Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/402

 385 CRITICAL NOTICES : trospection " is also subject to the defect that it can bring to mind but a few cases at a time. And both of them seem to exclude the application of rigid inductive methods. We may then, from the start, be sceptical as to whether the psychologist can ever discover, in terms of mere introspection, any general laws whatever. The confidence that our author, or that any other psychologist, has in his power to state any of the results of his introspection, as general laws, verifiable even for his own mind, actually depends upon his common-sense assurance that what he says is so far in agreement with the records and reports and expressions, or with the behaviour of other people, that, even if his supposed law has never been formally stated before, it is such as ought to be viewed as a fair account of the workings of our common human nature. Were he left to his own observation and memory, he could recall too few facts to warrant a law. Now this fact, namely, that introspection, viewed apart from the interpretation of the reports and the conduct of other people, can very seldom, if ever, be relied upon to present to the individual psychologist any uniformities worthy to be called laws of psycho- logy, or even laws of his own mind, is of such vast significance for the whole logic of "dynamic" psychology, and consequently for the very meaning of the term law as used in psychology, and for the whole interpretation of the nature of mental causation, that we may fairly bear in mind, as we consider the laws of mental life which our author believes himself to have discovered, the question whether he has anywhere overcome the natural limitations of introspection, or has discovered, by mere introspection, any genuine psychical law whatever. As a fact, I myself do not believe that he has done so, or that any psychologist can do so. My own belief is that mere introspection can discover no psychical law, not even a law of the observer's own mind. It can only analyse current conscious states. And, for that very reason, mere introspection can throw no light upon the true nature of psychical causation. However, this is plainly not our author's view, and, as pointed out above, the chapters where there is most prospect of finding him successful in this respect, that is of finding him able to discover by direct introspection true psychical laws, or true psychical causation, are the chapters on mental activity and atten- tion ; and to these chapters we may, therefore, briefly appeal. On page 144 of volume i. we begin a general discussion of the meaning of the term Activity. The popular use of " Activity " often makes it a mere synonym of Causality in general. But activity means for our author, as for Mr. Bradley, something more definite, namely (p. 145), "self-caused change," or "self-determin- ing process ". The thesis that in consciousness there is activity discoverable is (p. 147) coincident with the doctrine that con- scious life " has a current of its own," is "always in some degree self-sustaining," and " tends by its intrinsic nature in a certain direction or towards a certain end". In consequence, the active ,