Psychology and life

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PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE. Boston, 1899.

GRUNDZUGE DER PSYCHOLOGIE. Leipzig, 1900.

AMERICAN TRAITS. Boston, 1902.

DIE AMERIKANER. Berlin, 1904.

PRINCIPLES OF ART EDUCATION. New York, 1903.

THE ETERNAL LIFE. Boston, 1905.

SCIENCE AND IDEALISM. Boston, 1906.

PHILOSOPHIE DER WERTE. Leipzig, 1907.

ON THE WITNESS STAND. New York, 1908.

AUS DEUTSCH-AMERIKA. Berlin, 1908.

PSYCHOTHERAPY. New York, 1909.

THE ETERNAL VALUES. Boston, 1909.

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PSYCHOLOGY
AND LIFE

BY

HUGO MUNSTERBERG

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

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COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY HUGO MUNSTERBERG
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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§ OC) F

NOV 4 '55

TO

MY OLD FRIEND
HEINRICH RICKERT

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF FREIBURG (BREISGAU)

PREFACE

THE following volume contains six essays
which have been brought before the public dur-
ing the last year at very different opportunities.
The paper on History was delivered as the presi-
dential address before the New York meeting
of the American Psychological Association, and
was published in the " Psychological Review."
That on Education was read before the Harvard
Teachers' Association at their last Cambridge
meeting and printed in the "Educational Re-
view." The essay on Physiology is an exten-
sion of a paper read before the American Phy-
siological Society in New York, and has not as
yet been published. The three other papers
appeared in the " Atlantic Monthly." That on
Mysticism was read before the Buffalo meeting
of the Unitarian Ministers' Institute, and before
the Philosophical Department of Princeton Uni-
versity ; that on Art was written for the Detroit
meeting of the American Drawing - Teachers'
Association, and that on Real Life was an ad-

vi PREFACE

dress to Wellesley College. Two other papers
on educational problems which I have also pub-
lished during the last year in the " Atlantic
Monthly " series, the one under the title " The
Danger from Experimental Psychology," and the
other " The Teacher and the Laboratory/' are
not reprinted here because the one was chiefly
the criticism of a book and the other a rejoinder
to an attack, but they may be mentioned here
as supplementary interpretations of my educa-
tional views.

While the six essays were thus presented at
first to very various audiences, this book is in no
way a chance collection of disconnected pieces.
The contrary is true. They represent six chap-
ters of a book which was from the first planned
as a unity, and the separate publication of the
special parts is merely accidental. The group
should decidedly be taken as a whole. One
fundamental thought controls the book, and
each essay leads only from a different point to
the same central conviction.

This chief aim is the separation of the con-
ceptions of psychology from the conceptions of
our real life. Popular ideas about psychology
suggest that the psychological description and
explanation of mental facts expresses the reality

PREFACE vii

of our inner experience. It is a natural con-
sequence of such a view that our ethical and
sesthetical, our practical and educational, our
social and historical views are subordinated
to the doctrines of psychology. These papers
endeavor to show that psychology is not at
all an expression of reality, but a complicated
transformation of it, worked out for special logi-
cal purposes in the service of our life. Psycho-
logy is thus a special abstract construction which
has a right to consider everything from its own
important standpoint, but which has nothing to
assert in regard to the interpretation and appre-
ciation of our real freedom and duty, our real
values and ideals. The aim is thus a limitation
of that psychology which wrongly proclaims its
results as a kind of philosophy ; but this limita-
tion, which makes the traditional conflicts with
idealistic views impossible, gives at the same
time to the well-understood psychology an abso-
lute freedom in its own field, and the whole
effort is thus as much in the service of psycho-
logy itself as in the service of the rights of life.
A scientific synthesis of the ethical idealism with
the physiological psychology of our days is thus
my purpose. Every unscientific and unphilo-
sophical synthesis remains there necessarily an

viii PREFACE

insincere compromise in which science sacrifices
its consistency and idealism sacrifices its beliefs ;
it is the task of true synthesis to show how the
one includes the other, and how every conflict is
a misunderstanding.

The first paper gives the fundamental tone
and characterizes the problem of the whole book.
The second paper, on Physiology, develops the
real functions of a scientific psychology, and
defends its absolute freedom in the consistent
construction of theories of mind and brain. The
following three papers show in three important
directions, in art, education, and history, how
such a consistent psychology, even though most
radical, cannot interfere with the conceptions and
categories which belong to the activities of life
and to their historical aspect. The last paper
finally makes a test for this separation, showing
that just as psychology is not to interfere with
the conceptions of life, these latter must not
interfere with the conceptions of psychology ;
wherever this happens, the scientific aspect of
mental life goes over into mysticism.

The isolated appearance of the different essays
has made it necessary that each could be under-
stood alone without presupposing the knowledge
of the foregoing papers; frequent repetitions

PREFACE ix

were thus unavoidable. It would have been
easy to eliminate these in reprinted form, and to
link the papers so that each should presuppose
acquaintance with the preceding parts. But 1
have finally decided not to change anything and
to publish them again in a form in which every
paper can be understood for itself, because I
think that in a subject so difficult and so antago-
nistic to the popular view the chief points of
the discussion can have impressive effect only if
they are brought out repeatedly, always in new
connections and from new points of view. They
may be clear, perhaps, at a first reading, but
may become convincing only when they are
reached from the most different starting-points.
If the axe does not strike the same spot several
times, the tree will not fall.

It may appear still less excusable that when-
ever I have had to return to the same points, I
have made use of the same expressions like
stereotyped phrases. The effect would have
been of course much prettier if I had applied
a rich variety instead of such a monotony of
terms. But it seems to me that in such compli-
cated problems exactness and sharpness of the
technical terms is the condition for clearness and
consistency, which cannot be replaced by a more

x PREFACE

or less sesthetical enjoyment. I do not want to
entertain by these papers, I want to fight ; to
fight against dangers which I see in our public
life and our education, in art and science ; and
only those who intend serious and consistent
thought ought to take up this unamusing book.
I say frankly, therefore, that this little volume
is not written for those who kindly take an
interest in the psychological discussions of the
essays, but do not care for the philosophical part
which belongs to every one. For such readers
much more attractive treatises on the new psy-
chology are abundant. And there is a second
group of possible readers to whom also I should
seal the little book if I had the power. I refer
to those who heartily agree with my general
conclusion that no conflict between science and
the demands of life exists, but who base this
attitude merely on f eeling and emotion, and who
thus dread the indirect method of abstract con-
ceptions, all the more since they are not troubled
by a demand for consistency in science. I have
nothing in common with them ; I am not a mis-
sionary of the Salvation Army. And, finally,
I must warn still a third group whose exist-
ence I should not have suspected if it had not
shown most vehement symptoms of lif e after the

PREFACE xi

publication of some of my " Atlantic Monthly "
papers. I have in mind those who consider a
critical examination of the rights and limits of a
science as an attack against that science, instead
of seeing that it is the chief condition for a
sound and productive growth ; the triumph
through confusion is in the long run never a real
gain for a science. Those who, perhaps with
anger, perhaps with delight, consider my warn-
ing against a dangerous misuse of psychology,
pedagogy, and so on, as an onslaught against
psychology or pedagogy itself, certainly mis-
understand my intentions.

Finally, I wish to express my thanks to the
Assistant in the Psychological Laboratory of
Radcliffe College, Miss Ethel Puffer, for the
revision of my manuscript, and to the Assistant
in the Psychological Laboratory of Harvard Uni-
versity, Dr. Robert MacDougall, for the revision
of the proofs. It is needless to say that in
spite of their helpful retouching of my language,
the whole cast shows the style of the foreigner
who is a beginner in the use of English, and
who must thus seriously ask for the indulgence
of the reader.

HUGO MiJNSTEEBEEG.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, February, 1899.

CONTENTS

MM

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 1-34

1. The standpoint of naturalism . . .1

2. The psychological view of personality . . 4

3. The psychological view of life and duty . . 9

4. The standpoint of reality 15

5. The idealistic view of life 23

6. The idealistic view of psychology ... 28
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY .... 35-99

1. Hopes and fears from physiological psychology . 35

2. The empirical relations between mind and brain 40

3. The description of mental facts .... 44

4. The explanation of mental facts ... 53

5. The physiological explanation of mental facts . 60

6. The usefulness of the psychophysical functions . 68

7. The biological development of the psychophysical

apparatus ....... 74

8. Mistakes of association and apperception theo-

ries 81

9. The advantages of an action theory ... 91
PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION .... 100-144

1. The teaching of psychology 100

2. Psychology of the child 106

3. Methods and limits of child psychology . . 112

4. Child psychology, experimental psychology, phy-

siological psychology . . . . . 121

5. The value of psychology for the teacher . . 128

6. The value of psychology for pedagogy . . . 135
PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 145-178

1. The artist as psychologist ..... 145

2. The psychical causes of the work of art . . 152

3. The psychical effects of the work of art . . 157

4. Drawing instruction in schools .... 163

riv CONTENTS

5. The psychological aspect and the reality . . 169

6. The philosophical aspect of art and art instruc-

tion 174

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 179-228

1. The idealistic tendencies of our time . . . 179

2. Laws and special facts 185

3. Description and explanation 191

4. The real subjects 195

5* Science and art . . . » « * . 200

6. The causal and the teleological aspects . • 205

7. The task of history . . . .--... ». . 210

8. History and causality . ., •«.- . . 217

9. History and the normative sciences . . . 223
PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM . . . »„ 229-282

1. The psychological claims of mysticism . . . 229

2. The scientific aspect . . . . » . 234

3. Hypnotic suggestion 239

4. Christian science and mind cure . . . 244

5. Double consciousness 249

6. Examination of the claimed facts . . . 253

7. The mechanical and the emotional view . . 262
& The emotional categories applied to psychophysi-

cal processes . 269

9. Telepathy and spiritualism ; immortality . . 275

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

THE world of science and learning, as well as
the social world, has its alternating seasons and
its capricious fashions. Mathematics and phi-
losophy, theology and physics, philology and his-
tory, each has had its great time ; each was once
favored both by the leaders of knowledge and
by the crowd of imitating followers. The nine-
teenth century, which began with high philo-
sophical inspirations, has turned decidedly toward
natural science ; the description of the universe
by dissolving it into atomistic elements, and the
explanation of it by natural laws without regard
for the meaning and value of the world, has
been the scientific goal. But this movement
toward naturalistic dissolution has also gone
through several phases. It started with the
rapid development of physics and chemistry,
which brought as a practical result the wonderful
gifts of technique. From the inorganic world
scientific interest turned toward the organic
world. For a few decades, physiology, the science

2 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

of the living organism, enjoyed an almost
passed development, and brought as its practical
outcome modern medicine. From the functions
of the single organism public interest has been
drawn to the problems of the evolution of the
organic world as a whole. Darwinism has in-
vaded the educated quarters, and its practical
consequence has been rightly or wrongly a revo-
lution against dogmatic traditions.

Finally, the interests of the century have gone
a step farther, — the last step which naturalism
can take. If the physical and the chemical, the
physiological and the biological world, in short
the whole world of outer experience, is atomized
and explained, there remains only the world of
inner experience, the world of the conscious
personality, to be brought under the views of
natural science. The period of psychology, of
the natural science of the mental life, began.
It dawned ten, perhaps fifteen years ago, and
we are living in the middle of it. No Edison
and no Roentgen can make us forget that the
great historical time of physics and physiology is
gone ; psychology takes the central place in the
thought of our time, and overflows into all
channels of our life. It began with an analysis
of simple ideas and feelings, and it has de-
veloped to an insight into the mechanism of the
highest acts and emotions, thoughts and crea-
tions. It started by studying the mental life

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 3

of the individual, and it has rushed forward to
the psychical organization of society, to social
psychology, to the psychology of art and science,
religion and language, history and law. It be-
gan with an increased carefulness of self -obser-
vation, and it has developed to an experimental
science, with the most elaborate methods of tech-
nique, and with scores of great laboratories in
its service. It started in the narrow circles of
philosophers, and it is now at home wherever
mental life is touched. The historian strives to-
day for psychological explanation, the economist
for psychological laws; jurisprudence looks on
the criminal from a psychological standpoint;
medicine emphasizes the psychological value of
its assistance; the realistic artist and poet fight
for psychological truth ; the biologist mixes psy-
chology in his theories of evolution ; the philolo-
gist explains the languages psychologically ; and
while aesthetical criticism systematically coquets
with psychology, pedagogy seems ready even to
marry her.

As the earlier stages of naturalistic interests,
the rush toward physics, physiology, biology,
were each, as we have seen, of characteristic
influence on the practical questions of real life,
it is a matter of course that this highest and
most radical type of naturalistic thinking, the
naturalistic dissolution of mental life, must stir
up and even revolutionize the whole practical

4 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

world. From the nursery to the university, from
the hospital to the court of justice, from the
theatre to the church, from the parlor to the
parliament, the new influence of psychology on
the real daily life is felt in this country as in
Europe, producing new hopes and new fears,
new schemes and new responsibilities.

Let us consider the world we live in, from the
point of view of this new creed. What becomes
of the universe and what of the human race,
what becomes of our duty and what of our
freedom, what becomes of our friends and what
of ourselves, if psychology is not only true, but
the only truth, and has to determine the values
of our real life ?

II

What is our personality, seen from the psy-
chological point of view? We separate the
consciousness and the content of consciousness.
From the standpoint of psychology, — I mean a
consistent psychology, not a psychology that
lives by all kinds of compromises with philosophy
and ethics, — from the standpoint of psychology
the consciousness itself is in no way a person-
ality ; it is only an abstraction from the totality
of conscious facts, — an abstraction just as the
conception of nature is abstracted from the na-
tural physical objects. Consciousness does not
do anything; consciousness is only the empty

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 6

place for the manif oldness of psychical facts ; it
is the mere presupposition making possible the
existence of the content of consciousness, but
every thought and feeling and volition must be
itself such a content of consciousness. Person-
ality, too, is thus a content ; it is the central
content of our consciousness, and psychology
can show in a convincing way how this funda-
mental idea grows and influences the develop-
ment of mental life. We know how the whole
idea of personality crystallizes about those tac-
tual and muscular and optical sensations which
come from the body ; how at first the child does
not discriminate his own limbs from the outside
objects he sees ; and how slowly the experiences,
the pains, the successes, which connect them-
selves with the movements and contacts of this
one body blur into the idea of that central
object, our physical personality, into which the
mental experiences become gradually introjected.
Psychology shows how this idea of the Ego
grows steadily side by side with the idea of the
Alter, and how it associates with itself the whole
manif oldness of personal achievements and ex-
periences. Psychology shows how it develops
toward a sociological personality, appropriating
everything which works in the world under the
control of our will, in the interest of our influ-
ence, just as our body works, including thus our
name and our clothing, our friends and our work,

6 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

our property and our social community. Psy-
chology shows how, on the other hand, this idea
can shrink and expel everything which is not
essential for the continuity of this central group
of psychical contents. Our personality does not
depend upon our chance knowledge and chance
sensations ; it remains, once formed, if we lose
even our arms and legs with their sensations;
and thus the personality becomes that most
central group of psychical contents which ac-
company the transformation of experiences into
actions; that is, feelings and will. Thus psy-
chology demonstrates a whole scale of personali-
ties in every one of us, — the psychological one,
the sociological one, the ideal one ; but each one
is and can be only a group of psychical contents,
a bundle of sensational elements. It is an idea
which is endlessly more complicated, but theo-
retically not otherwise constituted, than the
idea of our table or our house ; just as, from
the point of view of chemistry, the substance
which we call a human body is theoretically not
otherwise constituted than, any other physical
thing. The influence of the idea of personality
means psychologically, then, its associative and
inhibitory effects on the mechanism of the other
contents of consciousness, and the unity and
continuity of the personality mean that causal
connection of its parts by which anything that
has once entered our psychical life may be at

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 7

any time reproduced, and may help to change
the associative effects which come from the idea
of ourselves.

Has this psychological personality freedom of
will? Certainly. Everything depends in this
case upon the definitions, and the psychologist
can easily construct a conception of freedom
which is in the highest degree realized in the
psychophysical organism and its psychological
experiences. Freedom of will means to him
absence of an outer force, or of pathological
disturbance in the causation of our actions. We
are free, as our actions are not the mere outcome
of conditions which lie outside of our organism,
but the product of our own motives and their
normal connections. All our experiences and
thoughts, our inherited dispositions and trained
habits, our hopes and fears, cooperate in our
consciousness and in its physiological substratum,
our brain, to bring about the action. Under
the same outer conditions, somebody else would
have acted otherwise ; or we ourselves should
have preferred and done something else, if our
memory or our imagination or our reason had
furnished some other associations. The act is
ours, we are responsible, we could have stopped
it; and only those are unfree, and therefore
irresponsible, who are passive sufferers from an
outer force, or who have no normal mental
mechanism for the production of their action, a

8 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

psychophysieal disturbance which comes as a
kind of outer force to paralyze the organism, be
it alcohol or poison, hypnotism or brain disease,
which comes as an intruder to inhibit the regular
free play of the motives.

Of course, if we should ask the psychologist
whether this unfree and that free action stand
in different relations to the psychological and
physiological laws, he would answer only with a
smile. To think that freedom of will means in-
dependence of psychological laws is to him an
absurdity; our free action is just as much de-
termined by laws, and psychologically just as
necessary, as the irresponsible action of the hyp-
notized or of the maniacal subject. That the
whole world of mental facts is determined by
laws, and that therefore in the mental world
just as little as in the physical universe do won-
ders happen, is the necessary presupposition of
psychology, which it does not discuss, but takes
for granted. If the perceptions, associations,
feelings, emotions, and dispositions are all given,
the action must necessarily happen as it does.
The effect is absolutely determined by the com-
bination of causes; only the effect is a free
one, because those causes lay within us. To be
sure, those causes and motives in us have them-
selves causes, and these deeper causes may not
lie in ourselves. We have not ourselves chosen
all the experiences of our lives ; we did not our-

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 9

selves pick out the knowledge with which our
early instruction provided us ; we have not our-
selves created those brain dispositions and talents
and tendencies which form in us decisions and
actions. Thus the causes refer to our ancestors,
our teachers and the surrounding conditions of
society, and with the causes must the responsi-
bility be pushed backwards. The unhealthy
parents, and not the immoral children, are re-
sponsible ; the unfitted teacher, and not the mis-
behaving pupil, should be blamed ; society, and
not the criminal, is guilty. To take it in its
most general meaning, the cosmical elements,
with their general laws, and not we single mor-
tals, are the fools !

Ill

The actions of personalities form the substance
of history. Whatever men have created by their
will in politics and social relations, in art and
science, in technics and law, is the object of the
historian's interest. What that all means, seen
through the spectacles of psychology, is easily
deduced. The historical material is made up
of will functions of personalities; personalities
are special groups of psychophysical elements;
free-will functions are necessary products of the
foregoing psychophysical conditions ; history,
therefore, is the report about a large series of
causally determined psychophysical processes

10 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

which happened to occur. But it is a matter
of course that the photographic and phono-
graphic copy of raw material does not constitute
a science. Science has everywhere to go for-
ward from the single unconnected data to the
general relations and connections. Consequently,
history as a scientific undertaking is not satisfied
with the kinematographic view of all the mental
processes which ever passed through human
brains, but it presses toward general connection,
and the generalizations for single processes are
the causal laws which underlie them. The aim
of history, then, must be to find the constant
psychological laws which control the develop-
ment of nations and races, and which produce
the leader and the mob, the genius and the
crowd, war and peace, progress and social dis-
eases. The great economic and climatic factors
in the evolution of the human race come into
the foreground ; the single individual and the
single event disappear from sight ; the extraor-
dinary man becomes the extreme case of the
average crowd, produced by a chance combi-
nation of dispositions and conditions; genius
and insanity begin to touch each other ; nothing
is new ; the same conditions bring again and
again the same effects in new masks and gowns ;
history, with all its branches, becomes a vast de-
partment of social psychology.

But if the free actions of historical per-

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 11

sonalities are the necessarily determined func-
tions of psychophysical organisms, what else are
and can be the norms and laws which these per-
sonalities obey? Certainly, the question which
such laws answer, the question what ought to
be, does not coincide with the question what is;
but even that " ought " exists only as a psychical
content in the consciousness of men, as a con-
tent which attains the character of a command
only by its associative and inhibitory relations to
our feelings and emotions. In short, it is a
psychical content which may be characterized by
special effects on the psychological mechanism of
associations and actions, but which is theoreti-
cally coordinated to every other psychical idea,
and which grows and varies, therefore, in human
minds, under the same laws of adaptation and
inheritance and tradition as every other mental
thing. Our ethical laws are, then, the necessary
products of psychological laws, changing with
climate and race and food and institutions, types
of action desirable for the conservation of the
social organism. And just the same must be
true for sesthetical and even for logical rules
and laws. Natural processes have in a long
evolutionary development produced brains which
connect psychological facts in a useful corre-
spondence to the surrounding physical world ;
an apparatus which connects psychical facts in
a way which misleads in the outer physical

12 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

world is badly adapted, and must be lost in
the struggle for existence. Logical laws are,
then, just so many types of useful psychical pro-
cesses, depending upon the psychophysical laws,
and changing with the conditions and complica-
tions of life.

The psychologist will add : Do not feel wor-
ried by that merely psychological origin of all
our inner laws. Is not their final goal also in
any case only the production of a special psy-
chophysical state ? What else can our thinking
and feeling and acting strive for than to pro-
duce a mental state of agreeable character ? We
think logically because the result is useful for
us ; that is, secures the desired agreeable, prac-
tical ends. We seek beauty because we enjoy
beautiful creations of art and nature. We act
morally because we wish to give to others also
that happiness which we desire for ourselves.
In short, the production of the psychological
states of delight and enjoyment in us and others,
and the reduction of the opposite mental states
of pain and sorrow, are the only aim and goal of
a full, sound life. Were all the disagreeable
feelings in human consciousness replaced by
happy feelings, one psychological content thus
replaced by another, heaven would be on earth.

But psychology can go one more step for-
ward. We know what life means to it, but
what does the world mean ? What is its meta-

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 13

physical credo ? There need not be much specu-
lative fight about it. All who understand the
necessary premises of psychology ought to agree
as to the necessary conclusions. Psychology
starts with the presupposition that all objects
which have existence in the universe are physical
or psychical, objects in matter or objects in con-
sciousness. Other objects are not perceivable
by us, and therefore do not exist. To come
from this to a philosophical insight into the ulti-
mate reality, we must ask whether these physical
and psychical facts are equally true. To doubt
that anything at all exists is absurd, as such
a thought shows already that at least thoughts
exist. The question is, then, only whether both
physical and psychical facts are real, or physical
only, or psychical only. The first view is philo-
sophical dualism; the second is materialistic
monism ; and the third is spiritualistic monism.
Psychology cannot hesitate long. What ab-
surdity to believe in materialism, or even in
dualism, as it is clear that in the last reality all
matter is given to us only as idea in our con-
sciousness ! We may see and touch and hear
and smell the physical world, but whatever we
see we know only as our visual sensations, and
what we touch is given to us as our tactual sen-
sations ; in short, we have an absolute knowledge
which no philosophical criticism can shake, only
in our own sensations and other contents of con-

14 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

sciousness. Physical things may be acknow-
ledged as a practical working hypothesis for the
simple explanation of the order of our sensations,
but the philosophical truth must be that our psy-
chical facts alone are certain, and therefore un-
doubtedly real.

Only our mind-stuff is real. Yet I have no
right to call it "ours," as those other per-
sonalities whom I perceive exist also only as my
perceptions ; they are philosophically all in my
own consciousness, which I never can transcend.
But have I still the right to call that my con-
sciousness ? An I has a meaning only where a
Thou is granted ; where no Alter is there cannot
be an Ego. The real world is, therefore, not
my consciousness, but an absolutely impersonal
consciousness in which a series of psychical states
goes on in succession. Have I the right to call it
a succession ? Succession presupposes time, but
whence do I know about time ? The past and
the future are given to me, of course, only by
my present thinking of them. I do not know
the past ; I know only that I at present think
the past ; the present thought is, then, the only
absolutely real thing. But if there is no past
and no future, to speak of a present has no
meaning. The real psychical fact is without
time as without personality; it is for nobody,
for no end, and with no value. That is the last
word of a psychology which pretends to be
philosophy.

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE IS

IV

Now let us return to our starting-point : are
we really obliged to accept this view of the
world as the last word of the knowledge of our
century? Can our historical and political, our
ethical and sesthetical, our logical and philosoph-
ical thinking, — in short, can the world of our
real practical life be satisfied with such a credo ?
And if we wish to escape it, is it true that we
have to deny in our conscience all that the cen-
tury calls learning and knowledge ? Is it true
that only a mysterious belief can overcome such
positivistic misery, and that we have to accept
thus the most anti-philosophical attitude toward
the world which exists ; that is, a mixture of
positivism and mysticism ?

To be sure, we cannot, no, we cannot be satis-
fied with that practical outcome of psychology,
with those conclusions about the final character
of personality and freedom, about history and
logic and ethics, about man and the universe.
Every fibre in us revolts, every value in our real
life rejects such a construction. We do not feel
ourselves such conglomerates of psychophysical
elements, and the men whom we admire and con-
demn, love and hate, are for us not identical with
those combinations of psychical atoms which pull
and push one another after psychological laws.
We do not mean, with our responsibility and

16 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

with our freedom in the moral world, that our
consciousness is the passive spectator of psycho-
logical processes which go on causally determined
by laws, satisfied that some of the causes are
inside of our skull, and not outside. The child
is to us in real life no vegetable which has to be
raised like tomatoes, and the criminal is no weed
which does not feel that it destroys the garden.

Does history really mean for us what psycho-
logical and economical and statistical laws put in
its place? Are " heroism" and " hero-worship"
empty words? Have Kant and Fichte, Carlyle
and Emerson, really nothing to say any more,
and are Comte and Buckle our only apostles?
Do we mean, in speaking of Napoleon and Wash-
ington, Newton and Goethe, those complicated
chemical processes which the physiologist sees in
their life, and those accompanying psychical pro-
cesses which the psychologist enumerates between
their birth and their death ? Do we really still
think historically, if we consider the growth of
the nations and this gigantic civilization on earth
as the botanist studies the growth of the mould
which covers a rotten apple ? Is it really only a
difference of complication ?

But worse things are offered to our belief.
We are asked not only to consider all that the
past has brought as the necessary product of
psychological laws, but also to believe that all
we are striving and working for, all our life's

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 17

fight, — it may be the noblest one, — means
nothing else than the production of some psy-
chological states of mind, of some feelings of
agreeableness ; in short, that the tickling sensa-
tions are the ideal goal of our life. The great-
est possible happiness of the greatest possible
number, that discouraging phrase in which the
whole vulgarity of a naturalistic century seems
condensed, is it really the source of inspiration
for an ideal soul, and does our conscience really
look out for titillation in connection with a ma-
jority vote ?

If you repeat again and again that there are
only relative laws, no absolute truth and beauty
and morality, that they are changing products
of the outer conditions without binding power,
you contradict yourself by the assertion. Do
you not demand already for your skeptical denial
that at least this denial itself is an absolute
truth ? And when you discuss it, and stand for
your conviction that there is no morality, does
not this involve your acknowledgment of the
moral law to stand for one's conviction ? If you
do not acknowledge that, you allow the infer-
ence that you yourself do not believe that which
you stand for, and that you know, therefore,
that an absolute morality does exist. Psycho-
logical skepticism contradicts itself by its pre-
tensions ; there is a truth, a beauty, a morality,
which is independent of psychological condi-

18 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

tions. When such ideal duties penetrate our
life, we cannot rest at last in a psychological
metaphysics where the universe is an impersonal
content of consciousness ; and every straightfor-
ward man, to whom the duties of his real life
are no sounding brass, speaks with a calm voice
to the psychologist : There are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your
philosophy.

Is there really no possible combination of these
two attitudes? Certainly such combination is not
given by an inconsistent compromise. If we say
to the intellect, Go on with your analyzing and
explaining psychology, but stop halfway, before
you come to practical acting; and say to our
feeling and conscience, Go on with your noble
life, but do not try to think about it, for all your
values would show themselves as a poor illusion ;
then there remains only one thing doubtful,
whether the conscience or the intellect is in the
more pitiful state. Thinking that is too faint-
hearted to act, and acting that is ashamed to
think, are a miserable pair who cannot live to-
gether through a real life. No such coward
compromise comes here in question, and still less
do we accept the position that the imperfectness
of the sciences of to-day must be the comfort of
our conscience.

The combination of the two attitudes is possi-
ble ; more than that, it is necessary in the right

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 19

interests of both sides, as the whole apparent
contradiction rests on an entire misunderstand-
ing. It is not psychology that contradicts the
demands of life, but the misuse of psychology.
Psychology has the right and the duty to con-
sider everything from the psychological stand-
point, but life and history, ethics and philosophy,
have neither the duty nor the right to accept
as a picture of reality the impression which is
reached from the psychological standpoint.

We have asked the question whether the psy-
chical objects or the physical objects, or both,
represent the last reality ; we saw that dualistic
realism and materialism decided for the last two
interpretations, while psychology voted for the
first. It seems that one of these three decisions
must be correct, and just here is the great mis-
understanding. No, all three are equally wrong
and worthless ; a fourth alone is right, which
says that neither the physical objects nor the
psychical objects represent reality, but both are
ideal constructions of the subject, both deduced
from the reality which is no physical object, no
psychical object, and even no existing object at
all, as the very conception of an existing object
means a transformation of the reality. Such
transformation has its purpose for our thoughts
and is logically valuable, and therefore it repre-
sents scientific truth ; but this truth nevertheless
does not reach the reality of the untransfornied

20 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

life. It is exactly the same relation as that be-
tween natural science and materialism. Natural
science considers the world as a mechanism, and
for that purpose transforms the reality in a most
complicated and ingenious way. It puts in the
place of the perceivable objects unperceivable
atoms which are merely products of mathemati-
cal construction quite unlike any known thing;
and nevertheless these atoms are scientifically
true, as their construction is necessary for that
special logical purpose. To affirm that they are
true means that they are of objective value for
thought. But it is absurd to think, with the
materialistic philosopher, that these atoms form
a reality which is more real than the known
things, or even the only reality, excluding the
right of all not space-filling realities. The phy-
sical science of matter is true, and is true with-
out limit and without exception ; materialism is
wrong from beginning to end. There is, in-
deed, no physical object in the world which
natural science ought not to transmute into
atoms, but no atom in the world has reality;
and these two statements do not contradict each
other.

In the same way psychology is right, but the
psychologism which considers the psychological
elements and their mechanism as reality is wrong
from its root to its top, and this psychologism is
not a bit better than materialism. It makes

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 21

practically no difference whether the real sub-
stance is of the clumsy space-filling material or
of the finer stuff that dreams are made of ; both
are existing objects, both are combinations of
atomistic indivisible elements, both are in their
changes controlled and determined by general
laws, both make the world a succession of causes
and effects. The psychical mechanism has no
advantage over the physical one ; both mean a
dead world without ends and values, — laws,
but no duties ; effects, but no purposes ; causes,
but no ideals.

There is no mental fact which the psychologist
has not to metamorphose into psychical elements;
and as this transformation is logically valuable,
his psychical elements and their associative and
inhibitory play are scientifically true. But a
psychical element, and anything which is thought
as combination of psychical elements and as
working under the laws of these psychical con-
structions, has as little reality as have the atoms
of the physicist. Our body is not a heap of
atoms ; our inner life is still less a heap of ideas
and feelings and emotions and volitions and
judgments, if we take these mental things in the
way the psychologist has to take them, as con-
tents of consciousness made up from psychical
elements. If it is understood that the function
of any naturalistic science is not to discover a
reality which is more real than our life and its

22 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

immediate battlefield, but only to transform the
reality in a special way, then it must be clear
that the demands of our real life can never be
contradicted by the outcome of the empirical
sciences. The sciences, therefore, find their
way free to advance without fear till they have
mastered and transmuted the physical and the
psychical universe.

But we can go a step farther. A contradic-
tion is the more impossible since this transforma-
tion is itself under the influence of the elements
of real life, and by that the apparent ruler
becomes the vassal. If psychology pretends
that there is no really logical value, no absolute
truth, because everything shows itself under
psychological laws, we must answer, This very
fact, that we consider even logical thinking
from the psychological point of view, and that
we have psychology at all, is only an outcome of
the primary truth that we have logical ends and
purposes. Logical thinking creates psychology
for its own ends; psychology cannot be itself
the basis for logical thinking. And if psy-
chology denies all values because they prove
to be psychical fancies only, we must confess
that this striving for the understanding of the
world by transforming it through our science
would have no meaning if it were not work
toward an end which we appreciate as valuable.
Every act of thought, every affirmation and

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 23

denial, every yes or no which constitutes a scien-
tific judgment, is an act of a will which ac-
knowledges the over-individual obligation to
decide so, and not otherwise, — acknowledges
an " ought," and works thus for duty. Far
from allowing psychology to doubt whether the
real life has duties, we must understand that
there is no psychology, no science, no thought,
no doubt, which does not by its very appearance
solemnly acknowledge that it is the child of
duties. Psychology may dissolve our will and
our personality and our freedom, and it is con-
strained by duty to do so, but it must not forget
that it speaks only of that will and that person-
ality which are by metamorphosis substituted for
the personality and the will of real life, and that
it is this real personality and its free will which
create psychology in the service of its ends and
aims and ideals.

V

In emphasizing thus the will as the bearer of
all science and thought, we have reached the
point from which we can see the full relations
between life and psychology. In the real life
we are willing subjects whose reality is given in
our will attitudes, in our liking and disliking,
loving and hating, affirming and denying, agree-
ing and fighting ; and as these attitudes overlap
and bind one another, this willing personality

24 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

has unity. We know ourselves by feeling our-
selves as those willing subjects ; we do not per-
ceive that will in ourselves; we will it. But
do we perceive the other subjects ? No, as little
as ourselves. In real life, the other subjects also
are not perceived, but acknowledged ; wherever
subjective attitudes stir us up, and ask for
agreement or disagreement, there we appreciate
personalities. These attitudes of the subjects
turn toward a world of objects, — a world which
means in real life a world of tools and helps and
obstacles and ends ; in short, a world of objects
of appreciation.

Do those subjects and their objects exist?
No, they do not exist. I do not mean that thej
are a fairy tale; even the figures of the fairj
tale are for the instant thought as existing. The
real world we live in has no existence, because it
has a form of reality which is endlessly fuller
and richer than that shadow of reality which
we mean by existence. Existence of an object
means that it is a possible object of mere passive
perception ; in real life, there is no passive per-
ception, but only active appreciation, and to
think anything as object of perception only
means a transmutation by which reality evapo-
rates. Whatever is thought as existing cannot
have reality. Our real will does not exist, either
as a substance which lasts or as a process which is
going on ; but our will is valid, and has a form

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 26

of reality which cannot be described because it is
the last foothold of all description and agree-
ment. Whoever has not known himself as will-
ing cannot learn by description what kind of
reality is given to us in that act of life ; but
whoever has willed knows that the act means
something else than the fact that some object of
passive perception was in consciousness; in
short, he knows a reality which means more than
existence.

The existing world, then, does not lack reality
because it is merely a shadow of a world beyond
it, a shadow of a Platonistic world of potentiali-
ties. No, it is a shadow of a real world, which
stands not farther from us, but still nearer to us,
than the existing world. The world we will is
the reality ; the world we perceive is the de-
duced, and therefore unreal system ; and the
world of potential forms and relations, as it is
deduced from this perceivable system, is a con-
struction of a still higher degree of unreality.
The potentialities that form the only possible
metaphysical background of reality are not the
potentialities of existing objects, but the poten-
tialities of will acts. This world of not existing
but valid subjective will relations is the only
world which history and society, morality and
philosophy, have to deal with.

The willing subjects and their mutual rela-
tions are the only matter history can speak of,

26 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

but not those subjects thought as perceivable
existing objects ; no, as willing subjects whose
reality we can understand, not by describing
their physical or psychical elements, but by
interpreting and appreciating their purposes and
means. The stones, the animals, even the sav-
ages, have no history ; only where a network of
individual will relations can be acknowledged
by our will have we really history ; and our own
historical position means the system of will atti-
tudes by which we acknowledge other willing
subjects. To be sure, history, like every other
science, must go from the raw material of single
facts to generalities ; but if we are in a world of
not existing but valid realities, the generalities
cannot be laws, but will relations of more and
more general importance. Existing processes are
scientifically generalized by laws ; valid relations
are generalized by more and more embracing
relations. The aim of the real historian, there-
fore, is, not to copy the natural laws of physics
and social psychology, but to work out the more
and more general inner relations of mankind by
following up the will influence of great men, tiL
finally the philosophy of history shall comprise
this total development from paradise to the day
of judgment by one all-embracing will connec-
tion. Thus history in all its departments, his-
tory of politics and constitutions, of art and
science, of language and law, has as its object

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 27

the system of those human will relations which
we ourselves as willing subjects acknowledge,
and which are for us objects of understanding,
of interpretation, of appreciation, even of criti-
cism, but not objects of description and expla-
nation, as they are valid subjective will func-
tions, not existing perceivable objects.

History speaks only of those will acts which
are acknowledged as merely individual. We
know other will acts in ourselves which we will
with an over-individual meaning, those attitudes
we take when we feel ourselves beyond the
domain of our purely personal wishes. The will
remains our own, but its significance transcends
our individual attitudes ; it has an over-individ-
ual value ; we call it our duty. To be sure, our
duty is our own central will ; there is no duty
which comes from the outside. The order which
comes from outside is force which seduces or
threatens us ; duty lies only in ourselves ; it is
our own will, but our will in so far as we are
creators of an over-individual attitude.

If the system of our individual will acts is in-
terpreted and connected in the historical sciences,
the system of our over-individual will acts is
interpreted and connected in the normative
sciences, logic, aesthetics, ethics, and philosophy
of religion. Logic treats of the over-individual
will acts of affirming the world, aesthetics of
those of appreciating the world, religion of

28 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

those of transcending the world, ethics of those
of acting for the world ; and in virtue of this
attitude also are constituted all the side branches
of ethics, as jurisprudence and pedagogy. All
treat of over-individual valid will relations, and
no one has therefore directly to deal with exist-
ing psychical objects. On the basis of these
normative sciences the idealistic philosophy has
to build up its metaphysical system, which may
connect the disconnected will attitudes of our
ethical, sesthetical, religious, and logical duties
in one ideal dome of thoughts. But however
we may formulate this logically ultimate source
of all reality, we know at least one thing surely,
that we have deprived it of all meaning and of
all values and of all dignity, if we picture it as
something which exists. The least creature of
all mortals, acknowledged as a willing subject,
has more dignity and value than even an al-
mighty God, if he is thought of merely as a
gigantic psychological mechanism ; that is, as
an object the reality of which has the form of
existence.

