Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/450

 438 j. SULLY' s OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY. allotted by Mr. Sully to the account of the Laws of Association. As commonly formulated these laws are most delusive, and the attempt to apply them in their crude form has only resulted in failure. We have in them empirical generalisations founded on observation of highly complex phenomena of mind which, as so stated, are wholly inapplicable to the problems that psychology has attempted to solve by their means. Kecent writers, espe- cially Wundt, but in part also Steinthal, have approached tha subject in a more comprehensive way and distinguished between the elementary modes of connexion in the mental life and the conditions under which in matured experience suggestions come about. What we require specially to keep in view in approaching the problem is that the mental life does not form for us a string of separate parts (a consideration, by the way, which should lead to a considerable revision of the ordinary explanations of Memory), and that phrases such as ' calling up an idea' are mere metaphors. Each separate fact of conscious experience stands out momenta- rily from the vast complex of the individual mind and, as one says, receives so much attention, but it is always accompanied by this complex, and the question what determines the train of thought, what causes us, as we say, to think of something else, is really the question what causes attention to include this or that at the moment. The motives are infinitely numerous, and vary indefinitely in character in successive stages of individual development ; for the most part, indeed, they are distinctly w r hat would be described as logical ; but the essential fact is the move- ment of attention as expressed in the view taken of the part more immediately under consideration. It would require more detail than can here be given to show how the currently accepted Laws are taken in under this more comprehensive view. The last point to which I can call attention is the treatment of the various forms of Thought, contained in chs. ix. and x. Here in particular I seem to notice the effects of the view which regards the complex and unique fact of knowing as though it were but an object, one among others, with the same singleness of nature that is peculiar to the content of external perception. Mr. Sully takes the class-notion or concept as though it were a fact to be observed, differing from the idea of the particular in being relatively poorer in marks, and resembling for the most part the generic image. Not only would one doubt the whole supposed process of beginning with particulars and passing to the general, not only would one hesitate much in describing the class- notion as the special type of conception, but one must entirely reject the reading of the general notion which is satisfied with regarding it as a kind of fainter image or faded picture. Fainter image or faded picture may, in truth, exist as parts of the com- plete act of conceiving, parts which ought not, however, to be viewed as having a quasi- objective existence, but the act of con- ceiving is itself, as the very name and common logical terminology