Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/570

 554 THE A M ERIC A N JO URN A L OF SO CIOL OGY

theory, the " previous question " is put in asking how this dualism of the physical and the psychical, which goes to pieces so readily under criticism, ever came about, and what is the significance of its con- ceptions. The finding is that this dualism does not originate in the individual's perceptual experience of an "external world," but that it is of essentially social origin. "The researches of anthropologists warrant us in assuming that when human intercourse begins there is no dualism." ' Dualism comes about in this wise: When L, M, and N look at one object, e. g., the sun, each has his own individual object. "How do they come to know that the actual object of each is the same individual object for all?" The answer is through some common reaction. All point or reach or in some manner react in the same way. This common reaction is at the same time inter-communication, and advances from gesture through exclamation to systematic language. Through this common reaction and inter-communication it is found that there is a common or " transsubjective " object independent of L, M, and N severally. Here, according to Mr. Ward, occurs the first step leading to dualism. Finding the transsubjective object independent of L, M, and N severally, it is concluded that it is independent of them collectively. To this fallacy is added another, which the author calls the fallacy of " introjection," and which occurs as follows:

Of my fellow common thought and language lead me to assume, not merely that his experience is distinct from mine, but that it is in him in the form of sensations, perceptions, and other internal states Thus, while my envi- ronment is an external world for me, his experience is for me an internal world in him. And smce I apply this conception to all my fellows and it is applied by all my fellow-men to me, I naturally apply it also to myself. Thus, instead of construing others' experience exactly and precisely on the lines of our own — the duality of subject and object — we are induced to misconstrue our own experience on the lines of a false but highly plausible assumption as to others' experience, which actually contradicts our own. With this contradiction and the fallacy of naive realism just referred to dualism is essentially complete.'

Coming to the more distinctively constructive part of the lectures, Mr. Ward finds that the fundamental characteristic of experience is its subject-object form. This character is frankly accepted as given.

If this duality in unity of subject and object be indeed the fundamental fact of experience present alike in cognition, in feeling, and in volition, then,

•Vol. 11, p. 165. ' Vol. II, p. 172.