VI

How do we come, then, to the idea of exist-
ing objects? There is no difficulty in under-
standing that. Our life is will, and our will has
its duties ; but every action turns toward those
means and obstacles and ends, those objects of
appreciation, which are material for our will and

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 29

our duties. Every act is thus a cooperation of
subjects and subjectively appreciated objects ;
we cannot fulfill our duty, therefore, if we do
not know what we have to expect from the
objects in this cooperation. There must arise,
then, the will to isolate our expectation about
the objects; that is, to think what we should
have to expect from the objects if they were inde-
pendent of the willing subjects. In reality, they
are never independent ; in our thoughts, we can
cut them loose from the willing subjects, and
think of them as objects which are not any more
objects of appreciation, but objects of perception
only. These objects in their artificial separation
from the real subject, thought of as objects of a
passive spectator, take by that change a form
which we call existence, and it is the aim of nat-
ural science to study these existing things. The
path of their study is indicated to them by the
goal they try to reach. They have to determine
the expectations the objects bring up ; at first,
therefore, they look out for those features of the
objects which suggest the different expectations,
and natural science calls these features of the
objects their elements. These elements are not
really in the objects, but they represent all that
which determines the possible variations of the
objects in the future. Thus science considers
the present thing a combination of elements to
determine its relation to the future thing ; but

30 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

the present thing is, then, itself the future of
the past thing, and it stands, in consequence,
between past and future ; that is, as a link in a
chain in which everything is determining the
future and determined by the past, everything
cause and everything effect.

Natural science finds in this attempt that
there may be two classes of such existing ob-
jects : objects which are possible, perceivable
objects for every subject, and others which are
perceivable only for one subject. Natural sci-
ence calls the first group physical objects, the
second group psychical objects, and separates
the study of them, as this relation to the one or
the many brings with it numerous characteristic
differences, the differences between physics and
psychology. But the point of view for both is
exactly the same ; both consider their material
as merely perceivable objects which are made up
from elements, and which determine one another
by causal connections. Since they are thought
as cut loose from the attitude of the will, neither
the physical nor the psychical objects can have
values or teleological relations.

But the will itself ? If psychology, like phy-
sics, deals with the objects of the world in their
artificial separation from the will, how can the
will itself be an object of psychology ? The
presupposition of this question is in some way
wrong ; the will is primarily not at all an object

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 31

of psychology. The real psychological objects
are the ideas of our perception and memory and
imagination and reason. Only if psychology
progresses, it must come to the point where it
undertakes to consider every factor of our men-
tal life from a psychological point of view ; that
is, as an object made up from atomistic elements
which the psychologist calls sensations. The
will is not a possible object ; psychology must
make a substitution, therefore ; it identifies the
real personality with the psychophysical organ-
ism, and calls the will the set of conditions
which psychologically and physiologically deter-
mines the actions of this organism. Now this
will, too, is made up of sensations, — muscle sen-
sations and others ; and this will depends upon
psychological laws, is the effect of conditions
and the cause of effects ; it is ironed with the
chains of natural laws to the rock of neces-
sity. The real will is not a perceivable object,
and therefore neither cause nor effect, but has
its meaning and its value in itself ; it is not an
exception to the world of laws and causes ; no,
there would not be any meaning in asking whe-
ther it has a cause or not, as only existing ob-
jects can belong to the series of causal relations.
The real will is free, and it is the work of such
free will to picture, for its own purposes, the
world as an unfree, a causally connected, an
existing system ; and if it is the triumph of mod-

32 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

ern psychology to master even the best in man,
the will, and to dissolve even the will into its
atomistic sensations and their causal unf ree play,
we are blind if we forget that this transforma-
tion and construction is itself the work of the
will which dictates ends, and the finest herald of
its freedom.

Of course, as soon as the psychologist enters
into the study of the will, he has absolutely to
abstract from the fact that a complicated substi-
tution is the presupposition for his work. He
has now to consider the will as if it were really
composed of sensational elements, and as if his
analysis discovered them. The will is for him
really a complex of sensations ; that is, a com-
plex of possible elements of perceptive ideas.
As soon as the psychologist, as such, acknow-
ledges in the analysis of the will a factor which
is not a possible element of perception, he de-
stroys the possibility of psychology just as much
as the physicist who acknowledges miracles in
the explanation of the material world denies
physics. There is nothing more absurd than to
blame the psychologist because his account of
the will does not do justice to the whole reality
of it, and to believe that it is a climax of forci-
ble arguments against the atomizing psychology
of to-day if philosophers exclaim that there is
no real will at all in those compounds of sensa-
tions which the psychologist substitutes. Cer-

PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE 33

tainly not, as it was just the presupposition of
psychology to abstract from that real will. It is
not wiser than to cast up against the physicist
that his moving atoms do not represent the phys-
ical world because they have no color and sound
and smell. If they sounded and smelled still,
the physicist would not have fulfilled his pur-
pose.

Psychology can mean an end, and can mean
also a beginning. It may be, and in this cen-
tury, indeed, has been, the last word of a natu-
ralistic attitude toward the world, — an atti-
tude which emphasized only what is expected
from the objects, and neglected the duties of the
subjects. But psychology degenerates into an
unphilosophical psychologism, just as natural sci-
ence degenerates into materialism, if it does not
understand that it works only from one side, and
that the other side, the reality which is not ex-
istence, and therefore no possible object of psy-
chology and natural science, is the primary real-
ity. Psychology may be also a beginning. It
can mean that we ought to abandon exaggerated
devotion for the physical world, that we ought
to look out for our inner world ; a good psycho-
logy is then the most important supplement to
those sciences which consider the inner life, not
as an existing, describable, explainable object, but
as a will system to be interpreted and to be ap-
preciated. If that is the attitude, the psycho-

34 PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

logical sciences on the one side, the historical
and normative sciences on the other side, can
really do justice to the totality of the problems
of the inner life. If psychology tries to stand
on both sides, its end must be near ; the real life
will tear it up and rend it in pieces. If it stands
with strong feet on the one side, and acknow-
ledges the right of the other side, it will have a
future. The psychology of our time too often
seems determined to die out in psychologism ;
that must be stopped. Psychology is an end as
the last word of the naturalistic century which
lies behind us; it may become a beginning as
the introductory word of an idealistic century to
be hoped for.

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY
I

IN the opinion of the public the most charac-
teristic feature of the present psychology is its
association with physiology ; the questions in re-
gard to the mind, which in earlier times belonged
to the domains of the philosopher only, are now
to be answered by inquiries as to the functions of
the brain. This new situation has everywhere
stirred up feelings of hope and feelings of fear ;
the hope in the hearts of enthusiastic admirers
of natural science, the fear in the souls of those
for whom the ethical values of life stand fore-
most. Each of these two antagonistic feelings
is based on a popular doctrine, and these two
doctrines have absolutely nothing in common
beyond the one fact that both are equally mis-
taken.

The hope-inspiring theory of the progressive
friends of psychology is that brain physiology
alone can teach us the real constitution of men-
tal life, as the brain is a perceivable, palpable
thing which can be dissected and microscopically
examined, while the soul is a merely hypotheti-

36 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

cal construction of the metaphysicians. All the
so-called knowledge of psychical life must thus
be vague and foggy, and all exact and scientific
knowledge of it must thus date from the time
when the ganglion cells and association fibres
were discovered to be the causes of mental
action. The fear-suggesting theory of the more
conservative friends of psychology does not deny
that many psychical acts are dependent upon
bodily functions, but while the others welcome
the fact as an instrument of science, they de-
spise it as an obstacle to an ethical life. All our
duties depend upon the freedom of our deci-
sions, and if it can be shown that our whole
mental life is determined by the physiological
processes in our brain, then the claim of free-
dom is meaningless ; we stand then fully under
the mechanical laws which move the molecules
in our body. The necessary and logical conse-
quence is that it must be a gain for morality to
show that at least some psychical functions, the
feelings for instance, or the attention or the
volitions, may be independent of intermingling
ganglion cells. The first view thus leads natu-
rally to the wish to find as many relations be-
tween mind and brain as possible; the second
view must lead to the opposite wish that such
relations may finally be recognized as incomplete
and full of exceptions.

The mistake of the psychophysiological enthu-

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 37

siasts lies more on the surface than that of the
accusers. We are told that we are to expect
an exact knowledge of the psychical facts from
our knowledge of the brain ; but what in the
world can we know better than the objects of
our immediate self -observation ? The observa-
tion and analysis of our mental facts is in no
way dependent upon a hypothesis in regard to
the soul ; it is the most direct object of our at-
tention, and we thus know endlessly more about
our psychical facts than about the functions of
the brain. Even two thousand years ago the
chief mental facts were well known, while the
most fundamental questions of brain physiology
are still to-day under lively discussion. Above
all, the history of science shows how in the times
of their cooperation psychology always had to
give and physiology to take ; light had to be
thrown from the side of the well-known psy-
chological facts upon the obscure physiological
facts, and never in the opposite direction. The
consequence of this situation is that psychologists
in their work of analysis and research into the
constitution of the psychical facts have not the
slightest reason for inquiring into any accom-
panying brain processes ; they cannot learn from
that side anything which they do not know bet-
ter from self -observation and the observation of
others. Whether a special mental act occurs in
one part of the brain or in another, whether

38 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

the cells or the fibres are engaged, whether the
processes are similar to the physical movements
in an electric wire or to the physiological actions
in an amreboid organism, whether the sensory
and motor centres are separate or identical, and
a hundred similar questions which stand in the
foreground of interest for the doctrine of psy-
chophysiological relations are all equally indif-
ferent for the study of the psychical facts as
such. The increase of scientific exactitude must
come from the use of more refined methods in
self-observation, and all the work done in our
modern laboratories of experimental psychology
is in the service of this endeavor, while the
methods of histology and comparative anatomy,
of pathology and vivisectional physiology, all
indispensable for the psychophysiological pro-
blems, are unknown, and ought to remain un-
known, in our psychological laboratories. The
hope that physiological psychology will give us
a fuller acquaintance with the psychological facts
as such is therefore an illusion.

But not less misleading is the fear that the
system of physiological psychology may inter-
fere with the values of our practical life. It
stands and falls with the conviction that the psy-
chical facts which are conceived as dependent
upon the brain machinery are the real inner
experience which embraces our duties and re-
Bponsibilities. A philosophical inquiry into the

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 39

relations of psychology to reality cannot leave
any doubt that such a belief is untenable. In
our real life our objects of action are not ideas
which are separated from the physical things,
but the physical and psychical objects form one
undifferentiated object of will, which from merely
secondary logical motives is divided into a physi-
cal and psychical part, and is then conceived as
independent of the acts of the subject. And
these acts themselves are also never given to us
as contents of consciousness, never as objects,
but as functions which we feel and live through.
Objects and subjective acts are thus alike trans-
formed into something which they never are in
reality as soon as the objects are conceived as
severed from the will and differentiated into
physical and psychical parts and the subjective
acts are conceived as psychical objects. All this
psychology must do in the interest of special
logical purposes of which we shall examine later
some of the motives and some of the conse-
quences. But whatever the motives may be, it
is clear that this construction of psychical ob-
jects, which precedes all special psychological
work, excludes from the start the possibility that
any connection and relation into which these
psychical facts enter can decide about the rela-
tions and connections of the real life.

There is thus no emotional interest involved
in the question whether a smaller or a larger

40 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

part of the psychical facts must be conceived as
the accompaniment of brain functions; the
problem is merely logical and theoretical, as are
also the considerations which lead to the ulti-
mate answer of the question. It is true that
the naturalists and psychologists themselves are
mostly inclined, in the eagerness of their special-
istic work, to overlook and to ignore this logical
basis of the relations, and to be satisfied with a
merely empirical foundation. The relation be-
tween mind and brain seems to them a fact of
observation, a chance fact whose limits must be
found by careful inquiry of the verifiable occur-
rences. They are not conscious of the deeper
spring of this inquiry; they follow their scien-
tific instinct as discoverers, and do not feel that
this instinct is controlled by logical demands
which decide what in the realm of observation
ought to be acknowledged as fact, and what
ought to be transformed till it satisfies the theo-
retical postulates.

II

Of course even the layman is familiar with
plenty of instances in which the empirical facts
suggest the view that the psychical facts some-
how depend upon the brain. Popularly best
known are the abnormal processes. A man be-
comes blind or deaf if special parts of the brain
are destroyed by a hemorrhage ; his intelligence

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 41

becomes disintegrated if he suffers from para-
lysis of the brain ; the brain state of sleep brings
with it the psychical wonders of dreams ; a blow
on the head may induce a state of fainting in
which all mental life disappears ; and chemical
substances introduced into the blood circulation
of the brain change our moods and emotions.
Such generally known experiences are supple-
mented by more complicated facts from all quar-
ters. The mental life of animals shows itself
to be parallel in its development to the differen-
tiation of the central nervous system ; the facul-
ties of human individuals appear to correspond
to a full development of the brain, the mental
life of the idiot to belong to a brain of inhibited
growth. To this class of facts belong all the
experiments of the physiologist who shows that
the artificial extirpation of a special centre in
the hemispheres of the brain destroys the peri-
pheral function, a function which, on the other
hand, can be artificially produced by an electrical
stimulation of the intact centre. Here belong
also the observations of comparative anatomy,
which prove the development of special brain
parts to be increased or decreased in different
animal groups according to the higher or lower
state of special psychical functions ; for instance,
the high development of the olfactory lobe in
animals which have a fine sense of smell. The
most different methods here work together to

42 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

make the collection of a large number of detailed
facts possible, and yet the psychologist follows
a wrong track if he believes that the results
which are yielded by such methods must be de-
cisive for his psychophysical convictions.

If the question were really a merely empirical
one, we should be obliged to limit the extension
of the psychophysical parallelism to the few
psychological processes for which the natural
sciences have already found the physiological
substratum, but in that moment all the interest
of the psychologist would disappear. He ac-
knowledges, in response to a logical demand, that
every single psychical fact has its physiological
counterpart or the whole inquiry becomes a use-
less and time-wasting luxury. Whether the psy-
chophysical connections have one exception or
a million is indifferent ; the belief that the con-
nection exists without exception is the chain on
which the whole pyschophysical system hangs,
and it must fall if the chain is broken, whether
broken once or a thousand times. If it were
otherwise — that is, if the psychophysical con-
nections were merely results of empirical observa-
tion — they would form an appendix to scientific
psychology which would be at least unnecessary
for the real psychological work. Psychology de-
scribes and explains the psychological facts ; it
is therefore not its task to study anything which
ties outside of the field of psychical facts^ if

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 43

such extension to the non-psychical facts is Dot
logically necessary for the study of the psychical
facts themselves. The study of the connections
between mind and body would then stand as a
special empirical science between psychology
and physics, but it would not be a part of psy-
chology itself. Such, however, is not the case.
Psychology needs the psychophysical connection
for its own special work, needs it as a logical sup-
position without which it cannot fulfill its proper
task, and it therefore acknowledges the complete-
ness of the connection independent of the special
empirical observations. Psychophysical paral-
lelism brings with it no ethical danger and no
materialistic consequences, because the connected
objects do not belong to reality, and are merely
theoretical constructions for special logical pur-
poses ; but in these constructed systems the con-
nection is absolutely complete and exceptionless
or it is altogether useless for psychology. The
decoration of our psychological lecture courses
with pretty physiological bric-a-brac and the
trimming up of our text-books with physiologi-
cal wood-cuts can hardly be admitted as an end
in itself.

Why does the psychologist transcend the lim-
its of the psychical world and look over into the
physical world, which is, as the name indicates,
never the direct object of his interests? The
usual answer is that the psychical facts need the

44 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

physical substratum for their explanation ; but 1
think we can go a long step farther and say that
even the description of the psychical facts needs
and constantly presupposes the reference to the
physical world, and that it is therefore an illusion
to believe that psychology can fulfill at least the
first part of its work, the description of its
material, without transgressing the boundaries
of consciousness.

Ill

Description means the communication of an
object by the communication of its elements.
Other ways of communication are open, but
only that method which analyzes the object into
elements and fixates the elements for the pur-
pose of communication is a description. The
choice of the elements and their fixation also can
of course reach very different levels. We may
analyze an animal by separating the chief parts
which we perceive from the outside, or we may
tear it in pieces to find out the inner parts also ;
we may make a careful anatomical dissection
which separates the different tissues, or we may
advance to a histological analysis which discrimi-
nates the different microscopical cells. The de-
scription thus stands the higher the more our
choice of elements takes account of the causal
connections, but even the most popular and un-
scientific report describes on the basis of an ana-

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 46

lysis. In the same way the fixation of the ele-
ments to be communicated may be increasingly
accurate : we may be satisfied to describe the
color or the form of the parts of the animal by
using the names of general conceptions which
include many similar objects, calling it green or
oval, or we may advance to a determination of
the number of ether vibrations and make mea-
surement of the dimensions in thousandths of a
millimeter : the principle remains the same.

How far can we describe psychological objects
in the same way, — an idea, for instance ? A
corresponding analysis is certainly possible. We
cannot really isolate the psychical elements, but
we can certainly separate them in consciousness,
turning the attention to one element after the
other, in our self -observation. Here also many
stages are possible ; the highest stage, corre-
sponding to the microscopical analysis of the
anatomist, is reached by self-observation under
the experimental conditions which our laborato-
ries furnish, — in other words, the analysis may
approach more and more nearly those elements
which are the necessary footholds for the ex-
planation of the facts ; but in any case there is
no theoretical objection to the analysis of mental
facts. Quite different is the second factor of
the descriptive process, the fixation of these ele-
ments for the purpose of communication. We
can say without limitation : a psychical element

o

46 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

can never be directly communicated, because
communication presupposes the possibility of a
mutual sharing in the object of experience,
while the psychical objects are from their nature
strictly individual property.

If we communicate by other methods than de-
scription, for instance by suggestion or gestures,
the other person takes part in our intentions and
purposes, and these intentions are then the ob-
ject of the communication. But these intentions
are not themselves psychical objects; they are the
ideal points towards which the meaning of our
ideas is directed, and the intention towards which
my ideas point may very well be at the same
time the goal for the attitudes of the other.
But we ask whether the content of consciousness
itself can possibly be an object in which the other
can take part, and this alone we deny. What
my ideas mean and intend is something in which
any other may participate, but my ideas them-
selves belong to me alone, and can, as psychical
objects, never be the ideas of any one else.
My consciousness is my castle, and even if a
mind-reader finds out my most hidden thoughts,
his claim does not mean that he has caught a
glimpse within my castle walls. He does not
become conscious of my psychical contents, but
he produces in himself ideas which he claims
correspond to my ideas; but not the slightest
sensation can ever belong to his and to my con-

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 47

sciousness together. All this is not a matter of
chance ; we cannot think of any psychical fact
for which it could be otherwise. In reality the
physical thing and our idea of it are one object,
and as soon as we differentiate it into a physical
and psychical part we have no other principle of
division than this one, that we call physical what-
ever is the possible object of experience for sev-
eral subjects, and psychical whatever cannot be
experienced by more than one. All the other
differences are secondary consequences of this
fundamental principle, and we have thus no rea-
son to be surprised that we find the latter true
without exception. No molecule moves in the
world which cannot be an object for every one,
and no sensation arises in a consciousness which
can be shared with a second subject.

The difference in the communication of physi-
cal and psychical objects is now evident. How-
ever I may analyze the physical thing, each ele-
ment is an object for me and my neighbor at
the same time, my object becomes his object
too, he can see it, touch it, hear it like myself,
and my communication is thus a demonstration
which fulfills its logical purpose in the most ideal
way, and my words have merely the function
of directing attention to the common property.
But it is not necessary that the physical object
should be present to our senses ; the words will
fulfill their communicating purpose no less if

48 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

they refer to an object which was experienced in
earlier time, or if the objects themselves were
never given; at least their elements may have
been shared. Whatever the form of the com-
munication about the physical world may be,
this reference to the physical world as the object
of common experience is always given. If I say
it rains, the other may never have seen rain, but
by the conceptions of water, sky, globule, falling
and so forth I can describe the rain from its ele-
ments, and each of these factors is understood
through its relation to the objective world. And
if even these conceptions were unknown, they
could finally be described by the mere measure-
ments in space and time, the knowledge of which
is presupposed in the acknowledgment of other
subjects.

There is no one of those who perceive the
outer world to whom I cannot describe the rain
and the snow and the thunder in terms of their
elements ; but how different if I wish to commu-
nicate that I am sorry, or glad, or afraid. In
practical life the words " I am afraid " do not
appear less descriptive than the words "it rains/'
and yet they have a quite different basis. Not
the least element in my fear as psychical content
can be demonstrated and offered for participa-
tion to others. Whether they call fear a state
which I call joy or violet odor no direct descrip-
tion can decide. However I may analyze it the

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 49

elements of my fear are just as incommunicable
as is the emotion as a whole.

But psychical states must be described some-
how; otherwise the possibility of psychology
would be excluded. If they are not directly
communicable we must take refuge in indirect
methods ; if the psychical facts are never object
for two, and thus strictly individual, we must
link them with physical processes which belong
to all. We understand what we mean by the
words fear, or shock, or joy, because we have
learned to use the words for those mental states
which are connected with special physical occur-
rences. The physical objects with which we link
them may be foregoing causes or following ef-
fects ; in any case we have an outer foothold
for them. We may call shock the mental state
which follows a sudden strong stimulus, or the
mental state which precedes a sudden contrac-
tion of the muscles ; either way is sufficient to
separate the one state from others for the pur-
poses of practical life. But it is clear that this
method also is not only dependent upon the
merely empirically founded belief that the same
causes or effects are connected with the same
psychical processes, but above all that it is not
a description, because the constitution and the
elements of the state are not communicated at
all. Is there no case in which the logical de-
mands are better fulfilled ?

60 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

This is now clearly the fact as regards the
ideas. The emotions link themselves with physi-
cal causes or effects, and everything in respect to
them is dependent upon doubtful observations
and interpretations ; the ideas, on the other hand.,
stand in a relation to physical things which is
anchored in philosophical ground and independ-
ent of chance observation ; the ideas mean
things, and the physical things and the ideas by
which we mean them are in reality one and the
same object. Here we have a logically necessary
connection which holds firm for the elements as
well as for the whole. The idea means the thing,
and any sensation in the idea means a feature of
the thing. The tone, the smell, the color as sen-
sation can thus be communicated indirectly by
reference to the sounding, smelling, luminous
physical object, and any degree of exactness
can be reached by the increasingly accurate de-
scription of the physical side. The ideas have
thus a perfectly exceptional situation. No other
mental state can find such logically necessary
connection with the physical world, as a feeling
or volition or emotion or judgment finds merely
empirical connections, and moreover connections
only in which the whole refers to a whole physi-
cal thing, but not every element to a special fea-
ture of the physical object.

Ideas and their elements alone can thus find a
logically satisfactory description in psychology ;

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 51

the description is indirect, but it is at least a
communication of elements. And yet it is easy
to understand that under one condition this ideal
method of description which we find for the ideas
may be found at our disposal for all the other
mental states as well. Psychology would then be
able to offer a complete description of its mate-
rial. The one condition is this. Let us call the
elements into which we can analyze our ideas by
means of self -observation by the name sensations.
It may then be that all the non-ideational mental
states also are made up of sensations. An emo-
tion or volition is never an idea, but their ele-
ments may be the same, just as the organic and
inorganic substances in nature are composed of
the same chemical elements. If an emotion or
judgment or volition were a complex of sensa-
tions, that is, a complex of possible elements of
ideas, then of course we could describe all psy-
chical facts with the same logical completeness
and safety, as every element of these subjective
states would be exactly determined by reference
to that particle of the physical world which is
meant by it as soon as it becomes part of an
idea ; that is, that with which it is identical from
the standpoint of undifferentiated reality.

Modern psychology, like every other active
and productive science, has had no leisure to stop
and inquire for the logical purposes in the ser-
vice of which its work is done. The scientist

52 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

follows his instincts, and these instinctive ener-
gies carry him, perhaps, more safely to the goal
than a conscious reflection on his ends and means;
but the philosopher must recognize these under-
lying purposes, and must bring all specialistic
work within this general point of view. If we
take such attitude toward the work in psychology
of the last twenty years, we can easily see that
not the least and not the most unimportant part
of it has been done in the unconscious service
of this one end — to make the non-ideational
states of mind describable. We have seen that
only one possibility would allow that. They are
describable in case they can be considered as
combinations of sensations ; our goal is, there-
fore, to replace the real emotions, judgments,
volitions, and so on, by complexes of sensations.
Complicated transformations are necessary for
this purpose, and yet the psychologist must work
in the belief and with the claim that these sen-
sations are not the result of his transformations,
but that he has discovered in them the real parts
of those mental states.

All the most modern theories which analyze
the emotions into complexes of bodily sensations,
and the will into ideational elements, and seek
sensational substance even in the most subtle
shades of the mind and in the most fugitive feel-
ings, have here their hidden spring. This move-
ment is unlimited; no content of consciousness

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 53

can resist its impulse. The aim of the psycholo-
gist is to describe the mental facts ; he must,
therefore, presuppose that all mental facts are
describable, and, since only elements of ideas can
be described, that every content of consciousness
is in reality a combination of sensations. As
long as the substitution remains incomplete the
psychologist feels that he has not discovered the
true nature of the facts. The belief that we con-
nect mental with physical processes merely in
the service of explanation is thus an illusion ;
the simplest description demands just the same.

IV

These claims of description do not mean that
the demand for explanation does not introduce
any new features into the system of relations
between the physical and the psychical worlds.
We can say even that a connection of a quite
different character must be acknowledged as
soon as we try to understand every psychical
phenomenon from its foregoing causes. This
new and in many ways higher form of psycho-
physical connection also can be developed here
only in general terms. In this case also the
principle itself may be more or less masked in
the soul of the psychologist who uses it, and here
again everything depends upon logical demands
which do not allow an exception, and not upon
empirical observation.

54 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

We may start from the empirical claim that
all our mental life goes on in our organism ; this
means at the outset only that my ideas and feel-
ings are with me now in this town, in this room,
in this body, probably in this head, but it does
not include any hypothesis as to the relation of
mind and body. My mental states are not out-
side of my epidermis, but they may go on some-
where, for instance at a special point of my brain,
absolutely independent of the functions of the
organism. Of course this empirical starting
point is itself reached only by a complicated
remodeling of the reality. Primarily the inner
experience has no spatial quality at all, and is
thus neither in a room nor in a brain ; space is a
form of its objects, not a form of its own reality.
But this introjection of the mental facts into the
physical organism may be acknowledged here as
granted without a discussion of the different
steps which lead to it. Even when this point is
reached, however, many possibilities of interpre-
tation are open; it is only the goal that lies
clear before us : we must explain the psychical
facts.

The wish to explain the psychical facts is not
an accidental afterthought resulting from an
abundance of curiosity; rather it is this wish
which has created the psychological facts as
such. In reality our objects are objects for the
will, that is, values. In striving towards the f ul-

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 55

fillment of the duties which life brings to us we
have an interest in determining what we have to
expect from the objects in so far as they are in-
dependent of our will. We thus separate the
object from the real active subject for the one
purpose of determining our justified expectations
in regard to the changes of the objects. In do-
ing so we create in thought independent objects,
which we call physical in so far as they are ob-
jects for every subject, and psychical in so far
as they are objects for one subject only. The
world is thus re-thought as physical and psychi-
cal phenomena only under the pressure of the
intention to find out the influence which the ob-
ject will have on the future, that is, the effects
which it will produce. In other words, we ac-
knowledge psychical objects as such merely as
factors in a system of causes and effects, that is,
as factors in an explainable system. We cannot
ask whether the psychical and physical facts are
explainable or not; the possibility of their expla-
nation is their only legitimate claim to existence.
If we wish to take another attitude toward the
experience, — the attitude of appreciation and
inner understanding, for instance, — then we
deal with the inner life as it is given in reality,
and nothing suggests that transformation which
creates psychical and physical objects.

How is the explanation of psychical pheno-
mena possible ? We consider a phenomenon

56 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

explained as soon as we can show that it is
necessarily connected with another existing fact
which precedes. At the first glance this de-
mand seems to be satisfied whenever we can
bring two facts under an empirical law which
says whenever A occurs B must follow. The
necessity of the connection between the single
facts appears then as a logical consequence of
the general fact which the law reports ; it must
be so and not otherwise this time because it is al-
ways so. Psychology and physics therefore seek
empirical laws. The attraction of the iron is
explained by the laws of electricity, and the re-
production of the idea is explained by the laws
of association. The two sciences seem in this
respect perfectly parallel, and yet they mean
something theoretically absolutely different. All
the laws of the physical universe are in the last
analysis applications of the laws of mechanics.
The question is not whether every empirical law
is already recognized in its mechanical factors,
but it must be acknowledged that natural science
has not reached its ideal end till the physical
world is understood as a world of atoms which
move according to mechanical laws. All physi-
cal, chemical, and biological laws are then merely
applications and combinations of the mechanical
laws for special complexes of atoms.

None of the empirical laws are as such neces-
sary connections for our intellect ; they are con-

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 57

densed experiences, and if the experiences were
otherwise the laws would be changed. The me-
chanical axioms, on the other hand, are of a very
different character ; they are the necessary forms
of our apperception of the outer world, — the
forms of connection which make the thinking of
a connected world of objects possible at all, — •
and the aim to transform all empirical laws ulti-
mately into mechanical ones is thus the unavoid-
able consequence of the logical nature of the
latter. The mechanical laws are therefore the
real basis of all necessity in the physical connec-
tions. The physical or chemical or biological
laws would in themselves not contain anything
which could convince us that an event must
happen just so and not otherwise, but as soon
as we understand them to be complications of
mechanical laws they are logically indispen-
sable. All our trust in the necessity of the
physical laws is thus based finally on the con-
viction, that if we knew ah1 we should recognize
every law as a consequence of the mechanical
axioms which are laws of thought applied to
the conception of space and time.

All the axiomatic doctrines about causal con-
nections in the universe depend upon one law,
which is the fundamental presupposition for the
existence of the physical world, the law that
the causes and effects are quantitatively equal.
The totality of physical processes can then be

58 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

expressed in causal equations, and every effect
can theoretically be determined and exactly cal-
culated from the causes. As all physical laws
can thus be reduced to mechanical axioms, which
are ultimately dependent upon this postulate of
causal equations, the necessity of the physical
universe finds here its real foundation ; this ulti-
mate axiom links all physical processes in the
world by the chain of necessity, and thus ad-
mits, theoretically, an absolutely perfect expla-
nation.

Nothing of this kind is possible, on the other
hand, for the empirical laws of the psychical
world. The laws of association and all the
other empirical laws, in which modern psycho-
logy condenses the results of observation, can
never be transformed into causal equations, and
therefore never based on a foundation of neces-
sity. They can never make us understand that
with a special preceding cause absolutely this
special effect must result. Why is it so ?
Why is all that gives its ultimate meaning and
strength to physical law definitively denied to
the psychical laws? It is not a matter of
chance ; no, it is the result of the fundamental
act by which the subject divides the real object
into a physical and a psychical thing, meaning
by physical all that is a possible object for every
twbject, by psychical all that is a possible object
for one subject only. This definition makes it

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 59

logically necessary that the physical object shall
not disappear and shall not be newly created,
but must be equal in all changes, while the psy-
chical object, which cannot be the object of two
subjective acts, must therefore be created and
disappear in every new act. One psychical ob-
ject can then not contain another, and can hence
not be considered as its multiple. It cannot be
understood, therefore, as a measurable quantity,
and is thus eternally unfit for a causal equation,
and therefore for a connection by necessity.

The claim that psychological facts as such can
never be directly connected by necessity may be
misunderstood as meaning that the acts which
form our inner life have no inner connection.
The opposite is true. Our inner life in its real
activity is bound together in all its acts, but it is
an inner connection, not an outer one, as it refers
to the will, while objects can have no other con-
nection than a causal one. The real acts of our
life bind each other teleologically by their inten-
tions and meanings, but as soon as we transform
the acts into psychical objects this inner connec-
tion loses all its meaning. Our acknowledgment
of premises binds us in acknowledging the con-
clusions, but this connection of judgments is
only logically, that is, teleologically, necessary ;
psychologically the judgments as psychical con-
tents can connect themselves with a wrong con-
clusion just as well as with the logical one.

60 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

The connection of our real inner life is not a
causal one, while psychological facts as such, that
is, as objects, find causal connection or are not
connected at all. We have seen that they can-
not necessarily be connected in a direct way,
because they cannot enter into a causal equation.
To concede that they ought then not to be ex-
plained at all is still less possible, as we have
seen that we conceive mental life as a series of
psychical objects merely for the purpose of link-
ing it causally. It follows that we must then
take the way which we were forced to choose in
the interest of description ; that is, we must try
to do indirectly what is impossible by direct
methods, we must connect the unexplainable
psychical world with the explainable physical
world. If the idea of the physical world in-
cludes the postulate that every physical process
can be understood as the necessary result of the
foregoing process, and if we are able to show
for every psychical process that it is connected
with a physical one, we can consider the psychi-
cal facts themselves as causally connected when-
ever the corresponding physical processes are
causally linked.

V

The purpose of this connection would be
fulfilled by any material that shows a logically
constant relation. In the discussion of the

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 61

principles of description we have seen that only
one connection between psychical and physical
facts — that between perception and perceived
object — has logical necessity, because this con-
nection can be deduced from primary identity.
It is evident that this relation cannot be used, at
least in this direct form, for the purposes of ex-
planation. By description we aim at making the
described mental state a kind of public property ;
every one- who understands the description finds
the idea which suits the description in his own
mind; and we must therefore link it with a part
of the physical world, which is practically at the
disposal of every one. The explanation, on the
other hand, does not seek to formulate a propo-
sition about the mental states of other subjects ;
it strives to set forth the one mental fact which
actually appears in me or in you. It must thus
refer to a part of the physical world which be-
longs to the individual, that is, to our body.
Our body is, of course, also like every physical
thing, an object of perception for all, and just
for that reason it is possible to take the processes
in the body on which the explanation is based as
material for description and communication ; but
in a more essential sense my body is an indi-
vidual object, as it is the one object whose local
and temporal relations to other objects determine
my individual view of the world. If we describe
an idea the reference to such a practically indi-

62 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

vidual object would be unsatisfactory, as it must
be linked with the corresponding idea in every
one to be a real description. If we explain an
idea the reference to a practically common object
would be useless, as we are seeking to explain
a strictly individual fact, the psychical object
which I have in this special moment. In the
description of the idea of the moon I refer to
the moon itself, claiming that wherever the
physical moon exists there is given the material
from which can be learned what idea I mean.
But if I wish to explain why I now have the
perception of the moon it would not do to refer
again merely to the existence of the moon, since
the fact that the moon exists certainly does not
logically imply that every one at present has the
perception of the moon in consciousness. It is
logically necessary that whenever, for the pur-
pose of explanation, psychical facts are linked
with physical ones the physical processes must
be processes in the individual bodies. We can
even add that it must be a process in the body
which cannot be an object for our neighbors in
the same way as for ourselves. A process of my
peripheral organs would thus be as unsatisfac-
tory a means of explanation as the existence of
the moon. The fact that something happens to
my hand, for instance, cannot serve as explana-
tion for the appearance of a special mental state,
for then my neighbor, who can perceive my hand

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 63

as I do, would necessarily have the same feeling
if that hand process and the feeling were two
objects which really belonged together. A cen-
tral part of the body, which cannot be the object
of sense perception while it is part of my body,
is alone in question. This is the reason that
all the peripheral parts of the body can be and
always are material for our descriptions, for in-
stance in the reference to muscles, joints, glands,
and so on, while the brain, which is not an
object of perception, can never be used for the
description. Exactly the opposite is necessarily
true of the explanation.

We thus need for explanation a process in the
physical individual body which is not a possible
object of perception while we have the psychical
experience, and for which can be found a uni-
vocal and necessary connection with the psychi-
cal object. This condition is realized for the
perceptive idea and that brain process which
stands in causally necessary dependence upon
the perceived object. The relation between the
perceptive idea, on the one side, and the brain
process which is produced by the perceived ob-
ject on the other side, fulfills those necessary
conditions in ideal completeness, inasmuch as the
connection between the idea and its object is
based on epistemological identity and the rela-
tion between the object and its effect on the
individual brain is necessary from physical caus-

64: PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

ality. The brain stimulation which is caused
by the moon is then not conceived as a cause
for the perception of the moon any more than
the perceived object itself was conceived as the
cause. The moon is the cause of the brain
action, but not of the idea. The material moon
belongs to the perception of it primarily, not as
a cause, but as the counterpart which is in epis-
temological reality identical with the perceptive
idea ; and it is merely this logical relation that
is kept up when the physiological effect of the
moon in our brain is substituted for the moon
itself. This brain excitement, also, is then in
no way the cause of the idea and the idea in
no way the effect of the brain action ; even the
usual metaphors which say that it is the inside
of the brain process, or that it is parallel to the
brain process, or that they belong together as
do a concave and a convex surface, are merely
practically useful expressions for a relation of a
strictly logical character which is derived from
epistemological identity. The psychophysical
parallelism of brain function and idea does not,
therefore, seek at all to explain the idea by the
physiological process, or vice versa, but merely
to state that they necessarily belong together,
and thus to admit the further consequence that
whenever the physical process is causally pro-
duced the parallel psychical idea must be
conceived as existing. Causality thus connects

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 65

only the physical objects directly, while the psy-
chical ideas are indirectly linked as accompani-
ments of the physiological processes. We have
seen that such a physical causal connection is
in principle a connection of absolute necessity,
not comparable with the combination suggested
by an observed regularity. So far, then, as
the ideas can fee understood as counterparts of
physiological processes which are causally con-
nected, this convincing necessity binds them,
while as merely psychical facts they were dis-
connected members.

