Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/108

92. These scientists have a very considerable quantity of data, and hence have a staging from which to soar off into speculation. The biologist has not progressed so far. Consequently, when he makes the assumption of vital force, he is immediately censured by chemist and physicist. But the biologist really has as good a right to postulate a vital force, superadded to the subtle chemical and physical changes in an animal organism, as the physicist and chemist have to say that it is not such an additional force which explains life, but more refined and inscrutable chemical and physical changes than any we meet with in inorganic nature. Both are using metaphysical conceptions. Science and metaphysics are supplementary. After all sequences are explained after science has done its work still the human mind will not be satisfied. It demands the reason of it all. Whether the reason be an underlying force of which phenomena are products or manifestations, or whatever the assumption, we are dealing with metaphysics. And the biologist has as good a right here as the physicist or the chemist.

The author himself has summarized the argument of this article in the following words: "Starting with the polarization of experience into its objective and subjective aspects, we have attempted to indicate how each aspect may be dealt with and interpreted through the ideal constructions of science in terms of antecedence and sequence; how the two aspects may be correlated; how force and will should be excluded from any rigidly scientific treatment save as measures of rapidity or intensity of phenomenal change; and how metaphysics may take up the task of trying to explain the universe and human life therein where science, as here limited, ceases to be applicable, endeavoring to frame a synthesis of its own on a different plane and with other canons of interpretation."

Professor Stumpf uses the expressions 'emotion' and 'affection' synonymously. An affective state differs from a sensory Gefühl in that it is based upon a judgment, while the latter is immediately evoked by a sensory impression. Desire implies an end that 'should be' attained, while an affective state (emotion) carries with it no such implication. The larger part of Professor Stumpf's article is devoted to a criticism of the current sensational theories of emotion which have grown up in opposition to this older view. An unfortunate scientific tendency to reduce the number of specific differences as far as possible has led many psychologists to identify emotions and 'feelings.' Thus Ribot's position is quite untenable even