T55 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF / Henrg W. Sage - 1891 4 ./.;2.-.^<2.M.3.,. :..::.. ...^.j^////A,. 6896- I Date Due Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024573176 Cornell University Library BF 191.T55 3 1924 024 573 176 EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE THOUGHT-PROCESSES THE MACMILLAN COMPANY HEW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO ATLANTA -• SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MBLBOURHK THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. Ltd TORONTO LECTURES ON THE Experimental Psychology of the Thought- Processes BY EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1909 All rights reserved ,D.y. BF TS'S' eriment; but the account will be correct, so far as it goes, and wUl suffice for our present purpose. My mind, then, is of the imaginal sort, — I wish that we had a better adjective! — and my ideational type is of the sort described in the psychologies as mixed. I have always had, and I have always used, a wide range and a great variety of imagery; and my furniture of images is, perhaps, in better than average condition, because — fearing that, as one gets older, one tends also to become more and more verbal in type^ — I have made a point of renewing it bjj 8 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM practice. I am able now, for instance, as I was able when I entered the class-room nearly twenty- years ago, to lecture from any one of the three main cues. I can read oflF what I have to say from a memory manuscript ; or I can follow the lead of my voice ; or I can trust to the guidance of kinaesthesis, the anticipatory feel of the move- ments of articulation.® I use these three methods under different circumstances. When it is a matter of preparing a lecture on a definite plan, of dividing and subdividing vmder various head- ings, I draw up in the mind's eye a table of con- tents, written or printed, and refer to it as the hour proceeds. When there is any difficulty in exposition, a point to be argued'pro and con or a conclusion to be brought out from the conver- gence of several lines of proof, I hear my own voice speaking just ahead of me: an experience which, in the description, sounds as if it should be confusing, but which in reality is precisely the reverse. When, again, I come to a piece of straightforward narrative, I let my throat take care of itself; so that I am able tp give fuU atten- tion to blackboard drawing or to the manipula- tion of instruments on the table. As a rule, I look to all three kinds of prompting in the course of a single hour. At times, however, some one method is followed exclusively: thus, when I am THE IMAGINAL MIND 9 tired, I find that vision and audition are likely to lapse, and I am left alone with kinaesthesis. When I am working for myself, reading or Avriting or thinking, I experience a complex in- terlacing of imagery which it is difficult to describe, or at any rate to describe with the just emphasis. My natural tendency is to employ internal speech; and there are occasions when my voice rings out clearly to the mental ear and my throat feels stiff as if with much talking. But in general the internal speech is reduced to a faint flicker of articulatory movement. This may be due, in part, to the fact that I am a very rapid reader, and have tried to acquire the power of purely visual reading.*" But it is also due, I am sure, to the fact that I have vivid and per- sistent auditory imagery. If I may venture on a very sweeping statement, I should say that I never sit down to read a book, or to write a para- graph, or to think out a problem, without a musical accompaniment. Usually the accom- paniment is orchestral, with a preponderance of the wood-wind, — I have a sort of personal affec- tion for the oboe; sometimes it is in the tone- colour of piano or violin; never, I think, is it vocal. Usually, again, it is the reproduction of a known composition; on rare occasions it is wholly unfamiliar. I am not aware that I make 10 IMAGEKY AND SENSATIONALISM any use of this musical imagery, though I should be sorry to lose it, and I can oif er no explana- tion of its arousal.^^ However, the important point in the present connection is, simply, that its freakish appearance has, without doubt, i tended to repress the auditory factor in internal speech. These musical and verbal images crop up of their own accord. I have never sought to con- trol the former ; I have, as I said just now, some- what weakened the latter by my effort after purely visual reading. I turn now to the topic of visual imagery, which is always at my dis- posal and which I can mould and direct at will.^* 1 rely, in my thinking, upon visual imagery in the sense that I like to get a problem into some sort of visual schema, from which I can think my way out and to which I can return. As I read an article, or the chapter of a book, I instinc- tively arrange the facts or arguments in some visual pattern, and I am as likely to think in terms of this pattern as I am to think in words. I understand, and to that extent I enjoy, an author whom I can thus visualise. Contrariwise, an author whose thought is not susceptible to my visual arrangement appears to me to be obscure and involved ; and an author who has an arrange- ment of his own, which crosses the pattern that VISUAL SCHEMATA 11 I am forming in my mind, appears to me diffi- cult and, to that extent, unenjoyable. Hence my standard of clarity and consistency is, in the last resort, visual. A writer may be discussing a highly complicated question ; but if he is what I call clear, I can follow and understand him; his pattern is complex, but it may be traced. On the other hand, a writer may be discoursing in the easiest popular fashion; but if he is what I call obscure, if I cannot trace his pattern, I am baffled by him. I must then go to my friends, or to printed reviews of his work, and try to pick up a pattern at second hand.^' You will understand that this visual frame- work of thought is both an advantage and a limitation. What I know, I know clearly; and what I have once understood, I am likely to re- member. But there are disadvantages. The task of composition, for example, is for me extremely laborious. Words come quickly and readily enough ; I have only to let them come, in terms of internal speech. But then the words are apt to switch me off the visual track, to entangle me in secondary arguments, to bring up irrelevant associations ; I cannot trust myself to think simply in words; indeed, I sometimes doubt, as I read over my rough draughts, if there ever was a psychologist who could make so many 12 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM loose-ended statements in so few pages as I can. This defect prescribes its own remedy. More serious is the temptation to allow one's visual schemata to harden, to become rigid. I have constantly to fight against the tendency to pre- mature systematisation. The term 'visual schema' is, of course, itself equivocal. Those of you whose minds are built on the same general plan as my own will know well enough what it means. But I must warn the others, to whom this sort of imagery is un- known, not to think of a geometrical figure printed black on white, or of anything a hun- dredth part as definite. I should be sorely puzzled to say what colours appear in my sche- mata, and I certainly could not draw on paper my pattern of a particular writer or a particular book. I get a suggestion of dull red, and I get a suggestion of angles rather than curves ; I get, pretty clearly, the picture of movement along lines, and of neatness or confusion where the moving lines come together. But that is all, — all, at least, that ordinary introspection reveals. The hardening and rigidity, against which I am always on guard, is not a fixation of the schema as visual outline, but its fixation as meaning, as the meaning of something read or heard or thought. I wish to be clear on this point: the visual pattern does not indifferently accompany. VISUAL SYMBOLISM 13 but is or equals, my gross understanding of the matter in hand. My visual imagery, voluntarily aroused as for Galton's breakfast-table test, is extremely vivid, though it seems bodiless and papery when com- pared with direct perception. I have never, so far as I am aware, experienced a visual hallu- cination; I have no number-form; I know noth- ing of coloured hearing. On the other hand, my mind, in its ordinary operations, is a fairly com- plete picture gallery, — not of finished paintings, but of impressionist notes. Whenever I read or hear that somebody has done something mod- estly, or gravely, or proudly, or humbly, or courteously, I see a visual hint of the modesty or gravity or pride or humility or courtesy. The stately heroine gives me a flash of a tall figure, the only clear part of which is a hand holding up a steely grey skirt ; the humble suitor gives me a flash of a bent figure, the only clear part of which is the bowed back, though at times there are hands held deprecatingly before the absent face. A great many of these sketches are irrele- vant and accessory; but they often are, and they always may be, the vehicles of a logical meaning. The stately form that steps through the French window to the lawn may be clothed in all the colours of the rainbow ; but its stateliness is the 14 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM hand on the grey skirt. I shall not multiply instances. All this description must be either self-evident or as unreal as a fairy-tale.^* It leads us, however, to a very important question, — the old question of the possibility of | abstract or general ideas. You will recall thef main heads of the controversy. Locke had main- tained that it is possible to form the general idea, say, of a triangle which is "neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon; but all and none of these at once."'® Berkeley replied that "if any man has the faculty of framing in his mind such an idea of a triangle, as is here described, it is in vain to pretend to dispute him out of it, nor would I go about it. . . . For myself, I find indeed I have a faculty of imagining, or representing to myself, the ideas of those particular things I have perceived, and of variously compounding and dividing them, . . . [but] I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea described above. . . . The idea of man that I frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man."^® The dispute has lasted down to our own day. Hamilton calls the Lockean doctrine a 'revolting absurdity.'^'' Huxley finds it entirely acceptable. "An anat- THE GENERAL IDEA 15 omist who occupies himself intently with the examination of several specimens of some new kind of animal, in course of time acquires so vivid a conception of its form and structure, that the idea may take visible shape and become a sort of waking dream. But the figure which thus presents itself is generic, not specific. It is no copy of any one specimen, but, more or less, a mean of the series,"^* — a composite photograph of the whole group. AH through this discussion there runs, unfor- tunately, the confusion of logic and psychology that is characteristic of the English school. It is no more correct to speak, in psychology, of an abstract idea, or a general idea, than it would be to speak of an abstract sensation or a general sensation. What is abstract and general is not thq idea, the process in consciousness, but the logic al msa ning of wMglCfliaf" process is ~^e' v ehicle. All that we can say of the idea is that it comprises such and such qualities ; shows these and these temporal and spatial characters ; has a certain degree of vividness as focal or marginal, clear or obscure; has the vague haziness of dis- tant sounds and faint Ughts or the clean-cut definiteness of objects to which the sense-organ is accommodated; is arranged on a particular pattern.^® Locke and Huxley, now, believed 16 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM that abstract meaning is represented in con- sciousness by abstract or composite imagery; Berkeley and the other Nominalists believed that imagery is always individual and concrete, and that abstract meaning is accordingly represented by the abstract term, the general name.^° But here is no alternative for psychology. Imagery might be strictly reproductive in form, and yet — for a certain type of mental constitution — ^be the psychological equivalent of an abstract meaning; and, again, imagery might be vague and indefi- nite, and yet be the psychological equivalent of an individual, particular meaning. The issue, in its psychological formulation, is an issue of fact. Is wordless imagery, under any circumstances, the mental representative of meaning? And if it is, do we find a correlation of vague imagery with abstract and of definite imagery wit^ par- ticular meaning? The first of these questions I have already answered, for my own case, in the affirmative. In large measure I think, that is, I mean and I understand, in visual pictures. The second ques- tion I cannot answer in the affirmative. I doubt whether particularity or abstractness of mean- ing has anything essentially to do with the degree of definiteness of my images. The mental vision of the incoming tide, which I described at the THE GENERAL IDEA 17 beginning of this Lecture, is no more definite when it recalls an afternoon's ramble than when it means the progress of science. We must, above all things, distinguish between attentional clearness and intrinsic clearness of definition, — sharpness, precision, cognitive clearness. A process may be transversing the very centre of consciousness, and therefore from the point of view of a psychology of attention may be maxi- mally clear: yet it may be so weak, so brief, so instable, that its whole character is vague and indefinite. In my own experience, attentional clearness seems to be the one thing needful to qualify a process for meaning. Whether the picture as picture is sharply outlined and highly coloured is a matter of indifference. Come back now to the authorities: to Locked, triangle and Huxley's composite animal. IMy own picture of the triangle, the image that means triangle to me, is usually a fairly definite outline of the little triangular figure that istands for the word 'triangle' in the geometries. But I can quite well get Locke's picture, the triangle that is no triangle and all triangles at one and the same time. It is a flashy thing, come and gone from moment to moment: it hints two or three red angles, with the red lines deepening into black, seen on a dark green ground. It is not a 18 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM there long enough for me to say whether the angles join to form the complete figure, or even whether all three of the necessary angles are given. Nevertheless, it means triangle; it is Locke's general idea of triangle ; it is Hamilton's palpable absurdity made real. And the com- posite animal? Well, the composite animal strikes me as somewhat too even, too nicely bal- anced. No doubt, the idea in Huxley's mind was of that kind; he, as an anatomist, was inter- ested to mark all the parts and proportions of the creatures before him.^^ But my own ideas of animals are sketchier and more selective : horse is, to me, a double curve and a rampant posture with a touch of mane about it; cow is a longish rectangle with a certain facial expression, a sort of exaggerated pout. Again, however, these ,things mean horse and cow, are the psychological vehicles of those logical meanings. And what holds of triangle and horse and cow holds of all the "unpicturable notions of intelli- gence."^^ No one of them is unpicturable, if you do but have the imaginal mind. "It is impos- sible," remarks a recent writer, "to ideate a mean- ing; one can only know it.'"^' Impossible? But I have been ideating meanings all my life. And not only meanings, but meaning also. Meaning in general is represented in my consciousness by THE IDEATION OF MEANING 19 another of these impressionist pictures. I see meaning as the blue-grey tip of a kind of scoop, which has a bit of yellow above it (probably a part of the handle), and which is just digging into a dark mass of what appears to be plastic ma- terial. I was educated on classical lines; and it is conceivable that this picture is an echo of the oft-repeated admonition to 'dig out the mean- ing' of some passage of Greek or Latin. I do not know; but I am sure of the image. And 1 am sure that others have similar images. I put the question not long since to the members of my graduate seminary, and two of the twelve stu- dents present at once gave an affirmative answer. The one reported the mental unrolling of a white scroU: what he actually saw was a whitish lump or mass, flattened and flattening towards the right. The other reported a horizontal line, with two short verticals at a little distance from the two ends. The suggestion in these two cases is plain enough: meaning is something that you find by straightening things out, or it is some-' thing that is included or contained in things. There was, however, no such suggestion in the minds of my informants: for them, as for me, the mental representation of meaning is a simple datum, natural and ultimate.^* I have dwelt at some length upon this visual- ^0 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM isation of meanings because the point in dispute is of great importance, historically and systemat- ically, and because visual imagery offers, so to say, the most substantial materials for its dis- cussion. Let me repeat, however, that my mind, the mind which I am trying to describe to you, is by no means exclusively, is not even predomi- nantly, of the visual type. I have, as I have said, a great deal of auditory imagery; I have also a great deal of kinassthetic imagery. The former needs no further discussion, since it plays no active part in my thinking; but I must speak briefly of kinaesthesis. As recently as 1904 I was not sure whether or not I possessed free kinaesthetic images.^^ I could not decide whether my kinaesthetic mem- ories were imaginal, or whether they involved an actual reinstatement, in weaker form, of the original sensations. I had no criterion by which to distinguish the sensation from the image. However, as so often happens, I had hardly recorded my difiiculty when the criterion was found: a ground of distinction so simple, that one wonders why there should have been any difficulty at all. It may be roughly phrased in the statement that actual movement always brings into play more muscles than are necessary, while ideal movement is confined to the precise KINESTHETIC IMAGERY 21 group of muscles concerned. You will notice the difference at once — ^provided that you have kinaesthetic images — if you compare an actual nod of the head with the mental nod that signifies assent to an argument, or the actual frown and wrinkling of the forehead with the mental frown that signifies perplexity. The sensed nod and frown are coarse and rough in outline; the imaged nod and frown are cleanly and delicately traced.^® I do not say, of course, that this is the sole difference between the two modes of experience. On the contrary, now that it has become clear /l seem to find that the kinsesthetic j image and the kinesthetic sensation differ in all essential respects precisely as visual image differs from visual sensation. But I think it is a depend- able difference, and one that offers a good start- ing point for further analysisj We shall recur to this kinaesthetic imagery in a later Lecture. All that I have to remark now is that/the various visual images, which I have referred to as possible vehicles of logical mean< ing, oftentimes share their task with kinsesthesis^ Not only do I see gravity and modesty and pride and courtesy and stateliness, but I feel or act them in the mind's muscles. This is, I suppose, a simple case of empathy, if we may coin that term as a rendering of Einfuhltmg; there is noth- 22 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM ing curious or idiosyncratic about it; but it is a fact that must be mentioned. And further: just as the visual image may mean of itself, without kinjesthetic accompaniment, so may the kinaes- thetic image occur and mean of itself, without assistance from vision. I represent the meaning of affirmation, for instance, by the image of a little nick felt at the back of the neck, — an ex- perience which, in sensation, is complicated by pressures and pulls from the scalp and throat.^'^ II I said at the outset that I should confess my constitutional bias; and if you were now asked to name that bias, you would doubtless agree that a mind which thinks in the manner described must have a strong leaning toward sensational- ism. I do not think that such a tendency is matter for praise or blame, is anything to be proud or ashamed of; it is a natural fact. What I would ask you to remember, however, is this: that the constitutionally impartial mind does not exist, or at any rate is infinitely rare. Every one of us has his natural inclinations to overcome; and if I lea^i towards sensationalism, why, the imageless minds, the minds of the extreme verbal type, lean just as strongly in the opposite direc- tion. A critic will often begin — fairly enough — WHAT IS SENSATIONALISM? 23 by charging his author with bias, but will then proceed to state his own views in complete un- consciousness of a very robust counter-bias. Well! it is from the clash of these individual psychologies that a generalised psychology of thought must arise. The individual psychologist can avoid misrepresentation and unfair imputa- tion; to that extent he can and must achieve impartiality; but he cannot wholly transcend the limits of his mental constitution. Philosophy itself, we have recently been told, is in no negli- gible degree a question of temperament. I am ready, then, to acknowledge a tendency toward sensationaUsm, if that is the logical infer- ence from my mental type. But it is important to know precisely what the sensationaUsm of experimental psychology connotes. Otherwise, we shall be unable to trace its consequences, and we shall be in danger of reading into it historical implications, perhaps of an epistemological sort, which are entirely foreign to its psychological meaning. Sensationalism is succinctly defined, in Bald- win's Dictionary, as "the theory that aU knowl- edge originates in sensations ; that all cognitions, even reflective ideas and so-called intuitions, can be traced back to elementary sensations."^® It is thus, primarily, a theory of the origin of knowl- 24 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM edge, not a theory of the genesis of thought. "Historically," — the Dictionary continues, — "it is generally combined with Associationalism." Turning to Associationism, in the same work, we find the following definition: "The theory which, starting with certain simple and ultimate con- stituents of consciousness, makes mental develop- ment consist solely or mainly in the combination of these elements according to certain laws of association. According to this theory, rigidly carried out, all genesis of new products is due to the combination of pre-existing elements."^^ Here is psychological formulation. But it would be a great mistake, though it is a mistake not seldom made, to confuse the sensationalism of experimental psychology with the doctrine of associationism. Let us see wherein the two kinds of sensationalism diifei;. In the first place, \the associationists did not distinguish the theory of knowledge from the theory of thoughJU "The British thinkers of the past" — I am quoting from a British thinker of the present — "were far from keeping their psy- chology unadulterated. . . . They gave us, in general, psychology and philosophy inextricably intermingled." "Their work often shows a cross- ing of interests and of points of view. Questions of logic and theory of knowledge were mixed up ASSOCIATIONISM 25 with the more properly psychological inquiry."^" In fact, the associationists dealt, on principle,, with logic al mean ings; not with sensations, but! with sensations-of ; not with ideas, but with) ideas-of ; it is only incidentally that they leave the plane of meaning for the plane of existence. The expgrimentalists, on the other hand, aim to des cribe the conten^jQ£.c onsciousness not as they meaiLbut as the y are. An a3m3raHeT[Iusta'ation of this change of standpoint is furnished by the doctrine of association itself. We were formerly taught that the idea of Napoleon calls up the idea of Julius Caesar because both men were great generals : it is a case of association by simi- larity; and that the idea of church calls up the idea of state because the two ideas have often been conjoined in experience: it is a case of asso- ciation by contiguity. But when Ebbinghaus began the experimental study of memory and association, he chose as his materials nonsense- syllables, verbal forms that lacked verbal mean- ing, contents that presented themselves simply as existential. These syllables, he points out, are qualitatively simple and homogeneous: "out of many thousand combinations of letters there are only a dozen or two that make sense, and of these again there are only a few that arouse the thought of their sense or meaning during the 26 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM process of learning" ; and they are also quantita- tively variable, "whereas to break off before the end or to begin in the middle of a verse or a sentence entails manifold disturbances of the sense and so introduces all sorts of complica- tions."'^ It is, indeed, these nonsense-syllables that have mainly helped us to our present knowl- edge of the mechanics of reproduction. You may roughly measure the advance by comparing Ebbinghaus' chapter on Die Aufeitianderfolge der seelischen Gebilde with Bain's chapters on Intellect. I do not say, of course, that experi- mental psychology ignores meaning; in so far as meaning is a phase or aspect of conscious contents, it is taken account of; but it is taken account of sub specie eccistentice. And where existence is the form to be considered, we sim- pUfy our task and hasten our progress by select- ing, as the first materials of experiment, contents to which that form is natural and adequate.^^ Locke's ideas, then, and James Mill's ideas, were meanings, thought-tokens, bits of knowl- edge ; (_the sensations and ideas of modern psychologv are Erlebnisse, data of immediate experienqt^ And the change of standpoint brings with it a second principal difference between the older and the newer sensationalism. Meanings are stable, and may be discussed with- THE IDEA AS PROCESS 27 out reference to time ; so that a psychology whose elements are meanings is an atomistic psychol- ogy; the elements join, like blocks of mosaic, to give static formations, or connect, like the links of a chain, to give discrete series. But experi- ence is^ontiimousjajndjLXunction of time; so that a psychology whose elem ents are sensationspm" the_ modern sense of the term, is a process- pjyEhoIogy, Jmiflcent. botL. of mosaic and of <^ncatenationj;^ This is a point which Wundt, the father of experimental psychology, never tires of emphasizing. In a well-known passage, in which he is appraising the value of the experi- mental method for his own psychological development, he says : "I learned from it that the ahlg _ftnd tra nsrhTTy JJf^^^Ms££^^^-^e;::i::^l^^^aa ; and I saw that, for that reason, the old doctrine of association is no longer tenable."^' And again, in protesting against the hypostatisation of ideas, he writes: "Thejd[egslliemselves are not objects, as by .ccmfusicm,J5dth.Jiieir objects they are supposed to be, but they are occurrences, Ereignisse, that grow and decay and during their brief passage are in constant change."^^ Now I dare say that you have heard or read dozens of statements to this effect. What I want you to do, however, and what I want some of our 28 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM philosophical critics to do, is to realise what the statements mean; to realise that those who do their business in the laboratories are ^Iways operating and observing in terms of process) The realisation is not quite easy: first, because language is discontinuous, and our descriptions must substitute a word-mosaic for the moving pictures of experience ; and secondly, because the terms which we are obUged to use for these descriptions are already stamped as meanings by their use in previous systems. Even so modern a psychologist as James has not worked out to entire clearness in this matter. In his chapter on The Stream of Thought he speaks, you wiU remember, of the varying rate at which succes- sive psychoses shade gradually into one another. "When the rate is slow," he goes on, "we are aware of the object of our thought in a com- paratively restful and stable way. When rapid, we are aware of a passage, a relation, a transi- tion from it, or between it and something else." Consciousness, "like a bird's Ufe, seems to be made up of an alternation of flights and perch- ings." So he distinguishes the substantive from the transitive parts of the stream of thought. "Now it is very difficult, introspectively, to see the transitive parts for what they really are. . . . The rush of the thought is so headlong that it THE 'FEELINGS OF RELATION' 29 almost always brings us up at the conclusion before we can arrest it. . . . The attempt at introspective analysis in these cases is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or try- ing to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks."