The Principles of Psychology, Vols. 1-2

The second difficulty is deeper still. The ' entire brainprocess ' is not a physical fact at all. It is the appearance to an onlooking mind of a multitude of physical facts. ' En tire brain ' is nothing but our name for the way in which a million of molecules arranged in certain positions may affect our sense. On the principles of the corpuscular or mechanical philosophy, the only realities are the separate molecules, or at most the cells. Their aggregation into a ' brain ' is a fiction of popular speech. Such a fiction cannot serve as the objectively real counterpart to any psychic state whatever. Only a genuinely physical fact can so serve. But the molecular fact is the only genuine physi cal fact — whereupon we seem, if we are to have an elemen tary psycho-physic law at all, thrust right back upon some thing like the mind-stuff theory, lor the molecular fact, being an element of the « brain,' would seem naturally to correspond, not to the total thoughts, but to elements in the thought.

What shall we do? Many would find relief at this point in celebrating the mystery of the Unknowable and the * awe ' which we should feel at having such a principle to take final charge of our perplexities. Others would rejoice that the finite and separatist view of things with which we started had at last developed its contradictions, and was about to lead us dialectically upwards to some 'higher synthesis ' in which inconsistencies cease from troubling and logic is at rest. It may be a constitutional infirmity, but I can take no comfort in such devices for making a luxury of intellectual defeat. They are but spiritual chloroform. Better live on the ragged edge, better gnaw the file forever !

The most rational thing to do is to suspect that there may be a third possibility, an alternative supposition which we have not considered. Now there is an alternative sup* position — a supposition moreover which has been fre quently made in the history of philosophy, and which is freer from logical objections than either c£ the views w© have ourselves discussed. It may be called the theory of polyzoism or multiple monadism; and it conceives tho matter thus :

Every brain-cell has its own individual consciousness, which no other cell knows anything about, all individual consciousnesses being ' ejective ' to each other. There is, however, among the cells one central or pontifical one to which our consciousness is attached. But the events of all the other cells physically influence this arch-cell ; and through producing their joint effects on it, these other cells may be said to 'combine.' The arch-cell is, in fact, one of those ' external media ' without which we saw that no fusion or integration of a number of things can occur. The physical modifications of the arch-cell thus form a sequence of results in the production whereof every other cell has a share, so that, as one might say, every other cell is repre sented therein. And similarly, the conscious correlates to these physical modifications form a sequence of thoughts or feelings, each one of which is, as to its substantive being, an integral and uncompounded psychic thing, but each one of which may (in the exercise of its cognitive function) be aware of THINGS many and complicated in proportion to the number of other cells that have helped to modify the central cell.

internal contradictions which we found to beset the other two theories. One has no unintelligible self-combining of psychic units to account for on the one hand ; and on the other hand, one need not treat as the physical counterpart of the stream of consciousness under observation, a ' total brain-activity ' which is non-existent as a genuinely physi cal fact. But, to offset these advantages, one has physio logical difficulties and improbabilities. There is no cell or group of cells in the brain of such anatomical or func tional pre-eminence as to appear to be the keystone or centre of gravity of the whole system. And even if there were such a cell, the theory of multiple monadism would, in strictness of thought, have no right to stop at it and treat it as a unit. The cell is no more a unit, materially con sidered, than the total brain is a unit. It is a compound of molecules, just as the brain is a compound of cells and fibres. And the molecules, according to the prevalent physical theo ries, are in turn compounds of atoms. The theory in ques tion, therefore, if radically carried out, must set up for its elementary and irreducible psycho-physic couple, not the cell and its consciousness, but the primordial and eternal atom and its consciousness. We are back at Leibnitzian monadism, and therewith leave physiology behind us and dive into regions inaccessible to experience and verification ; and our doctrine, although not self-contradictory, becomes so remote and unreal as to be almost as bad as if it were. Speculative minds alone will take an interest in it ; and metaphysics, not psychology, will be responsible for its career. That the career may be a successful one must be admitted as a possibility — a theory which Leibnitz, Herbart, and Lotze have taken under their protection must have some sort of a destiny.

