Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/411

 G. F. STOUT, Analytic Psychology. 395 in so far as these series embody the fulfilment of aims, and the success of intentions all this, to my mind, is something which is wholly different from any causal explanation of mental processes. And just such a descriptive psychology of the processes whereby meanings and purposes get conscious evolution and inner expres- sion, constitutes that aspect of our author's work with which I find myself in harmony. His opponents are here the " associationists". To my mind the latter are just as wrong in their causal explanations as is the doctrine of mental activity when this doctrine appears as a causal theory. For the associationists, in the stricter sense, more or less completely ignore the psycho-physical aspect. But laying aside causation altogether, the associationists are wrong in their analysis of the teleological aspect of consciousness, and are wrong in fashions that our author very skilfully exposes. They are wrong in so far as they try to reduce the mental wholes which con- stitute meanings to mere sums or series of elements. They are wrong in so far as they try to reduce all mental values to varia- tions in the quality and intensity of mental images. Hence they have no theory adequate to describe what our author calls " ap- perceptive systems " ; and they are unable to define the nature of our consciousness of relationships. Our author meets them with great success by means of his theory of " noetic synthesis," and of the related conscious processes. For this theory he prepares the way in chapters iii. and iv. of book i., where he deals with "The Apprehension of Form," and with "Implicit," and "Schematic," "Apprehension". The " Form " of a mental whole or series of states is something that, as in the case of a melody, or any other typical whole of conscious states, is relatively independent of the particular constituents of the whole. The whole can be apprehended with very various degrees of clearness as to the plan of its constitution, and as to the precise relations which it involves. The whole cannot be analysed into any sum of elements or of relations. In consequence, the nature of any whole can be, to any degree, "implicitly" apprehended. A typical example (p. 79 </</.) is that of the meaning of a word, which can be apprehended apart from imagery, and (p. 86) "with- out discernment of the multiplicity it really comprehends". Thus it is in such cases, as if (p. 95) " the multiplicity were somehow wrapped up in the distinctionless unity and were struggling to unfold itself". If we dwell upon such a whole, it tends to get expressed in a more explicit apprehension of its parts, and (p. 96) in "so far as the implicit idea or perception of a whole determines the successive emergence of its parts in consciousness, we may apply to it the term of 'schematic apprehension ' ". Our author is not the first to take note of this aspect of con- sciousness ; but his development and application of his principles is peculiarly minute and consistent. The principal cases are considered in the second volume. " Noetic synthesis," in general,