If it were our goal to extend this method of
indirect causal binding to the whole content of
consciousness, three conditions would have to be
fulfilled. First, the psychophysical parallelism
which expresses the relation of the brain process
to the idea would have to be acknowledged for
the parts of the idea also ; every element of the
idea would have to correspond to a special part
of the physiological process which the idea as a
whole accompanies. Secondly, every content of
consciousness must be capable of analysis into
possible elements of ideas, that is, into sensa- .
tions; and thirdly, the physiological processes, f
which are conceived as accompaniments of all
contents of consciousness, must be capable of
being linked by physical causality, either among
themselves or with the events of the universe
outside of the brain. Of these three conditions

66 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

we have seen the second one to be fulfilled in so
far as we acknowledge the mental life to be de-
scribable. The transformation of the inner life
into sensations was the only way to describe it,
and as the possibility of description is granted as
a presupposition of psychology, therefore we have
a right to presuppose that all mental states are
complexes of sensations, however far we may be
at present from a full knowledge of all the ele-
ments which compose it. The fulfillment of the
first and third conditions can, of course, be given
merely by the work of the physiologist ; the
psychologist can hardly add anything. The
physiologist, on the other hand, cannot find any
insurmountable difficulty in striving towards a
demonstration of their possibility. The over-
whelming manifoldness of the histological ele-
ments of the central nervous system and the
complication of its structure, the difficulty of
observing its functions in a direct way, and
many other peculiar factors open an almost un-
limited field to the interpretation of the physio-
logist; there is no reason why he could not select
as truth merely those facts which point towards
the fulfillment of the two mentioned conditions,
and why he could not supplement these facts by
constructions which make up a system in which
these logical presuppositions for the explicability
of the psychical facts are fulfilled. Exactly this
and nothing else the modern brain physiologist

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 67

is attempting, and, like all other scientists, he
must presuppose that the goal at which he is
aiming can be reached. He thus takes for
granted that every sensation is accompanied by
a special brain process, and that all brain pro-
cesses can be explained through physical cau«
sality.

Under these circumstances the totality of our
mental life can be conceived as linked indirectly
by real necessity, but it is not less clear that under
these circumstances our interest as psychologists
is directed merely to the general theory of psycho-
physical parallelism and not to the special facts
of the psychophysical connections. We must
acknowledge that every mental fact is the accom-
paniment of a special brain process, and this abso-
lutely without any possible exception, because
under this condition alone is it possible to con-
ceive the psychical objects as causally connected,
and it was for the purpose of causal interpreta-
tion only that the transformation of the inner
experience into psychical objects was made. But
we cannot have as psychologists any interest in
the question of the special brain process which
accompanies a special given psychical phenome-
non ; that is physiology, and psychology has
nothing to learn from it. We take for granted
that such a connection exists, indeed our whole
explanatory psychology would collapse if we
allowed the slightest exception; but we do not

68 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

learn anything about the psychical facts them-
selves when we hear that the process takes place
in the cortex or in the subcortical centres, in the
ganglion cell or in the dendrite, or in the front
part or in the side part of the brain. Moreover,
it is now clear why the conviction of the psy-
chologist, that every mental state has its physio-
logical accompaniment, is fully independent of
the special discoveries of physiology and patho-
logy ; it is not the result of observations, but of
postulates which are logically unavoidable if we
are to have psychology at all.

VI

There remains, of course, the possibility of the
objection that the empirical facts do not allow a
construction which satisfies such psychophysical
postulates, and that therefore the hypothetically
demanded psychology is an end which can never
be reached, and thus an impossible science. If
such view is correct, if a consistent descriptive
and causally explaining psychology cannot be
realized, it is evident whither the inheritance
must go. If the mental life cannot be explained
causally, — and that means psychophysically, —
then the whole inner experience must be given
over to the subjectifying sciences, which inter-
pret it by its meaning and by its values, taking
the inner lif e as a unity and as a will act, which
it certainly is in reality. The objections to ex-

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 69

plaining psychology from this side are essen-
tially two. On the one side, it is said that
the physiological system, which alone carries the
responsibility for all psychological connections,
can never explain the intellectual and teleological
character of our connections in consciousness.
On the other hand, it is emphasized that the struc-
ture and the connections of the brain are totally
inadequate to satisfy the other demand that a
special brain process shall correspond to every
possible variation of the psychical experience.
These two objections must now engage our at-
tention.

It is quite true that the first claim seems an-
tagonistic to all the instinctive feelings of a
popular philosophy. The psych ophysical paral-
lelism which we have deduced as a necessary
logical postulate if psychology is to exist at all,
demands indeed not less than the determination
of all our psychophysical functions by the dispo-
sitions and causal connections of processes in
physical matter. Whatever we think, feel, will,
and act can, as psychophysical process, be exactly
determined by the totality of active and latent
causes in the physical system. This seems to de-
prive our inner life of all its values, and, as we
are accustomed to connect every appreciation in
life with inner experience, it seems deplorable
to conceive this inner life as dependent upon the
blind movements of feelingless matter. But we

70 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

have emphasized from the beginning that here
every emotional interference means confusion.
Values and duties, freedom and responsibility,
belong to the inner life in its real activity, but
not to the system of psychological facts into
which we have transformed the inner experience.
As soon as the remoulding of the reality into
physical and psychical objects is completed the
latter do not stand nearer to the attitudes of the
real personality than do the former. Whether
a result is produced by the causal mechanism of a
physical substance, or by the causal actions of
a mental stuff, is not different from the point
of view of dignity ; both schemes are equally far
from the teleological actions of the real subject.
The question is thus merely whether the state of
science makes it appear possible to explain the
totality of psychophysical functions, even the
wisest word and the best deed, as the necessary
product of physiological processes.

The problem is a biological one, and the biolo-
gist need not wait for the philosopher with his
epistemological postulates deduced from the ne-
cessary limitations of psychology. The biologist
finds a direct impulse to such considerations in-
dependent of all psychological questions in the
fundamental principle of physics, the law of the
conservation of energy. He is, of course, mis-
taken in believing that it is based less on philo-
sophical reasons than on empirical observation,

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 71

but it is in any case a non-psychological principle
which leads to the same result as the psychologi-
cal discussions : every action, every expression,
every function which seems to refer to psychical
experience must find the totality of its causes on
the physical side, since every exception would be
a physical miracle. The slightest physical action
which is not completely determined by the fore-
going physical causes would represent an increase
of the sum of energy, a concession by which the
whole system of physical science would be hope-
lessly undermined, and which must be uncom-
promisingly denied, even at the present stage of
science, which is certainly still far from demon-
strating the constancy of the sum of energies in
all variations. Thus the difference between the
two possible ways of the biologist is merely this :
When he starts from the physical laws he seeks
to explain human actions, and this demand for
physical explanation of the motor discharges
leads him to the conviction that the psychical
states also are, from his standpoint, merely accom-
paniments of physiological processes. When he
starts from the psychical facts and their unfitness
for causal interdependence, he aims directly at
finding a physiological accompaniment to every
psychical fact, and thence comes to the conclu-
sion that the motor discharges can be explained
through these accompanying brain excitements ;
the final outcome, however, is in both cases the
same.

T2 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

Does the biologist ever feel discouraged in
such studies by the valuable character of the
processes, by that factor which seems to naive
eclecticism not only the moral hindrance, but
also the chief theoretical difficulty? Does it
retard his explanations when the result of the
.brain functions shows logical and practical
adjustment to the outer conditions and to the
interests of the acting organism, just as if a
deliberating intelligence had opened and closed
the right switches and tracks in the cerebral
system? Decidedly not; more than that, we
may say that this wisdom and usefulness is for
him the key to the whole situation.

The biologist naturally compares the postu-
lated functions of the brain with the actions of
the other organs in the organism and finds every-
where the same adaptation and the same select-
iveness without ever taking refuge in the too easy
hypothesis that an intellectual subject stands
behind the stage and pulls the wires. Such a
soul hypothesis is no doubt convenient, but it
leaves all the problems unsolved, and would be
in itself a still more complicated system to ex-
plain. After a hearty meal millions and millions
of cells are working in our vegetative system
which cooperate in the interest of the nutrition
of the organism with a wisdom no council of
chemists could surpass ; yet the physiologist
would think it a cheap hypothesis to suppose

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 73

that a stomach-soul controls these useful and
adapted actions. The same thing is true of the
apparatus of blood circulation, of breathing, of
procreation, and so on. But everywhere the
biologist takes this usefulness not as increasing
the difficulty of his explanations, but as the bridge
towards a causal understanding; the modern
biologist would feel himself lost only on finding
a useless or disadvantageous organ which could
not be understood as an abnormal individual dis-
turbance, or as the remainder of a formerly useful
organ. The useful organ alone can have found
the conditions for its development in the growth
of the race. The digestive apparatus of man
with its fairy-tale-like complication can be fol-
lowed in this phylogenetic development from
the highest mammals down to the protozoons,
where the assimilation of nourishing substance
is the function of the whole protoplasmic sub-
stance. With the growing differentiation of the
organism only those variations of the vegetative
apparatus were not eliminated which served the
purposes of the organism and its descendants j
every useless formation was destroyed in the
struggle for existence, and thus lost its chance
of being inherited. It is thus just the useful
complications which become explicable on me-
chanical principles to the biologist of the Dar-
winian age.

T4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

VII

Why not apply this same view to the functions
of the brain? One thing is of course evident
from the first : the biologist must consider not
merely a part of the apparatus, but the whole, as
only the whole can be useful. No biology can
explain the development of the heart without
the peripheral blood vessels, or the liver without
the stomach ; the brain alone is not the whole,
it is the central part, as is the heart in the
blood system. The brain is useful merely as
the central organ of a system which begins
with the sense organs, connects them by a hun-
dred thousand sensory nerves with the central
nervous system, and connects this central part, by
means of the motor nerves, with the muscles of
the organism. The psychophysical functions
without muscles to express them, or the centrally
controlled motor system without sense-organs to
adjust the functions to the outer world, would be
biologically useless. This whole arc, from the
sense organs through the brain to the muscles, is
on the other hand an apparatus not more and
not less useful than the circulatory or respiratory
apparatus; they all represent a perfect adapta-
tion of the organism to the outer world.

If this arc is looked on as one apparatus, we
have indeed no difficulty in following the phylo-
genetic development downward to the lowest

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 75

forms in which the functions of this arc were
secured by the protoplasmatic activity of the
whole organism. Among the protozoons we find
two types of reaction to outer stimuli : the con-
traction of the whole body under disadvantageous
stimulation and the pseudopodic extension under
favorable stimulation. Both reactions are most
useful characteristics, since contraction brings
the smallest possible surface in contact with the
dangerous substance, while extension offers the
largest possible surface to the beneficial sur-
roundings. It states the problem wrongly to
ask how the lowest animals came to this acquisi-
tion : it is just by virtue of this variation that
the protoplasmic substance becomes an animal.
As soon as organisms with the power of such
reaction exist, the differentiation of the under-
lying substratum of this function is a necessary
accompaniment to the increasing complication
and growth of the animals. Firstly, the animal
cannot reach its prey and cannot protect itself
against its dangers if at the higher stages of
development the whole body still goes through
the reactions. The stimulation and the motor
response must become more and more localized
and the transformation of excitement into dis-
charge must thus find isolated paths ; we call
them nerves. But the protective function of
this apparatus still remains too limited for a
higher stage if the reaction answers merely the

76 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

outer stimuli of the moment. It needs thus
secondly the development of an organ by which
the reaction can become the discharge of all the
foregoing stimuli together, an organ in which
the after effects of earlier impressions remain as
molecular dispositions which have a reenforcing
or varying or inhibitory influence on the dis-
charges of the new impressions. Such an organ
must develop its possibilities steadily in the phy-
logenetic development as it adjusts the move-
ments of the organism to a circle of conditions
which is the wider the more this apparatus is
differentiated ; we call it the central nervous
system. Its biological functions are those which
we refer in psychological interpretation to mem-
ory, attention, volition, and so forth. In prin-
ciple it is nothing new ; the bug, the frog,
the dog, adjust their useful and protective reac-
tions merely to an increasingly large set of
stimuli, spread over space and time, while the
central nervous system of even the mammal does
not produce any movement which better adjusts
the organism of its owner to its surrounding
than does the protoplastic substance of the in-
fusoria.

Nothing new is brought by the step forwards
from animal to man ; it is the steady development
of a biological mechanism which does not change
its functions in spite of new and characteristic
complications. The life of man brings two fac-

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 77

tors into the evolution which were not unknown
but insignificant in lower stages of the living
world : the tool and the division of labor. Su-
perficial biologists sometimes believe themselves
to be true Darwinians only when they predict
for man a development towards an over-man
with a still more developed body, and they even
go so far as to construct an ethics which shall
serve such biological progress. That the biolo-
gical development cannot suddenly stop is of
course true. A higher organism is indeed to
succeed the lower one in the human race too,
but the development has reached with man a
form in which progress does not mean simply dif-
ferentiation of the body. The tools of technique
and the means of communication through which
division of labor is possible, in short, the products
of civilization, are the new organs of man, and
their development in the struggle for existence
continues in a direct biological line the progress
of the animals. The only biologically possible
over-man is the man with higher civilization, and
it would correspond to zoological laws that he is
not more highly developed in his bodily appara-
tus ; the latter may even be reduced, since the
man does not need strong legs if he has locomo-
tives, nor strong fists if he has cannons, nor
strong eyes if he has microscopes, nor a strong
memory if he has libraries.

The tool in its widest sense was indeed the

78 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

greatest step forwards, as it means an extension
of the physiological arc at both its ends, char-
acterized by the entirely new attribute that it
is detachable and thus not destroyed in the
death of the organism by which it is produced.
The individual can attach to his arc apparatus
the products of all preceding generations, and
thus readjust his purposes with an incomparable
richness of means. And in the same direction
works the division of labor, the other great
biological scheme which nature has tried with
man. The functions of the individual sense-
organ-brain-muscle arc are for the complicated
man not sufficient to bring to his brain all the
stimulations which need motor adjustment or to
produce, even with the tools of civilization, ah1
the reactions which would be nutritious, protec-
tive, and creative. If one acts for the advantage
of others, and they repay it by acting for his
benefit, a mutual adjustment can be reached by
which a much larger amount of advantageous
motor reaction and sensory stimulation can be
secured for the individual. The necessary sup-
position is the development of the means of
communication from the simplest language to
the cable and the printing press and the coin,
and the result is the market and the state.

And yet this civilized man with his warships
and newspapers and universities is not better
adapted to his conditions of life than the micro-

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 79

scopical rhizopod to its simpler conditions; in
both cases nature has produced that development
of the reaction apparatus which is in its function-
ing useful to the organism, and its very useful-
ness gives us a foothold for explanation. We
naturally think here of one side of human life
which seems so fully to contradict such a biolo-
gical construction that the whole theory appar-
ently loses its value. Man is an ethical being,
and our morality finds its value just in the fact
that we act without reference to our personal
advantage. Nature cannot produce according
to biological laws an apparatus which possesses
normally functions which are useful to other
individuals but disadvantageous to the acting
organism. Actions in the interest of the off-
spring form an exception which explains itself
and confirms the rule, but the moral action
seems indeed inexplicable as long as every action
is explained as a biologically necessary reaction
of the organism. But we must separate the
motives of the ethical action from the action
itself ; the anticipated idea may be to the advan-
tage of the neighbor only, and yet the action
may have effects which are indirectly advanta-
geous to the actor. In our ethical functions we
perform reactions which we do not need for
ourselves, but just that we are doing all the
time in our economical functions also ; the shoe-
maker makes many more shoes than are necessary

80 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

to protect his foot. In our economical functions
we hope and wait for the exchange, in our
ethical functions we do not wait for it, but the
exchange comes nevertheless, and only because
it comes in the long run could nature afford to
create this kind of reaction apparatus. To re-
ceive all the great advantages which we enjoy
when others are good and helpful and generous
to us, there is only one way — we must be
generous and good and helpful ourselves. If it
were otherwise nature would have abolished the
luxury of variations in such moral directions.
We praise the sacrifice of life as the highest
ethical action, and it is indeed clear that here, at
least, no exchange is possible, after the action, if
we do not admit fame as a substitute. But here
ethical appreciation, which considers the motive
only and not the effects, does not bind biology.
From a biological standpoint the ethical sacrifice
of life is not a proof against the principle that
every psychophysical action is useful to the actor ;
it is merely a case of overfunctioning. We
have no useful organ in our body which cannot
kill us when we overwork it ; if we run too fast
our heart may kill us. Whenever the useful
ethical apparatus functions with an abnormal
intensity, life is lost, but that this intensity is
really abnormal follows simply from the fact
that if the voluntary sacrifice of life were a
normal function there would be no next genera-

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 81

tion to learn and to imitate that prescription.
In short, the biologist finds no difficulty in bring-
ing the totality of the psychophysical functions
under the biological and therefore ultimately
under the mechanical aspect ; that postulate of
psychology is in this respect thus realizable.
That such biological construction does not touch
at all the problems of the real life and of ethics
is a matter of course.

VIII

It may then be granted that the usefulness
and adaptedness of the psychophysical functions
would not contradict the mere mechanical char-
acter of the substratum upon whose causal func-
tions we must think the psychical connections
dependent. But we had a second chief objec-
tion before us. The structure of the brain seems
far too uniform to furnish a sufficient manifold-
ness of functions if we really demand a physio-
logical process corresponding to every possible
variation of the content of consciousness. The
mere number of elements cannot be decisive ;
if they are all functionally coordinated they can
offer merely the basis for coordinated psychical
functions. If we have psychical functions of
different orders, it would not help us even if we
had some millions more of the uniform elements.
It would be useless to deny that here indeed exists
a great difficulty for our present psychology ; the

82 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

only question is whether this difficulty really
opposes the demands and suppositions of psy-
chology or whether it means that the usual the-
ories of to-day are inadequate and must be im-
proved. It seems to me that the latter is the
case, and that hypotheses can be constructed
by which all demands of psychology can be satis-
fied without the usual sacrifice of consistency.
The situation is the following : —

The whole scheme of the physiologists operates
to-day in a manif oldness of two dimensions : they
conceive the conscious phenomena as dependent
upon brain excitements which can vary firstly
with regard to their localities and secondly with
regard to their quantitative amount. These two
variations then correspond to the quality of the
mental element and to its intensity. In the
acoustical centre, for instance, the different pitch
of the tone sensations corresponds to locally
different ganglion cells, the different intensities
of the same tone sensation to the quantity of the
excitement. Association fibres whose functions
are not directly accompanied by conscious experi-
ences connect these millions of psychophysical
elementary centres in a way which is imagined
on the model of the peripheral nerve. No seri-
ous attempt has been made to transcend this sim-
ple scheme. Certainly recent discussions have
brought many propositions to replace the simple
physiological association fibre which connects the

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 83

psychophysical centres by more complicated sys-
tems, — theories, for instance, in regard to the
opening and closing of the connecting paths or
in regard to special association centres or special
mediating cell groups, — but these and others
stick to the old principle that the final psycho-
physical process corresponds to the strength and
locality of a sensory stimulation or of its equiva-
lent reproduction, whatever may have brought
about and combined the excitements.

It is true that it has been sometimes suggested
that the same ganglion cell may also go over into
qualitatively different states of excitement, and
thus allow an unlimited manifoldness of new
psychophysical variations. But it is clear that
to accept such an hypothesis means to give up
all the advantages of brain localization. The
complicatedness of the cell would be in itself
sufficient to give ground to the idea that its
molecules may reach some millions of different
local combinations; and if every new combina-
tion corresponds to a sensation, all the tones and
colors and smells and many other things may go
on in one cell. But then it is of course our duty
to explain those connections and successions of
different states in one cell, and that would lead
to conceiving the cell itself as constructed with
millions of paths just like a miniature brain ; in
short, all the difficulties would be transplanted
into the unknown structure of the cell. If we,

84 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

on the other hand, do not enter into such spec-
ulations, the acceptance of qualitative changes
in the cell would bring us to the same point
as if we were satisfied to speak of qualitative
changes of the brain in general. It would not
solve the problem but merely ignore it, and
therefore such an additional hypothesis cannot
have weight.

The only theory which brings in a really new
factor is the theory of innervation feelings.
This well-known theory claims that one special
group of conscious facts, namely, the feelings of
effort and impulse, are not sensations and there-
fore not parallel to the sensory excitements, but are
activities of the consciousness and parallel to the
physiological innervation of a central motor path.
At this point of course comes in at once the
opposition of the philosophical claim that every
psychical fact must be, as we have seen, a con-
tent of consciousness, and made up of sensations,
that is, of possible elements of ideas, to become
describable and explainable at all. The so-called
active consciousness, the philosopher must hold,
has nothing to do with an activity of the con-
sciousness itself, as consciousness means from
the psychological standpoint only the kind of
existence of psychical objects. It cannot do
anything, it cannot have different degrees and
functions, it only becomes conscious of its con-
tents, and all variations are variations of the

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 85

content, which must be analyzed without remain-
der into elements which are theoretically coordi-
nated with the elements of ideas, that is, with the
sensations, while consciousness is only the general
condition for their existence. But also the em-
pirical analysis and experiment of the practical
psychologist are in this case in the greatest har-
mony with such philosophical claims and opposed
to the innervation theory. The psychologist
can show empirically that this so-called feeling
of effort is merely a group of sensations like
other sensations, reproduced joint and muscle
sensations which precede the action and have
the role of representing the impulse merely on
account of the fact that their anticipation makes
inhibitory associations still possible. It would
thus from this point of view also be illogical
to think the psychophysical basis of these sen-
sations different in principle from that of other
sensations. If the other sensations are accom-
paniments of sensory excitements in the brain,
the feelings of impulse cannot claim an excep-
tional position.

But are quality and intensity really the only
differences between the given sensations ? Can
the whole manifoldness of the content of con-
sciousness really be determined by variations in
these two directions only ? Certainly not ; the
sensations can vary even when quality and inten-
sity remain constant. As an illustration we may

86 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

think, for instance, of one variation which is
clearly not to be compared with a change in kind
and strength of the sensation ; namely, the varia-
tion of vividness. Vividness is not identical
with intensity ; the vivid impression of a weak
sound and the faint impression of a strong
sound are in no way interchangeable. If the
ticking of the clock in my room becomes less and
less vivid for me the more I become absorbed
in my work, till it finally disappears, it cannot
be compared with the experience which results
when the clock to which I give my full attention
is carried farther and farther away. The white
impression, when it loses vividness, does not
become gray and finally black, nor the large size
small, nor the hot lukewarm. Vividness is a
third dimension in the system of psychical ele-
ments, and the psychologist who postulates com-
plete parallelism has the right to demand that
the physiologist show the corresponding process.
There are other sides of the sensation for which
the same is true ; they share with vividness the
more subjective character of the variation, as,
for instance, the feeling tone of the sensation or
its pastness and presentness. Other variations
bring such subjective factors into the complexes
of sensations without a possibility of understand-
ing them from the combination of different kinds
only ; for instance, the subjective shade of ideas
we believe or the abstractedness of ideas in

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 87

logical thoughts. In short, the sensations and
their combinations show besides kind, strength,
and vividness still other variations which may
best be called the values of the sensations and
of their complexes. In the interest of simplicity
we intentionally neglected these subjective sides
of the sensations when we discussed the methods
of description ; it is evident that, in connecting
the sensation with the physical world for the pur-
poses of description these sides require reference
to the physical relation between the perceived
object and the organism. Is the typical theory
of modern physiological psychology, which, as we
have seen, operates merely with the local differ-
ences of the cells and the quantitative differences
of their excitement, ever able to find physiologi-
cal variations which correspond to the vividness
and to the values of the sensations ?

An examination without prejudice must neces-
sarily deny this question. Here lies the deeper
spring for the latent opposition which the psycho-
physiological claims find in modern psychology.
Here are facts, the opponents say, which find no
physiological counterpart, and we must therefore
acknowledge the existence of psychological pro-
cesses which have nothing to do with the physio-
logical machinery. The vividness, for instance,
is fully explained if we accept the view that the
brain determines the kind and strength of the
sensation, while a physiologically independent

88 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

subject turns the attention more or less to the
sensation. The more this attention acts the more
vivid the sensation ; in a similar way the subjec-
tive acts would determine the feeling tone of
the sensation by selection or rejection, and so on.
While the usual theory reduces all to the mere
association of locally separated excitements, such
a theory emphasizes the view that the physio-,
logically determined functions must be supple- 1
mented by an apperceiving subject which takes
attitudes. We may call one the association
theory, the other the apperception theory. We
have seen that the association theory is insuffi-
cient to solve the whole problem, but it is hardly
necessary to emphasize that the apperception
theory seeks the solution from the start in a
logically impossible direction, and is thus still
more mistaken than the association theory.

The apperception theory, whatever its special
label and make-up may be, does not see that the
renunciation of a physiological basis for every
psychical fact means resigning the causal ex-
planation altogether, since psychical facts as such
cannot be linked directly by causality, and that
resigning the causal aspect means giving up the
only purpose for which the inner life was ever
transformed into psychical facts. If those ap-
perceptive functions are seriously conceived as
without physiological basis, they represent a
manifoldness which can be linked merely by the

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 89

teleological categories of the real life, and we
sink back to the subjectifying view which con-
trols the reality of life, but which is in principle
replaced by the objectifying view as soon as a
psychical object is acknowledged as such. If
the apperception theory, on the other hand,
wants to live up to the demands of psychology,
that is, to give causal explanations, it can do
so only if it replaces the psychical objects by
constructions which are themselves conceived
on the analogy with physical objects. As soon
as the ideas are pictured like balls which are
pushed and rolled, then of course a kind of
pseudomechanics and pseudocausality is possible
for the psychical facts themselves, but in that
case the whole indirect connection of psychical
facts by means of the brain would be in all
respects a useless theory ; we have then sufficient
direct causality between the ideas themselves*
Its shortcoming is only that the whole system
is built up on a false metaphor which is to be
rejected from the outset because it gives to the
psychical fact that characteristic which by the
fundamental principle of the differentiation of
objects into physical and psychical is necessarily
reserved for the physical objects.

Of course the illogical apperception theory
would not return in psychology in so many
forms, did it not favor the illusion that it is less
opposed than the association theory to the emo-

90 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

tional demands of man. It is the old psycho-
logistic absurdity that any theoretical idea about
psychological objects can touch the subjectify-
ing interests of the real life. The apperception
theory, which comes home with the news that
there is a corner in the psychical world where
no causal explanation has as yet been found, is
then welcomed as the bringer of happy hopes ;
till later advices come we can still feel ourselves
free and dignified. The philosophical under-
standing of that which we mean by a psycho-
logical truth and by a transformation into psy-
chical objects, a transformation which would be
utterly meaningless if the apperception theory
were correct, is the only scientific way of over-
coming such illusory conflicts. As soon as this
fundamental misunderstanding about the mean-
ing of psychophysical theories has taken place,
it is quite natural that the most extreme form of
the apperception theory should have the best
popular chances. It would be represented in
the so-called transmission theory, which considers
the brain as unessential for the causal connec-
tions of the psychical facts and acknowledges
its function merely as an organ of transmission,
whose destruction would not hinder the temporal
continuation of the causal connection of psychi-
cal objects. The immortality which the trans-
mission theory seeks to secure to us is thus
the continuous repetition of objects which have

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 91

nothing in common with the real experiences of
our inner life, and which cannot claim anything
else than the fact that the psychologist must
construct them for the purpose of transforming
the teleological reality into a causal system.
Needless to say after all these discussions that
this real subjective life cannot possibly be in-
terested in any psychophysiological theory, and
that with the association and apperception and
transmission theories equally it connects not the
slightest emotional value, except those of logical
satisfaction and disappointment. The philosopher
who bases the hope of immortality on a theory
of brain functions and enjoys the facts which
cannot be physiologically explained, stands, it
seems to me, on the same ground with the astro-
nomer who seeks with his telescope for a place
in the universe where no space exists, and where
there would be thus undisturbed room for God
and the eternal bodiless souls.

IX

We do not here enter upon metaphysical ques-
tions ; we discuss the empirical brain theory, and
only deny to the apperception theory the claimed
right to recommend itself by illusory metaphysi-
cal promises. But does this bankruptcy of all
varieties of apperception theories necessarily
force us back to the association theory ? I do
not think so. The demand of the association

92 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

theory that every psychosis should be accom-
panied by a neurosis cannot be given up, but
this neurosis may be thought in a richer way
than in the scheme of the associationists. It
seems to me, indeed, that the physiological the-
ory works to-day with an abstract scheme with
which no observation agrees. We do not know
of a centripetal stimulation which does not go
over into centrifugal impulses. The studies on
the tonicity and actions of voluntary muscles, on
the changes in glands and blood vessels, on tendon
reflex centres, and so on, show how every psycho-
physical state discharges itself into centrifugal
functions. And yet these perceivable peripheral
effects are of course merely a small part of the
centrifugal impulses which really start from the
end stations of the sensory channel, as most of
them probably produce only new dispositions in
lower motor centres without going directly over
into movement, and others may fade away in the
unlimited division of the discharge in the ramifi-
cation of the system. Those milliards of fibres
are not merely the wires to pull a few hundred
muscles; no, the centrifugal system represents
certainly a most complex hierarchy of motor
centres too, and the special final muscle impulse
is merely the last outcome of a very complex
cooperation of very many factors in the centri-
fugal system. Manifold as the incoming nerve
currents must be, the possibilities of centrifu-

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 93

gal discharge and the dispositions in the nerv-
ous motor system determine the degrees in which
the ganglion cells can transform the centripetal
into centrifugal stimulation. It is thus not
only the foregoing sensory process, but in ex-
actly the same degree also the special situation
of the motor system, its openness and closed-
ness, which governs the process in the centre.
Whether the special efferent channel is open
or plugged implies absolutely different central
processes in spite of the same afferent stimu-
lus.

Here we have, then, a new factor on the phy-
siological side, which is ignored in the usual
scheme that makes the psychical facts dependent
upon the sensory processes only and considers
the centrifugal action of the brain as a later
effect which begins when the psychophysical
function is over. There is no central sensory
process which is not the beginning of an action
too, and this centrifugal part of the central pro-
cess necessarily varies the accompanying psychi-
cal fact also. As here the action of the centre
becomes the essential factor in the psychophysi-
cal process, we may call this view an action
theory as over against the association and apper-
ception theories of the day. The action theory
agrees, then, with associationism in the postu-
late that there is no psychical variation with-
out variation on the physiological side, and with

94 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

apperceptionism in the conviction that the mere
association of sensory brain processes is insuffi-
cient to play the counterpart to such subjective
variations of the psychical facts as vividness and
values of the sensations. It tries to combine
the legitimate points in both views, and claims
that every psychical sensation as element of the
content of consciousness is the accompaniment
of the physical process by which a centripetal
stimulation becomes transformed into a centri-
fugal impulse.

This central process thus clearly depends upon
four factors : firstly, upon the local situation of
the sensory track ; secondly, upon the quantitative
amount of the incoming current ; thirdly, upon
the local situation of the outgoing discharge;
and fourthly, upon the quantitative amount of
the discharge. The first two factors are of course
determined by the incoming current, which can
be replaced by an intra-cortical stimulation from
an associated centre, while the last two factors
are determined by the dispositions of the cen-
trifugal system. The association theory, which
considers the first two factors alone, thinks them
parallel to the kind and strength of the sensa-
tion. The action theory accepts this interpreta-
tion, and adds that the two other factors de-
termine the values and the vividness of the
sensation, — the values parallel to the local situa-
tion of the discharge, the vividness to the open-

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 95

ness of the centrifugal channel, and thus to the
intensity of the discharge.

If the centrifugal discharge is inhibited, the
channel closed, then the sensory process goes on
as before, but the impression is faint, unper-
ceived, while it may become vivid later as soon
as the hindrance to the discharge disappears.
The inhibition of ideas, which remains unex-
plainable to the associationists, would then mean
that a special path of discharge is closed, and
thus the idea which needs that discharge for its
vividness cannot come into existence ; the hyp-
notizer's words, for instance, close such channels.
Only discharges, actions, can be antagonistic, and
thus under mutual inhibition ; ideas in themselves
may be logically contradictory, but not psycho-
logically while one action makes the antagonistic
action indeed impossible and the inhibition of
ideas results merely from the inhibition of dis-
charges. If this view is correct, it is clear that
while we strictly deny the existence of special

innervation sensations, we can now say that

7 «/

every sensation without exception is physiologi-
cally an innervation sensation, as it must have
reached some degree of vividness to exist psy-
chologically at all.

With regard to the local situation of the motor
discharge, the manifoldness of possibilities is evi-
dent. The channels may be closed in one direc-
tion but open in others ; the actually resulting

96 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

discharge must be the product of the situation in
the whole centrifugal system, with its milliards
of ramifications, and the same sensory stimu-
lus may thus under a thousand different condi-
tions produce a thousand different centrifugal
waves, all, perhaps, with the same intensity. The
vividness would then be always the same, and
yet the difference of locality in the discharge
must give new features to the psychical element.
A few cases as illustrations must be sufficient.
We may instance the shades of time-direction;
the same idea may have the subjective character
of past, present, and future. It corresponds to
three types of discharge : the discharge which
does not include action on the object any more
appears a past; that which produces action as
present; that which prepares the action as future.
In this group belong also the feeling tones : the
pleasurable shade of feeling based on the dis-
charge towards the extensors, the unpleasant
feelings based on the innervation of the flexors.
Here belong the differences between mere per-
ception and apperception, as in the one case the
discharge is determined by the impression alone,
in the other case by associations also. Here
belong the characteristics of the abstract con-
ception which may be represented by the same
sensational qualities which would form a concrete
idea and yet has a new subjective tone because
the centrifugal discharge is for the concrete idea

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 97

a specialized impulse, for the conception a gen-
eral impulse which would suit all objects thought
under the conception. Here belongs, also, the
feeling of belief which characterizes the judg-
ment ; the judgment differs psychophysically
from the mere idea in the fact that the ideas
discharge themselves in a new tonicity, a new
set of the lower motor centres, creating thus a
new disposition for later reactions. To be sure,
many of these discharges lead finally to muscle
contractions which bring with them centripetal
sensations from the joints, the muscles, the ten-
dons, and these muscle and joint sensations them-
selves then become a part in the idea, for instance,
of time, of space, of feeling. But the new part
only reinforces the general tone which is given
in the general discharge, and gives to it only the
exact detail which gets its character just through
the blending of these sensations of completed
reactions with the accompaniments of the cen-
tral discharge.

A consistent psychology thus starts with the
following principles : It considers all variations
of mental life as variations of the content of con-
sciousness, and this content as a complex object,
including in this first presupposition a compli-
cated transformation of the real inner life, a
transformation by which the subjectifying view
of real life is denied for the psychological system.
Every content of consciousness is further con-

98 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

sidered as a complex of sensations, that is, of
possible elements of perceptive ideas. Every
sensation is considered as having a fourfold
manifoldness, varying in kind, in strength, in
vividness, and in value. The physiological basis
of every sensation and thus of every psychical
element is the physical process by which a cen-
tripetal stimulation becomes transformed into a
centrifugal impulse, the kind depending upon the
locality of the centripetal channel, the strength
upon the quantity of the stimulus, the value
upon the locality of the centrifugal channel,
and the vividness upon the quantity of the
discharge. Every transformation of the chaos
of so-called facts in the direction towards these
ends which are determined by epistemology adds
something to the system of psychological sci-
ence.

Also for these ultimate transformations in the
service of explanation is valid what we empha-
sized in regard to description. The scientist
must do his work continually with the feeling
that he seeks and discovers facts which preceded
his seeking and which he merely brings to
view. But the philosopher, at least, cannot for-
get that such is a low conception of truth, and
that the work is a transformation of the reality
for the fulfillment of our logical ideals which
takes place ultimately in the service of our
duties. The seeker for truth is not a miner who

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 99

digs and digs in the clay of reality till he by
chance finds a lump of gold with his shovel, gold
which has slumbered there for eternities. The
seeker for truth creates like the sculptor who
takes the valueless clay of reality to transform it
under his hands into the precious plastic work
which harmonizes with his ideals.

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

THE defender of idealistic convictions who
arms himself with philosophical arguments to
fight against materialism finds himself in com-
bat, not with one group alone, but with two —
with those who through serious arguments come
to anti - idealistic views and with those who
adopt idealism without arguments at all. They
may favor idealism through sentimentality, or
through mysticism, or, the more frequent case,
through laziness and mere lack of understand-
ing the arguments of the other side ; their
view has no solid foundation, no consistency, no
power of resistance. With the first group you
can argue ; with the second group you cannot
debate, as you speak a different language and
think with a different logic. As soon as the
real fight begins, you feel that the coincidence
of aims is only a chance result without signifi-
cance ; the help of these friends is only a hin-
drance and a trouble, and they ought to be sent
away, like the women and children of a besieged
city before the real bombardment begins.

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 101

This old experience came to me with unusual
force when a short time ago I expressed my
educational convictions, which take the ideal-
istic view of the teacher's work as against the
materialistic doctrines of certain psychological
schools. I maintained in some magazine articles
that the individual teacher cannot make any
direct use of physiological and experimental psy-
chology for his teaching methods. Why this
view alone lies in the line of idealism we shall see
later. My articles were sharply attacked from
the other side, as the progress of a discussion
demands, and I was ready to go on fighting.
But at the same time I was applauded by sym-
pathizers who did not care for my arguments at
all, and who hailed my side only because it was
much more convenient not to study psychology
and education. They cried naively : " Of course
the man is right ; all experimental and physiolo-
gical psychology is nonsense, and all study of
education is superfluous ; let the teachers do just
as they like ; our grandfathers made it just so."
From day to day I became more doubtful with
which side I disagreed more fully. If I warn
education not to make progress in a wrong
direction, must I proclaim by that that we ought
to go backward? If I denounce a dangerous
misuse of experimental psychology, do I there-
by attack experimental psychology itself ? If I
assert that the interest of the teacher ought not

102 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

to go in a misleading direction, do I demand by
that that the teacher ought to be dull and with-
out interest ? If I regret that something has be-
come the fad of dilettants, do I ask by that that
scholars also ought not to deal with it ? and if I
find fault with the recent development of child
study, do I imply by that the belief that we do
not need a modern science of education ? As long
as such confusion exists among assenters equally
with dissenters, we do not need so much argu-
mentation as discrimination. We must have
clearness and exact definitions before we decide
about consent or opposition ; and it is not suffi-
cient to dissolve the whole interlaced mass of
conceptions like child study, child psychology,
experimental psychology, physiological psycho-
logy, educational psychology, education, instruc-
tion, school teaching, etc., etc. ; but we must
clear up above all the manifoldness of possible
relations between these factors. An unpretend-
ing effort in this direction is the only direct
purpose of the following lines; they try only
to separate clearly the different questions and to
show soberly what some of us want and what we
do not want. I do not fight now ; I only peace-
fully draw a map which indicates the different
opposing positions.