But is this my last word? By no means. Many readers have certainly been saying to themselves for the last few pages : " Why on earth doesn't the poor man say the Soul and have done with it ? " Other readers, of antispiritualistic training and prepossessions, advanced think ers, or popular evolutionists, will perhaps be a little surprised to find this much-despised word now sprung upon them at the end of so physiological a train of thought. But the plain fact is that all the arguments for a ' pontifical cell ' or an ' arch-monad ' are also arguments for that well-known spiritual agent in which scholastic psychology and com mon-sense have always believed. And my only reason for beating the bushes so, and not bringing it in earlier as a possible solution of our difficulties, has been that by this procedure I might perhaps force some of these materialistic minds to feel the more strongly the logical respectability of the spiritualistic position. The fact is that one cannot atiord to despise any of these great traditional objects of belief. Whether we realize it or not, there is always a great drift of reasons, positive and negative, towing us in their direction. If there be such entities as Souls in the universe, they may possibly be affected by the manifold occurrences that go on in the nervous centres. To the state of the en tire brain at a given moment they may respond by inward modifications of their own. These changes of state may be pulses of consciousness, cognitive of objects few or many, simple or complex. The soul would be thus a medium upon which (to use our earlier phraseology) the manifold brain-processes combine their effects. Not needing to con sider it as the ' inner aspect ' of any arch-molecule or braincell, we escape that physiological improbability ; and as its pulses of consciousness are unitary and integral affairs from the outset, we escape the absurdity of supposing feelings which exist separately and then ' fuse together ' by them selves.

The separateness is in the brain-world, on this theory, and the unity in the soul-world ; and the only trouble that remains to haunt us is the metaphysical one of understanding how one sort of world or existent thing can affect or influence another at all. This trouble, however, since it also exists inside of both worlds, and involves neither physical improbability nor logical contradiction, is relatively small. I confess, therefore, that to posit a soul influenced in some mysterious way by the brain-states and responding to them by conscious affections of its own, seems to me the line of least logical resistance, so far as we yet have attained.

If it does not strictly explain anything, it is at any rate less positively objectionable fchan either mind-stuff or a material-monad creed. The bare PHENOMENON, hoivever, the IMMEDIATELY KNOWN thing which on the mental side is in appo sition ivith the entire brain-process is the state of consciousness and not the soul itself. Many of the stanchest believers in the soul admit that we knc w it only as an inference from experiencing its states. In Chapter X, accordingly, we must return to its consideration again, and ask ourselves whether, after all, the ascertainment of a blank unmediated correspond ence, term for term, of the succession of states of consciousness with the succession of total brain-processes, be not the simplest psycho-physic formula, and the last word of a psychology ivhich contents itself ivith verifiable laivs, and seeks only to be clear, and to avoid unsafe hypotheses. Such a mere ad mission of the empirical parallelism will there appear the wisest course. By keeping to it, our psychology will re main positivistic and non-metaphysical ; and although this is certainly only a provisional halting-place, and things must some day be more thoroughly thought out, we shall abide there in this book, and just as we have rejected minddust, we shall take no account of the soul. The spiritualis tic reader may nevertheless believe in the soul if he will ; whilst the positivistic one who wishes to give a tinge of mystery to the expression of his positivism can continue to say that nature in her unfathomable designs has mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and determine each other's being, but how or why, no mortal may ever know.

