Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/256

236 236 P8TCH0L0QT. already impossible for us to follow obediently in the foot- prints of either the Lockian or the Herbartian school, schools which have had almost unlimited influence in Ger- many and among ourselves. No doubt it is often con- venient to formulate the mental facts in an atomistic sort of way, and to treat the higher states of consciousness as if they were all built out of unchanging simple ideas. It is convenient often to treat curves as if they were composed of small straight lines, and electricity and nerve-force as if they were fluids. But in the one case as in the other we must never forget that we are talking symbolically, and that there is nothing in nature to answer to our words. A permanently existing ' idea ' or * Vorstellung ' which makes its appearance before the footlights of conscio2isness at periodical intervals, is as mythological an entity as the Jack of Spades. What makes it convenient to use the mythological for- mulas is the whole organization of speech, which, as was remarked a while ago, was not made by psychologists, but by men who were as a rule only interested in the facts their mental states revealed. They only spoke of their states as ideas of this or of that thing. What wonder, then, that the thought is most easily conceived under the law of the thing whose name it bears ! If the thing is composed of parts, then we suppose that the thought of the thing must be composed of the thoughts of the parts. If one part of the thing have appeared in the same thing or in other things on former occasions, why then we must be having even now the very same ' idea ' of that part which was there on those occa- sions. If the thing is simple, its thought is simple. If it is multitudinous, it must require a multitude of thoughts to think it. If a succession, only a succession of thoughts can know it. If permanent, its thought is permanent. And so on ad libitum. What after all is so natural as to assume that one object, called by one name, should be known by one affection of the mind ? But, if language must thus in- fluence us, the agglutinative languages, and even Greek and Latin with their declensions, would be the better guides. Names did not appear in them inalterable, but changed their shape to suit the context in which they lay. It must have been easier then than now to conceive of the same