We recognize at the first glance that our
whole group of conceptions has two central
points which are logically independent of each

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 103

other : the child and psychology. To simplify
the matter, we may start with these two ideas
only. Psychology is the science which describes
and explains mental phenomena, and what a
child is we know perhaps better without than
with a scholarly definition. Let us only keep in
mind that in the happy fields of child study
childhood lasts from the cradle to the end of
adolescence, usually to the twenty-fifth year. It
is clear that even between these two conceptions
a number of relations are possible, and the will-
ingness to transform one of these relations in
reality does not include the duty to do the same
with the others. The child, for instance, can
be taught psychology, or it can be taught after
the scheme of psychology, or it can be an object
of psychology, or it can be an instrument of
psychology, and so forth. We can be enthusi-
astic for the one and nevertheless at the same
time detest the other.

The simplest of the cases mentioned is the
first : the child may learn psychology. But even
here several modifications are possible, as it may
be learned at different ages, by different methods,
and different parts of psychology may be in
question. I for one should say that there is a
field here for sound and productive work, and
that we should not be hindered and crippled by
the lack of experience in this region, or by the
pitiable results which have had to be recorded

104 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

in the past when an antiquated and indigesti-
ble psychology was taught by incompetent per-
sons to unwilling pupils, by the driest possible
methods. For the instruction in modern em-
pirical psychology, at least in its elements, the
high school seems not at all too early a stage ;
only the work must be fully adapted to the prac-
tical experiences of the child, must be richly
illustrated by simple experimental demonstra-
tions, and must be given by competent men who
could make a whole address out of every sen-
tence they speak. There are few fields where a
born teacher can better show his power and his
wits. Philosophical psychology, including the
historical forms of rational and speculative psy-
chology, — certainly a most important subject for
the college student, — like all other real philoso-
phy, decidedly does not belong in the school ; the
more so as any instruction in philosophy which
means more than drill in logic and preaching in
ethics can become valuable in any case only if a
real scholar, and not a second-hand man, offers
it. I should also exclude from the school the
relations of psychology to the details of brain
physiology and the whole of pathological psy-
chology, and above all child psychology; the
more so since we cannot hope that everybody
would be in the happy situation of the teacher
who reports in the " Pedagogical Seminary," the
leading magazine for child study, that she

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 105

brought a baby of three weeks into the class-
room to demonstrate its smiling and crying and
other functions of similar alarming interest. If
we keep at a safe distance from such compromis-
ing caricatures we can, I believe, expect highly
valuable results from psychology instruction in
the school.

But the possibility of teaching psychology in
schools is not at all confined to regular courses
about the whole subject ; special chapters of
psychology find a most natural place in the
different fields of the usual school work. It is
impossible to teach physics without discussing
acoustical and optical sensations ; the drawing
teacher may discuss the conditions of our space
perception or optical illusions or the seeing of
colors ; the study of history or literature not
seldom brings with it a psychological analysis of
the higher mental states, and a school child's
curiosity rushes again and again to questions
which only a sober knowledge of psychology can
answer satisfactorily. It seems, therefore, not
too much to demand that at least every high-
school teacher should have some familiarity
with the elements of psychology. He may be
asked to teach it as a whole or he may be
obliged to interweave parts of it with his other
work; in any case he ought to have the facts
of that science at his disposal as a material
which he can teach like arithmetic or geography.

106 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

This alone would be for me sufficient reason for
welcoming every future teacher to the college
courses of psychology, but this attitude would
not have the slightest relation to the other ques-
tion, whether the teacher ought to know psy-
chology for the purpose of making use of it for
his professional methods of teaching. But we
do not stand as yet before this latter question,
which is much more complicated. If we follow
up the different relations between psychology
and the child, the question next in natural
order will leave educational theory still out of
the play.

II

We have asked so far what the child can learn
from psychology ; we must ask now what psy-
chology can learn from the child. The question
divides itself at once into many ramifications.
Even if we abstract, as we planned to do, from
all practical applications, and consider only the
interests which psychology as a theoretical sci'
ence can have in the child, we must from the
start acknowledge two different points of view
which are too often confused. The child's mind
can be firstly the real object of psychological
study, and secondly a vehicle for the study of
the human mind in general, a tool in the hand
of the psychologist. It is the same doubleness
which we find, for instance, with regard to the
pathology of mental life. The pathological mind

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 107

as such can certainly be an important object of
study, but it is such an object in the first place
for the psychiatrist, not for the psychologist.
The physician, of course, makes psychology as
a whole serve the need of these pathopsycholo-
gical cases which he analyzes in the hope of im-
proving them. The psychologist, on the other
side, attends to such abnormalities only as devia-
tions from the normal soul, — variations which
seem interesting to him only because they throw
some new suggestive side light on the normal
processes. He studies the disturbed harmony in
the hope that the caricature-like exaggeration of
special features will bring out a fuller under-
standing of their normal relations.

In exactly the same way we can approach the
child's mind as an object worthy of our interest
in and for itself, prepared to make use of our
whole general psychological knowledge for the
exploration of this new field ; or we can turn to
the mental life of children, with the purpose of
finding through this study new paths of en-
trance to the old field of general human psy-
chology. If the soul of the child is the object,
all studies of this kind group themselves with
inquiries about other sides of the nature of
children, with the anthropology and physiology
and pathology of the child ; a bundle of inves-
tigations for which the name "child study" is
perfectly correct, while to some ears the name

108 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

"paidology" seems to sound better. If, on the
other hand, the child's mind becomes an instru-
ment for investigating the phenomena and the
laws of the mental mechanism, then of course
the observation and experimentation on children
is merely one of the many methods of empirical
psychology, coordinated to the pathological and
hypnotical and physiological and other methods
which supplement by ways of indirect observa-
tion the direct self-observation of our laboratory
work. It forms then a narrower group together
with the psychical studies of animals and primi-
tive races, all aiding in the understanding of the
complicated mental life of the highly developed
adult man, by showing the different stages of
ontogenetic and phylogenetic development. Its
special function can then well be compared with
the service of embryology to general human ana-
tomy. If child study is an end in itself, every
fact in the child's mental experiences is of equal
importance or at least of equal scientific dignity ;
if it is only a method in the service of psycho-
logy, science will carefully select only those facts
by which the labyrinth of the developed mind
becomes simpler and clearer while everything else
remains indifferent. If child study is the ob-
ject, we start from our knowledge of the man to
interpret the child ; if child research is a method,
we seek knowledge about the child as a starting-
point for our interpretation of the man.

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 109

This is, however, not the only point of view
from which to classify the manifold efforts which
are possible in this realm ; it is the most central
division, but it shows cross-sections with many
other principles of division. The classification
may, for instance, refer to the different stages
of development, especially according as the time
before or in or after school life is in question.
But still more important : according as the ob-
servation goes on under natural conditions or
under the artificial conditions of experiment;
according as the inquiries are of individual char-
acter or seek for statistical results on the basis
of large numbers; above all, according as the
work is done by professional, at least specially
prepared, psychologists or by psychological ama-
teurs, who may be most excellent creatures in
every other respect. Of course an exhaustive
classification ought not to stop here. We can
divide further ; for instance, as the psychologists
in question are such as have their theories
beforehand or such as do not, and as the dilet-
tants who observe the children are people who
know that they do not know psychology or peo-
ple who don't know even that.

The possible combination of all these factors
secures such a manifoldness of types of research
in this field that the mere collection of the results
on the basis of coordination would contradict all
principles of scientific methodology. If I may

110 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

be allowed a word of criticism, I should not
hesitate to claim that child study ought to be a
method and not an end ; that it ought to be done
individually and not statistically, by professionals
and not by dilettants, more by natural observa-
tion and less by experiments. These decisions
hang, of course, closely together. If I take
paidology as a science by itself, then perhaps
I should also share that enthusiasm and de-
light over heaps of statistical and experimental
results which mothers, teachers, and nurses have
brought and certainly will bring together. But
all my instincts about the inner relations and
connections of human knowledge resist to the
utmost this artificial separation of child psycho-
logy from general psychology. I may write a
special book on the mental life of the child just
as I can write a monograph on memory or on hyp-
notism, but it has a final right of existence only in
virtue of its necessary place in the whole system
of psychology. To be sure, the chief reason for
taking this attitude lies in a conviction which I
must bring forward in the following discussion
again and again, and which is indeed the central
motive for my position in all these debates. I
shall indicate the point most quickly if I say :
Psychology is a study of mental facts, but not
every study of mental facts is therefore psycho-
logy. That psychology is a science and there-
fore every science psychology, probably nobody

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 111

pretends, and yet the logic of the conclusion
would not be worse than that which is so often
offered to us when every gathering or interpre-
tation or statistics of mental facts is claimed as
psychology. Most of the material which the
friends of child study heap together is, even when
mental facts and not physical ones are in ques-
tion, nevertheless not psychology at all; and
that small remainder which really contributes to
a psychology of the child's mind belongs so
clearly to general psychology that nobody would
dream of an artificial separation if it were not
usually so hopelessly mixed with unpsychological
odds and ends.

Certainly the good appetite of psychology has
sometimes become voracity in our days, and she
has begun to devour all mental sciences, history
and social life, ethics arid logic, and finally, alas !
metaphysics ; but that is not a development, it
is a disease and a misfortune. And when the
necessary conflict between such high-handed psy-
chology and the deep-rooted demands of the true
life begins, such uncritical science must burst
asunder. Psychology would learn too late that
an empirical science can be really free and pow-
erful only if it recognize and respect its limits,
about which philosophy alone decides. The lim-
its of psychology are easily understood. Psy-
chology considers the mental life as an object
which must be analyzed and explained, analyzed

112 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

into elements and explained by laws. The psy-
chologist, therefore, silently accepts the presup-
position that the mental life is such an object and
that this object is a combination of elements con-
trolled in their connection by causal laws. In
the reality of our inner experience our mental
life has not at all these characteristics : the ideas
are objects, while the feelings and volitions are
subjective activities, and these objects are experi-
enced as wholes and units, not as composita, and
these activities as controlled by freedom, not by
laws. Psychology thus presupposes for its pur-
poses a most complicated transformation of the
reality, and any attitude toward the mental life
which does not need or choose this special trans-
formation may be something else, but it is not
psychology. Practical life and history, mental
science and poetry, logic and ethics, religion and
philosophy, all deal with mental life, but never
with psychology as such. Not the material but
the special standpoint characterizes the psycho-
logist.

Ill

As soon as we are clear in regard to this ele-
mentary philosophical principle we cannot in-
deed doubt any longer that most of the so-called
child psychology is partly history, partly eco-
nomics and ethics, partly physiology, partly no-
thing at all, but is decidedly not psychology. To

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 113

be fair I choose as illustration one, of the very
best investigations in the field, one which seems
to me seriously interesting and important : the
extended statistical studies about the stock of
ideas which a child has when it enters the school.
The differences between city and country chil-
dren, between different home influences, between
different nations, and so forth, come clearly to
view, and the results suggest a continuation of
these studies — but these results do not belong
to psychology. The material of this inquiry is
ideas, but these ideas not with regard to their con-
stitution and their elements, but with regard to
their practical distribution : it is not scientific bot-
any to find out in whose yard in the town cherries,
in whose yard apples grow. Suppose the same
investigation made for adult persons : among a
thousand men of fifty years of age how many
have had impressions from such and such ol>
jects ? Ho w_ many have seen a phonograph and
how many a walrus ? The results would be a
quite interesting contribution to the history of
civilization, but nobody would think of classify-
ing it under the psychology of the adult man, as
we do not learn anything about the psychologi-
cal structure and origin of an idea if we know
that A happened to experience it while B never
had a chance. Such an imitation of the so-
called psychological studies on children by sim-
ilar studies on adults will perhaps give us the

114 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

readiest insight into their real character. The
" Pedagogical Seminary " offers us a splendid
collection of the teasing and bullying phrases
which are in the mind of children, or it reports
with careful statistics that among 845 children
exactly 191 preferred wax dolls, 163 paper dolls,
153 china dolls, 144 rag dolls, 116 bisque dolls,
69 rubber dolls, and so on, or it studies the love
poems of boys and discovers that among 356
poems only 91 refer to the eyes, 50 to their ex-
pression, 41 to their color — blue leading with
22. We could choose just as well a hundred
other illustrations. Now let us try to repeat
such inquiries with adult men : let us find out
what preferences they have in cigarette-holders
and meerschaum pipes, or how often they refer
to the eyes in flirting, or what their disponible
material of nicknames and abusive words may
be. The results will not be much less instruc-
tive than those from the study of children, but
surely you would not call them psychology.

If we thus exclude everything which is not
really psychological, there still remains a good
set of problems which belong strictly to the
psychology of the child ; the analytic study
of its perceptions and associations, its memory
and attention, its feelings and emotions, its in-
stincts and volitions, its apperceptions and judg-
ments, to be described and explained with regard
to their elements and laws ; but this group can

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 115

certainly not be separated from the psychology
of the adult. There are the same elements and
the same laws building up the mental life in all
its different stages of development. The study
of the child's mind then shows itself clearly as
that which we claimed it to be : one of the
many legitimate methods of studying the mental
laws and elements in general. We could better
have a special botany of the blossoms or a zoo-
logy of the eggs as scientific ends in themselves
than a separated psychology of the children.
On the other hand, if it is truly a method and
vehicle of general mind study, then certain con-
sequences are unavoidable. In the service of
general psychology child study must first select
its problems. What is the use of analyzing with
the doubtful means of indirect observation those
psychical states which we can find as the objects
of direct observation in our own minds ? Only
that must be selected which allows us to push
the analysis forward by showing our complicated
states as preceded by simpler and simpler ones.
But if the leading principle is thus a selection
of material best fitted for clearing up the de-
velopment of the complex combination of ele-
ments, it follows that the study of individual
children is by far superior to the statistics in
which the individual disappears, and that pro-
tracted observation is by far more important
than the experimental investigation of a special

116 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

stage. It follows, secondly, that the work must
be done by trained specialists or not at all. That
child study which has for its aim only the collec-
tion of curiosities about the child, as an end in
itself, may be grateful to the nurse who writes
down some of the baby's naughty answers or to
the teacher who sacrifices half an hour of her
lesson to make experiments in the classroom to
fill out the blanks that are mailed to her. The
students of that scientific child psychology which
stands in the service of the general mind study
know how every step in the progress of our sci-
ence has depended upon the most laborious,
patient work of our laboratories and the most
subtle and refined methods, and that all this
seductive but rude and untrained and untech-
nical gathering of cheap and vulgar material
means a caricature and not an improvement of
psychology. And it is not only the lack of tech-
nical training which brings these contributions
so near to hunting stories and their value for
scientific biology. No, it is, above all, the ab-
sence of the psychological attitude. That is in
my eyes not an opprobrium against the teacher.
I consider it to the teacher's credit that the
child is not an object of analysis for him, but I
blame those who make the teacher believe that
his observations nevertheless have value for psy-
chology.

Of course I know that some of the more sober

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 117

leaders of this movement emphasize very little
the scientific value of such private adventurous
expeditions of parents and school-teachers, and
praise most highly the expected result . that the
teachers themselves get thus a more vivid inter-
est in the children. I have to discuss this point
later, and acknowledge here only that the young
scholars themselves begin to doubt whether the
gossip contained in these blanks means science
or rubbish. Those who doubt, however, ought
not to find comfort in the frequent comparison
that the guileless teacher may collect the facts of
the young souls like the wanderer who brings
plants and stones home which the naturalist will
use later as material. No, psychological ma-
terial cannot be put into the pocket like a stone ;
it is not the fixation and communication of the
found and perceived material only that have
their difficulties, but the finding and perceiving
themselves are in the highest degree dependent
upon associations and theories already stored up.
Finally, even if all the stuff is reliable and
truly psychological, still we ought not to ex-
aggerate our hopes for real information. As
long as the thousand little facts are not con-
nected by a theory, the facts are dead masses,
and if they are only illustrations of a theory,
they do not teach us anything new. It will
be a very exceptional case that a new insight
into a law can be reached in this chance way \

118 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

physics, in spite of Bacon's recommendation,
has certainly never reached anything in this
way. At best the result will be a psychologi-
cal commonplace. The " Pedagogical Seminary"
prints 375 thoughts and reasonings observed in
children, and true to its scientific intention it
adds that this material is not sufficient. But I
confess that I do not see what profit could pos-
sibly result for the psychologist from even three
millions of such sayings. If we do not know
the general facts of association, attention, apper-
ception, and conception, then the whole material
is mere gossip without psychological interest;
and if we do know them and presuppose as a
matter of course that the child has smaller ex-
periences, fewer associations, and so on, then
the material teaches us no more for the psy-
chology of thought and reasoning than a collec-
tion of any 375 sentences of adult persons would
do. Yet these nobody would think of reprint-
ing. We ought not to deceive ourselves with
trivialities. It is not science to make exact sta-
tistics of even the pebbles on the road or to
collect the description of a hundred cases where
the law of gravity was confirmed by the falling
down of apples. Let us delay such luxury till
the real duties of child psychology have been
fulfilled; that is, till in the service of psycho-
logy the development of single mental functions,
especially of self -consciousness, of the will, of the

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 119

emotions, and of the ideas of space and time in
individual children have been studied by really
competent men with strictly scientific methods,
a line of work in which our gratitude is due to
Preyer, Perez, Stanley Hall, Baldwin, Sully, and
other psychologists for a most valuable begin-
ning.

The only part of the work for which I should
welcome the cooperation of untrained observers
is the search for, not the real study of, abnormal
cases. Pathological abnormalities in the child's
mental life, in its emotions and imitations, its
feelings and its will, are psychologically decid-
edly instructive, and the psychologist has no pos-
sibility of finding them if the layman does not
draw his attention to them. Such unusual devi-
ations in full development strike the eye of every
man ; no special psychological attitude is neces-
sary.

Hitherto our question has been only to what
extent theoretical psychology has an interest in
children. In practice, however, this simple issue
becomes far more complicated by the hopes and
fears which may be connected with this scientific
work in the interest of the children and of their
educators. Of course psychology as such is not
concerned in this question ; psychology does not
work for a social premium and cannot be deter-
mined in its course by social anxieties. But the
psychologist, as a member of the social organ-

X20 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

ism, has to adapt his endeavors to the needs of
society ; he must feel encouraged if he shares
these social hopes and can feel himself an edu-
cational benefactor, and he will modify his offi-
cious disposition if he becomes convinced of the
educational fears. The pessimistic group sees in
all psychological experiments on children an un-
sound interference with their natural develop-
ment, a kind of mental vivisection which, by its
artificial stimulations and tensions, may become
harmful to the health of the nervous system
itself. Even observation under natural condi-
tions seems to them of unfavorable influence on
the naivete and naturalness and modesty of the
young subjects. Above all, they fear that the
forced change of attitude in the teacher will do
harm to the whole school life. In the interest
of the teacher himself they add that such stud-
ies in the schoolroom burden the already over-
burdened man with work for which he him-
self does not feel sufficiently prepared ; that
he himself feels hampered by this new way of
looking on the children, not as friends, but as
interesting results of psychological laws; that
he needs every minute of his school hours for
his lessons, and that too often he confronts
the dilemma, either to follow his educational
conscience or to follow a superintendent who
believes in the newest educational fad. The
optimistic group of course holds to the exactly

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 121

opposite view, sees no harm for the children,
but the bliss of a deepened interest of the teach-
ers in the children, and a subsequent lifting of
the whole standard of school life. It is clear
that such a background of antagonistic social
movements complicates highly the theoretical
problem. On the other hand, these hopes and
fears about the practical effects of child psycho-
logy cannot be separated from the wider ques-
tion what the teacher has to expect from psy-
chology in general.

IV

Our plan to map out the whole manifoldness
of antagonistic tendencies in the entire psycho-
educational field brings us thus necessarily to a
large group of new problems. We have dis-
cussed so far whether the child can study psy-
chology directly, and secondly, whether psycho-
logy can directly study the child. We must now
ask also whether psychology cannot have indi-
rectly an influence on the child through the
medium of the teacher ; that is, whether the
work of the teacher can be modified by psycho-
logy. But the question shows at once many
important subdivisions ; if we do not consider
them, the result must be the confusion of Babel.
The fact that we spoke before of the value of
child psychology for the teacher, and are now
discussing psychology in general, suggests from

122 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

the start that we have to discriminate the differ-
ent departments of our science. It may be that
child psychology is educationally useless but
physiological psychology excellent, or that ex-
perimental psychology is the elixir but rational
psychology the poison of education. In any
case, however, we have no right to throw all
such methodologically separated parts of mind-
study together and to decide about right or
wrong in a wholesale manner. But another di-
vision of our question reaches still deeper : is
psychology valuable to the teacher for his teach-
ing methods directly, or only indirectly through
the medium of a scientific educational theory ?
In the first case the teacher himself transforms
his psychological knowledge into educational ac-
tivity; in the other case educational theory has
accomplished for him the crystallization of edu-
cational principles out of psychological sub-
stances, and he can follow its advice, perhaps,
even without himself knowing anything about
psychology. The two cases are so absolutely
different that here, still more, an assenting or
dissenting attitude toward the one proposition
cannot have any significance at all with regard
to the other. It may be just those who are
convinced that the teacher ought to study edu-
cation, and that education ought to make the
fullest use of psychology, who form the strongest
opponents of the psychologizing teacher who

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 123

manufactures his private educational theory from
his summer-school courses in experimental psy-
chology. I shall therefore separate the two
questions fully, and ask first, how far the indi-
vidual teacher can make direct use of psychology
for his teaching ; and secondly, how far psycho-
logy is useful for the science of education.

I turn to the first question, which must now,
as we have seen, be subdivided with regard to
the different departments of possible mind study.
A full exposition of the different parts of psy-
chology and their complicated mutual relations
would lead us, of course, far beyond the limits
of this essay, but we cannot avoid giving our
attention at least to some of the essential points.
Of all the conceptions in question only that of
child psychology does not need any further in-
terpretation. We have seen that it does not by
any means include every scientific interest with
regard to the mental life of the child, but only
those studies which consider its mental life under
the categories of psychology, — that is, with re-
gard to their elements and their causal laws ; we
have seen further that a child psychology of this
type does not claim to be an end in itself, but
only a method of general psychology.

Still simpler, if rightly understood, is the situ-
ation of " experimental psychology." Here there
is still less doubt that it is separated from the
other branches, not by its special objects, but

124 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

only fty its special method — the experiment.
The frequent misunderstandings which exist arise
only when it is identified with indirect observa-
tion in opposition to self -observation, or is claimed
as a mathematical science in opposition to a
merely qualitative analysis, or is understood as
physiological psychology. All that is impossible.
In the first place, experimental psychology is so
little in opposition to self -observation that self-
observation forms really the largest part of ex-
perimental psychology ; we can say that the whole
work of our modern psychophysical laboratories
must be characterized as essentially introspection,
but introspection under artificial conditions. To
be sure, experiments with indirect observation
also are possible, such as experiments on hypno-
tized subjects, on animals, and so forth, but they
are only exceptional guests in our laboratories.
Experimental psychology in any case exists wher-
ever psychological observations, direct or indirect,
are made under artificial conditions chosen for
the special purpose of the observation. Secondly,
experimental psychology is so little a mathemati-
cal science that every hope of introducing math-
ematics, even into the smallest corner of it, must
readily be recognized as a failure in principle.
Psychical facts are not and cannot be measur-
able, and the more and less in our mental life
never means an addition of psychical elements ;
We measure the physical conditions, but never

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 125

the mental facts themselves. Finally, experimen-
tal psychology is so far from identical with phy-
siological psychology that we may even say that
for its existence it does not need any relation to
physiology at all. In our laboratories we study
experimentally association and memory, attention
and apperception, space sense and time sense,
feelings and will, without being obliged to re-
cognize officially that there exists a brain at all.

That brings us to the question of what physio-
logical psychology is, as the latter statement pre-
supposes a definition of the term with which not
every one would agree. The word has indeed
been used with quite different meanings. We
can separate especially two types of use, a wider
and a narrower one. In the wider sense of the
word physiological psychology means the study
of mental phenomena in their whole relation to
physiological processes, central or peripheral, in
the brain or in the sense organs, in the nerves
or blood vessels or muscles. In the narrower
sense it means only the study of the relation
between the mental facts and the accompanying
physiological brain processes. The merely ter-
minological question is not essential for us, and
it is indeed in part only terminological, as there
cannot be any doubt that studies of both kinds
are legitimate. Nevertheless there are good rea-
sons for getting rid of the first use of the word
and for sticking to the second. The first use

126 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

suggests clearly the mistaken idea that there
can be a psychology which does not refer, not
only for explanation but also for description and
analysis, at every moment to peripheral physical
facts. This is not a defect or a caprice of our
present psychology ; for epistemological reasons
there can never be any analytic description of
psychical facts which does not refer directly or
indirectly to the physical objects which are in
relation to our organism. The psychical fact as
such is just as indescribable as it is unmeasurable,
since it is the object which by its very nature
exists for one only and which remains therefore
ever incommunicable. Every attempt to have a
science which describes mental facts must thus
at every stage relate the psychical facts to the
physical facts ; in short, there cannot be any em-
pirical psychology at all which from beginning
to end is not simply physiological psychology in
the wider sense of the word. The addition of
the word " physiological " has then no longer any
meaning ; it does not, if we think consistently,
mark any special group of studies, as it belongs
to all, and this whole is certainly better charac-
terized by the epithet " empirical," which stands
over against " speculative," than by " physiologi-
cal," which has no Correlative and which we need
much more for a special group of psychophy-
siological problems. The study of the mental
facts in their relation to the physiological brain

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 127

processes is indeed a scientific field by itself, with
its own anatomical and physiological and patho-
logical methods and with its own theoretical
unity. But this field has an aspect quite different
from what most people, and even most teachers,
believe. They believe often that the analysis
of psychical facts was in a poor and rather un-
scientific condition till the developed brain phy-
siology, with its cells and fibres and gyri and
centres, came and helped her poor relation.
Really it is not at all so. Psychology knows
endlessly more about these details than physiology,
and in the development of the special psycho-
physiological theories psychology has always
led, and taught physiology how to interpret the
chaos of brain facts. Brain physiology with-
out psychology would have been perfectly blind,
while psychology without detailed brain physio-
logy would have stood exactly where it stands to-
day, if we allow to psychology the general a priori
postulate that every mental fact is the accom-
paniment of a physical process. This postulate
is merely epistemological, and therefore independ-
ent of our knowledge of physiology. We must
demand it because mental facts, as they are not
quantitative, cannot enter into any causal equa-
tion. The demand for a causal interpretation
of the mental life includes, therefore, the postu-
late that it must be transformed so that every
element can be conceived as linked with a physio-

128 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

logical process, but whether that process is going
on in the occipital or in the parietal part of the
brain is, for psychology, absolutely indifferent.
In short, the whole physiological psychology
consists of two factors : first, a general theory
of psychophysiological relations which is based
merely on philosophical and general biological
principles and does not need physiology at all,
and second, psychophysiological details which
are important for the physiologist, but for psy-
chology are a useless luxury. The special physi-
ology of the brain, which in any case is still an
almost unknown field, does not therefore help
the psychologist anywhere; in my lectures on
psychology before my students I hardly speak
at all about the brain centres and the ganglion
cells, and to base on them psychological insight
turns our whole knowledge topsy-turvy.

The three usually vague and misinterpreted
conceptions of child psychology, experimental
psychology, and physiological psychology have
now taken for us clear and sharp forms, and we
understand the relative importance of their aims.
We must now ask of what use they are for the
individual teacher. My answer is simple and is
the same for all the three branches : I maintain
that they are not of the slightest use. Whether
the special mental facts are in the one or the other

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 129

gyrus of the brain, whether the development of
the child's mind favors the one or the other
theory about the constitution of a special mental
phenomenon with regard to its psychophysical
elements, and finally, whether laboratory experi-
ments follow this or that track, are questions of
absolutely no consequence to the teacher. Of
course I have not the right to speak about my
personal attitude, as I started to show objec-
tively the opposing positions, but I confess in
this case I do not see two sides at all. I do not
see how any one can hope that the teacher will
profit for his teaching methods from these three
fields the moment they are correctly defined and
are not mixed in the usual melange with other
things. Where a serious plea for them is made,
always either the psychological fields are mis-
interpreted or the teacher is substituted for the
science of education.

The case of physiological psychology is the
simplest one. There was never a teacher who
would have taught otherwise, or would have
changed his educational efforts, if the physiologi-
cal substratum of the mental life had been the
liver or the kidneys instead of the brain. We
have seen that here psychology has nothing at
all to learn from physiology, and that it is a
caricature of the facts if you tell the teacher
that he can learn anything new about the men-
tal life if he knows by heart the accompanying

130 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

brain processes ; and if the teacher, in the hope
of understanding the inner lif e of children better,
studies the ganglion cells under the microscope,
he could substitute just as well the reading of
Egyptian hieroglyphs. All talk about the brain
is, from the standpoint of the teacher, merely
cant, and I say this frankly at the risk of giv-
ing pleasure to those who do not deserve it — to
those who are only too lazy to study anatomy.

I insist that the situation lies in no way more
favorably for child psychology and experimental
psychology. Both sciences, as we saw, have as
their aim to be methods of analysis and explana-
tion of the normal psychical facts. Child psy-
chology reaches that goal by following up the
development ; experimental psychology reaches it
by introducing artificial variations of the outer
conditions. Both have thus merely the one pur-
pose, to aid our looking on mental life as if it
were a combination of elements, a composition
of psychophysical atoms. I know that such a
transformation of the inner life is extremely im-
portant for many scientific purposes, but I am
convinced, too, that such an atomizing attitude is
directly antagonistic to the attitude of the true
practical life, and thus opposed to the natural
instincts of the teacher toward his pupils. In
practical life our friends come in question for us
only as units ; their mental life interests us only
in so far as it means something to us and ex-

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 131

presses the real, willing personality. Decompose
it for logical ends into its constructed elements of
atomistic sensations, and their sum is no longer
the inner life of our friend. The naturalistic de-
composition into elements is most valuable for its
purposes, but the purposes of life and friendship
and love and education are others. There is no
necessary competition between these different
purposes ; that which serves the one is as true as
that which serves the other, because truth never
means a mere repetition of the one reality, but a
transformation of reality in the direction of logi-
cal ends. The view of man as a free being, as
history must see him, is equally true with the
view of man as an unfree being, as psychology
must see him ; and the friends' and educators'
view of the child as the indissoluble unit and
willful personality is just as valuable and true as
the psychologist's view which sees it as a psy-
chophysical complex mechanism. You destroy
a consistent psychology if you force on it the
categories of practical life, but you also destroy
the values of our practical life if you force on
them the categories of psychology. In experi-
mental psychology, or in child psychology, the
emotion may show itself as composed of circula-
tory and muscular elements, and the will as made
up from muscle and joint and skin sensations ;
but if you offer such transformed product to the
teacher, you do worse than if you should offer to

132 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

a thirsty man one balloon filled with hydrogen
and another with oxygen instead of a good swal-
low of water. The chemist is quite right : that
is water ; the fainting man insists that it is not,
and life speaks always the language of the thirsty.
Do I mean by all this that the teacher ought
to be without interest in the mental life of the
children, a dull and indifferent creature without
sympathy for the individualities and desires and
characteristics of the pupils ? Just the contrary
is true. I detest this mingling of the teacher
with psychology just because I do not wish to
destroy in him the powers of sound and natural
interest. It has been my point from the start
that not every interest in mental life is psycho-
logy, but that psychology studies mental life from
a special point of view. I therefore separated
child psychology sharply from other kinds of
interest in children's minds, and the psychologi-
cal sciences from the historical and normative
sciences. Certainly the teacher ought to study
children and men in general, but with the
strictly anti-psychological view ; he ought to ac-
knowledge them as indissoluble unities, as cen-
tres of free will the functions of which are not
causally but teleologically connected by interests
and ideals, not by psychophysical laws. The
study of the mental life of man from this other
point of view is not a special science ; it belongs
partly to history and literature, partly to logic

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 133

and ethics and philosophy, partly to poetry and
religion. Here may the teacher wander at his
ease, and he will learn to understand man, while
psychology teaches him only to decompose man.
Have you never observed what bad judges of
men in real life the psychologists are, and what
excellent judges of men the history-makers and
historians are ? Not a little of this desirable
knowledge about the real inner man and his
unity of intentions may be found also in the so-
called "rational psychology." To be sure, in its
deductions it is often too dependent upon met-
aphysics, and, above all, we must not forget
that, strictly speaking, it is not psychology at
all, since it aims at synthesis, not at analysis ;
but it is full of that which the teacher needs :
suggestions to intensify interest for the child's
mind by a deeper understanding of its volitional
relations, and by a critical appreciation of men-
tal values for the inner life. The teacher needs
interest in the mental life from the point of view
of interpretation and appreciation; the psycho-
logist, with his child psychology and experi-
mental and physiological psychology, gives him
and must give him only description and expla-
nation. Pestalozzi and Froebel were no psycho-
logists.

This standpoint does not at all exclude the
existence of facts which demand that the teacher
change his attitude and consider the child from

134 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

the naturalistic atomistic psychophysical point of
view ; and for this case also the teacher ought to
be prepared. I have in mind the facts related
to physical and mental health. To be sure, the
questions of hygiene, of light and air and re-
freshment and fatigue, of normal sense organs
and muscles, as well as of normal mental func-
tions, of pathological instincts and emotions, ab-
normal inhibitions and mental diseases, are by
a hundred threads connected with the school-
room, and there is not the slightest doubt that
they have to be treated from the psychophysical
point of view. That is no inconsistency ; these
facts belong indeed to an absolutely different
system of relations, which has to be cared for,
but which is not the system of educational rela-
tions. The word which I am writing now be-
longs to the stream of my thoughts and at the
same time to the stream of my fountain pen — I
have to take care of both. In the moment
when the teacher takes care of the child's myo-
pia or hysteria he is not teacher but psych ophy-
siological adviser of the child, just as it is not
my function as a scholar to fill my fountain pen.
Nobody overlooks that it is extremely important
for society that the teacher should be well pre-
pared to fulfill this naturalistic function, too.
Much misfortune could be avoided if every
teacher were especially trained to recognize
pathological disturbances of the mind in their

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 135

first beginnings, and for that he would indeed
need some real psychology. Only do not say
that he needs the psychology as teacher, while
he may remain a good teacher in spite of the
psychology which he studies in the service of
hygiene.

VI

This last discussion referred only to the ques-
tion how far psychology interests the individual
teacher as a help in his efforts, but that was only
one side of the more general problem, how far
psychology can be helpful to education. There
remains the other side : how can psychology in-
fluence education through the mediating channel
of a scientific educational theory; and it is clear
that here again the questions are so independ-
ent of each other that a mixture of the two
must result in confusion. We can be convinced
that the view of the teacher ought not to be
psychological, and we can nevertheless demand
that education as science make the fullest pos-
sible use of every branch of psychology. Ex-
actly that has always been, and is to-day, my
hope.

To be sure, the impression which theories of
education make in our day is in no way over-
whelming. The demand for educational wisdom
is decidedly greater than the supply, and neither
great systems nor imposing thoughts character-

136 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

ize the pedagogy of our age. The whole edu-
cational trade does its business to-day with small
coin. Our time needs a man like Herbart again.
But at least one very favorable condition for the
strong development of education is given : the
widespread conviction that we need it. No pre-
vious time has so seriously called for a special-
istic help from scientific education, and if, for
want of revolutionizing great thoughts, we de-
mand anything from it, then we demand that it
shall carefully make use of the whole empirical
knowledge of our time to transform it into sug-
gestions for the teacher. A responsible admin-
istration will then further transform these sug-
gestions into obligatory prescriptions. Among
this empirical knowledge which education unites
into a new practical synthesis psychology cer-
tainly plays one of the most important roles in
determining the means by which the educational
ends can be worked out. There is no reason to
confine this to a special branch of psychology ;
all that the analytical study of mind offers by
experimental or physiological methods, by self-
observation or by statistics, by child psychology
or by pathology, by " old " or by " new " means.
in short, the best and fullest psychology of the
time has to be one of the tools in the workshop
of education. The educational scholar differs in
two essential respects clearly from the individual
teacher. First, while the teacher's practical atti-

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 137

tude must suffer, as we saw, by the influence of
the antagonistic psychological attitude in the
same consciousness, the theoretical scholar, who
is not himself a teacher, can of course easily com-
bine the two attitudes and alternate between
them. The teacher must live fully in the one
attitude, and every opposite impulse inhibits
him ; the student of education remains in a
theoretical relation to each of them, and can
therefore easily link them. He can take the
whole wisdom of psychology and physiology and
remold it into suggestions for the practical
teaching attitude. The teacher ought thus to
receive finally, indeed, the influence of psycho-
logy, but only if the causal facts are transformed
by some one else beforehand into teleological
connections, adapted to the teacher's unpsycho-
logical work. The bread which the teacher
bakes for his classes comes indeed partly from
the wheat on psychological fields, but the corn
must be ground beforehand in the educational
mills. And the second point is not less im-
portant : such transformation of psychological
investigations into ideas how to teach may suc-
cessfully be done by the steady cooperation of a
large number of specialists who make a whole
lifework of it, but absolutely never by a single
teacher. He may run through laboratories and
digest statistical tables; he may commit to mem-
ory the numberless papers of the periodicals

138 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

and feast on microscopical ganglion cells, but
nowhere will he find anything which suggests
really a whole plan or a straight impulse. A
thousand little odds and ends without the slight-
est unity will be in his hand, and if he really
believes himself to have the material for a little
prescription, then he probably does not see how
directly it contradicts other indications. It is
impossible for him to survey the whole field, and
nobody can ask him to do privately, by the way,
a work which would give sufficient occupation to
a whole generation. Even the slightest progress
in the field presupposes a full acquaintance with
the whole literature of the special subject. We
cannot demand that from the much-burdened
practical teacher, even for any one problem ;
how absurd to hope it for all those which he
practically needs : for memory and attention, for
imagination and intellect, for emotion and will,
for fatigue and play, and a hundred other im-
portant functions. Do we not lay a special link-
ing science everywhere else between the theory
and practical work ? We have engineering be-
tween physics and the practical workingmen in
the mills ; we have a scientific medicine between
the natural sciences and the physician. If a
man prepared with the most wonderful know-
ledge of the anatomy, physiology, pathology,
and chemistry of the century should begin med-
ical practice and write prescriptions without

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 139

having passed through a training in real medicine,
he would be either the wildest quack, curing
one organ at the expense of a dozen others, or
he would throw away his theoretical wisdom
and follow his practical instincts. The ten thou-
sand little laboratory experiments he knows
would only confuse him if a whole generation of
medical men had not, in specialistic cooperation,
worked them up for practical use. Only, two
points such a theory of education must not
overlook.

