Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/408

 394 GUSTAV SPILLER : monstrated and never otherwise ? Is it not rather that such ob- servation as we have spoken of paves the way for mathematical demonstrations ? We have examined the question of recollected visual outlines. The problem of the remembering of colours is disposed of in the same manner. Manifestly, when I decide the query as to the colour of a book by examining the image of it, and when I recall deliberately innumerable coloured objects which are familiar to me, and classify them as regards colour observed in the image, there can be no justifiable doubt that one person at least, myself, sometimes recalls colours. Not only outlines, then, but objects as coloured may be recollected. Moreover, the inquiry we made as to visual images, may be extended to images referring to the other senses. In this way we may decide as to recollecting olfactory, tactile, taste, and auditory sensations. We may go farther and study percepts and their composition and origin on the one hand, and, on the other, try to find in the sensations those factors which differentiate the sensations. We may examine thus trains of thought, the nature of the memory, of habit, of the emotions and of the will, that is, the whole of the mind, and obtain by this method some point of view from which the total of mental processes seems built up of a few elements. He who is in a towering rage will find it impossible to examine his rage when it is at its height ; and he who is untrained and is not quite clear as to what he wishes to observe or who desires to observe events in their entirety, will despair of his task ; but a professional psychologist need neither be considered as an un- trained beginner nor need we think that everybody is always in a towering rage or desires to observe events in their concreteness. If as yet the psychologist is no more ambitious than his brother physiologist who troubles himself little about time measurements and about making an exact science of his subject, he will find that, relatively to physiology, for instance, the task of the scientific introspectionist is a light one. " Favourable conditions " for obser- vation are as plentiful in psychology as in most other sciences. Of course if " conscious contents are at the opposite pole from permanent objects ; [if] they are processes, fleeting occurrences, in continual flux and change," all direct self -introspection is ruled out of the question, " and under no circumstances can it lay claim to accuracy ". Indeed, all verification of hypotheses and experi- ments is likewise impossible or unreliable, and " experimental " psychology becomes as futile as " subjective " psychology. No sane man could accuse Wundt of being ill-informed and no man who is himself impartial would denounce the great German psychologist as being governed by blind prejudice. Either, there- fore, our account of the steadiness of mental facts is incorrect, or else no one, of any recognised standing, has attempted to show that "pure self-observation " is possible and practicable. When