpret it. The monarchs of the ancien regime
were legally the sovereign power in France, but their will was not the
will of the State. It did not prevail because of the supreme unwisdom
of the manner in which they chose to assume that their good was also
the popular good. They confused what Rousseau would have called
their "private good" with the "common good" and Louis XVI. paid
the penalty on the scaffold. The will of the State obtains preemi-
nence over the wills of other groups exactly to the point where it is
interpreted with sufficient wisdom to obtain general acceptance, and
no further. It is a will to some extent competing with other wills, and,
Darwin-wise, surviving only by its ability to cope with its environ-
ment. Should it venture into dangerous places it pays the penalty of
its audacity. It finds its sovereignty by consent transformed into
impotence by disagreement.
92 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
But, it may be objected, in such a view sovereignty means no more
than the ability to secure assent. I can only reply to the objection by
admitting it. There is no sanction for law other than the consent of
the human mind. It is sheer illusion to imagine that the authority
of the State has any other safeguard than the wills of its members.
For the State, as I have tried to show, is simply what Mr. Graham
Wallas calls a will-organization, and the essential feature of such a
thing is its ultimate dependence upon the constituent wills from which
the group will is made. To argue that the State is degraded by such
reduction in nowise alters, so far as I can see, the fact that this is
its essential nature. We have only to look at the realities of social
existence to see quite clearly that the State does not enjoy any neces-
sary preeminence for its demands. That must depend entirely upon
the nature of the demand it makes. I shall find again and again that
my allegiance is divided between the different groups to which I be-
long. It is the nature of the particular difficulty which decides my
action.
Nor is this view invalidated by the consideration that the purpose
of the State is larger than that of any other conceivable group, does,
in fact, comprehend it. I am not at all certain that this is the case.
A State may in theory exist to secure the highest life for its members.
But when we come to the analysis of hard facts it becomes painfully
apparent that the good actually maintained is that of a certain sec-
tion, not the community as a whole. I should be prepared to argue,
for instance, that in the England before the war the ideal of the
trade-unions was a wider ideal than that which the State had at-
tained, one is tempted to say, desired to attain. It is possible, again,
to say of the Roman Catholic Church that its purpose is wider than
that even of a conceivable world-state in the future; for the State
concerns itself with the lives of men on earth, while the Roman
Catholic Church concerns itself also with their future existence.
And, moreover, it is not so much greatness of purpose that seems im-
portant as the capacity to secure intensity of affection. This, as I
argued earlier, is surely the explanation of the attitude of those who
resist the State. The purpose of their organization is not more vast,
but it comes nearer home to what the individual immediately desires ;
so it has for him a greater momentary validity. He subordinates the
will of the State to the will of his group because the latter accords
with his desire or his conscience. I think that any one who reflects
on the history of opposition to the State will find that this is, psycho-
logically, the most fruitful source of its understanding.
Now I admit quite freely that I have been discussing a sovereignty
far wider than that which lawyers are accustomed to recognize.
When a distinguished jurist thinks that "sovereign power is that
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 93
which within its own sphere is absolute and uncontrolled, ' ' and when
another equally distinguished legal thinker argues that law rests on
sovereignty, I can only throw up my hands. For while, for example,
in England, the sovereign power is Parliament, and, broadly speaking,
only the rules laid down by it will be enforced by the courts, yet
Parliamentary opinion. Parliamentary statute, are the result of a vast
complex of forces towards which men and groups, within and without
the State, make often enough valuable contributions. It seems to me
that you can never find in a community any one will which is certain
of obedience. That is why Korkunov is profoundly right when he
urges that its phenomena can not be regarded as the manifestation
of such unity. I can not too greatly emphasize the importance of a
phrase used by John Chipman Gray. "The real rulers of a society,"
he says in a striking sentence, "are undiseoverable. " But with the
real rulers must go sovereignty ; and if you can not find them it too
must be beyond the reach of human insight. When you come to think
of it, the sovereignty of legal theory is far too simple to admit of
acceptance. The sovereign is the person in the State who can get his
will accepted, who so dominates over his fellows as to blend their
wills with his. Clearly there is nothing absolute and unqualified
about it. It is a matter of degree and not of kind that the State
should find for its decrees more usual acceptance than those of any
other association. It is not because of the force that lies behind its
will, but because men know that the group could not endure if every
disagreement meant a secession, that they agree to accept its will as
made manifest for the most part in its law. Here, at any rate, we clear
the air of fictions. "We do not bestow upon our State attributes it
does not possess. "We hold it entitled to ask from its members that
which conduces to the achievement of its purpose not because it has
the force to exact their consent, but because what it asks will in the
event prove conducive to that end. Further than this we can not go.
There are. in this view, things the State can not demand from its
members. It could not, for instance, demand from one of them that
he assassinate a perfectly blameless man ; for so to demand is to vio-
late for both men the whole purpose for which the State exists. It
would have, on the other hand, a clear right to ask from each member
such contribution as he can afford to a system of national education,
because the modern State has decided that the more educated are its
members the more are they likely to fulfil its end. "What I mean by
"right" is something the pragmatist will understand. It is some-
thing the individual ought to concede because experience has proved
it to be good. So when the State demands from one of its members
toleration for the religious belief of another as a right each should
en Joy, it means that the consequences of toleration are more coin-
94 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
cident with the end of the State than the consequences of religious
persecution. Our rights are teleological. They have to prove them-
selves. That is why, I confess, one of the main comforts I derive
from the study of Aristotle is the conviction that he attempted to
delineate a pragmatist theory of the State. He gave to his rights the
rich validation of experience; and surely a right that has no conse-
quences is too empty to admit of worth.
The view of the State I am endeavoring to depict may perhaps be
best understood by reference to a chemical analogy. The chemist
draws a picture of his molecule it is a number of atoms grouped to-
gether by certain links of attraction each possesses for the other.
And when a molecule of, say, hydrogen meets a molecule of oxygen
something new results. What is there may be merely hydrogen plus
oxygen ; but you must treat it as something different from either. So
I would urge that you must place your individual at the center of
things. You must regard him as linked to a variety of associations to
which his personality attracts him. You must on this view admit
that the State is only one of the associations to which he happens to
belong, and give it exactly that preeminence and no more to which
on the particular occasion of conflict, its possibly superior moral claim
will entitle it. In my view it does not attempt to take that preemi-
nence by force; it wins it by consent. It proves to its members by
what it performs that it possesses a claim inherently greater than, say,
their Church or trade-union. It is no dry a priori justification which
compels their allegiance, but the solidity of its moral achievement.
So, I shall fight for England because I can genuinely accept the right-
ness of its cause ; not because when the call comes I must unheedingly
and, therefore, unintelligently obey it.
Surely, too, that State will be the stronger which thus binds to
itself its members by the strength of a moral purpose validated.
When, for example, your miners in South Wales go on strike, rather
than attempt their compulsion by Munitions Acts to obey that for
which they feel no sympathy, and thus produce that feeling of balked
disposition of which Mr. Graham Wallas has written so wisely, you
seek means of finding common ground between their group and yours,
you will have done better. Is there not a tremendous danger in mod-
ern times that people will believe the legal sovereignty of a State to
be identical with its moral sovereignty ? Right is a dangerous word
for it is political no less than ethical, and in the hands of a skilful
statesman the meaning may be insensibly fused. So it will be
preached eventually that where a State, from this theoretic concep-
tion of Oneness, has a legal right, it has also a moral right which
passes so easily into a moral obligation. Government, then, stands
above the moral code applied to humbler individuals. It is almost
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 95
unconsciously exalted into tyranny. It gains the power to crush out
all that conflicts with its own will, no matter what the ethical impli-
cation of that will. I can then well understand why to an historian
like Treitschke power can be the end of all things. For then power is
moral and becomes more profoundly moral as it grows in extent. Is
there the slightest historical justification for such a conclusion?
The thing of which I feel afraid, if the State be admitted limitless
power, Professor Dewey has expressed felicitously in a single phrase,
so that I may be pardoned if I make use of him to point my moral.
"It has been instructed" [he is speaking of the German State] "by a
long line of philosophers that it is the business of ideal right to gather
might to itself in order that it may cease to be merely ideal. ' ' Nor is
what he urges true of Germany alone. When you hear in Great
Britain of unamiable retired colonels on half-pay writing from the
comfortable seclusion of a London club that the working-classes must
be compelled to do certain things because the existence of the State
is threatened, the voice may be the voice of an English colonel, but
verily! the spirit of a certain retired German cavalry officer creeps
into that voice. The State may ask the workers for their aid ; but the
condition must assuredly be, that when it fights, their good, no less
than its own, is bound up with victory. It seems to me, frankly, that
when many of us use the term "State" at the present time we are
performing a mental operation of which the content is essentially
different. The State is not the same thing, for instance, to the
Kaiser and to Herr Karl Liebknecht. When the former asks for the
support of Germans that the State may not perish, he has in mind a
thing almost antithetic to what it means for Herr Liebknecht. Is any-
thing gained by ignoring this difference, and urging that this State,
so fundamentally different to both men, is to have for both an equally
valid claim ? Assuredly, as the event proves, that can not be the case.
I have tried to show that the monistic theory of the State, making
it sovereign and, therefore, absolute, runs counter to some of the
deepest convictions we can possess. I have urged that it will ask from
us sacrifices it is against our consciences to give. It may of course be
said that such a sacrifice has in it a discipline it is well for men to
undergo. But when men begin, at the cost of suffering, to surrender
their convictions with a monotonous regularity they will end by sur-
rendering them without a pang. May we not here apply that sting-
ing aphorism of Coleridge ' ' He loves Christianity better than truth,
will love his sect or Church better than Christianity, and end by lov-
ing himself best of all ?"
In the realm of philosophy, the last forty years have seen tbe
consistent disruption of absolutisms. In the sphere of politics they
are assuredly but the expression of what our rulers are fain to believe
96 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
from half-instinctive desire. The history of recorded experience
seems to show that this kind of dogma is the stumbling-block in the
way of all progress. The State has sovereign rights; and those who
manipulate it will too often cause it to be used for the protection of
existing rights. The two get identified; the dead hand of effete an-
cestralism falls with a resounding thud on the living hopes of to-day.
I said earlier that such absolutism bridges over the distinction be-
tween right and wrong. Is it not clearly so? Is it not claimed in
Germany that an act is justified when State necessity compels it, and
that without reference to the accepted criteria of moral action ? In
the South African war were there not statesmen who, because they
condemned it, were adjudged morally degenerate? Is there not in
the United States a tendency to approximate criticism of the consti-
tution to original sin ? Please observe that I am only asking questions.
How ever are w r e to get any worth out of historical experience if
such absolutism is to be held valid? Every state then becomes ex-
alted above the moral law. Spain was right in its attack on the
Netherlands, and the Netherlands wrong in resisting the attack.
Great Britain was right absolutely in the American war of Inde-
pendence. Truly there is point in Mr. Chesterton's remark that
only logic drives men mad.
Such difficulties as this the pluralistic theory of the state seems
to me to remove. As a theory it is what Professor Dewey calls ' ' con-
sistently experimentalist, ' ' in form and content. It denies the right-
ness of force. It dissolves what the facts themselves dissolve the
inherent claim of the State to obedience. It insists that the State,
like every other association, shall prove itself by what it achieves. It
sets group competing against group in a ceaseless striving of pro-
gressive expansion. What it is and what it becomes it then is and
becomes by virtue only of its moral programme. It denies that the
pursuit of evil can be made good by the character of the performer.
It makes claim of the member of the State that he undertake cease-
less examination of its moral foundations. It does not try to work
out with tedious elaboration the respective spheres of State or group
or individual. It leaves that to the test of the event. It predicates
no certainty because history, I think fortunately, does not repeat
itself. It recognizes the validity of all wills to exist, and argues no
more than that in their conflict men should give their allegiance to
that which is possessed of superior moral purpose. It is in fact an
individualistic theory of the State no pluralistic attitude can avoid
that. But it is individualistic only in so far as it asks of man that he
should be a social being. In the monist theory of the State there
seems no guarantee that man will have any being at all. His per-
sonality, for him the most real of all things, is sacrificed to an idol
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 97
which the merest knowledge of history would prove to have feet of
elay.
I am well enough aware that in any such voluntarism as this
room is left for a hint of anarchy. To discredit the State seems like
enough to dethroning it. And when the voice of the State is viewed
as the deliberate expression of public opinion it seems like the de-
struction of the one uniquely democratic basis we have thus far at-
tained. But the objection, like the play queen in ' ' Hamlet, ' ' protests
too much. It assumes the homogeneity of public opinion, and of that
homogeneity not even the most stout-hearted of us could adduce the
proof. Nor is its absence defect. On the contrary, it seems to me that
it is essentially a sign that real thought is present. A community that
can not agree is already a community capable of advance. And if
public opinion is not homogeneous where and how is it constituted?
How will it prevail? I have already raised these questions. I have
urged that the proof is not general, but particular, lies in each special
occasion as it arises. And that is to postulate a State far from
uniquely sovereign, since on occasion it will not prevail as on occasion
it may not be right.
I imagine the absolute Hobbes, who has seen internal dissension
tear a great kingdom in pieces, hold up hands of horror at such di-
vision of power. Maybe I who write in a time when the State enjoys
its beautification can sympathize but too little with that prince of
monistic thinkers. And the reason is simple enough. It is from the
selection of variations, not from the preservation of uniformities, that
progress is born. We do not want to make our State a cattle-yard in
which only the shepherd shall know one beast from another. Rather
we may hope to bring from the souls of men and women their richest
fruition. If they have intelligence we shall ask its application to our
problems. If they have courage we shall ask the aid of its compelling
will. We shall make the basis of our State consent to disagreement.
Therein shall we ensure its deepest harmony. H. J. LASKT.
MCGILL UNIVERSITY.
SOCIETIES
THE FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN
PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
fifteenth annual meeting of the American Philosophical Asso-
*- ciation was held in Philadelphia on December 28-30, 1915, at
the University of Pennsylvania. The meeting promised ill at the
outset, partly on account of the small number of those in attendance,
98 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
partly because the earlier papers, though interesting in themselves,
failed to provoke discussion. Before its close it impressed every one
as having been decidedly successful.
The prevailing epidemic of influenza was no doubt largely respon-
sible for the small attendance. One heard of several cases of severe
illness, either of members of the association or in their families ; and
among those who were present there were a number who seemed not
very vigorous. Especially regrettable was the absence of the secre-
tary, Professor Spaulding, on account of the serious illness of his wife.
One thing that helped the meeting to triumph over all disadvan-
tages was the thoughtful hospitality of the University of Pennsyl-
vania. In particular, the serving of a tasty and substantial luncheon,
just at the door of the auditorium in Houston Hall where the sessions
were held, was a rare and much appreciated convenience. It made it
easy for every one to meet his friends and to make the acquaintance of
the young newcomers always one of the pleasantest, and not the least
profitable, features of these annual gatherings. Besides, it ensured
that at least the afternoon sessions should begin on time, which, I
fancy, very nearly makes a record for this association.
The peculiar feature of the meeting was the dedication of the first
two sessions to papers in honor of Professor Josiah Royce, together
with the Wednesday evening dinner at which he spoke. As Professor
Royce himself remarked, these sessions constituted a new departure,
as the like had apparently not been done before for a living man. He
was naturally somewhat curious to learn who had been responsible
for the idea ; but no one seemed to know. All that any one would say
was that the original suggestion had been for a Festschrift, and that
somehow this other plan had taken its place. Perhaps the Festschrift
may materialize, after all, as it is now proposed to gather all the ap-
propriate papers into a volume. Professor Creighton offered to
devote the May number of the Philosophical Review to this purpose,
enlarging it if necessary. I do not understand, however, that any
conclusive arrangements were made.
As I remarked above, the earlier papers provoked little discus-
sion. Professor Dewey, who, unbeknown to himself, had been assigned
the first place on the programme, did not appear till Wednesday;
and Professor Home opened with his attempt to exhibit the educa-
tional ideal involved in Professor Royce 's philosophy. No one offer-
ing to make any comment, Professor Royce was asked to say a few
words. His response was interesting and characteristic, and it was
repeatedly referred to later. He said that in attempting to formulate
his educational views he had always been embarrassed by an internal
conflict of tendencies. On the one hand he felt himself a rebel, a
natural-born dissenter, always prompt to challenge an accepted
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 99
standard ; while on the other hand he recognized that salvation for the
individual lies in union with the community. All philosophies of edu-
cation had been repellent to him on their formalistic side. And hence
he had never worked out a theory of his own.
The meeting was fortunate in being favored with papers by two
of Professor Royce's pupils who are now members of the medical
profession. One of these was Dr. R. C. Cabot, who spoke of Royce's
character as a teacher, emphasizing particularly his sympathetic tol-
erance of differences of opinion, and its effect in compelling the stri-
dent to enlarge his own ideas. Professor Calkins spoke of Royce's
theism, especially as embodied in "The Conception of God" and
"The World and the Individual." The paper contained an abun-
dance of well-ordered data and some interesting conclusions, which
at another time might have been eagerly debated, but which fell on
apathetic ears. Miss Calkins insisted upon the individual self-con-
sciousness of the Roycean absolute ; also, though perhaps more doubt-
fully, upon the distinction between the absolute and the universal
community. Even in his later works, she said, he did n'ot maintain
that the community is a person, but only that it may be loved and
served as one. The first session was concluded by the reading (by
Professor Hocking) of Professor Howison's paper on "The Signif-
icance of Royce's "Work in Philosophy." This contained a good deal
of biographical material which one will be glad to see preserved in
print. It also contained a summary criticism of two all-important
features of Royce's philosophy: his inference from an epistemological
to a metaphysical monism and his voluntarism. This last, it was
urged, despite the absolute character that was attributed to it, can
not fail to exhibit the instability of every theory that bases truth upon
desire. It can only end in anarchism, and has indeed been amply
refuted by Royce himself in "The World and the Individual."
If the afternoon session began on time, the president's address
restored the violated tradition by beginning half an hour late. Not
that Professor Armstrong was responsible for this ; for he was at the
hall at the time appointed ; but as there were only two or three others
as prompt he was constrained to bow to the will of the community.
The address on "Philosophy and Common-sense" seemed to many of
us to be one of the best that our lengthening line of presidents has
given us. It undertook, in the first place, to exhibit in the clearest
light the shifting character of common-sense ; and, in the second place,
to vindicate the great democratic function of philosophy as one of the
forces that determine the development of common-sense, especially in
its ethical aspect.
Wednesday morning's session began with a paper on the classi-
fication of delusions by Dr. E. E. Southard, the neuropathologist. He
100 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
offered it as an illustration of the method of research that has been
employed in recent years in Professor Royce 's logical seminary. The
method is that of superposition of schemata: the arbitrary applica-
tion to a given subject-matter of the principles of classification that
have gained acceptance in some widely different field. In this in-
stance the distinctions of person, number, gender, voice, and mood,
which grammar finds in various forms of the verb, were applied to
types of delusion. The paper at once showed the altered temper of
the meeting by the discussion which it excited. Professor Calkins
called attention to the psychological character and value of the gram-
matical distinctions referred to. Dr. Cohen took occasion to urge the
importance of the study of schemata in their utmost abstraction and
generalization, as it is pursued by formal logic. Professor Royce
added some interesting remarks about his seminary in ' ' the compara-
tive morphology of conceptions," as he had originally called it. He
never knew, he said, what was going to happen in it ; but it had been
increasingly productive in various ways. Numbers of his colleagues
from other departments had been attracted into the seminary. He
recommended it strongly to those who wished to give "a planless
course, with no effort, but with plentiful results. ' '
Professor Spaulding's paper, read by his fellow-realist Professor
Montague, called attention to the realism openly expressed by Pro-
fessor Royce in various passages of his recent essay on "The Prin-
ciples of Logic ' ' ; and protested against the idealistic position which
he found still taken in some other passages. Dr. Cohen observed that
this realism is equally in evidence in "The World and the Indi-
vidual, ' ' and attributed it to the influence of Peirce.
Professor Sheldon contended that few had faced and none had
solved the problem of the metaphysical status of the object of error;
and he offered as his own solution the theory that it is not an unreal
being (which would be a contradiction in terms), but real. Unfortu-
nately in writing his paper he had paid no attention to the time which
it would take to read it ; and as a result his thesis was left in mid-air
without any substantial support. This is an old and common offense,
and it was repeated at this meeting. In my opinion it has been re-
garded altogether too leniently by the association. The papers that
are thus presented to the association should be written for that pur-
pose, and adapted to the necessary conditions. If the authors wish to
expand them for publication later, that is their own affair. Or is this
too hard a saying ?
Professor Bakewell's paper was in one way the great success of the
meeting, for it was given special notice in the Philadelphia news^
papers. As it is always well for us to know what our intelligent con-
temporaries think of us, perhaps the editors will not object to a brief
quotation (with corrected spelling) from the Public Ledger:
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 101
Professor C. M. Bakewell at the morning session, in an address entitled
"Novum Itinerarium Mentis in Deum," contended that the earlier philosophers
[t. e., Fichte and Hegel], rather than Nietzsche and Treitschke, were responsible
for the doctrines that led to the war. But other delegates, commenting upon his
address afterwards, disagreed with him.
I leave it to the reader to guess from this what Professor Bake-
well really said. The whole notice is well worth clipping.
At the opening of the afternoon session, Professor Dewey's paper
on ' ' Voluntarism in Royce 's Theory of Knowledge ' ' was finally read.
It turned out to be a piece of purely historical study which no one was
ready to criticize. Dr. Hartman's analysis of causation tended to
minimize the importance of uniform succession as a factor in the rela-
tion, and to emphasize that of interaction. The paper brought out a
good many comments, including a thoroughgoing condemnation of the
whole enterprise by Professor Creighton, and a defense of it by Pro-
fessor Sheldon and Professor Dewey. Professor Montague suggested
a compromise between the views of idealism and monistic and dual-
istic realism, as to the relation between the apparent and the real.
Professor Shaw, who, like some others, had been surprised to find his
name on the programme, had not his paper with him, and gave a
spirited talk on modern individualism.
The dinner at the Walton Hotel will not easily be forgotten by
any of those present. "When all had put from them the desire of
meat and drink," President Armstrong read from a most interest-
ing and impressive array of telegrams and letters that had been re-
ceived from friends and admirers of Professor Royce : notably from
Professor Palmer and President Hibben in this country, and Berg-
son, Boutroux, and Bosanquet abroad. Then Professor Royce spoke.
I fear that I can give the reader but a faint impression of his speech.
It was a retrospect of his spiritual life. He began with his child-
hood in a mining-town a few years older than himself. He told of
the pitiless persecutions which he endured, as a red-headed country-
Jake, from the boys of a San Francisco grammar school. This was
his introduction to the "majesty of the community." He told of
the inspiration that had come to him, a few years later, from the
philosopher-geologist Joseph Le Conte. It was this great teacher
who had given him his first glimpse of the general character of scien-
tific investigation. He told of his study in Germany, and how.
through the teaching of Lotze, he had come under the influence of
the German idealism ; protesting at the same time that he had never
been in any real sense an Hegelian, and that, if a comparison was
to be made, he owed .far more to Peirce than to Hegel. Soon he
passed to memories of his maturer experience. He spoke of his
deepening sense of the value of social union, and of his own inca-
102 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
pacity for most forms of social life. He had been "a helpless lover
of the community. ' ' He had had no political ability. Even on the com-
mittees of the Harvard faculty he had been regarded as a nuisance.
The only society in which he had felt himself thoroughly at home was
that of his graduate students. William James had often wished that
he (Eoyce) might have a " religious experience." He never had
had one, in James's sense; but in the company of his graduate stu-
dents he had felt what was to him something of the divine ' ' an effort-
less sense of being one with the process. ' ' He spoke in a few words
of the love of logic that had grown in him of late years, and expressed
a wish that this experience had come to him sooner. He spoke of his
intense appreciation of the honor that his philosophical brethren
were now doing him; and then, with a sudden transition, recalled
how petty were all personal concerns, while the loftiest interests of
mankind were at stake in the European war. He declared, and re-
peated, that if in this conflict the cause of humanity "and you
know," he said, "what I mean by the cause of humanity" went
down, he had no wish to survive it. And he concluded by reading
the greater part of Swinburne's passionate and, as he believed, pro-
phetic poem, "A Watch in the Night."
I have left myself no space in which to say anything in detail
about the last morning session: about Professor Ewer's paper on
difficulties in the teaching of philosophy, Dr. W. K. Wright's defense
of evolutionary ethics, Dr. Slonimski's exposition of Kant's use of
the term "experience," or Mr. Swenson's exposition of the anti-
intellectualism of Kierkegaard. Many of the members had gone
home, but those who remained were more actively interested than
ever.
It remains to be said that at the business meeting of the Associa-
tion Professor Lovejoy was elected president and Professor Singer
vice-president; while Professor Spaulding was again reelected as
secretary. Professor Pratt and Professor Rogers become members
of the executive committee. Committees were appointed to present
minutes upon the philosophical services of President Ormond and C.
H. Peirce, the committee in the latter case consisting of Professor
Eoyce. Professor Dewey, Professor Hocking, and Professor Love-
joy were made a committee to investigate cases of alleged arbitrary
dismissal. It is proposed to make such a committee a permanent
organ of the association. The usual number of regular members
were admitted ; and Professor George Holmes Howison was made an
honorary member.
THEODORE DE LAGUNA.
BRTN MA WE COLLEGE.
PSYCHOLOGY AXD SCIENTIFIC METHODS 103
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The History and Theory of Vitalism. HAXS DRIESCH. London: Mac-
millan and Company. 1914. Pp. viii-|-239.
The Philosophy of Biology. JAMES JOHXSTOXE. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. 1914. Pp. xv + 391.
Vitalism will not down. A consideration of recent literature drives
us to this conclusion. One of the most widely read philosophical works
of the past few decades (Bergson's " Creative Evolution '') is primarily
a defense of this doctrine. The writings of Driesch, both in German
and in English, have followed one another with marvelous rapidity and
forced themselves upon the attention of even the most unswerving mech-
anist. And now there comes a volume by a more recent recruit, who has
hitherto been chiefly associated in the public mind with the " conditions
of life in the sea."