^^ But is there not here a confusion between what is transitive in function and what is transient in experience? Does it not often happen that the flight is steadier and lasts longer than the perching? I think that a good deal of the mystery which attaches to the feelings of 'if and 'but' is due to sheer confusion of logical meaning and psychological process, of transitive and transitory. The conditioning and the excepting consciousnesses may, in fact, move more slowly than the object-consciousnesses to which they refer. And if James had looked away from 'awareness of object' and 'awareness of relation,' and had looked toward the actual contents of consciousness, we should not have heard of the top and the gas-jet. Contrast, for instance, his treatment of the 'feeling of the central active self.' "It is difficult for me to detect in the activity any purely spiritual element at aU. Whenever my introspective glance suc- ceeds in turning round quickly enough to catch one of these manifestations of spontaneity in the act, all it can ever feel distinctly is some bod- 30 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM ily process, for the most part taking place within the head."** Why cannot the introspective glance do as much for the feelings of relation? But we must return for a moment to associa- tionism./l said that the psychology of meanings left us wtEK mosaic arrangements or with discrete series. You may reply that this characterisation is unfair. James Mill speaks, for instance, of the coalescence of ideasT] "where two or more ideas have been repeatedtogether, and the asso- ciation has become very strong, they sometimes spring up in such close combination as not to be distinguishable"; the idea of weight — ^to take a single illustration — involves the ideas of resist- ance and direction and the "feeling or feelings denominated Will," and resistance and direction are themselves compounded of simpler ideas.^^ And John Mill writes, in the same spirit: "When impressions have been so often experienced in conjunction that each of them calls up readily and instantaneously the ideas of the whole group, those ideas sometimes melt and coalesce into one another, and appear not several ideas, but one, in the same manner as, when the seven prismatic colours are presented to the eye in rapid succes- sion, the sensation produced is that of white. . . . These therefore are cases of mental chemistry, in which it is proper to say that the simple ideas ASSOCIATIVE GENERATION 31 generate, rather than that they compose, the complex ones." That is from the Logic.^^ There is a similar passage in the Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: "If any- thing similar to this [that is, to colour mixture] obtains in our consciousness generally (and that it obtains in many cases of consciousness there can be no doubt) it will f oUow that whenever the organic modifications of our nervous fibres suc- ceed one another at an interval shorter than the duration of the sensations or other feelings cor- responding to them, those sensations or feelings wiU, so to speak, overlap one another, and becom- ing simultaneous instead of successive, wiU blend into a state of feeling, probably as unlike the elements out of which it is engendered as the colour of white is unlike the prismatic colours.'"^ (It seems to me, however, that associationism has here fallen out of the frying-pan into the fire. The principle of association, which was to be in the world of mind what the principle of gravita- tion is in the world of matter^" Here is a kind of attraction," said Hume, "which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to show itself in as many and as various forms,"*" — this principle fhas broken down, and composition has been sup- plemented by generation, mechanical mixture by 32 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM chemical combinatiojj, I see no gain; I see rather an equal misunderstanding of chemistry and of psychology.*^ It is, however, a misunder- standing which has been fruitful of bad conse- quences, and of which we are not yet wholly free. I believe, nevertheless, that experimental 1 psychology has, in the main, transcended the doctrine of mental chemistry. Colour mixture — the illustration chosen by the two Mills and before them by Hartley*^ — is, as we all know, not a mixture of visual sensations, but the sensory resultant of the interplay of excitatory processes in the retina. That is a minor matter. But, in general,' we have better means than a false chemi- cal analogy for explaining what cannot be explained in terms of a straightforward associa- tionism. We have learned, for instance, to make allowance for complication of conditions; we do not expect, if two sensations are put together, to obtain a simple concurrence of their two quali- ties; we expect that the synergy of the under- lying physiological processes will, in some way, become manifest in consciousness^ We may speak of general attributes of sensation, as Ebbinghaus does; or we may speak of Gestalt- qualitdt, form of combination, funded character; or we may speak of the organisation of elements in the state of attention. Different systems deal MENTAL CHEMISTRY 33 with the facts in different ways, and one psy- chologist entertains possibilities that another rejects; but at all egents there is aio need of a mental chemistr^ [We have learned, again, that physiological conditions may produce their effect not within but upon consciousness; that nervous sets and tendencies may direct the course of conscious processes without setting up new and special processes of their own. We have learned, also, that such formations as perception and action can be understood only in the light of their history and development; the life of mind is, throughout, subject to a law of growth and decay, of gradual expansion and gradual reduc- tion; what is now, so to say, a mere tag or label upon a dominant formation may, a little while ago, have been itself a focal complex, and the formation to which it attaches may, a little while hence, sink to the parasitic level. We have all this knowledge, and much more, to supplement what we know of the mechanics of reproduction, the modern substitute for the laws of associa- tion; and there is, surely, good hope that we may work out a psychology of thought without taking any such leap in the dark as John Mill took when he added generation to compositio^^ I have mentioned two principal differences between the older and the newer sensationahsm. 3 34 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM The experimental psychologist deals with exist- ences, and not"with meanings; and his elements are processes, whose temporal course is of their very nature, and not substances, solid and resist- ant to the lapse of time. These differences illustrate, as they follow from, the more funda- mental difference of general attitude. /Current sensationalism is a result to which we are led by empirical analysis, and its sensations are simple processes abstracted from conscious experience, last terms in the psychological study of mind. The associationism of the English school is a preconceived theory, and its sensations are, accordingly, productive and generative elements, first terms in a logical construction of mmdj Associationism, in other words, puts sensations together, as physical atoms or chemical molecules, while modern psychology finds sensations to- gether in the given mental process. This wider consideration brings us now to a third principal difference between the two stand- points which we are comparing. vQie sensation- alism of modern psychology is simply an heuristic principle, accepted and applied for what it is worth in the search for the mentaL elements, — whereas the older sensationalism, just because it was a preconceived theory, required that the facts conform to it, whether they would or whether CURRENT SENSATIONALISM 35 they would ngtJ The Dictionary from which we have already quoted defines the 'composition theory' of mind as "the hypothesis that our mental states are the resultant of the varied combinations of certain primitive elements. (In its extreme form it assumes that the ultimate units of composition are all of one kind/|*® I suppose that the older sensationalism is, strictly, an extreme form of this theory; (^at the units which it postulates should all be sensations or the ideal derivatives of sensations^^ James Mill is, then, only playing the rules of the game when he speaks of pleasure and pain as sensations, and of desire and aversion as the ideas of these sensa- tions." But, [in this matter of the affective processes, the majority of present-day psycholo- gists have abandoned the strict letter of sensa- tionalism; they have placed pleasantness and unpleasantness under a separate rubricJ No doubt, there are some who, for psychological reasons, identify feeling with sensation. The demand for that identification comes, however, in its most insistent guise, from the outside, — from physiology and philosophy. I wish that I had time and occasion to speak of our debt to physiology, a debt which, in this sphere of sen- sation, is especially heavy. But it is clear that the physiologists themselves have had no need 36 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM of more than a popular psychology, the mixture of faculty-psychology and associationism that passes as common sense ; if they psychologise on their own behalf, they do so in terms of the or- gans of sense and the sensory and associational areas of the cortex; and sensationalism appears to them to be both logical and adequate.*^ The philosophers, the theorists of knowledge, are con- cerned with the presuppositions of science, which it is their task to classify and to criticise ; natur- ally, then, they lay greater stress upon formal consistency than the psychologist dares or can aflford to do.*® For the actual problem before psychology is, not the discovery of sensations, but 'the disentanglement of the mental elements. ^^Tiat I wish you to remember, therefore, in this third place, is that(§ensationalism is an heuristic principle and not a creedl) If modern psychology is to be tenned sensationalistic, that is not be- cause it is wedded to sensation. It must mean simply thai psychology prefers to work with as few tools as possible, and that sensation alone, or sensation and affection together, seem to give it all that it requires for the work of analysis. Wundt, for example, wiU hear nothing of a thought-element; his whole psychology, includ- ing the psychology of thought, is based upon these two elementary processes; and yet, if we CURRENT SENSATIONALISM 37 were classifying systems, we should place him rather with the voluntarists than with the sensa- tionalists.*'' Could there be stronger evidence for the point that I am urging? In fine, then, experimental psychology tries to save what is psychological from associationism on the one hand and from physiological sensa-) t ionalism on the other._ _ Associationism it trans- forms and reinterprets from beginning to end. It accepts from physiology the view that sensa- tions_ are the outcome of analysis, while it rejects or modifies the concrete form in which the view is presented, the naive doctrine of psychical cells and o rgans and ce ntres. It saves what it can, and adds only where it must ; and for this obedi- ence to the law of parsimony it pays a price, the price of that mistaken and undeserved criti- cism which confuses the new with the old. But, on the whole, it finds its account in the saving. And if you will avoid the confusion, and are pre- pared to agree that the position to-day is, in general, as I have described it, then I am ready on my side to plead guilty to a 'sensationalistic' bias. LECTURE II REFERENCE TO OBJECT' AS THE CRITERION OF MIND LECTURE II 'REFERENCE TO OBJECT' AS THE CRITERION OP MIND I MAINTAINED, in the preceding Lecture, that it is possible to ideate a meaning, — that the meaning, say, of the word 'animal' may be given, psychologically, as a visual image which appears before the mind's eye when the word is presented. This doctrine, now, is open to an obvious objection. 'Your word and your visual image,' a critic might say, 'are simply two ideas, two items of experience regarded, to use your own phrase, under the form of existence. But two existences do not make a meaning. You have only pushed the problem of meaning a step further back, from presented word to imaged animal; you have still to show how the image itself can mean. As a i matter of fact, m eanin g consist&Ja. reference , reference .. to. thexibjeeLof thoughtor_of_ ideaj^and this reference, as an author whom you cited very rightly said, can be known, but certainly cannot be imaged.' But, indeed, I need not quote an imaginary critic; I can take the objection, bodily, from a recent article. Let me read a few sentences. 41 42 REFERENCE TO OBJECT "The fundamental problem of meaning [is] the rela- tion of sign to thing signified, the 'objective reference' of the sign. There are passages in Professor James' Psychology in which he says explicitly that the objec- tive reference of the sign consists in its psychic fringe. . . . [But] so long as the fringe is merely a psychical fact or occurrence, it seems nonsense to say that it is the meaning of another psychical occurrence. It amounts to saying that the meaning of a sign is to be found in other signs. But where, then, is the 'thing signified.'" "^ I have no wish to slur this objection. I be- Keve, in spite of it, that two ideas do, under certain circumstances, make a meaning; and I shall try, later on, to specify the circumstances. In the meantime, however, it seems necessary to consider this question of 'objective reference.' And I think we cannot do better than Go direct to those psychologists who make reference to an object the criterion of mind, the character that distinguishes the mental from the physical, and whose classification of mental phenomena de- pends accordingly upon the various forms that objective reference may take.)-^ I begin with Brentano. If you turn to the table of contents of the Psychologic vom empir- ischen Standpunhte, you will find a section en- titled "Characteristisch fiir die psychischen PSYCHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION 43 Phanomene ist die Beziehung auf ein Object," — characteristic of psychical phenomena is their reference to an object. The phrase is ambiguous, and 'reference to an object' does not mean what, at first thought, you would suppose it to mean. Read, for instance, Brentano's summary of the most notable essays towards a classifica- tion of mental phenomena that have been made in the history of psychology. They are four in number: three of them we owe to Aristotle, the fourth to Spencer and Bain. The last-mentioned authorities divide mental phenomena into two great groups, as primitive and derivative. The Aristotelian classifications distinguish, first, psy- choses that are and psychoses that are not con- nected with bodily processes; and secondly, psychoses that are shared by man with the ani- mals, and psychoses that are peculiar to man. The remaining principle of classification, "which at all times has found wide-spread application," distinguishes mental phenomena by differences in the mode of their intentional inexistence.^ Since it is this fourth principle that Brentano himself accepts, we shall find in it the meaning of that 'reference to an object' which for him characterises mental phenomena at large. What, then, is this 'intentional inexistence' ? "Every psychical pEehomenon^" Brentano 44 REFERENCE TO OBJECT says, "is characterised by what the scholastics of the Middle Age have termed the intentional . . . inexistence of an object, and what we should term . . . reference to a content, direction upon an object ('object' not meaning here a 'reality'), or immanent objectivity. All alike contain within them something as their object, although they do not all contain the ob- ject in the same way. In idea something is ideated, in judgment something is accepted or rejected, in love something is loved, in hate hated, in desire desired, and so on. This intentional inexistence is the exclusive property of psy- chical phenomena. No physical phenomenon shows anything hke it. And we may accord- ingly define psychical phenomena by saying that they are phenomena which intentionally contain an object."' In other words, the 'object' to which a mental phenomenon r efers is not an object in -the-outside world, a physical object in our sense, — ^though Brentano would make it a physical phenomenon, — but rather what we should term a mental content. Brentano splits up idea, judgment, interest, into act and con- tent: the act is psychical, the content physical. "I understaSdTBy Idea not that which is ideated [the content of the idea], but the act of ideation. Thus, the hearing of a tone, the seeing of a IMMANENT OBJECTIVITY 45 coloured object, the sensing of warm or cold, [these are psychical phenomena; whereas] a colour . . . that I see, a chord that I hear, warmth, cold, odour that I sense, these are examples of physical phenomena."* We shall therefore do well to avoid so far as possible, the use of the word 'object,' and to speak of the psychical phenomenon as evincing the distinction of act and content. What shall we say to a view of this kind? Well, our first question may very properly be the question of the universality of the alleged criterion. All psychical phenomena, says Bren- tano, show this immanent objectivity. Now listen to Hamilton. "In the phenomena of cognition, consciousness distinguishes an object from the subject knowing. This object may be of two kinds : — it may either be the quality of something different from the ego [object-object]; or it may be a modification of the ego or subject itself [subject-object] . . . This objectifica- tion is the quality which constitutes the essential peculiarity of Cognition. In the phenomena of Feeling, ... on the contrary, consciousness does not place the mental modification or state before itself; it does not contemplate it apart, — as sepa- rate from itself, — ^but is, as it were fused into one. The peculiarity of Feeling, therefore, is 46 REFERENCE TO OBJECT that there is nothing but what is subjectively subjective; there is no . . . objectification of any mode of self."* In Feeling, then, in Pleasure and Pain or, as we should say, in pleasantness and unpleasantness, we have, according to Ham- ilton, psychical phenomena that are not analys- able into act and content. If the exception stands, Brentano's criterion is invalid. Brentano replies,® first, that certain feelings do, unmistakably, refer to a content, and that language indicates this reference. I am glad about something, I am pleased at something, I am sorry for something. Joy and sorrow, like affirmation and negation, love and hate, desire and aversion, follow in the train of an idea and refer to the content of that idea. But secondly, even where the reference is not immediately evi- dent, as in the experience of a cut or a bum, there is still something more than mere pain (that is, unpleasantness) in consciousness. We say: I have burned my hand, I have cut my finger; spatial localisation is involved, the idea of a definite locality. Indeed, there is more than that. Just as act and content are implied when- ever I say: I see a colour, I hear a tone, so pre- cisely are act and content implied when I say: I feel pain, or I feel pleasure. The cut or burn or tickle is given as content, as a physical phe- HAMILTON vs. BRENTANO 47 nomenon, and the concomitant feeling, the psy- chical phenomenon, can be distinguished from it by any but the most superficial observer. Feel- ing, then, always has a content. It is, however, true, thirdly, that the content to which a feeling refers need not be a physical phenomenon. When I listen to a consonant chord, the pleasure that I feel is not so much a pleasure in the tones as a pleasure in hearing. "Indeed, one might perhaps say, and be right in saying, that the pleasure in a certain sense really refers to itself, so that Hamilton is more or less accurately describing what happens when he de- clares that, in feeling, consciousness is fused into one." This is a rather puzzling statement; but we get Ught upon it if we turn to Brentano's psychology of cognition. Consider what is meant, in Brentano's system, by a pleasure in hearing. It is act of act: a psychical phenome- non takes, as its content, not a physical but an- other psychical phenomenon. Can, then, an act be the content of another act? Yes: Brentano saves himself from the infinite regress of psy- chical phenomena by the hypothesis that, for example, the idea of a tone (act and content), and the idea of that idea (act and act), and the idea of the idea of that idea (act and act and act) , and so on, are given together in an eigen- 48 REFERENCE TO OBJECT thiimliche Verwehung, a peculiar interweaving, — Hamilton's fusion: the single act of ideation has as its content both the physical phenomenon of tone and itself, the act of ideation, once or oftener repeated/ So pleasure may be pleas- ure's own content; and, if so, feeling will always be a phenomenon of the subjective-objective, and not of the subjectively subjective sort. Besides, — ^here Brentano again resumes the aggressive, — the term 'subjectively subjective' is, after all, self -contradictory; for if you have no object, then you have no right to speak of a subject. And when Hamilton ajSirms that, in feeling, consciousness is fused into one, he is really bear- ing testimony against his own position. To get a fusion, you must have at least two things to fuse; and the two things are, naturally, Bren- tano's act and content. Hamilton's objection has been met; but I question if it has been satisfactorily met. Sup- pose that an affective process may stand alone in consciousness, without basis or accompaniment of sensation. Kiilpe believes that such a state of things is possible: "we have feelings which are not accompanied by or attached to definite sensations, or which arise where the nervous con- ditions of sensation are debarred from the exercise of their ordinary influence on con- THE STATUS OP FEELING 49 sciousness."® Ladd asserts that "the feelings may assume either one of the three possible time-rela- tions towards the sensations and ideas by which we classify them; they may fuse with them in the 'now' of the same conscious state, or they may lead or follow them."® Wundt also believes that the affective process may enter conscious- ness alone, as the herald of the sensory process with which it is connected.-^" Suppose, then, that this is the case. Is there any reason for saying that the isolated pleasantness is the pleasantness of a pleasantness, or the isolated unpleasantness the unpleasantness of an unpleasantness? Surely there is none, — ^unless it be that you have to save a theory. Surely, it is the theory that reads the fusion and the interweaving into what ap- pears, introspectively, as an unanalysable ex- perience. I am not defending Hamilton's terminology, you see; I think, indeed, that the less we hear in psychology of subject and object, the better for us and for the science. But I argue that, if the separate occurrence of affective processes is a fact of observation, as Kiilpe and Ladd and Wundt testify that it is, then a valid exception has been found to Brentano's defini- tion of the psychical. We are in presence of a psychical phenomenon that is, so to say, all act, and has no content. 4 50 REFERENCE TO OBJECT However, I am forced to go farther. I do not discover, in my own case, that affective processes can stand alone in consciousness/^ And as there are psychologists who agree with me, I feel constrained to leave the question open, and to consider Brentano's position on its merits. My fundamental objection to it may at this point be stated very briefly as foUows: I think that a psychological fact, a datum of observation, has been cast, by reflection, into logical form; and I think that, here as everywhere, the inter- jection of logic has been detrimental to psychol- ogy. I come back to this matter later on. In the meantime I notice that Brentano himself, who, as you wUl remember, declares that the prin- ciple of immanent objectivity "has at all times found widespread application" in attempts at classification, — I am not now discussing whether this statement is right or vrrong, — Brentano him- self shows that it has led to very difi^erent results in different hands.^^ Aristotle was satisfied to distinguish thought and desire; the moderns have adopted the threefold division into_idea_feeling and appetition; Brentano throws feeling and desire into the single category of interest, and recognises judgment as an ultimate form of psychosis alongside of idea. Changes of this sort seem dictated rather by convenience of logi- IMMANENT OBJECTIVITY 51 cal arrangement than by direct reference to ex- perience. It is true that Brentano appeals, even more confidently than I am inclined to do, to the 'immediate evidence of introspection' and the 'judgment of the impartial observer.'^^ This is the way of all psychologists when they are in straits for an argument, and you must not lay too great stress upon either side of the contention : the experimental technique for the study of judg- ment, in particular, has not yet been perfected. But I call your attention to two further points. The first is, that Brentano has not yet pub- lished his second volume. Since the volume that we have dates from 1874, it is only fair to sup- pose that its author found it difficult to complete his system on the principles adopted at its incep- tion. The second is, that Brentano's arguments in favor of his criterion are couched in terms which themselves imply that criterion. "Let us suppose," he says, "that hearing has no other content than itself. Still, no one could make the same assumption with regard to other psychical acts, such as the acts of recollection and expec- tation, — the recollection of a past or the expecta- tion of a future hearing, — ^without committing himself to the most obvious absurdity."^* The phrase 'hearing has no other content than it- self is intended to represent the views of those 52 REFERENCE TO OBJECT who, like James Mill,* draw no distinction of act and content. I do not think, however, that this position is fairly represented by the state- ment that 'hearing has no other content than itself ; Mill's words have been translated into the language of a foreign theory; and it is only through the translation that Brentano's parallel of present hearing with the recollection of a past and the expectation of a future hearing becomes relevant. "In themselves," remarks John MiU, "[memories and expectations] . . . are present feelings, states of present consciousness, and in that respect not distinguished from sensations."