WE have now finished the physiological preliminaries of our subject and must in the remaining chapters study the mental states themselves whose cerebral conditions and concomitants we have been considering hitherto. Beyond the brain, however, there is an outer world to which the brain-states themselves * correspond.' And it will be well, ere we advance farther, to say a word about the relation of the mind to this larger sphere of physical fact. That is, the mind which the psychologist studies is the mind of distinct individuals inhabiting definite portions of a real space and of a real time. With any other sort of mind, absolute Intelligence, Mind unattached to a particular body, or Mind not subject to the course of time, the psychol ogist as such has nothing to do. * Mind,' in his mouth, is only a class name for minds. Fortunate will it be if his more modest inquiry result in any generalizations which the philosopher devoted to absolute Intelligence as such can use.

To the psychologist, then, the minds he studies are objects, in a world of other objects. Even when he introspectively analyzes his own mind, and tells what he finds there, he talks about it in an objective way. He says, for instance, that under certain circumstances the color gray appears to him green, and calls the appearance an illusion. This implies that he compares two objects, a real color seen under certain conditions, and a mental perception which he believes to represent it, and that he declares the relation between them to be of a certain kind. In making this critical judgment, the psychologist stands as much out side of the perception which he criticises as he does of the color. Both are his objects. And if this is true of him when

lie reflects on liis own conscious states, how much truer is it when he treats of those of others ! In German philosophy since Kant the word Urkenntnisstheorie, criticism of the faculty of knowledge, plays a great part. Now the psychol ogist necessarily becomes such an Erkenntnisstheoretiker. But the knowledge he theorizes about is not the bare function of knowledge which Kant criticises — he does not inquire into the possibility of knowledge uberhaupt. He assumes it to be possible, he does not doubt its presence in himself at the moment he speaks. The knowledge he criticises is the knowledge of particular men about the particular things that surround them. This he may, upon occasion, in the light of his own unquestioned knowledge, pronounce true or false, and trace the reasons by which it has become one or the other.

It is highly important that this natural-science point of view should be understood at the outset. Otherwise more may be demanded of the psychologist than he ought to be expected to perform. A diagram will exhibit more emphatically what the assumptions of Psychology must be : These four squares contain the irreducible data of psychology. No. 1, the psychologist, believes Nos. 2, 3, and 4, which together form his total object, to be realities, and reports them and their mutual relations as truly as he can without troubling himself with the puzzle of how he can report them at all. About such ultimate puzzles he in the main need trouble himself no more than the geometer, the chemist, or the botanist do, who make precisely the same assumptions as he.*

Of certain fallacies to which the psychologist is exposed by reason of his peculiar point of view — that of being a reporter of subjective as well as of objective facts, we must presently speak. But not until we have considered the methods he uses for ascertaining what the facts in question are. Introspective Observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always. The word introspection need hardly be defined — it means, of course, the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover. Every one, agrees that we there discover states of consciousness. So far as I know, the existence of such states has never been' doubted by any critic, however sceptical in other respects he may have been. That we have cogitations of some sort is the inconcussum in a world most of whose other facts have at some time tottered in the breath of philosophic doubt. All people unhesitatingly believe that they feel themselves thinking, and that they distinguish the mental state as an inward activity or passion, from all the objects with which it may cognitively deal. / regard this belief as the most }.; fundamental of all the postulates of Psychology, and shall dis card all curious inquiries about its certainty as too meta physical for the scope of this book.

A Question of Nomenclature. We ought to have some general term by which to designate all states of con sciousness merely as such, and apart from their par ticular quality or cognitive function. Unfortunately most of the terms in use have grave objections. ' Mental state,' ' state of consciousness,' ' conscious modification,' are cumbrous and have no kindred verbs. The same is true of 'subjective condition.' 'Feeling' has the verb 'to feel,' both active and neuter, and such derivatives as ' feelingly,' 'felt,' 4'eltness,' etc., which make it extremely convenient. But on the other hand it has specific meanings as well as its generic one, sometimes standing for pleasure and pain, and being sometimes a synonym of ' sensation ' as opposed to thought ; whereas we wish a term to cover sensation and