The strength of vitalism's appeal has a twofold basis : (1) the manifest
failure of dogmatic mechanism, as thus far formulated, to explain (even
in the sense of adequately describing) certain conspicuous facts of de-
velopment, function, and behavior; and (2) the unpalatable corollaries,
religious and ethical, which are supposed to follow inevitably the accept-
ance of a radical mechanism. Considerations of the former class appeal
primarily to the trained biologist, while the latter have most weight with
the non-scientific reader. The weakness of vitalism lies in its failure to
offer anything but a formal or verbal solution of the difficulties which it
raises, and in its insistence on indeterminism, a doctrine which, if ap-
plied consistently, would stifle experimental research in biology.
The controversy between mechanism and vitalism is by no means a
new one. It dates back to the Greeks. Xor is it an isolated one, apart
from other fields of thought. It has many points of contact with the
time-honored problems of materialism versus idealism, determinism versus
free-will, parallelism versus interactionism, preformation versus epi-
genesis. and doubtless others.
Driesch, in the volume under consideration, offers us a very useful
and interesting historical sketch of the evolution of vitalism from Aris-
totle to the present day. Both the exponents and the antagonists of the
doctrine are given a hearing. We have critical discussions of the views
of Aristotle, Harvey, Stahl, Buffon, Needham, ITaupertuis, C. F. Wolff,
Bonnet, Haller, Blumenbach, Bichat, Kant, Oken, Reil, Treviranus, von
Baer, J. Miiller, Liebig, Schopenhauer, Lotze, Bernard, Dubois-Reymond,
Helmholtz, Wigand, Bunge, von Hartmann, E. Montgomery, G. Wolff,
Reinke, and others. Certain of these, who thought they were opponents
of vitalism (e. g., Lotze, Claude Bernard) are found, on analysis, to be
vitalists at heart, while Bunge, who is commonly identified with that
school, owes this fact to his having had the temerity to concede the possi-
bility of a vitalistic interpretation at a time when biologists, almost as a
unit, were on the other side.
The " criterion," Driesch tells us in advance (p. 6), " by which we can
104 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
test every body of doctrine offered by history " is a recognition of the differ-
ence between " static " and " dynamic teleology." The former, while it
recognizes the fact of organic purposefulness, regards it as " the result of
a special constellation of factors known already to the sciences of the
inorganic" (p. 1). This was the earlier view of Driesch himself. The
second alternative, to which alone he applies the term " vitalism," is that
" the processes of life [are] purposive because of an unanalyzable auton-
omy" (p. 5). These last words will probably strike most readers as hope-
lessly vague, but such a criticism, at this point, would of course be pre-
mature. It should first be learned whether the author gives them a more
definite meaning before he closes.
The volume is divided into two sections, the first historical, the sec-
ond theoretical. While a resume of the former section is scarcely prac-
ticable, a few points deserve passing mention. Driesch censures scien-
tists at large for their failure to read Kant in the original, and under-
takes to fill out this gap in their education by a brief exposition of
Kant's views, so far as they bear on biological problems. I am afraid
that few of us will be thereby moved to undertake a more exhaustive
study of the " Critiques." This is not intended as a reflection on the
expositor, whose discussion is largely a running commentary on carefully
chosen citations from the philosopher. When Driesch, a sympathetic stu-
dent and apparently a profound admirer of Kant, admits that many of
these utterances are obscure and inconsistent with one another, and
when he tells us more than once that " almost any view could find ma-
terial to support it in the 'Critique of Judgment'" (p. 77), the average
biologist may be pardoned if he regards other reading as more impera-
tive. Surprising enough, in view of Driesch's searching studies of Kant,
is his confession that, after all, he can not feel sure just what the Konigs-
berg philosopher did believe regarding vitalism, and his expression of
doubt as to whether Kant himself really knew. After leading us through
a maze of seemingly contradictory opinions, our author states, as his
" final attitude towards the biological content of the ' Critique of Judg-
ment,' " that " in the case of man and his actions Kant is indubitably a
vitalist, while as regards the facts of organization he is only problematic-
ally so" (p. 86).
Historically, we are told, vitalism divides itself into an earlier and a
later phase, separated by a gap, occurring during the second half of the
nineteenth century, when it was temporarily stifled, or " out-shouted " by
the dominant mechanism of the period. Regarding the passing of the older
vitalism our author has this to say : " It is said of political parties that
they die out when they no longer have opponents to contend with. Some-
thing similar is also true of scientific and philosophic theories; . . . they
become lax and careless in their logical deductions; they forget to justify
every assertion in the light of the theory of knowledge. ... In such cir-
cumstances a doctrine declines and eventually dies. It may, of course,
have nevertheless been the right explanation, but what was right in it
was buried under a mass of confused and false details. The opposing doc-
trine which takes its place can not be said to have refuted its predecessor
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 105
as a whole; for it has refuted only certain particulars which were wrong
and not well founded on it. ... But, finally, the old theory rises again in
a new and imjyoved form, thankful for honest and well-founded criti-
cism, even though that criticism was wrong in its essentials and that is
exactly what happened in the case of the old Vitalism " (pp. 123-125).
In a chapter on " The Critics and the Materialistic Reaction/'
Driesch repeats his already familiar attacks on " Darwinism " and the
zoology of the later decades of the nineteenth century. The virulence and
exaggeration which pervade these passages are at times ludicrous : " Dar-
winism, which explained how by throwing stones one could build houses
of a typical style " (p. 137) ; " Botany [as contrasted with zoology] re-
mained a science " (p. 139) ; " Animal morphology celebrated a perfect
witches' orgy. It elaborated a phantastic construction of so-called ' genea-
logical trees ' " (p. 140) ; the " laws " fabricated by " general zoology "
" simply violated every principle of the formation of scientific concepts "
(p. 141) ; " The Darwinian school studied the construction and develop-
ment of animals only so far as to compare them with one another, and
to concoct genealogical trees" (p. 149).
How did zoology finally extricate itself from this " unworthy state " ?
" It was, on the one hand, the physiology of form construction which orig-
inated in His, and was materially advanced by Roux, and, on the other,
the exact researches made upon variations, hybrids, and mutations, which
ushered in the much -needed reformation" (pp. 141, 142). And it
was this new movement in biology, we note, which likewise ushered in
Neo-vitalism. " All new facts which support the theory of the autonomy
of life have been won in this field of investigation [*. e., "mechanics of
development"] with the exception, of course, of those which are derived
from the analysis of human action " (p. 171). As is well known, Driesch's
own chief contributions to biology were in the former field.
In this volume and elsewhere Driesch is singularly indifferent to the
great scientific awakening which followed the publication of the " Origin
of Species." To him its only results of consequence seem to have been
the apotheosis of chance and an insensate desire to trace out " genealog-
ical trees." The latter, in particular, are the objects of his scorn. This
appears to be less because they were imaginary constructions than be-
cause, even if true, they would have had very little importance for biol-
ogy. Apart from some object or guiding principle, manifesting itself in
evolution, no mere description of past happenings, he thinks, can be of
much significance. Indeed, he denies our right to apply the term " evo-
lution " to a process thus conceived. It would be merely a " cumulation."
It is doubtful whether most biologists whose work extends back
through the past twenty or thirty years would be willing to grant that
their early labors had been wasted. Morphology and embryology, guided
by the clarifying idea of descent, were certainly much more profitably
occupied than before that all-important clue was furnished them. If
there was much unbridled speculation concerning genetic relationships,
this fact does not vitiate the really great and enduring achievements of
the period. Many of the " homologies " established by comparative anat-
106 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
omy and embryology will doubtless never be overthrown, while our con-
viction that true homology denotes blood relationship is one of the crown-
ing achievements of the past century. Such careful descriptive work, in-
deed such wholly legitimate speculation respecting animal affinities, were
necessary before an inquiry could profitably be made into " developmental
mechanics " or into the moving forces in racial evolution.
It must be remembered, too, that many of our present leaders in biol-
ogy were active participants in that " witches' orgy " of twenty years ago.
If they passed over in a body to other lines of work, it was due partly to
a realization that, at this juncture, the newly opened fields were more
promising, partly to the gregariousness of even so highly evolved an ani-
mal as Homo scientificus. It was no confession of the futility of their
past endeavors.
In the second part of Driesch's volume he leaves the historical de-
velopment of the vitalistic doctrine and takes up its theoretical justifica-
tion. Unlike his former discussions of the subject (e. g., " Science and
Philosophy of the Organism"), the present one does not "ascend from
the facts to a theory, but descends from a theory, i. e., a logic of possi-
bilities, to the fact, i. e., to realities." Thus he gives us for the first time
a " deductive Vitalism as a real union of logic and biology, or rather as a
sort of filling out of certain departments of logic with biological facts"
(p. 188). This would seem to mark the final step in Driesch's progress
from an experimental zoologist to a professor of philosophy.
On purely logical grounds, so he tells us, he is able to discover four pos-
sible " types of becoming." The fourth type is the one with which, as a
vitalist, he is chiefly concerned. This is " becoming which changes the
state of the system in such a way that the number of different kinds of
relations among the things increases without there being any kind of
spatial agency that can be made responsible for this increase. In this case
' immaterial ' or non-spatial agents must have been at work. . . . The most
important form of this type of becoming would be that in which a distri-
bution of the things in one system of the form of a mere sum would be
transformed into a distribution that would be in some sense a unity or
totality, without any spatial mechanical predetermination of this totality.
. . . We shall call this type of becoming unifying or individualizing causal-
ity " (pp. 200, 201) . Needless to say, this type of becoming is the one
which is presided over by " entelechy."
We fear that the normal, unsophisticated scientist has much the same
distrust of a logician that a large section of the public has of a lawyer, and
for the same reason. If the interests of his client demand that a proof be
found, the successful lawyer will find it that is the essence of his profes-
sion. Correspondingly, we may well query whether a " logical possibility "
of vitalism would ever have been discovered except by a convinced vitalist.
And we may be perfectly sure that no one who is not already convinced
will be converted to vitalism by such a deductive "demonstration."
Driesch's " empirical proofs of vitalism " and much of his subsequent
discussion are little more than a condensed repetition of what he has
already told us in his " Science and Philosophy of the Organism." His
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 107
arguments have already been treated at some length in this JOURNAL 1 by
the present reviewer, and further consideration seems unnecessary here.
I may say, however, that while I can not believe that Driesch has offered
us anything more than a pseudo-solution of the problems he has raised, I
believe that the problems themselves are real ones. And furthermore, I
believe that in precisely formulating these problems Driesch has conferred
a real and lasting service on biology. In recognizing their importance he
has displayed a much more profound insight than some of his critics, who
are content with repeating mere conventional phrases by way of reply.
Those who knew of James Johnstone only as the writer of an instructive
work on the bionomics of the sea 2 were scarcely prepared for this more
recent volume dealing with the meaning of life itself. By many biologists
such an excursion into philosophy will doubtless be regarded as the first
step in the undoing of a man of science. And the example of Driesch is
sometimes held up as a terrible warning. Whether or not this is true in
Johnstone's case time alone can tell. Unfortunately for the prognosis, we
find our philosopher consigning important fields of organic happening to
"spontaneity" and frankly stating that "there are organic differences
which have no causes " (p. 242). To accept this viewpoint consistently is
to admit the futility of experimental research in what we now regard as
some of the most promising fields of biological endeavor. On the other
hand, it must be conceded that ingenious experiments have been devised
with the express object of determining whether or not vital phenomena are
primarily purposive, and that to this extent vitalism has played the part of
a working hypothesis.
The work of Johnstone is a skilfully blended mixture of the teachings
of Bergson and those of Driesch, a fact which the author freely admits in
his introduction. As Bergson's special contributions we recognize " dura-
tion," the " vital impulse," the arrest of the dissipation of energy by living
things, and the suggestive analogy between the scientific account of natural
phenomena and a series of moving pictures; also the relation between the
animal and plant kingdoms in nature and the dissociation of originally
combined tendencies during evolution. From Driesch are obviously de-
rived " entelechy," the " intensive manifoldness," and many of the biolog-
ical facts introduced as evidences of vitalism. Indeed, throughout the
book, we meet with no important line of argument which is not already
familiar to one who has read " Creative Evolution " and " The Science and
Philosophy of the Organism." But it would be unjust to let the matter
rest here. Johnstone has thoroughly assimilated the doctrines of his two
masters and presented them in his own words, illustrated to a great extent
by his own examples. He has largely spared us the perfervid rhetoric of
the one and the metaphysical entanglements of the other. The outcome is
a very readable and suggestive volume, by no means lacking in originality.
As we should have naturally expected, the work is strongest in its por-
trayal of the fundamental inadequacy of much of the current mechanistic
iVol. VII., pages 309-330.
2 "Conditions of Life in the Sea." Cambridge University Press. 1908.
108 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
"explanation" of vital phenomena. But I can not believe that either
Bergson or Driesch or Johnstone has contributed much to the positive
solution of these problems.
Johnstone's argument from the second law of thermodynamics agrees
pretty closely with that of Bergson, and is open to the same criticism.
Accepting as " scientifically " demonstrated the law of the dissipation of
energy and the consequent decrease of diversity throughout the universe,
he tells us that nevertheless " we are certain that it is not universally true.
For there must always have been an universe at least our intellect is capa-
ble of conceiving beginning. . . . We refuse to regard the problem as in-
soluble, and we must think of the second law as true of our physical experi-
ence only ... we have to seek for an influence compensatory to it " (p. 64).
This sounds promising and we read on expectantly. Living organisms,
he tells us, following Bergson, are characterized by their capacity for accu-
mulating energy which otherwise would pass into low-temperature heat
and become unavailable for further happening. The energy thus accumu-
lated is subsequently utilized with a minimum of dissipation, since " in the
animal organism chemical energy transforms directly to mechanical energy
without passing through the phase of heat" (p. 69). Moreover, in living
things energy transformations are held to be reversible in a sense that is
not true of non-living. " Such concepts as temperature and pressure are
statistical ones, and are applied to the mean properties of a large number
of molecules" (p. 116). The disappearance of molar temperature differ-
ences involves the loss of available energy, only because we can not put to
use the differences in the energies of individual molecules. This leads
naturally to an introduction of " Maxwell's Demons." And the upshot of
the whole discussion is that " primitive organisms, or even the tissue ele-
ments in the bodies of the higher organisms," may play the part of these
demons, and thus possess the " power of directing physico-chemical proc-
esses " (p. 119). I may remark that this possibility is made much more
plausible by our author than would be inferred from such a bare statement
as I have given.
Furthermore, this struggle "towards averting or retarding the prog-
ress towards dissipation, or irrecoverable waste, of cosmic energy that
of the sun's radiation, and of the motions of the moon" is mani-
fested in the activities of all organisms, notably those of man himself.
Thus, " life as a whole, on the earth, does not conform to the law of dissi-
pation. That which is true of the isolated processes into which physiology
decomposes life is not true of life. . . . Solar radiation falling on sea and
land fritters itself away in waste irrecoverable heat, but falling on the
green plant accumulates in the form of available chemical energy. The
total result of life on the earth in the past has been the accumulation of
enormous stores of energy in the shape of coal and- other substances. By
its agency degradation has been retarded" (p. 82).
This is all interesting and suggestive, though not entirely convincing.
But even if Johnstone's whole line of argument be accepted, how far does
it take us? The author himself tells us at one point that living things
constitute but a "film of inconceivable tenuity " covering the earth's sur-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 109
face. So this reversal of the law of dissipation can not apply to more than
an infinitesimal part of the universe. And even here all that is claimed is
that " the second law of thermodynamics does not restrict the energy-
transformations . . . to the same extent 3 that it restricts the energy-
transformations of the physico-chemical mechanism" (p. 69). He grants,
as he must, the loss of heat by "warm-blooded" animals and even, to a
lesser extent, by others.
Is this slight barrier, then, all that stems the torrent of dissipating
energy throughout the universe? We look in vain for a further suggestion
from Johnstone. Bergson does, indeed, intimate that life is much more
prevalent in the universe than we are wont to suppose, but even this admis-
sion helps us little. Nothing short of a complete hylozoism would meet the
needs of the situation. Unless there are factors adequate to undo the
whole work of degradation, the universe is doomed to extinction.
I shall not here discuss Johnstone's other arguments for a vitalistic
interpretation of biological phenomena, though they constitute a con-
siderable part of the volume at hand. As I have already stated, they are
substantially the arguments of Driesch and of Bergson. It is my belief
that they can be met only by departing somewhat from the traditional
mechanistic standpoint. The direction in which I believe the solution to
lie has already been indicated in my review of an earlier work of Driesch's
(op. cit.). I hope in the future to amplify this theme.
FRANCIS B. SUMNER.
SCBIPPS INSTITUTION FOR BIOLOGICAL EESEABCH.
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: A Study in Religious Soci-
ology. EMILE DURKHEIM. Translated from the French by Joseph
Ward Swain. London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. New York: The
Macmillan Company. 1915. Pp. xi -f- 456.
This careful translation of Professor Durkheim's now three-years-old
work will be welcomed by all interested in sociological, religious, and epis-
temological theory. The translation is literal, hence much of the grace and
brilliancy of Professor Durkheim's style has been lost in the process. On
the other hand, Mr. Swain, the translator, is himself a student and faith-
ful disciple of the French sociologist, hence we may be sure that the
master's meaning has in all cases been strictly adhered to.
The student of social science has long been accustomed to associate
Professor Durkheim's work with the pronounced tendency to emphasize
the social basis of all socio-psychological phenomena. Never before, how-
ever, has this emphasis been so absolute and categorical as is the case in
the author's analysis of the religious life. The data for the analysis are
furnished by the totemic system of Australia, a field which Professor
Durkheim handles with an authoritativeness born of systematic study
extending over many years.
At the close of an extensive and painstaking argument the author is
led to identify the core of all religion with mana, the belief in an imper-
3 Italics mine.
110 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sonal supernatural power. Mana itself, however, proves to be but a form
of the totemic principle, the power at the root of the totemic system.
Mana and the totemic principle, finally, are shown to be of social deriva-
tion: mana is but a symbol of society, the totemic principle, of the clan.
Not satisfied with having thus demonstrated the social derivation of
religion, the author extends his argument to the domain of thought itself
in an attempt to show that society is the fundamental determinant of the
categories underlying the processes of thought.
Professor Durkheim's work, in its English version, constitutes a signal
contribution to our sociological and religious literature, while much
credit is due the translator for the successful accomplishment of so ardu-
ous a task.
A. A. GrOLDENWEISER.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OE PSYCHOLOGY. October, 1915.
The History and Derivation of the Word " Function " as a Systematic
Term in Psychology (pp. 473-484) : K M. DALLENBACH. - The word func-
tion comes into general use with Brown (1778-1820) in his "Physiology
of the Mind." The term appears to have originated in works on phrenology.
The Thermal Sensitivity of the Stomach (pp. 485-494) : EDWIN G. BOR-
ING. - Thermal sensations of warmth or cold arise either in the stomach or
in tissues immediately adjacent to it at 40 C. and 30 C., respectively.
The Self in Scientific Psychology (pp. 495-524) : MARY WHITON CALKINS.
-Many psychologists find themselves conscious of a self through experi-
mental and analytical methods of introspection. There still remains a
great group of writers who do not recognize the self because the self is
always present, other activities have been their chief concern, and the
self has been positively ruled out by instruction and rules for introspec-
tion. Grasping, Reaching, and Handling (pp. 525-539) : GARRY C. MYERS.
- A detailed account of the development of the grasping, reaching, handling
movements of the author's baby during its first nine months. The Influ-
ence of Suggestion on Imagination (pp. 540-549) : GUSTAVE A. FEINGOLD.
- Experiments with ink blots and postal cards indicate that imagination is
controlled by suggestion in about 25 per cent, of the cases. The more
specific the suggestion the less fertile imagination becomes, which has its
educational and sociological bearings. Thanatophol>ia and Immortality
(pp. 550-613) : G. STANLEY HALL. - The child knows little concerning death
and the corpse. He desires to know little or nothing. Euneral ceremonies
are designed to take the mind away from the decay of the body. Life after
death is clung to because death as the end of all is hard to grasp. Medicine,
hygiene, life insurance, etc., receive reinforcement in the fear of death.
Immortality may be the desire to be remembered and esteemed, still to have
influence, to secure the rewards of this life, to leave children, to become a
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 111
part of a universal life, to become a part of universal wisdom, to become
free. Each of these views is an attempt to make death less fearful. A
greater love for the present life in a way partially counteracts thoughts of
death. Book Reviews: (pp. 614-618); Anna M. Petersen and E. A. Doll,
Sensory Discrimination in Normal and Feeble-minded Children: SAMUEL
W. FERNBERGER. Lewis M. Tennan. I. Suggestions for Revising, Extend-
ing, and Supplementing the Binet Intelligence Tests. H. Psychological
Principles Underlying the Binet-Simon Scale and Some Practical Con-
siderations for Its Correct Use. HI. The Significance of Intelligence
Tests for Mental Hygiene: FLORENCE MATEER. Lewis M. Tennan, The
Effects of School Life upon the Nutritive Processes, Health, and the
Composition of the Blood: FLORENCE MATEER. Lewis M. Tennan, Recent
Literature on Juvenile Suicides: FLORENCE MATEER. John F. Shepard,
The Circulation and Sleep : SAMUEL W. FERNBERGER.
The American College : A Series of Papers Setting Forth the Programme,
Achievements, Present Status, and Probable Future of the American
College. Introduction by William H. Crawford. New York: Henry
Holt and Company. 1915. Pp. xi + 194. $1.25.
Eichards, Herbert. Aristotelica. London: Grant Richards, Ltd. 1915.
Pp. viii + 167.
Smith, E. M. The Investigation of Mind in Animals. Cambridge : Uni-
versity Press. 1915. Pp. ix -+- 194.
Stewart, H. F. The Holiness of Pascal. Cambridge: University Press.
1915. Pp. lx+145. $1.20.
NOTES AND NEWS
AT a meeting of the Aristotelian Society on December 20, 1915, a paper
was read by Mr. J. W. Scott, entitled " On the Common- Sense Distinc-
tion of Appearance and Reality." Common-sense, he maintained, never
goes through the world taking things at their face value. On the contrary,
it selects one from the many appearances of an entity, and signalizes it as
the reality, of which the rest are the seeming, and from a knowledge of
which the rest in certain circumstances can be expected. The thesis which
the author endeavored to defend was that the " real " appearance possesses
the characteristic of being the container, of which the other appearances
are the content. He illustrated this thesis first of all by reference to the
familiar class of varying appearances consisting in the varying sizes and
shapes which a visual object assumes when placed in varying perspectives.
As regards the essence of the relationship of containing, it seemed to him
that the containing appearance was to the contents that which gave us
power over them. The container, as distinct from the contents, was that
vantage-ground, which, once seized, cleared a path for thought, as it were,
to the contents, and made the transition to them rapid, certain, and easy,
and so put them in our power. This power-conferring nature of the former
112 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
might be spoken of as its focal character, its centrality. A containing
limit contains in virtue of the fact that the thought of it is focal to the
thought of all its contents. The real appearance is, then, the containing
appearance; not the container alone, but the container together with all
that it contains. Every " real " is enriched with what it may appear to be.
In view of its initial effort to make itself at home in the world, common-
sense dare not be satisfied with what it calls the reality and nothing else,
rejecting all appearances, for the various appearances which a thing can
wear are part of its behavior and are what common-sense comes to learn
to anticipate. Common-sense, in learning what to anticipate, has in it
a tendency to lose its concreteness. Science encourages that tendency
to a much further extent, and, in doing so, it at once brings common-
sense nearer to reality, and hides reality more effectively from it.
Keeping our eye on the larger facts with which science deals, we are
given an infinitely wider range of expectation, which, in consequence,
we can not hold all before our minds at once, except by proxy, in
the form of abstract conceptions. When, for example, science turns its
attention from the ringing bell to the universal fact of sound, it uses
this particular noise to introduce us to a whole tract of the universe.
But then we are only introduced to it as a child might be introduced to
the Atlantic Ocean if it be taken to wet its feet on the coast of Galway.
We emerge with the conclusion, the writer argued, that the real is not a
few selected appearances only, but that everything that appears at all is
real. The real means all that is, and " what is " includes all that it seems
to be, except, indeed, what is indiscernible from and so identical with
another.
THE following officers were elected at the recent meeting of the South-
ern Society for Philosophy and Psychology: president, Professor D. S.
Hill, of Tulane University ; vice-president, Professor E. K. Strong, Jr., of
George Peabody College; members of the Council, Professors P. Wardlaw,
of the University of South Carolina, J. C. Barnes, of Maryville College,
and E. E. Kail, of the University of Tennessee.
THE Section of Anthropology and Psychology of the New York Acad-
emy of Sciences met on January 24. The following papers were read:
" General Ethnological Notes from Porto Rico," Professor Eranz Boas ;
" Porto Rican Burial Caves," Mr. Robert G. Aitken ; " Archeological Work
in Porto Rico," Dr. H. K. Haeberlin.
DR. KATE GORDON, head of the department of education, Bryn Mawr
College, goes next September to the Carnegie Institute of Technology,
Pittsburgh, where she will have charge of the Bureau of Mental Tests and
give instruction in psychology in the woman's department of the School of
Applied Design.
DR. OSWALD KULPE, professor of philosophy and psychology at Munich,
has died at the age of fifty-three years.
If*
VOL. XIII, No. 5. MARCH 2, 1916
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
A NOTE ON THE SENSOKY CHAKACTER OF BLACK
SOME years ago Professor Ward published an article entitled
' ' Is ' Black ' a Sensation ? ' n The question was answered in the
negative. Ward believes with Fick that we perceive black objects,
but that darkness is simply the zero intensity of the sensible quality
"light"; so that what we may call the "sensory content" of black-
ness and darkness is in reality "the absence of visual sensation."
Ward 's arguments have never, so far as I am aware, been met by
a rejoinder ; and the principal reason, as I venture to think, is that
his article broaches an extraordinary number of controversial topics.