^^ Precisely! If you take a memory-consciousness and an expectation-consciousness as they are given existentiaUy to psychology, you find no more reason to distinguish act and content in them than you find in the case of sensation.t — All that I have said, so far, may be sumtmed * Mill takes as illustration the prick of a pin. "Now, when, having the sensation, I say I feel the sensation, I only use a tautological expression: the sensation is not one thing, the feeling another; the sensation is the feeling. . . . The same explanation will easily be seen to apply to Ideas. ... To have an idea, and [to have] the feeling of that idea, are not two things; they are one and the same thing." That is explicit: and, in his section on Hearing, Mill is careful to point out the ambiguity of the term, and insists that hearing, as 'the feeling I have by the ear,' is 'the sensation called a sound.' t It IB true that John Mill at once loses himself in the episte- mological difficulty of "a series of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future"; I have said that this confusion of CRITIQUE OF BRENTANO 53 up in a few words. I take the act-and-content psychology to be a psychology not of observation but of r eflect ion. I note that it has led, in differ- ent hands, to very different classificatory systems. I think that Brentano found a difficulty in car- rying it over from the general to the particular. And I regard his criticism of the opposing stand- point as unfair, because it implies throughout the very distinction which is in dispute. It would be satisfactory, now, if we could find a psychol- ogy which, without entering upon controversial ground, set forth the principles and the facts of the science in accordance with Brentano's criterion; the issue would then be narrowed down to that of observation and reflection, and we could compare the exposition, as a whole, with that which we have, for instance, in Kiilpe's Outlines or in Ebbinghaus' Grundzilge. Such a work we find, in fact, in Witasek's Grundlinien der Psychologies published last year, psychology with philosophy is characteristic of the English schooL But that does not affect the correctness of the psychological posi- tion from which he starts. On the other hand, I am not sure that his present co-partner in the confusion, Brentano, is not open to the further charge of psychological confusion, of confusion within the limits of his own definition of the psychical. I am not sure that Brentano's parallel of act of memory and act of expectation with act of idea can be admitted, even by a psychologist who accepts the act-and-content criterion; both the nature of the act itsdf and the relation which it sustains to content appear to be widely different in the two cases. 54 REFERENCE TO OBJECT — a compact and thoughtful httle book, of which I should be glad to say pleasant things ; but with which I am here concerned only under a single aspect, and from whose teaching in that especial regard I dissent. Witasek does not, as Brentang does, make inmianen L obiectivity tJ ie^jEiiterion of_^m^d; but he asserts that all the funda- mental psychical formations, the psychischen Grundgebilde, show, "at least in a certain sense," the distinction of act and content. He illustrates the distinction by reference to idea. There is a certain part of the constitution of an idea {Teil der Beschaffenheiten einer Vorstellung) by means of which it brings a determinate object to consciousness ; this is its content. There is also a certain respect in which an idea resembles all other ideas but diifers from formations, like feeling and judgment, that are not ideas; a respect in which, further, one idea differs from another, idea of perception from idea of imagina- tion. This second part or aspect of the idea is its act. Content and act are inggparab ly co n- nected in the idea, and both alikeare psy chica l; both, therefore, are _ta Jbie. d.istillguishedJrom the object of idea, whi ch is usually physical.^ ^ My first criticism upon this introductory pas- sage — in what follows I shall combine criticism with exposition of Witasek's system — is that it WITASEK ON ACT AND CONTENT 55 makes the idea the typical, indeed the only full and complete, mental process.^'' The funda- mental psychical formations are, we are told, of two kinds, intellectual and emotional. The in- tellectual divide again into ideas and thoughts, the emotional into feelings and desires. ^^ Now at the beginning of the book, the psychical fact, the subject-matter of psychology, is defined by reference to idea, and the other kinds of psychi- cal formation are listed, so to say, in an appen- dix.^®" When the distinction of act and content is first drawn, we are left 'doubtful' whether the content of feeling, wish, etc., is directly or in- directly given: given, that is, in the same way as content of idea is given with act of idea, or given only secondarily, as something that is al- ready content of idea.^° But when we reach the special psychology of feeling and judgment, the doubt has disappeared. "No content is necessa- rily and by its very nature bound up with the act of feeling, as content of idea is bound up with act of idea; . . . the act of feeling is a psychical formation which brings into consciousness no new content of its own."^^ Feeling-content is, always, ready-made ideational content: "there are no contents, accompanied by feelings, that cannot be classified outright as contents of idea." The same thing holds of judgment. "In judg- 56 REFERENCE TO OBJECT ment, as in idea, we must distinguish the two moments of act and content; but while the act, which supervenes upon the ideas comprised in the judgment, is something novel and peculiar, the content of judgment is identical with the content of these ideas." Here, it seems to me, we have psychology committed to a sensationalism or an intellectualism that is far more dangerous, because far more closely connected with theory of knowledge, than the laboratory sensationalism of which I spoke in the last Lecture. The idea, let me repeat, is the sole mental process that ful- fils the definition of psychical fact; thought and feeling and desire can be brought under the definition only by a change in the meaning of 'content'; intrinsically they are aU act, and the content upon which their act is directed is con- tent that has already been brought to conscious- ness by act of idea. I submit that, other things equal, that psychology will be preferable which refuses thus to prejudice the issue in favour of idea, and which places all mental formations, as psychical facts, upon the same level. My second criticism is this. If, in every type of conscious process, you distinguish act and con- tent, you have to duplicate your psychology; everything must be treated twice over, from the point of view of act and from the point of view WITASEK ON JUDGMENT 57 of content. There is, of course, a certain sav- ing, if all content is ultimately content of idea; but even so you have to treat of the relation of the other types of act to this one type of content. Things thus become very complicated. Why not, you will say, if the psychical facts themselves are complicated? Well, I grant that objection; my criticism lies farther on. It is that the dupli- cation of treatment leads both to over-articula- tion and to neglect of analysis. You get too many headings, and you are too apt to assumie that the processes covered by the headings are psychologically irreducible. Let me illustrate by reference to Witasek's psychology of judg- ment. The act of judgment. Jhas, he says, two characteristic and essential moments : first, the rnoment of belief, supposition, conYiction, and secondly the moment of affirmation and nega- tiorir~ But there is a further complication. The contact {Beruhrung) of ideational content with the moment of affirmation-negation gives rise to a new quasi-content, the fact which the judg- ment affirms or denies, the objective of the judg- ment. In order, then, to get a psychology of judgment, we have to distinguish act, content and object of idea, and twofold act and quasi- content of judgment. The objective of judg- ment, like the object of idea, is not strictly 58 REFERENCE TO OBJECT subject-matter for psychology; it is, however, psychologically useful as indicating the way in which the act of judgment 'approaches and con- nects with' the ideational content of judgment; we are able, for instance, by means of it, to psy- ehologise the difference between the existential and the categorical judgment of the text-books of logic. Both moments in the act of judgment vary in this matter of contact with contents. There are, further, a qualitative differentiation within the moment of affirmation-negation, and an inten- sive differentiation within that of conviction. Af- firmation and negation are themselves qualitative opposites, connected by qualitative transitional forms, probabilities, which under favourable circumstances are numerically determinable. The mention of probabilities leads us, however, to a third moment or attribute of certain acts of judgment: the attribute of evidence. This may be evidence of certainty, correlated with afiirma- tion and negation, the direct yes and no, or evi- dence of probability, correlative with some qualitative intermediary between affirmation and negation. I understand that the two proba- bilities are distinct: that you may have, in the act of judgment, both the affirmation of proba- bility, so to say, and the evidence of probability. WITASEK ON JUDGMENT 59 Finally, probability itself — one is reminded of the White Knight's Song in Through, the Look- ing Glass! — is the moment of the objective which the judgment of probability apprehends. — And we have still to consider the moment of convic- tion, which belongs with that of affirmation-nega- tion to the act of judgment. This moment, as I have just said, is intensively, not qualitatively, variable; it admits simply of degrees of assur- ance, from maximal assurance or positive con- viction down to zero assurance or to suspense of judgment. The intensive scale of degrees of assurance is by no means to be confused with the qualitative continuum of probabilities. — You will naturally suppose that this account of Witasek's psychology of judgment is a mere outline, abstracted from a long chapter in which the subject is worked out in detail and abun- dantly illustrated. Not at all! I have given you the contents of a little less than eight pages.^' T think that those pages suffer from over-articu- lation. I think, also, that their author is too ready with his acceptance of psychological ulti- mates. There are the variable modes of approach of act to contents; there is the qualitatively var riable moment of affirmation-negation; there is the intensively variable moment of conviction; there is the variable attribute of evidence : there 60 REFERENCE TO OBJECT are all these things, and they are all ultimate and irreducible. No ! I come back to my original point: this is a psychology of reflection. You must read for yourselves; especially, you must assure yourselves that the treatment of judg- ment is not exceptional, but typical of the book ; you must estimate the system as a whole, and compare it as a whole with other systems. In my opinion, it is the artificial product of a wrong initial attitude; logical construction has fore- stalled introspective examination.^* I said just now, however, when I was treating of Brentano, that it is a psychological fact, a datum of observation, that has been thus cast into logical form. And while I cannot accept the distinction of act and content, I believe that the distinction rests upon a truly psychological foundation, that the logic is the logic of psy- chology. There are, in a certain sense, a hearing, a feeling, a thinking, which are distinguishable from the tone and the pleasure and the thought. Only, the distinction comes to me, not as that of act and content, but as that of temporal course and qualitative specificity of a single process. I entered a plea, in the last Lecture, for a more general recognition of the process-character of mind; and I suggest here that this character is the psychological key to the problem that Bren- QUALITY AND DURATION 61 tano and Witasek seek to solve in terms of act and content. The way in which a process runs its course, — that is its 'act,' that is what con-j stitutes it sensing or feeling or thinking; the' quahty which is thus in passage, — that is its 'con-l tent,' that is what constitutes it tone or pleasure j The durational and the qualitative aspects of mental experience (I use the term 'qualitative' in the widest possible sense) are discriminable as aspects, though they are inseparable in fact; and the psychology of act and content does good psychological service if we take it to insist that the discrimination is essential to a complete analy- sis. Experimental psychology, I should readily admit, has not hitherto done its duty by dura- tion. Nevertheless, we have in the idea of 'pro- cess' an instrument of analysis that is adequate to its task, and that relieves us from the fatal necessity of asking help from logic.^^ II We set out to discuss, the views of those psy- chologists who make objective refeiience- the criterion.pf.mind, the character that distinguishes the psychical from the .physical. So far, we have dealt only with one form of this objective ref- erence, — with immanent objectivity, or the refr erence of act to content. We have now to 62 REFERENCE TO OBJECT consider another form, which we may perhaps designate transitive objectivity. "Human con- sciousness," says Stout, "is normally concerned witli some object or other. . . . There are three ways in which our consciousness is related to its object, • • . three ultimate modes of being conscious of an object: knowing, feeling and striving. . . . The word object must not be taken to mean merely material object, but whatever we can in any way be aware or cognisant of . . . . The object itself can never be identified with the present modifications of the individual conscious- ness by which it is cognised."^® "Brentano's 'object' is ... an appearance in consciousness . . . [But] the object as we mean and intend it, can- not be a modification of our own consciousness at the time we mean and intend it."^'^ Witasek, too, — you will remember that he does not make the distinction of act and content a criterion of mind, though the distinction is drawn through- out his psychological system, — writes to the same €3*601 as follows: "My ideation, my thinking, my feeling and my willing are always in their own peculiar way 'aimed' at something ; I ideate something, a something that is not ideation, per- haps a book; my thinking apprehends things that are themselves not thinking, that do not belong to mind at all. . . . The same thing holds TRANSITIVE OBJECTIVITY 63 of feeling and willing."^^ "The perceived is something different from the perception. The former is usually something physical, the latter is always psychical. The former is then subject- matter for the sciences of external nature, physics, chemistry, etc.; the latter belongs to psychology."^® There is a real and important difference be- tween this view and that of Brentano, although the two views cross and overlap in a rather puz- zling way. Brentanojiiakes the act of idea refer to the content of idea; andjie regards the con- tent of idea as a physical phenomenon, to be studied in its laws of coexistence and succession by the methods of natural science. ^ Stout and Witasek^regard the .whole idea, Brentano's act . and content both, as psychical phenomenon, and make this total idea refer to some extra-mental objectj^^Witasek, however, keeps the three terms distinct: act of idea, con tent of ide a, ob ject of idea^ all play their separate parts in his system. Stout, if I understand him aright, — and Stout is one of the men whose visual patterns I find it almost impossible to trace, although I get along very well with Brentano and Witasek; so that I am never quite sure that I have fully grasped his meaning, — Stout seems, in general, to rim content and act together, to consider content as 64 REFERENCE TO OBJECT simply a specific determination of act; so that, for instance, in a visual perception of red we have to distinguish, not the act of perceiving, the content red, and the red object, but rather a redly determined or redly modified perceiving, and the red object.^" However this may be, the difference between Brentano, on the one hand, and Stout and Witasek, on the other, is, as I have said, real and important. What, then, shall be our attitude to this extra- mental reference, and its claims as criterion of mind and as principle of mental classification? Well, we might dismiss it at once, solely on the ground of the adjective 'extra-mental.' "The concept of transcendence," Buhler writes, "has no sort of application in psychology. Be the object what it may, its determinations cannot be presented or given to us, cannot have significance for us, unless we are conscious of them. All the objective determinations of which I know are known in or by modifications of my conscious- ness; that is a self-evident proposition. And it is only with these modifications that psychology is concerned. . . The concept of something that transcends itself is just as contradictory in the sphere of psychical reality as it is everywhere else. Hence' the question of transcendence is not, as Stout and Hoernle think, a central prob- TKANSITIVE OBJECTIVITY 65 lem of the psychology of thought: on the con- trary, it is not a psychological prohlem at all."^^ I am afraid that Stout and Hoernle will not be so easily convinced. But it is enough for my purpose to quote a sentence from Witasek: "This [transitive] reference would be puzzling, nay more, it would be inconceivable," he says, "were we not so thoroughly familiar with it from our inner experience."^^ But 'inner experience' is, I suppose, identical with 'modification of con- sciousness,' in Biihler's sense. The objection is too summarily stated; it must be recast, and more carefully phrased, if it is to be eifective. I shall not attempt its restatement here; nor shall I do more than mention, in passing, the objection that the rule of transitive reference has obvious exceptions. We saw that this ob- jection was raised, also, against Brentano's dis- tinction of act and content. It may be raised, far more cogently, against the distinction of idea and object of idea. The feelings, for ex- ample, at once suggest themselves, and with a greater insistence than before. But, besides the feelings, we may instance the organic sensa- tions:^' what is the 'object' of mind in the sensation of hunger? — we may instance Bain's passive sensibility,^^ and Stout's sentience, or mere sensation, or anoetic consciousness;'^ we 66 REFERENCE TO OBJECT may instance those faintest sensations which, as we know from Kiilpe's experiments, are as likely to be subjectified as to be objectified;^^ we may, perhaps, instance the 'passive contents' found by Messer in his experiments by the method of the associative reaction, where the stimulus-words called up ideas that, intrinsically, were well adapted to touch off the response, but that, as a matter of fact, lacked all motor ten- dency, so that it simply did not occur to the ob- server to utilise them for associative purposes.'^ In all these cases, it might be argued that the transitive reference is absent. Nevertheless, I think that there is another and a bolder line for the objector to take. You will remember that Brentano made the distinction of act and content a peculiarity of the psychical phenomenon; "no physical phenomenon shows anything like it."^^ Witasek is just as emphatic with regard to transitive reference. "It is strictly limited to the psychical domain; search the physical world, the world of material things, as closely as you will, there is no trace of it to be discovered; you find spatial contiguity, spatial inclusion, relative movement, all sorts of rela- tions, but this Inner state of reference to and direction upon, this pointing of one thing to another, has no place in the scheme. Physical THE POINTING RELATION 67 things stand separate and self-contained; none points beyond itself in that peculiar sense which is made known to us by ideation, by physical phenomena at large."^^ Dogmatic statements of this sort are apt to stimulate to the very effort that they declare to be impossible. Suppose that we do make search, more or less careful, in the world of material things, and see if we cannot find a pointing, more or less analogous to the pointing of idea to its object! When* I first proposed this task to myself, my thought ran at once to cases in which the presence of one material phenomenon indicates the pres- ence of another, A column of smoke indicates the existence of a camp-fire; a drop of the ba- rometer indicates a change in the weather. But it is soon seen that instances of this kind wiU not serve our purpose. The pointing-relation which we are seeking to parallel may, as Witasek says, be in consciousness, but it is certainly not for consciousness. It is, you will remember, itself the criterion of consciousness, the character that marks off the psychical from the physical. It is intrinsic to mental process; and its analogue must be similarly intrinsic to physical process. Smoke, now, is a sign or symptom of fire; but it is symptomatic only to me, to the mind of the observer. We must look further. 68 REFERENCE TO OBJECT I thought, in the next place, of the doctrine of orthogenesis, defined, in our convenient Diction- ary^ as "evolution which is definitely directed or determinate by reason of the nature or principle of life itself."*" Eimer, the protagonist of this doctrine, declares that "organisms develop in definite directions . . . through purely physio- logical causes." "The causes of definitely di- rected evolution are contained ... in the effects produced by outward circumstances and influ- ences such as climate and nutrition upon the constitution of a given organism. . . . Develop- ment can take place in only a few directions because the constitution, the material composi- tion of the body, necessarily determines such directions and prevents indiscriminate modifica- tion." "The variations in living beings follow in perfect conformity to law a few definite direc- tions."*^ Eimer's special views are not popular with biologists, since they imply some sort of vitalism, and also the inheritance of acquired characters. But then, if you object to either or both of these implications, you may substitute for orthogenesis the doctrine of orthoplasy, of "determinate or definitely directed evolution under the laws of natural and organic selection." "Orthoplasy," — I am again quoting the Dic- tionary"*^ — "emphasizes natural selection work- ORTHOPLASY 69 ing upon variations in many cases screened and fostered by the presence of individual modifica- tions." It gives you the same result as ortho- genesis, without committing you to Eimer's interpretations. Well! but a 'definitely directed' evolution, working itself out in terms of mechanical cause and effect: does not that furnish an instance of the pointing-relation? Does not every term in the evolving series point forward to the next following term in a perfectly definite and une- quivocal way? I see no escape from that con- clusion. And I think that we must go even farther. Does not the very notion of an evolu- tion imply this relation of forward pointing? And since evolution is not confined to the organic world, but governs the inorganic as well, are we not forced to say that the whole course of nature, the entire realm of mechanical causation, mani- fests the same relation? If we accept the prin- ciple of evolution at all, I see no escape from this wider conclusion. So we arrive at the position that a pointing- towards, a direction-upon, a reference-to, is in- trinsic to all natural phenomena. There remains the question whether this particular mode of pointing is analogous to the pointing of psychical phenomenon to its object. And here objection 70 REFEEENCB TO OBJECT seems in place. The pointing of term to term in the evolutionary series represents, so to say, a linking together of different things, a passage away from one thing and up to another ; and, in so far, physical things still "stand separate and self-contained," as they do in Witasek's pages. Granted that the pointing is intrinsic to natural phenomena : nevertheless, the word 'intrinsic' has shifted its meaning. The pointing is intrinsic to the behaviour of things, of causes and effects; but it is intrinsic to the very nature or essence or constitution of mind. Our analogy is faulty, because it offers what is simply an external char- acter in lieu of a constitutive factor. The relation of mind to object is more than a mere pointing, a Hinweisen; it is also an inneres Bezogensein, a relation of necessary implication.** I confess that I cannot meet this objection. Even, however, if we were obliged to stop here, I think it would have been worth while to remind you that the pointing-relation — to take that term in its widest sense — ^is not uniquely an affair of mind; that it has an analogue in the external world, which appears wherever the law of evolu- tion runs. I might have added that, since there undoubtedly is a difference between the physical and the psychical, the analogy would naturally be expected to show imperfection. But let me ORGANIC RELATIONS 71 guide you a step further .still. The pointing- relation that inheres in mind is a relation, we said, of necessary implication. Now think of an organism, of the solar system or of the living animal. Did not the constitution of the solar system point to and imply the existence of Neptune; and was not Neptune sought and found in consequence? Does not the occurrence of some fossil tooth or bone point to and imply the existence of a total animal of a certain size and shape; and do we not reconstruct the fauna of the prehistoric world accordingly? I am speaking, always, of intrinsic pointing and in- trinsic implication; I am not concerned with the consciousness of the astronomer or of the paleontologist, though it is difficult to phrase the illustrations without giving that suggestion. The argument is that the constituent parts of any organised whole, whether the whole be the entire universe of stars or the individual living creature, point to and imply one another as such, as parts of a whole ; so that we may substitute for the analogy of serial linkage, which we just now drew from the course of evolution, the better and closer analogy of physical organisation. I have no liking for vitalism, and I have a definite dis- like of teleology;** I am thinking solely of a world in time, a mechanistic world that is ade- 72 REFERENCE TO OBJECT quately described in terms of cause and effect; my science is altogether orthodox. But it seems to me that the very fact of natural law, of such a law as the conservation of energy, means organisation ; and that, wherever you have organ- isation, you have also this relation of pointing- with-implication. And if that relation is not identical with the transitive reference of idea to object, is it not, at any rate, a near kinsman? The analogy may, indeed, be pressed in some detail. Every constituent part of an organism points to and impUes all the other parts. In the same way, the ideational process which is the vehicle of conceptual meaning is involved in a network of reproductive tendencies; it points to and implies all the special ideas that fall under the concept in question. The transitive reference of mind is, therefore, not necessarily a reference of one to one but may be a reference of one to many. And conversely, one and the same object may be signified by many different mental processes : precisely as the existence of an undis- covered planet, of a certain mass and orbital path, may be indicated by various planetary irregularities, or a heart of a certain type may be variously indicated by a number of fossil remains. I have no desire to push these parallels too far; but they show — do they not? — that our analogy THE POINTING KELATION 73 from physical organisation is more than external. Nevertheless, I fear that many of you have found this entire discussion exceedingly crude. You have been accustomed to view the transitive reference of mind from a philosophical stand- point, the standpoint of a theory of knowledge; and my quest for its physical counterpart has seemed to yOu to miss the real issue, to shoot beside the mark. I must insist, however, that this transitive reference is offered by psycholo- gists, in works upon psychology, as the psycho- logical criterion of mind and as a principle of psychological classification. And psychology moves upon the plane of natural science, and not upon the plane of philosophy. Hence it is upon the scientific level that the criterion must be tested. If philosophy finds the transitive refer- ence of mind unique, psychology as science is not bound by that decision, — any more than, if the relation appeared as unique in our 'inner experi- ence,' this verdict of introspection would be binding upon philosophy. Close as the connec- tion between psychology and epistemology may be, it is, after all, the connection of a special science with a general philosophical discipline. On the other hand, I must not be unfair to the psychologists. The passage which I quoted, some time ago, from Witasek, — the passage in 74 REFERENCE TO OBJECT which he declares that transitive reference is "strictly limited to the psychical domain," — con- tinues as follows. "Here is the most tangible, the most characteristic difference between the two fields [of physical and psychical], though we cannot either say that it is what constitutes their essential diversity {Wesensverschieden- heit) ; it, too, is merely an index of this diversity, which itself cannot be expressed except by the antithesis of material and mental."