Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/367

 IT. ASSOCIATION AND THOUGHT. By F. H. BEADLEY. THE intention of this paper is to show in outline how Thought comes to exist. Its method, I trust, is strictly psychological. It has to do solely with psychical occurrences and their laws. The facts immediately experienced within a single organism or soul, 1 and those facts regarded merely as events which happen, make the object of psychology. 2 1 Not subject, because at first there is no proper subject, nor Ego for the further reason that in abnormal states we may have more than one Ego, or none at all. If we do not define by the organism, as for some reasons is undesirable (I do not discuss this), we must use the word ' soul ' or ' mind '. In psychology I should define the soul as " a totality of immediate experi- ence, possessed of a certain temporal continuity of existence, and again of a certain identity in character ". " Totality " is used to exclude partial states. " Experience " is not definable : it can only be indicated. " Im- mediate " negatives and excludes phenomena so far as their content is used beyond their existence : truth, e.g., as truth is not merely psychical. The amount of continuity and ideal identity required to make a single soul is matter of opinion, and mainly, I should say, of arbitrary opinion. The above definition is of course open to metaphysical objections, as are the conceptions which must be used in all empirical science. The objections are therefore irrelevant. It would be as idle to urge that the soul (as above) is not a real thing, as to say the organism is not one real thing because its matter has changed. At any given time the soul is its phenomenal contents plus that past which is taken to belong to it. 2 On the object of Psychology see an article by the Editor, MIND No. 29. Mr. Ward, MIND No. 45, pp. 46-67, in objecting to the above position, has invited me to define a psychical fact or event. A metaphysical definition I of course decline to give in an empirical science (Principles of Logic, pp. 315-18). A definition in psychology is for me a working definition. It is not expected to have more truth than is required for practice in its science; and if when pressed beyond it contradict itself, that is quite immaterial. With this understanding I will state what I mean by a psychical event, first giving an incomplete definition and then correcting it. A psychical fact must (1) be immediately experienced (see above). (2) It must have duration : what does not exist through a succession of moments is not a fact. (3) It must have quality : there must be sense in asking, Of what sort 1 quality being here taken to include the aspect of pleasure and pain, though usually it is convenient to separate quality from 'tone'. (4) A fact has intensity. (5) In reply to the possible objection that dura- tion has not duration, &c., we must say, Any one of the above aspects is a fact, so far as it is a mere aspect of that which has all the rest. So far, I hope, the definition is not very obscure. But, further, (6) it is necessary to include relations, even where'no one would say that they are immediately experienced. Is the reappearance of some traits of childhood in old age not a psychical fact ? But are these relations of succession and identity imme-