Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/262

244 our experience goes, the physical factors are indissolubly bound. Even the assumption of psychical occurrences is, therefore, an abstraction, in which we disregard the accompanying physical occurrences. To be sure, the assumption of purely physical occurrences is a similar abstraction, made easy for us by the limitations of sense perception. In our own selves, however, this fictitious antithesis of the physical and the psychical meets in a reality which is wholly neither. In man physical and psychical occurrences shade off into each other in ways which defy abrupt separation. The suspicion is, therefore, well grounded that neither a purely physical nor a purely psychical world has anywhere a real existence.

It remains, then, to discover whether there are qualities inherent in some parts of observable experience which make them distinguishable, though not distinctly separate, from the so-called natural phenomena. It is evident, from the foregoing that discrimination from the physical is not an affair of direct perception, through the use of one set of perceptive organs for the one kind of object, and of another set of perceptive organs for the other kind of object. That was the fiction behind the alleged antithesis of "subjective and objective perception." The distinction is reached rather by reflection upon the content of experience. Clear realization of the logical elements of this reflection may arise very late. Hence, science instinctively presses on in advance of consciously organized method, and, in a measure, anticipates results which must be verified and justified later. It is to be further said that we have no right to expect discovery of an exact balance of contrasted traits between the physical facts on the one hand, and psychical facts on the other; i. e., we are not to expect that physical facts will possess a certain number of traits not found in the psychical, and psychical facts a corresponding number of traits not found in the physical. It will be enough if we find, on one side, traits which do not appear on the other. This is the actual situation. Moreover, it is the situation that should be expected, for the very reason that the psychical world is not in external antithesis with the physical world, but the psychical is everywhere a something added to the physical, and we cannot think it sundered from the physical.

Here, then, appears the best division line between the realms of the physical and of the psychical. In fact, there are three marks which we always refer to the psychical working in the physical. These three traits always work together. The one which is foremost in a given case joins presently with the others. The three traits are (a) valuation, (b) design, (c) volition.

(a) The element of valuation is the most primary mark of the psychical in contrast with the physical. Natural science deliberately ignores valuations. Wherever they emerge in connection with natural science they are extraneous and gratuitous; phenomena regarded as phenomena are neither good nor bad, neither beautiful nor ugly. Even their utility, outside of their own process, is