*^ If, as I hope, the term 'essential diversity' does not mean ultimate, metaphysical diversity, but simply di- versity in first-hand experience, Witasek here shows that he would be ready, were proof forth- coming, to adopt any other criterion of mind which should come nearer than that of transitive reference to empirical reality. In the first part of this Lecture I argued that the psychology of act and content is a psychology of reflection, and that the psychology of process, which translates that distinction into terms of temporal course and qualitative specificity, comes to closer quarters with the subject-matter of the science. In the second part I have argued that transitive reference cannot be made the criterion of mind, since it appears — no doubt with minor differences — in every form of organisation. It seemed more important to urge this consideration TRANSITIVE OBJECTIVITY 75 than to repeat, mutatis mutandis, what I had already said against the doctrine of immanent objectivity. In fact, however, I believe that the introduction of an 'object' leads to more serious consequences, is fraught with greater peril to scientific psychology, than the setting off of a 'content.' It brings us into flat contradiction with the results of observation, since many of our mental processes are in truth objectless. And it must do this, for the reason that its underlying assumption is mistaken: it assumes or implies that mind is organisation; it thus confuses men- tal process with psychophysical process, mind with organism, psychology with biology. Not mind but man, embodied mind and ensouled body, is the subject of which we may predicate a transitive reference;*® if we are dealing in abstraction with mind, then our proper business as psychologists is simply to describe and to ex- plain mind in existential terms. It is matter for congratulation that the experimental study of the thought processes, now well begun, has made a systematically controlled introspection the final court of appeal. LECTURE III METHODS AND RESULTS: THE BEWUSSTSEINSLA GE LECTURE III METHODS AND RESULTS: THE BEWU8ST8EINSLAGE THOSE of you who follow the progress of experimental psychology will remember the flutter aroused, some two years ago, by the publication of Wundt's critical essay on Aus- frageexperimente, on what we may call experi- ments by the method of examination. "These experiments," we were told, "are not experiments at all in the sense of a scientific methodology; they are counterfeit experiments, that seem methodical simply because they are ordinarily performed in a psychological laboratory and in- volve the cooperation of two persons, who purport to be experimenter and observer. In reality, they are as unmethodical as possible; they possess none of the special features by which we distinguish the introspections of experimental psychology from the casual intro- spections of everyday lif e."^ Yet I was express- ing satisfaction, at the end of the last Lecture, that the experimental psychology of thought had appealed, openly and with confidence, to a 79 80 METHODS AND RESULTS systematically controlled introspection. Was not, then, that self -congratulation a little pre- mature? To answer this question, we must make a critical study of the methods which have actually been employed. I cannot go into detail; but I can say enough to give you a general idea of the way in which the experiments have been conducted. The methods followed by the two first investi- gators, by Marbe in his Experimental Investiga- tion of the Psychology of Judgment (1901) and by Binet in his Experimental Study of Intellec- tion (1903), are extremely simple. Both men lay great emphasis upon introspection. We waqd to find out, Marbe says, "what experiences must supervene upon a conscious process in order to raise it to the rank of a judgment. So ... we place the observer under conditions in which he may experience the most diverse kinds of mental process in their passage to judgments {die verschiedensten zu Urteilen werdenden Bewusstseinsvorgdnge) , and then ask him to report what concomitant experiences supervened upon those processes, and endowed them with MARBE ON JUDGMENT 81 the character of judgment."^ I quote Marbe's own account of his first experiment. "In the first experiment, I placed before the observer . . . two objects of the same size and shape but of differ- ent weight, and instructed him to lift them in turn to the same height with the same hand, and then to invert the one that he found the heavier. The act of inverting the weight was evidently right if the objectively heavier, and wrong if the objectively lighter weight was chosen. It was therefore, so far as it came to the observer's con- sciousness, a judgment." Marbe has provisionally defined the judgment as a conscious process to which the predicate right 6vwran^^J[jJiGMiff--ox -fulsck^. -xnay b£ signifi cantly a pplied^^ "As soon as the observer had inverted the weight which he took to be the heavier, he was required to report the conscious processes that he had experienced after lifting the second weight. He was instructed not to confine himself to the experiences which ran their course coincidentally with the percep- tions that took -on the character of judgment, since it might possibly be of interest to know what conscious processes introduced the act of judgment. The experi- ment was performed three times with each observer, one or both of the weights being changed in the repeated trials."* This procedure is typical of the whole enquiry, although Marbe varied his experiments in many ways. The observer might be asked, for in- stance, to listen to the tone of a tuning-fork, and then to sing the same tone as accurately as 82 METHODS AND RESULTS he could; or to add together a pair of numbers called out to him by the experimenter; or to reply to specific questions regarding articles of daily use, well-known facts of history, and so forth. He might respond by a gesture, or by a Yes or No, or he might simply answer to him- self, mentally, without expression. In every case, he was required, at the end of the experi- ment, to give a full introspective account of his experience.^ Binet's work is mainly taken up with an analysis of the intellectual processes of his two little girls, aged respectively fourteen and a half and thirteen years.^ "It has been my aim," he writes, "to give a wider scope to introspection, and to carry investigation into the higher mental phenomena, such as memory, attention, imagina- tion, the course of ideas. . . . All the experi- ments that I have made upon ideation have called for no more elaborate apparatus than a pen, a supply of paper, and a great deal of patience; they have been made outside of the laboratory."'^ The experiments are of the kind known as men- tal tests. Thus, the observer, seated with pen and paper before her, receives the instruction: Write down twenty words. The time required for the completion of this task is noted, privately, by the experimenter. When the words are BINBT ON INTELLECTION 83 written, the experimenter takes the paper, and comments as follows : "I am going to ask you a question about these words that you have written. You know that you may write a word quite mechanically, without thinking of any- thing; or you may write the word and think of the thing it stands for, but without thinking of any par- ticular thing, — ^you just think of something, a table, perhaps ; or again you may write the word and think of some particular thing, like our table in the dining-room. Now as I read off these words that you have written, you will tell me exactly which of these three classes it belongs to: whether, you .^rote it without thinking of anything,..pr ^whether you just thought of something, or whether you thought of some particular thing."^ The words are then read off, one by one; the observer explains the meaning which she attached to them, and how they were suggested to her; and the report is taken down in full, narrative and question and answer, by the experimenter. This procedure, again, is typical of the whole enquiry, though a great variety of tests was employed. Thus, words were read or shown by the experimenter, and the observer reported how she understood them, what idea they aroused in her; sentences were written down by the observer at command, or sentences begun by the experi- menter were completed by the observer; compo- sitions were written upon assigned subjects; 84 METHODS AND RESULTS recollections were called up; objects and events were described. The experiments upon atten- tion included the cancellation test, tests upon direct memory of series of figures, tests of the time of simple reaction. Finally, a series of tests was devoted to memory, — memory of iso- lated words, of poetry, of objects, of narrative prose, of pictures, of spatial magnitudes, of time intervals. And the results, viewed always in the light of the introspective records, are made the basis of a differential characterisation of the two youthful observers, — furnish, so to say, psychological portraits of two types of intellection.® Different as these French and German meth- ods are, they both strike the note of experimental simplicity; instruments have practically disap- peared, and the outcome depends altogether upon the tact of the experimenter and the intro- spective capacity of the observer. Marbe worked with professors and instructors and graduate students whose abUity and integrity are above question; Binet, who himself displays keen psychological insight in the application and inter- pretation of his tests, pays a deserved tribute to the psychological qualifications of Marguerite and Armande.^° Now, however, the instru- ments, for a time, come back again. The German WATT ON THOUGHT, 85 studies of the next three years — Watt's Experi- mental Contributions to a Theory of Thought (1904), Ach's Volition an^ Thought (1905), and Messer's Experimental Investigation of the Psychology of Thought (1906)— employ the Hipp chronoseope and its most modern accessories. Watt worked by the method of the associative reaction. Familiar substantives, printed black on white, were shown to the observer, who replied by uttering an associated word. The associa- tions were of the sort termed, technically, the 'partially constrained' : the observer was required, in six different series, to associate to the visual word a superordinate, coordinate, or subordi^ nate idea, or a whole, a part, or another part of a common whole. Watt is able to utilise the times of reaction in various ways; but he also pays special attention to the introspections. "After every experiment the observer reported the whole contents of his experience, and made any re- marks upon it that he pleased. The report was at once written down in full by the experimenter, and was occasionally extended by appropriate questioning."^^ Moreover, at the conclusion of the principal experiments, "Series were taken with all the observers, in which they were instructed to make a particular stage of the course 86 METHODS AND RESULTS of reaction the object of an especially careful observa- tion. It seemed best to mark off four of these stages: the preparation for the experiment, the appearance of the stimulus-word, the search for a reaction- word (if such search occurred), and lastly the cropping-up of the reaction-word. . . . The method was eminently successful. The restriction to a single phase of the complicated process of reaction enabled the observers to introspect more carefully and with better result."^^ It is upon these introspections that Watt bases the theory of thought with which his dissertation concludes. Ach is concerned, primarily, with the analy- sis of voluntary action, and treats of the psy- chology of thought only in so far as it is involved in that analysis. We must, however, take ac- count of him, first, because his incidental contri- bution to our subject is important, and secondly because he names and f uUy discusses the method of 'systematic experimental introspection.'^' Ach distinguishes, in every psychological experi- ment, a fore, mid and ji,ftei. period* The fore period covers the time from signal to stimulus. The mid or principal period is occupied by the experience upon which the experiment is ex- pressly directed. The after period is a time of indefinite duration, but certainly lasting several minutes, which follows immediately after the conclusion of the experiment. The method of ACH ON THOUGHT 87 systematic experimental introspection requires that the events of the fore and mid periods be introspectively examined, as a whole, during the persistence of the perseverative tendencies in the after period.^* Introspective observation is thus confined to what a psychologist of the 'image- mongering' type^® would be .apt to term, with Fechner, the memory after-images of his experi- ence.^® Moreover, if the introspective report is to be complete and unequivocal, the experimenter must come to the help of the observer ; there must be free exchange of question and answer ; so that, as Ach remarks, "in this method of systematic experimental introspection, the experimenter plays a more prominent part than in any other psychological method."-^^ Ach himself employs the method in a series of experiments upon simple and compound reactions, — and he could hardly have chosen a more promising field. For although Kiilpe said as long ago as 1893 that "reactions are nothing else than exact types of . . . voluntary action, ... so that their mere duration is but a small part of their psychological significance,"^* and although Wundt has repeat- edly endorsed this statement,^^ no one before Ach had made any serious attempt to build up a psychology of volition upon the introspective data which the reaction experiment afi'ords. 88 METHODS AND RESULTS Messer's work may be regarded as a continu- ation and extension of Watt's. He begins with experiments on 'free' association, — a word is shown, and the observer, having read and under- stood it, rephes by uttering the first word that occurs to him.^° The following series distinguish between association of ideas and association of objects: thus, the word being shoAvn, the observer is required to name, in one set of experiments, a coordinate object, in another, a coordinate idea; or in one set to name a character of the idea expressed by the word, and in another to recall and to characterise a particular object that falls within the range of its meaning.* Further series set more complex tasks to the observer. Thus, two names are shown — names of philosophers, artists, statesmen — and the observer is instructed, first, to compare them objectively, to pass judg- ment upon their relative merits, and secondly to say which of the two he himself agrees with or * Instances of coordinate objects are duck-swan, hand-foot; the associated object (swan, foot) belongs with the object denoted by the stimulus-word (duck, hand) to a whole (a pond, the observer's body). Instances of coordinate ideas are cellar-vault, piano-violin; the associated idea (vault, violin) belongs with the idea expressed by the stimulus-word (cellar, piano) to the same general idea or Oberbegriff (underground chamber, musical instrument). Instances of idea and character are country-fert'ile, shop-full; of idea and character of some particular object, river- wide, shop-pretty (externalised visual idea of a particular river, of a particular florist's shop). MESSEE ON JUDGMENT 89 prefers. Or again, objects, or pictures, or printed sentences of philosophical import are laid before him, and he makes a remark about them, or gives his opinion of them. In experi- ments of this latter sort the chronoscope is re- placed by a stop-watch, which is started when the object or sentence is exposed and stopped as soon as the observer begins to speak.^^ — It is clear, I think, that Messer's problem grew as his work progressed. Watt and Ach seem to have begun with their programme pretty clearly in mind, and to have followed it out pretty much as they had planned; Messer seems to be led from experi- ment to experiment by the suggestion of his own results.^^ The consequence is that his pages are by no means easy reading; one is conscious of a certain lack of logical coherence as one passes from section to section ; while, on the other hand, as a mine of introspective information, his paper is perhaps the most valuable of those issued from the Wiirzburg laboratory. For after every ex- periment of every series — ^there were fourteen series in all — the observer "reports the whole contents of his experience from the appearance of the stimulus-word to the moment of reac- tion."* When occasion arises, questions are put * Messer's paper fills 224 pages of the Archiv f. d. ges. Psychologie, and at least a half of these are in fine print. There 90 METHO'DS AND RESULTS by the experimenter: Messer, however, unlike Ach, makes but sparing use of this means of obtaining information.^^ We come now to the Ausfragemethode proper, to that method of examination which Wundt condemns as a mere travesty of the experimental procedure. In 1907 Biihler pubhshed the first installment of his Psychology of the Thought- Processes: Facts and Problems, — the article Ueber Gedanken, On Thoughts. His problem is very general : What do we experience when we are thinking? To solve it, he says, the prime necessity is, to make your observers think. And to make them think, he reads to them some aphorism of Nietzsche, some couplet from Riickert, or puts some question suited to their temper and attainments. The question is always answerable by Yes or No : Was the Pythagorean proposition known in the Middle Ages? Can our thought apprehend the nature of thought? Does Monism really involve the negation of per- sonality? The aphorisms are thrown into ques- tion-form by a preliminary: Do you understand? can be no doubt that the method of 'systematic experimental introspection,' whatever its advantages, runs to bulk. If it comes into general use, and still more if, as Ach proposes, the conversa- tions betvifeen experimenter and observer, the introspective inter- views, are taken down by the phonograph and stored for future reference, we shall be forced to employ a staff of 'introspective computers' to render our materials manageable. BUHLER ON THOUGHT 91 Do you agree with this? — For example: Is this true? 'To give every man his own were to will justice and to achieve chaos'; Do you grasp this? 'Thinking is so extraordinarily difficult that many a man had rather pass judgment.' The harmless necessary stop-watch is started as the stimulus begins, and arrested as the observer replies by Yes or No. When the answer has been given, the observer undertakes a descrip- tion, as accurate as possible, of his experience during the experimental period.^* Biihler, like his predecessors, lays great stress upon the atti- tude of the experimenter and the introspective calibre of the observer. The experimenter must be in full sympathy with his observers; he must think, by empathy, as they think, understand as they understand, speak in their language. And the observers themselves must be picked men, sujets d' election: Biihler had seven at his dis- posal, but relies exclusively upon the reports of the two most experienced, Kiilpe and Diirr,^^ — I give a single instance of question and report. Can our thought apprehend the nature of thought? — Observer K. 'Yes.' 6 sec. — The question struck me comically at first; I thought it must be a trick ques- tion. Then Hegel's objection to Kant suddenly occurred to me, and then I said, decidedly: Yes. The thought of Hegel's objection was fairly full; I knew at the 92 METHODS AND RESULTS moraeijt precisely what the whole thing was about ; there were no words in it, though, and there were no ideas either. Only the word 'Hegel' came up afterwards, in auditory-motor form.^® I should mention here that Woodworth, in 1906, had abeady used a method of question and answer, although apparently in cruder form. The observer was required to answer such ques- tions as: Which is the more delightful, the smell of a rose or its appearance? Who was the great- est patriot of Hungary? What is the difference between similarity and congruity? Should a man be allowed to marry his widow's sister?* As soon as the answer was given, or sometimes before, the experimenter broke in, and demanded a description of the process of seeking and find- ing the solution of the problem. "The intro- spection may be made more reliable by calling for answers to very definite questions, as: Any visual picture? Any words heard? Any feehng of bodily movement?" For example: What substances are more costly than gold? — ^Dia- monds. — I had no visual image of the diamond; the thought of diamonds was there before the sound of the word. You don't think of the words you are going to say before you say them. It is the same way in con- versation: you know what you want to say, but the * I may be obtuse: but I confess that I can find in this question no food for thought. BUHLER ON THOUGHT 93 words come so quickly that you don't have a chance to think of them before you say them.^'' If this is not Biihler's method, it is at any rate a link which connects his work, at the one ex- treme, with that of Marbe and Orth, at the other. Orth I have not before mentioned; he performed, in 1903, some experiments that will presently occupy our attention.* In a later publication (1908) , Biihler describes experiments on thought-memory, which are based upon a method akin to Miiller and PUzecker's Trefferinethode, or method of right associates. A series of twenty paired titles, as we may call them, is read to the observer: — ^the point of Archimedes, the egg of Columbus; destruction of the Phoenician sea-power, fate of the Spanish Armada; and so on — ^with the instruction that the two topics are to be connected in thought. Then the first members of the pairs are repeated, in a diiFerent order, and the observer seeks to recall their thought-associates. The procedure is modi- fied in various ways. Thus, a list of half- sentences is read, in a certain order; the observer listens and understands. Then the list of com- plementary half-sentences is read, in another order, and the observer is asked to complete each one, as it comes, by reproducing the appropriate *P. 102. 94 METHODS AND RESULTS term of the first list. Or a series of brief, pro- verbial expressions is read without other instruc- tion than that the observer is to listen and understand. Then a second series is read, with the instruction that he is to recall an expression of similar tenor from the first series. For in- stance: 'When the calf is stolen, the fanner mends the cow-house' is paralleled, in the second series, by: 'When the wine is running in the cellar, everybody goes to look after the cask.' Or, finally, a list of thoughts, more or less aphor- istic in form, is read and imderstood; then a catch-word is given, and the observer tries to recall the complete thought. In all these experi- ments, full introspective reports are taken.^® So far, then, there has been nothing new in the technique of this work upon thought. We have the familiar method of mental tests; we have the method of reaction, reduced in Marbe and Orth, Woodworth and Biihler to its lowest technical terms, but stiU recognisable for what it essentially is;^® and we have the memory methods. The two methods that remain to be considered, methods described in 1908 by Stor- ring and Woodworth, are still of the reaction- type. Storring showed his observers a card, upon which were printed the premisses of a syl- logism. The observers were instructed not to CRITICISM 95 hurry, but to draw the conclusion from the premisses with the consciousness of absolute cer- tainty. The time from the exposure of the card to the first utterance of the observer was mea- sured by a stop-watch. The syllogisms ranged in difficulty from 'U is left of L, F is left of U, therefore . . . ' to 'No k belongs to the genus s; all / belong to the genus Je; therefore . . . '^° Woodworth employed, not the syllogism, but the rule-of -three. He asked such questions as: London is to England as Paris is to — ? The hand is to the fist as a nation is to — ? The observers supplied the missing term, and re- ported, as Storring's observers did also, upon their experience during the solution of the problem.*' — I fear that this account of methods has been tedious ; I have given it, in order that you might have some ground upon which to base your judg- ment of results. My own opinion, which I must here state briefly and dogmatically, is as follows. I think that Marbe and Binet made a ^ood be- ginning: though I must add that, when I read Marbe, I took his procedure to represent rather the temporary poverty of the Wiirzburg labora- tory than any act of free choice; and that, when I read Binet, it never occurred to me to regard his conclusions as final, or in fact as anything 96 METHODS AND RESULTS more than problems set to future analysis. I think, further, that the investigations of Watt and Ach constitute the logical continuation of the inquiry thus begun, and that in 1905 the outlook for an experimental psychology of thought was distinctly promising. The time had come for putting the subject into commission. Unfortunately, Messer attempted to cover the whole ground, and his task was too great for him. Still more unfortunately, Biihler gave a turn to the inquiry which, in my judgment, has served to retard rather than to advance the prog- ress of our knowledge. Do I not then believe, after all, in a method of systematically controlled introspection? Very emphatically I do: with all my heart, with all my mind, and with all my strength. My belief in introspection is old enough to have attained its majority; for it was in 1888, when for the first time I was reading James Mill's Analysis, that the conviction flashed upon me — 'You can test aU this for yourself!' — and I have never lost it since. But the question here is, not whether we believe at large in a method of ex- perimental introspection, but whether the special methods followed by Messer and Biihler are ade- quate to their task. I remarked just now that Messer's paper is a mine of introspective infor- CRITICISM 97 mation. So it is : but on a number of not very closely articulated problems. Messer, if I read him aright, — and I hope that I am not doing him injustice, — failed to get his bearings in the wide field that he had undertaken to survey; he worked piecemeal. The observations that he took in this way are valuable, both positively and negatively, by what they say and what they omit ; and their value is largely due to the sepa- rateness, the discreteness, of the problems at- tacked; you may almost say, if you will, that Messer's work is valuable because he was forced, against his intention, to see many issues where Watt and Ach had seen but one. Nevertheless, all the work must be done over again. It is, of course, easy to be wise after the event; and we must remember that, just as Ach wrote too early to take account of Watt, so Messer wrote too early to take account of Ach.^^ But we who come later can see very clearly that, with Watt and Ach, the time for a single-handed grappling with the psychology of thought had passed. Part-problems were now the order of the day: part-problems, attacked by every refinement of technique that laboratory experience could sug- gest ; part-problems, with rigorous technical con- trol of the introspections. We get, instead, — with Messer, a series of studies more or less 7 98 METHODS AND RESULTS discrete, broken aspects of the whole offered for clear vision of a part; with Biihler, a revolution- ary attempt to rewrite the psychology of thought from the beginning. And while Watt and,Ach could use their chronoscope times to good sys- tematic purpose, Messer is content at first merely to mention them and later to drop them alto- gether, and Biihler so shapes his 'method that anything like an experiment in the ordinary sense of the term, any regulation or regular variation of conditions, is impossible. II To criticise further at this point would be to anticipate. I pass to a consideration of the prin- cipal results of these experimental investigations of the thought processes; and I begin with the discovery of the Bewusstseinslage. You wiU remember that Stout, in his Analytic Psychology (1896), maintained the occurrence in consciousness of 'imageless thought.' "There is no absurdity," he says, "in supposing a mode of presentational consciousness which is not com- posed of visual, auditory, tactual and other ex- periences derived from and in some degree resembling in quality the sensations of the special senses; and there is no absurdity in sup- posing such modes of consciousness to possess ANGELL vs. STOUT 99 a representative value or significance for thought."