Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/829

 PROLEGOMENA TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 809

process. Function, then, rather than organism or environment, is the thing to be considered in psychology. From this point of view all forms of psychical activity can be reduced to two types : coordination and adaptation. All the phenomena of psychical life group themselves about these two fundamental forms — are the outgrowth of them, and are functionally explained by their reference to them. Thus a coordination which has once been successfully established tends to persist, or becomes a habit. The necessity of adjustment, however, arising from some varia- tion in the organism or environment, causes the old coordination or habit to break up, and sensation results. Sensation, then, is the sign of the interruption of a habit, and represents the point at which an activity is reconstructed. The old coordination in breaking up, however, must yield the material for the new co5r- dination ; that is, it must be used as means for the construction of a new coordination. The processes of discrimination, atten- tion, and association come in to build up the new coordination. They are all processes which arise only through the transition from one coordination to another. The discriminative process, for example, represents the breakdown of the old coordination, and what we call association represents the building up of the new coordination. Attention represents the conflict of two or more activities involved in the building up of the new coordina- tion ; it is the attempt, on the part of the organism, to discover, select, the adequate stimulus for the construction of the new coordination. These illustrations will suffice for our purposes. In the same manner all psychical processes may be interpreted — as referring either to the coordination or to the transition from one coordination to another. The coordination is, there- fore, the fundamental and central fact of the psychical life. All other psychical facts are functional expressions of the coordina- tion, or of the relation of one coordination to another within the life-process. Thus the psychical life presents itself as a system of means and ends, whose unity finds expression in the general end of control over the means of existence, that is, over the conditions of survival. Summarizing, then, we may say that Professor Dewey's psychological point of view is that of a life-