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 PSYCHOLOGY

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PSYCHOLOGY

In Germany the purely empirical tendency which had reduced psychology in England to a mere positi- vistic science of mental facts did not meet with quite the same success. Metaphysics and philosophy proper never fell there into the degradation which they experienced in England in the beginning of the nine- teenth century. And although the old conception of a philosophical science of the nature and attributes of the soul was rejected by Kant, and abandoned in the systems of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, yet mere Phenomenalism was never completely triumphant in Germany. Herbart, whilst denying the reality of faculties, postulates a simple soul as the underlying subject of the presentations or ideas which form our conscious life. Hermann Lotze, laying similar stress on the importance of scientific observation of our mental states, insists even more strongly that our introspective experience correctly interpreted affords abundant metaphysical justification for the doctrine of an immaterial soul. Meanwhile the earlier at- tempts of Herbart to express mental activities in mathematical formulae led to a more successful line of experimental research in the hands of Weber, Fechner, Wundt, and others. The aim of this school is to attain the possible quantitative measurement of conscious states. As this is ordinarily not directly possible, much industry and ingenuity have been de- voted to measuring quantitatively, by the aid of skil- fully devised instruments, the immediate physical antecedents and effects of sundry mental activities, by which it is hoped to secure accurate quantitative descriptions of the mental states themselves. Psy- chological laboratories devoted to research of this kind have been set up in several countries, especially in Germany and America. One of the most successful so far is that at the Catholic University of Louvain, and another has lately been established at that of Washington. In Great Britain, however, the special home of empirical psychology since Locke, the new movement in favour of experimental psychology has not, at all events down to the present time, met with much success. The advance of physiological science, and especially of that of the brain and nervous system, has also reacted on psychology, stimulating closer inquiry into the relations between mental and bodily processes. It cannot, however, be maintained that the progress of physiological knowledge, considerable though it is, has brought us appreciably nearer to the solution of the great problem, how body arid mind act on each other. The study of nervous pathology, of mental disease and of abnormal mental states, such as those of hypnotism and double-consciousness, has also opened up new fields of psychological research, constantly widening with the last thirty years.

Scope of Psychology. — As we have already observed, recent writers commonly confine the term psychology to the science of the phenomena of the mind. Thus William James, probably the psychologist of widest influence during the past twenty years, defines psy- chology as "The Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions". ("Principles", I, 1). Wundt's definition is: "the science which in- vestigates the whole content of Experience in its relations to the Subject". ("Outlines", 3rd ed., 3). Other writers describe it as, "the science of the facts apprehended by our internal sense", or again, "the science of our states of consciousness, their laws of succession and concomitancy". The common fea- ture of all these definitions is the limitation of the scope of psychology to the phenomena of the mind directly observable by introspection. In this view it is a purely positivist science from which all philo- sophical problems are to be excluded, as rigorously as from chemistry or geology. It is, in fact, la psycho- logic sans dme. If such questions as the nature, origin, or destiny of the soul are to be discussed at all, it must be, according to these writers, not in psychol-

ogy, but in some branch of speculation to be styled the metaphysics or ontology of the human mind, and to be completely isolated from science.

In direct contrast with this view is that ordinarily adopted by Catholic writers hitherto. By them, psychology has usually been conceived as one of the most important branches of philosophy. In their view it may be best described as the philosophical science, which investigates the nature, attributes, and activities of the soul or mind of man. By soul, or mind, is understood the ultimate jjrinciple within me by which I think, feel, will, and liy which my body is animated. Whilst the soul ami tliu mind are con- ceived as fundamentally one, the kider ti-rni is usually employed to designate the animating ])riiiciple viewed as subject of my conscious or mental operations; the former denotes it as the root of all vital activities. By terming their branch of knowledge a philosophical science, it is implied that psychology ought to include not only a doctrine of the laws of succession and concomitance of our conscious states, but an inquiry into their ultimate cause. Any adequate study of the human mind, it is contended, naturally presents itself in two stages, empirical or phenomenal psychology, and rational or metaphysical psychology. Though conveniently separated for didactic treat- ment the two are organically connected. Our meta- physical conclusions as to the nature of the soul must rest on the evidence supplied by our experience of the character of its activities. On the other hand, any effort at thorough treatment of our mental operations, and especially any attempt at explana- tion of the higher forms or products of consciousness, it is urged, is quite impossible without the adoption of some metaphysical theory as to the nature of the underlying subject or agents of these states. Pro- fessor Dewey has justly observed: "The philosophic implications embedded in the very heart of psychol- ogy are not got rid of when they are kept out of sight. Some opinion regarding the nature of the mind and its relations to reality will show itself on almost every page, and the fact that this opinion is introduced without the conscious intention of the writer, may serve to confuse both the author and his reader" ("Psychology", IV). Ladd, and others also, recognize the evil of "clandestine" metaphysics when smuggled into what claims to be purely "scientific" non-philosophical treatments of psychology.

Psychology is not in the same position as the physical sciences here. Whilst investigating a ques- tion in geology, chemistry, or mechanics, we may, at least temporarily, prescind from our metaphysical creed, but not so — judging from the past history — when giving our psychological accounts and ex- planations of mental products, such as universal concepts, the notions of moral obligation, respon- sibility, personal identity, time, or the perception of an external material world, or the simple judg- ment, two and two must make four. The view, there- fore, of those philosophers who maintain that the in- trinsic connexions between many of the questions of empirical and rational psychology are so indissoluble that they cannot be divorced, seems to have solid justification. Of course we can call the study of the phenomena of the mind, " Psychology", and that of its inner nature, the "Philosophy of the Mind"; and we may treat each in a separate volume. That is merely a matter of terminology and convenience. But the important point is that in the explanatory treatment of the higher intellectual and rational processes, it will practically be impossible for the psychologist to preserve a philosophically neutral attitude. A truly scientific psychology, therefore, should comprise: (1) a thorough investigation by introspective obser- vati(m and analysis of our various mental activities — cognitive and appetitive, sensuous and rational — seeking to resolve all products of the mind back