Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/288

276

1. Problems. In addition to the main problem of Psychology (the investigation of the general uniformities of the mental life) two others now begin to engage attention, which until recently, have been left almost wholly to other disciplines.

The Question of Differences (differentielle Fragestellung) deals with the variations in the particular mental functions. Each may be studied with reference to the degree of its general variability; its qualitative differentiation into "Types," its quantitative differentiation into grades, its genetic differentiation into developmental stages, its relative variations in comparison with other functions, i. e., its correlation.

The Question of Individuality (individuelle Fragestellung) has to do with the knowledge of a single individual personality in and for itself, whether in relation to its total psychical makeup or in relation to a particular aspect, as character, intelligence, etc.

The study of individuality has, up to the present, been a matter either of the historical sciences (biography) or of certain practical disciplines (lists of individualities in schools, alienists' tests of intelligence, characterological indications of the graphologists and the like). There is needed, however, both from a philosophical and from an empirico-methodological point of view, a general scientific foundation for all these undertakings.

2. The Philosophical Basis of the Concept of Individuality can here be merely indicated, for details confer W. Stern's Person und Sache, System der philosophischen Weltanschauung, I, and his Psychologic der Individualität, to appear in 1910. It is impossible to take an individuality merely as an aggregate of contents of consciousness; for, on the one hand, that which appears in consciousness is by no means identical with the real and essential kernel of individuality; and on the other, the multiplicity of the psychical content is combined into a single organic whole which can be explained only by a unitary purposeful principle of activity (aus einem einheitlichen zielstrebigen Ta ttgkeitsprinzip). Every individuality is therefore a "person" in the sense of the following definition: "A person is such an existence as, in spite of the multiplicity of its parts, presents a real unity, having a character and a value of its own; and as such exhibits, in spite of a multiplicity of subordinate functions, a unitary and purposeful self-activity." (Person ist ein solches Existierendes, das trotz der Vielheit der Teile eine reale eigenartige, eigenwertige Einheit darsiellt, und als solche trotz der Vielheit der Teilfunctionen eine einheitliche, zielstrebige, Selbsttatigkeit vollzieht.)