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 PSYCHOLOGY

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PSYCHOLOGY

chology, gradually grew up and received its final elaboration in the Middle Ages in the metaphysical theology of the Schoolmen. The Christian mystics were naturally led to consider the character of the soul's knowledge of God. But their treatment of psychological questions is generally vague and obscure, whilst their language indulges much in allegory and symbolism. Indeed, the greatest of the mystics were not sympathetic with the employment of Scholastic or scientific methods in the handling of mystic experi- ence. The great controversy between Realism and Nominalism from the early Middle Ages directed much attention to the theory of knowledge and the problem of the origin of ideas. However, although psychological observation was appealed to, the epis- temological discussions were largely metaphysical in character during this period. To Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas the popularization of the psychology of Aristotle throughout Europe during the thirteenth century was mainly due. In Questions Ixxv to xc of part I of the "Summa Theologica", St. Thomas gives a very fairly complete and systematic account of the leading topics connected with the soul. However, questions of biology, general metaphysics, and theol- ogy were constantly interwoven with psychology for many centuries afterwards. Indeed, the liberal use made of physiological evidence in psychological dis- cussions is a marked feature in the treatment of this branch of philosophy throughout the entire history of scholastic philosophy. But although there is plenty of proof of acute obser\'ation of mental activities, the usual appeal in discussion is rather to metaphysical analj'sis and deductive argument than to systematic introspective observation and induction, so character- istic of modern psychology. The treatise "De Anima" of Suarez is a verj- good example of scholastic psychology at the close of the Middle Ages. The treatise, containing six books, starts in book I with an inquiry into the essence of the soul. Recalling Aris- totle's definition of the soul as the form of the body, the author proceeds to examine the relations of the vegetative, sensitive, and rational soul. Next, in book II he treats of the faculties of the soul in general and their relation to the soul as an essence. In book III he investigates the nature and working of the cognitive faculties, and especially of the senses. In book IV he inquires into the character of the activity of the intellect. In book V he deals with faculties of appetency and free will. Book VI is devoted to a speculative consideration of the condition and mode of operation of the soul in a future life. In each question he begins with a summary of previous opinions and then puts forward his own solution. The order of treatment starting from the essence and passing thence to the faculties and their operations is characteristic of the scholastic treatises generally. The method is mainly deductive and the argument metaphysical, though in dealing with the senses there is constant appeal to recognized physiological authorities from Aristotle to Vesalius.

In psychology as well as in other branches of philos- ophy the influence of Descartes was considerable though indirect. His subjective starting-point, cogilo, ergo siim, his insistence on methodic doubt, his ad- vocacy of reflection on thought and close scrutiny of our fundamental ideas, all tended to encourage (he method of internal observation, whilst the mechanical explanation of the "Traite des Passions" favoured the advent of physiological psychology. It was prob- ably, however, .John Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding" (1690) which did most to foster the method of analytic introspection which constitutes the principal feature of modern psychological method. Notwithstanding the confused and inconsistent meta- physics and the many grave psychological blunders with which that work abouniLs, yet his frequent appeal to inner experience, his honest efforts to describe

mental processes, and the quantity of acute observa- tions scattered throughout the work, coming also at an age when the inductive method was rapidly rising in popularity, achieved a speedy and wide success for his book, and gave a marked empirical bent to all future English psychology'.

Psychological observation and analysis were still more skilfully used by Bishop Berkeley as a principle of explanation in his "Theory of Vision", and then employed by him to establish his psychological creed of Idealism. Finally, David Hume, the true founder of the Associationist school of psychology, still further increased the importance of the method of introspec- tive analysis by the daring sceptical conclusions he claimed to establish by its means. The subsequent British adherents of the Associationist school, Hart- ley, the two Mills, Bain, and Herbert Spencer, con- tinued this method and tradition along the same lines. There is constant direct appeal to inner experience combined with systematic effort to trace the genesis of the highest, most spiritual, and most complex mental conceptions back to elementary atomic states of sensuous consciousness. Universal ideas, necessary truths, the ideas of self, time, space, causality as well as the conviction of an external material world were all explained as the outcome of sensations and asso- ciation. The reality of any higher activities or fac- ulties essentially different from the lower sensuous powers was denied, and all the chief data formerly employed in establishing the simplicity, spirituality, and substantiality of the soul were rejected. Rational or metaphysical psychology was thus virtually ex- tinguished find erased from English philosophical literature during the nineteenth century. Even the more orthodox representatives of the Scotch school, Reid and Dugald Stewart, who avoided all meta- physical argument and endeavoured to controvert Hume with his own weapons of appeal exclusively to experience and observation, had only further con- firmed the tendency in the direction of a purely em- pirical psychology. The great need in English psy- chological literature throughout most of the nine- teenth century, on the side of those defending a spiritual doctrine of the human mind, was a systematic and thorough treatment of empirical psychology. Excellent pieces of work on particular questions were done by Martineau, W. G. Ward, and other writers, but nearly all the systematic treatises on psychology were produced by the disciples of the Sensationist or Materialistic schools. Yet, if philosophy is to be based on experience, then assuredly it is on the care- fully-scrutinized and well-established results of em- pirical psychology that any satisfactory rational metaphysical doctrine respecting the nature of the soul, its origin, and its destinj' must be built. It was in their faulty though often plausible analysis and interpretation of our states of consciousness that the greatest errors in philosophy and psychology of Bain, the two Mills, Spencer, and their disciples had their source; it is only by more careful introspective ob- servation and a more searching analysis of the same mental facts that these errors can be exposed and solid foundations laid for a true metaphysical psy- chology of the soul.

In France, Condillac, La Mettrie, Holbach, an<I Bonnet developed the Sensationalism of Locke's psychology into an increasingly crude Materialism. To oppose this .school later on, Roycr-Collard, Cousin, .louffroy, and Maine de Biran turned to the work of Reid and the "common sense" Scotch school, appro- priating their method and results in empirical psy- cliology. Some of these writers, moreover, sought to carry their reasoning beyond the mere inductions of em])irical psychology, in order to construct on this enlarged experience a genuine philosophy of the soul, as "principle" and subject of the states and activities immediately revealed to introspective observation,