Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 10.djvu/812

* INTBODUCTION. 722 INTROSPECTION. of his dramatic works, Wajmcr generally opens every art »itii an introduction of some length. INTROIT (Lat. introittis, entrance). .•Xn an- tiplion sun^ or said at the befjinninp of the mass, varying with the season or festival, .ftcr tlie nntiphon jiroper conies a verse fniin the I'saliiis, followed (except in requiem masses and in Pas- sion-tide) by the Gloria I'liiri, and the repetition of the antiphon. The opening words of tlie introit are commonly used in ecclesiastical terminology to desi<;nate the proper mass of the day; and certain Sundays are even popularly known in the same way, as Oaiirlclc, Lwiare, Quasimodo Sunday, etc. This practice is very usual in nieiliavnl documents and authors. INTROMISSION (ML. iiiliomissio, from hat. intromit l< re, to send within, from intro, within + mittere, to send). In Scotch law, the assumptiim of legal authority to deal with an- other's pro])orty. It is divided into legal and vicious intromission. I-cgal intromission is where the party is expressly or impliedly au- thorized, either by judgment or deed, to assume the management and control of an estate. Vicious intromission is where a person without legal authority interferes with a deceased per- son's estate, as by assuming to act as heir or as executor of a will. Such acts constitute a usur- pation, but have a certain qualilieil validity, and cannot be impeached collaterally. They corre- spond to the acts of an executor de son tort of English and American law. See Executor. INTROSPECTION (from Lat. intronpicere, to look within, frum intro, within -j- npicere, specere, to look: connected with Gk. CKt-Tcndni^ skcptesthai, Skt. spa^, pai. to look, OHG. sprhon, Ger. spdhcn, to sp.v). The specific metliod of psychology-, as observation or inspection is the specific method of physical science; also termed Self-Observ.tion or 'IxxEK Receitiox.' The three names are characteristic of three difTerent attitudes toward the study of mental phenomena, which we may term the rationalistic, the em- pirical, and the experimental. ( 1 ) Kant de- clared that a science of mind is impossible, for the reason, among others, that the method of psychology is impracticable: self-observation im- plies a change of the very f.icts which we desire to observe. If self-observation were, literally, the method of psychology, Kant's objection would be valid. If. then, psychology- were forced to rely on self-observation, there could be no ascer- tainment of mental uniformities, no science of mind ; the more attentive the obser^'er, and the more systematic his use of the method, the scantier would be his harvest of facts; specula- tion would have free play. Hence the empirical ^ school (2) .substituted for self-observation the method — or, rather, the unmethodical employ- ment — of inner perception (inncre ^yahrnek- tiiunfi). Observation is planned and prepared for: perception, the noting of events and condi- tions as they appear, is a matter of happy acci- dent. Now inner states and processes can be perceived or noted as well as outer: there is no self-contradiction involved in the phrase 'inner perception;' but, at the same time, the loss of the plan and system implied by the term 'obser- vation' is a serious handicap to a science, and must lead to inadequacy both of description and of theory. We find, accordingly, that the intro- spection or inner perception of the empirical psychologists has no claim to rank as a true scientific method. It makes the cardinal mistake of considering merely the most obvious as|H'el of mind — its cognitive function ; it views mental proCT'sscs always through the glass of meaning. of logical import; it tells us what mental events stand for, but not what they are. It is clear that we shouhl gain little knowledge of the anatomy of our bodies by a superficial cata- loguing of the bodily functions, as they are ap- parent in the weurreiices of every-day life; indeed, that we might go sadly astray, in our attempt to translate function into the unknown language of structure. The same thing ludds of mind, as interpreted by the metliod of inner piT- ception. (o) In the first place, the method Ic'ads to an overemphasis of what .James has called the 'substantive' factors in the stream of thought, and to an underemphasis of the 'transitive' parts. We read of images and ideas and representations; but the 'fringes' of these psychical entities, the elusive and yet essential processes which Spencer (still in logical terms) has denominated •feeling-i of relation.' are left entirely out of account. The result of this error is that mind is piitured as if composed of discrete and sharply separable terms (the 'sensations' or 'ideas' which corre- spond to the sini])lest 'bits of knowledge'), in- stead of lx"ing presented as what it really is. ii shifting continuum, a tangle of ever-moving and ever-changing pro<'esses. (i) A second mistake to which inner perception is liable is that whiih has been callecl par rxcellonrr the 'psychologist's fallacy.' The |isyehologist is tempted to read himself, his own knowledge and attitude, into the mental process or group of mental processes which he is considering. Instead of taking the mental stufT as it is, in the incompleteness and abstractness which are conditioned upon its de- tachment from context, he rounds it olT and supplements it by his outside knowledge of this context. He is thus tempted into a twofold error. On the one haml — mi>led by the poverty of langu:ige, which ordinarily names a pcrccp tion or idea by naming the object to which it refers, no matter what the mode or character of this reference may be — he is easily brought "to suppose that the thought, which is of the object, knows it in the same way in which he knows it, although this is often very far from being the case." On the other hand, since he is himself familiar with all the relations in which the given mental process stands, he is apt to read an awareness of these relations into the process; he makes the pro<'ess conscious of itself as he is conscious of it. The result is that we are fur- nished not with a description, but with a logical construction of mind: while, as there is no appeal from the logical construction to the facts, em- pirical psychology is full of quasi-logical con- troversies, that are not only long drawn out, hut are in the nature of things incapable- of psycho- logical termination. (."i) We arrive at introspection proper only when we reach the point at which the experi- mental method is introduced into psychology. (See Psvciioi.OGV. Experimen-tat..) "This does not mean that there was no valid introspection before there was experiment ; men are often better than their methods. Nor does it mean that all the results of experimental research are the fruits of an unimpeachable introspection; methods may be better than the men who use