A full consideration, pro and con, would fill a small volume. I be-
lieve, nevertheless, that the definitely psychological arguments may
be discussed within decent limits, and I attempt their discussion in
the present note. Ward, in fact, supports his conclusion by two
closely interwoven, but logically distinct, lines of evidence: by
direct appeal to psychological observation, and by a review of visual
theories. On this second path I shall not follow him. For whether
Helmholtz confused sensation with perception, whether Bering's
physiology is adequate to the psychological data, whether Wundt
changed his mind between 1874 and 1905, 2 whether Miiller is more
ingenious than convincing all these questions, acutely as Ward
debates them, and necessary as their discussion may be to an his-
torical setting of the psychological issue, are really irrelevant to
that issue itself. The important question is whether what we call
"the blacks" or what we might also, but for habits of expression,
call "the darks" are positive qualities of visual sensation.
We are primarily concerned, then, with the appeal to observa-
tion; and we should naturally expect to find in Ward's pages a
somewhat detailed study of the visual phenomena in which black
plays a part. As a matter of fact, not much is said of vision ; Ward
prefers to go further afield; and what is said is not always beyond
1 The British Journal of Psychology, I., 1905, pages 407 ff.
2 Wundt has replied on his own behalf in Psychologi&che Studien, II., 1906,
pages 115 ff.
113
114 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
challenge. We are told, for instance, that "in a light-field many
colors may be distinguished, but in a dark field none." Yet "light
admits of indefinite increase," and "ranges in intensity ... up to a
dazzling brightness that becomes painful and blinding"; these are
Ward's expressions; and Helmholtz had written in 1867 that "with
increase of brightness all the simple colors approximate white or
whitish yellow." We are asked again (the question occurs in the
polemic against Bering ) : "who ever heard of a blinding black?"
Yet Ebbinghaus, writing in 1897 of general adaptation, parallels
"dazzling brightness" with "impenetrable blackness": "you have
spent the evening in a good illumination, and now you set off home ;
everything out-of-doors looks impenetrably black; you are at a loss
to know how you are going to find your way. ' ' The ' ' impenetrable ' '
black that follows upon intensive light-adaptation is definitely
' ' blinding ' ' in its effect ; I should not hesitate to apply that adjective
to it; and von Kries comes very near the actual term when he re-
marks that "at first we can not see anything at all."
These two samples may suffice for the present to indicate the
treatment of vision: Ward's chief reliance is on the analogy of
darkness to silence. Here again he follows Fick, who wrote in
1879 : "I find this process [the darkening of a white paper to black]
precisely analogous to that in which a particular tone is heard with
diminishing intensity until at last it disappears in complete silence. ' '
Let us see how the analogy is used. Where the cessation of
sound is striking, Ward remarks, "everybody speaks of the cessa-
tion as audible." I do not think that I have ever come across the
phrase "a silence that could be heard"-, the regular expression,
surely, is "a silence that could be felt." 3 This, at any rate, is the
only correct verb to apply to a silence which follows upon loud
noise. I have made a number of experiments by subjecting ob-
servers, trained and untrained, for a period of 30 seconds or more,
to the noise of machinery in my laboratory workshop; at the end
of the set period the noise was cut off as abruptly as possible.
Various organic and kinesthetic sensations are reported, most fre-
quently a slight dizziness and a change of breathing; but all ob-
servers find an "oppression" in the region of the drumskins, a
"boring" in the ears, a "pressure" in the ears, a "pushing" at the
ears, a "feeling as if the ears would burst," and so on. Silence,
under these conditions, is not auditory, though it is largely auricular.
s I am sure that I have read, in works of travel, of silence which (like
darkness) could be "felt"; I connect the phrase in particular with the silence
following an earthquake. But I can give no reference; and the Dictionaries
of Quotations 'that I have consulted mention neither audible nor palpable
silence.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 115
"Nobody would object to defining silence as the absence of all
sound," Ward observes, "till he had shown beyond question that it
was something more." But in the cases of which I am speaking
silence is dissociated both from sound and from its absence ; a noise
is succeeded by a "feel"; silence, as experienced, is something else
than sound or the cessation of sound.
If, again, an observer is asked to describe the course of conscious-
ness during a period of time which includes the objective cessation
of a weak and continuously decreasing sound, he invariably reports,
at the moment of subjective cessation, a marked change in breath-
ing and the relaxation of muscular tensions in head and face ; often-
times, a weak emotion of relief. The organic and kinesthetic feels
are, here too, the sensory materials of the perception of silence ; and
there is no direct realization of an auditory blank such as seems to
be implied in Fick's account.
It is true, on the other hand, that if one listens in an objectively
quiet place one may catch Preyer's entotic phenomena. I have
often verified the observation, in myself and others, when sitting
late at night in an inner room of the laboratory. Only one is then
listening for sound ; and sound is what one hears, not the ' ' absence
of all sound. ' '
Such are the sensory data of silence as they may be observed
under simple experimental conditions. The apprehension of silence
may occur, of course, in far more complicated settings. Thus, ac-
cording to "Ward, who is now criticizing Stump f, the "perception of
silence wakes the miller when his wheel stops and the clerk when
the sermon is ended." Here, however, we must analyze a little
more closely. "What the miller directly perceives, if his wheel stops
in the daytime, is dizziness and ear-pressure. I have noticed these
things, at some degree of intensity, when passing from a noisy train
into an unusually quiet snow-blocked street, and when the engines
of a liner have stopped in mid-ocean. So far the parallel is fairly
close, for the mill vibrates as do the train and the boat. But on a
calm sea I have slept uninterruptedly through a stoppage of the
engines; and the miller might sleep as soundly if he had no special
interest in the mill. The various organic stimuli have power to wake
him for the same reason that the baby's cry has power to arouse its
mother, or the groan of her patient the sleeping nurse, or a mere
hint of the scent of fire the dozing watchman. Complex sets and
adjustments are here in play, and it is only a Podsnappian flourish
that can dismiss the facts to a psychology of perception. As for
Fechner's sleeper, he too has his cues: the preacher's change of
intonation as the sermon ends, the incipient stir and rustle of the
116 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
more wakeful members of the congregation: but it is the fear of
ridicule or of social condemnation that has given the cues their
sanction. When the whole congregation sleeps, "worldly Tom and
Bob and Billy" all together, then Sir Macklin may be removed
without disturbing their slumber.
From these considerations it sems to follow that the meaning of
silence may be carried consciously in a number of ways: by faint
sounds, by dizziness and ear-pressure, by release of breathing and
of muscular strains. There are, very likely, cases in which it may
be carried by the feel of walking on tip-toe, or may be reinforced by
such visual impressions as monotony of color, signs of previous habi-
tation, etc. All this, we may grant, stands upon the level of per-
ception. But when the silence becomes significant, and we enquire
for the conscious processes which carry the meaning of a significant
silence, then we have passed beyond perception to the levels of asso-
ciation and attitude and acquired interest. Unfortunately, the
group of experiences to which this particular mode of apprehension
belongs has not yet been brought under experimental control. 4
There is yet another point in Ward's criticism of Stumpf upon
which it seems necessary to comment. We often have a non-auditory
consciousness; we may have it under conditions of external quiet,
and we may have it despite the presence of fairly strong auditory
stimuli, as when we are utterly absorbed in some sight. We are
then, for the time being, deaf. In the same way, when we are
utterly absorbed (say) in music, we may be, though our eyes are
open and are variously stimulated, temporarily blind. Under such
circumstances it seems to me that we fail to hear and fail to see with
our ears and eyes precisely as we do not hear and do not see with
our hands and feet; the distinction here of privative and negative
terms is psychologically meaningless; privation, so far as conscious-
ness is concerned, is nothing else than absence. Stumpf has con-
fined himself to the simplest case, that of the "absence of external
stimulation"; and Ward counters by the remark that "when there
is nothing to hear we do not say that we do not hear in the sense in
which we say this of hands and feet." The rejoinder is doubly
warranted : for consciousness when there is nothing to hear may still
be auditory, and if it is not we may have a positive feeling of
privation. But when we are looking back, retrospectively, at a
non-auditory consciousness of the kind I have described above, we
are, surely, ready to say that we did then no more hear with our
ears than with any other part of our body. 5
*Cf. my "Feeling and Attention," 1908, pages 199 ff.
5 There are, no doubt, many occasions of this general kind when, in reply
to the exasperated question "Didn't you hear me calling?" we say apologetically
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 117
I come now to a portion of Ward's discussion that I find very
puzzling. Ward supposes that "we succeed in finding a dark gray
to match" the gray of the Eigenlicht. "A strip of such gray on a
white ground yields a sensation that is darker still." That would,
of course, be the immediate result; and we should have a case of
what Hering calls simultaneous contrast or simultaneous negative
light-induction. Ward then rightly argues that the physiological
mechanism of the contrast-effect is, "so far as psychological descrip-
tion is concerned, wholly irrelevant." He proceeds as follows:
"Leaving physiological differences aside, we can at least clearly
imagine a parallel in the case of sound, which would hold good
psychologically, at all events. Suppose we hear a loud sound of
constant intensity and quality and simultaneously a much fainter
one of different quality. Let the intensity of the latter steadily
diminish and the contrast in intensity between the two sounds will
steadily increase ; and there is a priori no reason why we should not
attribute this growing contrast to the increasing stillness of the
waning sound." I suppose that the louder sound here stands for
the white background, and the weaker for the dark gray. But
where is the parallel ? The gray on the white ground does not grow
continuously darker; on the contrary, it gradually lightens (simul-
taneous light induction). The two sounds, heard together, if tones,
would assuredly either blend or beat ; and to call a difference of in-
tensity a "contrast" simply begs the question. Furthermore, to
"attribute a contrast to" something is to try to explain that con-
trast, while we were invited to leave explanation for psychological
description. And finally, to ascribe "increasing stillness" to a
waning sound is to imply that stillness may be perceived as an
auditory blank, that its "sensory content" is the "absence of audi-
tory sensation." But this is the very thing to be proved, and we
have seen earlier in the present note that the evidence is against
such an assumption.
What, then, of Preyer's saying that "just as black is a sensa-
tion indispensable to painting so is the rest a sensation indispensable
to music ? ' ' Our first comment must be that it is unhappily worded.
For black is not indispensable either to the painter's palette or to
the critic's eye. Out-of-door painters use black pigment very little
indeed, and indoor portrait-painters make very varying, individual
and manneristic use of it; while one may pass in review a whole
wall of pictures without once getting the sensation (or perception!)
"I believe cow that I did hear something." I am referring, however, to the
extreme, but (for certain persons, at any rate) not infrequent cases, when we
say "No! I didn't hear a thing."
118 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of black. It is otherwise with the rest ; music, whether we regard it
from the composer's or from the hearer's standpoint, depends upon
the rest, as it depends upon the hold, for a variety of effects. But
these effects are, in the first instance, esthetic, not psychological;
and the psychological facts upon which they are based must be
worked out, experimentally, in the different cases. Meumann, writ-
ing from a wide experimental acquaintance with rhythms, remarks :
"Especially striking is the rhythmical effect of the different kinds
of 'rests.' . . . The causes of this effect of the rests are an impor-
tant subject in the psychological investigation of rhythm. I am
disposed to ascribe it essentially to the influence of central adapta-
tion to the change of attentional energy, or, in other words, of adap-
tation to the succession of tones which had been maintained up to the
beginning of the rest. In consequence of this adaptation there
arises at the beginning of the rest a definite expectation of a similar
tonal sequence, and the non-fulfilment of expectation seems to give
the rest its peculiar attraction." 6 This view is offered, no doubt,
merely as a general impression ; it would have been elaborated and,
in all likelihood, modified in later articles, had Meumann been able
to carry his labors to completion ; I do not myself regard it as ade-
quate. It illustrates, however, what I take to be indisputable, the
complex and positive character, psychologically considered, of the
rest-experience. A filling by expectation and disappointment is very
different from a sheer auditory blank, very different even from a
shaped and perceptible auditory blank.
And what, lastly, of Mach, and his parallel of time-shapes with
space-shapes? I turn to the paragraph from which Ward quotes,
and I find its opening sentence to be this : "I conceive it to be beyond
question that there is a peculiar, specific time-sensation." One
might perhaps hesitate, after reading the text of 1886, to decide
whether Mach recognizes simply a specific sensation of succession,
or whether besides this (and possibly given with it) there is a
specific sensation of duration. But the text of 1900 is explicit.
"If a tone A is followed by a color or a scent B, one is always sure
that B followed A, though the estimate of the interval separating A
and B is not materially influenced by the quality of these sensa-
tions. It must be, then, that another and distinct process is in-
volved, which is not affected by variation of the sensory quality, but
is completely independent of it, and by which we estimate the
time." The alternation of sound and silence is thus, for Mach, an
alternation, not of sound and nothing, but rather of sound-time and
6 E. Meumann, ' ' Untersuchungen zur Psychologie und Aesthetik des Rhyth-
mus," Wundt's Philos. Studien, X., 1894, page 309.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 119
of pure (sensory) time; the "blank" interval has a specific time-
content.
"Blue and green," says Ward in his concluding paragraph, "are
both positive sensations, because both have assignable stimuli and
can occur in any order and independently: black is not a positive
sensation, because it has no assignable stimulus and depends solely
on the cessation of light, internal or external." But is not the
"possibility of assigning a stimulus" irrelevant to psychology? Is
not that Ward's own view in other contexts? "If we are to come
to the study of our visual sensations without any prejudice, then
we must know nothing whatever of the fact that objective light cor-
responds to white but not to black." That is Hering's statement;
but the spirit is surely Ward's as well as Hering's: "the simplest
way" and psychologically the only way "is to let the facts speak
for themselves." But "blue and green can occur in any order."
If we are speaking of human vision as it is to-day, then so can black
and white ; we may see white before black, but we may also see black
before white. If we are speaking genetically well, then we are
speaking speculatively. Blue, I take it, appeared earlier than green ;
and black and white appeared together. Ward too assumes that the
primitive sensation of sight consists of a "light" which ranges from
complete darkness to dazzling brightness; and as, for reasons to be
given later, I can not distinguish between "complete darkness"
and black, further argument at this point is needless. "Blue and
green" once more "can occur independently." So, in a given visual
field, can black and white : a figure may be shown either in black or
in white upon a gray or colored ground. Or are we here leaving
psychology for physiology? Then, truly, black and white are inter-
dependent, but so also are blue and yellow, green and red; and are
not blue and yellow, for instance, positive sensations? Lastly, "black
depends solely on the cessation of light, internal or external."
Surely an unguarded statement! The "cessation or inhibition of
the intrinsic light" is an hypothesis of McDougall's; and it is an
hypothesis to be considered; but it has hardly yet attained the
rank of established fact. A black, again, will appear on the cessa-
tion of external light, provided that the eye is already light-adapted
and that the cessation is sudden; if the eye is dark-adapted, or if
the external light is gradually reduced (as in twilight), there is no
vision of black. Conversely, our ordinary vision of blacks requires
the presence of light : Ward writes, in another passage, that Bering
has shown "the so-called sensation of the deepest black" to be
"possible only under the influence of light."
120 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
What, then, are the positive reasons for attributing a sensory
character to the blacks? I should say that they are to be found in
all the elementary phenomena of vision. These qualities take their
proper place on the vertical' axis of the color-pyramid, and serve
as end-points of chromatic lines within that structure. The facts
of adaptation, general and local; the after-effects of adaptation,
namely, a modified ''sight" or ' ' sightedness " and the negative
after-image ; the facts of visual contrast ; the facts of indirect vision
these are all phenomena in which the blacks play a positive sen-
sory part. They are also phenomena which may be observed, not
only by help of black "body-colors," but also when these are re-
placed by the darkness of an unlit space, such as the interior of a
black-walled tube ; there is no ground for separating the blacks from
the darks. In short, black or dark, so far as we are dealing with
sheer looks, is no more the zero-point of white than blue is the zero-
point of yellow ; and when we proceed to experiment, black or dark
behaves just as other acknowledged qualities behave. I can not see
that further psychological evidence is necessary. 7
We should all, nevertheless, welcome an experimentum crucis.
And there is a hint of one. "Apropos of an experiment which he
has described," says Ward, "Professor Miiller maintains that it is
'altogether inconceivable' how this experiment is to be explained
without assuming the positive character of black. Yet Professor
McDougall seems to have done this satisfactorily, and even to have
turned the tables by experiments of his own which give results in-
compatible with theories of a special black-process." Miiller is in
truth concerned with a besondere S-Erregung, not directly with the
positive character of black as sensation; and it is on this ground
that McDougall meets him. In other words, the experiment is, in
the present connection, explanatory rather than descriptive ; it bears
upon physiological hypothesis rather than upon psychological ob-
servation. Since, however, psychology is involved, we may prop-
erly give it some consideration here.
Miiller 's experiment is well-known; he puts a black-red ring
upon black and white discs, and finds that the red shows well on the
black, and is hardly perceptible on the white. "In order to obtain
light" upon this result, McDougall puts a gray-red ring upon gray
(the same light gray) and white discs, and finds that the red shows
well on the gray, and is hardly perceptible on the white. He then
argues that contrast-black ought, on Miiller 's view, to have enhanced
1 It may be remarked that Ward, though his effort to distinguish sensation
and perception is wholly justified, tends to overestimate the r61e of stimulus.
Whether a black figure, a ' ' shaped ' ' black, shall arouse in the observer a sensa-
tion or a perception depends (other things equal) on the observer's attitude.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 121
the red on white, by bringing the gray of the gray-red ring nearer
to neutral gray. He has, however, forgotten the Axiom der Misch-
empfindungen. Had he put his gray-red upon black, as well as
upon its own gray and upon white, he would have found that the
red shows best upon gray, less well on black, still more poorly on
white; and had he put Muller's black-red upon his own gray, as
well as upon black and white, he would have found that the red
shows best on black, less well on gray, hardly at all on white. (These
statements hold, at any rate, for the Hering red, which is definitely
lighter than McDougall's light gray.) You can not, that is to say,
if you are to get to a positive conclusion, take casual mixtures of
light and color (casual gray-reds) and set them upon casual back-
grounds of gray; before you work with grays, you must know the
course of the chromatic limens, or must know at least the general
tendency of that course. "We do not, any of us, know either course
or tendency; we know astonishingly little of the chromatic values
of our colored papers; but we know enough to realize that the
knowledge, in a case like the present, is essential to positive argu-
ment. Miiller himself chose black and white with a reason ; he chose
them because they were, in the rough, the extremes of the light-
series, and therefore gave him a maximal difference of light-excita-
tion. Whatever, therefore, we may think of Muller's "altogether
inconceivable" and of the crucial character of his experiment, we
must recognize that the force of his demonstration is not impaired
by McDougall's counter-experiment.
E. B. TITCHEXER.
THE perennial interest and difficulty of the problem as to our
knowledge of the external world is very strikingly shown by
the various attempts at a new treatment of the problem in the work
of the American "New Kealists," in the writings of Professor S.
Alexander, its frequent treatment in recent proceedings of the Aris-
totelian Society, and in Bertrand Russell's "Our Knowledge of the
External World."
My own humble contribution to this discussion will be a defense
of realism, modified only by insistence on the organic and functional
interdependence and correlation of percipients and perceived objects.
One must start with analysis of the simplest kind of knowledge
of external things. It will not do to import physical and psycho-
logical speculations at the beginning of such inquiry. Speculations
122 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in this field must justify themselves, if at all, by rendering the facts
of immediate experience more consistent. Putting aside all sophis-
tication through theories, I find in my immediate apprehension of
such things as the tree or the table only two factors, neither of which
is reducible to the other. I find the object which I immediately
apprehend as real, and the consciousness that I (whatever I may
be, whether spiritual Ego or flux of cortically determined processes
or mixture of both is now an irrelevant question) apprehend the
object. I see that the tree is determinately round, brown, rough,
about two feet in diameter, with branches and green leaves. I may
call it a complex of sensory or perceptual qualities, but I do not
mean thereby that it is a state of my consciousness.
I do not find that I have, as distinguishable factors, sensations
which are purely mental processes and sense data (as does Mr. Rus-
sell). I am convinced, after prolonged reflection, that the assump-
tion that sensations exist as mental processes has been responsible
for most of the difficulties and confusions connected with this prob-
lem. I have "feelings" of esthetic joy at the tree's beauty, feel-
ings of pain if a branch blows down and hits me. These feelings
are subjectively mine, just as hunger, love, friendship, and all my
other emotions. I suppose these "feelings" to be in part, perhaps
wholly, due to modifications of my body acting on my conscious
self. Perheps they result from the reaction of my psychical self to
occasioning stimuli. Perhaps my psychical self is simply and solely
the by-product of the action of a complex neurone-system. I am
not concerned here with the metaphysical problem of the self and
the body. Feelings and emotions, then, are subjective processes,
belong only to this Ego. On the other hand, the sensory qualities
of the objects which I immediately apprehend are in the objects,
not in my Ego. They constitute the object in its objectivity. Mr.
Russell says that all that I really see is a patch of color. For my
own part I do not immediately see merely a patch of color. I see
an object having determinate color, form, texture, etc., all blended
together. 1 I can not perceive the one without the other. If I feel
the tree in pitch darkness I do not perceive only a tactual surface
sensation. The so-called sensations are artificial constructions, which
the psychologist has invented in order to account for the genesis of
perceptions out of simpler elements and for their multiform varia-
tions. Sensations are on the same footing as electrons. The psy-
chologist is prone to say that we learn to perceive concrete objects
by correlating visual, tactual, and other sensations. I hold that,
from the very outset, and in the case of the vaguest perceptions, we
f
I 1 do not, of course, mean that there are no mediate factors in my per-
ceptions.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 123
immediately apprehend objective complexes of qualities, and -that
we learn to perceive better by discriminating and correlating ob-
jective complexes, by differentiating and relating their features
more fully by analysis and synthesis, thus causing them to stand out
more clearly from the vaguer background of the total external
reality immediately apprehended. This vague continuum of reality
is always the matrix of our determinate perceptions. Perceptual
knowledge grows out of a vaguer, less discriminated, and less clearly
correlated or coordinated immediate or intuitive knowledge. I do
not believe that any baby ever had a purely visual and a purely
tactual space, which it correlated. It had what, in psychological
terms, we may call a vague and circumscribed visuo-tactuo-motor
space field, which it analyzed and synthetized into a more definite
or articulate spatial system. So with all of us. If we start with
the assumption of sensations, which are just Humian "impressions"
as the sole immediately given, we may argue from now until dooms-
day and we shall never be able to prove that there is an external
world. Having started with an epistemological fiction, no wonder
we can not get to reality. I suppose sensations were invented,
among physicists and philosophers, as a convenient makeshift to
account for the variations in human perception, and especially for
those features of immediate reality which could not be conveniently
measured, as well as for errors and illusions of all sorts. In time,
like many another human makeshift, they have acquired the sacro-
sanct authority of a dogma. As to whether psychology still has
need of them, as useful fictions, I leave to the psychologists. I
opine that the behaviorist and the functionalist, when they are thor-
oughgoing, may find that they can dispense with them, except per-
haps as pedagogical crutches.
Since I have no sensations, only feelings and immediate appre-
hension of objects, as complexes of sense qualities, I do not need
to suppose that sense data cause sensations. I see no convincing evi-
dence that the relation between my immediate apprehension of the
tree and the tree is that of effect to cause. They are simultaneous
in time and identical in nature. There is more in the tree than I
apprehend, but that more is not inconsistent with what I apprehend.
If you say that my apprehension is not of the tree as it is in
itself, since the tree looks different from different positions
and to different observers, I reply that there is no tree in itself
as an isolated object and no observer as an isolated subject.
Trees and observers are elements in a total spatio-temporal
system of interacting things. I have good reason to believe
that my being aware, of the tree depends on my visual appara-
tus and on the light in the intervening and surrounding atmos-
124 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
phere. The sensory organs and the central nervous system are
media of communication between my Ego and the tree, just as the
atmospheric light is. If there is variation in any of the media of
communication there will be variation in the object apprehended.
If it were cloudy I should not see the tree so distinctly. If my eye
were defective a similar result would follow. Similarly, this paper
does not cause me to write this article. It and this JOURNAL are
media of communication between my fellow students and myself.
With reference to my cognizing Ego, my nervous system and end
organs are just as truly parts of the external world as are the in-
tervening lighted space and the tree. With reference to pure cog-
nition, my whole body is an object in space, among other spatial
objects. With reference to my feelings there is a peculiar and in-
timate relation between this body and my conscious Ego.
The sensory system is a means for enabling a center of con-
sciousness, which, as unitary center of feeling and cognition, is as-
sociated in some kind of functional interdependence with a cortical
nervous system, to go out into circumambient space and to appre-
hend the qualities and relations of things. The awareness of ex-
ternal things, as well as the awareness of one's own bodily states,
is probably conditioned by cortical changes; but to say that aware-
ness is merely a cortical change is to confuse two qualitatively dis-
tinct things. Some cortical change must occur without accompany-
ing consciousness, and the cortical changes which are associated
with acts of awareness, with feelings, desires, and voluntary acts,
are unique kinds of cortical change by virtue of that association.
Is my mind out there where it apprehends the tree ? If so, how
can my mind be in my body and over yonder at the same time?
The simplest solution of this problem is to admit that my mind is
-wherever it perceives anything. It is partly out there and partly
in my body, since, while perceiving the tree, my mind is also con-
scious of the straining of eyes and head muscles, conscious that as a
psychophysical organism I, as cognitive Ego, am attending to the
tree. My mind, as actually conscious, is cognitively wherever the
things that it apprehends are. Affectively and volitionally it is
always centered in my body. Is it then in China, when I think of
China? No. For I am conscious that my thought of China is not
an immediate apprehension of China, but a mass of centrally located
images. As contemplating or immediately apprehending things,
the mind is translocal. To a limited extent and conditioned by light,
air, and other media it traverses space with immeasurable velocity.
