Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/399

 G. F. STOUT, Analytic Psychology. 383 exclusive object of any one observer's experience. He conceives such fact as fact that can be observed in common by many. And the laws of such facts are conceived as laws precisely in so far as they are conceived as objects of a possible social agreement, valid for all men. But if we thus define natural law in general, then we must carry over this concept into psychology. What an observer can, as psychologist, hope to say about the natural laws of mind is, substantially, that our common experience of human nature, as observed within and as also expressed without, in the words, gestures, deeds, conduct and rational life of men, proves, upon the basis of the general postulates of science, that certain causal relations exist. But the objects of such a common and social experience of human nature are never mental states alone, observed by introspection. For the introspective observer is, as such, watching what, by hypothesis, nobody else can ever observe, namely, his own inner states. The objects of our general social knowledge of the ways of human nature are always conceived as psycho-physical processes, that is as mental phenomena ex- pressed in physically observable words, deeds, gestures, blushes, laughter, tears, and other such processes. Only of these psycho- physical wholes can causal or " dynamical " relations be psycho- logically predicated. Hence, as I should maintain, introspection, as such, has no right to discover any " dynamical " connexions not because introspection is vain, nor yet because the " associa- tionists " are right, but because the causal concept forbids the purely introspective, that is the essentially immediate and lonely discovery of any causal relations. For causation "marries uni- versals," and universals of a peculiar type, namely, universals conceived as the common objects of the experience of many. It is this general logical scruple that determines my own inability to follow Mr. Stout's dynamical explanations of conscious processes, or to believe in "mental activity" as anything essenti- ally causal. On the other hand, I can follow the discussions of the so-called "active " processes with a full sense that the author is everywhere analysing the inner and geruuine significance of conscious events in a profoundly important way. So much for purely general comments. They may serve to determine the plan of the following observations, which will be devoted first to the dynamic, and secondly to the more strictly analytic aspect of our author's psychology. That we thus begin with the aspect which will provoke our principal dissent, may serve to enable us to do all the more justice to the other aspect, when we express later our agreement. II. If we view psychology as a science that deals with the " laws of mind," precisely as a physical science deals with the laws of