On the one hand, education forgets too easily
that such psychophysical material is only a part
of the stuff to be mixed and filtered and brought
into solution before educational principles are
crystallized. The causal analysis of the psycho-
physical variations and possibilities must at every
point be combined with the teleological inter-
pretation of the ends suggested by ethics and
aesthetics, by history and religion. It is not
enough to substitute for a serious study and
examination of the latter half a mere personal
taste and capricious instinct, which takes as a
matter of course that which ought to be scienti-
fically criticised. Carelessness in the teleological
part makes the synthesis just as dilettantic and
useless as ignorance about the causal material.
Nothing ought there to be taken for granted.
Take one simple illustration instead of a thou-
sand. The statistics show a very poor knowledge

140 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

of the natural objects of the country on the
part of the youngest school children. The in-
vestigator draws the educational conclusion that
preparation in that respect must be improved.
But who gives us a scientific right to take for
granted that early acquaintance with natural
objects is at all desirable? Socrates did not
think so; not the stones but only men can teach
us. The best education is certainly not that
which gives a little bit of everything. We must
develop some and must inhibit other psycholo-
gical possibilities ; psychology as such cannot
decide on that. Only when education succeeds
really in amalgamizing the two sides, and be-
comes something else than merely picked-out
psychology, can we tell the teacher that he will
find that study of man which he desires not
only in philosophy and history and literature,
but also in the handbooks and seminaries of
education.

But education must appreciate a second point
also. It cannot expect to find all necessary psy-
chological and physiological information always
ready-made. As no science is merely a collec-
tion of scraps, psychology as such cannot ex-
amine every possible psychological fact in the
universe, but must select just those which are
essential for the understanding of the psychical
elements and laws. This choice in the interest
of psychology differs of course fully from the

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 141

choice of psychical facts which education would
make for its own purposes. Here the science of
education must take the matter in its own hand
and must work up, with all the subtle means
and methods of modern psychology, those psy-
chological phenomena which are important for
the special problems ; the most intimate relation
to psychological laboratories is here a matter
of course. In what form education will fulfill
this demand may itself be at first a matter of
educational experiment. Some believe in spe-
cial psycho-educational experimental laborato-
ries, some believe in special experimental schools,
and recently the proposition was made for the
appointment of special school psychologists at-
tached to the superintendent's office in large
cities. In any case the work has to be done ;
the psychologist as such cannot do it, and the
teacher cannot do it, either. For the psycho-
logist it would be a burden, for the teacher it
would be a most serious danger; the student
of education alone can do it. Of course even
these adjuncts of superintendents, and these prin-
cipals of experimental schools, must never forget
that their work always refers only to the one
half, which is misleading without the other half
— to the causal system, which must be harmon-
ized with the teleological one.

Personally I consider the psycho-educational
laboratory as the most natural step forward.

142 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

Such laboratories would be psychophysical labo-
ratories, in which the problems are selected and
adjusted from the standpoint of educational
interest. All that has been done so far in our
psychological laboratories for the study of atten-
tion, memory, apperception, imagination, and so
on, in spite of seductive titles, has almost never
had anything to do with that part of these func-
tions which is essential for the mental activities
of the classroom. While the individual teacher,
as we have seen, ought to keep away from our
psychological laboratories because our attitude
is opposed to his, the student of education ought
to keep away from us because, in spite of the
same attitude, we have too seldom problems
belonging to his field. It is a waste of energy
to hunt up our chronoscope tables and kymo-
graph records for little bits of educational in-
formation which the psychologist has brought
forward by chance; sciences cannot live from
the chances of work which is intended for
other purposes. When in the quiet experimental
working place of the psycho-educational scholar,
through the steady cooperation of specialists, a
real system of acknowledged facts is secured,
then the practical attempts of the consulting
school psychologist and of the leader of experi-
mental classrooms have a safer basis, and their
work in its turn will help the theoretical scholar
till the cooperation of all these agents produces

PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 143

a practical education which the teacher will
accept without experimenting himself. Then
the teacher may learn psychology, to understand
afterward theoretically the educational theory he
is trained in, but he himself has not to make
educational theory nor to struggle with psycho-
logical experiments.

There need be no fear that such psycho-educa-
tional laboratories would have too few problems
at their disposal ; a fear which may be suggested
by the fact that the friends of this movement
always refer to the same few show pieces, the
experiments on fatigue, on memory, and on asso-
ciation. The situation would develop just as
twenty-five years ago did that of experimental
psychology, which itself lived at first only from
the crumbs that fell from the table of other sci-
ences — physics and physiology. It also began
with only a few chance questions, with the
threshold of sensations and reaction times ; but
since it has wrought in its own workshops, for
its own points of view and interests, it has con-
quered the whole realm of psychology. In the
same way psycho-educational experiments will
extend the work to all the functions active in
education. Such new studies will then show
how incomplete an essay like this is, and how
many other relations still exist between the child
and the study of mental life. But even this
incomplete enumeration is sufficient to show at

144 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

least one thing : the question whether there is
a connection between psychology and education
cannot be answered simply with yes or no, but
must be answered by firstly, secondly, thirdly,
fourthly — I do not discuss whether we can ever
say also : lastly.

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

COMMON sense, which is to-day, as it has been
since eternity, merely the trivialized edition of
the scientific results of the day before yesterday,
is just now on the psychological track. The
scientists felt some years ago that the psycholo-
gical aspect of the products of civilization was
too much neglected, and that the theoretical
problem how to bring the creations of social life
under the categories of psychology might find
some new and interesting answers in these days
of biological, physiological, experimental, and
pathological psychology. Thus the scientific
study of the psychology of society and its func-
tions has made admirable progress. Science, of
course, took this only as a special phase of the
matter ; it did not claim to express the reality of
language and history, law and religion, econom-
ics and technics, in describing and explaining
them as psychological facts. Therefore science
did not forget the more essential truth that
civilization belongs to a world of purposes and
duties and ideals; at present, indeed, science

Z46 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

emphasizes decidedly this latter view, and has
changed the direction of its advance. Common
sense, as usual, has not yet perceived this
change of course. Ten years may pass before
it finds it out. Above all, one-sided as ever,
common sense has misunderstood the word of
command, as if the psychological aspect must
be taken as the only possible aspect, and as if
psychology could reach the reality. Therefore
common sense marches on, still waving the flag
of psychology, and with it its regular drum
corps, the philistines.

This pseudo-philosophical movement, which
takes the standpoint of the psychologist wrongly
as a philosophical view-point of the whole inner
world, has found perhaps nowhere else so little
organized resistance as in the realm of art ; for
the real artist does not care much about the
right or wrong theory. For the same reason,
indeed, it may seem that just here the influence
of a warped theory must be very indifferent
and harmless. A one-sided theory of crime may
mislead the judge, who necessarily works with
abstract theoretical conceptions ; but a one-sided
psychological theory of art cannot do such harm,
as the artist relies in any case on the wings of
his imagination, and mistrusts the crutches of
theories. This would certainly be the case if
there did not exist three other channels through
which the wise and the unwise wisdom can influ-

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 147

ence, strengthen, and inhibit the creative power
of art.

The market influence is one way; that is a
sad story, but it is not the most important fac-
tor, as the tragedy of the market depends much
more upon practical vulgarity than upon theo-
retical mistakes. ^Esthetical criticism is another
way ; but even that is not the most dangerous,
as it speaks to men who ought to be able to
judge for themselves, although nobody doubts
that they do not do so. The most important of
the three, however, is art education in the
schoolroom. Millions of children receive there
the influence that is strongest in determining
their a3sthetical attitude ; millions of children
have there the most immediate contact with the
world of the visible arts, and mould there the
sense of refinement, of beauty, of harmony.
Surely the drawing-teacher can have an incom-
parable influence on the aesthetic spirit of the
country, — far greater than critics and million-
aire purchasers, greater even than the profes-
sional art schools. The future battles against
this country's greatest enemy, vulgarity, will be
fought largely with the weapons which the draw-
ing-teachers supply to the masses. Whoever has
attended their meetings or examined the exhibi-
tions of schoolroom work knows that they do
not lack enthusiasm and industry, and that their
importance in the educational system is growing

148 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

rapidly. But they are primary teachers, and
primary teachers are men who adore nothing
more than recently patented theories which ap-
peal to common sense ; to-day they really feast
on psychology. The greater the influence, the
more dangerous is every wrong step on the the-
oretical line, the more necessary a sober inquiry
as to how far all this talk about psychology and
art really covers the ground.

We thus raise the question, what psychology
and art have to do with each other, in its most
general form, at first without any relation to
the practical problems. If we acknowledge the
question in such an unlimited form, we cannot
avoid asking, as a preamble to the discussion,
whether the work of art cannot be itself a man-
ual of psychology ; whether, especially, the poet
ought not to teach us psychology. We all have
heard often that Shakespeare and Byron, Mere-
dith and Kipling, are better psychologists than
any scholar on the academic platform, or that
Henry James has written even more volumes on
psychology than his brother William. That is
a misunderstanding. The poet, so far as he
works with poetic tools, is never a psychologist ;
if modern novelists of a special type sometimes
introduce psychological analysis, they make use
of means which do not belong to pure art ; it is
a mixed style which characterizes decadence.

It is true that discussion would be meaning-

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 149

less if we were ready to call every utterance
which has to do with mental life psychology.
Psychology does not demand abstract scientific
forms ; it may be offered in literary forms, yet
it means always a special kind of treatment of
mental life. It tries to describe and to explain
mental life as a combination of elements. The
dissolution of the unity of consciousness into
elementary processes characterizes psychology,
just as natural science demands the dissection
of physical objects ; the appreciation of a physi-
cal object as a whole is never natural science,
and the interpretation and suggestion of a men-
tal state as a whole is never psychology. The
poet, as well as the historian and the man of
practical life, has this interpretation of the whole
as his aim; the psychologist goes exactly the
opposite way. They ask about the meaning,
the psychologist about the constitution ; and the
psychological elements concern the poet as little
as the microscopical cells of the tree interest the
landscape painter. The tree in the painting
ought, indeed, to be botanically correct ; it
ought not to appear contradictory to the results
of the botanist's observations, but these results
themselves need not appear in the painting. In
the same way, we demand that the poet create
men who are psychologically correct, — at least
in those cases in which higher sesthetical laws
do not demand the psychological impossibilities

150 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

of fairyland, which are allowed like the botani-
cal impossibilities of conventionalized flowers or
the anatomical impossibilities of human figures
with wings. We detest the psychologically
absurd creations of the stage villain and the
stage hero in third-class melodrama, the psy-
chological marionettes of newspaper novels, and
the frequent cases of insanity in poor fiction,
for which the schooled psychologist would make
at once the diagnosis that there must be simula-
tion in them, as the insane never act so. We
demand this psychological correctness, and the
great poet instinctively satisfies it so fully that
the psychologist may acknowledge the creations
of poetry as substitutional material for the psy-
chical study of the living man. The psycholo-
gist believes the poet, and studies jealousy from
Othello, and love from Romeo, and neurasthenia
from Hamlet, and political emotions from Csesar ;
but the creation of such lifelike men is in itself
in no way psychology.

The poet creates mental life in suggesting it
to the soul of the reader ; only the man who
decomposes it afterward is a psychologist. The
poet works as life works ; the child who smiles
and weeps causes us to think of pleasure and
pain too, but it offers us no psychological under-
standing of pleasure and pain. Just so the poet
smiles and weeps, and if he is a great artist, with
strong suggestive power, he forces our minds to

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 151

feel with him, while we have only an intellectual
interest if he merely analyzes the emotions and
gives us a handful of elements determined by
abstract psychological conceptions. Popular lan-
guage calls a poet a good psychologist if he cre-
ates men who offer manifold material for the
analysis of the psychologist ; when the poet
begins to make that analysis himself, and to ex-
plain with the categories of physiological psy-
chology why the hero became a dreamer, and
the dreamer a hero, and the saint a sinner, he
will hinder his scientific effort by the desire to
be a poet, and will weaken his poetry by his
instructive side show. Meredith and Bourget
do it, Ibsen never. Poetry and psychology are
different, not because they speak a different
language, but because they take an absolutely
different attitude toward the mental life; the
wisdom of the poet about the human soul does
not belong to a handbook of psychology. For
music and the visible arts the whole question
is non-existent, or at least ought not to exist.
A side branch of it, nevertheless, continues to
grow in the old discussion whether music ought
to "describe" the human feelings. The con-
fusion about the logical meaning of description
here lies more on the surface ; theoretically the
case is the same as in poetry. The composer
describes the emotions as little as the poet does ;
tones and verses suggest the feelings, while it is

152 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

an unmusical, unpoetical business to psycholo-
gize about them ; but just that is our aim, if we
consider the preamble as closed, and ask once
more what art has to do with psychology.

II

We have seen so far that art is not by itself
psychology ; the remaining question, in which
all centres, is, then, how far art can become an
object of psychology. The situation is simple.
Psychology is the science which describes and
explains the mental processes. A physical thing
or process, even a brain action, is never, there-
fore, an immediate object of psychology. Every
work of art — the pencil drawing and the writ-
ten poem, the played melody and the sculptured
statue — exists as a physical thing ; hence the
work of art itself is never an object of psycho-
logy, and the description of it lies outside of the
psychologist's province. The physicist describes
the tone waves of a melody; the geometrician
describes the lines and curves and angles of a
drawing. The physical object is in contact with
the human mind at two points : at its start and
its goal. Every work of art springs from the
mind of the artist, and reaches the mind of the
public ; its origin and its effect are both psychi-
cal processes, and both are material for the de-
scription and explanation of the psychologist.
Two groups of psychological problems are thus

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 153

offered, — two points of view for the psycholo-
gical study of art; a third one cannot exist.
The one asks, By what psychological processes
does the mind create art ? The other asks, By
what psychological processes does the mind en-
joy art ?

Modern psychology has attained to its rapid
progress of late years through the wonderful
development of its methods; it believes no
longer that one way alone will bring us to the
goal ; we have to adapt the methods to the pro-
blem. It is quite clear that these two sesthetical
psychological problems demand different meth-
ods. The question how the artist creates art
lies beyond the self-observation of the psycholo-
gist ; he must go back to the past. The ques-
tion how the work of art influences the enjoying
spectator can be studied by an analysis of his
own sesthetical emotions. In the interest of
this self - observing analysis he may introduce
experimental methods, but he cannot make ex-
periments with the artistic production. On the
other hand, the artistic creative functions may
easily be traced down toward the art of the child,
of the primitive races, even of the animals. And
so the first group of investigations makes use
chiefly of the sociological, biological, and his-
torical methods of psychology ; the second group
favors experimental methods. The larger ma-
terial is at the disposal of the first group ; the

154 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

more exact treatment characterizes the second.
We cannot sketch the results here even in the
most superficial outlines ; we can recall only the
most general directions which these studies have
taken.

First, the psychology of the art-creating pro-
cess. The sesthetical psychologist, in our days
of Darwinism, goes back to the play of animals.
Biologically this is easily understood; the fre-
quent playful contests are a most valuable train-
ing for action, — as necessary, therefore, for the
organism in the struggle for existence as is any
other function of the nervous system, and yet
they contain the most important elements of
aesthetic creation : they are actions which are
useless for the present state of the organism,
carried out for enjoyment only. Social psy-
chology finds the more complicated forms of the
same impulses in the life of savages. We see
how the primitive races accompany their work
by rhythmical songs, how their dances stir up
lyrical poetry, how their tools and vessels and
weapons and huts become decorated, how art
springs from the religious and social and tech-
nical life. The psychologist links these first
traces of art with the productions of civilized
peoples. His interest is not that of the philo-
logical historian ; he does not care for the single
work of art as the unique occurrence ; no, he
looks for the psychological laws which under the

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 155

varying circumstances produce just the given
works of poetry and sculpture, of music and
architecture and painting. We learn to under-
stand how climate and political conditions, tech-
nical, material, and social institutions, models
and surrounding nature, brought it about that
Egypt and China and India, or Greece and Italy
and Germany, had just their own development
of artistic production. Art becomes thus an
element of the social consciousness, together
with law and religion, science and politics ; but
art is psychologically still more interesting than
any other function of the national soul, because
it is less necessary for the biological existence
than any other production of man. Art is there-
fore freer, follows more easily every pressure
and tension, every inner tendency and outer
opportunity ; it can fully disappear even in the
strongest social organism, and can break out in
fullest glory even in the weakest sociological
body. It is in its incomparable manifoldness
and easiness of adaptation that art shows best
how the mental products of man are dependent
upon the totality of variable conditions.

While such a sociological view contrasts dif-
ferent periods and nations, psychology does not
overlook the differences among individuals. The
general artistic level of the whole social mind
is only one side of the problem; the varia-
tion of individuals above and below this level,

166 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

from the anti-aesthetic philistine to the greatest
genius, is the other side, and here also the de-
pendence upon the most diverse conditions at-
tracts interest. The psychologist consults bio-
graphy, especially the autobiographies of poets
and painters, and follows up most carefully the
subtle influences which fertilized the imagina-
tion and gave abnormal direction to the person-
ality.

Studying thus the artistic production in indi-
viduals at all times and at all places, psychology
finally abstracts a general understanding of the
creative process and its conditions. There ap-
pears nothing mysterious in it : by manifold
threads it seems connected with the mental func-
tions of simple attention, with inhibition and
suggestion ; in other directions with dreams and
illusions, and also with the abnormal functions
of hypnotism and insanity. It is a most com-
plex process, truly, in which the whole personal-
ity is engaged, but it is connected by short steps
with so much simpler events in mental life, and
it can so easily be traced back to the artistic ele-
ments in the child, that the psychologist has no
reason to despair ; the artistic function of the
brain is not beyond the causal understanding.
The machinery of modern psychological concep-
tions, the atomistic sensations and their laws of
association and inhibition, can theoretically ex-
plain it in its entirety from the schoolboy's

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 157

drawing of profiles on his blotting-paper up to
Michael Angelo's decoration of the dome of St.
Peter's with immortal religious frescoes.

Ill

Very different indeed are the methods by
which we investigate our second group of sesthet-
ical problems, the psychological effect of the
beautiful object. Experimental psychology en-
ters here into its rights. When the students of
mental life, twenty years ago, took up the exact
method of natural science and worked out ex-
perimental schemes for the most refined analysis
of psychical processes, it seemed at first a matter
of course that only the intellectual processes,
especially the functions of perception, and per-
haps the elementary activities, would offer them-
selves to such inquiries. But slowly the new
method has reached and conquered one field
after another, — memory and imagination, asso-
ciation and apperception, feeling and emotion,
undeveloped and abnormal mental states; and
now, in different places, experimental work is
dealing with the most delicate psychical fact, the
sesthetical feeling and its conditions.

Fechner gave a strong impulse to such an ex-
perimental study of sesthetic elements a long
time ago. He asked systematically a large num-
ber of persons which one of a set of rectangles,
for instance, each of them preferred ; the ten

158 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

forms varied from a square to a rectangle with a
length of five and a breadth of two inches. He
found a marked sesthetical preference for those
forms which are determined by the golden sec-
tion ; that is, in which the short side stands to
the long side as the latter stands to the sum of
both. To-day the work transcends in every di-
rection such elementary beginnings. In the first
place, it is not confined to a special art. Music
and poetry share equally with the visible arts.
The sesthetical harmony and discord of tones,
their relation to beats and overtones, to the
fusion and the discrimination of tones, to timbre
and duration ; in the same way, the musical
properties of rhythm, its relations to the atten-
tion and time sense, to the physiological pro-
cesses of breathing and muscle tension, and to
many other psychophysical functions, — all these
have become the problems of the experimental
psychologist. These studies of musical rhythm
naturally turn the attention toward the elements
of poetry ; the experimental study of rhythm in
the verse, and its relation to the position of the
rhyme, to the length of the stanza, to the fluc-
tuations of apperception, to the physiological
functions, and so forth, is exceedingly promising,
although still in its beginning.

Much more developed is the attempt to reach
experimentally the characteristics of the visible
arts. Material and form, above all color and

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 159

shape, offer themselves in an unlimited series of
problems. The color spectrum has always been
at home in the laboratory, but the psychologist
has studied color as an element of perception or
as a function of the eye, not as the object of
sesthetical feeling. His studies now take a new
direction and ask which of two colors is preferred.
How does this preference depend upon saturation,
brightness, extension? What combination of
colors is agreeable : how does this effect depend
upon the relative extension of the colored sur-
face; how upon the colored materials and the
relation between their intensity or their white-
ness ? Which shapes and angles and sections are
preferred : how does this preference depend upon
associations, or upon our bodily position, or upon
eye movements ? How does the plastic effect,
in stereoscopic vision for example, influence the
intensity of sesthetic feeling; how does move-
ment influence it, or the combination of shape
with color ? In a series of rectangles or ellipses
or bisected lines, is only one of them agreeable,
or has the curve of our sesthetical pleasure sev-
eral maximal points ?

The experimental investigation may come
much nearer still to the problem of fine arts. I
take as illustration a series of experiments which
make up part of a recent thesis from the Har-
vard laboratory. The problem is the pleasing
balance of two sides of an sesthetic object. That

160 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

is, of course, realized in the simplest way by geo-
metrical symmetry as many works of architec-
ture show it; we have this pleasing feeling of
equilibrium, also, when we see a well-composed
building of which the two halves are far from
identical, and every painting shows this ideal
symmetry of composition without the monotony
of geometrical uniformity; so it is even in the
most irregular Japanese arrangement. The ques-
tion arises under what conditions this demand
for balance is fulfilled, if the objects in both
halves are different. Translated into the meth-
ods of experimental psychology, the question
would be, how far, for instance, a long verti-
cal line must be from the centre of a framed
field, if a line of half its length is at a given
distance from the centre on the other side ; how
far if a point or a curve of special form or two
lines are there. The variations are endless. In
an absolutely dark room is a framed field of
black cloth, which is so illuminated that no other
object in the room is visible ; by a little device,
bright lines, points, curves, also letters, pictures,
objects, can be made to move over this field
without showing the moving apparatus, while
the exact position of each is indicated on a scale.
One line may be given on the left side, and the
experimenter has to find the most pleasing posi-
tion of a double line on the other, imitating thus
the case when two figures are to be on one side

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 161

of a painting, while one only is to balance them
on the other side ; where must it stand ? Start-
ing from such simple lines, the investigation
turns to more complicated questions : What is
the influence of the impression of depth ? — for
instance, a flat picture on one side, a picture
representing depth on the other. What is the
influence of interest ? — a meaningless paper on
one side, a paper of equal size with interesting
figures on the other side. What is the influence
of apparent movement ? — a picture of a resting
object on one side, an equally large object which
suggests movement in a special direction on the
other. So the problem can easily be carried to a
complication of conditions which does justice to
the manifoldness of principles involved in the
composition of paintings, sculptures, decorations,
interiors, buildings, and landscapes. If, finally,
all these experiments are carried out under dif-
ferent subjective conditions, in different states of
bodily position, of eye movement, of distance,
of attention, of fatigue, under different degrees
of illumination, with different colors, with differ-
ent associations, all with different subjects and in
steady relation to the real objects of historical
art, we learn slowly to understand our aesthetic
pleasure in the balance of a composition, and its
relation to the functions of our body.

Some one may say : All these experiments are
too simple ; they may be quite interesting, but

162 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

they never reach the complication of real art.
What are those simple figures beside a Madonna,
those primitive harmonies beside a symphony?
Yet is it a reproach to the physicist that he
studies the nature of the gigantic thunderstorm,
not from an equally large electrical discharge,
but from the tiny sparks of his little labora-
tory machine? And if the physicist is inter-
ested in the waves of the ocean, he studies the
movements in a small tank of water in his work-
ing-room, and introduces simple artificial move-
ments. It is just the elementary character of
experimental methods which guarantees their
power for explanation ; and sesthetical effects
can be psychologically understood only if we
study their elements in the most schematic way
possible. The necessary presupposition is, of
course, that the aesthetical attitude itself can be
maintained in the laboratory rooms, and there
is no reason for being skeptical about that.
With regard to practical emotions such skepti-
cism may be correct : we cannot love and hate,
nor admire and detest in the laboratory, and it
may even be said that the joy of the laboratory
is not agreeable, and the pain is not painful.
But the sesthetical emotion remains intact pre-
cisely on account of the absence of every prac-
tical relation in it. The beautiful or the ugly
thing lasts as such in every corner of our work-
shop.

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 163

The experimental study of the psychological
effect of art seems thus even more safely housed
than the biological and historical study of the
psychological production of art, and both to-
gether form already a psychological system of
aesthetics which certainly still has blanks, but
which is surprisingly near completeness. Psy-
chology will go on in this way till the most deli-
cate cause and the most subtle effect of each
artistic work are understood by the action of
causal laws, like any other cause and effect in
nature.

IV

Before us lies the question which is important
for the teacher : how far the results of such
studies can become productive, or at least sug-
gestive, for instruction in artistic drawing. Here
again we must separate the two sides, — the
causes and the effects of the beautiful objects.
The causes which produce the drawing are the
activities of the pupil ; the effects are the im-
pressions on the spectator. The study of the
causes will help us to understand how to train
the sesthetical activities of the pupil ; the study
of the effects will help us to advise how the
drawing or painting should be made up in order
to please others. The study of the causes sug-
gests to us methods of teaching ; the study of
the effects suggests rules and facts which are

164 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

to be taught. The study of the causes interests
only the teacher who handles the pupil ; the
study of the effects offers insight which the
teacher may share with the pupil.

Think first of the effects. Psychology has
analyzed the impressions on our sense of beauty,
and each fact must express a rule which can
be learned. Blue and red are agreeable, blue
and green are disagreeable : therefore combine
red and blue, but not green and blue. The
golden section of a line is the most agreeable of
all divisions : therefore try to divide all lines,
if possible, according to this rule. Such psy-
chological prescriptions hold, of course, for all
arts : do not make verses with lines of ten feet ;
do not compose music in a scale of fifths. Step
by step we come to the prescription for a tra-
gedy, for a symphony, for a Renaissance palace;
how much more for the details of a simple draw-
ing ! Fill the space thus and thus ; take care of
good balance ; if there is a long line on one
side, make the short line on the other side nearer
to the centre : these are aesthetical prescriptions
which can be learned and exercised like the laws
of perspective for architectural drawing. When-
ever the pupil follows the rules, his drawing will
avoid disagreeable shocks to the spectator. I
am free, I trust, from the suspicion that I over-
estimate the value of experimental psychology
for teachers ; I have often attacked its misuses.

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 165

Here the case is quite different. Such prescrip-
tions do not prescribe the ways of teaching, but
are material of instruction. There is no other
school subject for which psychology supplies
such material. Mathematics and natural sci-
ences, languages and history, are not learned in
school with reference to their psychological ef-
fects. Art, however, has an absolutely excep-
tional position. My belief, therefore, that meth-
ods of teaching cannot be learned to-day from
the psychological laboratory is no contradiction
of my acknowledgment that artistic prescrip-
tions, worthy to be taught, can be deduced from
psychology. I see with great pleasure that the
development in this direction goes steadily on,
and that children learn easily and joyfully the
ways of avoiding ugly lines and arrangements.

My theoretical objections against teaching on
the basis of psychological knowledge interfere
much more with the pedagogical results which
may perhaps be indicated by the study of the
psychological causes of art. If we apply here our
theoretical insight at all, the result cannot have
the form, Teach your pupils to make the draw-
ing thus and so ; but the form, Teach thus and
so your pupils to make a drawing. If we un-
derstand the causes which produce a beautiful
drawing, and if by our teaching we can influ-
ence the central system of the child so that the
causes for such production are established, then

166 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

it seems that the goal is reached. But we are
not only far from a full understanding ; we are
endlessly farther from such desired influences.
To know the chemical constitution of an egg
does not mean the power to produce an egg
which can be hatched. We cannot make a
genius, we cannot make talent ; and by itself the
psychological analysis only indicates, and that but
slightly, how to evolve from a bad draughtsman
a good one. We may make the general abstrac-
tion that constant training is a good thing ; to
reach such a triviality, however, we need psycho-
logy as little as we need scientific physiology to
find out that eating is useful for our nourish-
ment. Wherever psychological speculation goes
farther, it is finally dependent upon secondary
factors which are determined by presuppositions
of non-psychological character, and thus the
results may be quite contradictory : the one re-
commends the study of nature, the other only
imagination ; the one proposes flowers for mod-
els, the other geometrical figures ; the one lines,
the other colors. Psychology listens carefully
to all, but is responsible for none of these propo-
sitions. An examination of the papers which
drawing-superintendents and drawing-teachers
usually read at their meetings shows, indeed,
that they belong for the most part to a species
well known in all our educational gatherings.
The first half of each paper is made up of famil-

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 167

iar sentences taken from good textbooks of phy-
siological psychology, — the ganglion cells of
the optical centres play the chief role in the
drawing associations, — and the second half of
the paper contains a list of correct educational
suggestions ; only the chief thing, the proof that
the suggestions are really consequences of the
textbook abstracts, is forgotten. The two parts
have often not the slightest connection. The
second half alone would appear commonplace,
and the first alone would appear out of place ;
together they make a scholarly impression, even
if they have nothing to do with each other.

Perhaps one other danger in these practical
movements of to-day deserves mention. The
fact that drawings, paintings, pictures, please us,
encourages the working out of technical prescrip-
tions from them for instruction in art ; but the
pleasure must be a pure and natural one, as little
as possible dependent upon fugitive fashions and
capricious tastes ; and if our pleasure is a refined
eccentricity, or even perversity, it is certain that
we have no right to infect with it the taste of
the younger generation. Seldom has this danger
been so near as in our time, with its preraphael-
itic and Japanese preferences, with its poster style
and its stylistic restlessness. The healthy atmo-
sphere for the taste of the child is harmonious
classical beauty. The man who has passed his
training in pure beauty may reach a point where

168 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

a reaction against classicism is a sound and ma-
ture a3sthetical desire, but to begin with eccentric
realism or with mysterious symbolism in an im-
mature age is a blunder. The educational mis-
take becomes worse if that style is allowed in
the schoolroom which is over-indulged in our
time, and which is most antagonistic to the
child's mind : I mean the primitivistic style of
our posters and bindings. The simple forms of
primitivistic art are not a real returning to the
beginnings of art, which would be quite adapted
to children. No ; this style means an ironical
playing with the primitive forms on the basis of
a most artful art. It is masquerading with the
costumes of simplicity, not real desire for simple
nature ; and the spirit of irony alone makes it
possible, and so dangerously attractive for our
taste. If a school exhibition of drawings in the
style of the Yellow Book appears to our eye
pleasant and almost refreshing, after the tiresome
elaborations of our own school-time, it is our
moral duty to ask, not what we like, but what
children ought to learn to like. Irony toward the
most mature products of civilization ought not
to flourish in a child's mind ; and if the ironical
curves of the Beardsley style become the trained
methods of children, who finally believe that
they really see nature in conventionalized poster
style and use those lines thoughtlessly as pat-
terns, the result is decidedly a perverse one.

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 16»

Nevertheless, the future may be wiser ; psycho-
logy will perhaps help pedagogics to find the
way to develop the facility of pupils in produ-
cing fair drawings ; and if we are willing to take
the hope for the fact, we may say that psycho-
logy gives to the teacher prescriptions for train-
ing the child to draw better and better, and,
above all, prescriptions which the child itself
can learn, prescriptions for the composition and
arrangement of a drawing which shall please
others. Art can thus be fully described psycho-
logically and explained with regard both to its
conditions and to its effects, and both groups of
facts can become suggestive for the construction
of rules for the teaching of drawing. The rela-
tions of psychology and art are then important
and suggestive ones ; and yet, is that our final
word ? Has philosophy nothing else to say ?

I know quite well that there are plenty of men
who would say, Yes, that is the whole story. I
think, however, the number is increasing of those
who see that while half a truth is true as fai
as its half goes, half a truth is a lie if it pre-
tends to be the whole. It seems to me, indeed,
that this psychological scheme is one-sided, and
that our time confronts dangers for its ideal life
if triumphant psychology crushes under its feet
every idealistic opposition. It is with art here

170 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

exactly as with science and with morality. Psy-
chology proclaims : We can describe and explain
every thought of science and every decision of
morality from an atomistic naturalistic point of
view ; we can understand it as the necessary
result of the foregoing psychophysical condi-
tions. There is, then, no absolute truth in sci-
ence, no absolute virtue in morality ; duties are
trained associations, and the value of our actions,
as of our thinking, lies in their agreeable effects.
Art easily joins the others ; if there is no truth
and no virtue which is more than the product
of circumstances, then there is no beauty which
has absolute value; then beauty has no other
meaning than that which psychology describes ;
it is the effect of certain psychological processes,
and the cause of certain agreeable psychological
results ; and if we are careful to prepare those
conditions and to insure that outcome, then we
have done all that the sesthetical luxury of soci-
ety can wish for its entertainment.

I do not deny the right of psychology to
consider the world of beautiful creations from
such a point of view, and as a psychologist I do
my best to help in such investigations; but I
cannot forget that this view-point is an artificial
one for living, real art ; that it is artificial both
for the subject who creates art and for the
subject who enjoys art ; that it is artificial wher-
ever art is felt in its full meaning.

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 171

I say that psychology has its full right of
way within its own limits ; it has limits, however,
and they are much narrower than the superficial
impression may make us believe. Psychology
has to describe and to explain mental life ; but
description and explanation are possible only for
objects. Explanation always presupposes de-
scription, and the very idea of description pre-
supposes the existence of objects. Psychology
considers mental life, therefore, only in so far as
it can be thought as a series of existing objects,
— objects which exist in consciousness as phy-
sical objects exist in space.

We have not to ask here why it is important
for the purposes of life and thought to consider
the mental world as if it were a world of objects.
We are sure that in the primary reality our
inner life does not mean to us such a world of
objects only. Our perceptions and conceptions
may reach us as objects, while our feelings, our
emotions, our judgments, our volitions, do not
come in question with us first as objects which
we passively perceive, but as activities which we
live out, as activities the reality of which cannot
be described and causally explained ; it must be
felt and understood and interpreted. In short,
we are not merely passive subjects with a world
of conscious objects; we are willing subjects,
whose acts of will have not less reality in spite
of the fact that they are no objects at all. To

172 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

consider the mental world, including feeling and
the will, psychologically means an artificial trans-
formation and substitution which may have its
value for special purposes, but which leads us
away from reality. The reality of the will and
feeling and judgment does not belong to the
describable world, but to a world which has to
be appreciated; it has to be linked, therefore,
not by the categories of cause and effect, but by
those of meaning and value. And in this world
of will relations grows and blossoms and flowers
Art.

Let us examine the characteristics of this great
network of will attitudes, in which the personality
feels itself a willing subject, and acknowledges
all other subjects as volitional also. One distinc-
tion is of paramount importance : our will may
be thought of as an individual attitude, or it
may arise with the meaning of an over-individual
decision that demands acknowledgment by every
subject, and that is willed, therefore, independ-
ently of our merely personal desires. It is an
act of will which is meant as necessary for every
subject, which ought to be acted by everybody :
we call it duty. From a purely psychological
standpoint, the will thought as object is deter-
mined in any case, — the virtuous act as well as
the crime, the nonsensical judgment as well as
the wise one. From the critical standpoint of
reality, the special will decision is necessary if it

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 173

belongs to the very nature of will, binds every
will, not by natural law, but by obligation ; and
it can be and is unnecessary if it is merely
personal arbitrariness.

This doubleness of duty and arbitrariness in
our will repeats itself in every division of possible
will activities, and there exist four such depart-
ments of relations of will to the world, four
possibilities of reacting on the world. First,
the subject may change the objects of the world
by his actions ; secondly, may decide for addi-
tional supplements to the given objects ; thirdly,
may transform the objects in his thought so that
they form a connection ; and fourthly, may trans-
form the objects so that they stand each for
itself. If these four possible subjective acts are
performed by the individual personal arbitrary
will, they represent individual values. The ac-
tions toward the world are then such changes of
the objects as are useful and practical for our
comfort ; the supplementations are then the play
of our fancy and imagination ; the connections
are then expressions of our hope or fear; the
isolations, finally, are means to our personal
enjoyment. These four functions may be carried
out also as functions of the deeper, over-indi-
vidual, necessary will; that is, as functions of
duty. Those actions which alter and change
the objective world are then moral actions ; the
ideas which supplement the world make up re-

174 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

ligion ; those transformations which bring out a
connection between the objects of the world
compose scientific truth ; and finally, those trans-
formations which isolate the objects, so that
they stand each for itself, form the domain of
beauty.

VI

Truth and beauty thus represent duties, logical
and sesthetical duties, just as morality represents
ethical duties. We choose and form the physical
axiom in science so, and not otherwise, because
our will is bound by duty to do so ; that is, only
that particular decision of our affirming will can
demand acknowledgment by every subject ; and
thus art chooses the forms and lines, the colors
and curves, of the Sistine Madonna just so, and
not otherwise, because only this decision of the
creating will is as it ought to be, as duty pre-
scribes, as it can demand that every willing
subject ought to acknowledge it. Everything
in this world is beautiful, and is a joy forever if
it is so transformed that it does not suggest
anything else than itself, that it contains all
elements for the fulfillment of the whole in
itself. We do not ask for the arms and legs of
the person whose marble bust the artist gives
us, and we do not ask for his complexion, either.
We do not ask how the field and forest look
outside of the frame of the landscape painting,

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 175

and we do not ask what the persons in the
drama have done before and will do after the
story. Our works of art are not in our space
and not in our time ; their frame is their own
world, which they never transcend. Real art
makes us forget that the painting is only a piece
of canvas, and that Hamlet is only an actor, and
not the prince. We forget the connections, we
abstract from all relations, we think of the object
in itself; and wherever we do so, we proceed
aesthetically. And if we enjoy the great works
of art, the essential function is not the individ-
ual enjoyment of our senses and feelings, like
the enjoyment in eating and drinking ; no, it is
the volitional acknowledgment of the will of the
artist. We will with him ; and if we appreciate
his work as beautiful, we acknowledge that it is
as we feel that it ought to be ; that our will of
thinking that particle of the world is lifted to its
duties ; that we have transcended the sphere of
merely personal arbitrariness and its desires and
agreeable fulfillments ; that we have reached
the sphere of over-individual values. Whoever
understands art as will function believes in art
and appreciates it as a world of duties ; psycho-
logy has not to try to understand it as such, but
to transform it into something else, into a set of
objects which have causes and effects. Psycho-
logy must destroy the deepest meaning of art,
just as it disregards the deepest meaning of

176 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

truth and morality, if it tries to present its view
as the last word about our inner activities.