^^ In controverting this position, James Angell gives some illustrations of imagery from his own experience. "When the process is that of apprehending a sen- tence, I find in my own case the imagery involved is frequently constituted by a matrix of vague, shifting, auditory word images, in which some significant word is likely to be most prominent, and which is accompanied by a tingling sense of irradiating meaning, which, if the sentence comes to a full stop, is likely to work itself out in associated images of a fairly definite type." "In those cases where we hang upon the dying sound of the word or its fading visual characteristics, without clear-cut imagery dissevered from the perceptual pro- cess itself, there is often present ... a definite (quasi- affective) attitude of familiarity with the word, and a feeling of placid conviction that at any moment the explicit associates which give it meaning could, if neces- sary, be summoned before us."^'* These accounts, I say, are offered as illustra- tions of the imagery which in a particular mind serves as the psychological vehicle of thought. Stout, however, replies that the 'tingling sense of irradiating meaning' and the 'placid conviction' that the associates can be explicated are pre- cisely the sort of thing that he wishes to empha- sise in his doctrine of imageless apprehension. He even rubs it in: " 'Irradiation,' " he says, "is a particularly good word."^^ Well! my own 100 METHODS AND RESULTS point is that these experiences are also precisely the sort of thing that the German investigators designate as Bewusstseinslage, an almost un- translatable term, meaning something like pos- ture or attitude of consciousness. The word Bewusstseinslage was first em- ployed, at Marbe's suggestion (1901), by Mayer and Orth, who had undertaken a qualitative study of association by the word method. These investigators found that the association might be direct, from word to word, or indirect, by way of interpolated processes. And they divide the interpolated processes into three classes: jdeas , volitions, and Bewusstseinslagen. In their own words : "Besides ideas and volitions, we must mention a third group of facts of consciousness, which has not received sufficient emphasis in current psychology, but whose existence has been impressed upon us again and again in the course of our experiments. The observers very often reported that their experience consisted of certain conscious processes which obviously refused description either as determinate ideas or as volitions. Thus, Mayer observed that the hearing of the word Versmaass [metre] was followed by a peculiar conscious process, not char- acterisable in detail, to which the spoken word trochee was associated. In other cases the observer was able to furnish some description of these facts of consciousness. Orth, for instance, observed that the word mustard MARBE ON ATTITUDE • 101 touched off a peculiar process which he thought might be characterised as the 'suggestion of a familiar form of expression.' Then came the associated word grain. In all such cases the observer was unable to find in conscious- ness the least trace of the ideas which he afterwards employed in his report to describe the facts of experi- ence. All these conscious processes we shall include, despite their evident and often total differences of quality, under the single name of conscious attitudes. The introspective records show that the conscious atti- tudes were sometimes affectively toned, sometimes com- pletely indifferent."^^ Marbe's own experimental study of judgment (1901) helps us in two ways to a further under- standing of the conscious attitudes. It gives us, first, a long list of indicative terms. In a few cases the observers can say nothing more of their attitudes than that they are peculiar, or indefi- nite, or indescribable ; but for the most part they are able to characterise them in a more positive way. And it gives us, secondly, hints of the be- haviour of the attitudes in the general flow of consciousness, hints of their relation to other and better known conscious processes. The attitude most frequently reported is that of doubt, with the cognate forms of uneasiness, difficulty, uncertainty, eifort, hesitation, vacilla- tion, incapacity, ignorance, and the opposite ex- periences of certainty, assent, conviction that a 102 METHODS AND RESULTS judgment passed is right or wrong. To the old-fashioned psychologist all these terms have an emotive ring, and it is worth noting that the same observers refer to surprise, wonder, aston- ishment, expectation and curiosity as emotions. But there is another group of attitudes that do not carry the emotive suggestion. These are described, in confessedly roundabout phrase, as remembrance of instructions, remembrance that one is to answer in sentences, recollection of the topic of past conversations, reahsation that non- sense-combinations have been presented earher in the experimental series, realisation that sense or nonsense is coming, realisation that a certain di- vision will leave no remainder. Here we are in the sphere of intellection. And the general beha- viour of the attitude appears to consign it to that sphere. For it may be aifectively toned or it may be affectively indifferent; it may be touched off, associatively, by an idea, and it may form part of an ordinary associative complex; it may be attended to, and it may be forgotten. In a word, it behaves just as ideas behave.^'' Orth, in his Gefuhl und Bewusstseinslage (1903), — the study to which I referred a httle while ago,* — ^brings the conscious attitudes into relation with James' fringes, with Hoff ding's * p. 93. ORTH AND ACH ON ATTITUDE 103 quality of familiarity,^^ and with many of Wundt's feelings. When, for instance, Wundt declares that feeling is the pioneer of knowledge, or that a novel thought may come to conscious- ness first of all in the form of a feeling,^^ he is, in Orth's opinion, referring in fact not to feel- ing proper but to conscious attitude. For the rest, Orth asserts that these attitudes, however widely they may differ in other respects, have in common the character of obscurity and intangi- bleness ; they cannot be further analysed. When we name them, or seek to describe them, we are simply translating, substituting known for un- known; in actual experience, the attitudes are peculiar modifications of consciousness, which cannot be identified with sensation or idea or feeling. Many of them consist in a sort of di- rect apprehension; but in any case, and alto- gether apart from this function, they appear to be more closely related to cognition, and thus to sensation, than to feeling.*" We come next to Ach (1905), who gives us both a classification and a theory. In the ex- perimental after-period, the period of introspec- tion, Ach's observers often reported that a complex conscious content was simultaneously present as kptrwledge, — as a Wissen,^^ or what 104 METHODS AND RESULTS James calls a knowledge-about as distinguished from a knowledge of acquaintance. "At the end of the experiment, that is, at the begin- ning of the after-period, the observer frequently has a peculiar consciousness of what he has just before ex- perienced. It is as if the whole experience were given at once, but without a specific differentiation of the contents. The entire process, according to the report of one observer, is as if given in a nutshell."*^ This imageless presentation of a total knowl- edge-content is termed by Ach Bewusstheitj awareness. And awareness is of two principal kinds: awareness of meaning, and awareness of relation. Awareness of meaning is always ac- companied or preceded by some sensation or image, which "constitutes the imaginal represen- tation in consciousness of the content imagelessly present as knowledge," and thus stands as sym- bol of the meaning-content.^^ Suppose, for instance, that I anj reading a paragraph, quickly but understandingly, and that I come to the word 'bell.' Under other circumstances, if the word had a special significance or if it stood alone, I might take its meaning imaginally; a group of appereeiving ideas — the idea of its sound, the visual image of a bell — ^might spring up and assimilate it. As it is, the appereeiving masses are not realised ; the meani.ig of the term ACH ON AWARENESS 105 is present simply as an awareness. The visual word-form 'bell' rouses a number of associated ideas to a state of preparedness, gets them ready, so to say, to make their appearance in conscious- ness; or, to speak in physiological terms, stirs up a number of reproductive tendencies. The associated ide as need n ot_actua lly app ear ; the reproductive tendencies need not discharge their full function; the half -arousal, the subexcita- tion suffices to set up a determinate, unequivocal reference, which manifests itself in conscious- ness as knowledge or meaning.** That is Ach's theory. We are looking, if you like, at a sailor standing alone by the helm of his vessel. But that innocent-looking steersman is a pirate; he is in league with a numerous crew who are crouching, repressed but alert, behind the bul- warks; his association with them constitutes him a pirate ; they give him his meaning. Now, per- haps, an impatient head shows over the side. Likely enough! but its appearance does not change the meaning of the figure in the stern; our friend is no more a pirate than he was be- fore; his Begriff is the same, only that it has acquired an exphcit Merkmal. Since awareness has degrees of intensity, and these degrees must have their psychophysical substrate, Ach defines Bewusstheit as a progres- 106 METHODS AND RESULTS sive function of this subexcitatory state of the reproductive tendencies.*^ He makes no attempt to work out a complete classification, but calls attention at once to two transitional forms be- tween awareness of meaning and awareness of relation. The first is the awareness of determi- nation, our immediate knowledge that the present flow of mental processes is or is not directed by some preconceived purpose,, or some foregone suggestion or instruction.*® The second, which is in reality a special case of determination, is the awareness of tendency, a general knowledge that the course of consciousness is determined, without specific representation of its direction or goal; such awareness as we have when we say 'It is on the tip of my tongue,' or 'I know there's something that I haven't done.'*'' The aware- ness of relation itself Ach identifies with Marbe's Bewusstseinslage. It is true, of course, that reference or relation is also involved in the aware- ness of meaning ; the arousal of the reproductive tendencies implies that the sensation or idea is given to consciousness in a network of relations. But the reference here is forward, to a fact of the future, to the ideas which are making ready- to cross the conscious limen; in the awareness of relation the reference is backward, to some con' tent of a previous consciousness. Instances may ACH ON AWARENESS 107 be found in surprise, perplexity, doubt, and in the opposite states of satisfaction, certainty, relief, — names that are already familiar to us from Marbe's list of conscious attitudes. In all these cases, Ach says, we are eingestellt, predis- posed or adjusted, to receive a certain impression. An impression comes, and either fulfils or inter- feres with this predisposition; but, whatever its character, it is spontaneously referred to some fact of our past experience.** ' , I wish that Ach had discussed, even schematic- ally, the psychophysics of the Bewusstseinslage, of this awareness of relation. He does not: and I can only guess that he would regard the inde- terminate play of reproductive tendencies as the ideal limit towards the one extreme, the extreme of 'meaning,' and the single function of what he calls the determining tendencies*® as the ideal .limit towards the other extreme, the extreme of 'relation,' — ^while in fact every case of either type of awareness wiU require the cooperation, in varying measure and in various complication with other psychophysical factors, of both sets of tendencies. However this may be, his theory of meaning is explicit, and he tells us that 'meaning' grades off into 'relation' through intermediate forms. Messer (1906), like Ach, offers us both a 108 METHODS AND RESULTS classification and a theory, though his classifica- tion is more and his theory is less detailed. He distinguishes a group of intellectual and a group of emotional attitudes; the former are matters of understanding, pure and simple, the latter are complicated by affective and volitional mo- ments.^" So far, we are on psychological ground. When, however, he comes to distin- guish the sub-classes under these two main head- ings, Messer forsakes psychology for logic. Anything and everything that can be made the topic of thought may appear, he says, in the form of a conscious attitude ; hence, if we classify by topic, we obtain an 'extraordinary variety' of attitudes; hence, again, a full survey is impos- sible, — ^we can only fall back on logic, upon fun- damental and formal distinctions.^^ Logic, it is true, is not psychology; logic, indeed, abstracts from the very things that psychology investi- gates, "ob und wie [ein Denk] inhalt in einem menschlichen Bewusstsein reprasentiert ist"; nevertheless, a logical classification may be of great assistance to psychology, may even help toward that goal of psychological ambition, a psychology of the categories.^^ 'Biit why go to topic at aU?' the psychological reader may exclaim; 'why not try a psychologi- cal classification?' Well, there the psychological MESSER ON ATTITUDE 109 reader, as we shall see in the next Lecture, has his linger on a very sore point of method. Messer is making the best of a bad job; he appeals to logic because he has nothing else to appeal to. And so he classifies his intellectual attitudes as those of reality, of spatial proper- ties and relations, of temporal properties and relations, of causal connection, of teleological connection, and of logical relation (identity and diiFerence, whole and part, etc.) . Similarly, the emotional attitudes are those which have as their content the relation between the subject and the object of thought (familiarity, value) ; those which contain, further, an objective relation to the task set by the experimenter to the observer (appropriateness, relevancy, correctness) ; and those in which this supervening relation to the task in hand shows merely as a subjective state (question, reflection, doubt, assurance, ease, per- plexity, etc.).^* All this does not greatly help us. It is, how- ever, worth while to note that Messer's intellec- tual attitudes correspond_to_Ach's awareness of meaning, and Messer's _.emotional attitudes -to- AchisL awareness -of- relation, -fl»4-Jims„tgttie.. original Bewusstseinslagen of M a rbe and Orth ^ Indeed, the correspondence is, for psychological purposes, almost too exact ; it suggests a common no METHODS AND RESULTS logical principle rather than a common outcome of introspection. For that matter, Messer ob- literates the psychological difference almost as soon as he has described it. The emotional attitudes, he explains, are those in which an affective moment of pleasantness-unpleasantness is usually reported by the observer, or in which we may trace the influence of 'will,' in the sense of a causal activity on the part of the psycho- physical subject. But feeling and will are merely concomitants of the attitude. Attitude itself is always intellectual. We may, perhaps, call it 'thought' when the complete expUcation of its topic or content requires one or more sentences, and we may call it 'meaning' when it carries the content of single words or phrases ; we may thus dispense altogether with what was, from the be- ginning, merely a provisional term.'* So we find in Messer a classification borrowed and adapted from logic; a classification based on the presence or absence of affective and voli- tional concomitants ; and a classification in terms of the relative simplicity or complexity of the content or topic of thought. His theory of atti- tude is summed up in a single sentence. "[I assume] that the real psychical processes which underlie an explicitly formulated thought may run their course in all sorts of abbreviated forms. MESSER ON ATTITUDE 111 telescoping into one another, making various demands upon the store of psychophysical energy."^^ For 'real psychical processes' we may here substitute 'cerebral disposition.' Mes- ser's theory then becomes practically identical with Ach's. "Thejunconscious real processes that underlie understanding" — Ach's reproductive and determining tendencies — "occur in various degrees of intensityj_ according Jto circumstances, . . . and consequently throw mqre^ or less light {einen verschiedenen Re/lex) into consciousness, are consciously represented in different degrees of^ cleai ' ness , from (listmct- v£rba,L ideas._dowil. t o unanalysab le atti tudesZ' ^^ Ach had pointed out that our awa reness of meaning always_iA:. volves a process j^. what he. terms associative abstraetion ; the associative relations that mani- fest themselves in consciousness as meaning are those of the greatest regularity, of most frequent occurrence; accidental and occasional associates are aroused but little, if at all, in the stirring up of the reproductive tendencies.^'' Messer — and this is one of the most valuable features of his work — supplements Ach by pointing to trans- itional forms, by showing the various stages of Entfaltung, of development or elaboration, that a thought-process may pass through in con- sciousness. .Thus a visual idea (we are deahng 112 METHODS AND RESULTS with visual ideas considered as vehicles of logical meaning) may begin as a mere 'feeling of visual direction,' vague and inchoate to the last degree, and may grow during the experiment to a pic- ture of almost hallucinatory clearness;^® and the meaning of a word has a continuous scale of representations in consciousness, from the zero- point of inseparable fusion with look or sound of the word itself up to distinct realisation as a group of visual and verbal associates/® Atti- tude, the background of meaning or reference against which a mental process is seen, may be just a glow or halo of indiscriminable conscious- ness, or may be as articulate as the background of cherubic faces upon which Raphael painted his great Madonna. ^ Messer's series of transitional forms are, how- ever, logical rather than psychological; the members of the series are, as a rule, selected from the mass of introspective material and ar- ranged in order by the writer. It is, plainly, very desirable that the transition should be observed within a single mind. That, it seems to me, is one of the part-problems most obvi- ously suggested by the work of Watt and Ach, — a systematic study of the genesis of conscious attitude from explicit imagery.®" Here, then, we may for the present leave the MESSER ON ATTITUDE 113 Bewusstseinslage. Watt and Biihler employ the term, but in such intimate connection with a theory of thought that we must postpone their discussion to the next Lecture. Binet, too, gives illustrations of imageless thought that must un- doubtedly be classed with the conscious attitudes. The word 'to-morrow,' for instance, aroused in one of his observers a 'thought' which she defines as "something that you can translate by words and feelings; something vague; it is too difficult to describe":®^ evidently, a Bewusstseinslage of meaning. But I have given you enough, both of instances and of theory; you know what the facts are, and you know the attempts that have been made to explain them. We pass, therefore, to the consideration of thought itself. LECTURE IV METHODS AND RESULTS: THE THOUGHT-ELEMENT LECTURE IV METHODS AND RESULTS: THE THOUGHT-ELEMENT ■pvESCARTES, as we all know, laid some ■*— ' stress, in his philosophy, upon the fact of thinking. And the Cartesian psychology dis- tinguishes hetween thinking in images and pure thinking, between imagination as the faculty of the picturable and pure intellection as the faculty of the unpicturable.^ The modern notion of an 'imageless thought,' as we find it in Stout and Binet, evidently harks back to this doctrine, while the concepts of 'awareness' and 'attitude,' as used and explained by Ach and Messer, offer a compromise between the intellectualism of Descartes and the sensationalism of Locke, — or, as we might here say, the sensationalism of Aristotle.^ We have now to ask whether the theory of 'imageless thought' is borne out by the results of experiment, is attested by a controlled introspection. Marbe (1901) offers a provisional definition of jiidgment^as_a_conscioTis proce ss-t o wbich -tfig" predica te righ t_.Qi_JECcmg-jnay be significantly applied, and tries to find out what experiences 117 118 METHODS AND RESULTS must supervene upon conscious processes in or- der to make this predicate applicable, to raise them to the rank of judgments.^ He reports no less than eight series of experiments, carried out by various modifications of the method which I have already described; and his results are flatly and unexceptionally negative. The observ- ers discover, much to their own astonishment, that "there are no psychological conditions of judg- ment, whatever the experiences may be that in the particular case pass over into judgment {zum Urteil werden)."* And what holds of the pri- mary experience of judgment holds also of the understanding of judgments already formulated: "The understanding of judgments, read or perceived, does not depend upon psychological facts, that are bound up with the reading or perception of the judg^ ments. In like manner, the read or perceived judgments are not bound up with different experiences, according as we are able or unable to appraise them; nor are they connected with different conscious processes according as we pronounce them, in the particular case, to be right or wrong."" Marbe is led by these results to modify his' definition of judgment. "All^^xperiences may become judggaieixtSy-i£-it-liesJiiJ;hep urpo se C^b- sicht) of Jhejexper^Kicingjsuhjgctthat they shall accord, either directly _pr^ in meaning, witK" <5tHer MARBE ON JUDGMENT 119 nbJRrtSi,"' Only, as the experiments prove, the purpose of the subject need not be conscious. You say to a painter: "That's much too dark!" — and he, with some impatience at your sim- plicity, replies: "Of course it is; I made it too dark on purpose"; but he had no explicit purpose in his mind as he painted. In this sense, judgments may_bg_j:effarded as-purposed, ex- p eriein SsX^^tEe end, in whose interest the experi- ences are evoked, is their accordance, direct or through meaning, with the objects to which they refer.^ As for the understanding of a judg- ment, that is simply our knowledge of these objects that, in the purpose of the judging sub- ject, are to accord with the judgment or with its meaning.* Or, since knowledge is never given in consciousness {ein Wissen ist niemals im Be- wusstsein gegeben),^ — remember that Ach and Biihler are stiU below the horizon! — our under- standing of a judgment is simply our capacity of experiencing certain other judgments; a ca- pacity which depends, like musical ability, upon physiological dispositions, and which comes to consciousness only in its particular man- ifestations.^" There is, then, so far as appears in these experiments, no psychological judgment-process, nothing that in direct experience marks a judg- 120 METHODS AND RESULTS ment as judgment. If we call the observers' consciousness a judgment-consciousness, we do so for extra-psychological reasons, because we take it to be guided and directed by an uncon- scious, dispositional 'purpose.' Marbe declares expressly that no hint of the purpose shows in the observers' own reports.^^ This negative result of Marbe's investigation is pronounced by Watt to be "extraordinarily important. For it constitutes an unanswerable argument against any theory which maintains that, in order to judgment, this, that or the other conscious experience is or must be psychologi- cally realised."^^ Marbe, however, confined him- self to an introspective examination of the contents of consciousness in the interval between stimulus and reaction. Watt takes into account, further, the period immediately preceding the stimulus, the period of preparation for the reac- tion; and what he there finds turns out, also, to be extraordinarily important. "Marbe," he says, "has no psychological criterion of a judg- ment; I have one, and one only, — the task or , problem [Aufgahe) ."^^ "What transforms into judgments the mere sequence of experiences that we discover when we analyse the processes of judgment, and what distinguishes a judgment from a mere sequence of experiences, is the MARBE ON JUDGMENT 121 problem."^* Watt's observers, you will remem- ber, were instructed beforehand that they were to associate part to whole, or subordinate to superordinate idea ; in every experimental series a determinate task or problem was set them; and it is the influence of the problem that raises the associative consciousness to the rank of judg- ment, so that, as Watt puts it, "all my experi- ments were judgments."^® Marbe's observers were also engaged upon tasks or problems. But the nature of these tasks was extremely simple. Moreover, the instruction given by the experi- menter restricted their field of observation, as I said just now, to the mid experimental period. For one or both of these reasons, the Aufgabe, as psychological criterion of judgment, failed to make itself apparent. That is straightforward enough. But one wishes that Marbe had taken account of cases in which a purpose is present in consciousness, — that he had arranged experiments in which a purpose should be overtly realised by the ob- servers. The existence of purpose, he says, is essential to judgment^ and he adds only that an Absichtlichkeit "need not be demonstrable in consciousness,"^® and that in fact no reference is made to purpose in the introspective reports before him. Watt finds that the Aufgabe may 122 METHODS AND RESULTS come to consciousness immediately after the ex- posure of the stimulus-word, though normally it does not.^'' It is useless to speculate on what Marbe might have found, had he carried his experiments a httle further ; but it is surprising, and somewhat puzzling, that he does not make conscious purpose, where it occurs, a psycho- logical criterion of the judgment. Watt, on his side defines "a j udgment or an act o f thou ght as a sequence of experiences whoseprocessioiTSom its first term, the stimulus. has been_jieteaniliedby_2: psycholo^cal f^or [thatJs,_by-the-^*eblgm]. As conscious experi- ence, this psychological factor is itself past and gone, but it still persists as an appreciable influ- ence."^* I do not, however, understand this to mean that the Aufgahe must be antecedently conscious on every occasion when it is effective. Let me read another passage : "A preparation that is common to all problems alike," says Watt, "consists in a certain adjustment of the body. The observer directs his gaze, more or less attentively, and in a state of expectation that is ac- companied by strain sensations of more or less vivacity, upon the screen that conceals the stimulus-word. Now he will say the name of the problem two or three times over to himself: subordinate idea, superordinate idea, find a part, etc. ; perhaps he will think of two or three instances. This process is fairly clear in consciousness WATT ON AVFGABE 123 at the beginning of the series, and especially on the change to a new problem; but it weakens with time, so that in the second or third experiment the name of the problem is said once only, and finally Internal speech lapses altogether and the conscious tension almost wholly disappears. All that remain, therefore, is the adjust- ment of the body — the fixation of the screen, the approach of the lips to the voice-key, etc. — and a state of faint expectancy. This is the course of events when the problem is easy and the observer has grown used to the experimental procedure.'"' It seems, then, that the problem must have been fully conscious, as specific problem, at some past time, if the present experience of the ob- server is to be a judgment; but that it may, with repetition, tend more and more to disappear ; so that finally nothing is left of its specific determination, and judgment is touched off mechanically, automatically, so to say reflexly, by the experimental surroundings. It seems that we have, in the sphere of thought, precisely what we find in the sphere of action. The skilled pianist had, once upon a time, to learn his notes ; now he sits down to the instrument, and plays mechanically, automatically, so to say reflexly, in a certain key and at a certain tempo. Messer makes the point more explicit. In- stead of waiting till the association has been effected, he now and again interrupts an experi- 124 METHODS AND RESULTS ment at the end of the fore period, and asks the observer to describe the contents of conscious- ness. Sometimes the problem is clearly there; sometimes, however, the report runs: "Problem not in consciousness; I simply thought, It's taking a long time," or "No repetition of prob- lem, only attention to the apparatus."