Cognitively the mind is in the body only in so far as what the mind
apprehends is its own bodily state. Affectively and volitionally
the mind is, to a much greater extent, in the body since both the in-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 125
citements to purposive action and the immediate instruments thereof
are bodily. The body is chiefly, perhaps, a means of action. It is
also certainly a condition of the mind's apprehension of what is
spatially beyond the body. But it is not properly described as a
cause of that apprehension, except in a very loose sense of the word
cause. Nor does the sensory nervous system necessarily distort the
nature of what is beyond itself. It is just as consonant with the
facts, and much more in harmony with the conditions of a coherent
theory of knowledge one that does not begin by throwing away
the common-sense conviction that we really perceive real things, as
though the man in the street were a fool to say that the sensory
nervous system is the medium through which the mind goes out
into space and travels around in it as to say that this system is the
means by which the external world effects a burglarious entrance
into the mind. Surely it is less repugnant to the actual nature of
perception to suppose the mind to be a pervasive system or self-
expanding entity that goes out into space than to suppose that the
whole material world, in order to get perceived, must be concentrated
into a dimensionless point somewhere in the brain.
Do I perceive the tree in one private space and you in another
private space? Mr. Russell, in his very ingenious treatment in
Chapters III. and IV. of "Our Knowledge of The External World,"
supposes every percipient to be like a Leibnizian monad which takes
only private views of things. He defines the "thing" as the series
of its aspects, and, starting from the series of aspects which consti-
tutes every individual's private views of the thing, he constructs a
perspective space, which seems to be the space to which, in some
way, every one 's series of private space-views refer. I am not at all
sure that I follow all Mr. Russell's argumentation on this point.
But it seems to me that his construction of a general perspective
space is plausible only on the assumption that he already knows
that other minds exist, and it is admitted that the existence of an-
other mind is an inference from the existence of another body. But
how do I know that your body exists as the habitat and instrument
of your mind, unless I already know that there is one public space
in which your body and my body coexist ? At the present moment,
for example, I am not, so far as I am aware, in the immediate pres-
ence of any other mind. I am apprehending objects within my
range of vision. Then in walks my wife and fills up part of this
field of vision. Her body has entered that part of public space
which I immediately perceive. She obtrudes herself upon my no-
tice and speaks to me. I interrupt my work to reply. Unless I
immediately apprehend space as the place of the simultaneous exist-
ence and interaction of things I certainly could not apprehend my
wife's reality.
126 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
A perspective space can not be deduced from "private spaces."
For, if we begin with self-enclosed private spaces we can never
logically get into the public world and can never find any other
mind. The other self body and mind must exist in public space.
I believe that my wife exists because I immediately perceive one
indivisible object body and soul in public space. I am not con-
scious of inferring by any process of ratiocination that her soul is
there. I am immediately conscious of a living body which behaves
in an intelligent and affectionate fashion. Of course I may be
mistaken about her views or feelings on some matters. Then, in try-
ing to find out what she does think or feel, I learn that knowledge
in detail of another's state of soul does involve inference. But the
immediate apprehension of minds and of the portions of space in
which they live and express themselves are two aspects of the same
realistic contemplation of things as they are. My knowledge of an-
other mind's existence is logically as "primitive" as my knowledge
of my own mind's existence. In both cases, for completer knowl-
edge, I have to reflect, analyze, and infer. It is often quite as easy
to know another 's mind as to know one 's own mind.
Psychological or "private" spaces, are, like sensations, of which
indeed they are the "subjective" places, artificial constructions.
They are not given, but constructed as the "imaginary" places for
the variations in sense-perceptions. It is true that our spatial, like
our other qualitative, apprehensions of things, vary. I do not perceive
the surroundings precisely as my wife does. But, in so far as these
differences of perception are due to differences of position and dif-
ferences in the structures of our respective sensory apparatuses, the
differences, too, are parts of the objective order of things in space.
In so far as these differences may be due to differences in our mental
histories they are parts of the past objective order which, through
memory, functions in the present. In so far as they may be due to
inherent psychical and physical differences in the make-up of our
respective individualities they are due to what, for epistemology,
must be regarded as ultimately real facts.
There is no difference in perception which is not a difference due
to the fact that the real world is a system of interacting elements or
individua of varying degrees of structural complexity. If there be
such a thing as a psychical or spiritual principle of individuality,
then your individuality and mine are true parts of the objective
order, and your private views of things and mine are private only in
the sense that one is the consequence of your individuality and posi-
tion and the other is the consequence of my individuality and position.
But individuality and privacy have no meaning except in relation
to a public world and as parts of -the whole apprehended reality.
The real percipient, like the real object perceived, is never an isolated
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 127
datum of experience. Just as a physical thing is a sensory complex
attended to and discriminated from a vague background of appre-
hended reality, the individual percipient and agent is a felt center of
reference for all sorts of relations.
The vague background of reality which we immediately appre-
hend, and the parts of which we differentiate and correlate in the
analytic-synthetic growth of knowledge, is always spatial (and tem-
poral). -Space is apprehended immediately as the container or
medium of existence for all things and their properties. Kant and
the nativists are right to this extent that an immediate spatial ap-
prehension is presupposed in the barest modicum of perception (and
similarly with time).
But, since sensory qualities change, things when defined as com-
plexes of sensory qualities change and even vanish away. "What
then is the real thing ? This is too large a problem to be adequately
discussed at the tail end of a journal article. I will state briefly
what I regard as the right point of view for treating the problems of
thinghood, permanence, and substance. In the first place a thing
does not change without other things changing in the same spatial
and temporal stretch. Absolutely isolated change is no more real
than absolutely isolated existence. The ice does not melt unless the
temperature rises above 32 F. This statement is a symbol of a mul-
titude of other conditions of change. The changes through which a
thing ceases to be the same thing involve the interaction of elements
in the one spatial whole and in the one temporal continuum of
reality. Just as there is one objective spatial whole at any instant,
of which we apprehend only fragmentary, though genuinely real,
aspects, because we are localized centers in that whole, so there must
be one objective temporal order or order of cosmical succession in
which the changes that we observe and the changes that we undergo
are factors.
Nowhere in science and philosophy is the pragmatic method more
clearly applicable than to this problem of thinghood. For what
common sense means by the sameness of the thing is just the suffi-
cient persistence, for immediate apprehension, action, and enjoyment,
of those qualitative complexes which are the actual things. A thing
is any groupings of sensory qualities if, and so long as, for any pur-
pose, this grouping can be treated as a persisting whole. A thing
is the same so long as a self can count on finding the same qualities
together in space. I say that I have put some peaches in the refrigera-
tor. When I go there and find the expected complex of edible and
enjoyable qualities I say that the peaches have kept well. If I find
a rotten mush they have practically ceased to be the same. I seek
the explanation of the change from edible things to an inedible mess
in bacteria. The bacteria are, for purposes of explanation, things;
128 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
not for purposes of eating. The thing of common sense is a
practical construction, that is, a construction relative to a desire
and a purpose, and so is every so-called theoretical construction.
Even the attempt to conceive ultimate and unchangeable things,
such as atoms or egos, is simply the expression of the desire to
get one's mental feet planted on something permanently permanent.
The degree of thinghood that any complex of sensory qualities
possesses is relative to its fulfilment of a purpose. The things
of physics, "atoms," "electrons," are things for the very gen-
eral and abstract purposes of the physicist. In so far as they
fulfill those purposes in a clear and consistent fashion he can treat
them as real. But in so far as they do not satisfactorily account for
the complex and changing qualities of the empirical world, which are
hourly and momentarily real for the fundamental business of indi-
vidual and social living, common sense is justified in holding that
"atoms" and "electrons" are but artificial constructions. Even
law, morality, civil polity, art, and letters are full of such artificial
constructions; not of course so abstract and unreal as "atoms" and
' ' electrons, ' ' since they have more concreteness and individuality in
their interpretation and use. And, in the last analysis, the real must
be the whole spatial-temporal nexus or continuum which engenders
the local and transitory qualitative complexes which we call empir-
ical things and selves. The real world must, in some way, own all
the qualities which, for the fulfilment of individual and social pur-
poses, must be taken into account ; either as furthering or as hinder-
ing these purposes. The real external world owns all the primary
and secondary qualities; moreover since we enjoy nature selflessly
and "uselessly," as well as use some of its powers, the real world
must own qualities akin to the esthetic features that we find in it.
Naive realism does not imply that objects experienced would exist
exactly as they are experienced entirely apart from any experient.
It does imply that experiencing does not falsify or distort real things.
It implies, for me at least, that the percipient as well as the qualities
perceived are true integral factors in the objective complex of things.
Reality is a vastly complex and changing system which engenders
at some places and moments in its career feeling and reacting cen-
ters in which its qualities become consciously focused, and through
which they are under modification and rearrangement, but are neither
created, annihilated, nor radically distorted. A world which can
produce selves must have always been a world in which selfhood was
implied. A world in which selves live only through dependence on
and use and enjoyment of a physical order can never have been a
world of disembodied spirits or Egos, whether one or many.
JOSEPH A. LEIGHTON.
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 129
NEW YORK BRANCH OF THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL
ASSOCIATION
THE New York Branch of the American Psychological Associa-
tion met in conjunction with the Section of Anthropology and
Psychology of the New York Academy of Sciences on the evening of
November 22, at Columbia University. Four papers were read, ab-
stracts of which follow.
Some Relation Between Memory-Span, Attention, School-Grade, and
Age. CHARLES K. TAYLOR.
A series of experiments were made with about 500 children in the
four upper grades of a public school, as a result of which interesting
relations seemed to appear between memory-span, attention, school-
grade, and age.
Groups of numbers, varying from three to twelve digits, were
dictated to the children who wrote from memory each number as soon
as it was dictated. While this was going on the class-room was made
as quiet as possible and free from disturbing elements. Two series
of numbers, ten numbers to the series, were given under these condi-
tions. Not more than two or three children, it was found, could
remember and write down a number of twelve digits after dictation,
a few more remembered eleven, more remembered ten, and so on.
It was found, first, that the average numbers remembered by the
different grades were larger as the grades advanced in age. It was
also found that of children of the same age in different grades, those
in the lower grades could not remember as large numbers as those in
higher grades. Also, there was a close correspondence between the
memory average of the children and their averages given in the
monthly reports.
After a period of rest, two more series of numbers were dictated,
similar to the first two. but this was done while the teacher read aloud
from an interesting book, thus making a disturbing element. By
comparing averages in the two sets of series one could gain an idea as
to the attentive powers of the children. v
It was found that, though there was some relation between the
school-report and "attention" and the school-grade and "attention,"
the most marked relation seemed to be between age and atten-
tion. For instance, all of the sixteen-year children did as well with
the disturbing element, or better, than with the quiet. Only 42 per
cent, of the fourteen-year children and only 32 per cent, of the
130 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
twelve-year children did as well or better with the disturbing element
as they did without it. With the children of eleven and under all
made poorer averages with the disturbing element than without it.
Color Therapy. T. H. AMES.
References brought together, ranging from the most ancient super-
stitions and folk-lore to modern material from psychological labo-
ratories, give evidence that color was used to conciliate or ward off
supernatural beings, to ameliorate abnormal physical and mental con-
ditions and to change the emotional states of normal people.
Color acts for these ends in various ways: By magical charms
or sorcery, as a scape-goat, by thinking processes, or by homeopathic
and allopathic procedure.
Not only are masses and individuals affected in a similar manner
by color, but also the masses and individuals of all nations and all
times. The experiment by Wells in the Psychological Bulletin of
1910 stating that colors at the red end of the spectrum are stimu-
lating, that those in the central part are tranquilizing, and those at
the purple end subduing, agrees in its results with those to be ob-
tained from a study of ancient superstitions.
While the uses of color never have been and may never be demon-
strated to be of such value as to become commercialized, still there is
sufficient evidence to warrant us in believing that apart from any
purely utilitarian or purely esthetic use, color has a place in thera-
peutics.
Why the Lower Senses are Unesthetic. H. L. HOLLINGWORTH.
The speaker reviewed the various reasons that have been suggested
in explanation of the unesthetic value of the lower senses. Such fac-
tors as abundance, ecclesiastic censorship, number of qualities, sharp-
ness of discrimination, reaction time, inertia and life-span, spatial
characteristics, immediate affective value, materiality, consumption of
stimulus, utilitarian function, ontogenetic and philogenetic develop-
ment, vividness of imagery, organization and systematic relations
within the modality, social character, range of stimulus, perceptual
value, tendency to adaptation, etc., were considered. Criticisms were
offered of the theory that "the function of art is to please" and the
intellectual character or "meaning" function of esthetic manipula-
tion was emphasized.
A Practise Experiment. M. J. VAN WAGENEN.
Table I. gives the Pearson coefficients between the work done at
various parts of two practise periods and a final test period. The
material consisted of a set of ten paired associates, the stimuli being
the first ten letters of the alphabet arranged in chance order, the
associates being the next ten letters, also arranged in chance order.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
131
The subjects were forty university students in a class in elementary
psychology, who practised two periods of thirty-two minutes each,
forty-seven hours apart, and for three minutes forty-seven hours later.
The three-minute test was followed by another practise period on
a new set of paired associates, the stimuli consisting of the original
first ten letters arranged in a new chance order, the associates con-
sisting of the digits to 9, also arranged in chance order. The results
are given in Table II.
TABLE I
Minutes
Period
Minutes
Period
r
4-S
4-8
4-8
2&-30
26-30
First
First
First
First
First
26-30
33-37
58-62
58-62
65-67
First
Second
Second
Second
Test (third)
.780
.698
.515
.820
.8801
TABLE
Minutes
Period
Associates
Minutes
Period
Associates
r
4-8
4-8
First
First
Letter-digit
Letter-digit
4-8
65-67
First
Third
Letter-letter
Letter-letter
.615
.531*
A second experiment was carried out with a group of thirty-four
summer-session university students, in which the same letter-letter
associates were used as in the previous experiment, and in which the
quantity of work done, instead of the time, was kept constant. During
the first practise period 120 associations were made with each pair.
Four weeks later 80 more associations were made with each pair.
Just before the second practise period the amount that could be re-
called during 200 seconds was measured, the amount being the num-
ber of correct associates that were recalled when the stimulus letters
were read in varied order two seconds apart. The results are given
in Tables III. and IV.
TABLE m
Minutes
Period
Minutes
Period r
4-8
4-8
4-8
4-8
Last five
First
First
First
First
First
26-30
Last five
4-8
Last five
Last five
First
First
Second
Second
Second
.727*
.753
.541
.604
.845
1 Only thirty-five subjects were present for this test. The method of rank
differences was used in finding this coefficient while the product-moments method
was used in finding the other coefficients.
2 Thirty-seven subjects.
8 Thirty-four subjects.
* Probably too low as the last five minutes were used in two cases where the
work was finished during the 27th minute.
132 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
TABLE IV
Amount recalled Shortness of first^ practise period r = .186
Amount recalled Amount done during minutes 4-8 331
Amount recalled Rate of work during last five minutes of first
practise period 355
Amount recalled Bate of work during last five minutes of
second practise period 533
A. T. POFFENBERGER, JR.,
Secretary.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Great Problems. BERNARDINO VARISCO. Translated by R. C. LODGE.
New York : The Macmillan Company. 1914. Pp. xi -f- 370.
Varisco's " Great Problems " is a vigorously written and closely rea-
soned book. It will be differently appraised according to the different
philosophical points of view of its readers ; but few will deny the soundness
of Varisco's definition of philosophy (p. 4) as " the search and knowledge
of the supreme truth " and the correctness of his formulation (p. 8) of its
aim " to render full reason for everything."
In the first of several appendices Varisco defines his present stand-
point in technical terms. " To make an indeterminate profession of ideal-
ism," he says (p. 295), "is ... like signing a blank cheque, and I hare
no wish to do so." In particular, he disavows every form of idealism
which leads to solipsism. But with this qualification he asserts positively
" I am an idealist."
A brief outline of some of the more significant teachings of the book
will define more closely Varisco's type of idealism and will also provide a
basis for comment. He is first concerned to defend the possibility of
philosophy, conceived as search for ultimate truth, against the "critical
doctrine " that reality is unknowable. " With the assertion," he says
(p. 16), "that the 'beyond' is unknowable comes the affirmation that it
exists. A ' beyond ' of which we know the existence is not an absolutely
unknown thing is not unknowable. . . . Positive knowledge," Varisco
concludes, "contains, without doubt, the solution of the Great Problems.
. . . But ... in order that positive knowledge may lead us where we wish
to go ... we must make a well-thought-out use of it" (p. 21).
Philosophical theory, Varisco proceeds, must be based simply on facts :
"We must refrain from any theory which goes beyond the fact" (p. 48).
And the fact first discovered is that a body, a so-called " external reality "
an inkstand or a flower, for example is a complex of properties, that is,
of sense-perceivables. But, a sense-perceivable, as, for instance, the red
color of the flower, is " numerically one " (p. 32) with a sense-percept (my
sensation of redness). In a word, a body is " nothing but a group of facts
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 133
of consciousness" (p. 46; cf. pp. 47, 290), a "unity of sense perceivables."
Following upon this discovery of the identity of bodily property and
sense-percept is the reasoned conclusion, emphasized and reiterated by
Varisco, that two subjects are conscious of identically the same sense-
perceivable : Titus and Sempronius, for example, see the same color.
Varisco's argument, often repeated (cf. pp. 37 ff, 227, 291-293) may best be
condensed from his own statements. Any other conclusion, he points out,
would involve us in solipsism, and the fatal objection to solipsism is that
it would render " quite impossible " the " undoubted fact of communica-
tion" (pp. 37-38). Solipsism, Varisco is at pains to show, follows not
only from the subjectivist doctrine that " the existence of the object con-
sists in my having " a percept (p. 39), but from the dualistic teaching
that the percept is " a modification of the subject determined in it by the
action of an external cause " (p. 40). For if either hypothesis "were true
I should be absolutely enclosed within myself . . . without possible escape.
In such a case no personal subject could know or suspect or suppose the
existence of any other personal subject, which is contrary to the truth
(p. 227 ; cf. p. 292). The strength of the argument lies in the words which
I have italicized. For the argument against solipsism is thus based not on
an imagined assumption of the existence of other selves, but rather on the
indisputable awareness, whether or not an illusion (p. 51), of these other
subjects.
Varisco has so far sought to establish the existence of many subjects
having sense-perceivables " in common." He conceives these subjects and
sense-perceivables as " determinations of the one Being " (p. 239), as in-
cluded in a " Universal Being " which " must itself be a subject " (p. 238).
The argument for this conclusion is never adequately formulated, but is
perhaps implicit in the statement (p. 233) : " the unity of concrete objects
is ' concluded ' from the absurd results we obtain if we assume that [they]
are not essentially connected."
The emphasized characters of this Universal Being are its fundamental
unity and its observed variations. Indeed, " the variation of the universe
has its root in an intrinsic requirement of Being " (p. 234). The deter-
minations of " Being," or " concrete objects," are described as relatively
independent " centers of spontaneity," or monads, and are of the following
varieties : (1) " common monads " (p. 241) bound together in bodies " by
laws other than the unity of consciousness, in substance by causal laws "
(p. 240) ; (2) subjects (or unities of consciousness), which unify their
sense-percepts, recollections, feelings and (notably) volitions (p. 241 and
Chapter m.). Among subjects, the " purely animal " or " psychical " sub-
ject is sharply to be distinguished from the rational subject, the personal,
self-conscious I (cf. p. 241 and Chapter IV.).
The comment which follows will supplement, at certain points, this
very summary account of Varisco's teaching. Attention has already been
called to the insufficiency of the argument (in the reviewer's opinion,
readily supplied) to the existence of a Universal Being. The entire dis-
cussion of Being, in Chapter VII., suffers from a confusion of " qnalita-
134 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tive " with " numerical " identity. (The terms are not Varisco's.) Thus
Varisco says (p. 239) : " The monads as determinations of the one Being,
are included in it. And they include it because each of them exists." The
first sentence correctly states the inclusion of the monads within the One,
the second incorrectly expresses the homogeneity, or qualitative identity,
of the parts with the whole.
The main weakness of the book lies, howerer, in the reviewer's opinion,
in the conventional and defective conception of consciousness. The elabo-
ration of this criticism demands a more detailed statement of Varisco's
position. In Chapter II., he sharply distinguishes the subject, or unity of
consciousness, from the body or unity of sense-perceivables. The sense-
perceivables are, he says, " independent " of the subject (p. 63) and may
"realize" themselves "apart from any subject whatever" (p. 51). The
law which unites them differs from the law which constitutes the unity of
consciousness (p. 35). The subject seems to be treated, throughout the
first four chapters of the book, as a sum of elements (sense-percepts, mem-
ories, feelings, and activities). Indeed, these are often referred to as
" constituent " elements for example, in the statement (p. 58) : " the
same sense-perceivables constitute my body and me my body, so far as
they are connected by a physiological law, me, so far as they are connected
by the unity of consciousness." In later chapters, however, Varisco modi-
fies these accounts of " subject " and of " body." On the one hand, with
Chapter V., on " Values," he introduces a new view of the subject. Value
exists, Varisco reiterates, only for the subject for the satisfied and the
dissatisfied and, above all, for the willing subject. " Every valuation pre-
supposes," he says, " a volition which takes up a position and seeks satis-
faction" (p. 139). The valuing self, however, can not, it now appears
(p. 130), be a mere aggregate or "bundle of sense percepts and recollec-
tions, . . . variable in accordance with a certain law." Rather " it has "
the percepts and recollections, " it lives," " it acts." " Sensations, repre-
sentations, manifestations of activity, feelings," Varisco says (p. 152),
" presuppose the subject of which they are the determinations. They would
vanish if the subject vanished." This fundamental subject, however, the
subject of cognition and not of mere feeling, is distinguished as personal
self or " I " from the simple " animal " self, or unity of consciousness.
Along with this enriched view of the subject goes a conception of body
which, as our preliminary summary has already shown, more closely allies
body with the subject. Bodies, in truth, like subjects, are determinations
of Universal Being. Bodies, like subjects, are centers of spontaneity,
monads. The unity which binds them, the causal law, is not so different as
at first appeared from logical law, the principle of the internal consistency
of judgment; for causal laws too, " have their root in the unity of Being "
(p. 240) which is Thought.
None the less, to the very end, Varisco retains the mythical conception
of a " fact of consciousness " which is something other than a self or a
self's consciousness, the self-contradicting hypothesis of an unconscious
self, the belief that a monad can be " analogous to a subject," " comparable
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 135
to a subject," even a very simple kind of subject (p. 246) without, after
all, fully being a subject. He sees clearly that the existence of anything
"extraneous to consciousness, heterogeneous to consciousness, must abso-
lutely be excluded " (p. 291), but he is blind to the fact that consciousness
exists only as personal. He is, therefore, obliged to leave unsolved "the
Greatest problem," whether Universal Being, or "the divine, ... is or is
not a unity of consciousness . . . transcendent with respect to the indi-
vidual consciousnesses " (p. 268). Had Varisco fully carried through his
analysis of actual experience he would have discovered that only as unity
of consciousness, or self, can the "Universal Being be either a subject or
even qualitatively identical with a universe which is through and through
consciousness.
The reader of this notice is referred to " The Great Problems " itself
for further detail of Varisco's doctrine in particular for his admirable
treatment, in Chapter VUL, of " accidentalness, however alogical in itself "
as "the result of an intrinsic logical requirement of being" (pp. 235 ff),
and his theory that evolution and change really characterize different
systems even while " the whole remains always the same in spite of th
variation of its parts" (p. 246).
In conclusion, a word must be said about the skill of the translator.
The writer of this notice has had no chance to compare this version with
the Italian and has not once missed the privilege. The translator has
transmitted to us the individuality of the author through the medium of
an unlabored and spontaneous style.
MARY WHITON CALKIXS.
WELLESLEY COLLEGE.
Problems of Conduct. DL~RA>~T DRAKE. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and
Company. 1914. Pp. xiii -f- 455.
This book makes very pleasant reading; it is widely informative; it is
genuinely inspiring. If such qualities do not represent the maximum of
achievement in ethical text-book writing, they certainly come near it.
These merits are due to a persuasive sanity eminently characteristic of
the author, to his thoughtful awareness of the multitudinous problems
that press for solution upon modern civilized society, to his forceful yet
winning manner of writing.
Undoubtedly the noteworthy feature of the book is its extensive treat-
ment of present-day practical problems problems that concern particu-
larly American social life and hence confront the American college gradu-
ate. The limits of a review prevent any detailed consideration of the
author's views upon the various questions which he takes up in the
two thirds of the book devoted to "personal" and "public" morality.
Besides greater moral problems, such subjects as smoking and intercol-
legiate athletics, gambling and yellow journalism, pacifism and party
loyalty, consumers' leagues and the single tax, are all thoughtfully and
profitably discussed. Two chapters are deserving of special comment be-
cause they depart markedly from the procedure commonly adopted in text-
136 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
books of ethics. Chapters XVII. on Chastity and Marriage contains a
franker and more thorough treatment of sex problems than I have seen in
any ethical manual written in English. In Chapter XXI. on the Me-
chanism of Self-Control, the author refers to mind cure as an established
fact, states his conviction that these psychical forces should be more gen-
erally employed in the conduct of life, and gives directions for the use of
auto-suggestion in obtaining control of thought and impulse.
The least adequate portion of the book is unquestionably the one fourth
dealing with ethical theory. Criticism is possibly out of place since it is
evidently a prime purpose of the author to subordinate all questions of
theory, particularly those of technical nature, to a study of the practical
problems of morality. Doubts arise, however, as to the wisdom of such a
self-imposed limitation on the part of the moralist. As helpful as such
discussions of practical problems as we have in this volume undoubtedly
are, we can not forget that many of these subjects are treated with greater
thoroughness and precision in the special sciences of economics, sociology,
politics, etc.
A " sound utilitarian or eudaemonistic theory " is the view that Profes-
sor Drake adopts and defends : the highest human good is the life that has
the greatest total of happiness. The bottom fact of ethics is that different
experiences bring different degrees of pleasure and pain. What makes
one form of happiness more worthy than another is, in the first place, its
greater keenness, or freedom from pain and, in the second place, its poten-
tialities of future happiness or pain for self or others. We do not always
act in ways calculated to bring the greatest happiness, but we ought to.
