Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/97

Rh PSYCHOLOGY 85 ally when these are over or have ceased to be all-engrossing. Now in such cases it will be found that some effect of the preceding state of objective absorption persists, like wounds received in battle un- noticed till the fight is over, such, e.g., as the weariness of muscular exertion or of long concentration of attention ; some pleasurable or painful after- sensation passively experienced, or an emotional wave subsiding but not yet spent ; "the jar of interrupted expectation," or the relief of sudden attainment after arduous striving, making prominent the contrast of contentment and want in that particular ; or, finally, the quiet retrospect and mental rumination in which we note what time has wrought upon us and either regret or approve what we were and did. All such presentations are of the class out of which, as we have seen, the presentation of self is built up, and so form in each case the concrete bond connecting the generic image of self with its object. 1 In this way and in this respect each is a concrete instance of what we call a state, act, affection, &c., and the judgments in which such relations to the standing presentation of self are recognized are the original and the type of all real pre- dications (comp. p. 81). The opportunities for reflexion are at first few, the materials being as it were thrust upon attention, and the resulting " percepts " are but vague. By the time, however, that a clear conception of self has been attained the exigencies of life make it a frequent object of contemplation, and as the abstract of a series of instances of such definite self-consciousness we reach the purely formal notion of a subject or pure ego. For empirical psychology this notion is ultimate ; its speculative treatment falls altogether usually under the heading "rational psychology" to metaphysics. The growth of intellection and self-consciousness reacts power- fully upon the emotional and active side of mind. To describe the various sources of feeling and of desire that thus arise festhetic, social and religious sentiments, pride, ambition, selfishness, sym- pathy, &c. is beyond the scope of systematic psychology and certainly quite beyond the limits of an article like the present. 2 But at least a general resume of the characteristics of activity on this highest or rational level is indispensable. If we are to gain any oversight in a matter of such complexity it is of the first im- portance to keep steadily in view, as a fundamental principle, that as the causes of feeling become more complex, internal, and repre- sentative the consequent actions change in like manner. We have noted this connexion already in the case of the emergence of desires, and seen that desire in prompting to the search for means to its end is the primum movcns of intellection (pp. 73-75). But intellect does much more than devise and contrive in unquestioning sub- servience to the impulse of the moment, like some demon of Eastern fable ; even the brutes, whose cunning is on the whole of this sort, are not without traces of self-control. As motives conflict and the evils of hasty action recur to mind, deliberation succeeds to mere invention and design. In moments of leisure, the more imperious cravings being stilled, besides the rehearsal of failures or successes in the past, come longer and longer flights of imagination into the future. Both furnish material for intellectual rumination, and so we have at length (1) conceptions of general and distant ends, as wealth, power, knowledge, and self-consciousness having arisen the conception also of the happiness or perfection of self, and (2) maxims or practical generalizations as to the best means to these ends. Instead of actions determined by the vis a tergo of blind passion we have conduct shaped by what is literally prudence or foresight, the pursuit of ends that are not esteemed desirable till they are judged to be good. The good, it is truly urged, is not to be identified with the pleasant, for the one implies a standard and a judgment and the other nothing but a bare fact of feeling ; thus the good is often not pleasant and the pleasant not good ; in talk- ing of the good, in short, we are passing out of the region of nature into that of character. It is so, and yet this progress is itself so far natural as to admit of psychological explication. As already urged (p. 72), the causes of feeling change as the constituents of con- sciousness change and depend more upon the form of that conscious- ness as that increases in complexity. When we can deliberately range to and fro in time and circumstances, the good that is not directly pleasant may indeed be preferred to what is only pleasant while attention is confined to the seen and sensible ; but then the choice of such good is itself pleasant, pleasanter than its rejection would have been. Freedom of will in the sense of absolute arbi- trariness or "causeless volition," then, is at least without support from experience. The immediate affirmation of self-consciousness 1 They have thus a certain analogy to the presentative element in external perception, the re-presentative elements being furnished by the rest of the generic image of self. But, as this generic image is combined with and prim- arily sustained by a continuous stream of organic sensations, the analogy is not very exact. 