Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/620

 H. HOFFDING,. PSYCHOLOGIE IN UMRISSEN. 60? both of positive results, and, what is equally important, of issues demanding solution, to compel all future workers to follow a certain prescribed course. Dr. Hoffding has fully recognised this necessity, and he throws himself cordially into the work of co- ordinating and completing the labours of his immediate pre- decessors. Possibly some may find that now and again the desire to harmonise and systematise the results of the many detached lines of inquiry of which recent psychology consists has led to the appearance of an eclecticism, to the semblance of unity of principle rather than to its reality. Yet a measure of eclecticism seems unavoidable in the present stage of psycho- logical progress. And however this be, it is certain, as Dr. Hoffding very clearly sees, that the final unification of psycho- logical results is a work that will have to transcend the limits of the science and call in the co-operation of philosophy. The work may be said to fall into two main divisions a general and a special psychology. In the first three sections we have a discussion of the fundamental ideas of the science viz., its object and method, the relation of mind to body, and of the conscious to the unconscious. This general part occupies about a fourth of the volume. Then follows an account of the common three- fold division of psychological elements, and a detailed exposition of the successive manifestations of each in the customary order intellect (Erkenntniss), feeling and volition. Sensation, which is dealt with in its general features only, forms the first subsection under intellect, though its emotional side or Gefiihlston is carefully considered apart, under the head of feeling. It may be added that the phenomena of intellection and feeling are much more fully dealt with than those of volition. One misses, for example, an adequate recognition of the problems coming under the head of inhibition. The work concludes with a slight though instruc- tive account of individual character. The author's point of view is pretty clearly indicated at the outset. He claims, as against Lotze, the utmost liberty for psy- chology as empirical science from all metaphysical presumptions. Psychology has no need of any conception of soul, if by this is meant an absolute being or underlying substance. On the other hand, psychical phenomena must not be carelessly swamped in the sea of biological facts. A truly scientific conception of mind is as far removed from materialism as from spiritualism. Dr. Hoffding recognises to the full the services of biological science to psychology, and in his interesting section on mind and body shows how the psychologist is compelled to follow out the intimate connexions of the mental life with organic processes and with the activity of nature as a whole. But he sees at the same time that in its higher manifestations of conscious ex- perience it is something determined by its own forms and laws, and something to be investigated by its own method. The chief characteristics of this conscious life are said to be: (1) change and contrast as condition for the genesis of single elements;