Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/606

 594 c. STUMPF'S TONPSYCHOLOGIE, i. science a valuable service in bringing together from inaccessible treatises and journals the most important results of recent investigation. On reading a work like this one naturally asks : When will such special psychological work be needed and en- couraged in this country ? The science must take a much higher place both in academic and in popular estimation if we are to emulate the Germans in work of this kind and keep our old place in the van of the psychological army. The first instalment of Dr. Stumpf s work falls into two Parts : a shorter and introductory one on sense-judgments in general, and a longer one on judgments respecting successive tones. The estimation of relations between simultaneous tones is along with that of musical intervals reserved for the second volume. The first division, though much the shorter, is so important that I purpose devoting special attention to it in this notice. It is to be noted at the outset that the work is on tone- judgments, and not like Helmholtz's, on tone-sensations. This brings out the fact that the author approaches the subject from the psychological point of view. By judgment he understands the reaction of the mind on the sensations, the apprehension of their quality and intensity, and the relations of these to those of other sensations. Judgment thus covers what Dr. Bain calls the discrimination of sensations, and Mr. Spencer the classification of them. To say that a tone is one of a particular pitch is to judge. It is thus evident that a judgment does not always pre- suppose reflection, and is not in all cases fixed in language. Judgments concerning difference or similarity link themselves on immediately to sensations. They are habitual and never wanting in the case of the mental life of the adult. This fact has given rise to the doctrine of the relativity of sensation, which Dr. Stumpf forthwith subjects to a searching criticism. A number of different forms of the theory are distinguished and separately handled : e.g., " every sensation is necessarily referred to another, there are no pure sensations " ; " sensations may exist in the mind without being discriminated, but it is only by such dis- crimination and reference that they become ingredients of con- sciousness " ; " sensation is itself something relative : we feel not absolute contents but only relations, differences, changes." In opposition to these and other forms of the doctrine our author maintains that, though closely connected, the sensation and the reference (Bezielmng) of the sensation are perfectly distinct. We must assume the existence of non-referred sensations in early life at least, for there could have been no reference till after a plurality of sensations, and such non-referred sensations are in a manner in consciousness. Having thus defined sense-judgments, Dr. Stumpf proceeds to assign the conditions of their trustworthiness or credibility (Zuverlassigkeit). Since in ordinary cases the judgment deals not merely with the sensations but with the external objects, it has