thought indifferently. Moreover, ' feeling ' has acquired in the hearts of platonizing thinkers a very opprobrious set of implications ; and since one of the great obstacles to mutual understanding in philosophy is the use of words eulogistically and disparagingly, impartial terms ought always, if possible, to be preferred. The word psychosis has been proposed by Mr. Huxley. It has the advantage of being correlative to neurosis (the name applied by the same author to the corresponding nerve-process), and is moreover tech nical and devoid of partial implications. But it has no )/ verb or other grammatical form allied to it. The expres sions ' affection of the soul,' * modification of the ego,' are clumsy, like 'state of consciousness,' and they implicitly assert theories which it is not well to embody in terminol ogy before they have been openly discussed and approved. ' ' Idea ' is a good vague neutral word, and was by Locke employed in the broadest generic way ; but notwithstanding his authority it has not domesticated itself in the language so as to cover bodily sensations, and it moreover has no verb. ' Thought ' would be by far the best word to use if it could be made to cover sensations. It has no opprobri ous connotation such as ' feeling ' has, and it immediately suggests the omnipresence of cognition (or reference to an ' object other than the mental state itself), which we shall ^soon see to be of the mental life's essence. But can the 'expression 'thought of a toothache' ever suggest to the reader the actual present pain itself ? It is hardly possi ble ; and we thus seem about to be forced back on some pair of terms like Hume's ' impression and idea,' or Ham ilton's 'presentation and representation,' or the ordinary ' feeling and thought,' if we wish to cover the whole ground.

In this quandary we can make no definitive choice, but must, according to the convenience of the context, use sometimes one, sometimes another of the synonyms that have been mentioned. My oivn partiality is for either FEELING or THOUGHT. I shall probably often use both words in a wider sense than usual, and alternately startle two classes of readers by their unusual sound ; but if the con nection makes it clear that mental states at large, irrespec-

tive of their kind, are meant, this will do no harm, and may even do some good.* The inaccuracy of introspective observation has been made a subject of debate. It is important to gain some fixed ideas on this point before we proceed. The commonest spiritualistic opinion is that the Soul or Subject of the mental life is a metaphysical entity, inac cessible to direct knowledge, and that the various mental states and operations of which we reflectively become aware are objects of an inner sense which does not lay hold of the real agent in itself, any more than sight or hear-' ing gives us direct knowledge of matter in itself. From, this point of view introspection is, of course, incompetent to lay hold of anything more than the Soul's phenomena. But even then the question remains, How well can it know the phenomena themselves ?

Some authors take high ground here and claim for it a sort of infallibility. Thus Ueberweg : " When a mental image, as such, is the object of my apprehension, there is no meaning in seeking to distinguish its existence in my con sciousness (in me) from its existence out of my consciousness (in itself) ; for the object apprehended is, in this case, one which does not even exist, as the objects of external perception do, in itself outside of my consciousness. It exists only within me." t

" The phenomena inwardly apprehended are true in themselves, As they appear — of this the evidence with which they are apprehended is a warrant — so they are in reality. Who, then, can deny that in this a great superiority of Psychology over the physical sciences comes to light ?" " No one can doubt whether the psychic condition he apprehends in himself \e, and be so, as he apprehends it. Whoever should doubt this would have reached that finished doubt which destroys itself in de stroying every fixed point from which to make an attack upon knowl edge, "t

Others have gone to the opposite extreme, and main- . tained that we can have no introspective cognition of our / ) own minds at all. A deliverance of Auguste Comte to thia effect has been so often quoted as to be almost classical ; and some reference to it seems therefore indispensable here. " in these latter days imagined themselves able to distinguish, by a very singular subtlety, two sorts of observation of equal importance, one external, the other internal, the latter being solely destined for the study of intellectual phenomena. ... I limit myself to pointing out / the principal consideration which proves clearly that this pretended ; direct contemplation of the mind by itself is a pure illusion. . . . It is in fact evident that, by an invincible neccessity, the human mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own proper states. For by whom shall the observation of these be made ? It is conceivable that a man might observe himself with respect to the passions that animate him, for the anatomical organs of passion are distinct from those whose function is observation. Though we have all made such observations on ourselves, they can never have much scientific value, and the best mode of knowing the passions will always be that of ob serving them from without ; for every strong state of passion ... is necessarily incompatible with the state of observation. But, as for observing in the same way intellectual phenomena at the time of their actual presence, that is a manifest impossibility. The thinker cannot divide himself into two, of whom one reasons whilst the other observes him reason. The organ observed and the organ observing being, in this case, identical, how could observation take place ? This pretended psychological method is then radically null and void.

