Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/43

 A DEFENCE OP PHENOMENALISM IN PSYCHOLOGY. 29 (i.) It may be objected first that the soul really is one, and that on the view of phenomenalism it has no unity. To this I reply that it has all the unity which is wanted for our purpose. I do not indeed say that its continuity in time is un- broken, nor is there any need for me to say this ; and again the history of the soul as a whole is of course not immediately experienced by it. But the soul has certainly an identity in quality which appears in the series and the nature of which can be studied. 1 And besides qualitative identity it has relations of co-existence and sequence which phenomenalism takes as real, 2 and it has also laws of those relations. And with so much the soul certainly has a real history. The question of its ultimate real unity is not recognised by phenomenalism, but I cannot see that this prevents us from treating its history as one. (ii.) " But in the soul then at any one time there will be for phenomenalism nothing but what is experienced at that time." Not so, I reply, and this is a sheer mistake. For phenomenalism the soul is at any one time what is experi- enced at that time, but it is also more. For it is qualified also by the past which really belongs to it, and that past belongs to it not merely as what it has been but as what it now is. The soul in other words is the dispositions which it has acquired. 3 And if it is objected that with this we have gone beyond phenomenalism, I reply that once more the objection rests on a mistake. For the dispositions are simply statements about the happening of events within the phenomenal series assertions as to what will happen, or 1 The possibility of an entire defect in this I do not discuss. I do not. myself care what answer psychology gives in this case to the question of unity and identity. 2 Under this head of relations will fall any piece of psychical duration, beyond what is immediately experienced, that psychology may have occasion to consider. 3 If we recognise native psychical dispositions, a point on which I wish to say and to imply nothing, these again will qualify the soul. They will be something the real nature of which psychology does not discuss, but which it expresses as tendencies statements as to what will happen under certain conditions. It is better to understand that these are not to be taken to exist before there is a beginning of actual psychical fact. Anything before this will be not a psychical but a physical disposition. It is, I should say, not convenient to assume a soul there where there not only is (as we assume) nothing psychical now, but where that has not existed and may not be about to exist. The inconvenience is less in a case where we suppose a temporary but complete " suspension " of psychical life. But even in this case, if any one insists that we have no right in psychology, during such a suspension, to speak of an actual psychical dis- position, I cannot say he is wrong. At any rate, if we do this, we should not forget that we are making use of a certain licence.