^" Messer applies this result as follows: "We may say in general that many of the 'problems' that give direction to human activity have this char- acter of the obvious, and in so far of the unconscious, and that philosophical reflection and self-examination are needed to raise them into the clear light of con- sciousness. "Among these 'problems' that are wholly matters of course to us, and for which we are so to say continually predisposed, we may without any question place the problem of the cognition of real things, that is, of giving such a form to our perception, thought and speech that they are adequate to real things, whether we are con- cerned with the persistence, properties, states, changes, relations or value of the real. Just because this pre- disposition is altogether accustomed and obvious, it will not of itself and unaided come to consciousness as what it is."" "This relief of consciousness," he goes on, "the gradual mechanising by practice of processes that at first demanded effort of attention and consideration from various points of view, is WATT ON AVFGABE 125 one of the most firmly established results of psychology. "^^ It is always difficult, as we read a series of works upon a given subject, to assign their just dues, enough and not too much, to the earlier authors. I think, as Messer himself\ thinks, that this notion of an unconscious, merely dispositional problem was clear to Watt. It is also clear to Ach, who, however, believes that determination of consciousness is accompanied, practically without exception, by an awareness of determination,^^ and who in so far challenges Marbe's introspections. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the work of the later investi- gators, Ach and Messer, has made the relation between Watt and Marbe much closer than Watt realised when he wrote his paper. We may conclude our present account of Watt's theory by quoting from his own summary: "The reproductive tendencies represent the mechan- ical factor in thinking, while the problem is what makes it possible that ideas shall be significantly related.'"* "There are, then, three fairly well-defined Sjgher^__of influence: that of the re prSductive tendencies themselves, the groun dah d basis of everything else; th at of the problem; and that of the coconsciousness and cocon- sfifegs^ctivity of. .pf^IegTj:::t)ii Jhe one Jhandr itnd of conte nts, that may Ije re][ati"yely-Jadependent, on the other." If we seek to relate these three sph"ere5""df in- 126 METHODS AND RESULTS fluence to the theory of apperception, we may say that "to the first belongs the process known as apperceptive choice {die sog. Wahl einer apperzeptiven Tatigkeit) ; to the second, whatever in the modem idea of appercep- tion is derived from the apperception of the Herbartian psychology; and to the third apperception proper, the core or nucleus of the Wundtian doctrine.'"^ Ach we may dismiss still more briefly, since his exposition, so far as concerns our present topic, is in close agreement with that of Watt. The obserY§£^s--eoHseiQusness,.j3kiring the fore periodj^ is dominated by a pur pose (Absicht) . T he idea ^tj^^^i,^^^J^d£ikMltsl3M!ig, subexcites its corre- Ig teH rfiprndin ;tive tendencies, and is therefoia. accmnpai]ied_by_an a wareness of meaning . The tendencies so arous ed are, furtheri_ brought into relation -a ith the i dea of obiect, the Bezu^- vorst ellung, which th ey accordingly influence in t he sense of the i5ea of end. "Th e establishment of these relat ions between idea o f end and idea of object I te rm a purpose. "^^ We should thus have, as constituents of the purpose-conscious- ness, the idea of end, given, perhaps, in terms of internal speech; the awareness of the meaning of this idea ; the awareness of the idea of object; and, I suppose, the awareness of the relations obtaining between the two ideas, of end and of object. We may also have, Ach says, a relation ACH ON DETERMINING TENDENCIES 127 to the future, since the purpose is- directed upon the perception of object which the future is to bring.^''' The idea of end is, evidently, very much the sameThing a§rWT[.tf'S"2tiifgaBe, and the relation which the idea of end sustains to the present idea and future perception of object covers much the same ground as Watt's cooperation of prob- lem and stimulus. The idea of end is also, like the 4,:**/,gfl.^.?^.A%J?"9ittt. o.f ,3eparture of deter- BaiflingJ^ndensies*- Although it seldom appears in consciousness when the object is perceived, the stimulus presented, it nevertheless determines our reaction upon the object. Suppose, for ex- ample, that the stimulus consists of the figures 6 and 2, divided by a vertical line — 6|2. Accord- ing as the task prescribed is addition, subtraction or division, the ideas reproduced by the stimulus will be 8, 4 or 3; the Aufgahe, the Zielvorstel- lung — itself unrepresented in consciousness — ^has rais ed to sup rali minal intensityj the_sing^rgprQ=. ductive tendency that accordsj^itih the_purpose of the o Eservef? ^ "These dispositions, uncon- scious in their operation, which take, their origin from the meaning of the idea of end and look towards the coming perception of object, — ^these dispositions," says Ach, "that bring in their train 128 METHODS AND RESULTS a spontaneous appearance of the determined idea, we call determining tendencies."^® All this might easily be translated into Watt's terminology: so easily, that we are likely to forget the difference of subject-matter, to forget that Watt is dealing with the judgment, and Ach primarily with the voluntary action. That difference comes back to us with a sort of shock, and, when it comes, sets up the Bewusstseinslage o f doub t. How can the concepts of purpose and problem be adequate to the psychology of thought, if they serve equally well for the psy- chology of volition? So we are obliged — there is no help for it — to start over again, and to scrutinise the defini- tions of judgment offered by Marbe and Watt. And it seems to me that a very brief scrutiny shows these definitions to be too wide. "All ex- periences may become judgments," Marbe told us, "if it lies in the purpose of the experiencing subject that they shall accord, either directly or in meaning, with other objects."^" Now let me read you a significant passage from his book: "The purpose that is characteristic of judgment, the accordance of the experiences or their meanings [with the objects to which they refer], may be effective only secondarily, alongside of other purposes. When, for instance, an actor is playing a part, he utters words MARBE ON JUDGMENT 129 which he intends to agree with the words chosen by the dramatist. But as he speaks, he is pursuing a whole number of other purposes. He aims to impress his hearer in various ways ; he tries, perhaps, to sink himself wholly in his part, . . . and so on. When experiences are evoked in this way, when the purpose that is character- istic of judgment is forced into the background by other, concomitant purposes, it hardly seems correct to term the experiences judgments. Or take another example. In some of our experiments, the observer was asked to sing a tone of the pitch of a given tone, and no one would hesitate to call the tone sung a judgment. But we should hesitate to say of a singer who took the part of Lohengrin that he had, by his singing, judged rightly or wrongly. Nevertheless, there is no sharp line of distinction between our experiment with the sung tone and the case of this opera singer that should lead us in the one instance to speak of judgment and in the other not. The fact is that, as the purposes concerned in the origination of an experience (over and above the ■ purpose that is characteristic of judgment) become more and more numerous, we grow less and less inclined to consider that experience as a judgment."'* Does not that sound a little apologetic? Surely, it is not impossible that an actor should read his part with the single-minded purpose of express- ing his author; surely, it is not impossible that he should take it mechanically, as a matter of course, because he is an actor and that is the part to take, — precisely as Marbe's observers sang the tone because they were psychological 130 METHODS AND RESULTS observers and that was the tone to sing. These things are possible. And, on the other hand, a plurality of purposes is not fatal to judgment. You may review a book in order to show that you think it important, in order to make its writer better known, in order to see your own name in print, in order to earn some money: your estimate of it is stiU right or wrong. Un- less, then, we give up altogether the attempt to mark oif judgment as a special subject of psychological inquiry, we must say that Marbe's definition is too wide. Watt defines judgment— a§^^ seguence of experiences whose procession from its first term, thFstiSSluSrEas been determined by_a~-psycho- logical factor^jjow past as conscious experience, but persisting -as^ ?iji appreciable influence,"*^ and declares that 'all his experiments were judg- ments.'^' But then one rather wonders if there is anything in the mental life, of the sequential type, that is not a judgment. In reproducing a series of nonsense-syllables, for instance, the observer is determined by the Aufgahe; and it may be questioned whether the same thing does not hold — I quote Ach's examples — of the freest play of imagination and the most abstract form of aesthetic contemplation. Messer points a like criticism by reference to gymnasium work. The WATT AND MESSER ON JUDGMENT 131 instructor formulates the exercise in some stereo- typed phrase, and then counts one, two, three; the exercise is gone through at the word of com- mand. Here, then, we have a sequential expe- rience that is conditioned upon the stimulusi the number called, and that takes place under the persistent influence of a foregone conscious ex- perience, the hearing of the original prescrip- tion. And so a raising of the arm or a bending of the body would be a judgment.^* Well ! what, then, does Messer offer by way of definition? His observers were instructed, from the first, to "understand by judgment that pro^l cess of thought which finds its complete linguis-l tic expression in a predicative propositionl (Aussagesatz) , which must, of course, be sig-j nificant."^^ And when he examines the intro- spective reports, Messer discovers — ^what the rest of the world would probably have expected, but what apparently comes to him as a pleasant sur- prise — ^that the observers agree in their view of the essential character of the judgment con- sciousness. It is essential to judgment, they say, "that a^ relation bet^een ^timulus-idea and idea ofj;espQasgi_a jrelation that is more partic- ularly d[iaja£t£lissd.aila]rel^]^^ {Aussage-Beziehung) , s hall be willed, 'intendeds, ' or at any rate accepted (anerkannt) ."^® But a 132 METHODS AND RESULTS significant relation of predication was what they had been told to find; and when we remember that three of the six observers (Watt himself was one) had taken part in Watt's investigation, that two of the three had acted as observers for Ach, and that the work was done, largely with Watt's apparatus, in the laboratory in which Watt's study had just been completed,^'' we shall hardly be overwhelmed by the 'willed' or 'intended.' I do not say that Messer is wrong; but I gather that he took out of his experiments, in this re- gard, pretty much what he put in. However, it is more important to consider his analysis. What, first of all, of the relational experience? Can it be analysed? The observers were not able to define it positively in its specific charac- ter (ti/e Beziehung in seiner spezifischen Eigen- art positiv zu hestimmen) . They did, in some cases, distinguish it from the attributive relation : attribution narrows consciousness, restricts the sphere of meaning, predication extends it: but, even so, "the limits between predicative and at- tributive relation are fluctuating {/liessend) ." On the whole, then, "the exact analysis and char- acterisation [of this relation] must be left to later investigators."^* The willing or intending, on the other hand, is ordinarily a matter of the problem set to the observer by the instruction MESSER ON JUDGMENT 133 of the experimenter, — "on the assumption, of course, that the observer understands the instruc- tion and has the 'will' to react in accordance with it."^^ So far, therefore, we have Watt's Aufgahe, and t.h ^ experience of a - -pyedwatwe-^-eifttionr Marbe had no psychological criterion of judg- ment; Watt had one; Messer has two. But Messer seeks^_further. to bring the Aulgjohe- psycFiology into relation with the objectisze-ref'— erence oT the~2 GistrTan school . I am not sure that I wholly understand him; but I will give you what I take to be his meaning. Ordinarily, Messer says, in the-e v^T'y day life of mind, our .g gierieDce is injentiflnal. dir£ct£d. upon obJ£CtS>i° Tli^g rpfprpn^P ig rinp tO JIL Aufgahe, the normal, self-evident and therefoje. unconscious purpose 'to cognise.'*' Now this natufaTandliormal aHTEudeoTmind may or may not be carried into the laboratory. We exchange it for an unusual and, in a way, artificial atti- tude when we are studying sensations and ideas (that is, reproduced sensations or reproduced complexes of sensations) ; we seek, in their case, to describe consciousness as it is, to discriminate the qualities of conscious contents; the contents themselves, and not their meanings, are in the focus of attention.*^ Contrariwise, we retain it. 134 METHODS AND RESULTS and we must retain it, when we are studying the processes of cognition, perception and thought (judgment) ; we have, in their case, to take account of the fact of transcendence, of the things and the properties of things to which the cognitive experiences refer. "The psycholo- gist who should suppose that perception and thought may be adequately characterised by the simple ascertainment of the sensations and ideas present in consciousness would be like a man who should seek to apprehend the real nature of money by simply investigating the materials of which money is made."** The nature of the Aufgdbe, then, is of very great importance. The Aufgabe of existence, with its consequent internal predisposition {Ein- stellung), gives us the psychology of sensation and idea and the association of ideas; gives us, among other things, Ebbinghaus' work on mem- ory. The Aufgabe of objective reference, with its predisposition, gives us the psychology of perception and judgment. The shift from this, the customary attitude of everyday life, to the other, the unusual attitude of the descriptive psychologist, is justified on two grounds: first, because it ensures an exact psychology of the processes investigated ;** and secondly, because it brings to light what otherwise, from sheer force MESSER ON JUDGMENT 135 of habit, we should have overlooked, — e.g., the "peculiar experience of specific conscious qual- ity"^^ that forms part of the judging conscious- ness, the volition or intention of the introspective reports. For transcendence or intentional rela- tion inheres in thought as conscious experience: we have only to lay an associative reaction and a judgment reaction side by side, and it appears at once. If Marbe's observers missed it, that was because their problems were not sufficiently varied. Marbe himself implies it, when he says that "allexperiences may become judgments if it lies in the purpose of the exp^nencjngjiubject_ that_they s hall accord ..mth. other obji^cts"; for this statement, translated into other terms, means precisely what we have already said, — that the obviou§.,.aiid_th£3'efore unconscious purpose of cognitjgn jii^jiecisive^-f or ihe jud^mentncTiaracter of expei-ience.*^ In summar y, therefore, we have in the judg- ment, first, th e experience of a predicatiy e^rela- tion; secondly, the control or direction ^fjthe course "or' consciousness, by an Aufgoibe_thai usy^Ji2_doe§__Eot show in consciousness ; and thirdlj;j^he^ qualitatively specific experience of w illing_OT |ntgndJJPg the-f^edicatn£,relatiP B, due to theJaclthat.the-.^tt/'^a&e is.that of objective reference, that the 'purpose' of the observer is 136 METHODS AND RESULTS 'to cognise.' But the relation, you will remem- ber, Is liul necessarily willed or intended; it may be merely accepted. What does this mean? It means that we are to go the whole way with Brentano's school, and to distinguish act and content, — or rather, in this case of judgment, act and objective.^'' Primarily, Messer says, the distinction is concerned only with the signifi- cance or meaning of the judgment, and is there- fore logical, not psychological. Nevertheless, it comes into psychology, if only in secondary- fashion. For whenever a judgment, a predica- tion, is questioned, tested, examined by the judg- ing subject, then act and objective, acceptance or rejection and matter accepted or rejected, appear in psychological guise, as discriminable factors of his experience.*^ If, then, the Aufgabe has not been fully effective; if the volition or intention has, for some reason or other, failed of realisation, so that the peculiar quale of the judging consciousness is absent, and the observer turns round upon his Aussage in critical mood; then the judgment may be completed by the specific act of acceptance. I have stated Messer's position as accurately as I can. But I do not find it clear. I have the impression that he is confusing two different things: the nature of mental experience as de- MESSER ON JUDGMENT 137 termined by various problems, and its nature as given apart from any problem. I can see that the setting of a problem might, as Ach says it does,^' lead to novel modes of mental connection; I cannot see how it should actually generate a specific conscious quality. I fail, also, to see the ground of Messer's classification of the sub- ject-matter of psychology. Memory is, surely, as intentional as perception or thought. If, not- withstanding, Ebbinghaus' existential treatment of memory promises us an exact psychology, why should not an existential treatment of per- ception and thought be both possible and hope- ful? Or, in other words: if perception and thought are intrinsically something other than existent qualities, as money is something intrin- sically other than paper and gold and silver, then, of course, their objective reference must always be considered, whatever the Aufgahe of the moment may chance to be. If, however, the objective reference is itself due to Aufgahe, then a shift of Aufgahe from that of everyday life to that of the laboratory should yield results as valuable as those obtained in the sphere of sensa- tion and the association of ideas. Messer speaks of a 'divergence of the lines of psychological inquiry,'^" as if there were a single original path which now branches into two, the one taking us 138 METHODS AND RESULTS to sensation and idea, and the other to percep- tion and judgment. But the original path, so far as I can discover, is simply the path of popu- lar psychology, which is straightly continuous with the road to perception and judgment; the second path, that Ebbinghaus followed, is the httle travelled and artificial way of existential or 'exact' psychology. It would seem wiser, if we are to pay regard to objective reference at all, — and I need not here discuss that question, — to lay double tracks from the very beginning. However, I am now criticising Messer's posi- tion, whereas I set out to criticise his statement of the position. I find the statement confused, in this matter of objective reference; and I find it still more confused in the matter of act and content. I must read you a longish passage. "This act of judgment," Messer writes, "this act of acceptance and rejection, appears not only in connec- tion with objectives of judgment, that is, with thought- contents that stand in predicative relation and find their linguistic expression in the predicative proposition, but is of frequent occurrence in all our experimental series. Whether the problem is that of formulating a proposi- tion, or merely that of designating an idea or an object or what not, again and again we have the experience reported that conscious contents, of one kind or another, offer themselves as solution of the problem, and that they are accepted or rejected; oftentimes the verbal MESSER ON JUDGMENT 139 idea Yes or No is discovered in consciousness. And this experience of approval and disapproval, this utterance of Yes or No, is termed, by all observers alike, a 'judg- ment.' We have ourselves limited the term judgment to the thought-content of the predicative proposition, but we may very well apply the name 'act of judgment' to the experience in question. Acts of judgment, in this sense, may appear wherever 'problems' are set to thought, and wherever the contents supplied by the mechanism of association are brought into relation with the 'problem,' examined as to their adequacy to its solu- tion, and accordingly accepted or rejected. Now in these facts, that certain contents acquire the character of problems, and further that acts of acceptance and rejection occur in the manner described, we have psy- chical experiences that are evidently inexplicable from the uniformities of simple reproduction and association, and that justify our distinguishing the processes of thought from those of associative reproduction."^^ I say nothing of the point that, in this passage, the mechanism of association apparently fur- nishes contents of a certain sort apart from any problem whatsoever: that difficulty we have al- ready mentioned. The particular difficulty here is that an act of judgment may appear in con- sciousnej§_wShQut^the content of judgment, that the JJrteilsakt appearsalong with a Begriff sin- halt. How is such a state of affairs possible, if act and content are correlative? I can explain Messer's view only if I suppose that, as regards 140 METHODS AND RESULTS both the act of judgment and the specific experi- ence of volition or intention, he moves back and forth between his two types of Aufgabe, the existential and the relational. When he affirms that the relational problem brings into being a specific conscious quality, and when he affirms that the act of judgment, as acceptance or rejec- tion, may accompany a single significant term as weU as a predicative proposition, he seems to me to be regarding intention and acceptance, after all, as existential contents, on the same level with sensations and ideas. If I am right, Messer is confused in his thinking. If I am wrong, then I must still believe that he is con- fused in his writing. Let us, however, summarise once more. The observer is given a certain problem. The prob- lem finds representation in consciousness, verbal or other; the observer understands it, has the 'attitude or Bewusstseinslage of meaning; and has the good-will to follow instructions. This good- will, which may also be termed a prepared- ness for the particular mode of reaction, is repre- sented in consciousness by a definitely directed expectation, by a 'feeling' of clearing obstruc- tions out of the way, and so on.°^ The stimulus comes, and the judgment runs its course. It is characterised formally, by its determination; MESSER ON JUDGMENT 141 materially, by the experience of a predicative relation, and also, as a rule, by a volition or in- tention, the specific conscious quality of the relational problem, the problem of objective reference. If this quality is lacking, then the predicative relation appears along with an act of judgment, the qualitatively specific experience of acceptance or rejection. That is Messer's analysis; and it contains, evi- dently, much more than we find in Watt. At the same time, a good deal of the new matter implies the doctrine of conscious transcendence; and a psychologist who, like Biihler, banishes transcendence from psychology will make short work of it. Moreover, the predicative relation was, as I pointed out, not the discovery of the observers but an explicit feature of Messer's instruction to them; and we have seen that they insisted, despite the instruction, on following out some prior suggestion and giving the name of judgment to the experience of acceptance or rejection. All this leaves us in uncertainty as regards the net value of Messer's contribution to our subject. And when we read, later on, that "thinking may be counted among the volun- tary actions,"'^ we may even doubt whether we have advanced appreciably beyond our starting point. For what we need is not a genus but a 142 METHODS AND RESULTS difference: Watt and Ach gave us the genus. And if the predicative relation is the differentia required, we want the observers to find it for themselves, and not to take it from the experi- menter; we want them to tell us what it is like, and not to leave its description to future investi- gations; and we want them to stick to it, and not to apply the term judgment to something quite different. For the rest, there are plenty of 'judgments' classed by Messer as 'reproduced,* 'abbreviated,' 'preparatory,' 'borrowed,' that on his own definition should not be classified as judgments at all.^* So Messer passes from the scene. I have dealt somewhat severely with his psychology of judg- ment. Let me, all the more for that, remind you that his two hundred pages will well repay your study ; let me say again that he is a mine of intro- spective information; and let me repeat my opinion that his paper is, in many respects, the most valuable of the studies issued from the Wiirzburg laboratory. We turn now to Buhler. You remember Biihler's method? He means to make his observers think; and he makes them think by asking them questions that cannot be answered, yes or no, without thought. A first group of questions, suggested by Ach's observa- tions on non-iraaginal awareness,^^ takes the BUHLER ON THOUGHT 143 form : Can you, or Do you know : — Can you cal- culate the velocity of a freely falling body? The observer replies, yes or no, as soon as he has made up his mind. In the second and third groups, which begin with Do you understand. Is this cor- rect, or the like, the experimenter reads off some condensed and pithy saying, — an aphorism from Nietzsche, or a verse from Heyse or Riickert. A fourth group, which aims to induce thoughts of a synoptic character, comprises large general questions: What is an ideal? What has Herbart in common with Hume? And a fifth and final group, which is intended to bring out the rela- tion between thought and idea, contains such questions as: Do you know how many primary colours the Sistine Madonna is painted with? In every case, the observer gives a full account of his experience.^® We find in the introspective reports ideas, feel- ings, attitudes. But, Biihler says, this is not all, "The most important items of experience consist of something that is not touched at all by any of the categories by which these formations are defined (I ab- stract for the time being from the attitudes, whose position is peculiar) : something that shows no trace of sensible quality or sensible intensity: something of which we may rightly predicate degree of clearness, degree of assurance, a certain vividness whereby it ap- peals to our mental interest, but which in content is 144 METHODS AND RESULTS determined quite diflFerently from anything that in the last resort may be reduced to sensations; something about which it would be nonsense to enquire whether it possessed a higher or lower degree of intensity, and still greater nonsense to ask what sensible qualities it could be resolved into. These items are what the observers have termed, with reference to Ach, aware- nesses, or sometimes knowledge, or simply 'the conscious- ness that,' but most frequently and most correctly thoughts."" "The essential constituents of our thought- experiences are thoughts and thoughts alone."°' We may say at once that Biihler interprets the attitude (Bewusstseinslage) in terms of this theory as "a consciousness of the process of thought, and more especially of the turning- points of this process in experience itself,"^® — just as Watt, we may add, interprets it, in terms of his problem-psychology, as a problem without a name.