And if art is thus a realization of duties which
have their real meaning in this acknowledgment
of the will, in what light should we see all these
technical rules and prescriptions for facilitating
in the child the production of artistic works, and
for preventing him from making disagreeable
drawings? Those rules and prescriptions remain
quite good and valid. They do for real beauty
and art just what the police and the prisons on
the one side, the training of habits and manners
on the other side, do for real morality. Nobody
will underestimate the value of the fact that our
children learn through training a thousand habits
which keep them, as a matter of course, out of
conflict with the laws, and that police and jails
remind them again and again, Do not leave the
safe tracks. Whoever lives a noble life, however,
means by morality and duty something else and
something higher. Habits and jails do not in-
sure that in an important conflict of life, where
personal interests stand against duty, the bad
action may not triumph. Only a conscience
which is penetrated by morality stands safe in
all storms, and such a conscience is not brought
out by technical prescriptions, nor by punishments
and jails ; no, only by the obligatory power of
will upon will, by the inspiring life of subjects
we acknowledge, by the example of the heroes

PSYCHOLOGY AND ART 177

of duty, that speaks directly from will to will,
and for which we cannot substitute psychologi-
cal training and police officers. And thus the
duty of art. Do not believe that the easier pro-
duction of a not disagreeable drawing means a
positive gain for real art and beauty: it raises
the standard, it uplifts the level of aesthetic pro-
duction, just as the standard of moral behavior
is lifted by the existence of a watchful police,
and it is extremely important. Do not forget,
however, that sesthetical life also needs not only
the policeman's function, but above all the min-
ister's and helper's function ; in other words,
not technical rules, but duties ; not easy produc-
tion, but convictions; not knowledge of psy-
chological effects, but belief in absolute values.

This attitude becomes the more important as
this whole view shows that the world of art is in
no way subordinate to or less true than the world
of science. The reality is neither that which
the scientist describes nor that which the artist
sketches ; both are transformations for a special
purpose. The scientist, we have seen, trans-
forms for the purpose of connection, and in that
service he constructs atoms which exist nowhere
but in his thought. The artist transforms in
the interest of isolation, and in that service he
constructs his drawings. The mechanical pro-
cess of drawing as such is, of course, not art in
Itself ; it is the indifferent means of expression

178 PSYCHOLOGY AND ART

which can communicate science as well as art.
Just as words can serve Shakespeare as well as
Darwin, so lines and curves can serve the mathe-
matician and the physicist as well as the artist ;
the purpose alone separates the poet from the
biologist, the scientist from the artist. And if
art thus means a world which is exactly as true
and valuable as the world of science, let us not
forget that the school lesson in drawing means
contact with this world of art, — that is, with
the special spirit of aesthetic duties; and that
every drawing-teacher ought to be, not an
sesthetical policeman only, but an inspiring be-
liever in these sacred aesthetic duties.

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

A STUDY of the relations between psychology
and the science of history emphasizes necessarily
the limits of psychology. I know quite well
that the choice of such a subject easily suggests
the suspicion of heresy; whoever asks eagerly
for the limits of a science appears to the first
glance in a hostile attitude towards it. To em-
phasize its limiting boundaries means to restrain
its rights and to lessen its freedom. It seems,
indeed, almost an anti-psychological undertaking
for any one to say to this young science, which
is so full of the spirit of enterprise : Keep within
the bounds of your domain. But you remember
the word of Kant : " It is not augmentation, but
deformation of the sciences, if we efface their
limits." Kant is speaking of logic, but at
present his word seems to be for no field truer
than for psychology. Psychology, it seems to
me, encouraged by its quick triumphs over its
old-fashioned metaphysical rival, to-day moves
instinctively towards an expansionistic policy.
A psychological imperialism which dictates laws

180 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

to the whole world of inner experience seems
often to be the goal. But sciences are not like
the domiciles of nations ; their limits cannot be
changed by mere agreement. The presupposi-
tions with which a science starts decide for all
time as to the possibilities of its outer extension.
The botanists may resolve to-morrow that from
now on they will study the movements of the
stars also ; it is their private matter to choose
whether they want to be botanists only or also
astronomers, but they can never decide that
astronomy shall become in future a part of
botany, supposing that they do not claim the
Milky Way as a big vegetable. Every exten-
sion beyond the sharp limits which are deter-
mined by the logical presuppositions can thus be
only the triumph of confusion, and the ultimate
arbitration, which is the function of episte-
mology, must always decide against it. It is
thus love and devotion for psychology which
demands that its energies be not wasted by the
hopeless task of transgressions into other fields.

Philosophers and psychologists are mostly will-
ing to acknowledge such a discriminative atti-
tude when the relations between psychology and
the normative sciences, ethics, logic, aesthetics, are
in question. They know that a mere descrip-
tion and causal explanation of ethical, sesthetical,
and logical mental facts in spite of its legitimate
relative value cannot in itself be substituted for

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 181

the doctrines of obligation. The line of demar-

o

cation thus separates with entire logical sharp-
ness the duties from the facts, the duties which
have to be appreciated in their validity as ideals
for the will, and the facts which have to be
analyzed and explained in their physical or psy-
chical existence as objects of perception. But
can we overlook the symptoms of growing oppo-
sition against the undiscriminative treatment of
the world of facts in the empirical sciences?
The creed of those who believe in such uni-
formity is simple enough : the universe is made
up of physical and psychical processes, and it
is the purpose of science to discover their ele-
ments and their laws ; we may differentiate and
classify the sciences with regard to the different
objects which we analyze or with regard to the
different processes the laws of which we study,
but there cannot exist in the. world anything
which does not find a suitable place in a system
in which all special sciences are departments of
physics or of psychology. In a period of natu-
ralistic thinking like that of the Darwinistic age
the intellectual conscience may be fascinated and
hypnotized by the triumphs of such atomizing
and law-seeking thought even to the point of
forgetting all doubts and contradictions. But
the pendulum of civilization begins to swing in
the other direction. The mere decomposition of
the world has not satisfied the deep demand for

182 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

an inner understanding of the world ; the dis-
covery of the causal laws has not stilled the thirst
for emotional values, and there has come a chill
with the feeling that all the technical improve-
ment which surrounds us is a luxury which does
not make life either better or worthier of the
struggle. The idealistic impulses have come
to a new life everywhere in art and science
and politics and society and religion; histori-
cal and philosophical thinking has revived and
rushes to the foreground. We begin to remem-
ber again what naturalism too easily forgets,
that the interests of life have not to do with
causes and effects, but with purposes and means,
that in life we feel ourselves as units and as free
agents, bound by culture and not only by na-
ture, factors in a system of history and not only
atoms in a mechanism.

Such a general reaction demands its expres-
sion in the world of science too, and there can-
not be any surprise if psychology has to stand
the first attack. The naturalistic study of the
physical facts may not be less antagonistic to
such idealistic demands, and yet it is the de-
composition of the psychical facts which op-
presses us most immediately in our instinctive
strife for the rights of the personality. The
antithesis becomes thus most pointed in the con-
flict between psychology and history, and it
seems to me that only two possibilities are open.

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 183

One possibility is that these sciences stay yoked
together, the one forcing the other to follow its
path. Either of two events may then happen.
Either psychology will remain as hitherto the
stronger one; in which case history must follow
the paths of psychological analysis and be satis-
fied with sociological laws ; every effort of history
which goes beyond that is then unscientific, and
the works of our great historians must seek shel-
ter under the roof of art. Or — and this second
case has all odds in favor of it — the belief
in the unity of personality will become stronger
than the confidence in science, which merely de-
composes, and psychology will be subordinated
to the historical view of man. That is possible
under a hundred forms, but the final result must
always be the same, the ruin of real psychology.
I think this undermining of psychology with
the tools of history is to-day in eager progress.
Here belong, of course, all the most modern
attempts to supplement the regular analyzing
psychology by a pseudo-psychology which by
principle considers the mental life as a unity
and asks not about its constitution but about its
meaning. Whether authors, half unconsciously,
alternate with these two views from chapter to
chapter, or whether they demand systematically
that both kinds of psychology be acknowledged,
makes no essential difference. Both forms are
characteristic for a period of transition; both

184 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

must lead in the end to giving up fully the
analyzing view, to shifting the results of suoh
analysis over to physiology, and thus to confin-
ing psychology entirely to the anti-causal cate-
gories, that is, to denying psychology altogether.
Such turnings of the scientific spirit are slow,
but if history and psychology remain chained up
together, the symptoms of the future are too
clear : there is no hope for psychology.

But there is a second alternative open. The
chain which forces psychology and history to
move together may be broken ; the one may be
acknowledged as fully independent of the other.
What appears as a conflict of contradictory
statements may then become the mutual sup-
plementation of two partial truths, just as a
body may appear very different from the geo-
metrical, from the physical, and from the chemi-
cal points of view, while each one gives us truth.
To those who have followed the recent develop-
ment of epistemological discussion, especially in
Germany, it is a well-known fact that this logi-
cal separation of history and psychology is, in-
deed, the demand of some of the best students
of logic. They claim that the scientific inter-
est in the facts can and must take two abso-
lutely different directions : we are interested
either in the single fact as such or in the laws
under which it stands, and thus we have two
groups of sciences which have nothing to do

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 185

with each other, sciences which describe the
isolated facts and sciences which seek their laws.
A leading logician baptizes the first, therefore,
idiographic sciences, the latter nomothetic sci-
ences ; idiographic is history ; nomothetic are
physics and psychology. Psychology gives gen-
eral facts which are always true, but concerning
which it has not to ask whether they are realized
anywhere or at any time ; history refers to the
special single fact only, without any relation to
general facts.

II

I consider this logical separation as a liberat-
ing deed, not only because it is the only way
for psychology to escape its ruin through the
interference of an historically thinking idealism,
and also not only because the value and unity
and freedom of the personality which history
preaches can now be followed up without inter-
ference on the part of psychology, but because,
independent of any practical results, it seems to
me the necessary outcome of epistemological
reflection. And yet the arguments which have
led to this separation appear to me mistaken and
untenable in every respect. I agree heartily
with the decision, but I absolutely reject the
motives. No antithesis is possible between sci-
ences which study the isolated facts and sciences
which generalize ; such a methodological differ-

186 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

ence does not exist. We shall see that it must
be replaced by a difference of another kind, but
the end must be the same : psychology and his-
tory must never come together again. To criti-
cise the one way of attaining this end and to
illuminate the other new way which I propose is
the purpose of the following considerations.

We must proceed at first critically ; what is
the truth of the view which contrasts idiographic
and nomothetic sciences? At the first glance
the importance of the discrimination seems so
evident that it appears hard to understand how
it could ever have been overlooked. It seems a
matter of course that the empirical sciences can
ask either about the general facts of reality, the

laws which are true always and everywhere and

«/ «/

which do not say what happened on a special
place and in a special time, or on the other
hand about the single facts which are character-
ized just by their uniqueness. We may be in-
terested in the physical and chemical laws of
fire, but our interest in the one great fire which
destroyed Moscow has an absolutely different
logical source, and if we extend our historical
interest from the physical to the psychical side,
and investigate the stream of associations which
passed through the mind of Napoleon during the
days of that fire, we have again an absolutely
different kind of interest from that of the psy-
chologist who studies the laws of association

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 187

and inhibition, which are true for every mortal.
How small from a logical standpoint appears the
difference between the search for physical laws
and the search for psychological laws compared
with the unbridgable chasm between the search
for laws and the inquiry for special facts which
happened once ! And this difference grows if
we consider that all our feelings and emotions
refer, to the special single object, not to any
laws, that, above all, the personalities with which
we come in contact come in question for us just
in their singleness, and that we ourselves feel
the value of our life and the meaning of our
responsibility in the uniqueness of the acts by
which we mark our individual role in the his-
tory of mankind. These arguments of recent
epistemological discussions will easily find the
ear of the multitude. Common sense, which
demands for itself the prerogative of being in-
consistent, will probably hesitate only at the
unavoidable postulate of this standpoint, that
also the development of our solar system, of our
earth, of our flora and fauna, belongs then to
history and not to natural science, as they de-
scribe a process which happened once, and not
a law.

I may begin my criticism at the periphery of
the subject, moving slowly to the centre. I
claim first that all natural sciences, of which
psychology is one, do not seek laws only, but set

188 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

forth also judgments about the existence of ob-
jects. Of course, we can make the arbitrary
decision that we acknowledge the natural sci-
ences as such only so far as they give eternal
laws without reference to their realization in a
special place or in a special time, while any
judgment about the existence here or there,
now or then, has to be housed under the roof
of history. The sciences as they practically are
would then be mixtures of historical and natu-
ralistic statements, the historical factor diminish-
ing the more, the more abstract the science,
reaching its minimum in pure mechanics. Such
decision has only recently found able defense,
but do we not destroy, by its acceptance, the
whole meaning of natural science? Are the
laws for themselves alone still of any scientific
interest at all ? Why do we care at ah1 for such
general laws, as the law of causality, the most
general of them, which embraces all the others,
is included already in the presuppositions of sci-
ence, and thus anticipated beforehand ? When
formal logic or mathematics deals with A and B
and C, they state valid relations without asking
whether A, B or C is given anywhere or at any
time, even without excluding the possibility that
their real existence may be impossible. The
scientific judgments of physics and psychology,
on the other hand, have lost all their meaning
if we deprive them of the presupposition that

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 189

objects which prove the validity of such laws
have real existence in the world of experience.

We can construct well-founded physiological
laws also for the organism of the centaur and
psychological laws for the minds of nixes and
water fairies, but neither attempt belongs with-
in the system of science. The claim of exist-
entiality is not explicitly expressed in the for-
mulation of scientific knowledge, not because it
is unessential, but because it is a matter of
course. The larger the circle for which the
law is valid, the more we find these included
judgments of reality deprived of their reference
to special local and temporal data, but even in
the most general propositions of mechanics such
judgments are tacitly included. The question
is not whether the objects with which the laws
of mechanics deal have real existence from a
philosophical point of view ; certainly they have
not. The important point is that mechanics
by its laws tries at the same time to make us
believe that even the atoms have existence. On
the other hand, the existential judgment must be-
come the more detailed the more special the law
is, that is, the more complicated the conditions
of its realization. If the psychologist states the
laws of the feelings, he claims that it is not true
that only men without feelings exist ; he claims
that men with feelings have reality too. If he
gives us the more special laws of ethical feelings,

190 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

he claims that experience knows men with ethi-
cal emotion. If he goes on with his specializa-
tion of the psychical laws, claiming that under
special conditions the ethical emotion of obedi-
ence to the state comes to inhibit the desire for
life, he tells us that this really happened. His
psychological law becomes finally only still more
detailed if he lays it down that under such and
such conditions obedience to the state discharges
itself in the drinking of a hemlock potion in
spite of antagonistic suggestions of escape from
philosophical friends. It is a psychological law,
and yet it claims at the same time that all this
once at least really happened, while the com-
plication of conditions practically excludes the
possibility of its happening more than once in
the world of our experience.

Of course, it remains a law of general char-
acter with regard to absolute space and absolute
time; when all conditions including our solar
system and all the events on the earth are given
once more in infinity, then Socrates necessarily
must drink once more the poisoned cup. But
in the limited space and time of our experience
the conditions for the realization of such a psy-
chological law can have been given only once,
and that they really once were given is decidedly
claimed and thus silently reported by the law.
If our opponents maintain that the naturalistic
sciences need as supplement an historical descrip-

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 191

tion of one special stage of the world to give a
foothold for the working of the eternal laws, we
can thus reject this external help for the expla-
nation of the world, as the laws themselves fur-
nish all that we need. The system of the laws is
at the same time a full and graduated system of
existential propositions with regard to the limited
space and time of our experience. If ever and
anywhere in the empirical universe a molecule
had moved otherwise or another thought had
passed through a consciousness, then the system
of laws, thought in ideal perfection, would have
demanded a change. Our physics and psycho-
logy presuppose and assert the real existence of
exactly our world. They do not seek the laws
with the intention of neglecting and ignoring
the special facts.

in

The separation of the single facts from the
general facts is thus untenable, because the ex-
planatory law includes the description; but we
can also emphasize the other side of this mutual
relation : every description includes explanation,
every assertion of a special fact demands refer-
ence to the general facts. A description has a
logical value only if it points towards a law.
We describe a process by the help of conceptions
which are worked up from the general facts,
common to a group of objects, and these general

192 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

conceptions are the more valuable for the pur-
poses of description the more their content is a
condensed representation of real objective con-
nections. Descriptions in popular language
make use of conceptions which are deduced from
superficial similarity, but every new insight into
physical and psychological laws gives to these
general conceptions a more and more valuable
shape. The history of science is the steady
development of the means of description ; there
is no description which by its use of conceptions
does not aim at working out the laws. Thus,
far from the trivial belief that the law is merely
a description of facts, we ought not to forget
that the description of facts involves the laws
and is only another form of their expression.
To describe a physical thing as a group of atoms
or an idea as a group of sensations demands the
whole knowledge of the psychological and me-
chanical laws and condenses in its conceptions
the progress of science. To separate the descrip-
tive report from the explaining apperception is
thus again impossible.

It might appear that this does not hold for all
kinds of description ; we communicate with one
another in practical life without relying on gen-
eral conceptions. But our communication then
is no description. Any mode of personal ex-
pression, gestures or tears, may tell us what is
going on in the mind of another without refer-

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 193

ence to psychological laws. But the fact is that
they give no description either; they give a
suggestion. The words of practical life, the
words of the poet, and, as we may add at once,
the words of the historian, work like such move-
ments of expression ; they make every mental
vibration resound in us, because they force us
unintentionally or with conscious art to follow
the suggestion and to imitate the mental experi-
ence. The rhythm and the shade of the words
may then be substituted for logical exactitude,
and interjections may have deeper influence than
complete judgments, but all that is decidedly no
description, as a description demands a commu-
nication of the elements. Such a suggestion
allows us an understanding of the meaning, but
gives us no knowledge of the constitution.
Where a single object really has to be described,
there conceptions and laws are inevitable, and
the historian cannot make an exception.

But just this fact, that description and expla-
nation cannot be separated and that the concep-
tion includes the law, has opened in recent
philosophical discussions a new way of thought
which also seems to lead to those claims which
we rejected. Granted, it is said, that every
description presupposes generalizing abstractions,
but such abstraction must then lead us away
from the endless manifoldness of the reality.
Every scientific description deals with physical

194 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

or psychological abstractions; does that not
mean that we need still another kind of treat-
ment which does justice to the existing richness
and fullness of the real single fact ? If we give
this mission to history, we acknowledge that its
communications would not be ordinary descrip-
tions, but in any case we should again have the
separated camps with the antithesis: Manifold-
ness and abstraction, single fact and general
fact. But the presupposition is wrong; the
manifoldness of the reality is not endless and
the abstracting conceptions are not at all unfit
to do justice to the richness of the single fact.
The single conception abstracts, but the connec-
tion of conceptions in the sentence reconstructs
again. On the other hand, whatever is the
possible object of perception and discrimination
must be the possible object of descriptive deter-
mination. Whether the task of a complete con-
ceptional description is difficult or not is no
question of principle ; impossible it is not. The
ability to perceive differences is even inferior
compared with the power to separate the differ-
ences conception ally, and the abstracting de-
scription of science must, therefore, frequently
increase and not decrease the manifoldness of
the object. We know about the objects more
than we perceive ; above all, the description can
never leave behind it a perceivable remainder
which from its too great manifoldness excludes

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 195

description. The full variety of the single facts
thus belongs just as much as the most general
law to the physical and psychological sciences ;
the antithesis psychology and history as coincid-
ing with the antithesis abstraction and mani-
foldness of reality is then impossible. That
history stands, indeed, nearer to reality than any
psychology we shall later fully acknowledge,
but, as we shall see, for very different reasons ;
history abstracts, we shall see, not less than
psychology, and psychology is interested in the
variety of the facts just as much as is history.

IV

This brings us to our central arguments :
Every science considers the single facts in their
relations to other facts, works towards connec-
tion, towards generalities. Science means con-
nection and nothing else, and history also aims
at general facts, or it cannot hope for a place in
the system of science. Does that mean that it is
valueless to consider the single fact as it stands
for itself, isolated and separated from everything
else ? Certainly not ; the isolation is not less
valuable than the connection, but it never forms
a science ; it is the task of art. The single fact
belongs to art and not to history ; history has to
do with the general facts. That is the thesis
which I must interpret and defend. One point,
of course, is clear before the discussion. If we

196 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

maintain that history has also to work up its
material with respect to the general facts and
not with regard to the single facts, then it is
evident that there is in the deepest principle of
the inquiry no methodological difference between
physics and psychology on the one side and
history on the other. But we insisted that an
important difference does exist. The difference
must then be not in the kind of treatment, but
in the material itself. To be sure, there cannot
be a physical or psychical object in the universe
which would not be possible material for psy-
chology or physics; if history deals with a
material which is different from the possible
objects of those empirical sciences, then it must
deal with facts which differ from the physical
and psychical objects in their kind of existence;
in short, the difference between psychology and
history is not a methodological but an ontological
one.

We must then ask what kind of existence
belongs to the material with which physics and
psychology deal, and how it is related to reality ;
above all, how far reality offers still another
kind of facts which could be the substance of
other sciences. Reality means to us here the
immediate experience which we live through.
This immediate truth of lif e may be transformed
and remoulded in theories and sciences, and
these remodelings of reality may be highly valu-

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 197

able for special purposes of life; we may even
reach finally a point of reconstruction from
which the subjective experience appears as an
illusion and the supplementation stands as the
only truth. Yet the importance of such con-
structions must not make us forget that we have
then left reality behind us. Our doubting and
remoulding itself belongs to the reality for
which its products can never be substituted.
And this primary reality can, of course, never
be reached when we start from the finished
theories of the physical or psychological sciences.
Whether we pretend that the world is a content
of our consciousness, a system of psychological
ideas, or whether we start from the mechanical
universe and consider experience as effect of the
outer world on the consciousness, or whether we
confuse the two and call the world a product of
the brain, it is all equally misleading if we seek
the reality, as each view presupposes equally the
psychological or physical constructions. It is
then, of course, also impossible for us to reach
the less remoulded primary experience by going
backward through the genetic development of
the individual or of the race to an earlier simpler
stage of experience. Just this genetic tracing
backward fully presupposes the categories of the
psychological view ; we must have already con-
sidered our own inner life as a complex combi-
nation of elements before it has a meaning to

198 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

call the mental life of the child or of the animal
less complex ; the starting point of the genetic
development is thus itself an artificial construc-
tion which lies further away from the primary
experience.

If we thus escape all theories and stand firm
against the suggestions which psychology and
physics plentifully bring to us, then we find in
the reality nothing of ideas or of mechanical
substances, neither consciousness nor a connected
universe. The reality we experience does not
know the antithesis of psychical and physical
objects, but in the primary stage merely the
antithesis subject and object. We feel our
personal reality in our subjective attitudes, in
our will acts which we do not perceive but which
we live through, and with the same immediacy
we acknowledge other personalities as subjects
of will. They too are not objects which we
merely perceive, but we acknowledge them, by
our feeling, as subjects with whom we agree or
disagree and whose reality is thus not less cer-
tain than our own. Our acts as subjects are
directed towards objects which in reality exist
only as such objects of will, that is, as values.
They are our ends and means, our tools and pur-
poses, and nothing is to us real that is not called
to be selected or rejected, to be favored or dis-
missed. Subjective acts of will and objects of
will form the reality, the whole reality, nothing

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 199

lies outside, and nothing is valid beyond this
•world of will relations; and even if we form
judgments about objects which we think as
independent of the will, this judgment and this
thought itself is an act of will working towards
a purpose.

As soon as we begin to bring order into the
manifoldness of this real world, the subjective
acts as well as the objects divide themselves into
two groups, — those of individual character and
those which are common to all, over-individual.
This division is not a result of counting whether
several subjects or by chance only one subject
have made the decision or appreciated the object:
it is a question of intention merely. My act is
over-individual if it is willed with the meaning
that it belongs to every subject which I acknow-
ledge, and my object is over-individual in so far
as I consider it as a possible object of attitude
for every subject. My over-individual will-act is
that factor of reality which we call duty ; every
duty lies in us as subjects, as our own deepest
will, and yet as more than our individual deci-
sion. The over-individual objects are those
which we call physical ; the individual objects
are the psychical ones ; we must only not for-
get that these physical and psychical objects
are in reality not in question as independent ob-
jects of perception, but are always related to the
will ; they are not contents of consciousness and

200 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

mechanical bodies in a continuous space, but
suggestions which have a meaning, things which
have a use. We find thus four factors of real-
ity, beyond whose validity a constructive meta-
physics alone can go. Metaphysics may ask
whether the individual and over-individual acts
do not blend in an absolute subject and whether
the objects are not posited by such a subject
of higher order ; epistemology must be satisfied
with the more modest task of settling how we
deal with this reality in our scientific or aesthetic
knowledge. Reality itself is, of course, neither
art nor science, but life. Art and science must
be thus transformations of the material which
life offers to us, while these transformations
themselves are acts of the subjects and thus
belonging to those will-formations which claim
for themselves an over-individual character, cre-
ating the values of beauty and truth.

V

The acts which lead from life to art and
science are thus for epistemology free acts of
that subjectivity which we find in ourselves by
immediate feeling, and which we acknowledge
in others by an understanding of their proposi-
tions and suggestions ; they are not functions of
the psychophysical organism, not psychophysical
processes, as we must have reached already the
artificial reconstruction of science before the

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 201

subject is replaced by that object among other
objects, the psychophysical personality. Scien-
tific and esthetic acts are not the only functions
of the real subject ; the ethical and others stand
coordinated, but we are concerned here only
with the two functions which do not aim to
change and to improve the world, but to rethink
it in beautiful or truthful creations. It seems
to me now that the two attitudes are in every
respect antagonistic; to express their direction
in a short formula, I should say science connects
the factors of reality; art, on the other hand,
isolates them. The material of science and of
art is then the same, though treated by a differ-
ent method. Both can deal with all the four
factors of reality, with individual acts and over-
individual acts, with individual objects and over-
individual objects. Life does not isolate fully,
and gives no complete connection ; whatever we
turn to with our will has features which lead us
further and further to ever new interests; life
does not let us sink into the one alone — we
rush beyond it to new realities. And life does
not give connections beyond the immediate
needs of practical purposes in the narrow circle
of chance experience. Wherever is full isolation
of single facts there is beauty, wherever truth
there must be full connection.

The assertion that every isolated fact in its
singleness means beauty has for us here only

202 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

the character of a critical argument and is not
for itself an object of our discussion. It has for
us merely the negative purpose of proving that
the singleness cannot be characteristic of his-
tory. We cannot here defend this assertion by
detailed discussion; we have only to elucidate
its meaning. Certainly the real life, too, brings
us pulses of experience in which our will is cap-
tivated by the given experience, satisfied with
the object in itself or in the acknowledgment of
other subjective acts ; then we have the beauty
of nature, the beauty of forms and of land-
scapes, of love and of friendship. Of course,
it is only an exception when life offers to us in
the untransf ormed reality such complete beauty ;
it remains the duty of art to change the world
till everything is eliminated that leads the sub-
ject beyond the single experience, and the wiD
can rest in the single fact. The world of ob-
jects is thus transformed in painting and sculp-
ture, the world of subjective acts remoulded in
poetry. The sentiment or the conflict which
the poet suggests to us, the bust or the land-
scape which the artist brings before our eye, is
severed from the practical world ; as long as
anything connects it with the background of the
daily world it may be useful or inspiring or in-
structive, but it is not beautiful. The poet pro-
jects his work into an ideal past ; the painter
cuts an ideal space out of the reality, and the

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 203

sculptor fills an ideal space, not the space of our
surrounding, to take care thus that the acts and
objects may not link into our real world, may
never become causes for outer effects, motives
for actions, or centres for associations which lie
beyond the frame.

We ought not to become skeptical in regard
to this point on account of the overhasty gen-
eralizations in which empirical psychology mostly
characterizes the aesthetic act as rich in asso-
ciations. The epistemological problem we are
discussing cannot be settled by psychology, yet
as soon as the facts are expressed in the terms
of psychological language they cannot possibly
assert the opposite of the epistemological truth.
But there is no reason for such a conflict, as
psychology is undoubtedly in the wrong. The
psychological claim is based on the general theory
that all pleasant mental states represent an in-
crease of activity, and with it an increase of
associations, while all unpleasant states are
marked by a decrease of activity and lack of
associations. I think that is wrong; there are
different kinds of increase and different kinds
of decrease in both ideas and actions. The an-
tithesis pleasure and displeasure does not at all
coincide with increase and decrease if we do not
arbitrarily select such emotions as joy on the
one and grief on the other side. Increase of
activity characterizes pleasant and unpleasant

204 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

states, only in the pleasant states it produces
action of the extensors, in the unpleasant states
action of the flexors. In the same way decrease
of activity can have a double type : it can have
its ground in the absence of stimulations, and
this is, indeed, characteristic of some unpleasant
states ; but the lack of outer action can have its
ground also in the fact that every motor impulse
goes to the antagonistic muscles equally. This
increase of tonicity without possible action is
characteristic for one pleasant state above all,
the aesthetic one. The increase and decrease of
associations is here, as always, parallel with the
motor impulses. Here also increase of associa-
tions is essential for some pleasant states, but
for some unpleasant ones too, only, like muscle
activity, it is in antagonistic directions, in the
one case turning to the future, in the other case
faUing back to the past. And the same double-
ness is to be noted in the decrease of associa-
tions ; in some unpleasant states the decrease
comes from a mere lack of ideational impulses,
in some pleasant states from the fascination
which leads every ideational impulse again to
the object itself, so that no thought can lead
beyond it. This is again true, above all, for the
aesthetic state. The beautiful object includes all
that it suggests in itself, and where we connect
we sin against the spirit of beauty.

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 205

VI

By the contrast with art the fullest light falls
on the process of science; every step towards
science leads in the opposite direction. The in-
complete connections of life are severed by art,
but made complete by science, while the material
is the same. We had four groups of facts in
reality, and we must thus have four groups of
sciences which bring systematic connections into
the four different fields. We have the science
of the over-individual objects, that is, physics;
secondly, the science of the individual objects,
that is, psychology ; thirdly, the sciences of the
over-individual will-acts, that is, the normative
sciences ; and last, not least, the sciences of the
individual will-acts, that is, the historical sci-
ences. Physics and psychology have thus to do
with objects ; history and the normative systems,
ethics, logic, aesthetics, deal with will-acts. Psy-
chology and history have thus absolutely differ-
ent material ; the one can never deal with the
substance of the other, and thus they are sepa-
rated by a chasm, but their method is the same.
Both connect their material ; both consider the
single experience under the point of view of the
totality, working from the special facts towards
the general facts, from the experience towards
the system. And yet the difference of material
must, in spite of the equality of the methodo-

206 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

logical process, produce absolutely different kinds
of systems of science. We must consider again
from the standpoint of real life how the connec-
tion of objects is different from the connection
of attitudes, and how the purposes of the sys-
tematizing reconstruction are different in the
two cases.

We and the other subjects have objects which
are in reality, as we have seen, objects of our
will. Why have we an interest in considering
the objects from a scientific standpoint, that is,
in systematized connection ? If we do so, it
must serve, of course, a special purpose in our
real life. The purpose is clear. We cannot do
the duties of our life, that is, we cannot act on
the objects, if we do not know what to expect
from them with regard to the reality which we
prepare, and we call the reality which we can
still prepare the future. We must ask, there-
fore, what we have to expect for the future from
the objects alone, that is, from the objects thought
as if they were independent from the subjective
will reaction. The answer to this question as to
our justified expectations is the system of physi-
cal and psychological sciences. To reach this
end we must think the objects, the individual or
over-individual ones, as if they were no longer
objects of a will, as if the subject were deprived
of its real activity and were a merely passive per-
ceiving subject the objects of which are thus

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 207

definitely cut away from the will. Our interest
was to determine their influence on the future.
We thus consider every object as the cause of
an expected effect, and call those characteristics
of the object which determine our expectation of
the effect its elements. Physics and psychology
thus look on their objects as complexes of ele-
ments. It is the task of science to reconstruct
and to transform the objects till each is con-
ceived as such a combination of elements that
the effects to be expected can be fully deter-
mined from the elements. In this service grew
up the atom doctrine in physics and the sensa-
tion doctrine in psychology. Each object is
thus linked into a causal system ; each is con-
sidered not as that which it really is, but as a
complex of constructed factors which are substi-
tuted for the purpose of the causal connection,
and each is in question in its relation to all the
others. The world thus becomes a system of
causally linked objects which can be described
by their elements, while these elements them-
selves are chosen from the point of view of
explanation by causality. The determination of
the effects by means of the elementary causes is
expressed by the laws which give the rules for
our expectations. "We can say thus that physics
and psychology may very well consider any spe-
cial facts, and, as we have seen, they certainly
do not ignore the special facts at all, but they

208 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

consider them with regard to the causal law,
and the laws as types of causal connections are
thus the only general facts towards which the
systematized study of objects can lead us.

Quite different is the systematic connection of
ihe subjective will-attitudes ; we may abstract
here at first from the over-individual attitudes
and concentrate our interest on the individual
will-acts. In psychology the will - attitude as
such, as act of the real subject, cannot have any
place whatever ; psychology deals with objects ;
the subjective attitude is never an object ; it is
never perceived ; it is experienced by immediate
feeling and must be understood and interpreted,
but not described and explained. If psychology
wishes to treat of the will, the psychophysical
organism must be substituted for the real subject,
and thus the will be considered as a process in
the world of objects. The description of any
known will-acts as psychophysical functions, that
is, as illustrations of psychological laws, thus as
a matter of course belongs to psychology, and if
the psychologist should analyze into psycho-
physical elements and explain as causally deter-
mined all will-acts and human functions of the
last three thousand years, he would not tran-
scend the limits of psychology. It would be a
very useless psychological undertaking, but it
would be such and not history. History starts
from and deals with the real subjective will-acts

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 209

which cannot be found in the world of psycho-
physical objects.

Our personal life in its political, economical,
religious, scientific, aesthetic, technical, and prac-
tical aspects is a manifoldness of will-attitudes
and acknowledgments. We live in the midst of
a variety of political and social, technical and
practical institutions, but no institution means
anything else than expectations and demands
which reach our will, and suggestions towards
which we take attitudes. State and church,
legal community and social set, what else are
they but will-attitudes which we acknowledge
and which are, therefore, never understood in
their real meaning if they are considered as de-
scribable objects, but which must be interpreted
and appreciated as subjective will-relations, striv-
ing towards purposes and ends. And to under-
stand all the technical and practical institutions
which civilization brings to us means again not
to describe or explain them, but to interpret
them as will-suggestions to be imitated. The
machine and the book, the law and the poem,
are not physical and psychical objects for our
interests as living men, but suggestions and de-
mands for the understanding of the intentions
and attitudes of other subjects which we can
enter into only by taking an imitating or reject-
ing attitude, thus reaching will by will. All our
knowing and believing, our enjoying and re-

210 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

specting — as long as we abstract from their
over-individual values — all our education and
civilization, our politics and our professional
work, is such a complex of real affirmations and
negations, demands and inhibitions, agreements
and disagreements, which have to be understood
and felt and interpreted, but which are not
touched in their reality if merely their psycho-
physical substitutions are analyzed and causally
explained. To be a Chinese or a Mohammedan,
a symbolist or an Hegelian or an atomist, means
to be the subject of special complexes of will-
attitudes and nothing else. If, for instance, we
substitute the race for the state, then, of course,
we have objects before us and no longer subjec-
tive attitudes, but then we deal with biological
conceptions and no longer with history.

VII

The manifoldness of will-acts the totality of
which forms my real personality thus refers in
every act to the will acts and attitudes of other
subjects which I acknowledge or oppose, imitate
or overcome. These demands and suggestions
of others are not in question in my life as causes
or partial causes of my will ; they have not to
be sought in the interest of a causal connection ;
they are merely conditions which I as subject of
attitude and acts presuppose for my free decision,
and which are thus logically contained in it ; the

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 211

connection is, therefore, not a causal, but merely
a teleological one. The endless world of will-
acts which stands thus in teleologically determin-
ing relation to our own will-attitudes forms the
only material of history.

The material is, of course, unlimited. If
every act of ours means an attitude towards acts
of others which we must try to understand, it
is clear that those others are understood only
if their acts again are interpreted as attitudes
towards the propositions and demands and sug-
gestions of others, and so on and on. Every
will-act is thus ideally related to an unlimited
manifoldness of other acts, just as the movement
of every grain of sand is causally related to every
molecule in the universe. It is the unique task
of history as a science to work out and make
complete this teleological system of individual
will-relations, thus to bring out the connections
between our acts and all the acts which we must
acknowledge as somehow teleologically influen-
cing our own. While physics and psychology
thus produce a connected system of causes and
effects, linking all objects which stand in con-
nection with our objects, history follows up all
the subjective acts which stand in will-relation to
our subjective attitudes.

Physics and psychology, as we have seen,
reach this end through striving towards laws
and causality ; that, of course, cannot be the

212 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

way of history. The objects interested us only
as factors which influence the future, and the
laws by which we have connected them have
satisfied this expectant interest. The subjects,
on the other hand, do not interest us primarily
as causes of effects. Of course, we are able to
consider them also as objects which produce
effects, and that aspect may become important to
us in many practical respects ; psychophysics will
fully satisfy this kind of interest. And in the
same way we may look on the development of
peoples with an interest in what we have to ex-
pect from them ; they are then sociological or-
ganisms, the laws of which we study ; but such
study is not history. The aim of the real his-
torian is not to prophesy the future. Peoples
never learn from history, and the forgotten doc-
trine that we ought to study history to find out
what we have to expect from the future stands
on the same level with its contemporary, the
doctrine that it is the purpose of art to instruct
us and to make us better. No, the historian
makes us understand the system of will-attitudes
to which our individual will is related. That,
indeed, alone, is our primary interest in the will-
acts of other subjects; we want to understand
them, not to analyze them into elements ; we
want to interpret their meanings and not to cal-
culate their future. The objects awake our ex-
pectations ; the subjects interest our appreciation,

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 213

and all that we want to know about them is with
what other attitudes they agree or disagree. We
thus have the logical aim, to consider them in
their relations to all other will-attitudes and to
work out the system of these connections; that
is, to consider the institutions which are the
representatives of will-suggestions, together with
the personalities themselves, as links of this end-
less chain of will-relations.