Eight living is therefore an art, the art of choosing in the present that
object which will bring the greatest happiness in the end. Such in sub-
stance is the author's position. It has been frequently and, in my opinion,
successfully assailed in ethical literature. Indeed, I think that Professor
Drake who criticizes other theories rather severely should have taken the
trouble to answer effectively the fundamental objections that have been
brought against all forms of hedonism. He speaks disparagingly of epi-
cureanism, yet is not epicureanism the one consistent form of hedonism?
How is such a pleasure calculus as he recommends ever to lead to, or to
justify, self-sacrifice and the complete devotion of an individual to a
cause ? He says that we must encourage men to venture, to take chances,
in the service of great causes. But what justification can be found in his
theory for any other course than that of careful prudence choosing that
line of action which past experience indicates will yield the greatest
pleasure.
Beginning the book are five well-prepared chapters on the origin and
development of morality. Skillfully the author traces the development of
human conduct from the lower types of action. He does not, in my be-
lief, emphasize sufficiently the features which distinguish human conduct
from all forms of animal action. Even in custom, generalization and
judgment, obligation and choice, play a part, as Wundt convincingly
shows; to overlook them is to minimize and obscure the distinguishing
feature of the moral life. H. W. WRIGHT.
LAKE FOREST COLLEGE.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 137
The Psychological Methods of Testing Intelligence. WILLIAM STERX.
Translated by G. M. WHIPPLE. Educational Psych. Mon. No. 13.
Stern gives here a clear and brief statement of the principles of in-
telligence testing. To a survey of the chief methods and results of others
he adds his own criticisms and suggestions for improvement in various
methods. The book is prepared more especially for teachers of normal
and of backward children, for physicians and for others engaged in prac-
tical work with children. It falls into three parts: (I.) "Single Tests
and Series of Tests," (II.) " The Method of Age Gradation," and (HL)
" Estimation and Testing of Finer Gradations of Intelligence." Intelli-
gence is discriminated from other mental capacities as a " general mental
adaptability to new problems and conditions of life." It thus differs from
genius in that genius creates the new spontaneously, i. e., is not limited
to adaptation, and it differs from talent in being a general capacity,
whereas talent is an efficiency limited to one kind of content. Relative
to the method of age gradation, the importance of the range of irregular-
ity is discussed. In dealing with abnormal children the author also
recommends the use of the " mental quotient," i. e., the mental age divided
by the chronological age, as the best expression for the child's intellec-
tual status. Stern also emphasizes the need for parallel series of tests
for the different years. The last part of the book treats of correlations.
The author approves of the principle according to which an amalgamated
rank-order secured from a group of tests is used as the index of intelli-
gence. There are appendices and a bibliography.
KATE GORDON.
BEYN MAWB COLLEGE.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. October, 1915.
Psychology of Animism (pp. 1-32) : Animism originates in the belief in
ghosts of men, and tends to spread as the explanations of whatever had
formerly been attributed to magic. A review of the literature concerning
the ghost theory, its extension to animals and plants, the evolution and
the dissolution of animism is given. The Theory of Repression in Its
Relation to Memory (pp. 33-47) : ERNEST JONES. - " There exist in the
mind certain inhibiting forces which tend to exclude from consciousness
all mental processes the presence of which would evoke there, either
directly or through association, a feeling of 'unpleasantness.'" The
bearing of this theory is manifold and the subject may be divided under
the headings of registration, conservation, recollection, and recognition.
The Recognition Vocabulary of Children (pp. 48-51) : G. H. THOMSON
and F. W. SMITH. - The method was similar to Kirkpatrick's ; 170 samples
of 35,000 label words in Chamber's Dictionary were selected; 238 boys
and 229 girls were tested to see if they understood the words. The chil-
dren varied in age from 9 through 14J years. The difference between
138 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
boys and girls is not significant, although all the points but one on the
boys' curve are above the girls' curve. Outlines of a Method for the
Quantitative Analysis of Writing Vocabularies (pp. 52-69) : G. H.
THOMSON and J. R. THOMPSON. -A sampling method of estimating the
size of writing vocabularies and of analyzing the vocabulary into groups
of words of more or less frequent use, was employed for Dickens's " David
Copperfield." It exposes the vagueness of ordinary estimates of vocabu-
lary. Factors in the Mental Processes of School Children (pp. 70-92) :
N. CAREY. - Six groups of tests were made on four classes of girls and one
class of boys in the senior department of a London County Council ele-
mentary school. One group was for discrimination, a second for memory
of sense material, the third for memory of verbal memory, fourth for
school subjects, fifth for estimates of school intelligence, etc., sixth for the
"general factor." All the tests for each class were intercorrelated. The
correlation of the general factor with scholastic intelligence is .75 and with
tactile discrimination .00; the correlations of general intelligence with
other tests lie between these limits. The Formation of Projected Visual
Images by Intermittent Retinal Stimulation: II. Apparatus, Procedure,
and Results (pp. 93-126) : G. H. MILES. - Great individual differences exist
with respect to the retino-cerebral tract as regards general sensitiveness,
retentivity, and the character of the subsequent color phenomena induced
by the original stimulus. A relationship appears to exist between the
factors involved in the formation of the projected image and immediate
visual memory. Eleven figures illustrate the apparatus used and express
the results graphically. Publications Recently Received. Proceedings of
the British Psychological Society.
Healy, William. Honesty. Childhood and Youth Series. Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill Company. 1915. Pp. 220.
Holt, Edwin B. The Freudian "Wish and Its Place in Ethics. New York :
Henry Holt and Company. 1915. Pp. vii + 212.
McTaggart, J. Ellis. Human Immortality and Pre-Existence. New York :
Longmans, Green, and Company. 1915. Pp. vii -\- 119. 90 cents.
Ricklin, Franz. Wishfulfillment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales. Tr. by
W. A. White. Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No. 21.
New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company. 1915.
Pp. iii -f 90. $1.00.
NOTES AND NEWS
A MEETING of the Aristotelian Society was held on January 3, Dr. H.
Wildon Carr, president, in the chair. Professor A. N. Whitehead read a
paper on " Space, Time, and Relativity." Mathematicians have succeeded
in defining diverse Euclidean measure-systems without any reference to
distance. There are alternative groups of such congruent transformations
of space all equally applicable, but, while the distance P^ may equal the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 139
distance (^Q., for one measure-system, it will not equal it for another.
The extraordinary thing is that each of us does, as a matter of fact,
employ a determinate measure-system which remains the same, except prob-
ably for very small variations, and that the measure-systems of different
human beings agree, within the limits of our observations. This, how-
ever, is different in regard to time. Owing to the fact that points of space
are incapable of direct recognition, there is a difficulty in determining
what is at rest and what is in motion, and a further difficulty of determin-
ing a definite uniform flow of time. If all physical influences require time
for their propagation in space, the idea of an immediate presentation to
us of an aspect of the world as it in fact is must be abandoned. What we
perceive at any instant must, in that case, already be ancient history, with
the dates of the various parts hopelessly mixed. Again, if all physical in-
fluence is electro-magnetic, all influences are propagated with the velocity
of light in vacuo. But what dynamical axes are we taking as at rest?
There are two possibilities. We may assume either (a) that one set of axes
is at rest, and that the others will show traces of motion in respect to the
velocity of light, or (&) that the velocity of light is the same in all directions
whichever be the dynamical axes assumed. The first supposition is nega-
tived by experiment, and hence we are driven to the second, which imme-
diately lands us in the whole theory of relativity. If we will not have this
theory, we must reject the supposition that the velocity of light in vacuo is
the same in all directions. This is done by assuming an ether and a cer-
tain law for its modification. But as soon as the assumed ether has to be
patched up with special properties to explain special experiments, its scien-
tific use is problematical, and its philosophic use is nil. Philosophically
the ether appears to be an ambitious attempt to give a complete explana-
tion of the physical universe by making an elephant stand on a tortoise.
Scientifically it has an adequate use by veiling the extremely abstract
character of scientific generalizations under a myth, which enables our
imaginations to work more freely.
THERE will be opened in affiliation with the Carnegie Institute of
Technology, Pittsburgh, on June 1, 1916, a Bureau of Salesmanship Re-
search. A fund amounting to $75,000 for the support of the bureau for
the first five years has been provided by a group of business concerns to
whose initiative the organization of the bureau is due. Among these co-
operating concerns are the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing
Company, the H. J. Heinz Company, the Armstrong Cork Company, the
Equitable Life Assurance Society, the Ford Motor Company, the Carnegie
Steel Company, and others. Offices, psychological laboratories and equip-
ment have been provided by the Carnegie Institute of Technology. The
aim of this bureau is to secure a broader basis of established fact for use in
improving present methods of selecting and training salesmen, by accumu-
lating and systematizing information concerning the methods now used by
successful firms, by applying psychological tests to the analysis of the
mental traits of successful and unsuccessful salesmen, by carrying on
experiments in the selection and training of salesmen in cooperation with
various firms, and by publishing the results of these studies through appro-
140 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
priate channels. The activities of the bureau will be guided by a scientific
staff, on which Dr. W. D. Scott, professor of psychology in Northwestern
University, serves as director, and Professors W. V. Bingham (Carnegie
Institute of Technology), J. B. Miner (Carnegie Institute of Technology),
and G. M. Whipple (University of Illinois), will serve as cooperating
psychologists. The scientific staff will comprise, in addition to the fore-
going, a research assistant and several research fellows. The fellowships,
yielding from $300 to $500, will be awarded to graduate students of supe-
rior intellectual ability, personality, and leadership, who intend to fit them-
selves for careers as employment managers and supervisors of personnel.
There will be opportunity also for students of psychology who wish to pre-
pare doctors' dissertations in the fields of mental tests, vocational analysis,
statistical method, etc. Inquiries may be addressed to W. V. Bingham,
Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
THE sixteenth annual meeting of The Western Philosophical Associa-
tion will be held in St. Louis, Missouri, April 21 and 22, in acceptance of
invitation from the department of philosophy of Washington University.
The special topic will be: " The State; Its Meaning, Its Development, and
Its Possibilities." The executive committee has selected this topic as
timely and fruitful in view of the international situation. It is desired
that consideration of it may follow the newer channels, so far as possible.
The following amplification is given merely by way of suggestion: The
place of the economic, the social, the ethical, and the religious factors in
relation to the political, in the organization of the state; the nature,
ground, and extent of the duties of citizenship; the meaning of patriotism;
the merits of nationalism, imperialism, and internationalism; the value
and limits of assimilation, internal and external; the criteria and condi-
tions of progress, and its present obstacles; the applicability of theory of
state to actual conditions. Papers (limited to twenty minutes) are invited,
either on the special topic or on any other subject. Titles of papers, to-
gether with brief outline, should be in the hands of the secretary not later
than March 25. The sessions will probably be four in number (morning
and afternoon of each day), with at least one session devoted to the special
topic. The president's address will follow a dinner to be given by Wash-
ington University to members of the association on Friday evening,
April 21.
BERTRAND EUSSELL has accepted a call to Harvard University. He will
lecture next year on logic and ethics.
VOL. XIII, No. 6. MABCH 16, 1916
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE RELATIVE MEMORY VALUES OF DUPLICATION
AND VARIATION IN ADVERTISING
THE investigation to be described in this paper is a continuation
of one recently published entitled, "The Relative Importance
of Size and Frequency in Forming Associations." 1 In that paper,
the relative memory values of a full-page advertisement shown
once, a half-page shown twice, a quarter-page shown four times,
and an eighth-page shown eight times were determined. In all
cases where an advertisement appeared more than once, exact dupli-
cates were used.
The question then arose, which has the greater memory value,
two or more duplications of the same advertisement, or two or more
advertisements of the same commodity, each advertisement differ-
ing from the other either in picture, or in wording, or in both?
The following experiment was devised to test this point.
Two dummies were prepared, one of which contained advertise-
ments which when repeated were duplicates. The other consisted
of different advertisements of the same commodity, but the adver-
tisements were variations, not duplicates. The first dummy, in
which duplicates were used, was made up as follows:
4 full-page advertisements appeared once.
4 full-page advertisements appeared twice.
4 full-page advertisements appeared 4 times.
4 half-page advertisements appeared once.
4 half-page advertisements appeared twice.
4 half-page advertisements appeared 4 times.
4 quarter-page advertisements appeared once.
4 quarter-page advertisements appeared twice.
4 quarter-page advertisements appeared 4 times,
i This JOURNAL, Vol. XII.. pages 477 ff.
141
142 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The second dummy was made up in the same way, variations of
advertisements of the same commodity being used instead of dupli-
cates. The advertisements were all the size of those contained in
the Saturday Evening Post. The same subjects, 40 in number,
were used in both tests. It is frankly acknowledged that too few
subjects were employed, but since the results agree so closely with
those of others who have investigated the first part of the problem,
it is believed that a publication of our findings is warranted.
Each subject was handed one of the dummies and was told to look
it over at his leisure, turning each page of the advertising section.
The average time taken by each subject with each dummy was about
10 minutes. After finishing with the dummy, he was instructed to
write down all that he could remember about the advertisements
which he had seen. One week or more afterwards, he was handed
the other dummy and given the same instructions. Half of the
subjects started with the dummy containing duplicates; the other
half with the dummy containing variations.
RESULTS
The results obtained from the first dummy are presented in the
table below. The figures show the total number of credits received
by each form of presentation of the material. Since in both dum-
mies certain advertisements were shown but once, the average of
the results was used to determine the value of the advertisements
shown but once:
Once
Twice
4 Times
Quarter page
16
26
45
Half page
32
37
83
Full page
47
80
108
If the quarter page shown once is considered the standard of
stimulation, the half page shown once and the quarter page twice
represent a doubling of the stimulation. Were both repetition and
increase in size of equal value, the figures for the half page appear-
ing once and the quarter page appearing twice should be the same,
but they are not, indicating rather that size is a more important
factor than repetition. This point will shortly be considered more
in detail. Similarly, the full page shown once, the half page shown
twice, and the quarter page shown four times represent four times
the amount of stimulation. The full page shown twice and the
half page shown four times are eight times the standard stimulus
and the full page shown four times is sixteen times the standard.
If the table given above is reduced to ratios, the quarter page
appearing once being taken as the standard, the following table is
obtained :
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
143
Once
Twice
4 Times
Quarter page
1.00
1.62
2.82
FTftlf page
2.00
2.32
5.19
Full page
2.94
5.00
6.76
If, from this table, another one is prepared, showing the effect
of constantly doubling the amount of stimulation, the following is
obtained :
Units of Stimulation
1
2 4
8
18
1.00
2.00
1.62
2.94
2.32
2.82
5.00
5.19
6.76
Average 1.00
1.81
2.69
5.10
6.76
These ratios vary approximately as the 1.35 root of the amount
of the stimulus.
The differences in memory value between repetition and size
have been disregarded in the tables so far. The table given below
shows the effect upon memory of increasing size. The quarter page,
no matter whether it is presented once, twice, or four times, is con-
sidered as the standard, and the half- and full-page values are reduced
to ratios of the quarter page.
Quarter
Half
Full
Once
1.00
2 00
294
Twice
1.00
1 42
3 08
4 times
1 00
1 84
2 40
Average
1.00
1.76
2.80
These ratios vary approximately as the 1.3 root of the number
of presentations or amount of stimulation, the 1.3 root of 1 being 1,
of 2 approximately 1.70. and of 4 about 2.9.
Before trying to establish correlations between these results and
those of other investigators, I shall present the rest of my material.
When all the data are at hand, definite relations will be easier to
establish.
Turning now to a consideration of the effects of frequency of
insertion, we regard one presentation of the material as the stan-
ard and reduce the other values to ratios of it. The table showing
these ratios follows:
144
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Once
Twice
4 Times
Quarter page
1.00
1.63
2.81
Half page
1.00
1.16
2.60
Full page
1.00
1.70
2.30
Average
1.00
1.49
2.57
Here we find that the ratios vary approximately as the 1.6 root
of the number of presentations.
The conclusion which we are forced to accept by this part of
the experiment is that size is of more importance in the formation
of associations than repetition. This point will be considered more
in detail at a later period.
With the second dummy, which was made up of varied adver-
tisements of the same commodity where repetition was necessary,
the following totals were received by each of the different arrange-
ments :
Once
Twice
4 Times
Quarter page
16
46
85
Half page
32
86
117
Full page
47
108
149
Reducing this table to ratios of one presentation of the quarter
page, as was done with the other dummy, we obtain the following:
Once
Twice
4 Times
Quarter page
1.00
2.88
5.31
Half page
2.00
5.37
7.31
Full page
2.94
6.75
9.31
Another table, showing the effects of repeatedly doubling the
amount of stimulation, follows:
Units of Stimulation
1
2
4
8
16
1.00
2.00
2.88
2.94
5.37
5.31
6.75
7.31
9.31
Average 1.00
2.44
4.54
7.03
9.31
These figures do not follow an X n curve. But they do indicate
quite forcibly that variability is a more important consideration
than duplication in advertising.
Turning now to the consideration of the effect of size, the fol-
lowing table gives the ratios, considering the quarter page as the
standard :
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
145
Quarter
Half
Full
Once . .
1.00
2.00
2.94
Twice
1 00
1.84
2.35
4 times
1.00
1.38
1.76
Average
1.00
1.74
2.35
These figures agree fairly well with the results obtained from
the dummy containing duplicates, giving, however, a slightly lower
ratio for the full page. The average of the two is given below:
Quarter
Hall
Full
Duplicates
1.00
1.76
2.80
Variations
1.00
1.74
2.35
Average
1.00
1.75
2.58
J..W |
A comparison of these results with those of other experiments
will now be made. Scott 2 found the following ratios, his results
being uncorrected for familiarity:
Quarter
Halt
Full
Recognition
1.00
2.32
3.74
Recall
1.00
2.52
5.53
Average
1.00
2.42
4.64
His general conclusion is that there is a more than proportionate
increase in memory value with increase in size of the advertisements.
Starch 3 gives the following figures. "Where the ratios repre-
senting the memory value are uncorrected for familiarity he ob-
tained the first set of ratios ; where correction was made for familiar-
ity, he obtained the second set of values :
Quarter
Half
Ful
Two Pages
1.00
1.00
2.43
1.77
5.23
3.44
6.98
4.41
Starch's results agree with Scott's in that, when uncorrected for
familiarity, they show a more than proportionate increase in mem-
ory value with increase in the amount of space used. Where
familiarity is allowed for, however, the ratios show a less than pro-
portionate increase.
Strong 4 gives the results of several experiments, showing the
effect of increasing space. His ratios follow:
* Scott, W. D. ' ' The Psychology of Advertising, ' ' pages 168-169.
J Starch, D. ' ' Advertising, ' ' pages 30 and 48.
Strong, E. K. Psychol. Bev., Vol. 21, pages 137 ff.
146
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Quarter
Half
Full
(A)
1.00
1.41
2.15
(B)
1.00
1.11
1.13
((7)
1.00
2.39
3.65
(D)
1.00
1.53
2.34
(E)..
1.00
1.66
2.41
Average
1.00
1.62
2.34
Strong's results indicate a less than proportionate gain in mem-
mory value with increase in size in all cases but one.
If we take the results of all of these investigations and average
the ratios, it may bring out an approximate truth. In averaging
the ratios, all of the experiments will be considered to be of equal
value, no allowance being made for the greater number of subjects
used in certain of the experiments. The ratios are given below :
Quarter
Half
Full
Scott
1.00
2.32
3.74
Scott
1.00
2.52
5.53
Starch
1.00
2.43
5.23
Starch . .
1.00
1.77
3.44
Strong
1.00
1.41
2.15
Strong
1.00
1.11
1.13
Strong
1.00
2.39
3.65
Strong
1.00
1.53
2.34
Strong
1.00
1.66
2.41
Adams
1.00
1.76
2.80
Adams
1.00
1.74
2.35
Average
1.00
1.87
3.16
These ratios for the half- and full-page spaces are undoubtedly
higher than they should be. For in four of Strong's experiments,
in one of Starch's, and in Scott's there is little if any selection of
the advertisements used. The general scheme was to use the ad-
vertising section of some current magazine as the material in the
experiment. The greater familiarity of the half-page and especially
of the full-page advertisements undoubtedly raised the ratios for
those sizes somewhat above the normal memory value. For in ad-
vertising, as elsewhere, there is a natural selection going on, so that
the full pages tend to represent those firms which have advertised
successfully for some little time. The mere fact of familiarity gives
to these advertisements all the value to be derived from repetition,
either from duplicated advertisements, or, more probably, from
varied advertisements. We shall see below that variation in the
form of presentation is a very important principle in relation to
memory value.
If we accept Starch's 5 method of allowing for familiarity, we
5 Starch, D. "Advertising," page 34.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
147
find that the quarter page should be allowed 100 per cent., the half
page 73 per cent., the full page 63 per cent., and the two page 62
per cent, of the values actually received. Reducing the half-page
and the full-page values by these amounts in the seven experiments
mentioned above, we obtain the following ratios.
Quarter
Half
Full
Scott
1.00
1.69
2.36
Scott
1.00
1.84
3.50
Starch
1.00
1.77
3.44
Strong
1.00
.81
.71
Strong
1.00
1.74
2.30
Strong
1.00
1.13
1.48
Strong
1.00
1.21
1.52
Average
1.00
1.46
2.20
Taking the other series of experiments, in which the advertise-
ments were selected to avoid undue familiarity, though the values
were undoubtedly somewhat affected by it, we obtain the following
set of ratios :
Quarter
Half
Full
Strong
1.00
1.41
2.15
Adams
1.00
1.76
2.80
Adams
1.00
1.74
2.35
Average
1.00
1.64
2.43
A word should be said in explanation of the differences which
exist between Strong's results and ours. In the first place, our
advertisements were possibly slightly more familiar than his. In
the second place, the time intervals in the two experiments were dif-
ferent. Strong presented his duplicated advertisements one month
apart and tested a month later. In our experiment, the successive
presentations of the material occurred within a space of 10 minutes
and the test followed immediately after. The effect of this should
be to raise our values somewhat, 6 since our averages are made from
one, two, and four presentations of the material.
The reason for going into so much detail in connection with the
influence of space is because we wish to obtain some definite data
which may be used in making a comparison between the experi-
mental results and those obtained in actual advertising business.
The business returns were obtained from Shryer's "Analytical Ad-
Strong, E. K. PsychoL Bev., Vol. 21, page 147, footnote.
"From data now being accumulated we find that shorter intervals, as one
week, give ratios indicating a greater effect from two or four presentations than
shown here. ' '
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
vertising," 7 where he shows the number of inquiries received by
quarter-page, half-page, full-page, two-page, and three-page adver-
tisements.
His results show the total number of insertions of the advertise-
ments of each size, the total number of inquiries, the advertising
cost, and the cash returns. We are interested here primarily in
the average number of inquiries per insertion. Obviously, Shryer's
results do not indicate the actual memory value of the advertise-
ments, though his displays must have been remembered to a certain
extent to have obtained any responses at all. Naturally, also, many
persons must have remembered the advertisements who did not
write to him. His book, however, is one of the few places that the
writer knows of where accurate, practical data may be obtained.
His figures indicate the actual efficiency of his advertisements and
because of this fact, it will be instructive to include his material
here. His results, reduced to ratios of the average number of in-
quiries per insertion, follow:
Quarter
Half
Full
2-Page
3-Page
P. 171-5
1.00
1.46
2.22
P. 190
1.00
1.60
2.27
1.01
4.17
Average
1.00
1.53
2.25
1.01
4.17
The first three of these ratios are quite trustworthy, depending
as they do on 109 insertions of quarter-page advertisements, 79
insertions of the half-page, and 91 insertions of the full-page. It
is interesting to note that the ratios, if we except the one represent-
ing the two-page value, vary approximately as the 1.7 root of the
space occupied by the advertisement. It seems probable, every-
thing considered, that the value of space varies somewhere between
the 1.35 root and the square root of the space occupied, depending
upon the conditions under which the experiment is performed. The
most probable value is in the neighborhood of the 1.7 root. This
statement holds for both memory value and actual efficiency in pull-
ing replies.
The problem of the frequency in insertion of the advertisement
is the next one which needs discussion. A comparatively slight
amount of work has been done on this point, so the facts are not so
definitely known. A summary of the experiments which have been
performed will disclose the available data.
Strong's 8 results show the ratios for one, two, and four presenta-
7 Shryer, W. A. ' ' Analytical Advertising, ' ' pages 171-175, 190.
Strong, E. K. Psychol. Rev., Vol. 21, page 146.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
149
tions to be 1.00 : 1.25 : 1.62. Our results with duplicated advertise-
ments give these ratios: 1.00:1.49:2.57. The average of the two is
1.00 : 1.37 : 2.10. It will be seen that these values are somewhat
lower than those obtained for increase in size of the advertisements.
It seems to be pretty well proved, then, that size is a more important
factor from the standpoint of memory than is frequency of insertion
where the repeated advertisements are exact duplicates.
A comparison will again be made with the practical results which
are obtained by working over the figures given by Shryer. 9 He
gives a large number of figures showing the results of consecutive
advertising. The number of inquiries received from the first, second,
and so on up to the seventh insertion of the advertisement, are
given. Since both the number of insertions of the advertisement
and the resulting number of inquiries were so irregular, they were
all reduced to ratios and the ratios averaged. The records for
classified advertisements were not considered, for it is generally ad-
mitted that there is a considerable difference in the attitude which
persons take towards the two kinds, classified and display, the
former appealing primarily to those who are already interested in
the proposition. It is rather amusing that if one takes Shryer 's
results as they stand, they prove the existence of cumulative value,
the very thing which they were supposed by him to disprove.
In working out his results, the writer has added together the
results of consecutive insertions of the advertisement, thus showing
the total number of inquiries pulled by the first insertion alone, by
the first two, by the first three, etc. The figures, reduced to ratios,
follow :
Number of Insertions
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Inquiries
1.00
2.01
303
433
5 23
6.58
7.84
These figures are to a certain extent untrustworthy and mis-
leading, for out of the 30 or more tables from which they were de-
rived, fully half contained too few figures to be entirely dependable.
