Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/257

 256 CEITICAL NOTICES : taken in connexion with the laws of Association and Comparison, the character of the more developed forms of mental life is expli- cable. Nothing can be further from his real view. The value of these elementary facts and processes is as nothing compared with the importance of certain other contributions, notice of which is only extended in connexion with the treatment of the more com- plex mental forms. Thus we gradually discover that, in Prof. Murray's view, recognition of Self is an elementary factor of mind, and that through its existence only can there be explained the transition from Sensation to Perception ; that Space- and Time- quality in the content apprehended by sense (Baumlichkeit and Zeitlii-liki'it, terms for which English equivalents are much needed) are likewise contributed to, not given in and by, the elementary facts and processes ; that " the act of intelligence, by which w r e are conscious of sensations, projects these into an objective sphere, transmuting them into qualities of objects, and thus form- ing out of them a world that is not ourselves " ; finally, that the thought of an "essential connexion, so that the one cannot appear without the other, is a new thought, wholly different from either or both of the terms in the sequence". In fact we learn that all the more important factors in mind have been excluded from the review of elementary data and processes, and that these elements, if to be retained as constituents arrived at by analysis and abstraction, are actualities in mind only as parts of processes much more complex than themselves. Such a result, it seems to me, is natural and inevitable, if one tries to force into the mould of a systematic psychology, materials, the character of which has been determined on quite other than psychological grounds. It is perhaps a concomitant effect of the same cause that Prof. Murray should have omitted so much that recent researches have shown to be of psychological importance : the nature and develop- ment of attention, the conditions of localisation, the recognition of the body and of its distinction from extra-organic things, the origin and development of the sense of individuality, the common elements involved in the series of processes designated simply Knowing, Feeling and Striving. If, however, one cannot recognise in Prof. Murray's book a method of treatment that is truly and successfully psychological, it by no means follows that his vork has not high merit as a general introduction to philosophy. Such merit it seems to me undoubtedly to possess. It is written in excellent style and with a genuinely philosophical spirit ; that it should not contain a thorough investigation of the notions and method peculiar to psychology is certainly not to the detriment of the purpose which it has in view. EOBEKT ADAMSON.