The purpose of history is not reached until
every institution and personality with which we
may be in a direct or indirect will-relation is un-
derstood as a complex of agreements and disa-
agreements, that is, of will-attitudes towards other
subjects. This regress must be, of course, infi-
nite, just as no physical process can be reached
which has not again causes and effects ; and this
task demands also, like the naturalistic sciences,
a continual transformation. Just as the physical
object is not really a complex of atoms and the
psychological idea not really a complex of sen-
sations, but must be in thought transformed into
such to make causal connection possible, so in
exactly the same way history must reconstruct
the personalities and institutions as complexes of
will-attitudes, which they really are not, but as
which they must be considered to make the un-
broken teleological connection possible. And,
again, like physics and psychology, history too
cannot communicate to us the whole of the con*

214 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

nected system, but has to work out the general
facts which give to every single fact at once its
place in the whole system. These general facts
in the teleological will-system cannot be causal
laws, but must be will-relations of more and
more comprehensive character. Just as in the
world of objects the general law covers and de-
termines the causal changes of an unlimited
number of objects, so the important will-actions
cover and determine in the world of subjects the
impulses and suggestions for the decisions and
attitudes of an unlimited number. The regu-
larity of the causal law and the importance of
the imposing will lift in a corresponding way the
general fact over the level of the single facts.
It is the work of history to make conspicuous
the increasingly important will-influences, as it
is the work of physics and psychology to work
out the laws. If I say I am a German, I want
to assert by that statement that I acknowledge
by my will a world of laws, institutions, hopes
and ideals which are the will-demands of an
undetermined multitude of subjects ; this multi-
tude constitutes the historical nation of Ger-
many. But it would be unscientific if I should
start to interpret the attitude of every one who
is part of that chaotic mass of subjects ; it is
the work of science to find those influences
which determined the multitude, those will-acts
which were imitated and acknowledged by the

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 215

unimportant subjects. The chaos thus becomes
order, and Goethe and Beethoven, Kant and
Hegel, Luther and Bismarck, stand as the gen-
eral facts for the millions and millions of less
important subjects who were determined by their
suggestions. Any individual's historical place
is then characterized by his will-attitudes to-
wards the leaders. Just as the naturalist knows
a whole hierarchy of sciences which work out
increasingly general laws up to mechanics as the
most abstract system, so history can consider in
different stages the will-relations of more and
more comprehensive character. The most ab-
stract view is represented by the so-called phi-
losophy of history, which aims at understanding
the history of the world as determined by one
decision of the will. In this spirit the concep-
tion of original sin in the theological systems of
the Middle Ages was in the field of historical
thinking perhaps not less marvelous than the
conception of atomistic mechanism in the realm
of natural science. The fact that Adam did not
exist in reality is as little an objection to the
mediaeval construction as the fact that no atom
can really exist militates against our atomism;
both reconstructions of reality fill merely ideal
places as necessary goals of thought.

On the other hand, in the same way that
mechanics does not lower the importance of
special natural sciences, no all-embracing theory

216 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

of the history of man can interfere with the
importance of the special historic disciplines
down to the biographies of single personalities.
But even the biography has to work in the same
direction as the most abstract philosophy of
history, in the direction of general connection.
The real biography written in an historical spirit
shows in the individual the attitudes towards the
demands and suggestions which make the history
of mankind ; the single man becomes thus the
crossing point of all the political, technical, reli-
gious, sesthetical, intellectual impulses of his
time, and he is thus by the will-attitudes which
constitute his personality connected with the
whole universe of will-acts. As the astronomer
in his calculations describes the one curve of a
star as the combination of a large number of
impulses by attraction, and thus brings the star
in relation to the whole firmament, so the his-
torical biographer reconstructs the one life as a
system of single attitudes towards an endless
multitude of demands and suggestions. It is a
complete transformation in the service of connec-
tion. The man's life can be told otherwise also :
the life as he feels it as a personal experience ;
so also do we learn to understand the man, but
we have then poetry and not history ; it is isola-
tion and not connection. And if, instead, we
describe and explain his life as a set of ideas,
feelings, emotions, and volitions which arose in

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 217

his psychophysical system from birth to death,
then we have again a transformation in the ser-
vice of connection, but this time for the causal
connection of objects, not for the teleological
connection of subjects ; it is again not history,
but psychology.

VIII

The separation of the material of the two
sciences is thus simple and clear; there can
never be a doubt about the line of demarcation,
as there is no psychophysical object in the world
— from the sensations of a frog up to the ideas
of Newton, the emotions of Byron, and the voh>
tions of Cromwell — which is not a suitable
object of psychology, and as there is no sub-
jective individual act which cannot be linked
into the endless teleological system of history.
A division of material, as if a social psychology,
for instance, were to deal with the psychical
processes of the unknown masses, while history
were to deal with the psychical processes of the
well-known men, is an absurdity. Not less mis-
leading would be an antithesis between savagery
and civilization. From a psychophysical stand-
point such a line is secondary; the organism
which adds outer appendages to his body to
make the psychophysical functions more effec-
tive has reached merely a higher stage of bio-
logical development, but is not different in prin-

218 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

ciple from the lower type in which nature does
not provide for detachable acquisitions of the
organism. The animal which runs with loco-
motives, sees with microscopes, hears with tele-
phones, makes gestures of expression through
newspapers, attacks through cannons, and remem-
bers through libraries, stands above the savage as
-TL dog stands above a jelly-fish, but it is theoreti-
cally nothing new ; it is a more complicated pro-
duct of nature which, therefore, offers a more
difficult problem to the descriptions and expla-
nations of psychology and physiology, but does
not as such become material for history. And
still another line of separation must disappear;
the fight between the "materialists" and the
" idealists " of the recent economical schools has
nothing to do with the doubleness of psycho-
logical naturalism and real historical aspect. If
the materialists claim that every occurrence
among men is the direct or indirect effect of
economical causes, while the idealists consider
other causes still which seem to them independent
of material conditions, for instance, religious
and patriotic emotion or ambition and love, both
sides stand fully on the ground of psychology
and outside of history. Those emotions of
practical idealism are in question only as psycho-
physical causes, and are thus material merely for
a causal system. In the system of history exists
no causality.

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 219

Here is the point where even the historians
themselves are inclined to compromises which,
at least in principle, must be rejected. Whether
or not practically quite interesting reports of
periods of civilization can be written by mixing
the two attitudes is secondary. Historians, we
know, produced in earlier times their deepest
effects by mixing history with ethics, but the
philosopher at least must be clear that ethics is
not history, and he ought to be still less in doubt
that a causally explaining social psychology is
not history either. As soon as it is acknow-
ledged that we have, on the one side, an interest
to consider human life as an object and thus to
describe and to explain it, and that we have, on
the other side, a logical aim to understand
human life as subjective acts which can be inter-
preted and linked together only by will-attitudes,
then we must have the energy to keep the two
systems separated. Each is logically valuable,
each is therefore true, but if confused both
become logically useless.

We can say that Socrates remained in the
prison because his knee muscles were contracted
in a sitting position and not working to effect
his escape, and that these muscle-processes took
place because certain psychophysical ideas, emo-
tions, and volitions, all composed of elementary
sensations, occurred in his brain, and that they,
again, were the effects of all the causes which

220 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

sense stimulations and dispositions, associations
and inhibitions, physiological and climatic influ-
ences, produced in that organism. And we can
say, on the other hand, that Socrates remained
in the prison because he decided to be obedient
to the laws of Athens unto death. This obedi-
ence means, then, not a psychophysical process,
but a will-attitude which we must understand
by feeling it and living through it, an attitude
which we cannot analyze, but which we inter-
pret and appreciate. The first is a psychological
description ; the second is an historical interpre-
tation. Both are true. They are, to be sure,
not equally valuable for science, as that particu-
lar psychophysical process is not more important
for the understanding of the psychological sys-
tem than millions of other emotions in unknown
men, while that will-attitude influenced by its
demand the acknowledging will of twenty cen-
turies, and is thus most important in the his-
torical system. And yet both are equally true,
while they blend into an absurdity if we say that
those psychophysical states in the brain of
Socrates were the objects which inspired the will
of his pupils and were suggestive through two
thousand years.

A history which interprets subjectively and
understands their purposes out of the deeds of
men relinquishes, indeed, its only aim if it coor-
dinates these teleological relations with the causal

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 221

explanation of human happenings from climatic
and geographical, technical and economical,
physiological and pathological influences. The
subject which is determined by purposes is free ;
the action which is the effect of causes is unf ree.
In the unf ree world there cannot be any action
which must not be understood causally, and we
have no right to stop at any point in our expla-
nation ; the unexplained action means only an
unsolved problem which is in no way solved if
we seek for its subjective meaning instead of its
elements and causes. In the world of freedom,
on the other hand, it would be meaningless to
ask for cause, as the objects then come in ques-
tion merely as objects for the willing subjects
and not as realities for themselves. The realm
of freedom is not made up of oases in the world
of necessity ; the reality of history is not spread
here and there over the field of nature, but lies
fully outside of its limits. The antithesis be-
tween psychology and history is thus not law
and single event, but causality and freedom, and
this difference is the logical result of the on to-
logical difference of the material, the one deal-
ing with objects, the other with subjects. Both
go methodologically the same way, considering
the single facts from the point of view of the
general fact, and both transforming the dis«
connected material until a perfectly connected
system is reached. But because objects are

222 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

understood by describing and explaining them,
while subjects are understood by interpreting
and appreciating them, the connection of the
one system must be causal, that of the other
system teleological, and the general fact in the
one field must be a law and in the other field
the will relation of importance. As every sub-
jective act can be replaced by a psych ophy-
sical function of an organism in the world of
objects, and as every object can be understood
as a value for a will, the whole reality can be
brought without any possible remainder under
the one aspect as well as under the other. His-
tory, in the real historical spirit, then need no
longer fear that the progress of psychology can
inhibit its functions, and the psychologist need
not feel discouraged that his psychological laws
of . history appear so utterly trivial to the his-
torian. That which is important for psychology,
that which is fit for constructing connections
between psychological objects, has the privilege
of being indifferent for the historian, that is, of
being unfit to link subjective will - attitudes.
Psychology and history cannot help each other
and cannot interfere with each other as long as
they consistently stick to their own aims. Each
of them has thus unlimited opportunities for
development. The processions of the great
psychologists from Aristotle to Herbart, and
that of the great historians from Thucydides to

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 223

Macaulay, can both have for the future an un-
limited number of followers without any quarrel,
in spite of the naturalistic claims of our age,
which for a while was under the illusion that all
is understood when all is explained, and that the
historians had better become psychologists.

IX

As soon as the difference of the two stand-
points is recognized, light falls on all the special
characteristics of the two sciences. Now we
understand why history stands so much nearer
to real life than psychology. Not, as it was
suggested, because history deals with single facts
and psychology with general facts, but because
psychology deals with objects which are thought
as independent of the subject, while in reality
and so in history the material is acknowledged
only in relation to willing subjects. In real life
we are subjects which must be understood but
not described ; psychology starts thus at once
with a material which in its singleness is already
farther away from reality than the material with
which history deals. Now we understand also
why the substance of history has value for us,
while the objects of psychology and of all natu-
ralistic sciences are emotionally indifferent. That
is not, as it was suggested, because the single
facts are important for us and the general facts
indifferent; no, it is because the psychological

224 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

objects, the contents of consciousness, are thought
as cut loose from the will and thus no longer
possible objects for appreciation, while the his-
torical objects are thought as in their relation to
the attitudes of the will. Now we understand
also under which principle the historian selects
his material. If we accept the view that all
single facts belong to history as such, it is arbi-
trariness to chronicle Napoleon's battles and
state acts but not his flirtations and breakfasts,
while now we understand how it is that this
selection means the most essential part of the
historian's work, as it is the way to transform
the reality into a system of teleological connec-
tions, thus dropping more and more the will-acts
which have no teleological importance for will-
attitudes of other subjects. Now we understand
also why the language of the historian has so
much similarity with that of the poet. The his-
torian, we have seen, has aims which are directly
antagonistic to those of the poet, as the poet
isolates, while the historian, like every scientist,
connects his material. But the materials them-
selves, the subjective acts, are common to the
poet and the historian. Where the psychologist
encourages the reader to take the attitude of the
objectively perceiving observer, the poet and the
historian speak of facts which can be understood
only by interpretation and inner imitation ; they
cannot be described by enumerating their ele-

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 225

ments ; they must be suggested and reach some-
how the willing subject which enters into the
subjective attitude of the other. Thus the means
of both may approximate to each other. The
poet and the historian may use the same meth-
ods of suggestion to reinforce in the reader the
subjectifying attitude which is the presupposition
for the understanding of the isolated will-acts in
the work of poetry and the connected will-acts
in the work of history, while the psychologist
has to adapt even his style and his presentation
to the service of his objectifying aim.

But we now understand and see in a new light
also the relations of the psychological and his-
torical sciences to the normative doctrines, to
ethics, logic, and aesthetics. As long as history
appears merely as a part of psychology or as long
as the one is given over to single facts, the other
to laws, all the normative sciences stand without
any inner relation to any empirical science, those
speaking of duties, these of facts. For us the
relation takes a very different form. We have
seen that all the historical sciences are systems
of individual will-relations and nothing else. On
the other hand, we have found that duty never
means anything but our own over-individual will-
act. All the normative sciences are thus the
systematic connections of our over-individual
will-attitudes, our will-attitudes aiming toward
morality and truth and beauty and religion. As

226 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

the over-individual will is, of course, thought as
independent of the individual subject, the con-
nection which is sought cannot lead as it did in
history from subject to subject ; as all subjects
are presupposed as agreeing in their over-indi-
vidual acknowledgment, the connection, the sci-
entific aim can then He here merely in the sys-
tematic connection of our own over-individual
purposes and their interpretation. Here, too,
a transformation becomes necessary in the in-
terest of connection ; each single will-attitude
must be linked into this teleological system and
must thus be transformed till it represents a
crossing point of all the ethical, sesthetical, re-
ligious, and logical impulses and demands. The
normative sciences and history stand thus in the
nearest relation to each other ; both are trans-
formations of will-acts in the service of teleo-
logical connection, only the one reconstructs and
systematizes the individual will-acts in us, the
other the over-individual will-acts.

The relation between these two groups of sci-
ences, the historical and the normative ones, is
thus perfectly parallel to the relation between
the psychological sciences and the physical sci-
ences, of which the one systematizes the indi-
vidual objects and the other the over-individual
objects. The proportion — history stands to
the normative doctrines as psychology stands to
physics — is, indeed, true in every respect and in

PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY 227

every consequence. We may consider here as
our last word only one of them. The historical
development of the naturalistic sciences shows
the continuous tendency to take more and more
of the properties of the physical object into the
psychological object, that is, to show that the
apparent over-individual qualities of the thing
are qualities which depend upon the individual ;
color and sound, smell and taste, go over from
the physical thing into the idea, and thus the
whole manif oldness of our experience moves over
into the sphere of ideas. In exactly the same
way and led by the same methodological mo-
tives, history takes more and more of the nor-
mative duties over into its own field, and shows
how the special duties, the logical beliefs, ethical
convictions, sesthetical demands and religious pos-
tulates are the results of individual attitudes under
the suggestion of the individual groups of will-
influences. The absolute duties and beliefs and
obligations and truths seem thus lost in our life
as the colors and sounds and smells are lost for
the physical objects. But the parallelism holds
for the end-point of this development too. We
must deprive the physical object of its colors
and sounds, but we cannot give up the truth
that there is a physical object nevertheless, as
the quantitative reality to which we project, with
objective truth, our sensations and ideas ; all the
naturalistic sciences would be destroyed if we

228 PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY

were to give up this realistic conviction of physics.
In the same way we may take into the individual
all the single over-individual special duties of
special nations and ages and social groups, but
the reality of the background of projection we
cannot give up. Whatever history teaches, the
postulate of the reality of duties, of absolute
values, stands firm. The absolute duties may
be abstract and deprived of color and sound as
is the world of physics, but they stand and must
last like the physical universe, and whoever in
striving towards truth denies the reality of abso-
lute values and gives up the belief in morality
and the belief in logic, thus destroys and under-
mines his own endeavor to find the truth as
logical thinker and to stand for the truth as
ethical man.

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

MYSTICISM — that is, the belief in supernatural
connections in the physical and psychical worlds
— has always been an interesting object of ob-
servation for the psychologist. When the hu-
man mind believes that it has reached the realm
unseen, psychology can analyze its inner experi-
ences and follow up the devious paths from
empirical knowledge to the knowing of the
mysterious Unknowable. From this point of
view, psychology finds a wonderful field of work
in the mystical systems from the earliest Hindoo
speculation to the spiritualistic doctrines of to-
day ; and its interest in mysticism is the deeper
and more spontaneous, the more complicated
the motives which push the soul beyond the
limits of natural insight. Keligious emotion and
hysterical rapture, mysterious fears and super-
stitious habits, pathological disturbances and
surprising experiences, abnormal credulity and
dissatisfaction with science, and very many other
true and half -true impulses come in question.
Even the pseudo-mystic, who deceives the world

230 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

because he knows that the world wishes to be
deceived, becomes an attractive object for psy-
chological analysis ; fanaticism regarding the
church and greed for bread and butter, hysteri-
cal pleasure in irritating tricks and sensuous
pleasure in power over others, are here among
the most characteristic features. What a differ-
ence between the neoplatonistic philosopher, who
sinks into the Absolute and finds the super-
natural reality by his feeling of unity with God,
and the modern member of a Society for Psy-
chical Research, who discovers the supernatural
world by his mathematical calculations on the
probable error in telepathic answers about play-
ing-cards ! What a difference between the
mediaeval monk, who becomes convinced of the
mystical sphere because the Virgin appears to
him in the clouds, and the modern scholar, who
is converted because a pathological woman is
able to chat about his personal secrets at the
rate of twenty francs a sitting ! Yet psychology
recognizes the common features and understands

o

the mental laws which make mysticism a never-
failing element of the social consciousness ; the
wilder its eccentricities, the more interesting the
psychological material.

But the claims of mysticism suggest to the
psychologist another attitude less peaceable than
that of the observer, the attitude of a rival. If
mystics believed only that heavy chairs some-

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 231

times fly through the air, that invisible bells
ring, and that objects disappear into the fourth
dimension, they would have to fight it out with
the physicists, but psychology would not inter-
fere. If, inspired by occult advisers, they pro-
posed a new metaphysical theory of the ultimate
substratum of the physical universe, the philoso-
phers might stand up as indignant competitors,
but the psychologists, again, would have nothing
to do with it. The physicians may dispute with
the mystics whether the waters of Lourdes are
helpful, whether the comets are causes of pesti-
lence, and whether men die on account of being
thirteenth at table. There is, perhaps, not a single
science, from geometry to theology, which has
not its private conflicts with the mystical doc-
trines ; but psychology has no reason to enter
the quarrel so long as the mystic does not under-
take to answer psychological questions. In this
field, however, mysticism has never shown too
much modesty. It has at all times, by prefer-
ence, rioted in the proclamation of mental facts
which did not fit into the descriptions and ex-
planations of a sober empirical psychology. If
mysticism is right with its old claims, psy-
chology, even with its newest discoveries, is
wrong ; and thus arises the question, What has
the psychologist to say of the claims of mysti-
cism concerning mental processes and the laws
of mental action ?

232 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

These claims have been different at different
periods and in different nations, and are still so
divergent that no scientist can contend more
sharply with the mystical creeds than they
contend with one another in the different sets
to-day. The telepathists annihilate the theoso-
phists, and the spiritualists belittle the telepa-
thists ; and when the Christian scientists and
metaphysical healers on the one side, the mind
curers and faith curers on the other side, have
spoken of each other, there remain few abusive
words at the disposal of us outsiders. The
average mystic of to-day is a man of high logical
ambitions. He looks with contempt on the
gypsy who reads your character from the
grounds in a coffee-cup, and smiles over the as-
trological belief that the position of the stars in
the hour of your birth has decided your success
in love. The medical remedies which have to be
cooked at midnight at the churchyard gate are
in discredit ; and as we live in an enlightened
age, it even appears doubtful whether the
witches of early time were really under Satanic
influences, as their witchcraft can now be " ex-
plained" by the telepathic action of mediums,
by malicious spirits and materializations. The
requirements of mysticism thus shrink to the
following main demands. First, the human
mind must sometimes be able to perceive in an
incomprehensible way the ideas and thoughts of

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 233

others. By gradual approaches, this telepathic
talent seems also connected with the power to
have knowledge of distant physical occurrences ;
and if our concessions have reached this point,
we ought not to strain at the little addendum,
the vision of the future. In all cases of this
kind the exceptional talents of the soul are re-
ceptive and passive. A second group of mysti-
cal powers may be formed by the corresponding
active influences. In an inconceivable way, it
is assumed, the human mind can control the
thoughts and actions of others ; and here, again,
small steps lead soon to greater and greater mys-
teries. The mental influence may reach not
only the soul, but also the body of the other
person, and may restore his disturbed health;
even a child may produce such metaphysical
healing of consumption and heart trouble, can-
cer and broken legs. The mind which by " love "
brings together the fragments of a neighbor's
broken bones ought surely to have no serious
difficulties with the movements of inorganic
bodies : at the bidding of such a mind, tables
fly to the ceiling, and a little stick in the hands
of a weak woman cannot be moved by the
strongest man. A third group refers to the
functions of a deeper self, which is usually hid-
den under our regular personality. In the most
different trance states, in crystal vision and auto-
matic writing, this mysterious self appears, and

234 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

remembers all that we have forgotten, knows
many things which we never knew, writes and
acts without our control, and shows connections
which go far beyond our powers, and mostly
even beyond our tastes. Nearly related to these
facts is a fourth circle of mystical doctrines,
which deal with the psychical deeds of the hu-
man spirit after the earthly death. According
to these doctrines, the spirits are ready to enter
into communication with living men by the help
of mediums, with or without materialization, by
noises or by table tilting, by slate drawing, and
recently even by typewriting. This creed be-
comes, of course, the starting-point for many
denominational divergences.

II

The most natural question is, How far can the
regular empirical psychology acknowledge the
claimed phenomena ? Where is the exact limit
which the scientific psychologist is unwilling to
pass ? He does not discredit perception of voices
from far distances if a telephone is included,
and he does not doubt that one person may have
influence over another in a hundred ways. We
must carefully consider where the mystery be-
gins. The attitude of common sense, however,
must not be allowed to dictate this line of de-
marcation ; otherwise the psychologist would be
bound to denounce all facts which are rare and

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 235

surprising to the naive consciousness, or incapa-
ble of explanation to the dilettante. Let us
remember that it counts for little whether a fact
occurs once a day or once in a century, and that
many facts of physiological and pathological
psychology must appear to the naive mind much
more surprising and alarming than do the pre-
tensions of the spiritualist. It seems much
simpler and more natural to grant that a little
word or figure may wander by mere thought
transference from one's mind into the mind of a
bystander, than to believe in the startling fea-
tures of the more complicated cases of hypno-
tism and somnambulism, hysteria and insanity,
all of which find legitimate place in the system
of modern psychology.

If we begin with the first two groups of the
claims of mystics, — the passive reception of
outer psychical and physical events, and the
active influence upon other souls and organisms,
— we can easily state the general principle which
here controls the psychological attitude, though
it may often be far from easy to follow up the
principle in specific cases. The psychologist in-
sists that every perception of occurrences outside
of one's own body and every influence beyond
one's own organism must be intermediated by an
uninterrupted chain of physical processes. The
justice of this apparently arbitrary decision may
be examined later ; at first we ask only for its

236 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

precise meaning and its consequences. With re-
gard to perception, the limit is certainly sharply
drawn, and yet it may be often difficult to recog-
nize it. We perceive only objects which directly
or indirectly stimulate our physical sense organs,
and which stimulate them by physical means.
The perception of a man's body is therefore the
primary process ; the perception of his thoughts
and feelings is secondary, as they must be some-
how physically expressed in order to act as
stimuli for the sense organs.

In two directions the case may become abnor-
mal : the transmitter or the receiver may differ
from the usual type of communicating persons.
The transmitter himself, for instance, may not
be conscious that he expresses his ideas, or,
better, that his ideas discharge themselves in
perceptible physical processes. He may blush
without knowing it, and thus betray his inner
shame; or he may contract the muscles which
turn his body toward the outer point he is think-
ing of; or his breathing or pulse may change
through his excitement over a question ; and the
receiver may be in a situation to become aware
of these unintended signals of inner states.
Here belongs the well-known stage piece of
muscle reading, which is often carelessly con-
fused with real telepathy. It certainly is one of
the easily explicable forms of psychophysical
communication. Here belong as well all the

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 237

slight hints by which nervous persons make it
possible again and again for confessed impostors
to play the roles of successful mind readers.
The pseudo-mediums need only to seek for in-
formation in desultory chatting, which, under
the high tension of expectancy, suffices to bring
about all kinds of unintended expressions which
show the clever juggler the way.

The receiver of the physical impressions, also,
may differ from the average. We think pri-
marily of the possibility that the receiving in-
struments— that is, the sense organs or the
sensory brain parts and nerve paths — may have
become abnormally sensitive, by training or by
pathological variations. Through the touch
sensation of his face the blind man perceives
distant obstacles in his way, to which our un-
trained central sense apparatus is unresponsive;
but that does not conflict with the propositions
of psychology, and is not mystical. We know
that the threshold for just perceptible sensations
is often surprisingly lowered for hypnotic and
hysterical subjects, who can thus perceive faint
impressions and signals which must escape the
normal consciousness. Even if a man were so
gifted as to discriminate smells like a dog, or to
see the ultra-violet rays, or to perceive solids by
the Roentgen rays, or if he had a sense organ for
electric currents more sensitive than the finest
galvanometer, the psychologist would have no

238 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTIC7SM

reason for skepticism so long as the physical
nature of the transmission from the outer object
to the brain is admitted. Other variations in
the receiver may be determined by his state of
attention. An outer stimulus may reach his
brain by the door of his senses without producing
an apperceived idea at the moment, but not
without influence on his later feelings and ac-
tions ; a molecular alteration of the brain dispo-
sition may last and work as after effect of the
stimulation without having attracted the atten-
tion at all. This occurrence, also, which in
narrow limits is familiar and usual enough, may
be pathologically exaggerated, and may then, as
for instance in hysterical cases, produce surpris-
ing results, if the subject shows undoubted
knowledge of facts which he could never have
acquired consciously; but this, likewise, nowhere
transcends the psychological probabilities.

Still more complicated, perhaps, are the varia-
tions in the active power of the mind, within the
limits which psychologists willingly acknowledge,
or at least ought to acknowledge. Our thoughts
and volitions certainly have influence on other
minds ; we should not speak a word nor write a
line if we did not believe that. But again we
consider the psychical effects which we produce
in others as intermediated by physical processes.
We stimulate the optic and acoustic and tactual
nerves of others with the purpose of reaching

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 239

their central nervous system, and of producing
there the ideas with which we started. These
ideas must then work for themselves ; they stir
up their associations and awaken their inhibi-
tions, but the outsider cannot add anything fur-
ther. He can only communicate the ideas, and
let them work in the receiver from a psychologi-
cal point of view ; that is all the influence we
have on our fellow men.

Ill

There is one complication of this trivial pro-
cess of communication which seems to touch the
borderland of mysticism, — hypnotic sugges-
tion. The hypnotized subject must do what-
ever the hypnotizer suggests to him. Here the
will of one mind seems to have an incompre-
hensible influence over the other, and as if it
were only a short way from the hypnotic rap-
port to the influences of mystical character;
that is, of a kind which excludes the possibility
of physical intermediation. The resemblance is
deceptive, however ; even the most complicated
«ase of hypnotic influence is based only on ele-
mentary actions which occur every moment in
our normal mental life. If we want some one
to do a thing, we communicate our wish to him,
trusting that the idea proposed will discharge
itself in the desired motor action. That cor-
responds fully to our general knowledge that

240 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

every sensory mental state is at the same time
the starting-point of motor impulses. If we say
to our neighbor, "Please pass me the cream,"
we take for granted that the communicated idea
will discharge itself in the little action. But if
we say, "Please jump out of the window," the
result will not be the same. The communicated
idea by itself alone would have the effect of
producing the action demanded, but it awakens
by the regular associative mechanism a set of
ideas on the folly of the demand and the danger
of the undertaking, and all these associations are
starting-points for antagonistic impulses which
are finally reinforced by the whole personality :
the proposed action is thus inhibited, and the
man does not jump. He would jump if the an-
tagonistic idea could be kept down ; and in this
case the foolish action would be just as neces-
sarily determined by the conditions and just as
natural as the reasonable one. But we all know
that this power of ideas to overcome antagonistic
associations is quite a normal thing, active in the
most varying measure everywhere in our normal
mental life.

We call an idea which thus checks the an-
tagonistic one a suggestion, and we may be sure
that no education or art, no politics or church
life, would be possible without such suggestions.
The idea may become a suggestion by the way
in which it is presented, but it may also acquire

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 241

this character by the disposition of the receiver.
We know there are stubborn men who contra-
dict every proposition, and there are others who
are open to every new idea without inner resist-
ance, and ready to believe everything they hear,
or even everything they see in print. They
are thus more at the mercy of suggestions ; we
say they show greater suggestibility. On the
other hand, every man's suggestibility is vari-
able ; it is increased by fear and other emotions,
by alcohol and other nervines, and under special
conditions it may reach a pathological intensity.
This abnormal degree of suggestibility, in which
the antagonistic associations of the suggested
ideas are more or less completely inhibited, is the
mental state we call hypnotism. If this state
of increased suggestibility is reached, the outer
action which fulfills the proposed suggestion
becomes, through the regular psychophysical
mechanism, unavoidable. The final results, to
be sure, may appear surprisingly different from
the normal actions of the personality, but even
the most absurd hypnotic action is based on these
simple psychological principles. As, theoreti-
cally, everybody can hypnotize everybody, it is
obvious that no special mystical power need be
invoked at this point ; and even if we induce
the hypnotized subject to do a criminal action, it
is no mysterious power with which we overcome
his honesty, but a combination of processes

242 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

which are neither clearer nor more obscure than
normal attention and association. There is not
the slightest reason to consider hypnotism, with
all its ramifications, as in any degree mystical
because of its weird and alarming results. We
may not understand every detail as yet, but
nothing need suggest any doubt that other prin-
ciples are involved than those in daily mental
activity. Hypnotism is free from responsibility
for mystical theories. Mysticism, on the other
hand, cannot hope to pass through the entrance
door of science on account of its superficial simi-
larity to some hypnotic cases.

Practically, the two may be mixed till they
are indistinguishable. In spiritualistic seances
the plain hypnotic phenomena are not seldom
used to smooth the way for the telepathic mys-
ticism, as criticism of the latter will be less sharp
if the first part of the performance is undoubt-
edly reliable. If there is no physical interme-
diation between the transmitter and the receiver,
thought transference remains mystical, and whe-
ther the receiver is hypnotized or not has nothing
to do with the case. No change is involved
by the belief of the subject, no matter how sin-
cere, that he is under such mystical influence
from far distances. Only a short time ago I
had such a case under my observation. There
came to me, late at night, a stranger, in wildest
despair, resolved to commit suicide that night if

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 243

I could not help him. He had been a physi-
cian, but had given up his practice because his
brother, on the other side of the ocean, hated
him and had him under his telepathic influence,
troubling him from over the sea with voices
which mocked him and with impulses to foolish
actions. He had not slept nor had he eaten
anything for several days, and the only chance
for life he saw was that a new hypnotic influ-
ence might overpower the mystical hypnotic
forces. I soon found the source of his trouble.
In treating himself for a wound he had misused
cocaine in an absurd way, and the hallucination
of voices was the chief symptom of his cocain-
ism. These products of his poisoned brain
had sometimes reference to his brother in Europe,
and thus the telepathic idea grew in him and
permeated his whole life. I hypnotized him,
and suggested to him with success to have sleep
and food and a smaller dose of cocaine. Then
I hypnotized him daily for six weeks. After
ten days he gave up cocaine entirely, after three
weeks the voices disappeared, and after that the
other symptoms faded away. It was not, however,
until the end that the telepathic theory was ex-
ploded. Even when the voices had gone, he
felt for a while that his movements were con-
trolled from over the ocean ; and after six
weeks, when I had made him quite well again,
he laughed over his telepathic absurdities, but

244 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

assured me that if these sensations came again
he should be unable, even in full health, to
resist the mystical interpretation, so vividly had
he felt the distant influences.

IV

This case may bring us to another main group
of personal influences, the therapeutical ones.
The man of common sense is more suspicious of
fraud in this field than anywhere else, and yet
the psychologist must here concede as possible a
greater part of the claimed facts than in the
other domains of mysticism. He will reject a
good deal, it is true, and in acknowledging the
rest of the facts he will not think of committing
himself to the theories ; yet he must feel sorry
that truth demands from him the acknowledg-
ment of anything, not because he thinks himself
bound to advertise the regular practicing phy-
sician, but because he knows how these facts
carry with them a flock of contagious confus-
ing ideas. Seen from the standpoint of the psy-
chologist, the line between the possible and
the mysterious healing influences of personality
is fairly though not absolutely sharp. We have
seen that every normal psychophysical state has
the tendency to go over into peripheral bodily
processes. We have so far noticed only the pro-
cesses in the voluntary muscles, the so-called
actions, and we have found that there is no

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 245

special power involved and that no mystery need
be invoked, but that every idea discharges itself
in an action provided the antagonistic ideas are
checked. But the motor nerves and muscular
apparatus represent only a part of the cen-
tral and centrifugal system which can be stimu-
lated by sensory processes. The researches of
physiology have fully proved that our involun-
tary muscles and our blood-vessels, our glands
and our internal organs, are under the influ-
ence of our central system. Our whole body in
every instant resounds in every part to the vari-
ations of our brain activity, and the normal
functioning of our organism depends in a large
degree on the right work of these central stimu-
lations. Are they absent or inhibited, some-
thing must go wrong ; and if the central stimu-
lus can be enforced, if the antagonistic inhibition
can be checked, the right tension and the normal
functioning must return as necessarily and as
naturally as the suggested action must occur
when the contradicting ideas are removed. We
have seen that hypnotism is nothing but a psy-
ehophysical state of increased suggestibility;
that is, a state in which the suggested ideas find
less resistance than in normal life. If the hyp-
notized patient receives suggestions which refer
to those physiological functions which are de-
pendent upon the central nervous system, the
change and the readjustment of the organic

246 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

functions by the removal of false inhibitions and
by the reinforcement of useful central stimula-
tions are certainly no more obscure than the
action of antipyrine and phenacetine. Even
that which may be still obscure in the action of
the suggestions can be only a matter of details,
not of principles.

There are two methods of suggestion open :
a more active and talkative way, which turns
the subject's attention to the desired point by
direct suggestions, and a more passive and silent
way, which attempts a general quieting of the
mind, in which a new balance of impulses may
be inaugurated, and the desire for normal func-
tions may work itself up to increased influence.
Every good physician makes use of these two
means to increase the effectiveness of his reme-
dies. At the right time, they are almost a
substitute for all other aid, and in the mystical
therapy of all periods through four thousand
years they have developed a high technique.
To-day, the passive method of indirect sugges-
tion is the vehicle of the Christian scientists and
metaphysical healers; the active way of more
direct suggestion belongs to the mind curers and
mental healers.

Much of the success of both methods depends,
of course, upon the ability of the transmitter to
make the suggestions effective. His personal
appearance and way of talking, his voice and

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 247

temperament, must be persuasive, and his reputa-
tion and authority must reinforce the expectancy
which prepares the inhibitions. Teachers and
lawyers and ministers strengthen their influence
by these silent servants of a dominant mind.
Many of these personal qualities can be replaced,
to be sure, by merely mechanical tricks which
can be imitated and taught. Our mystical
schools bring this technique to external virtuos-
ity. But still more important are the antecedent
conditions in the mind of the patient. Whoever
has seen the patients in the clinic of a famous
hypnotist (half hypnotized as soon as they pass
the door of the hospital) knows how the fascina-
tion of the attention by belief — by any belief —
works favorably for the increase of suggestibility ;
so that the smallest additional intruder, perhaps
the sensation of half-darkened light, of soft
touch, of muscle strain in the eyes, is sufficient
to bring about the new equilibrium of psycho-
physical impulses. The most vulgar and trivial
belief will answer ; the most absurd superstition
can bring success, as everything depends upon
the intensity of the subject's submission; and
the more pitiable the intellectual powers of a
creature, the greater may be his chance of a cure
by idiotic manipulations. To deny this in the
interest of science would be unscientific.

The most deep-seated form of belief is reli-
gious faith, and there cannot be the slightest

248 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

doubt that religious emotion, from the lowest
f etichism to the highest protestantism, has always
been fertile soil for therapeutical suggestions.
What we have called the active method appeals
to the subjective faith with direct words; the
passive method awakens the same fascination
indirectly, lulling to sleep the antagonistic
impulses by a feeling that the mind of the
transmitter has reached by prayer and love a
supernatural unity with the mind of the patient.
We must not forget that it is not the solemn
value of the religious revelation, nor the ethical
and metaphysical bearing of its objects, which
brings success, but solely the depth of the emo-
tion. To murmur the Greek alphabet with the
touching intonation and gesture of supplication
is just as strengthening for the health as the
sublimest prayer ; and for the man who believes
in the metaphysical cure, it may be quite unim-
portant whether the love curer at his bedside
thinks of the psychical Absolute or of the spring
hat she will buy with the fee for her metaphy-
sical healing. From the psychological point of
view, the direct method of healing by faith and
the indirect method of healing by love are thus
almost identical ; both are confined to the nar-
row limits within which the nervous system
influences the pathological processes; but in
these limits both have some chances of a transi-
tory success, and both are liable to the same

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 249

illusions on the part of sincere healers and to the
same humbug on the part of impostors.

Our review has sought to examine the two
large groups of facts which refer to the influ-
ence of mind on mind, and to separate in both,
in those of active influence and in those of
passive reception, the psychological possibilities
from those claims which the psychologist at first
rejects. There are two groups more which we
must sift, — the facts which lead to the theory
of double consciousness, and the spiritualistic
facts which refer to the communication of the
living with the souls of the dead. In the former
group there is little fault to be found with the
facts ; only the theory is misleading. In the
latter group, on the other hand, it may be diffi-
cult to decide whether the claims for the facts
c>r the attempts at theories are the more objec-
tionable. The phenomena which suggest that a
deeper personality lies hidden under the experi-
ences of our surface personality are to-day gen-
erally familiar and scientifically well studied.
Typical of these phenomena are the interesting
facts of automatic writing, apart from the at-
tempts to give them a spiritualistic interpreta-
tion. Our hands may be brought to write
truths of which we are not conscious, and to
answer questions which we do not perceive ; and

250 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

these writings which we do not control may
clearly belong to a special personality, with its
own memory and its own wit and temper. Many
similar facts which do not necessarily point in
the same direction presuppose hysterical disturb-
ances. It is true that the idea of a separated
subject of consciousness offers itself to a super-
ficial view as the simplest hypothesis, and the
acceptance of this hypothesis gives a foothold
for the most complicated mystical theories. But
there are two groups of facts which we must
keep in mind. First, we know that all our com-
plicated useful actions which are acquired under
the control of the intellectual attention, as
walking and eating, speaking and reading and
writing, become slowly automatic, yet nobody
thinks of putting them under the care of a
deeper personality; we make the right move-
ment in speaking without consciously intending
tte special tongue and lip movements, because
the lower nerve centres steadily unburden the
higher ones, and more and more easily trans-
*orm the stimulus into the useful motor dis-
charge. Even in the most complicated cases,
therefore, the unconscious production of appar-
ently chosen and adapted actions is no proof
whatever that the whole process was not a merely
physiological one. Secondly, a manifoldness of
psychological personalities is in no way identical
with a plurality of subjects of consciousness.