The 16 tables which contained 100 inquiries or more for the first in-
sertion were considered apart, for it was thought that the greater
the number of inquiries, the less relative effect some slight accidental
variation would have. The table made up of these ratios follows :
Number of Insertions
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Inquiries
1.00
2.08
2.78
3.46
4.20
5.64
6.28
'Shryer, W. A. "Analytical Advertising," pages 82-114.
150
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
These figures show a lack of cumulative value, except in the
case of the second insertion, and this lack is enhanced when we con-
sider another argument of Shryer's. 10 He states that an advertise-
ment which is inserted but once will still pull inquiries during the
second, third, and fourth months and backs up his statement by a
list of 10 examples. The relative efficiency of an advertisement
which has appeared but once is shown for the first, second, third,
and fourth months in the following table of ratios :
1
2
3
4
1.00
1.68
1.83
1.94
Taking Shryer's figures as they stand, uncorrected for the pil-
ing up effects of one insertion, we find that they are somewhat
higher than those obtained by the experimental method with dupli-
cates, as will be indicated by the following table :
l
2
4
Experimental
1.00
1 37
2 10
Shryer
1.00
2.08
3.46
If we try to correct his figures roughly by obtaining the ratio of
efficiency of the repeated advertisements to the piling up effects of
one insertion alone, we obtain the following ratios:
i
i.oo
2
1.24
4
2.21
His figures, with correction, show a very close resemblance to
those obtained by the experimental method.
On the average, it appears that increased space is more effective
than duplication of advertisements, with both the experimental and
the practical results, as will appear from the following table:
Experiment.
Units of Stimulation
1
2
4
Size.
1.00
1.64
2 43
Duplication
1.00
1 37
2 10
Practical Test.
Sine
1.00
1.53
2 25
Duplication
1.00
1.24
2.21
The table is also interesting in that it points out the very close
and striking resemblance between the laboratory tests on memory
values and the business tests on practical efficiency.
10 Shryer, W. A. "Analytical Advertising," pages 114-115.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 151
When we consider the effect of varied advertisements rather than
duplicates, we find that repetition is a greater factor than increase
in size, as the following table will show :
Once
Twice
4 Times
Quarter page
1.00
2.88
5.31
Half page
1.00
2.70
3.66
Thill pagfi ......... ,
1.00
2.30
3.17
Average
1.00
2.63
4.05
These ratios are considerably above those obtained for increase
in size of the advertisements, which were 1.00 : 1.64 : 2.43.
"We are also justified in stating that duplication has a much
lower memory value than variation. The following table will make
this clear:
Duplication Variation
1 appearance 1.00 1.00
2 appearances 1.49 2.63
4 appearances 2.57 4.05
This table shows very strikingly that variation possesses a very
much greater memory value than duplication.
There are at least two reasons why this should be the case. In
the first place, the degree of attention is undoubtedly an important
factor. When we see a duplicated advertisement the second time
it is relatively uninteresting, consequently the second impression is
not as great as the first. But with the variation, there is always
the novelty of a new advertisement so that attention may be at its
maximum.
In the second place, where duplicates are used but one type of
appeal can be successfully employed. This may be for the reader
an uninteresting one, consequently he may neglect the advertise-
ment entirely. Where variations are used, however, it is possible
to make as many different types of appeal as there are variations
in the series. In addition to producing greater attention, varia-
tion is more likely to connect the advertisement with the individual 's
series of interests, thus tending to give it a greater memory value.
Since Shryer's advertisements have been running consistently
in a fairly large number of magazines, it is a very probable supposi-
tion that those who answered his advertisements had been influenced
both by duplications and variations of the advertisements. If such
were the case, and we assume it to be, it would be interesting to
compare his ratios with our ratios representing an average of the
two tendencies. Such a comparison follows :
152 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Once
Twice
4 Times .
Duplication
1.00
1.49
2.60
Variation
1.00
2.63
4.05
Average
1.00
2.06
3.33
Shryer's
1.00
2.08
3.46
These figures, which are strikingly similar, show a high degree
of correlation between the experimental test of memory and the
practical test of efficiency.
SUMMARY.
1. Increasing size gives a higher memory value than increasing
the number of repetitions of an advertisement when exact dupli-
cates are used.
2. Variation is about twice as effective as duplication.
3. There is a very close correlation between the memory value
of the different forms of presentation of the material and the prac-
tical efficiency of the same forms of presentation in pulling in-
quiries.
HENRY F. ADAMS.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
THE FIELD OF LOGIC
volume of the "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences"
J- recently published gives an accurate rehearsal of the present
condition of the science of logic. If there is any direction in the
development of logic it seems to be away from the conception of
that science as a branch of psychology. Among the papers we find
rather less of that peculiar psychology written in terms inherited
from the scholastic logic that characterized the literature under the
head of logic some years ago. The conception of logic as the
science of the empirical process of thought to be dealt with through
the categories of Aristotle or their scholastic modifications for a
time threatened to leave no room for the traditional formal logic
and its modern successor. From this departure logic has been res-
cued by the mathematicians. As a result of the work of Peano and
his followers psychologism has gone out of fashion.
Psychologism has not disappeared from logical writing, however,
and there can be found in the present volume very disconcerting
traces of its survival which threaten a return. The writers of the
volume have approached their task from very different points of
view, but there is one respect in which they are agreed, with vary-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 153
ing emphasis. Logic is still a science of thought as distinct from
expression. Windleband makes it clear that this does not mean
that in psychology is to be found the ground of logic. "Logic," he
says, ' ' is concerned not with the origin, but with the validity or truth
of ideas. " It is true that this validity is distinguished by means of
a feeling and that it is the task of psychology to establish "the
marks which from a psychological point of view distinguished the
purely theoretical grounds on which perception and knowledge are
accepted from those of opinion and belief," yet, for this thinking
which is directed at truth there are ' ' constraining norms ' ' by which
we proceed from one assertion to another. These norms are not a
matter for the psychologist's investigation. Logic, then, for Windle-
band, applies to thinking which is done under this constraint.
That there exists such thought distinct from any verbal expression
he takes to be proved by instances of aphasia, inability to express
what is in the mind, the fact that mechanical speech is sometimes
accompanied by distinct thought, and, best of all, the fact that we
may have in two different languages the same thought expressed.
Windleband narrowly escapes, if he does escape, the clutches of
the psychologists, who may claim such a thing as a "constraint"
to think thus and so for their own, or may attach the "feeling" by
which a true judgment is distinguished from a false. The other
writers who are given place in the volume are in less danger. Pro-
fessor Royce makes logic a part of a more general science of order
which turns out on examination to be Russell's mathematics. These
forms of order in general "are in fact the forms of all rational ac-
tivity," which is again something different from verbal expression.
For Croce also logic is the science of thought, the thinking proc-
ess as distinguished from expression. It is to include among other
things a theory of error, or the "pathology of thought." From
Couturat we had been led to expect a different attitude. Some
years ago in a discussion with Poincare he offered the suggestion that
logic was not the science of thought, but the body of rules of demon-
stration. We find him in this volume, nevertheless, asserting that
logic is the "normative science of the formal laws of correct think-
ing. ' ' It deals with the understanding, not with expression, though
language offers the best example of the operation of the under-
standing. "We find practical agreement among the writers of the
volume in these two respects: (1) Thought or meaning is some-
thing competely distinct from and independent of expression. As
Windleband puts it: ". . . it must, above all, be clearly laid down
that the linguistic relational forms are nothing less than imitations
of the forms of the movement and association of ideas," signs for
these. "The fundamental logical act, the judgment,-finds its verbal
154 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
form in the proposition." (2) Logic is concerned with this inner
activity that underlies expression and not with the expression : this
bears the character of something accidental to the thought.
This conception of the field of logic does not prevail with the
unanimity that the volume suggests. It contains two sources of
confusion which have been pressed many times in recent discus-
sion. One of these is that when we choose for the field of logic
thought and not expression we are dealing with a field which is
better left to the psychologists. Thought seems to be a process
in time which occurs whether it is logical or not. Logic does not
pretend to offer causal laws for thought and is so left to furnish
normal laws but there are grave difficulties in the way of author-
izing these normal laws. Why any one should think " logically"
when thinking illogically will be successful can not be made clear.
To avoid the discussion of empirical thinking logicians are forced
to invent a purely fictitious "rational activity" and to apply to
this the laws of pure thought. The second difficulty is that if we
consider thought as something over and beyond expression, some-
thing that never comes to complete expression, we have for the sub-
ject-matter of logic not merely the not-expressed, but even the non-
expressible. Our data are in a form which can not be discussed,
compared, described or shared.
These difficulties are to be overcome only by a radical change of
attitude. Of all the writers Couturat is least involved in the
course of his paper in problems of "the act of judgment," "pure
rational activity," and like never-expressed, unknowable matters,
and the reason is that his definition of the province of logic is only
a half-hearted concession to a tradition and his real attitude is
more like that of Padoa, whose symbolic logic is frankly an ideogra-
phy with rules for use. In reality Couturat represents this more
modern position which lacks the explicit recognition it deserves in
the volume of the Encyclopedia. When it is formulated it will
include at least the following two provisions: (1) The field of logic
must be redefined as the structure of expression rather than
thought. (2) The meaning of propositions as distinct from the
propositions themselves is not (for logic) an entity independent of
any particular expression, but is a function of the expression,
usually indicating equivalence of two expressions or a possibility
of substitution. The question, "What does this mean?" is not un-
answerable, as it would be if meaning were distinct from expres-
sion, but is answerable by a second expression which can be substi-
tuted for the first. Windleband would have it that "the thought
form as such never comes to expression in speech." His conse-
quent difficulties are beautifully illustrated in his article. "If,"
155
he says, "... I say of gold that it possesses the property of yel-
lowness (which is the logical meaning of the proposition that affirms
of the subject 'gold' the predicate 'yellow'), so I may equally well
say of yellow it is a property of gold ; but verbally the conversion
of 'gold is yellow' to 'yellow is gold' would appear as incorrect,
or at least not as the exchange of subject and predicate, but only
as an uncommon and inverse form of proposition." He could
hardly have avoided giving verbal expression to the real logical
meaning (which was never to come to expression in speech) and
his choice seems to common sense to be between two differing verbal
expressions rather than between a real meaning not expressed and
a verbal expression. Real meaning must be for logic equivalence
of forms. In fact this is what is actually observed when logicians
pretend to be dealing with "true meaning." What we are offered
is an equivalent statement. "When Bosanquet refers to the "true
meaning" of a statement, he offers us what he would have said or
what might better have been said.
Logic in this sense will not represent the actual play of con-
sciousness by which scientists and common men make additions to
knowledge nor the path which they should follow in order to arrive
at truths, but the structure of expression of truths once found.
Logical laws will represent agreement as to form that must precede
communication, agreement which conditions expression. The "log-
ical act," the judgment, the actual or desirable thought process,
remain a mystery to the psychologist and are barren ground for
logical research. On the other hand, the rules which govern the
expression of thought can be determined from expression. Logic
as a descriptive and a normative science becomes possible. Geome-
tries do not contain histories of the thinking and the motives of
the geometers who discovered their theorems, but a statement of
the theorems connected with the body of the science in certain set
ways. We need not think in syllogisms or any other of the forms
of logic. This was Mr. Schiller's contention in his "Formal Logic"
and is perfectly justified. His error lies in not recognizing that
communication, the sharing and storing of knowledge would be im-
possible except in expression, usually verbal, that is through and
through formal, that possesses a definite structure. In an argu-
ment we do not reproduce our train of imagery in another's mind,
nor needwe try. It is sufficient to speak by the card. Discovery
and proof are different matters. Logic deals with the latter, the
former we may leave to psychology with the expectation of little
help. Formulation of the art of thinking is not far advanced.
Windleband's greatest insight is in his admission that " perceiving
and knowing as empirical functions are entirely social in their na-
156 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ture." Together with his later statement that the normative con-
straint of logic is felt "as soon as an assertion is made" the way
was prepared for better things than the " purely theoretical prin-
ciples," the ''pure logic," the "a priori" laws of valid thinking
with which his paper is concerned.
Such discussion of "real meanings" and "pure thought" which
is "never brought to complete expression" comes from two sources.
One of them is the fact of inner speech which is but rehearsed ex-
pression. The other is the desire to attribute the equivalence of
varying expressions, the interchangeability of differing verbal
forms, to an underlying unity of which both are "imitations" or
"signs." There must be one entity which both can "copy." This
motive would require a modern Hume for its complete subjugation.
The "something, I know not what" that underlies expression is a
thing in itself of which the logician may well beware. The dis-
cussible matter of logic seems to be confined to expression, and logic 's
task should be rather to examine the forms of expression for their
structure, to invent new and simpler forms, to codify the relations
between forms, even if this means that we surrender that mystical
satisfaction that comes from the discussion of the ineffable real
meanings that are different from expressed ones.
If this view of logic is the correct one, logic ceases to be the
a priori condition of thought and becomes the a priori condition of
expression, but its a-priority becomes relative to its use, to the group
within which it is established. Logic takes on a human character
very different from the awe-inspiring divine science of order which
Royce presents. We may find logics rather than logic. We can
say no more than that in a certain group a certain structure of ex-
pression prevails, a certain agreement as to the use of language,
and this group need not be defined by differing forms of human
culture, it may be limited by the specialization of a science. The
logic of mathematics consists of agreements in form of statement
that would be entirely unable to deal with the uses of ordinary life.
Not all human expression will submit to the rigid forms of mathe-
matical logic whose limited number and comparatively simple and
abstract character makes them so easily symbolized. Between old
friends a shrug may convey an intricate and definite meaning. The
logic of mathematics does not mention shrugs.
It requires a very delicate metaphysical discrimination to de-
termine the sense in which forms of reasoning are valid for men
who do not use them. A man on a desert island with a companion
dog needs little of the complicated structure of the logistic. A few
simple uniformities which he must observe in calling to his dog
suffice. What else he has will be memories of former association
PSYCHOLOGY ASD SCIESTIFIC METHODS 157
with men, or will apply to anticipated meeting with his fellows.
He need make no assertions. His thinking need not have the
structure of logic. He needs no syllogisms with which to avoid a
storm or take nourishment. A feeling of hunger, the sight of food,
motor habits, all the stock of terms granted to the psychologist,
apply to his situation. The logician must concern himself else-
where.
Not only can logic include more than the logic of Aristotle, as
the modern logistic does, there might have been non-Aristotelian
logics with principles different from the familiar laws of contra-
diction and excluded middle. What final authority would judge
between the ultimate "correctness" of Aristotle's logic which offers
two contradictories defined by the axioms: x -j- x' = 1, x x' = 0.
(x')' x and a logic which would provide three contradictories as
would the following axioms : x + x'-\- x"= 1, x x' x"= 0. (x) '=
x', (x'Y=x", (x")' = x1 It is true that we can only discuss other
logics in terms of one logic, but this is no more a proof that they
are therefore unreal than is the fact that an Englishman in dis-
cussing German must use Engish, a proof that English is the a
priori condition of communication, valid for all times and all places.
The principles of such logics will not imply the immutability of
the real, but only the comparative immutability of the terms in
which it is discussed, during the discussion.
Not only is there a divergence between the complete logic that
will provide for all intercourse and the limited field to which the
mathematician restricts himself, it is also true that this body of
abstract rules which is susceptible of symbolic statement may be
developed into a calculus and carried to a degree of intricacy that
passes all need for intercourse even between mathematicians. For-
mulas may be constructed that can never serve, or never find in-
stances of use. At this point logistic ceases to be logic and becomes
mere calculus, a branch of mathematics of interest only as a game.
To a certain extent the logistic coincides with the logic of ordinary
intercourse ; for some distance beyond it offers a structure for state-
ment and proof useful to the mathematician only; beyond that it
is a mathematician's amusement. The mathematical treatment of
logic becomes a mistreatment.
The logic of science has pretended to determine how the expan-
sion of scientific knowledge takes place. "What it really does is to
exhibit the structure to which new matter must conform to be un-
derstood by other workers, the schemata of expression and com-
munication, not the actual thought processes of investigators. We
can not make chemists by imparting to laymen the logic of science.
We have no successful formulas for discovery and invention. Col-
158 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
lege courses in logic which pretend to impart the ability to think
profitably in various fields of endeavor are a snare and a delusion.
Jevon's four stages of induction, like those of Enriques, and a host
of others, hopelessly confuse two different matters, the thought
process by which a scientist arrives at a discovery, which goes by
very devious ways, and the schema by which he connects his dis-
covery with the body of his science, the schema of proof or demon-
stration. This is rational. The thought process may or may not
be rational. "Rational" and "logical" are best taken to their first
sense in which they apply to verbal expression.
"We find ourselves in entire agreement with Russell in his belief
that truth is quite accidental to propositions as far as logic is con-
cerned. Logic is not concerned with the truth or validity of ideas
as Windleband would have us believe; it is rather life itself that
is concerned with their truth and validity, logic with the structure
of discourse and expression.
EDWIN GUTHRIE.
UNIVERSITY or WASHINGTON.
IN Part II. of Professor Warren's "Study of Purpose," 1 we find
the statement that before Darwin 's time ' ' the only alternatives
for explaining progress were ' design ' and ' chance, ' ' ' but that Darwin
himself "pointed out an intermediate alternative in 'natural selec-
tion.' ' Later on we read, "if, through some chance variation, a
peripheral organ appears in some creature, which is capable of being
stimulated by the juices emanating from food, the creature possessing
that variation is ... more likely to survive and have offspring than
the rest of the species."
Is there not a contradiction here ? If the doctrine of natural selec-
tion includes the principle of chance variation, can natural selection
logically be regarded as "an intermediate alternative" between
chance and design ? If variations come by chance, how is this a third
alternative? Does it any more than very partially relieve the "ab-
surdity" to which Dr. Warren refers of attributing all progress to
"mere chance"? Natural selection may explain in a manner satis-
factory to science why certain variations persist and others dis-
appear, but it leaves the problem of the origin of these variations
quite as much in the air as it was before.
But there is a way out of this difficulty if we define the concept of
chance more carefully. The term ' ' chance variations ' ' should not be
i This JOURNAL, Vol. XIII., page 40.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 159
construed as meaning that those variations have no cause, but merely
that their cause is too complex to be detenninable. Such a definition
of chance would seem to be absolutely essential to the mechanist
position.
I write these suggestions, not in defense of scientific vitalism, nor
yet of philosophical mechanism, but of the view that mechanism is
the essential standpoint of science taken in connection with the meta-
physical position that the principle of causality is itself an expres-
sion of a deeper principle of teleology. The admission of an ' ' entel-
echy" principle into the essentially mechanist world of science
would indeed "play havoc" with the universal causal principle for-
mulated in the interests of scientific explanation; but this does not
mean that science says all there is to say in the matter of purpose.
Dr. Warren's analysis of purpose on its scientific side is valuable and
impressive, but the scientific aspect of purpose is after all but one
aspect, and that an abstract and artificial one.
JA.RED S. MOORE.
WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. New Series, Vol. XIV, 1913-
1914. London: Williams and Norgate. 1914. Pp. 438.
The first paper in this volume of the "Proceedings" is by the Presi-
dent, Mr. G. Dawes Hicks, and is entitled, "Appearance and Real Exist-
ence." In it the writer leads up to his own doctrine through a discussion
of the topic as treated in the systems of Plato, Kant, and Hegel. These
are all criticized on the ground that empirical things are assigned to the
realm of phenomena or appearances. According to the view advanced
by Mr. Hicks, objects are not appearances in the usual sense, but appear-
ances are rather the ways in which objects are apprehended. The com-
mon notion that objects of immediate experience are sense-data, which
by their presence enable us to lay hold of objects more remote, is contrary
to fact. What we perceive is the physical object, though this perceiving
is indeed mediated or made possible by the sense-data or " presentations."
These data are not immediately apprehended ; " their influence is largely
indirect and in the region of obscure consciousness" (p. 36). Objects
are immediately apprehended and apprehended as they are, though our
apprehension is indeed incomplete. "It is precisely in this contrast be-
tween the imperfect, the partial, and the perfect, the complete, that the
significance of the term 'appearance' is to be discerned" (p. 39). It is
immediately added, however, that " incompleteness may often amount to
positive error." Apparently the significance of this transformation from
pure negation or incompleteness to "positive error" escapes the writer,
for his explanation of illusions, such as the bent stick, consists simply
160 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in showing that " the distinction between appearance and reality is neces-
sitated by objective conditions" (p. 41). Instead of showing how a bent
stick results from a partial or incomplete perception of a straight stick,
the explanation devotes itself to considerations of perspective, diffrac-
tion, etc., which are entirely irrelevant to the question at issue. What-
ever the reason for the appearance of the stick, the difference between
the perceived stick and the "real" stick is hardly a difference of mere
omission. Much of the discussion is evidence that the writer is unable
to shake off the bondage of an outworn psychology. In discussing mem-
ory and imagination, for example, he protests with some feeling against
the notion that the mind is a storehouse for the materials required for
the construction of objects, yet he hospitably shelters the presentations
which "do duty merely as signs" of objects. That the two cases are
essentially parallel does not seem to occur to him, and, in his own lan-
guage, "the assumption would be less readily made if the question of
what it implies were not so lightly passed over" (p. 45). It is held both
that " we do not start with the apprehension of innumerable patches of
color, etc." (p 37), and also that " it is psychologically demonstrable that
what appears to be the immediate apprehension of distance is in truth a
complex estimate based upon a number of data and is essentially of the
character of a judgment" (p. 36). Sensation, in other words, is an ab-
straction, an achievement, which comes relatively late, but it is also a
starting-point, a constituent, or datum. Fundamentally the trouble
seems to lie in the assumption of " what certainly seems to be an empir-
ically established fact, that a finite mind is a real entity in the midst of
a vast environment of other minds and of physical objects" (p. 39).
The second paper, entited, " On Feeling," by Mr. J. A. Smith, opens
with a critical discussion of various theories regarding the nature of
feeling, and then proceeds, dialectically, to the conclusion that "all ex-
perience, so far forth as it is experience, or in proportion to its perfec-
tion as experience, is Feeling and therefore Pleasant Feeling or Pleasure.
And, conversely, that so far as any experience is short of perfect ex-
perience, it is by comparison non-feeling and therefore unpleasant Feel-
ing or Pain. This involves the paradox that Pleasure is Feeling, and
Pain not Feeling, but its opposite, and therefore Pain has, as compared
with Pleasure, only a secondary or borrowed existence. It exists only
in so far as non-experience or inexperience can be said to exist. Pleasure
is positive, Pain negative, a contrast or shadow effect. Or, as I should
prefer to put it, Pleasure is and is something, while Pain is not or is
nothing" (p. 72). This conclusion is based on a wearisome process of
logic-chopping, with the inevitable assumptions and ambiguities that
have made philosophy so often a battle of words.
The paper on " William of Ockham," by Mr. C. Delisle Burns, aims
to show, in the first place, that Ockham " regarded the individual Soc-
rates as objective fact, and, seeing that it did not consist of qualities,
supposed the likeness between Socrates and Plato, etc., to be ' intentiones
mentis' ' abstract ideas ' ; but he avoided the statement that these ' ideas '
or classifications are arbitrary. And again this, though inexact, prac-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 161
tically amounts to the admission of an irreducible reality, a universal"
(p. 90). The conclusion arrived at is that "we must accept, as the
basis for understanding the particular, numerical difference; and as a
basis for understanding the universal, existence which is not reality, or
if the terms are preferable, at least two kinds of reality " (p. 99). This
conclusion, however, is simply a demand that must be met by our ex-
planations. How this is to be accomplished, or what new modes of ap-
proach are possible, the writer does not undertake to say.
"Philosophy as the Coordination of Science," by Mr. H. S. Shelton,
advances the thesis, " that the coordination of the facts and theories of
science is a branch of philosophy and that this coordination should not
be a shadow, but a solid reality" (p. 100). Intensive work in different
fields has become so common that some means of coordination has become
indispensable, and this is the task of what the writer calls " objective phi-
losophy." Various illustrations are given to show the practical value of
such work. " In some small way to correct the modern tendency towards
over-specialisation, to preserve that wider view which tends to be lost in
the increasing mass of detailed work, to distinguish between the facts of
the scientist and his theories and opinions, to endeavor to ascertain which
of the latter are sufficiently well established to be transferred to other
spheres of thought, and which are allowable only as working hypotheses
to be confined to the circle of ideas whence they arise, to separate the
main trend of human thought, research and endeavor from those personal
and sectional excrescences with which they are bound up, these are a few
of the aims of objective philosophy" (p. 123).
"Intuitionalism," by Mr. X. O. Lossky (translated from the Russian),
analyzes experience as including " (1) the self, (2) a content (a ' some-
thing'), (3) a relation of having between the self and the content" (p.
127). Subject and object are coordinate, the relation being of a non-
causal sort. The usual argument for subjectivism is met by the start-
ling suggestion that some of our experiences " might be states of some
lower centers of the nervous system," in which case they are not mental
states, but "would still belong to the sphere of the not-self" (p. 132).
It is true, indeed, that every act of knowledge must contain a certain
coloring of subjectivity, but this can be separated out, for truth bears
certain marks. If, for example, we add imaginative elements to a situa-
tion presented by memory, the difference is directly and easily perceived.
In judgment the content is objective and springs from the nature of the
objects known if the predicate (or the conclusion) " follows from the ob-
jective content of the subject (or the premises) without any intervention
on the part of the knowing mind. All that is left for the individual is
passively to follow what the content of the subject compels him to admit "
(p. 150).
Under the title, " Some New Encyclopedists on Logic," Mr. J. Brough
offers a review of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This is
followed by a "Discussion on the Value of Logic," which consists of a
defense by Mr. A. Wolf against the criticisms advanced in Mr. F. C. S.
Schiller's "Formal Logic," and a reply by the latter. In his handling
162 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of this topic Mr. Wolf unfortunately does not concern himself seriously
with the specific charges brought by Mr. Schiller, his discussion showing
considerably more animus than relevancy. This is the more regrettable
because a detailed consideration of these charges would be especially op-
portune. Such a consideration would doubtless be welcomed by many
teachers of logic who are apparently growing more and more distrustful
of the traditional treatment, but who are not ready to take the radical
position defended by Mr. Schiller.