*®° This, then, is the thesis of a ll Bii hler's publi- cations, — that "there are thoughJa~jyjJJbiQut_5iiX_, * Both in Watt and in Biihler, the theory of attitude is merely an incident in the theory of thought. "A problem," Watt says, "is a state of consciousness that exists only in order to determine a certain significant series of reproductions; that can be specified only by reference to, and indeed comes to consciousness only as, this series: an attitude is the same thing without a special name. In the case of the problem, we can specify both the name and the meaning of the contents reproduced by it." This account, of course, leads to the difficulty which we discussed above, p. 130. Biihler speaks of attitudes as "eigentiimliche mehr zustandliche Erlebnis- strecken," and then defines them in the words of the quotation. BtJHLER ON THOUGHT 145 t he least demonstrable fvacp nf apy snjt-Qf in^^g- JnaLgro undworkf ^^^ "knowledge (Wissen) is a new manifold of modifications of our conscious- ness,"®^ covering the variety of thoughts as the general term sensation covers the variety of sensations. He accordingly defines thought as a mental element, "the ultimate'unit"or"^perir pnfP in our tVirmglit-PYppviVnpfg," as "the least, i tem of a thoug ht experience^ thaJLin which a progressive definitional _analysis_^can_discriim nate no ind^g^endent Jtenj,s . hu t onlyu dependent- par^^^®^ And he proceeds at once to classifi- cation. Into this classification I shall not follow him, because I believe that his method leads to erro- neous results. I can best indicate my line of criticism by taking a very simple instance. When a student begins work in the psychological laboratory, and more particularly when he be- gins work by any one of the metric methods of psychophysics, he is very likely to fall into what we term, technically, the stimulus-error.®* He is instructed to attend to sensation, but in real- ity he attends to stimulus. Instead of comparing two noise-intensities, he will compare the imag- ined heights from which the balls fall that give the noise-sensations; and, in general, he will concern himself not with greys but with grey 10 146 METHODS AND RESULTS papers, not with kinassthetic sensations but with weights, not with visual magnitude but with the size of objects. The error is both insidious and persistent; I could quote you a long list of warn- ings to avoid it; and I could show you that those who give the warnings do not always themselves escape the error. It is, as Messer said, natural and customary to think, not of mental processes, but of the things and events about us, — ^while it is, as I believe, absolutely necessary to get rid of things, and to think only of the mental processes, if we are to have a science of psychology. Well! my criticism is that Biihler's observers fell into an error of the same sort as the stimulus-error. They were men of wide psychological experi- ence, of long technical training, of undisputed ability: but they were given an immensely diffi- cult task, in terms of a very poor method. How difficult was the task, you may realise by calling to mind the history of analytical research in the more accessible field of sensation; how poor was the method, you may realise by calling to mind the wealth of experimental appliances which that research has found necessary. Indeed, the method was not only intrinsically crude but it was also suggestive. Let me give an illustra- tion, taken at random. "Is this true? 'To give every man his own were to BUHLER ON THOUGHT ' U1 will justice and to achieve chaos.' — Yes. — First of all, a peculiar stage of reflection {eigentUmliches Stadium der Ueberlegung) with fixation of a surface in front of me. Echo of the words, with special emphasis on the beginning and end of the sentence. Tendency to accept the statement. Then all of a sudden Spencer's criti- cism of altruism occurred to me, with the thought that Spencer mainly emphasises, — the thought that the end of altruism is not attained. Then I said Yes. No ideas except the word 'Spencer,' which I said over to myself.""* Here we have a report of two verbal experi- ences, — an echo of the stimulus, which we may probably put down to perseverative tendency, and a significant fragment of internal speech. But we have also the report of a peculiar stage of reflection, and of a tendency to agreement. I submit that a method which simply notes ex- periences of this kind, and leaves them without further attempt at analysis, is a suggestive method. And I submit that the observer is not describing his thought, but reporting what his thougjiLis^ about; not phot'og raphin g conii^ uis ness, but formulating the reference of conscious- nessjo thiiiff&UjaLg jyord , t hanT5"Kas f allege irffhe case ofJihflUg'ht, into the error which we shou ld term the stimulus-error in thejjase^ilLsensatixMi. Yes! you say, — but the first of these criti- cisms may be due to sensationalistic bias, and the latter is, after aU, a mere record of personal 148 METHODS AND RESULTS impression. To which I reply: Do not try to separate the criticisms; take them together. If I am right in saying that the observers tell us what their consciousness is about, when they should be telling us what it is, then evidently the method is somehow at fault; and its obviously crude and obviously suggestive nature points at once, whether we are sensationalists or whether we are not, to a comparison with the refined and objective methods employed in the study of sen- sation and association. What I have to show, then, is that my charge of an error akin to the stimulus-error is well-founded, based on more than individual impression. If I can do this, my criticism of the method, however it was origi- nally prompted, will follow of itself. I read, first of all, a passage from a critical essay by von Aster, published last year in Ebbinghaus' Zeitschrift. "It was my intention to show that Biihler's experi- ments do not, in themselves, prove the existence of specific thought-experiences; experiences, that is, which are unequivocally and adequately definable as a 'knowl- edge about' or a 'consciousness of ; experiences in whose nature it lies that, In or by them, we experience, appre- hend, have before us a content that must be brought to expression by words or complete sentences. No more is proved, it seems to me, than the fact that the observers mtijnated certain definite experiences by these sentences. CRITIQUE OF BUHLER 149 But since intimation, with whatever assurance it may be given, is not of itself a description or a direct identifica- tion {Konstatierwng) , the question now arises, what experiences lay at the basis of this intimation."®" Here, it is true, nothing is said of a stimulus- error. But the distinction between intimation and description, between Kundgabe and Be- schreihung, is precisely m y distinction betwe en repo rting about consciousness _an d rep orting consciousnes s. Biihler's results, says von Aster, must be psychologically interpreted, in the light of an existentially directed introspection; and they need not be interpreted in Biihler's way. He points out, further, that the change from Marbe's unanalysable 'attitudes' to Biihler's precise and well-defined 'thoughts' itself indi- cates a change of procedure on the part of the observers : for description, and especially psycho- logical description, is always approximate and rough, while intimation is assured, self-confi- dent, a matter of course.®''' There, then, is one critic who, in principle, agrees with me. But I can call another witness on the same side, — and, this time, one of Biihler's two preferred observers. Diirr, in a later num- ber of Ebbinghaus' Zeitschrift, writes as follows : "I have followed the course of Biihler's investigation, in which I was privileged to take part as observer, with 150 METHODS AND RESULTS keen interest. And I have been led to a rather curious result, which has altogether changed my ideas of the best method for the conduct of thought-experiments. Over and over again, as I was observing for Biihler, I had the impression, though I was not able at the time to formulate it very clearly, that my report was simply a somewhat modified verbal statement of the thoughts aroused in me by the experimenter, and that this verbal statement could not properly be regarded as a psycho- logical description of the thoughts. What I mean by this antithesis of verbal expression and psychological description will perhaps become clearer if I suggest that the layman in psychology would be giving introspective reports every time that he exchanged thoughts with a friend, unless there were some distinction between verbal expression and psychological description.'"* The psychologically trained observer is, of course, not so naive as this layman; his report, as Diirr says, is a somewhat modified verbal statement {eine irgendwie modifizierte sprachliche Dar- stellung) of his thoughts ; but, in the last resort, he too is stating, not describing. And so, Diirr continues, "I maintain that Biihler, despite the ingenuity and care which he has shown in his experiments, has not attained to a correct apprehension of the nature of the thought-processes. The path that he has travelled will, in all probability, never lead us to the desired results.'""— I have offered you these quotations from von BINET AND WOODWORTH ON THOUGHT 151 Aster and Diirr, instead of giving a summary af their criticism in my own words, because I wish to convince you that the objection which they raise to Buhler's work, though it is some- what differently phrased, is in fact identical with my charge of an error which is of the same genus as the stimulus-error. I say that the observers tell us, not what consciousness is, but what it is about; von Aster says that they intimate, and do not describe; Diirr says that they state, ver- bally express themselves, but do not describe. In view of this agreement, I shall not follow Biihler further into his experiments upon thought-memory. But there are still two investigations, those of Binet and Woodworth, which I may seem to have unduly neglected, I think, however, that what applies to Biihler appUes also to them. Binet's observers often reported reflexions, idees, pensees, i mageless thought s which they distinguished from images^ |l pointed out, in the last_LectuTe, that_ma]Q.y- f--thiese- thoughts m ay be regard ed a s attitudes, B ewusstseinslagen. In so far as they seem, further, to imply a speci- fic thought-process, Biihler's Gedarike, they are open to the objection that we have just raised against Biihler's thought-elements, — and in in- creased measure. For you will perceive that, if 152 METHODS AND RESULTS trained psychologists are liable to confuse de- scription with intimation, children of thirteen and fourteen, however patient, however respon- sive, however psychologically gifted, will be stiU more liable to slip from fact to meaning, from observation to objective reference. It would be strange indeed if Marguerite and Armande resisted a temptation to which Kiilpe and Diirr succumbed! And Woodworth's re- sults by the method of questions must be judged by the same standard. It may very well be true that "the thought of diamonds was there before the sound of the word," and that "you know what you want to say" in conversation before the words themselves appear.''^ But what is a thought-of? and what is a knowing? The ' method is at fault here, as it was with Biihler; experience is indicated, intimated, not described. There remain Woodworth's and Storring's experiments by the methods of rule-of -three and of syllogism. Woodworth finds that the trans- fer of the relation from the first pair of terms to the case suggested by the third term may take place without consciousness, simply as a result of the Aufgabe; or that the transferred relation may have a name or an image as its vehicle; or again that it may be in consciousness, as 'image- less thought,' without any vehicle. To meet this STORKING ON INFERENCE 153 last case, he postulates 'feelings of relation,' of the same psychological order as "feelings of sensory qualities. Each feeling of relation is a simple quality."''^ The assumption seems un- necessary, — at any rate until we have finally decided that the 'feelings of relation' do not con- stitute transitional forms of a Bewusstseinslage, of the kind to which Messer has called atten- tion;^^ the series 'image or word, imageless thought, no consciousness' is characteristic of these 'attitudes.' Storring's work, again, touches that of the Wiirzburg school at various points, — as regards the influence of the Aufgabe, or as Storring calls it, the Anweisung, the instruction ; as regards the mechanics of introspection, and so on, — but, dealing as it does with inference, and not with concept or judgment, it moves in general upon a higher plane, and takes the results of the earlier studies for granted. Consciousness of identity, consciousness of assur- ance, consciousness of understanding, conscious- ness that something is coming, — phrases of this sort meet us at the threshold.''* But these are the very things whose psychology we have been discussing. — I said, in the last Lecture, that in 1905 the outlook for an experimental psychology of thought was distinctly promising; but that 154 METHODS AND RESULTS Messer then essayed a task which was too great for him, and that Biihler gave a turn to the inquiry which has served rather to retard than to advance the progress of our knowledge. We have, now reviewed the various experimental studies, under the heads of the conscious attitude and the thought-element, and you agree, I hope, that my criticism was sound. I cannot subscribe, as Diirr and Biihler himself cannot subscribe, to all that Wundt urges against the Ausfrage- methode; but I believe, with Diirr and von Aster, that in Biihler's hands the method, so far as its immediate purpose is concerned, has proved a failure. I have now to undertake, in a conclud- ing Lecture, two tasks of very different degrees of difficulty: a general appraisement of the work so far done, and a defense of a sensationalistic psychology of thought. LECTURE V THE EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT LECTURE V THE EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY OP THOUGHT THERE is a type of review, known to everyone who has written a book, which begins with a compliment, disapproves steadily of the contents of the successive chapters, and ends by saying that the author has made a valu- able contribution to his subject. Now I believe very thoroughly in criticism; and I think that the rather haphazard and planless sort of criticism that we are apt to get in experimental psychol- ogy, criticism that is either perfunctory and therefore unhelpful, or else due to a personal interest in the writer and therefore biased, — I think that the relatively large proportion of this sort of criticism is a plain indication of the im- maturity of our science. But I believe also in appreciation, and I think that appreciation should be as explicit and as technical as criticism. I shall therefore try to state, in definite terms, the advantage that, as I see things, has accrued to psychology from the series of investigations which we have been discussing. 157 158 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT I see, then, in the first place, two advantages that are closely bound together, as closely as foblem and solution, or question and answer. is a great thing that consciousnesses like doubt, sitation, trying to remember, feeling sure, V have been dragged into the daylight, and lie now in. plain sight, a challenge to the experimental method. And it is a great thing that the fact of determination, the influence of Aufgabe, has been expressly recognised, in strict laboratory procedure, as a principle of explanation)) Let me enlarge, for a moment, upon these two aspects of our thought-psychology. Whether we look back over the course of ex- perimental psychology as exhibited in text-books and journals, or whether we search our own hearts, there is no escape from /the conviction that sensationalism has been taken too easily. I tried to show, in my first Lecture, how the sen- sationalism of experimental psychology differs from the traditional sensationalism of the Eng- lish school. All that I then said I hold to. But I add now that we have not been serious enough with our canons and rules of procedure; having gone so far, we have retraced our steps and gone so far over again, but more carefully; we have not pushed out into the unknownj I can illus- trate what I mean by reference to a piece of THE PROBLEM OP SENSATIONALISM 159 work published some years ago f rotn the Cornell Laboratory, — work which I am not likely to underestimate, and whose solid merits have been recognised both at home and abroad. Bagley, in his Apperception of the Spoken Sentence, takes issue with Stout on the matter of imageless thought. "From the series of observations which were made in the course of our experiment," he says, "no conscious 'stuff' was found which could not be classed as sensation or affection, when reduced to its ultimates by a rigid analy- sis"; and he gives a wealth of introspective de- tail. But it is a question, you see, whether his observers were not unconsciously set, disposed, prejudiced towards sensationalism; it is a ques- tion whether, had they been bom and bred in Stout's briar-patch, they would not have discov- ered an 'imageless apprehension.'^ (At any rate, what we have now to do is to grapple with the alleged imageless experiences, one by one; to look them squarely in the face, from our sensa- tionalistic standpoint; and either to carry our analysis triumphantlv through, or to make open confession of failure_ji I have sometimes fanci ed — though the effort to be impartial may easily carry one too far — that ^e lack of sensationalistic enterprise, of which Marbe and the rest have convicted us, 160 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT may have been due, in part, to a feeling that we could all shelter ourselves, in time of need, be- hind Wundt's apperception^ The Wundtian doctrine is a psychological achievement of the first rank, although we stand, perhaps, too near for a just appraisement of its real magnitude. Not everybody has taken the trouble to under- stand it, — and, like all large thought construc- tions, it requires understanding, ^ut everybody has known that it was there, a living witness to the inadequacy of associationism ; and as Wundt operates only with sensations and affections, we have had the comfortable assurance that we might safely do the same thingj However that may be, and I offer it as the merest suggestion, rthere can be no doubt that the imageless psychol- ogists have done us the same kind of service in the sphere of thought that the James-Lange theory did us in the sphere of emotiraj We had become too civilised, too professional, too aca- demic, in our accounts of emotion; and James, with his reverberation of organic sensations, (brought us back to the crude and the raw and the rank of actual experience^ James' lion has now been pretty thoroughly assimilated by the aca- demic lamb^^who is the better and stronger for the meal. (Whether the sensationalists can, in like manner, assimilate attitudes and awarenesses THE DOCTRINE OF AUFGABE 161 and thought-elements remains to be seen. They have at least been stirred up to a healthful activ- ity; and if the outcome of the struggle is a dual control, their position will certainly not be weaker than it now is, but rather made more secure within a fixed boundary^ /There, then, is the problem which the recent psy^iology of thought sets to psychology at large, — and of which it at once offers a partial solution in ttie doctrine of the problem, the Auf- gahe, itselfj The notion of an external arid precedent determination of consciousness is, of course, familiar enough ; we speak of command, of suggestion, of instruction, of the influence of surroundings, of class-room atmosphere and laboratory atmosphere, of professional attitude, of class bias, of habit and disposition, of temper- amental interests and predilections, of inherited ability and inherited defect ; and in all these cases we imply iiiat the trend of a present conscious- ness, the direction that it takes, is determined beforehand and from without, whether in psy- chophysical or in purely physiological terms. But a thing may be a commonplace of the text-books, and yet have escaped experimental study. Thus laboratory psychology has, until very lately, looked askance at hypnosis as a method of psychological investigation ; the treatment of sug- 11 162 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT gestion has therefore, to a large degree, been left to the psychopathologists and the psychologists of society, and we have borrowed from them as occasion arose. Things are changing; Ach and Martin have employed hypnosis in the labora- tory. Things will change still more, now that experimental results in general are seen to be functions of the instructions given. I do not know where the first hint of this de- termination of consciousness is to be found. Miiller and Schimiann are on the track of it in 1889, when in reporting their experiments with lifted weights they describe the phenomenon of motor Einstellung, motor predisposition.^ Kiilpe in 1893 works it out explicitly for the case of voluntary action; "the preceding state of con- sciousness," he declares, "is of first importance in all reaction-time experimentation," and he dis- tinguishes the sensorial from the muscular type of simple reaction, and the simple sensorial from the cognitive reaction, on the ground of differ- ence in the preparation of the reactor; indeed, his whole polemic against the subtractive proce- dure, the measuring of time of cognition, time of discrimination, time of choice by the successive subtraction of the times of simpler reactions, is based upon the argument that reaction-psychol- ogy must be essentially a psychology, not of THE DOCTRINE OP AUFGABE 163 contents, but of preparation.^ To some extent, this same idea was present to Martins in 1891,^ to Miinsterberg in 1889,^ to Lange in 1887.^ On the non-experimental side we may go back to Hobbes, who in the Leviathan distinguishes mental discourse that is unguided, without de- sign and inconstant, from mental discourse that is regulated by some desire or design;^ or we may start with Volkelt, who in 1887 emphasised the importance of the Vorsatz, the plan or de- sign, for the results of observation.* On the whole, it is probably true to say thalAhis notion of the external and precedent determination of consciousness comes into experimental psychol- ogy' ^Y hints and partialrecognitions, in the late eighties of the last centur^ However, I am not disputing the originality or the service of m^att and Ach. It is they who, by systematic experimentation, have given us the Aufgdbe and the determinierende Tendenzen, and the gift has made it impossible for any fu- ture psychologist to write a psychology of thought in the language of content alone. I believe, indeed, that the principle of determina- tion, taken together with what I may call a genetic sensationalism, furnishes a trustworthy guide for further experimental study of the thought-processes; and I think that the work 164 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT immediately before us is, under this guidance, to bring the processes, little bit by bit, under rigorous experimental control) We aremirther indebted to the subjects of our inquiry for a great volume of introspective data, a mass of introspective material that for bulk and value is, I suppose, without a paralley Grant that the reports need, in many cases and in various ways, a psychological reinterpretation: ^hey stimulate to that interpretation^ Grant that they set more problems than they solve : th^ fset those problems in clear and positive form) Raise whatever objection you will: the fact re- mains that a large proportion of this analysis is solid and stable, and that none of it need be mis- leading. If it had merely retaught the old lesson that the stronghold of mind is not to be taken by storm, but must be reduced by patient siege, we might still have been grateful; we cannot too often be reminded that the method of psychology is an experimewfeal-intrx>speGtion, — 'thatofeiServra- tions^ust be repeated, that the process observe^ niu.st_be .set apart, in isolation from other pro- cesses^ that variation of experience aaust follow and_tally with variation of cpliditionSi if we are__ to build the science on a firin foundation.® The printed records show us this; they justify to the utmost that painstaking regard for method that INTROSPECTIVE DATA 165 has now and again been made our reproach: but the proof and the justification are positive as well as negative, given with success as well as with failure. One feels — I have felt — a certain aversion to the scores of closely packed and spottily printed pages of the Archiv; and the writers, surely, have a good deal to learn on the score of literary presentation; there is no reason why they should be quite as f uU, quite as chatty, confidential, platitudinous, formless, as they actually are. But after a first reading, when one has the clue to the labyrinth, the real and permanent value of the 'protocols' is plain enough. ^A specific problem set : a principle of explana- tion discovered: a volume of untrimmed intro- spections offered in evidence: — those, I should say*^re the three things that we may be grateful {oT.\ Those are, at any rate, the three most tangible things. There is much more to be learned: useful hints are given for the conduct of experiment, individual differences are in- structively displayed, sources of suggestion may be traced and their influence noted, mistakes are made and their consequences may be followed up, and so on and so forth. But help of this sort is, after all, the help that we derive from any serious and extended piece of work, while the 166 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT three points that I have just mentioned are characteristic and new. II And now I am to attempt construction, and to set forth my own ideas on the psychology of thought! I am not happy in the prospect. But I am committed to certain principles, and I must do" what I can — ^though there is time only for fragments and outline sketches — in their de- fense. And first I offer a word upon^he regu- lative maxims that should, as I believe, direct our inqui^. I assume that we are to attempt a psychology, and that (psychology has here to pick its way between logic or theory of knowledge, on the one hand, and common sense on the othew When we are instructing our students(in the psychol- ogy of sensation and of the simpler sense-com- plexes, we have to steer this same sort of middle course, only that there the course lies between physics (under which I include physiology) and common sensej[ The psychological process is so \mHke both the nerve-process and the thing of common-sense thinking that our task, in the case of sensation, should be relatively easy. You know that it is not ; you know that while students will profess that they clearly see the differences PSYCHOLOGY AND LOGIC 167 as described, nt is exceedingly difficult to get them to take up the psychological attitude for themselves, to psychologise ; the solid, palpable facts of natural science and the prejudices of common sense are for ever in the way. Well! this difficulty is increased tenfold in the case of thought. For the psychology of thought leads straight up to, passes directly over into, a func- tional logic, a theory of knowledge^ you may love the one and hate the other, but you cannot be sure that you are always on your own side of the line ; you are interested to work out an appli- cation, or you give the rein to your reproductive tendencies, and behold! you have overstepped your limit. [Common sense tempts you: for common sense, however illogical itself, is very fond of logic, and oftentimes joins forces with logic to wean you from your psychological allegianc£^ I speak abstractly; but it is only a step to the concrete. Nothing is more strik- ing, nothing in its way is more amusing, than the constant recurrence of the chp,rge of logical bias in others, and the honest ignorance of logical bias in oneself, that characterises the authors we have been reviewing. Woodworth 'smarts un- der the epistemological whip' of sensationalism, and wUl go to the observed facts; he therefore proceeds to write several pages of epistemology. 