2 The psychology of a century or so ago, like the biology of the same period, was largely of the "natural history" type and was much occupied with such descriptions ; writers like Dugald Stewart, Brown, and Abercrotnbie, e.g., draw freely from biography (and even from fiction) illustrations of the popularly received mental faculties and affections. A very complete and competent handling of the various emotions and springs of action will be found in Bain, The Emotions and the Will; Nahlowsky, Das Gefiihlsleben, 2d ed., 1884, is also good. that in the moment of action we are free must be admitted indeed, but it does not prove what it is supposed to prove the existence of a liberum arbitrium indifferentix but only that the relation of the end approved to the empirical self as then presented was the determining motive. This freedom of this empirical self is in all cases a relative freedom ; hence at a later time we often come to see that in some past act of choice we were not our true selves, not really free. Or perhaps we hold that we were free and could have acted otherwise ; and this also is true if we suppose the place of the purely formal and abstract conception of self had been occupied by some other mood of that empirical self which is con- tinuously, but at no one moment completely, presented. It must, however, be admitted that psychological analysis in such cases is not only actually incomplete but in one respect must necessarily always remain so ; and that for the simple reason that all we discern by reflexion must ever be less than all we are. That empirical self that the subject sees and even fashions is after all only its object and workmanship, not itself. If this be so, the indeterminist posi- tion, that particular acts are not fully determined by aught in con- sciousness, can neither be certainly established nor finally overthrown on scientific grounds ; but the presumption is against it. In another sense, however, it may be allowed that freedom is possible, if not actual, viz. , as synonymous with self-rule or autonomy. Freedom applies not to the ultimate source of an activity but to execution ; that man is free "externally" who can do what he pleases, and when we talk of internal freedom the same meaning holds. 3 BIBLIOGRAPHY. A. Historical. There are few good works on the history of psychology ; the only one in English (R. Blakey, History of the Philosophy of Mind from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, London, 1848) is said to be worthless. F. A. Carus's Geschichte der Psychologie (Leipsic, 1808) is at least useful for refer- ence. A work bearing the same title by H. Siebeck, of which only the first part has yet appeared (consisting of two divisions (i. ) Die Psychologie von Aristoteles, (ii.) Die Psychologie von Aristoteles bis zu Thomas von Aquino, Gotha, 1880 and 1884) is thoroughly and carefully done. Die Philosophie in ihrer Geschichte (I. Psychologie}, by the late Professor Harms (Berlin, 1878), is also good. Ribot's La Psychologie Anglaise contemporaine (2d ed., Paris, 1875) and La Psychologie Allemande contemporaine (Paris, 1879) are lucid and concise in style, though the latter work in places is superficial and inaccurate. B. Positive. The most useful and complete work as an intro- duction, and for the English reader, is Mr Sully's well-arranged and well-written Outlines of Psychology (2d ed., London, 1885). Of more advanced text-books the late Professor Volkmann's Lehr- buch der Psychologie (2 vols., 3d ed., Kbthen, 1885, edited by Cornelius) is a monument worthy the lifelong labours it entailed. Written in the main from a Herbartian standpoint, it is still the work of one who not only had read and thought over all that was worth reading by psychologists of every school but was unusually gifted with the qualities that make a good investigator and a good expositor. The importance of the Herbartian psychology to English students has been too long overlooked ; while it has much in common with the English preference for empirical methods, it is in aim, if not in attainment, greatly in advance of English writers in exactness and system. Other excellent works of the same school are M. W. H. Drobisch's Empirische Psychologie (Leipsic, 1842), T. Waitz's Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft (Bruns- wick, 1849), and Steinthal's Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft (Berlin, 1871). To the honoured name of Lotze belongs a distinguished place in any enumeration of recent produc- tions in philosophy ; his Medicinische Psychologie (Gbttingen, 1852) is still valuable ; but it is out of print and scarce. A large part of his Mikrokosmos (3 vols., 3d ed., 1876-80 ; translated into English, 2 vols., 1885) and one book of his Metaphysik (2d ed., 1884 ; also translated into English) are, however, devoted to psycho- logy. The close connexion between the study of mind and the study of the organism has been more and more recognized as the present century has advanced, and the doctrine of evolution in particular has been as fruitful in this study as in other sciences that deal with life. In this respect Mr Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology (2 vols., 2d ed., 1870) and Data of Ethics (1879) occupy a foremost place. Dr Bain's standard volumes, The Senses and the Intellect (3d ed., 1873) and The Emotions and the Will (3d ed., 1875), contain a good deal of " physiological psychology," but no adequate recognition of the importance of the modern theory of development ; still, with the exception of Locke, perhaps no English writer has made equally important contributions to the science of mind. It is very questionable whether the time has yet come for a systematic treatment of the connexions of mind and body. Wundt's Physio- logische Psychologie (2 vols., 2d ed., 1880) is rather a physiology added to a psychology than an attempt at such a systematic treat- ment. It is, however, a thoroughly able work by one who is both a good psychologist and a good physiologist. (J. W*.) PSYCHOPHYSICS. See WEBER'S LAW. 3 See ETHICS, to which these questions more fitly belong.