" The Psychology of Dissociated Personality," by Mr. W. Leslie Mac-
Kenzie, confines itself to " terms and doctrines where 'criticism of cate-
gories ' ought to be of service" (p. 243). The discussion of person-
ality, the formation of double personality, the unity of consciousness,
the subconscious, and the mechanism of dissociation is intended to elim-
inate as far as possible all empty and unintelligible concepts, in order
to limit the study of dissociated personality to concepts and facts that
can be experimentally verified and analytically described.
The paper by Miss F. R Shields is a defense of " The Notion of a
Common Good." The judgment that the Good is common, so it is ar-
gued, is " an analytic proposition. If there be such a thing as Good at
all, it must be recognizable as such to all rational individuals; just as
the notion of Truth means what is true for all, whatever the content
may be, so the notion of Good means common good" (p. 274). The
contrary belief arises partly from the mistaken notion that the good of
different individuals is conflicting, and partly in confusing the proposi-
tion that the good is common with the proposition that whatever is, is
right. These views are erroneous, as is also the opinion that the common
good is the x goal and not in any sense the presupposition of ethical en-
deavor. Whenever interests conflict, the good is equally good for all
concerned, why or how is not stated, save that this is involved in the
"logical" or "formal" characteristic of the good. How the good is
related to the lives and activities of men is not made clear, and it is diffi-
cult to suppress the suspicion that the discussion is concerned with the
fruitless manipulation of an abstraction and not with a dynamic and
authoritative ideal.
Mr. David Morrison's paper on "The Treatment of History by Phil-
osophers" opens up with the apparent conflict between determination by
personal agency and determination by universal law. Freedom and the
reality of time are questions that must be faced by the philosophy of
history. To deny the reality of time is to discount the individual and
his experiences, and in the end it wrecks all huma,n purposes. Given
the reality of time, however, it is still requisite to provide for the con-
servation of values, and this conservation seems to be bound up with the
persistence of personality, both finite and infinite. The problems with
which history presents philosophy all lead back ultimately to the contest
"between spontaneity or individual activity and the scientific concept of
inert matter as a constant quantity" (p. 316). The writer, however, does
not seem to feel that an investigation into the nature of values and their
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 163
relation to human conduct is likewise necessary to legitimate his con-
clusions as to what is necessary to give dignity and worth to history.
The thesis of Mr. S. Alexander's paper on " Freedom " is " that Free-
dom is enjoyed determination; and that it is found wherever the dis-
tinction of enjoyment and contemplation is found; so that human free-
dom is but a particular case of something much more general" (p. 322).
We find freedom, for example, even in instinctive processes, where one
mental state leads on to another; or in what we call the free play of the
imagination, one fancy suggesting another," without the presence of in-
tent or volition. Acts of volition are simply one kind of freedom. Seen
from without, such processes do indeed have the character of deter-
minism. But " freedom in general is the experience which each thing has
of the working of its own nature; and a distinction parallel to ours of
freedom and unfreedom exists for the plant and for the stone or the
atom. The plant undergoes the wind which bends it, or the air which
sets its respiration at work. But it enjoys its own free act of respiration.
The stone is passive to the freezing water that splits it, but free in its
resilience to deformation" (p. 352). This view of freedom, as is ex-
plained in some detail, does not involve the abolition of temporal distinc-
tion, nor does it deny causality to mind or make mental facts wholly pre-
dictable. Causation presents essentially the same features on the mental
and on the physical side; and predictability has the same kind of limita-
tion in the physical as in the psychical realm. In the discussion of
causation, which is confessedly " brief and vague," it appears that in acts
of willing the expectation or anticipation of future consequences leads
on to their fruition, i. e., such expectations are operative in the deter-
mination of events (p. 339, note). For other modes of conscious be-
havior, however, no corresponding differentia is indicated, with the result
that all the familiar difficulties and obscurities regarding psychical causa-
tion remain pretty much as they were. Mr. Alexander's suggestive paper
is apparently too much concerned to show that freedom, being "nothing
but determination or causality in enjoyment " is " in no wise different
from the familiar causality of the physical world" (p. 329). The re-
viewer ventures to suggest that unless some new category is employed
by which to differentiate conscious or intelligent behavior from other
activities, the problem of freedom offers little hope of solution. The sug-
gestion, for example, that is made regarding the modus operandi of voli-
tional acts may perhaps be fruitfully applied to all forms of conscious
behavior. A more thoroughgoing analysis of conscious behavior seems
to be demanded for a consistent and illuminating doctrine of freedom.
The Symposium on "The Status of Sense-Data," by Messrs. G. E.
Ifoore and G. F. Stout, is a careful and excellent discussion. The points
af agreement between the two writers are stated by Mr. Stout as follows :
(1) " The sensibles which we directly apprehend in perceiving a physical
object are never simply identical with the physical object itself or with
any physical part of it or with any quality belonging to it"; (2) "What
we know through sense-perception of a physical object is based in the
last resort on the direct apprehension of sensibles and the perception of
164 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
relations between directly apprehended sensibles (p. 381). Both hold
that we have direct knowledge of " sensibles " or sense-data as connected
with existence beyond themselves. The source of the sensibles is known
as like in nature to the nature of the sensible. According to Mr. Moore,
however, this kinship of nature holds only for the "primary qualities,"
whereas Mr. Stout thinks that it is true of all sensibles without restric-
tion. The question, raised by Mr. Moore, how we can know the source
beyond the sensibles, can be answered, according to Mr. Stout, by ref-
erence to the parallel case of recollection, in which images know or refer
to the earlier experiences from which they were derived. Here also we
have an immediate knowledge of a source that lies beyond the present
experience. What we have in such cases is the " unanalyzed complex in-
cluding image and primary experience and their connection, without sep-
arate discrimination of these factors" (p. 387). To make the discrim-
ination is to correct the errors of illusions and hallucinations. As to ob-
jects existing unperceived, it is sufficient to assume that the source of
our sensibles persists, together with the possibility of such sensibles, this
possibility being " of such a nature that its realization does not affect the
existence or nature of the source" (p. 403). This relation to sense-ex-
perience must be included or the physical object is no physical object at
all.
In this presentation the relation of the mind to its object seems, un-
fortunately, to be passed over all too lightly. The theory must show what
relation is presupposed between the mind and its object or else lay itself
open to the suspicion that this relation of " immediate knowledge " can
not be made intelligible. The difficulties that have so long infested the
concept of reference can hardly be eliminated by citing facts that are
indubitably cases of legitimate reference. And, secondly, the attempt to
solve the problem of perception and of relativity by including within the
object the possibility of perception or reference to sense-organs does not,
after all, advance us a great deal. " Possibility " is only a word. If we
conceive of objects that are in nowise affected by the fact that they be-
come perceived, the nature of perception and of relativity would seem to
be past finding out.
The concluding paper of the volume, by Mr. H. Wildon Carr, is en-
titled, " The Principle of Relativity." The purpose of this paper is to
discuss the philosophic import of those recent speculations in the physical
sciences known as the doctrine of relativity. These speculations, accord-
ing to the writer, raise three philosophic problems, viz., the problem of
continuity, the problem of the nature of real duration, and the problem
of original movement. These problems are discussed and solved along
orthodox Bergsonian lines. Matter being the externalization of our life
in action, is inherently discrete; hence continuity must be sought "in
what is essentially concrete and qualitative, that is, life." Similarly, time
becomes concrete and continuous when regarded as pure duration and
not as merely geometrical time. And, lastly, "life is a movement, or
change, or duration which is not a quantity ; it is not an aggregate ; it is
not divisible into parts external to one another; it is a pure quality. . . .
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 165
The physical world is the reflection outwards of what in itself, in its ab-
solute nature, is psychical duration" (424).
The volume as a whole shows the range of subjects and standpoints
that have marked earlier volumes of the "Proceedings." Generally
speaking, it presents no striking novelties in the way of ideas, but it
reflects the different systems and doctrines that during the past decade
have been struggling for supremacy in the philosophic world.
B. H. BODE.
UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOIS.
The Analysis of Sensations. ERNST MACH. Chicago and London: Open
Court Publishing Company. 1914. Pp. xvi + 380.
Mach's small work on the " Analysis of Sensations " is too well known
to call for a detailed review. A new English edition of it has recently
come from the Open Court Publishing Company, revised and supplemented
from the fifth German edition. Since the first appearance of the Contri-
butions in 1886 and the first English translation in 1897, great changes
have come about in psychological epistemology, which are reflected in the
present volume. The editor of the present revised edition, Mr. Sydney
Waterlow, informs us that " six chapters are entirely new, namely, Chap-
ter III., on ' My ^Relation to Richard Avenarius and other Thinkers ' ;
Chapter V., on ' Physics and Biology : Causality and Teleology ' ; Chapter
VIII., on ' The Will ' ; Chapter IX., on ' Biological-teleological Considera-
tions as to Space ' ; Chapter XL, on ' Sensation, Memory, and Associa-
tion ' ; and Chapter XV., on * How My Views Have Been Received/ "
Further, the eight chapters of the original edition have all been greatly
expanded. Chapter II. now contains most of the matter which appeared
as an appendix to the translation of 1897. Chapter VJLL. contains six sec-
tions by Dr. Josef Pollak on recent research as to the functions of the
labyrinth of the ear.
By no means the least interesting and encouraging part of the book is
the series of prefaces accompanying the various German editions, from
the first to the fifth, in which the reader may perceive how the work has
steadily made its way and how epistemological opposition has steadily
weakened. " Whether I shall ever succeed in making my fundamental
ideas plausible to philosophers, I must leave time to decide," says Mach
in the chapter, " How My Views Have Been Received." Time has prob-
ably been more friendly to Professor Mach's opinions than the author had
at one time much reason to expect.
WENDELL T. BUSH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
166 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
MLNTD. October, 1915. Nietzsche on the Problem of Reality (pp.
441-463) : W. M. SALTER. - Summarizes Nietzsche's teaching of the prob-
lem of reality as follows: (1) The world (the world as we commonly
understand it) is not real the world of " science " as little as that of
common sense; (2) we make the world real, i. e., posit it as such, have to
for life, and none the less delude ourselves; (3) is there any reality?
(4) reality conceived as power and will to power. What do We Mean by
the Question: Is our Space Euclidean? (pp. 464-480): C. D. BROAD. -
" Subject to the conditions that space is to be changeless and homogene-
ous and not to act on matter, and that matter is to move about in space,
can we construct a system of physics which assumes Euclidean geometry
for space and enables us to deal consistently and adequately with all the
data that scientists agree to be most worthy to be taken into account ? "
Lotze's Relation to Idealism. Section S (pp. 481-497) : E. E. THOMAS. -
According to Lotze, " what renders the world a whole is an order of valid-
ity." In addition to the " unity of order " there is a " unity of existence."
" To make the unity of order prior to that of existence, is to return to
Idealism; to make the unity of existence prior to that of order, is to move
away from Idealism." The Relation of Idea to Object-matter as a Uni-
versal Mode of Cognition (pp. 498-515) : CHARLES E. HOOPER. - " The re-
lation of thought to object-matter from which it consciously detaches
itself is, in my view, a universal and self-evident mode of human cogni-
tion." "The logical form of thinking conditions the matter of thinking,
but does not refer to anything outside itself. It is the matter of thinking
which always refers to a quite different matter thought about." Discus-
sions: Realism, Pragmatism, and William James: F. C. S. SCHILLER.
The Necessity for a Universal in Reasoning: H. S. SHELTON. Mr.
Strachey's Defense of Mr. Russell's Theory: J. E. TURNER. The A Forti-
ori Argument: W. A. PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE. The Indetermination of
Meanings: F. C. S. SCHILLER. Critical Notes. New Books. Philosoph-
ical Periodicals. Notes.
Calkins, Mary Whiton. The Self in Scientific Psychology. Reprinted
from American Journal of Psychology, October, 1915. Pp. 495-524.
Cannon, Walter B. Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage.
New York and London. D. Appleton and Company. 1915. Pp. xiii -f-
311. $2.00.
Chidley, W. J. The Answer. Sydney, Australia: Sydney D. Smith.
1915. Pp. 205.
Davies, Arthur Ernest. A Text-book of Logic. Columbus, Ohio. R. G.
Adams and Company. 1915. Pp. xxviii + 601.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 167
NOTES AND NEWS
A WORK OF RECONSTRUCTION
THE Belgian Scholarship Committee was founded about a year ago in
Washington by the well-known author, scientist, and traveller, Dr. Nevil
Monroe Hopkins. At first it confined its activities to the District of Co-
lumbia, and its aim was simply to collect money for destitute scholars, but
ita scope has become broader and broader. The committee now includes
among its members the presidents or chancellors of the following univer-
sities: Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Michigan, Missouri, Leland Stanford,
Pennsylvania, George Washington, State of New York, Nebraska and
many other leading men of this country. The aims of the Belgian Schol-
arship Committee are the following:
1. To give to the Belgian scholars, writers, and artists a chance to re-
sume their work of art or science. To accomplish this aim the Belgian
Scholarship Committee acts as a clearing bureau between the American
universities, and other educational institutions, and the Belgian victims
of the war.
2. To raise a fund for the reconstruction of a new and better Belgium,
especially in the educational field.
The first aim is only of a temporary nature; the second one becomes
every day more important. Our ambition is to be ready, as soon as the
war is over, to help in putting Belgium on her feet again for a new and
greater career. We are appealing for books to the American libraries; we
hope that they will be willing to give some of their duplicate copies and
also that we shall receive free sets of their publications from the educa-
tional institutions and learned societies. We can not afford to store and
keep the books until the end of the war. Therefore, we do not ask for
books, but rather for promises of books. We suggest that the whole busi-
ness be managed in the following way: Each library would simply send
us a list of the books that it is willing to give to Belgium. This list would
contain all bibliographical information that is necessary to identify the
books without mistake (author, title, number of volumes, date and place
of publication, editor). We should acknowledge receipt of these lists,
and enter them on a duplicate list on cards. After the war, as soon as
circumstances permit, the Belgian Scholarship Committee would write a
letter to all the libraries, recalling their promise, and asking them to send
all the books to some central storehouse in New York City, from where
they could easily be shipped to Belgium. We shall concentrate our efforts
upon the making up of a collection of American books books published
in America, or relating to American affairs. We should thus be able to
offer to Belgium, soon after the war, an American library. No gift would
be more appreciated and would do more to bring about a better under-
standing of American conditions and ideals, and greater international
friendship. Of course books given by publishers and authors will also be
welcome. We would suggest leaving in each book its former ex libris, a
short note being added to show how and when the transfer to Belgium was
168 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
made. Dedications by the authors would be also much appreciated. The
value of the collection would be in this way considerably increased. It
would really constitute a lasting souvenir of America's generosity and
sympathy.
We are also appealing for money. Money is needed to help Belgian
scholars and artists; money is needed to carry on our activities; lastly, we
must be able to remit a huge reconstruction fund (to be used for educa-
tional purposes only) to the Belgian people when the war is over. We can
not expect to be helped by the general public, as is the case with the gen-
eral relief fund, but we earnestly appeal to the elite of the American
people to those who are especially interested in the development and
diffusion of knowledge and art. The best way to show one's sympathy is
to become a Fellow or Member of the Belgian Scholarship Fund for the
duration of the war and two years thereafter. The Associate members
agree to subscribe at least Ten Dollars a year ; the Sustaining members at
least One Hundred, and the Fellows One Thousand. Please draw checks
to the order of John Joy Edson, Treasurer, and send them to the Belgian
Scholarship Committee, 309 Wilkins Building, Washington, D. C. When
the war is over the Belgian Scholarship Committee will publish a book
containing a complete record of its activities and a list of the Fellows and
Members whose devotion made it possible.
We wish to lay stress upon the fact that ours is not simply a relief
work; it is essentially a work of reconstruction, making for international
friendship and peace.
GEORGE SARTON, D.Sc.,
Secretary of the Committee.
UNIVERSITY OF GHENT, BELGIUM.
THE Section of Anthropology and Psychology of the New York Acad-
emy of Sciences met in conjunction with the New York Branch of the
American Psychological Association, at Columbia University, on February
28. The following papers were read : " Tests of Manual Accuracy in Pre-
Vocational School Boys," Mr. R. L. Gould ; " Association and Classifica-
tion," Dr. G. C. Myers; " Tests of the Memory of School Children," Miss
E. F. Mulhall; "An Experiment in the Learning Process," Dr. C. L.
Bobbins ; " Tests of Mechanical Ability," Mr. J. L. Stenquist.
PROFESSOR WILLIAM STERN, of Breslau, has received a call from Ham-
burg to fill the chair of philosophy and psychology vacant by the death of
Professor Ernst Meumann.
PROFESSOR LAWRENCE J. HENDERSON has been giving a course of five
public lectures, at Harvard University, on " Teleology and Natural
Science."
Ml
VOL. XIII, No. 7. MARCH 30, 1916
A STATEMENT OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL DUALISM
fundamental distinctions which I think it desirable to make
J- at the start are between the content of knowledge, the object
of knowledge, and the psychological existence of the knowledge act.
The hardest thing, of the three, to make clear in language is the
first; but if one will take the matter simply enough, the mean-
ing should not be particularly ambiguous. "What is intended is
that abstract articulation of the content of the judgment which
the proposition represents, as this can be distinguished alike from
the judgment as a psychological fact occurring in time, and the
thing, or actually existing reality, to which the judgment is in-
tended to refer. Thus when I say, This is a green apple, there is,
we ordinarily agree, a definite mental process taking place "in my
mind/' which the psychologist presumably could describe. It oc-
curs at a given moment, occupies a specific duration, is preceded by
a certain other, and succeeded by still a third, psychical process,
and has describable peculiarities of sensation and imagery. On the
other hand there is the real apple, an object in the physical uni-
verse, which, so our ordinary judgment runs, existed prior to any
thought of ours about it, is unaffected now by our thinking un-
less indeed we are led by the thought to come into some physical
relationship to it, and goes on the even tenor of its way after we
have passed by and forgotten all about it. Now the content of
our thought is distinguishable from both of these, although in close
relationship to both. It is the descriptive side of the nature or
characteristics of this object, an abstract and representative sum-
ming up of the qualities and relationships which coexist in it. In
a way it is a rather elusive sort of thing; psychology has had a
good deal of trouble in placing and giving an account of it. It
somehow applies to the object, is true of it; but in itself it is a
bundle of abstractions, each element capable of being represented
by a icord, and is not fixed in any spatial location as physical ap-
ples are. And furthermore the content, as content, or as product of
the activity of judgment, is not to be confused with its own psycho-
169
170 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
logical existence as bare mental fact or stuff. It is, to be sure, some-
how embedded in the concrete mental process. If the latter ceases,
then the thought with its content also ceases. There can be no con-
tent without psychological embodiment, no thought without think-
ing ; all that then would be left would be the real apple. But never-
theless when I am thinking about the content as the result of an act
of judgment, my thought has shifted from the content as the psy-
chologist analyzes it in factual terms. Each element in it has
indeed a factual side ; but I am regarding this now not in its isolation
as an existent, but as a connected meaning. The content as such is
not only abstract in the sense that it is unloealized in space; it is
unlocalized also in time. Every psychological existence takes place
at a specific time in the stream of experience; the content of truth,
as the product of an abstracting act, is timeless.
Now it is not strange that a fact of so peculiar a sort should
have played a large role in philosophy. To my own notion, it has
indeed been in a special sense the ignis fatuus of the philosopher.
Himself occupied primarily with thought, he has had an irresistible
tendency to suppose that intellectual content, freed from all limi-
tations of time and space, and from the peculiarities of individual
knowers, is all that reality connotes a thing especially easy since
all that we can possibly say about reality must be put in terms of
intellectual content. Most historic rationalisms and absolutisms
have been of this description. It is for this reason that it is so ex-
tremely difficult for an opponent to come to terms with a philosophy,
for example, like the neo-rationalism of the successors of Kant. If
by a certain form of words I have in mind a description of actually
existing things and persons, and my opponent means instead the
timeless content which my words presuppose, with the individual
reference dropped, then while there is enough community between
our thoughts the content is the same to mislead us into suppos-
ing that we are talking about the same thing, the actual reference of
our thought is different, and endless confusion is bound to result.
That the new realists, in their doctrine of subsistence, have not been
free from the same leaning, I think is probable; indeed they are
showing some tendency, even, to let existence shift for itself alto-
gether as hardly worthy the philosopher's attention, and actually
to substitute definitions for things. How powerful the temptation
is, is indicated by the fact that even pragmatism does not appear to
have escaped it. In subordinating thought to thinking, pragmatism
might seem to be on the way to getting rid of the deification of the
thought content. The content of thought presents itself now not as
the goal of philosophic endeavor, but as a stage in action, and a
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 171
practical help in solving its problems. But what if this means, not
an overcoming of the fundamental vice of hypostasizing content,
but only a different character assigned to content, which merely
postpones the abstraction one step further? what if it is simply
changing the nature of the content from static to dynamic, from
thought to thinking and acting? When we find the abstract term
"thought," as a definition of reality, merely changed to the equally
abstract term "experience." when we find the reference of thought
to an object repudiated as strongly as by the absolutist, and the
"object" turned into a stage in the development of action, while
"consciousness," again, equally disappears as a concretion, and is
replaced by a scientific description of operations or activities, it
would seem that pragmatism is also following the popular path in
philosophy, and that when it has got what seems to it an adequate
description of reality, is refusing to go beyond this description, and
to admit realities which indeed are as described, but which also have
independent existence apart from the terms of the description.
Xow in opposition to this, I am assuming that when we have com-
pletely envisaged an intellectual content not some of them, but any
and even- intellectual content we still have left out two funda-
mental points in the situation, two objects of belief, which common
sense demands. Both of these agree in one respect. They presup-
pose, that is. the notion of existences, or entities, or stuff, in our ac-
count of reality. The denial of this is of course a necessary incident
of the content theory of reality; but it clearly has, and has always
found itself with, the strong prejudices of the non-philosophic mind
to contend against. To the best of my belief, the popular opinion is
in the right here, and the philosophic tradition wrong. For certain
technical purposes we can substitute descriptions for existences; but
a philosophical account of truth is not one of these. I confess I find
myself somewhat at a loss to enforce this against a hostile opinion ;
I can simply appeal to an expugnable belief when we come to stand
in presence of the facts. Consider the physical world. It is almost
a commonplace nowadays with an influential group of thinkers, that
force is no more than a formula, and a thing no more than a law.
It is hard to eradicate this opinion, partly because, for the special
purposes of the scientist, energy is a formula. His whole aim is to
reduce it to a shape that can be set down in a book, and used in cal-
culations. And he has accordingly an inveterate disposition to
think that when this is questioned as an ultimate fact, the objector is
simply trying to reintroduce mystical and incalculable elements into
science. But it ought not to be impossible to take a point of view
outside the specific scientific interest; and if one will take this in
172 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
imagination, then it is not difficult to bring things at least to an
issue. And if one can think himself engaged in an active struggle
with any of the great forces of nature battling, we will say,
with a tornado or a raging torrent and still genuinely confine his
belief in nature to a set of equations, if he can resist the practical
persuasion that there are real things and real forces that are exist-
ences beyond him ; and that set active limits to his self-assertive will,
then the only thing to be said is that one has come to a branching of
the ways. Of course I do not deny that the thing can be done, and
that from his vantage-point the philosopher may be able to look
down upon the naive and foolish superstition he has abandoned. I
only confess that I can not manage it ; and in this I am pretty well
assured that I should represent the general judgment of mankind.
The other case, that of psychological or conscious stuff, stands
on a somewhat different basis. But here also I know of no way to
meet the claim that consciousness is just a relationship, or a func-
tion, or whatever it may be called, except by putting oneself in
a certain situation, and noting what impression it makes upon one,
in what state of belief it leaves him. And the situation is, again,
not that of the scientific psychologist attempting to set forth the
laws of his science, but that of the plain human being. Consider,
then, the experience of having a vivid color sensation or a hard
toothache, or a compelling emotion. That there is existence here,
stuff, brute fact that can not be resolved into relations or activities
or any of the philosophical devices for avoiding ultimates, is to me
a result from which I can not get away. I recognize, I may add,
that this statement fails to set forth any clear ground of opposition
to that special doctrine of consciousness which, if I understand them,
the new realists have advanced, and to which I do not profess here to
be making any adequate reply. At present all I wish to make clear
is the nature of my belief that there is real stuff there ; and that in
some instances, at any rate, we can avoid calling this conscious stuff
only at the risk of breaking with common sense. For while it is pos-
sible, though I do not concede this to be the fact, that common sense
might accept the claim that the stuff is a neutral entity color, and that
it is only the relationship to my organism which leads me to speak of
it as conscious color, it certainly would reject this explanation where
pain and fear are concerned. I shall, therefore, assume as my start-
ing-point the traditional position of the classical psychology taken
as self-evident till recently that there are in the universe such
things as streams of conscious psychological experience, ultimate
fact-stuff, which we can be so sure of that the evidence for other
reality even suffers in comparison.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 173
What then I interpret, in large terms, as the common-sense be-
lief, is as follows : x There exist, in the sense of the traditional philos-
ophy of empiricism, streams of conscious experience which, by direct
introspection primarily, we can analyze and to an extent describe,
though the meaning of the words in this description can only be
realized as each man is able to verify in his own experience that to
which they are intended to point. For purposes of description, what
is most accessible are the conscious elements of the sensation psy-
chology. Apart, however, from these elements within experience,
there are also to be distinguished certain active attitudes into which
the elements enter; what these are, again, can only be verified by
looking to experience itself. Among these is the act of judging, or
connecting the elements in certain specified ways. So connected,
they form what I have been calling intellectual content. Since the
act of connection is something over and above the elements connected
in that act, the knowledge content can not be analyzed into mere
isolated bits of conscious stuff. It can be analyzed, provided we do
not forget the act of synthesis itself as a part of our analysis; but
the synthesis, by definition, can not be itself only a new bit of psycho-
logical stun 8 , else it could not do what we are assuming it does do
bring the other elements together ; it would be simply one more grain
added to an amorphous pile. And it is just the character of the
act of judgment that it gives to the content, in its connection, a
timeless and abstract character, as distinct from its mere existence
as a part of the temporal conscious process. The elements, as ele-
ments, are incidents in this stream, as also is the act of judgment as
a special psychological act ; but the result of the act, or knowledge,
is a timeless character, and not an event at all. And now, further-
more, it is normally a function of the act of judgment that it should
not only connect these elements, but that it should refer the connec-
tion, or the connected content, beyond itself to an object, or to real-
ity. Concretely, when I say, This is a green apple, there is a certain
timeless character which I assert belongs to a real object in the phys-
1 The need of starting with the common sense point of view is an assump-
tion of method which I do not stop to justify at length. It is to my mind
suicidal in philosophy to ignore the situation as men would ordinarily accept
it, and to carry on discussion within the confines of a reasoned point of view dif-
ferent from that of the pre-metaphysical human stage. If one is going to con-
trovert this in the end. he has of course a perfect right to make the attempt;
but to slur over the discrepancy, and fail to begin with the common nse of
language, from which then the more sophisticated use is plainly differentiated,
is to give the reader no way to orient himself, to introduce needless confusion,
and to confine the philosopher's influence at any rate to the circles of the
iUuminati. The only real matter that I regard as relevant here, is whether I
really have interpreted the universal mind correctly. I shall come presently to
criticisms of this interpretation.
