Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/74

 PSYCHOLOGICAL PEINCIPLES. (ill.) 61 entirely distinct categories the one subjective faculty or function of Action-under-Eeeling or Consciousness on the one side, and a Field of Consciousness, consisting of Objects, Ideas or Presentations, on the other. The older psychologies, with their legion of faculties, were no doubt un- scientific, just as were the older physics with their legion of forces. But modern physicists have not abandoned the old conception of force altogether : they have only transformed it into the exacter conception of Energy. There is, however, a difference between psychology and physics that deserves notice, and to this we must turn for a moment. The most important generalisations in psychology as pro- bably everybody will allow are those included together as the Laws of Association. But these admit of a still more general treatment as the Laws or Theory of Presentations, under which head might be brought together the important results obtained by our own Associationist school and the equally important contribution of the Herbartian psycholo- gists which are largely the complementary of ours. Now it was the Associationist psychology which in England gave the death-blow to the Scottish school with its interminable faculties; and a like fate befel the " alte VermogentJieorie" at the hands of the Herbartians in Germany. In this now dominant psychology of presentations "Psychology ohne Seek," as Lange calls it we are led to recognise only inter- action of presentations inter se : ideas tend to attract or repel each other; they associate and they conflict : in short, as Herbart roundly put it, we have in them a psychical statics and dynamics, and these, as he thought, admit of a mathematical treatment. The activity underlying the old terms 'faculty,' 'power,' &c., which was formerly referred to the subject, here reappears on the side of the object. Hence then the attempt to explain everything in terms of the interaction of presentations. We have this pushed to the utmost in Herbart 's own psychology with that speculative thoroughness so characteristic of the master minds among our Teutonic brethren. It would not be difficult to show that the metaphysical theory of " self-preservation " which Herbart developed makes no material difference to the general character of his psychology as here described. In Prof. Bain and in J. S. Mill the same tendency is apparent, but in them systematic thoroughness is sacrificed to regard for facts, which is said for better, for worse to be the peculiarly British trait. Now comes the question : Can we, provided we credit pre- sentations or perhaps it will be fairer to say ' ideas,' since presentation in this connexion may be thought to have a treacherous ring can we, if ideas are credited with certain