On the one hand, they advise you to isolate yourself, as far as possible, from every external sensation, especially every intellectual work, — for if you were to busy yourself even with the simplest calculation, what would become of internal observation ?— on the other hand, after having with the utmost care attained this state of intellectual slumber, you must begin to contemplate the operations going on in your mind, when nothing there takes place ! Our descendants will doubtless see such pretensions some day ridiculed upon the stage. The results of so strange a proced ure harmonize entirely with its principle. For all the two thousand years during which metaphysicians have thus cultivated psychology, they are not agreed about one intelligible and established proposition.

* Internal observation ' gives almost as many divergent results as there are individuals who think they practise it." Comte hardly could have known anything of the English, and nothing of the German, empirical psychology. The scholastic ones, such as principles of internal activity, the faculties, the ego, the liberum arbitrium indiffer entice, etc. John Mill, in replying to him,* says : " It might have occurred to M. Comte that a fact may be studied through the medium of memory, not at the very moment of our per ceiving it, but the moment" after: and this is really the mode in which our best knowledge of our intellectual acts is generally acquired. We reflect on what we have been doing when the act is past, but when its impression in the memory is still fresh. Unless in one of these ways, we could not have acquired the knowledge which nobody denies us to have, of what passes in our minds. M. Comte would scarcely have affirmed that we are not aware of our own intellectual operations. We know of our observings and our reasonings, either at the very time, or by memory the moment after; in either case, by direct knowledge, and not (like things done by us in a state of somnambulism) merely by their results. This simple fact destroys the whole of M. Comte's argu ment. Whatever we are directly aware of, we can directly observe."

Where now does the truth lie? Our quotation from Mill is obviously the one which expresses the most of practical truth about the matter. Even the writers who insist upon the absolute veracity of our immediate inner apprehension of a conscious state have to contrast with this the fallibility of our memory or observation of it, a moment later. No one has emphasized more sharply than Brentano himself the difference between the immediate feltness of a feeling, and its perception by a subsequent re flective act. But which mode of consciousness of it is that which the psychologist must depend on ? If to have feel ings or thoughts in their immediacy were enough, babies in the cradle would be psychologists, and infallible ones. But the psychologist must not only have his mental states in their absolute veritableness, he must report them and write about them, name them, classify and compare them and trace their relations to other things. Whilst alive they are their own property ; it is only post-mortem that they be come his prey.f And as in the naming, classing, and know-

f Wundt says: " The first rule for utilizing inward observation congists in taking, as far as possible, experiences that are accidental, unex pected, and not intentionally brought about. . . . First it is best as far as possible to rely on Memory and not on immediate Apprehension. . . ing of things in general we are notoriously fallible, why noi also here? Comte is quite right in laying stress on the , fact that a feeling, to be named, judged, or perceived, must \ be already past. No subjective state, whilst present, is its own object; its object is always something else. There are, it is true, cases in which we appear to be naming our present feeling, and so to be experiencing and observing the same inner fact at a single stroke, as when we say ' I feel tired,' ' I am angry,' etc. But these are illusory, and a little attention unmasks the illusion. The present con scious state, when I say ' I feel tired,' is not the direct state of tire ; when I say ' I feel angry,' it is not the direct state of anger. It is the state of say ing -I-f eel-tired, of saying-I-f eel-angry, — entirely different matters, so different that the fatigue and anger apparently included in them are considerable modifications of the fatigue and anger directly felt the previous instant. The act of naming them has momentarily detracted from their force.*