174 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ical world, through an act of judgment which is an incident in a
process of psychological experience which I call my conscious life.
I hold that this represents a statement that the common man would
readily accede to if he could be made to understand it, and that,
accordingly, unless there are fatal difficulties attaching to it, it has
the philosophical right of way.
In such a statement, we have the natural suggestion of a defini-
tion of truth; and it is, I think, identical with the definition which
common sense would be most likely to accept. The judgment is true,
namely, when the character or content which is assigned to the object
actually belongs to it; otherwise it is false. This is a definition
which, I have ventured to hold, appears perfectly simple and satis-
factory to the common man; but with philosophers it is distinctly
under a cloud. Everywhere it meets with much disdain as the
"copy theory" of knowledge. For since the judgment says that
the character of its content belongs to the object, and the content is
made up of a certain connection of elements which exist also in the
form of psychological content, it seems to follow that there must be a
correspondence between the ideas as mental facts, and the reality;
and this, we are told in various forms, is absurd. I wish to examine
the reasons for this rejection of what after all looks so simple to
the naive mind.
The first reason is easily stated, which is more than can be said of
the others ; and it is frequently regarded as in itself final. How, it
is asked, if truth consists in an agreement between our ideas and
reality, can there be, for human beings at any rate, any such thing
as truths in particular, since to attain truth seems to involve a con-
dition which can never be met? By definition, the ideas are in the
mind, and are the only things we ever directly experience ; the things
are outside consciousness, and as such inaccessible. Now we can
compare two things of both of which we have some experience ; but
how can we compare a thing which we meet in experience with one
which we never meet? The copy idea, therefore, is absurd, Q. E. D.
Now with regard to this I have at present only two or three
things to remark briefly. To begin with, the foundation of the
charge is of course to be admitted. We do not, in some instances at
any rate, and these the most important, come into direct contact
with the reality which we know, and there is always, therefore, at
least the academic chance of our being mistaken. If one refuses to
be satisfied until this chance is eliminated, he can not, of course,
accept the theory, though it always remains possible that he is re-
belling not against an erroneous theory, but against the conditions
of human life on this earth. But more than this it does not seem
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 175
necessary to concede. It surely is possible, pending a more careful
investigation that should dispel this chance, that we still might have
good grounds for believing something about things we never have ex-
perienced; which never, that is, have come as existences within the
experience process. It is true that in the definition of truth there
is nothing to enable us to distinguish between grounded and ground-
less belief ; but it does not follow that there is nothing in the nature
of experience either. A definition of truth does not profess to be a
criterion of truth, and can not be blamed because it does not do the
work of a criterion. "We could hardly ask, indeed, what distin-
guishes truths from falsehoods, without first knowing what we mean
by truth. All that I say is, that there is a common assumption lying
back of any and every claim that something is true the assumption
that it is true of reality; what reasons we have for thinking that in
some cases it actually is true of reality, while in other cases the
correspondence does not really hold, is a further question. This I
am not proposing to answer ; but not to leave the matter wholly in
the air, it may be noted, first, that the belief that our ideas corre-
spond to reality is not to be regarded as a result of comparison, but
as an assumption or postulate ; and it may be asked why, even if it
can never be directly tested, it may not conceivably be tested indi-
rectly by the consequences which we do experience, and which are
seen to stand in some rational connection with this assumption of an
unexperienced reality. For the present, however, I am content to
appeal merely to facts ; and it is not without importance that beliefs
do undoubtedly exist, strong beliefs, which involve the assumption
in question. The one which I should select as least ambiguous is
the belief in the existence of an inner life in our fellow men. I see
my neighbor throwing up his cap and shouting, and I say, He is
feeling pleased over something. I mean by this, as I think every un-
sophisticated person will allow, that at the moment I perceive his
actions, there is a certain psychological fact in existence, an emo-
tional feeling within the current of experience which I call his con-
scious life, which I can interpret because I have had similar feelings
in the past, but which I do not now actually experience, but only
infer. Yet I declare that I have a knowledge of this feeling; and
how am I to describe this except by saying that I have in my mind
an idea of joy which I refer to his actual inner state, though this
exists beyond me and the connected stream of consciousness to which
my ideas belong? and the very act of referring this assumes that it
is roughly adequate to the reality. This is a situation surely offer-
ing enough difficulty to the denier of transcendence and dualism to
deserve very close and candid attention; but so far as my reading
goes he is much more likely to mention it casually, and then to pass
176 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
by on the other side. Professor Perry, in his "Present Philosophical
Tendencies," is an honorable exception; but while he really consid-
ers the difficulty, I do not see that he helps greatly to its removal.
There may be depths to his argument which I have failed to plumb ;
but I really can not see in it anything more than a rather pretty case
of begging the question. Apparently it refutes the "privacy" of in-
dividual minds by appeal to the fact that we can "know" another's
mental content. This of course dualism does not deny ; but instead of
arguing that because I can know, say, another man's emotion, that
emotion must be bodily present to my knowing consciousness, it rather
argues that because, obviously, the emotion is not thus bodily present,
knowledge must be different from what the denier of transcendence
asserts it to be. An emotional content furnishes a better instance
here than an ideational, because it does not so readily lend itself to
a certain ambiguity. I can say, plausibly, that my idea, and my
neighbor's idea which it knows, are the "same" idea, because usually
in such a statement I am concerned with content, and not with psy-
chological existence ; but it is not so plausible to affirm that my idea
of his emotion, and the emotion itself, are the same. And it is of
course on the side of existence that the imperviousness of minds is
intended to be understood.
There is a second form of objection which will make it necessary,
however, to examine the situation more closely. This attempts to
turn the flank of dualism by asserting that it is not in reality two
things, an idea and a reality, that common sense itself believes in,
but only one; and therefore that the copy theory is a speculative
misreading of the facts. This claim it usually attaches to the judg-
ment of sense-perception, where it undoubtedly can be made most
plausible. The dualistic position maintains that when I judge, Here
is an object present to sense, what I mean is this: A real thing is
making an impression on my nervous system, accompanying which
there is a sensation or group of sensations in my mind. These last
are what alone I actually experience; but they reveal to me the pres-
ence of an object which lies beyond experience (though not, of
course, beyond knowledge). Now this, the criticism goes, is not the
true interpretation. When I see an object I am not conscious of two
things, but only of one. What I see is the object itself, not my sen-
sation of the object. The object is right there in experience, not
veiled from us by a copy of itself. In the sense experience there is
no hint of a copy at all.
As a description of the naive experience, this is undoubtedly in a
sense correct. I do seem to see, and know, the real object directly.
But this does not settle the business of dualism. Dualism may at
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 177
times have used words inadvertently which lay it open to criticism ;
but a clearer statement of its real meaning will, I think, extricate it
from any serious embarrassment here. If, for example, it talks
about knowing only our own sensations, and inferring to something
beyond these, it does not really hold that in actual perception we
are conscious of performing this twofold process. The mind does
not perceive its sensations, it perceives or knows the object ; but only
through the sensations which the object sets up. This is a highly
relevant distinction, and the offense to common sense can be avoided
by sticking to it. Indeed, the objection ignores the very point of
the dualistic definition of knowledge, which is the reference of the
ideal content to an object, not to our psychological states. Take first
an instance which eliminates the peculiar perplexities of the sense ex-
perience. What happens, for example, when I think about some
other man's motives for a course of action? Am I thinking about
my thoughts about his motives ? Certainly not ; I am thinking about
the motives themselves, as objective facts. But can I think about
these motives of his without at the same time having thoughts of my
own? As certainly not. "While I am engaged with the objective
reference, however, I do not think about my own thinking. My at-
tention is not turned to it ; I do not know it, then ; when I do become
aware of it, if at all, it is as the object of a new act of attention and
knowledge. This is the simple explanation of the whole difficulty.
Where common sense maintains, quite correctly, that we are in know-
ing conscious of no discrepancy between idea and object, is in con-
nection with the original act. Just as in thinking about anything
I am thinking about that thing itself, and not about my thought of
it, so in perceiving an object I am perceiving the real object, and
not my perception of it. Common-sense dualism is an outcome not
of the original act, but of a reflection upon that act ; and if it never
reflected, it doubtless would fail to discover the true state of the case.
The insistence of the critic that we should stick to the original ex-
perience is simply the insistence that we shall erect a philosophy
on the assumption that we are not to philosophize. Common sense
would be inarticulate if it consisted merely of first experiences; of
course it has introduced already much complication and theory
into its beliefs. The way to treat this is not, however, to try to
strip away the theoretical elements, but to test them, and see whether
they are sound. And when reflection comes, I feel certain that
it is equally the judgment of common sense that there are two things
involved. With a little psychological practise, after thinking
about someone's motives, or my own, for that matter, I easily dis-
cover that I was thinking about them that certain ideas were in my
178 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
mind. Having made this reflection, I also discover that these thoughts
are not identical with their object, the motives themselves, just as in
reflecting on the perception of an object, I discover that I had cer-
tain fleeting sensations which I hesitate to identify with the permanent
thing of the perception. And now having got so far, I imagine it
equally certain that common sense would hold that while thinking
about anything, the only thing actually present at first hand and
bodily in consciousness, or experience, is the thought, and not the
object of the thought. The other man's motives, as original driving
forces in his inner life, never actually were in my experience I never
have felt them as he did ; my own motives in the same sense are not
now, when I know them, actually in my experience ; all that is there
is the thought itself, as a reference of a certain content to an outside
and unexperienced, but of course known, fact. So the perception is
the reference of a sensational content to an unexperienced, but known,
real object. Any satisfying theory must, it would seem, find a place
for these very strong persuasions ; and the dualistic theory of knowl-
edge does, to the best of my belief, succeed in doing just this. It
accounts both for the persuasion that there are really two things, and
for the immediate recognition of only one. This last is due, again, to
the fact that attention can not be directed to two places in one and
the same act. Knowledge involves both a psychological existence as
the bearer of its reference, and the reference itself. It is this last
that sets the direction of attention, which can only double on itself
by a fresh act.
But, the critic may continue, here is a mystery. An idea, a par-
ticular psychological existent, has the very peculiar property of
being able to jump out of its own skin, bridge an impassible chasm,
and somehow connect us with an unexperienced object on the other
side; is not this calling for a good deal of philosophical credulity?
Now I admit the desirability of getting rid of mysteries as far as
seems feasible. But when the mystery is something that is involved
in the very nature of thinking, it seems to me to call rather for a more
resolute attempt to resolve it than for its repudiation ; and even if it
can not satisfactorily be cleared up so as to leave no opaque residuum,
I see no self-evidence for the assumption that nothing goes in this
universe unless it is sun-clear to the philosopher. Now the assump-
tion in question is one which it does seem to me totally impossible for
the philosopher to escape making at some point along the line, except
by the refusal to reflect; where this would leave his standing as a
philosopher I do not stop to ask. Suppose he takes the position that
in knowledge there is no transcendence whatever, no leap into the un-
experienced. There are various ways in which the difficulty then
might be put up to him ; perhaps the simplest is in terms of memory.
PSYCHOLOGY AXD SCIENTIFIC METHODS 179
Could you have discovered this important fact, he might be asked,
without evidence in the form of past experiences, on which supposedly
you have brooded and reflected? But in so far as your pronounce-
ment is understood to base itself on the evidence, isn't there some-
thing which you are bound constantly to refer to, but which as an
existence is irretrievably gone, and so incapable of entering bodily
into your present experience which thinks it, or into any future ex-
perience for you?
However, though in case of failure I reserve the right to con-
tinue to accept the fact simply as a mystery, I do think that the
demand that it should attempt to give some account of itself is a fair
demand ; and there is something which it seems to me can really be
said. Professor James has, I believe, pointed out what is essen-
tially the truth of the matter, although he does not appear to me to
have appreciated accurately its consequences, and therefore has used
his theory to disprove the very possibility on which I am inclined to
think it throws light. The problem, as James puts it, is this : What,
when we say that an idea means an object, do we mean by meaning?
And his answer is, roughly, as follows: I think of, or mean, a cer-
tain familiar building ; what is the descriptive character of the act ?
"Well, it is the passing through a series of connected experiences
which culminate in the actual perception of the building itself.
Meaning can be interpreted in terms of a string, or series, of transi-
tive experiences through which anticipation is led to experienced
realization. This often, Professor James admits, stops short of ac-
tual realization. Sometimes we are content with the feeling that
we could carry the process to its end ; sometimes also, with our best
endeavors, we are carried only into the vicinity of the object. But
the essence of knowing is this, that it will get us to our goal.
Now I believe that this really contains the gist of the matter.
That which makes it most unsatisfactory to leave the mystery un-
analyzed is, I think, not the question how a gulf can be bridged, but
what we mean by bridging it, and getting to the other side. In other
words, is this relation of the idea to something out of experience a
fact sui generis, which we simply have to accept in its opaqueness?
or has it a prototype within experience itself in the stricter sense?
The merit of Professor James's theory is, it seems to me, that it has
pointed out, in terms of a certain sort of psychological experience,
the type of every case of transcendence, so that if there still remains
a mystery, it is not a mystery connected specially with the knowledge
of so-called independent reality. The nature of "meaning" is to
be found in that concrete experience of satisfied expectation, where
an idea, or anticipation, finds itself met by the experience which
fulfils it. So far I find James's theory adequate.
180 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
But now if this is so, what of the claim that transcendence has
been eliminated? As I have just implied, the fact seems to me to
be that the mystery has simply been brought within what is com-
monly called the psychological realm, not evaded entirely. For
what of this series to which meaning has been reduced? Is it the
actual transitive series as a whole, from the first start of initial idea
to final percept? Professor James inclines to talk as if this were
what he had in mind ; but it seems clear that such an interpretation
will not do. A mere string of transitive experiences is not the an-
ticipation of a future experience; and it is only as something has
been anticipated, while not yet present bodily, that the peculiar
feeling of completion can result. But the essence of anticipation is
not the actual series, brought to an end in perception, but the series,
usually very much syncopated, existing in imagination before the
end is actually there. James's theory, in other words, ought to
change the definition of meaning from the realization of the end
term, to its realization in imagination. Otherwise James falls into
a dilemma. If knowledge is actual attainment, then there is no
knowledge, or meaning, until the final percept of the building is
reached ; but when this is reached, then, as James himself maintains,
we no longer have "knowledge about" the thing we set out to ex-
plain, but "acquaintance with," an experience of perfect unity. It
seems evident, therefore, that meaning must be the anticipation of
fulfilment in imagination, and that consequently there must exist,
to form the knowing experience, a synthesis of content in an ex-
perienced unity, which includes alike the idea, the sense of present
unfulfilment, and the reference to some future experience which, if
attained, would be found to correspond to and complete the idea.
But this is to admit precisely the thing which in principle is in dis-
pute. In saying that a future experience, not yet existent, is an-
ticipated, there is just that transcendence of the present idea that
does the knowing which has been denied. This is evident in any
case ; but it is peculiarly evident when James admits that sometimes
the anticipated realization is impossible, at any rate for the present,
and that all that we are led to is the vicinity of the object. How on
such a showing, if we really are thinking of the object itself and not
of its suburbs, James is able to get around the notion of a gulf, and
of a grasping in idea somehow of what lies beyond the gulf, I find
myself totally at a loss to comprehend.
For my own part, I have of course no difficulty here. I can,
therefore, follow the positive part of James's theory, as providing
a typical experience which gives content to the notion of an idea
meaning a reality. It is the feeling of fulfilled expectation, which
I have often got when both the anticipation, and the thing antici-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 181
pated, have been experiences of my own. By knowing a thing, I
seem to find that I mean on analysis a vague sense of the possibility
of this sort of experience being repeated. But now, having the type,
I can go further. It is not the actual fulfilment, again, which con-
stitutes the knowing experience, but rather the idea of fulfilment;
and having the idea, I can extend its application. As James him-
self grants, I can extend it to the case where the fulfilment is post-
poned. Here my meaning is the same ; it is only that the final test
has not been made, and so there is still a chance of error. It is quite
possible, even, that the postponement may be extended till the op-
portunity is lost; I may die before fulfilment, as I doubtless shall
die before seeing many interesting things in the world which yet
form in the ordinary sense a part of my stock of knowledge. But
this for James represents the limiting case ; unless there is the possi-
bility, some time and somehow, of the object of the idea coming itself
bodily into a unity of experience with the knowing thought, and be-
ing felt to be the very object we mean, he will not allow that knowl-
edge has any meaning for us. But I fail to follow this. All that
seems necessary, in order to describe a truly transcendent object, is
to say that in thinking about such an object, or having it in mind,
or believing that a certain character belongs to it, or meaning it, I
add the recognition, not simply that I can not now verify it, or that
men can not verify it in my lifetime, but that it is forever out of the
reach of direct verification in the sense in which I can verify the
prophecy of future experience to myself, because it is incapable of
becoming a member in the same continuous experience series with
the thought which knows it. When I think, or mean it, the sense
attaching to the phrase is, that if I could ever arrive at the identical
object itself, I should have the same feeling of expectation realized
that I have in cases where the verification is humanly possible here
is where the notion gets its content, but that at the same time I
recognize that the fulfilment is, not temporarily, but forever and
necessarily, out of reach. I see no difficulty in this ; and if, accord-
ingly, the facts seem to require it, the notion of a reality capable of
being recognized as beyond experience presents no greater mystery
than the knowledge of other parts, not immediately present, of our
own experience. To be sure, we still should have to ask what ground
we have for asserting such realities ; but that, as I say, is a further
question.
A. K. ROGERS.
YALE UXIYEKSITT.
182 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
THE PSYCHOPHYSICAL CONTINUUM
IN a recent discussion of the relational view of consciousness 1 Mr.
Marshall takes occasion to reaffirm the familiar distinction be-
tween the " natural order" and the " mental order." In the nat-
ural order he places the ' ' stream of appreciations of the existence of
what we in thoughtful reflection come to call objects in the outer
world; the chair, the table, the fireplace, etc." But in addition to
this stream "there are discovered items which are felt to be of a
different order. . . . The three items, warmth, desire, belief, may
be taken as typical of innumerable instances of these appreciations
of existences which . . . are usually grouped together as items
within what we may call the mental order, or what is usually spoken
of as consciousness. ' ' Mr. Marshall seems to feel that there is a real
gulf fixed between these two orders, and that the existence of this
gulf constitutes also a barrier between the study of behavior and
the study of consciousness.
It occurs to me that the whole matter may be much simplified by
recognizing the purely statistical character of the distinction and by
noting that there is as a matter of fact not a gulf, but a gradual
transition and continuity between the two so-called orders. It is
true that in daily conversation and also in common psychological
classification we emphasize the natural as opposed to the mental, the
cognitive as over against the affective and conative. But so also do
we distinguish between black and white, long and short, and between
various other ends of continuous series. It seems to me that psycho-
logical classification, and hence both psychological and epistemolog-
ical theory, have suffered from the uncritical acceptance of purely
practical distinctions, based on the statistical features of the ex-
periences indicated, and that epistemology will be relieved and psy-
chology clarified by having the points noted, even if in a rather naive
and amateurish way, unembellished by metaphysical vocabulary.
To begin with, the objects constituting the natural order are put
there merely because of the universality of their occurrence. When
one of us experiences table, fireplace, etc., and our fellows are inter-
rogated, a universal affirmative verdict is assured, all or nearly all
of them report the same experience. Or on different occasions I
myself continue to report it. At least the conditions required for
such a verdict are rather easily satisfied, it requires merely that the
light be turned on, that a curtain be withdrawn, etc. But when I
report the presence of desire, belief, emotion, etc., and interrogate
i This JOURNAL, Vol. X., page 477.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 183
my fellows, the affimative reports are likely to be fewer, I may be
alone in my testimony, I may receive the confirmation of a few inti-
mate associates, or indeed a fairly large group may agree with my
report "Anger is now experienced." But the verdict is far from
universal, and it is furthermore difficult to arrange the conditions
for such a verdict, if not indeed impossible. It may require a long
course of neuro- or psycho-therapy.
Sometimes, indeed, when a closed circle of associates is concerned,
an emotion, a desire, etc., may be universally reported. On such
occasions the reported experience takes its place in the natural order
and is designated by an object-name, as The Holy Ghost, The Spirit
of the Lord. etc. This is particularly true when the experience is
not one of the routine sort, but depends on some rather rare condi-
tion or set of conditions. The fever, the plague, beauty, are other
instances. Such experiences are given full objectivity in our table
talk, in economics, sociology, and history. The plague "is spread-
ing," "is being combated," etc. The fever "is identified," "is re-
stricted to a certain area," etc. Disease entities, complexes of
"pathological" experiences, very nicely illustrate the transition
region between the natural and the mental orders. The reason for
this is obvious it is usually fairly easy to effect the conditions
requisite for a universal or widespread report of symptoms. Med-
ical prophylactics is mainly engaged in maintaining a set of condi-
tions which will justify us in classifying the various diseases as ob-
jects of the mental order. Religious zeal of a certain kind, on the
other hand, is chiefly engaged in perpetuating or reviving conditions
which will induce us to classify various "emotions" as objective
existences in the natural order.
Esthetic experiences again easily come to have objective charac-
ter, because such large groups of observers report identical objects.
Thus beauty, ugliness, sublimity, harmony, are not classified as pecu-
liar modifications of the self, as are anger, fear, and perplexity,
they are properties of objects, they are assigned existence well down
toward the ' ' natural ' ' end of the continuum of experience. Only an
international experience suffices to convince one that the beauty of a
given art form is not as intrinsic and fundamental as is the resist-
ance of a solid object, or the brilliance of a pencil of homogeneous
ether waves.
Analytic psychology, again, in its attempt to pigeonhole those
experiences which are mainly toward the "mental" end of the series,
gives us such rubrics as feeling, belief, judgment, perception, and
in the past has assumed the existence of certain qualitative differ-
entia between the experiences thus named. But it should be noted
184 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
that every "introspective" attempt to formulate the ear-marks
of the variously named experiences has resulted in failure, and in
the conclusion that all these experiences merge into each other, that,
in fact, in Mr. Marshall's words, consciousness is "a complex of
diverse emphases within a whole psychic pulse" and that "in so
far as these emphases display observable characteristics, the aver-
age man gives them special names, e. g., 'thoughts,' 'desires,' 'be-
lievings,' 'emotions,' 'sensations,' etc."
As a matter of fact the observable characteristics, so far as used
in psychological classification, are chiefly statistical. Thus I am
said to "perceive" an object, a difference, a relation, etc., when
the greater part of the total distribution of observers or observa-
tions make a similar report. I am said to make a "judgment" of
difference when the verdicts, either of other observers or of my own
repeated reports, are frequently contradictory. Sometimes, to be
sure, another factor is considered, viz., the degree of confidence of
the report, that is, the briskness of formulation, the speed with
which the object or situation develops, and the clearness or in-
tensity which it finally displays. Thus when a visual object de-
velops quickly and in an orderly way and when motor adjustments,
in the form of handling, naming, etc., develop in a definite and
standardized form, I say I perceive an object, but this is chiefly on
the basis of the fact that in the long run I have found that this sort
of an object or situation is one which will be universally reported.
But if the object develops slowly or irregularly or if the handling
or naming reactions are uncertain or uncoordinated or novel, I am
likely to say "I feel it" to be such and such an object, I judge, I
believe it, etc.
Thus in laboratory experiments on the differential threshold,
various degrees of confidence are likely to be reported in some such
way as the following:
(A} If the difference is exceedingly small, so small that its di-
rection is not evident, though its existence is suggested, the ob-
server is likely to report that he feels a difference.
(B) If the difference is increased somewhat, not only will the
existence of a difference be reported, but its direction will also be
asserted, though the observer reports the direction not to be abso-
lutely constant, but to vary from moment to moment. He will then
be said to be judging the difference.
(C) Increase the difference still more and the observer will re-
port a difference which continues to have the same direction through
successive trials or inspections. He then holds a belief with respect
to the difference, a belief, be it noted, which may not accord with
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 185
the objective conditions 2 because of the presence of certain constant
errors or motives to illusion.
(D) A larger difference still will be said to be perceived, since
it is not only clear, but its direction is consistently reported and
coincides with the consensus of other estimates or verdicts or with
those estimates which are so universal that they have been stand-
ardized as objective.
Now if requested, the observer can easily indicate the various
types of report by the four degrees of confidence, D, C, B, and A,
and more degrees than this he will hardly find possible. Further-
more, his various percentages of correctness will be found to be about
60. 70, 80, and 95. Or if different observers are used and their
reports compared, similar differences will be found in the vari-
ability of their reports. In other words, here we have, in the case
of the same general situation, four distinguishable types of report,
whi