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 251

Every one of us finds in his consciousness a
bundle of social personalities. We are different
men in the office and in the family circle, in the
political meeting and in the theatre; one does
not care for the others, and may even ignore
them ; each has his own memory connection and
his own impulses. But they do not represent
different subjects of consciousness, different
groups of objects alternating in the same sub-
ject. Of course these various empirical person-
alities have always some elements in common,
by which we can easily bridge over from one to
the other, and remember our office anger in
front of the stage of the theatre. No change
in principle occurs when, by an abnormal brain
process, these paths of association and connec-
tion are blocked, and one personality remains
without relations with the other. In such a case
several personalities alternate, each consisting of
a set of associations and impulses without remem-
brance of the others. The student of hypnotism
and hysteria is familiar with such phenomena.
These personalities alternate in consciousness in
the same way that groups of ideas succeed one
another ; but the subject which is the bearer of
all these personalities remains always the same,
and the hypothesis that this subject itself
changes when the content of the social person-
ality changes is thus without support in the
psychological interpretations of the normal idea

252 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

of personality. The real source of these theo-
ries as to a deeper self and a double conscious-
ness lies, indeed, not in the psychological facts,
but in motives of a very different character.
We shall turn presently to these more hidden
impulses, as they will show us the real springs
of mysticism ; but we must first glance at our
fourth and last group of claims, — the wonders
of spiritualism.

So long as we consider spiritualism only from
the point of view of its agreement with the sys-
tem of scientific psychology, the discussion may
be extremely short, for one sweeping word is
sufficient. There are no subtle discriminations
necessary, as in the other fields : the psycholo-
gist rejects everything without exception. We
have here not the slightest relation to philo-
sophical spiritualism, either to that of the Berke-
leian type or to that of Fichte. We are not on
the height of philosophical thinking, but on the
low ground of observation and explanation of
empirical facts. The question is not whether
the substance of the real world is spiritual ; it is
only whether departed spirits enter into com-
munication with living men by mediums and
by incarnation. The scientist does not admit a
compromise : with regard to this he flatly denies
the possibility. Of course he does not say that
all the claims are founded on fraud. He does
not deny that sincere persons have frequently

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 253

believed, through hallucinations, and still oftener
through illusions, that they saw the apparitions
of departed friends and heard their voices. The
psychologist has no dearth of explanations for
this product of the psychophysical mechanism.
In the same way, he need not doubt that many
of the mediums really believe themselves to be
under the control of departed souls ; for this
also exactly fits many well-known facts of nerv-
ous disturbance. But the facts as they are
claimed do not exist, and never will exist, and
no debate makes the situation better.

VI

Our short survey of the wide domain of mys-
ticism is finished. We have seen what part of
its claims can be acknowledged by psychology,
and what must be rejected. We have seen that
many of those occurrences which appear mys-
terious and uncanny to the naive mind are easily
understood from a scientific point of view, and
are often separated by an impassable chasm from
happenings which on the surface look quite
similar. We have seen especially that hypnotism
and hysteria, muscle reading and hyperaesthesia,
alternation of personality and the therapeutic in-
fluence of psychophysical inhibitions, hallucina-
tions and illusions, and other mental states which
psychology understands just as well as it does
the normal associations and feelings, explain

254 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

many of the observed events, and bring them
from the domain of mysticism into the sphere of
causally necessary processes. And yet all this
is only a preamble for our real discussion. We
have given decisions, but not arguments; we
have shown that psychology is able to explain
many of the facts, but we have not shown as
yet why we have the right to reject other so-
called facts and to deny their possibility; and
everything must at last depend upon this right
alone.

The modern mystic, if he is ready to follow
us thus far, would not find the slightest argu-
ment against his position in any of our preced-
ing points. He would say : " I accept your
psychophysical explanations for the facts which
you acknowledge ; with regard to the others, I
see only that you are unable to understand them,
but that gives you no right to deny them.
There are many facts which are still puzzles for
science. History must make us modest, show-
ing that again and again the truth was at first
ridiculed and the deeper insight derided. These
very phenomena of hypnotism and automatism
and hysteria were denied in their reality only a
few generations ago. Science must give every-
thing fair play, and a refusal even to examine
the facts is unworthy of real science. It is nar-
rowness and stubbornness to reject a fact be-
cause it does not fit into the scientific system of

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 255

to-day, instead of striving toward the better sys-
tem of to-morrow, which will have room for all
the phenomena ; and this the more if these facts
are of vast importance, involving the immor-
tality and the absolute unity of all minds, the
spiritual harmony of the universe, and the very
deepest powers of man."

This is the old text, indeed, preached from so
often, and sometimes in so brilliant and fascina-
ting a style that even the best men have lowered
the sword. Yet it is wrong and dangerous from
beginning to end, and has endlessly more harm
in it than a superficial view reveals, as it is in
its last consequences not only the death of real
science, but worse, — the death of real idealism.

First a word about the so-called facts. Our
newspapers, magazines, and books are full to
overflowing of the reports of happenings which
no science can explain, and which may over-
whelm the uncritical mind by their sheer bulk.
But whoever stops to think for a moment how
the psychological conditions favor and almost
enforce the weedlike growth of mysterious sto-
ries will at least agree that a live criticism must
sift the tales, even if they are backed by the au-
thority of a most trustworthy sailor or a most
excellent servant girl. If the glaring light of
criticism is thrown on this twilight literature, the
effect is often surprising. Some of the " facts "
prove to be simply untrue, having grown up

256 PSfCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

through gossip and desire for excitement, through
fear and curiosity, through misunderstandings
and imagination. Another set of the " facts "
turns out to be true, but not mysterious ; being
merely a checkered field of abnormal mental
phenomena, such as hypnotism, somnambulism,
hysteria, insanity, hyperaBsthesia, automatic ac-
tion, and so forth. Another large group is based
on conscious or unconscious fraud, from the
mildest form down through a long scale to the
boldest spiritualistic forgery. If we take away
these three large groups, there is a remainder
which may deserve discussion as to its interpre-
tation. Here belong the chance occurrences
which appear alarmingly surprising if taken in
isolation, but quite natural if considered as mem-
bers of a long series, giving account of all the
cases in which the surprising coincidences did
not occur. The recent statistics of apparitions
and hallucinations show clearly the difficulty of
finding always the right basis for such calcula-
tion of mathematical probabilities. Here belong,
further, the illusions of memory, by which pre-
sent experiments are projected into the past, or
past experiences are transformed by present sen-
sations; the surprising coincidences illustrated
by recent experiments, which are produced by
the concordance of associations and other simi-
larities of mental dispositions ; and the illusions
of perception which allow us to hear and see

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 257

whatever we expect or whatever is suggested
to us.

If we are ready to make full use of every
means of possible explanation, there remains
hardly an instance where it is impossible to tear
aside the veil of mystery, and to explain psy-
chologically either the occurrences of the facts
themselves, or the development of the erroneous
report about them. Even when long series of
careful experiments on thought transference and
similar problems were made, the cautious papers
discreetly reported in most cases, not that a
proof was furnished, but only that the evidence
seemed to point in a certain direction. And
even the most ardent believer in telepathy, Mr.
Podmore, concedes that " each particular case is
susceptible of more or less adequate explanation
by some well-known cause." Mr. Podmore con-
siders it absurd to accumulate the strained and
complicated explanations which thus become ne-
cessary, instead of accepting the simple whole-
sale interpretation that telepathy took place.
But with the same right we might say that in
an endless number of instances the lowest ani-
mals and plants rise from inorganic substances ;
each case taken separately could be explained by
biologists from procreation, but since such expla-
nation would involve an accumulation of com-
plicated theories about the conditions of life for
the lowest animals, it would be much simpler to
believe in generatio equivoca.

258 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

Our presupposition was that a large propor-
tion of the claims are false. Even the cham-
pions of mysticism are to-day ready to admit that
the temptations and chances for deception are
discouragingly numerous. Not only is there an
abundance of money-making schemes which fit
well the natural credulity and suggestibility of
the public at large. Some lie and cheat merely
for art's sake, getting pleasure from the fact that
their fiction becomes real through the belief that
it awakes, and some do the same merely in boy-
ish trickery. Some elaborate their inventions to
make themselves interesting, and some feast in
the power they thus gain over men. Some
begin by consciously embellishing the slender
facts, and end with a sincere belief in their own
superstructure ; and others, through hysterical
excitement, are unaware of their own cheating.
Add to these causes the incorrectness with which
most men observe and report on matters in
which their feelings are interested, and the mis-
erable lack of the feeling of responsibility with
which average men and average papers put forth
their wild tales. Consider how again and again
the honored leaders of mystical movements have
been unmasked as cheap impostors and their
admired wonders recognized as vulgar tricks,
how telepathic performances have been reduced
to a simple signaling by breathing or noises,
and how seldom disbelievers have interrupted a

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 259

materialization seance without putting their hands
on a provision of beards and draperies. Think
of all this, and the supposed facts dwindle more
and more.

At this point of the discussion the friends of
mysticism like to go over to a more personal
attack. They say, " How do you dare to pre-
suppose credulity and suggestibility in the ob-
server, and intended or unintended tricks and
dishonesty in the performer, when you have
never taken part in such experiments, and when
some brilliant scholars have examined them and
found no fraud ? " To such personal reproach
I answer with personal facts. It is true I have
never taken part in a telepathic experiment or in
a spiritualistic stance. It is not a nervous dis-
like of abnormalities which has kept me away,
as I have devoted much time to the study of
hypnotism and insanity. The experiences of
some of my friends, however, made me cautious
from the beginning ; they had spent much
energy and time and money on such mysteries,
and had come to the conviction that all was
humbug. Once, I confess, I wavered in my
decision. In Europe I received a telegram from
two famous telepathists asking me to come
immediately to a small town where they had dis-
covered a medium of extraordinary powers. It
required fifteen hours' traveling, and I hesitated ;
but the report was so inspiring that I finally

260 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

packed my trunks. Just then came a second
message with the laconic words, " All fraud."
Since that time I do not take the trouble to
pack. I wait quietly for the second message.

Why do I avoid these seances? It is not
because I am afraid that they would shake my
theoretical views and convince me of mysticism,
but because I consider it undignified to visit
such performances, as one attends a variety
show, for amusement only, without attempting
to explain them, and because I know that I
should be the last man to see through the
scheme and discover the trick. I should cer-
tainly have been deceived by Madame Blavatsky,
the theosophist, and by Miss Paladino, the me-
dium. I am only a psychologist, not a detective.
More than that, by my whole training I am ab-
solutely spoiled for the business of the detective.
The names of great scientists, like Zoellner,
Richet, Crookes, and many others, do not im-
pose on me in the least ; for their daily work in
scientific laboratories was a continuous training
of an instinctive confidence in the honesty of
their cooperators. I do not know another pro-
fession in which the suspicion of possible fraud
becomes so systematically inhibited as it does in
that of the scientist. He ought to be at once
dismissed from the jury, and a prestidigitator
substituted. Whether I personally take part in
Buch meetings or not is, therefore, without any

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 261

consequences; I take it for granted from the
start that wherever there was fraud in the play,
I should have been cheated like my brethren.
The only thing that the other side can reason-
ably demand from us is that we be fully ac-
quainted with their claims and with the evidence
they furnish in their writings. I confess I have
not had quite a good conscience in this respect ;
I had not really studied all the recorded Phan-
tasms of the Living and all the Proceedings of
the Societies for Psychical Research, and I am
afraid I had forgotten to cut the leaves of some of
the occult magazines on my own shelves. Now,
however, my conscience is fully disburdened. I
used — or ought I to say, misused ? — my last
summer vacation in working through more than
a hundred volumes of the so-called evidence. I
passed through a whole series of feelings. In-
deed, I had at first a feeling of mysterious
excitement from all those uncanny stories, but
that changed into a deep sesthetical and ethical
disgust, which flattened finally into the feeling
that there was about me an endless desert of
absolute stupidity. I, for one, am to-day far
more skeptical than before I was driven to ex-
amine the evidence ; I have studied the proofs,
and now feel sure of what before I only sus-
pected, — that they do not prove anything ; and
if we condemn science on such testimony, we do
worse than those who condemned the witches and

262 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

vampires. In short, I believe that the facts, if
they are examined critically, are never incapable
of a scientific explanation ; and yet even this is
not the central point of the question. I must
deny that the battle is waged over the facts
which science understands and those which it
does not understand.

VII

No scientist in the world feels uncomfortable
over the confession that there are many — end-
lessly many — things in the world which we do
not know; no sane man dreams that the last
day of scientific progress has yet come, and that
every problem has been solved. On the con-
trary, the springs of scientific enthusiasm lie in
the conviction that we stand only at the beginning
of knowledge, and that every day may unveil
new elements of the universe. Even physio-
logical psychology, which seems so conceited in
the face of mysticism, admits how meagre is the
knowledge it has so far gleaned. Almost every
important question of our science is still un-
settled, and yet that has never discouraged us in
our work. The physicist and the astronomer,
the chemist and the botanist, the physiologist
and the psychologist, work steadily, with the
conviction that there are many facts which they
do not know, like the Roentgen rays ten years
ago, and that many facts are not fully under-

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 263

stood, like the Eoentgen rays at present. If the
mystical facts were merely processes which we do
not understand to-day, but which we may under-
stand to-morrow, there would not be the slightest
occasion for a serious dispute. But the situa-
tion is very different. The antithesis is not
between the facts we can explain and the facts
we cannot explain, and for which we seek an
explanation of the same order. No; it is be-
tween the facts which are now explicable by
causal laws, or may be so in any possible future,
and those facts which are acknowledged as in
principle outside of the necessary causal connec-
tions, and bound together by their values for
our personal feelings instead of by mechanical
laws. As Professor James puts it excellently :
It is the difference between the personal emo-
tional and the impersonal mechanical thinking,
between the romantic and the rationalistic views
of the world. Here lies the root of the problem,
and here centres our whole interest. Indeed, all
that is claimed by the mystic as such means, not
that the causal connections of the world found
so far are still incomplete and must be supple-
mented by others, but that the blanks in the
causal connections allow us glimpses of another
world behind, — an uncausal emotional world
which shines through the vulgar world of me-
chanics.

If the astronomer calculated the movement of

264 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

a star from the causally working forces, he might
come to the hypothesis that there are centres of
attraction existing which we have not yet discov-
ered : it was thus Leverrier discovered Neptune.
But his boldest theories operate only with quan-
tities of the same order, with substances and
forces which come under the categories of the
mechanical world. If, on the other hand, he
considered some emotional view, perhaps the
sesthetical one that the star followed this curve
because it is more beautiful, as indeed an older
astronomy did; or the ethical one that this
movement of the star occurred because it served
to make the moral progress of men possible,
while the causal movement would have thrown
the earth into the sun; or the religious one
that the angels chose to pull the star this way
rather than that; or the poetical one that the
star was obliged to move just so in order to
delight the heart on a clear evening by its spar-
kling, — in none of these cases would he be
doubtful whether his hypothesis were good or
bad ; he would be sure that it was not an astro-
nomical hypothesis at all. He would not search
with the telescope to find out whether or not his
theory was confirmed by new facts. No; he
would see that his thought denied the possibility
of astronomy, and was a silly profanation of
ethics and religion at the same time.

The naturalist knows, if he understands the

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 265

philosophical basis of his work, and is not merely
a technical craftsman, that natural science means,
not a simple cast and copy of the reality, but a
special transformation of reality, a conceptual
construction of unreal character in the service of
special logical purposes. The naturalist does
not think that bodies are in reality made from
atoms, and that the movements of the stars are
really the products of all the elementary im-
pulses into which his calculation disintegrates
the causes. He knows that all his elements, the
elementary substances and the elementary forces,
are merely conceptions worked out for the pur-
pose of representing the world as a causally
connected mechanism. The real world is no
mechanism, but a world of means and aims,
objects of our will and of our personal purposes.
But one of these purposes is to conceive the
world as a mechanism, and so long as we work
in the service of this purpose we presuppose that
the world is a mechanism. In the effort to re-
present the world as a causal one — that is, in
our character as naturalists — we know only a
causal world, and no other. We may know
little about that postulated causal world, but we
are sure beforehand that whatever the future
may discover about it must belong to the causal
system, or it is wrong. We are free to choose
the point of view, but when we have chosen it
we are bound by its presuppositions. A natu-

266 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

ralist who begins to doubt whether the world is
everywhere causal misunderstands his own aim
and gives up his only end.

These simple facts from the methodology of
science repeat themselves exactly, though in a
more complicated form, for psychology. Psy-
chology, also, is never a mere copy of the
reality, but always a transformation in the ser-
vice of a special logical purpose. Our real
inner life is not a complex of elementary sensa-
tions, as psychology may see it : it is a system of
attitudes of will, which we do not perceive as
contents of consciousness, but which we live
through, and objects of will which are our
means and ends and values. It becomes a
special interest of the logical attitude of the will
to transform this real will system in conceptual
form into a causal system, too, and, in the ser-
vice of this end, to put in the place of the
teleological reality a mechanical artificial con-
struction. This construction is psychology, and
it is thus clear that in the psychological system
itself every view which is not causal is contra-
dictory to the presuppositions, and therefore
scientifically untrue. Between the mental facts,
in so far as they are considered as psychological
phenomena, there exists no other possible con-
nection than the causal one, though, to be sure,
this causal view has not the slightest meaning
for the inner reality, which never consists of

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 267

psychological phenomena. This is the point
which even philosophers so easily overlook : as
soon as we speak of psychical objects, of ideas
and feelings and volitions, as contents of con-
sciousness, we speak of an artificial transforma-
tion to which the categories of real life no longer
apply, — a transformation which lies in the
direction of causal connection, and which has,
therefore, a right to existence only if the right
to extend the causal aspect of nature to the inner
life is acknowledged. The personal, the emo-
tional, the romantic, in short the will-view, con-
trols our real life, but from that standpoint
mental life is never a psychical fact.

It is one of the greatest dangers of our time
that the naturalistic point of view, which decom-
poses the world into elements for the purpose of
causal connection, interferes with the volitional
point of view of the real life, which can deal
only with values, and not with elements. I
have sought again and again to point out this
unfortunate situation, and to show that history
and practical life, education and art, morality
and religion, have nothing to do with these psy-
chological constructions, and that the categories
of psychology must not intrude into their teleo-
logical realms. But that does not blind me to
the fact that exactly the opposite transgression
of boundaries is going on all the time, too. If
the world of values is intruded into the causal

268 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

world, if the categories which belong to reality
are forced on the system of transformation which
was framed in the service of causality, we get a
cheap mixture which satisfies neither the one
aim nor the other. Just this is the effort of
mysticism. It is the personal, emotional view
applied, not to the world of reality, where it fits,
but to the physical and psychical worlds, both
of which are constructed by the human logical
will for the purpose of an impersonal, unemo-
tional causal system. But to mix values with
laws destroys not only the causal links, but also
the values. The ideals of ethics and religion,
instead of growing in the world of volitional
relations, are now projected into the atomistic
structure, and thus become dependent upon its
nature. Intended to fill there the blanks in the
causal system, they find their right of existence
only where ignorance of nature leaves such
blanks, and must tremble at every step of pro-
gress science makes. It is bad enough when
the psychological categories are wrongly pushed
into ethics by the over-extension of psychology,
but it is still more absurd when ethics leaves its
home in the real world and creeps over to the
field of psychology, satisfied with the few places
to which science has not yet acquired a clear
title. Our ethics and religion may thus be
shaken to-morrow by any new result of labora-
tory research, and must be supported to-day by

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 269

the telepathic performances of hysteric women.
Our belief in immortality must rest on the gos-
sip which departed spirits utter in dark rooms
through the mouths of hypnotized business medi-
ums, and our deepest personality comes to light
when we scribble disconnected phrases in auto-
matic writing. Is life then really still worth
living ?

vni

We must here throw more light on some
details which may be difficult to understand.
We have said that the claims of mysticism im-
pose the emotional teleological categories upon
the psychological facts ; that is, upon construc-
tions which are formed for the purpose of the
mechanical categories only. It may not be at
once evident how this is true for special propo-
sitions of a mystical nature. Of course we can-
not develop here the presuppositions of psycho-
logy ; a few words to show the nature of the
problems must be sufficient. Psychology tries
to consider the mental life as a system of per-
ceivable objects which are necessarily determined ;
every transformation which is serviceable for this
purpose is psychologically true. If the mental
facts are thought as determining one another,
we must presuppose that they have characteris-
tics to which this effective influence attaches.
These characteristics are called their elements,

270 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

and therefore, for psychologists, the mental life
consists of elements. The psychical material is
different from the physical by the presupposition
that it exists for one subject only. It is there-
fore not communicable ; since incommunicable,
it is not determinable by communicable units,
and hence is not measurable, — not quantitative,
but only qualitative. Consequently, it is incapa-
ble of entering into a mathematical equation, and
is unfit to play the role of determinable causes
and effects. Before psychical elements can be
transformed into a system of causes and effects
a further transformation must be made ; they
must be thought as amalgamated with physical
processes which exist for many, and which are
measurable, and therefore capable of forming a
necessary causal system. The psychical facts
are thus thought of as accompaniments of physi-
cal processes, and in their appearance and disap-
pearance fully determined by the physical events.
There is no materialistic harm in this doctrine,
as it aims at no reference to reality, but is merely
a construction for a special purpose ; within its
sphere, however, there cannot be any exception.
If the psychical facts are thought of as accom-
paniments of the physical processes, they must be
projected into the physical world, and must
accept its forms of existence, space and time.
The real inner life in its teleological reality is
spaceless and timeless, — it knows space and

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 271

time only as forms of its objects ; the psycholo-
gical phenomena themselves enter into space and
time as soon as they are connected with the
physical phenomena. They are now psycho-
physical elements which can determine one an-
other only by the causal relations of the physical
substratum. The working hypothesis of modern
psychology — that every mental state is a com-
plex of psychical elements, of which each is the
accompaniment of a physical process in time and
space, and influences others or is influenced by
others merely through the medium of physical
processes — is then not an arbitrary theory. It
is the necessary outcome of the presuppositions
which the human will has freely chosen for its
logical purposes, and to which it is bound by its
own decision.

From this point a full light of explanation
falls upon all our earlier decisions. We rejected
every claimed fact in which the psychological
facts were without a physical substratum, as in
the case of departed spirits and those in which
psychical facts influenced one another without
physical intermediation, as in telepathy. If
mental life is taken in its reality, it must not be
considered as composed of elements, ideas, and
f eelings, but must be taken as a whole ; then it
is not in bodily personalities, not in space and
not in time, — in short, is not a psychological
fact at all. But if we take it as psychological

272 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

fact in human bodies and in time, it must be
thought of in accordance with the psychological
presuppositions, as bound to the physical events,
communicated by their intermediation and disap-
pearing at their destruction. Where these con-
ditions are in part wanting, psychology declines
to accept the propositions as truths, and de-
mands a further transformation of the facts till
the demands of psychology are satisfied. Mysti-
cism, however, prefers an easier way. Where-
ever the conditions of psychological truth are
absent, and, owing to the lack of physical sub-
strata or of physical mediation, the psychical facts
are disconnected or unexplained in their exist-
ence, there mysticism imports the teleological
links of the prepsychological real world, and
gives the illusion that the psychical facts have
been thus explained and connected.

Perhaps most instructive in this respect are
those claims of mysticism which refer to the
healing influences of men, because here it ap-
pears most clearly that it is not the facts, but
only the points of view, which constitute the
mysticism. The facts from which these claims
arise the psychologist does not deny at all ; as
we have seen, he takes them for granted. But
he explains them by suggestion and other famil-
iar laws of mental action, and thus links the
psychical phenomena by an uninterrupted chain
of physical processes. The mystic, on the other

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 273

hand, brings the same facts under the categories
which belong to the world of values : prayer has
now a healing influence, not because it is per-
ceived by the senses of the patient, and works
through association some inhibitory changes in
his brain, but because prayer is ethically and
religiously valuable. Not its physiological ac-
companiments which produce psychophysical
effects, but its goodness and piety secure success,
and, conversely, the illness which is cured by
the prayer must be a symptom of moral and
religious obliquity. The causal conception of a
disturbance of physiological functions is thus
transmuted into the ethical conception of sin.
Exactly the same psychophysical facts, the
prayer of the transmitter and the feeling of
improvement in the receiver, are in this case,
then, connected by the mystic and the scientist
in different ways, without any need on either
side of a further transformation of the facts.
For the one, it is the causal process that a sug-
gestion psychophysically overpower nervous inhi-
bition ; for the other, it is the victory of saint-
hood over sin, by its religious values. If the
scientist maintains that only the first is an
explanatory connection, the second not, does he
mean by this that goodness has no power over
evil ? Certainly not ; he means something very
different. Goodness and evil, he thinks, are
relations and attitudes of will, which have their

274 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

reality in being willed and lived through. They
are not psychophysical facts, to be perceived as
taking time, and going on in space in a special
brain and nervous system. They belong to the
world of willing subjects, not to the world of
atomistic objects ; they are primary, while sug-
gestions and inhibitions and all the other psycho-
physical objects are unreal derived constructions.
If prayer and sin are taken in their reality as we
live through them, then of course their meaning
and their value alone are in question, and it
would be absurd to apply to them the relations
of causal connection. As realities, they are not
brain processes ; as such, they do not come in
question as processes in time and space ; as such,
they are not transmuted into mere objects. If
we take them in their reality as will-attitudes,
they have no relation to causality. If we take
them as psychological processes which go on in
time in physical personalities, then we have
transformed them in the service of causality, and
have pledged ourselves to the causal system.
An ethical connection of psychophysical facts is
a direct inner contradiction ; it means applying
the categories of will to objects which we have
taken away from the will for the single purpose
of putting them into a system of will-less cate-
gories. We might just as well demand that the
figures of a painting should talk and move
about.

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 275

IX

Another case in which scientists and mystics
agree in regard to the facts is that of double
personality. The difference here, also, is only
one of interpretation. We have seen that the
psychologist understands this class of facts as
various degrees of disaggregation of psychophy-
sical elements, whereas the mystic introduces the
ethical categories of different responsibility and
dignity. It is otherwise with the telepathic or
spiritualistic claims : here there is no agreement
about the facts, and yet the principle is the
same as in the other cases. The mystic applies
the emotional personal links in this case, also,
not to the reality, but to psychological facts in a
stage of transformation which the psychologist
does not accept because they do not allow causal
connection. The psychologist calls the claimed
facts untrue, because the transformation of real-
ity is psychologically or physically true only
when it has reached that form in which it fits
into the causal system. It is the aim of science
to find the true facts, — that is, to transform
reality till the ends of causal ordering are at-
tained ; and if they are not attained, the objects
have not become a part of the existing psycho-
logical or physical world. An infinite number
of facts appear to us in disconnected form, but
we ignore them ; they remain only propositions j

276 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

they have not existence, because they do not
fulfill the conditions upon which, according to
the decision of the will which produces science,
psychical or physical existence depends. That a
fact is true in the world of psychical facts means
that it is selected as fit for a special logical
purpose ; and if the telepathic facts, for instance,
are not suited to that purpose, they are not true
according to the only consistent standard of
truth. They must become somehow otherwise ;
that is, they must be transformed until they can
be accepted as existing. The history of science
constantly demonstrates this necessity. It is
absurd for the mystics to claim the backing of
history because it shows that many things are
acknowledged as true to-day which were not
believed in earlier times. The teaching of his-
tory, on the contrary, annihilates almost cruelly
every claim of mysticism, as, far from a later
approval of mystical wisdom, history has in
every case remoulded the facts till they have
become causal ones. If the scientists of earlier
times disbelieved in phenomena as products of
witchcraft, and believe to-day in the same phe-
nomena as products of hypnotic suggestion and
hysteria, the mystics are not victorious, but
defeated. As long as the ethical category of
Satanic influence was applied to the appearances
they were not true ; as soon as they were brought
under the causal categories they were accepted

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 277

as true, but they were then no longer mystical, —
it was not witchcraft any more.

This process of transformation goes on stead-
ily ; millions of propositions which life suggests
remain untrue till they are adjusted. Just this
would be the fate of the telepathic propositions:
they would remain below the threshold of the
world of empirical facts, if a mistaken emotional
attitude did not awaken the illusion that there
exists here a connection capable of satisfying the
demand for explanation. The personal impor-
tance then links what ought to be linked by
impersonal causality. A feeling of depression
in the psychophysical organism and the death of
a friend a thousand miles distant have for us no
causal connection, but an emotional one. The
two events have no relation in the sphere of
objects ; they are connected only in the sphere
of will-acts ; and the link is not the goodness,
as in the case of healing by prayer, but the
emotional importance of the death for the
friend's feeling attitude. By this will-connec-
tion the two phenomena are selected and linked
together, and offer themselves as one fact, while
without that emotional unity they would remain
disconnected, and therefore in this combination
they would not be accepted in the sphere of
empirical facts.

Does the scientist maintain, in his opposition
to telepathy, that in reality mental communica-

278 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

tion between subjects is possible only by physi-
cal intermediation? Decidedly not. If I talk
with others whom I wish to convince, there is
no physical process in question ; mind reaches
mind, thought reaches thought ; but in this
aspect thoughts are not psychophysical pheno-
mena in space and time, but attitudes and propo-
sitions in the sphere of the will. If we take our
mental life in its felt reality, then the emotional
conviction that no physical wall intervenes be-
tween mind and mind is the only correct one ;
it would be even meaningless to look for physi-
cal connection. But if we transform the reality
into psychological objects in time and in bodies,
then we are bound by the aim of the transfor-
mation, and we can acknowledge their connec-
tion as true only if it is a mechanical one.

Finally, the ethical demand for immortality,
when applied to the artificial construction of
psychology instead of to the real life, brings out
the most repulsive claim of mysticism, — spirit-
ualism. The ethical belief in immortality means
that we as subjects of will are immortal; that
is, that we are not reached by death. For the
philosophical mind which sees the difference
between reality and psychological transforma-
tion, immortality is certain ; for him, the denial
of immortality would be even quite meaningless.
Death is a biological phenomenon in the world
of objects in time ; how then can death reach a

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 279

reality which is not an object, but an attitude,
and therefore neither in time nor in space? Our
real inner subjective life has its felt validity, not
in time, but beyond time; it is eternal. We
have seen why the purpose of psychology de-
mands that this non-local and non-temporal sub-
jectivity shall be transformed into a psychical
object, and as such projected into the space- and
time - filling organism. By that demand the
mental life itself becomes a process in time; and
if the ethical demand for immortality is now
transplanted into this circle of constructed phe-
nomena, there must result a clash between
psychology and human emotion. Conceiving
mental life as a process in time was done merely
for the purpose of representing it as the accom-
paniment of physical phenomena, and now to
demand that it should go on in time after the
destruction of this physical substratum is absurd.
In so far as we conceive mental life as an artificial
psychological process in time, in so far we think
of it only as part of a psychophysical phenome-
non, and thus never without a body, disappearing
when the body ceases to function. To the
ethical idealist this impossibility of the psycho-
logical immortality is a revelation; for such
pseudo- immortality could satisfy only the low
and vulgar instincts of man, and not his eth-
ical feelings. Only to a cheap curiosity can it
appear desirable that the inner life viewed as a

280 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

series of psychological facts shall go on and
on, that we may be able to see what is to hap-
pen in a thousand or in a million years. Life
seen from a psychological point of view as a
mere chain of psychological phenomena is utterly
worthless. It would be intolerable for seventy
years ; who would desire it for seventy million
years? Multiplication by zero always leads
back to naught. And even if we perceive all
the facts of the universe for all time to come, is
that of any value? We should shiver at the
thought of knowing all that is printed in one
year, or all that men of a single town feel pass-
ing through their minds; how intolerable the
thought of knowing even all that is and that
will be ! It is like the thought of endlessness in
space : if we were to grow endlessly tall, so that
we became large like the universe, reaching with
our arms to the stars, physically almighty, would
our life be more worth living, would it be better
or nobler or more beautiful ? No ; extension in
space and time has not the slightest ethical
value, for it necessarily refers only to those
objects which exist in space or time, and all our
real values lie beyond it. The mortality of the
psychological phenomena and the immortality of
our real inner life belong necessarily together,
and the claim that the deceased spirits go on
with psychological existence is therefore not
only a denial of the purposes for which the idea

PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM 281

of psychological existence is constructed, but
also a violation of the ethical belief in immor-
tality.

Here, then, as everywhere, mysticism means
nothing else than the attempt to force the
emotional categories on an unreal construction,
\ whose only presupposition was that it had to be
constructed as an unemotional objective mech-
anism. The result is a miserable changeling,
which satisfies neither the one side nor the
other. If mysticism is not contented with the
childish or hysteric pleasure of throwing obsta-
cles in the way of advancing science, it can
have, indeed, little satisfaction from its own
crippled products. Thousands and thousands
of spirits have appeared; the ghosts of the
greatest men have said their say, and yet the
substance of it has been always the absurdest
silliness. Not one inspiring thought has yet
been transmitted by this mystical way ; only the
most vulgar trivialities. It has never helped to
find the truth ; it has never brought forth any-
thing but nervous fear and superstition.

We have the truth of life. Its realities are
subjective acts, linked together by the categories
of personality, giving us values and ideals, har-
mony and unity and immortality. But we have,
as one of the duties of life, the search for the
truth of science which transforms reality in
order to construct an impersonal system, and

282 PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

gives us causal explanation and order. If we
force the system of science upon the real life,
claiming that our life is really a psychophysical
phenomenon, we are under the illusion of psy-
chologism. If, on the other hand, we force the
views of the real life, the personal categories,
upon the scientific psychophysical phenomena,
we are under the illusion of mysticism. The
result in both cases is the same. We lose the
truth of life and the truth of science. The real
world loses its values, and the scientific world
loses its order; they flow together in a new
world controlled by inanity and trickery, unwor-
thy of our scientific interests and unfit for our
ethical ideals.

INDEX

INDEX

ABNORMAL mental life, 107, 119,

134.

Action theory, 93-99.
Esthetic creation, 154-157.
^Esthetic enjoyment, 158-162.
^Esthetic prescriptions, 163-169.
Analysis, 44.

Apperception theory, 88-92.
Appreciation, 24.
Art, 145-178, 202-204.
Association theory, 88.
Atoms, 20, 265.
Axioms, 57.

Beauty, 174, 201.
Biography, 216.
Biology, 72.
Body, 62.
Brain, 35-99.

Causality, 218-222.
Causal laws, 8, 71, 263.
Central organ, 74.
Centrifugal impulses, 92.
Child psychology, 106-121,
Christian science, 246, 272.
Civilization, 77, 217.
Communication, 44-49.
Consciousness, 4, 46, 84.
Conservation of energy, 71.

Darwinism, 74-78.

Description, 44-53, 191-194.

Development, 73-81.

Division of labor, 77.

Double consciousness, 249-252.

Drawing teachers, 147, 163-169,

177.
Duty, 172-178, 199, 227.

Education, 100-144, 163-169.

Educational theories, 135-143,

166, 167.

Elements, 51, 269.
Emotion, 51.

Emotional thinking, 263-282.
Ethical action, 79.
Ethical laws, 11.
Existence, 24, 28, 196.
Existential judgment, 188-191.
Expectation, 29.

Experimental aesthetics, 157-162.
Experimental psychology, 123-

125, 162.
Explanation, 53-67, 191-194.

Freedom, 7, 221.

Gang-lion cells, 83.
God, 28.

History, 9, 16, 26, 179-228.
Hypnotism, 239-249.

Ideals, 17, 268.

Ideas, 50.

Ideographic sciences, 185.

Immortality, 90, 278.

Inhibition, 95.

Innervation feelings, 84, 95.

Instruction in psychology, 103-

105.
Intensity, 85.

Judgment, 51.

Laboratory experiments, 158-162.
Laws, 8, 56, 185-191, 214.
Life, 23.
Logical thinking, 22.

Materialism, 13, 20.

286

INDEX

Metaphysics, 28, 200.
Methods of teaching, 129.
Mind cure, 246, 272.
Motor centres, 92.
Muscle reading, 236.
Muscle sensations, 97.
Mysticism, 229-282.

Naturalism, 1-4, 181.
Natural sciences, 187-191.
Necessity, 57.
Nomothetic sciences, 185.
Normative sciences, 27, 172-178,
181, 225-228.

Objects, 24, 171, 206.
Over-individual will acts, 27, 172-

178.
Overman, 77.

Paidology, 108-111.
Personality, 4-9, 130, 131, 198,

209-217.

Philosophy of history, 215.
Physical objects, 30, 39.
Physiological psychology, 35-99,

125-127.
Poetry, 148-151.
Primitivistic art, 168.
Psycho-educational laboratories,

141.

Psychological objects, 31, 267.
Psychologism, 20.
Psychophysical parallelism, 42, 64.

Quality, 85.
Quantity, 58.

Bational psychology, 133.
Reactions, 75.

Reality, 22-31, 198-200, 265.
Responsibility, 8.

Self-observation, 37, 45, 124.
Sensations, 31, 51, 85, 98.
Skepticism, 17, 227.
Social psychology, 26, 154, 155.
Soul, 72.
Space, 54, 270.
Spiritualism, 278-281.
Structure of the brain, 81-96.
Subjects, 24.
Substitution, 32, 53.
Suggestion, 239-249.
Symmetry, 160, 161.

Teachers, 116, 120, 129, 147, 163-

169.
Teleological connection, 59, 211,

224.

Telepathy, 236, 243, 275-278.
Therapeutical influences, 244-249,

272,273.

Time, 14, 270, 279.
Tools, 77.
Transformation of reality, 22, 39,

98.

Transmission theory, 90.
Truth, 17, 98.

Vividness, 86-98.
Volition, 51.

Will, 23-28, 30, 172-174, 208-217.

DATE DUB

fffr-SG 1007

JH^r^^r

JUN 2 1983

3 5132 00270 8139

University of the Pacific Library

Muneterberg, Hugo
Psychology & life

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