Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/51

Rh PSYCHOLOGY 39 elements, and secondly, to ascertain and explain the laws of their combination and interaction. General Analysis of Mind ; its Ultimate Constituents. nsti- As to the first, there is in the main substantial agree- int ment : the elementary facts of mind cannot, it is held, be mind 3 ex P resse d in less than three propositions, I feel somehow, I know something, I do something. But here at once there arises an important question, viz., What are we to understand by the subject of these propositions? Nobody nowadays would understand it to imply that every psychi- cal fact must be ascertained or verified by personal intro- spection ; perhaps no modern writer ever did understand this ; at any rate to do so is to confound the personal with the psychological. We are no more confined to our own immediate observations here than elsewhere ; but the point is that, whether seeking to analyse one's own consciousness or to infer that of a lobster, whether discussing the asso- ciation of ideas or the expression of emotions, there is always an individual mind or self or subject in question. It is not enough to talk of feelings or volitions : what we mean is that some individual, man or worm, feels, wills, acts thus or thus. Obvious as this may seem, it has been frequently either forgotten or gainsaid. It has been for- gotten among details or through the assumption of a medley of faculties, each treated as an individual in turn, and among which the real individual was lost. Or it has been gainsaid, because to admit that all psychological facts per- tain to a psychological subject seemed to carry with it the admission that they pertained to a particular spiritual substance, which was simple, indestructible, and so forth ; and it was manifestly desirable to exclude such assump- tions from psychology, i.e., from a science which aims only at a scientific exposition of what can be known and verified bj'ect by observation. But, however much assailed or disowned, Eg- the conception of a mind or conscious subject is to be found implicitly or explicitly in all psychological writers whatever, not more in Berkeley, who accepts it as a fact, than in Hume, who accepts it as a fiction. This being so, we are far more likely to reach the truth eventually if we openly acknowledge this inexpugnable assumption, if such it prove, instead of resorting to all sorts of devious peri- phrases to hide it. Now wherever the word Subject, or its derivatives, occurs in psychology we might substitute the word Ego and analogous derivatives, did such exist. But Subject is almost always the preferable term ; its im- personal form is an advantage, and it readily recalls its modern correlative Object. Moreover, Ego has two senses, distinguished by Kant as pure and empirical, the latter of which is, of course, an object, while the former is subject always. By pure Ego or Subject it is proposed to denote the simple fact that everything mental is referred to a Self. This psychological conception of a self or subject, then, is after all by no means identical with the metaphysical conceptions of a soul or mind-atom, or of mind-stuff not atomic ; it may be kept as free from metaphysical implica- tions as the conception of the biological individual or organism with which it is so intimately connected, tempts The attempt, indeed, has frequently been made to resolve the ex- former into the latter, and so to find in mind only such an indivi- ide the duality as has an obvious counterpart in this individuality of the such procedure owes all its plausibility to the fact that it leaves out of sight the difference between the biological and the psycho- logical standpoints. All that the biologist means by a dog is " the sum of the phenomena which make up its corporeal existence." 1 And, inasmuch as its presentation to any one in particular is a point of no importance, the fact, of presentation at all may be very well dropped out of account. Let us now turn to mind : Why should we not take this word or "the word 'soul' simply as a name for the series of mental phenomena which make up an indi- 1 Professor Huxley, Hume (English Men of Letters series), p. 171. vidual mind ? " 2 Surely the moment we try distinctly to under- stand this question we realize that the cases are different. "Series of mental phenomena" for whom? For any passer-by such as might take stock of our biological dog ? No, obviously only for that individual mind itself ; yet that is supposed to be made up of, to be nothing different from, the series of phenomena. Are we, then, (1) quoting J. S. Mill's words, "to accept the paradox that something which ex hypothesi is but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series ? " 3 Or (2) shall we say that the several parts of the series are mutually phenomenal, much as A may look at B, who was just now looking at A ? Or (3) finally, shall we say that a large part of the so-called series, in fact every term but one, is phenomenal for the rest for that one ? As to the first alternative, paradox is too mild a word for it ; even contradiction will hardly suffice. It is as impossible to express "being aware of" by one term as it is to express an equation or any other relation by one term : what knows can no more be iden- tical with what is known than a weight with what it weighs. If a series of feelings is what is known or presented, then what knows, what it is presented to, cannot be that series of feelings, and this without regard to the point Mill mentions, viz., that the infinitely greater part of the series is either past or future. The question is not in the first instance one of time or substance at all, but simply turns upon the fact that knowledge or consciousness is unmeaning except as it implies something knowing or conscious of something. But it maybe replied : Granted that the formula for consciousness is something doing something, to put it generally ; still, if the two somethings are the same when I touch myself or when I see myself, why may not agent and patient be the same when the action is knowing or being aware of ; why may I not know myself in fact, do I not know myself? Certainly not ; agent and patient never are the same in the same act ; the conceptions of self-caused, self- moved, self-known, et id genus omne, either connote the incompre- hensible or are abbreviated expressions such, e.g., as touching oneself when one's right hand touched one's left. And so we come to the second alternative : As one hand washes the other, may not different members of the series of feelings be sub- ject and object in turn ? Compare, for example, the state of mind of a man succumbing to temptation (as he pictures himself enjoying the coveted good and impatiently repudiates scruples of conscience or dictates of prudence) with his state when, filled with remorse, he sides with conscience and condemns this "former self," the " better self" having meanwhile become supreme. Here the cluster of presentations and their associated sentiments and motives, which together play the role of self in the one field of consciousness, have only momentarily it is true, but still have for a time the place of not-self ; and under abnormal circumstances this partial alterna- tion may become complete alienation, as in what is called ' ' double consciousness." Or again, the development of self-consciousness might be loosely described as taking the subject or self of one stage as an object in the next, self being, e.g., first identified with the body and afterwards distinguished from it. But all this, however true, is beside the mark ; and it is really a very serious misnomer, though the vagueness of our psychological terminology seems to allow it to do, as e.g., Mr Spencer does represent the develop- ment of self-consciousness as a "differentiation of subject and object." It is, if anything, a differentiation of object and object, i.e., in plainer words, it is a differentiation among presentations a differentiation every step of which implies just that relation to a subject which it is supposed to supersede. There still remains an alternative, which, like the first, may be expressed in the words of J. S. Mill, viz., " the alternative of believ- ing that the Mind or Ego is something different from any series of feelings or possibilities of them." To admit this, of course, is to admit the necessity of distinguishing between Mind or Ego, mean- ing the unity or continuity of consciousness as a complex of pre- sentations, and Mind or Ego as the subject to which this complex is presented. In dealing with the body from the ordinary biological standpoint no such necessity arises. But, whereas there the indi- vidual organism is spoken of unequivocally, in psychology, on the other hand, the individual mind may mean either (i.) the series of feelings or ' ' mental phenomena " above referred to ; or (ii. ) the subject of these feelings for whom they are phenomena ; or (iii.) the subject of these feelings or phenomena + the series of feelings or phenomena themselves, the two being in that relation to each other in which alone the one is subject and the other a series of feelings, phenomena, or objects. It is in this last sense that Mind is used in empirical psychology, its exclusive use in the first sense being favoured only by those who shrink from the speculative associations connected with its exclusive use in the second. But psychology is not called upon to transcend the relation of subject to object or, as we may call it, the fact of presentation. On the other hand, as has been said, the attempt to ignore one term of the relation is hopeless ; and equally hopeless, even futile, is the 2 Professor Huxley, op. cit., p. 172. 3 Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, ch. xii. fin.
 * o. organism, i.e., what we may call an objective individuality. But