The only sound grounds on which the infallible veracity of the introspective judgment might be maintained are empirical. If we had reason to think it has never yet deceived us, we might continue to trust it. This is the ground actually maintained by Herr Mohr. *' The illusions of our senses,1' says this author, " have undermined our belief in the reality of the outer world; but in the sphere of inner observation our confidence is intact, for we have never found ourselves

•• «J to be in error about the reality of an act of thought or feeling. We Second, internal observation is better fitted to grasp clearly conscious states, especially voluntary mental acts: such inner processes as are ob scurely conscious and involuntary will almost entirely elude it, because the effort to observe interferes with them, and because they seldom abide in memory." (Logik, n. 432.) * In cases like this, where the state outlasts the act of naming it, exists

before it, and recurs when it is past, we probably run little practical risk of error when we talk as if the state knew itself. The state of feeling and the state of naming the feeling are continuous, and the infallibility of such prompt introspective judgments is probably great. But even here the certainty of our knowledge ought not to be argued on the a priori ground ; that percipi and esse are in psychology the same. The states are really ' two; the naming state and the named state are apart; 'percipi is esse' is not

have never been misled into thinking we were not in doubt or in anger when these conditions were really states of our consciousness." * But sound as the reasoning here would be, were the premises correct, I fear the latter cannot pass. However it may be with such strong feelings as doubt or anger, ( i / about weaker feelings, and about the relations to each other !/f of all feelings, we find ourselves in continual error and uncertainty so soon as we are called on to name and class, and not merely to feel. Who can be sure of the exact order of his feelings when they are excessively rapid ? Who can be sure, in his sensible perception of a chair, how much comes from the eye and how much is supplied out of the previous knowledge of the mind ? Who can compare with precision the quantities of disparate feelings even where the feelings are very much alike ? For instance, where an object is felt now against the back and now against the cheek, which feeling is most extensive? Who can be sure that two given feelings are or are not exactly the same ? Who can tell which is briefer or longer than the other when both occupy but an instant of time ? Who knows, of many | actions, for what motive they were done, or if for any motive at all ? Who can enumerate all the distinct ingredients of such a complicated feeling as anger ? and who can tell off hand whether or no a perception of distance be a compound or a simple state of mind? The whole mind-stuff contro versy would stop if we could decide conclusively by intro- / spection that what seem to us elementary feelings are ' really elementary and not compound.

Mr. Sully, in his work on Illusions, has a chapter on those of Introspection from which we might now quote. But, since the rest of this volume will be little more than a collection of illustrations of the difficulty of discovering by direct introspection exactly what our feelings and their relations are, we need not anticipate our own future details, but just state our general conclusion that introspection is difficult and fallible; and that the difficulty is simply that of all observation of whatever kind. Something is before

us ; we do our best to tell what it is, but in spite of oui good will we may go astray, and give a description more applicable to some other sort of thing. The only safeguard is in the final consensus of our farther knowledge about the thing in question, later views correcting earlier ones, until at last the harmony of a consistent system is reached. Such a system, gradually worked out, is the best guarantee the psychologist can give for the soundness of any partic ular psychologic observation which he may report. Such a system we ourselves must strive, as far as may be, to attain. The English writers on psychology, and the school of Herbart in Germany, have in the main contented them selves with such results as the immediate introspection of single individuals gave, and shown what a body of doctrine they may make. The works of Locke, Hume, Reid, Hart ley, Stewart, Brown, the Mills, will always be classics in this line ; and in Professor Bain's Treatises we have prob ably the last word of what this method taken mainly by itself can do — the last monument of the youth of our science, still unteclmical and generally intelligible, like the Chem istry of Lavoisier, or Anatomy before the microscope was used.