168 PSYCHOLOGY OP THOUGHT Biihler regrets that Messer should have been dominated by Erdmann's logic, and will himself go to the observed facts; he prepares for the expedition by putting on a fairly complete suit, of logical armour. It seems to me that the charge, as made in the particular instancesf, is for the most part justified, and that the mutuai — shall I say, recrimination? has its allotted place in thought-psychology; the more we are criti- cised, the more careful shall we be. Only, it would be foolish to suppose that we are ourselves, ex officio, free from an error that we discern in everyone else. Let us remember that the chances of error are legion, and not be surprised if we succumb, put let us cling to the ideal of writ- ing a psychology; let that Aufgabe be perpetu- ally present in consciousness; let us adopt it as a regulative principle of ourprocedurej I assmne, secondly, that wherever we have to deal with a closed consciousness, simultaneous or sequential,\-I can think of no better adjective than 'closed' ; I mean si^bthings-as^-perception, aa^cti on, a th ought,— ^the analytical considera- tion of mind must be supplemented by the genetic, and that this genetic consideration must be twofold, individual and racij,jj I have been so generally misunderstood and so seriously (though I have no doubt unintentionally) mis- THE TASK OP ANALYSIS 169 represented in this connection that you will, per- haps, pardon a somewhat elementary discussion of the postulate : I desire to be quite exphcit. The imifiediate-task of .analysis, in face of any complex mental proc ess, I take to be itself twa- fold. We have to regard the process both in tranSKefiseflS^-in longitudinal section; to deter- mine ttie_nato;e_ajftd number of the elementary processes _jntp .Tfyhich Jhe complex may be re- solved, laiid.. to determine, again with reference to these elengientary processes, the type and dura- tion &£ its temporal course. When, however, we are dealing with what I have called the closed consciousnesses, [a single application of this analytical procedure is not enough; on the con- trary, we must analyse again and again, at the various formative levels of consciousness; we must follow out the operation of that general law of growth and decayjto which I referred in the first Lecture.* An obvious illustration of this necessity is furnished by the psychology of action. To understand the action consciousness we must trace the rise and fall of the impulse within the individual mind : its rise to volition and selective action, its fall to the ideomotor and secondary reflex forms. But we must go even still further afield; /we must transcend the limit ^*P. 33. 170 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT of the individual mindj we must raise the ulti- mate question whether the earliest organic move- ments were conscious or unconscious. fThere is no other way, as things are, to approximate ex- planation in this department of psychology, — and we have said that pss^shologjj-is to be both descriptive and explanatoryi We find, in fact, that analytical psychology always takes this way: I instance only such weU-known things as Wundt's theory of space-perception and Stumpf's theory of tonal fusion.^^ There are, then, in these casesftwo analytical and two genetic problems: the examination of present process in transverse and in longitudinal section, and the examination of foripative levels in the history of the individual and of the race^ Now arises the question with which we are here directly concerned :MVhat shall be adopted, in these various examinations, as the criterion of a mental elementj I regard as a mental element any process that proves tp be irreducible, unanalysable, through- out the whole, course of individual_experieoce,. Consider, for instance, the processes of sensa- tion and affection. They have certain salient characteristics in common; they suggest the bio- logical analogy of two species of the same genus ; I have felt justified in deriving them from a THE MENTAL ELEMENT 171 single hypothetical mental ancestor/^ Never- theless, I can trace no passage from the one to the other in the individual mind ; they seem to be separate and distinct, so soon as nervous organi- sation is complete; and they must, therefore, I believe, be regarded by analytical psychology as separate elements. Consider, on the other hand, the-attitudes and awarenesses of which we have said so much. Ul we can trace an attitude back, within the same mind, to an imaginal source; if it thus appears not as original endow- ment but as residuum, not as primule but as vestige, then I should protest against its ranking as a mental elem entj Even if there are certain minds in which the derivation is impossible, in which the attitude can neither be identified with sensation and image nor referred with certainty to precedent sensory and imaginal experience, I should still hesitate — so long as there are other minds in which the derivation is possible — to adopt the purely phenomenological standpoint, and to class it outright as elementary; I should prefer to^tenn^ a, secondary element, or a derived ele- ment, and. so. ixudistinguish it from the elements proper, as defined a moment ago. Classification is, of course, always a matter of expediency, and I have no quarrel with those who differ from me on this particular point. But it seems to me 172 PSYCHOLOGY OP THOUGHT inexpedient to give the rank of element to any- thing that is not a matter of original and general human endowment. You see, then, the place that I allow to genetic consideration. The misunderstanding to which I have referred arises, I imagine, from a confu- sion of two points of view, which may be dis- tinguished as the analytical and the integrative. The analytical psychologist, even when he is occupied with mind in its development, is always trying to analyse. He may, and he does, protest that it never occurs to him to consider sensation, for instance, — the sensation of the adult human consciousness, — as a genetic unit. Nevertheless, what he finds by his genetic consideration must, of necessity, be sensation over again, in some less differentiated form; his problem is analysis, and his results are conditioned by the problem. The integrative psychologist, eager to preserve that continuity of mind which the analyst purposely destroys, and working from below upwards in- stead of from above downwards, reaches results that, in strictness, are incomparable with the results of analysis: as incomparable, let us say as 'seasonal dimorphism' and 'unstriped muscle.' Incomparables, of course, are not in- compatibles; but the attempt to compare them, to bring them under a common rubric as 'facts CONTKOL OP CONSCIOUSNESS 173 of psychological observation' or what not, must inevitably lead to misunderstanding.^' I have only to add the caution that we must not expect a genetic inquiry to reveal, in every case, a complete series of nicely graded transi- tional forms. If I may trust some observations of my own, the path that leads, for example, from full imagery to Bewusstseinslage is more likely to be broken than continuous; conscious- ness seems to drop, at a single step, from a higher to a lower level; the progress is effected by substitutions and short cuts, rather than by a gradual course of transformation. This, how- ever, is a matter of descriptive detail, and does not affect the principle which is laid down in the maxim. I assume, thirdly ,rthat consciousness may be guided and controlled by extra-conscious, physio- logical factors, — ^by cortical sets and dispositions ; and I agree with Ach that this extra-conscious determination may lead to novel conscious con- nections, which would not have been effected by the mere play of reproductive tendencies,^* though I do not agree with Messer that the dis- position as such is represented in consciousness by a gpecifle experience^^ In a paper which is intended to form the basis for a theory of thought, a paper entitled "On the Nature of 174 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT Certain Brain States connected with the Psychi- cal Processes," vor^-Kries, in 1895, worked out a theory of cerebrate EinstellungX^Tehral set or adjustmem, with the main features of which I am in entire accord. He distinguishes two 'i^ypes of adjustment, the connectiye-and the dis- positional: the former illustrated, in simple tepms7~fey~-the_readin§- of a-musical- scor« -in a par±icula£jk£yj^thej[aiter by Quxjinderstanding of abstract words like 'red,^ 'triangle.'-^® It is needless to point out that a theory of this sort serves admirably to explain the experimental results of Watt and Ach; indee^Ach's deter- minj^g tendencies and subexcited reproductive tendencies are merely specialised types of von Kiies.' _ . connective and dispositional ad j ust- ments.^^ And the idea of determination is now so familiar to us that I need not further discuss it here, or devote further time to my third and last regulative maxim. I pass on to the prob- lems themselves; and I take up first of all the problem of meaning. Ill Some time ago we met with the objection that it is nonsense to call a psychical fact or occur- rence the meaning of another psychical fact or occurrence; two ideas are and must remain two THE PSYCHOLOGY OP MEANING 175 ideas, and cannot be an idea and its meaning. I said, in reply, that in my beli^ftwo ideas do, un- der certain circumstances, make a meaning. What are the circumstances^] I hold that, from the psychological or existen- tial point of view, meaning^ — so far as it finds representation in consciousness at all — is always context. A n idea means another idea , i s "jysycho - ' logicaUyJhe_^m£aning..a£JtJMLfl^^ if it is th§iJdea's,£ontsxt. And I iind££§.tandJ)y_con- text simply the mental process or complex of mental pr5&esses wTiicTT'acCTues^to' thF"0!rig1ffSl idea through t he situati on* in wliich the orgaii-" ism finds itself, — primitively, the natural situa- tion; later, either the natural or the mental. In another connection, M! have argued that the earliest form of attention is a definitely deter- mined reaction, sensory and motor both, upon some dominant stimulus; and that as mind de- veloped, and image presently supervened upon sensation, this gross total response was differ- entiated into three typical attitudes, — the re- *The terra 'situation' seems to me to bring out more clearly than any nearer equivalent of Aufgdbe the part played in determination by the organism itself. Externally regarded, a situation is a colloca- tion of stimuli; but it becomes a situation only if the organism is prepared for selective reaction upon that collocation. An Aufgahe, on the other hand, a task or problem, may be set to any organism, prepared or unprepared. I have no wish to press the word : but I here mean by 'situation' any form of Aufgahe that is normal to' the particular organism. 176 PSYCHOLOGY OP THOUGHT ceptive, the elaborative and the executive, whidi we may illustrate by sensible discrimination, re- flective thought, and voluntary actionJ Now it seems to me thatl^eaning, context, has extended and developed in the same way. Mean ing Js. originally, kinassthesis ; the organism faces the situation by some IBodily attitude, and the char- acteristic sensations which the attitude involves give meaning to the process that stands at the conscious focus, are psychologically the meaning of that process.'^® Afterwards, when differen- tiation has taken place, context may be mainly a matter of sensations of the special senses, or of images, or of kinsesthetic and other organic sensations, as the situation dema nds.^ The par- ticular form that meaning assumes is then a question to be answered by descriptive psy- chology. Of all the possible formsj however, — and I 'think they are legion^^ — two appear to be of especial importance: v^kinaesthesis and verbal images.v We are animals, locomotor organisms; the motor attitude, the executive type of atten- tion, is therefore of constant occurrence in our experience; and, as it is much older than the elaborative, so it is the more ingrained. There would be nothing surprising in the discovery that, for minds of a certain constitution, all non- THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MEANING 177 verbal conscious meaning is carried by kinass- thetic sensation or kinaesthetic image. And words themselves, let us remember, were at first motor attitudes, gestures, kinesthetic contexts: complicated, of course, by sound, and therefore, fitted to assist the other types of attention, the receptive and the elaborative ; but stiU essentially akin to the gross attitudes of primitive attention. ^he fact that words are thus originally contex- tual, and the fact that they nevertheless as sound, and later as sight, possess and acquire a content-character, these facts render language preeminently available for thought; it is at once idea and context of idea, idea and meaning; and as the store of free images increases, and the elab- orative attitude grows more and more natural, the contextJise of words or word-aspects becomes habituahi The meaning of the printed page may now consist in the auditory-kinsesthetic accom- paniment of internal speech; the word is the word's own meaning;^" or some verbal represen- tation, visual or auditory-kingesthetic or visual- kinsesthetic or what not, may give meaning to a non-verbal complex of sensations or images. There would, again, be nothing surprising — we should simply be in presence of a limiting case — in the discovery that,/for minds of a certain con- 12 '^ 178 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT stitution, all conscious meaning is caijifid either by total kinesthetic attitude or by wordsj As a matter of fact,fnieaning is car^d by all sorts of sensational and imaginal processes^ Men- tal constitution is widely varied, and the mean- ing-response of a mind of a certain constitution varies widely under varying circumstances, A descriptive psychology is primarily concerned with types and uniformities; but if we were to make serious work of a differential psychology of meaning, we should/probably find that, in the multitudinous variety oT situations and contexts, any mentalprocess may possibly be the meaning of any othejj But I go farther. I doubt if meaning need hecessarily be conscious at all, — if it may not be ycarried' in purely physiological terms. In rapid reading, the skimming of pages in quick succes- sion; in the rendering of a musical composition in a particular key; in shifting from one lan- guage to another as you turn to your right or left hand neighbour at a dinner table : in these and similar cases \J_doubt if meaning necessarily has any kind of conscious representation. It very well may; but I doubt if it necessarily doesj There must be an Aufgahe, truly, but then tlie Aufgdbe, as we have seen, need not either come to consciousness, |I was greatly astonished to THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MEANING 179 observe, some years ago, that the recognition of shades of grey might be effected, so far as my introspection went, in this purely physiological way. I am keenly alive to the importance of organic sensations and, as I shall show in a moment, to that of reduced or schematic kines- thetic attitudes. I was not at all astonished to observe that the recognition of a grey might consist in a quiver of the stomach. But there were instances in which the grey was 'recognised' without words; without organic sensations, kin- aesthetic or other; without the arousal of a mood; without anything of an appreciably conscious sort. I found not the faintest trace of an image- less apprehension, if that apprehension is sup- posed to be something conscious over and above the grey itself. I cannot further describe the experience : it was simply a 'recognition' without consciousness. Nevertheless, you may say, there must have been something there; you would have had a different experience had the grey not been recog- nised. So a word that you understand is experi- enced otherwise than a nonsense word or a word of some unknown foreign language. Certainly! Butyfiiy contention is that the plus of conscious- ness^fn these comparisons, lies on the side of the unrecognised, the unknown, and not on the side 180 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT of the recognised and knowiy There was plenty of consciousness, in the experiments to which I am referring, when a grey was not recognised: the point is that there was sometimes none at all when there was recognition. But let me repeat that this statement is made tentatively, and suh- ject to correction; I believe it to be true of my- self, but it requires confirmation from others.^^ (what, then, of the imageless thoughts, the awarenesses, the Bewusstseinslagen of meaning and the restj) I have, as you may suppose, been keeping my eyes open for their appearance ; and we have several investigations now in progress that aimjinore or less directly, at their examina- tion. nVhat I have personally found does not, so far, shake my faith in sensationalism. I have become keenly alive, for instance, to the variety of organic attitude and its kinaesthetic represen- tationj I am sure that when I sit down to the typewriter to think out a lecture, and again to work off the daily batch of professional cor- respondence, and again to write an intimate and characteristic letter to a near friend, — I am sure that in these three cases I sit down differently. The different Aufgahen come to conscious- ness, in part, as different feels of the whole body; I am somehow a different organism, and a consciously different organism. Description ORGANIC ATTITUDES 181 in the rough is not difficult: there are dif- ferent visceral pressures, different distributions of tonicity in the muscles of back and legs, dif- ferences in the sensed play of facial expression, differences in the movements of arms and hands in the intervals between striking the keys, rather obvious differences in respiration, and marked differences of local or general involuntary move- ment. It is clear that these differences, or many of them, could be recorded by the instru- ments which we employ for the method of ex- pression, and could thus be made a matter of objective record. But I have, at any rate, no doubt of their subjective reality; and I believe that, under experimental conditions, description would be possible in detail. I find, moreover, that these attitudinal feels are touched off in all sorts of ways: by an author's choice and ar- rangement of words, by the intonation of a speaking voice, by the nature of my physical and social environment at large.^^ They shade off gradually into those empathic experiences which I mentioned in the first Lecture, the experiences in which I not only see gravity and modesty and pride and courtesy and stateliness in the mind's eye, but also feel or act them in the mind's muscles. And I should add that they may be of all degrees of definiteness, from 182 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT the relatively coarse and heavy outlines of the typewriting illustration, down to the merest flicker of imagery which lies, I suppose, on the border of an unconscious disposition. I do not for a moment profess to have made an exhaustive exploration of my own mind, in the search for Bewusstseinslagen. Butlif there were any frequent form of experience, different in kind from the kin£esthetic backgrounds that I have just described, I think that I am sufficiently versed in introspection, and sufficiently objective in purpose, to have come upon its tra^ I have turned round, time and time again, upon con- sciousnesses like doubt, hesitation, belief, assent, trying to rememlier, having a thing on my tongue's tip, an<^ have not been able to discover the imageless processes^ No doubt, the analysis has been rough and uncontrolled; but it has been attempted at the suggestion of the imageless psychologists, and with the reports of their in- trospections echoing in my mind, (^iihler's thought-elements I frankly disbelieve vTP The unanalysable and irreducible Bewusstseinslagen of other investigators may, I conceive, prove to be analysable when they are scrutinised directly and under favourable experimental conditions. If they still resist analysis, " they may perhaps be considered as consciousnesses of the same gen- CONSCIOUS ATTITUDES 183 eral sort as my attitudinal feels, but as conscious- nesses that are travelling toward the unconscious by another roadJ It is conceivable, in other words, that whileTin my mind, the attitudes thin out, tail off, lose in bulk, so to say, as they become mechanised, in minds of a different type they retain their original area, their extension, and simply become uniform and featureless, as a variegated visual surface becomes uniform under adaptation. If that hypothesis is worth consideration, then the first problem for experi- ment is, as I have earlier suggested, to trace this course of degeneration within the same mind, Whether the featureless fringes or back- grounds shall be classified as a secondary kind of mental element — in any event, as we have seen, a question of expediency — would then de- pend upon the success or failure of the search for intermediaries that should link them to imagery.^^ f3 for Ach's theory of the subexcitation of a of reproductive tendencies^ I confess that I have been in many minds about it. The ob- jection that a mere glow or halo in consciousness could not be the vehicle of anything so clear and definite as a specific knowledge, I discount alto- gether; (there is no necessary relation, in my experience, between indefiniteness of conscious 184 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT contents and haziness of meaning. The doubt that I have is, first of all, whether the theory is necessary, whether the awarenesses (which, re- member, I do not myself experience as aware- nesses) may not be traced down from imaginal complexes; and secondly, whether it is psycho- physicaUy possible that excitations which are individually subliminal shall by their combination produce an effect in consciousnejssJ The case is not at all parallel to that of Fechner's caterpil- lars, heard feeding in the wood :^^ for there you have a simple simimation of homogeneous excita- tions, whereas here you have the faint stirring up of all sorts of reproductions, the getting ready of all manner of associated ideas. (1 can- not quite reconcile myself to the theory, — though if I were convinced of the ultimate character of the awareness, I might find it more plausible than I do.^A /And what of the feelings of relation? Do I 'not grant that they exist? Most assuredlyj) I intimated as much in a previous Lecture. It would be curious indeed if we could talk so fluently about relations, and yet had no feeling of them, no conscious representation of relation. (But the phrase 'feehng of relation' is no more unequivocal, as a psychological term, than the phrase 'idea of object' or 'consciousness of mean- FEELINGS OP KELATION 185 ing. It carries an intimation, an indication, a statement-about ; it does not describe. And the question for psychology is precisely that : What do we experience when we have a 'feeling of relationj^ What I myself experience depends upon cir- cumstances. It was my pleasure and duty, a little while ago, to sit on the platform behind a somewhat emphatic lecturer, who made great use of the monosyllable 'but.' My 'feeling of but' has contained, ever since, a flashing picture of a bald crown, with a fringe of hair below, and a massive black shoulder, the whole passing swiftly down the visual field from northwest to south- east. I pick up such pictures very easily, in all departments of mind; and, as I have told you, they may come to stand alone in consciousness as vehicles of meaning. In this particular in- stance, the picture is combined with an empathic attitude; and all such 'feelings' — :l^lings of if, and why, and nevertheless, and therefore — nor- mally take the form, in my experience, of motor empathy. I act the feeling out, though as a rule in imaginal and not in sensational terms. It may be fleeting, or it may be relatively stable; whatever it is, I have not the slightest doubt of its kinaesthetic characterT^ Sometimes it has a strong afi'ective colouring — this statement holds 186 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT of all my attitudinal feels — and sometimes it is wholly indifferent. The kinaesthetic origin of these 'feelings' has recently been urged by Washburn, who however considers them to be, in the human consciousness, "ultimately and absolutely unanalysable and un- localisable." "The significance of these ['relational elements']," we read, "... is the following. They are remnants of remotely ancestral motor attitudes, and they resist analysis now because of their vestigial nature. Take the 'feeling of but,' for example: the sense of the con- tradiction between two ideas, present when we say 'I should like to do so and so, but — ^here is an objection.' If we trace this back, what can it have been originally but the experience of primitive organisms called upon by simultaneous stimuli to make two incompatible re- actions at once, and what can that experience have been but a certain suspended, baffled motor attitude? Sim- ilarly with the 'feeling of if . . ."" We all appeal, at times, to the primitive or- ganism — who is a useful creature — and I have no doubt that, in this particular case, the appeal is justified. But, in my own experience, an or- ganism need not be more primitive than a pro- fessor of psychology in an American university to feel the suspended motor attitude. And while the analysis and localisation of my particular feeling of 'but' has value only for individual FEELINGS OP RELATION 187 psychology, I do roughly localise it and I can roughly analyse it into constituents. It follows from what has been said that(l fully agree with Woodworth as regards the unit-char- acter, the psychological completeness.,and inde- pendence, of the 'feeling of relation^ Calkins' characteristic of 'belonging to' something else appears to me to derive from reflection, not from introspection.^^ ffl^here I differ is in my sensa- tionalistic reading of the relational consciousnesg. It is, however, always possible, as I explained a little while ago in the case of meaning, thatQve are in presence of individual differences, and that the champions of the element of relation have moved farther than I along the path to automatism or mechanisation. It would then again be a question of expediency whether we set this unanalysable degenerate in a class by itself, or whether we give it a place among the ideational contents of consciousness. In either event we shall have to qualify oiir choice, to state thaj^ another mode of classification is possible, ^^hat the path of habit does, in fact, lead here to mechanisation^ I am as sure as, without strict experimental proof, I can be. Over and over again I have noticed how Consciousness may be switched into a new direction by a relational word, without any traceable representation of 188 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT the relation within consciousness^ The function of the word is like that of the mysterious button at the side of the barrel-organ, wiiich when pressed by the grinder changes the resulting tune. I must declare, at the risk of wearying you with declarations, that ft can bear witness both to kinsesthesis and to cS^tical set, but that between these extremes I find nothing at alT^- So much, then, for meaning and attitude and relation. Even the little that I have been able to say about them shows, I hope, that the sen- sationalistic position is stiU tenable, fl wish that I could offer some positive contribimon to the psychology of judgment; but the insuperable difficulty there is that we do not yet know what judgment liT) It is an anomalous position! We are committed to a 'psychology of judgment' ; we can no longer say, with Rehmke, that the phrase is a contradiction in itself ,^^ or with Marbe that there is no psychological criterion of judgment; and yet no one, psychologist or logician, can furnish a definition that finds general accept- ance.'" And this lack of a settled psycholog- ical definition is not a matter simply of different points of view, as it is, for instance, in the case of sensation and idea. There the differences of opinion are natural, traditional, intelligible from the history of human thought;! here there THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JUDGMENT 189 is actual uncertainty regarding the nature and limits of the process to be defin^dJ When, years ago, I was writing a text-book of psychology, and felt the need of a paragraph upon judgment, /Tadopted Wundt's description of the play of active attention upon an aggregate idea; and in order to give judgment a definite place in the system, I named it an association after disjunction, and classified it with the suc- cessive associati(mgJi I I took Wundt's description because it was couched in terms of content, and because I could verify it in my own experience Biihler and his observers have recently borne witness to its truth f^ and, indeed, I suppose that no one denies the occurrence of the particular type of consciousness to which Wundt refers. For the same reason, when a reviewer observed that I had given an account only of the analytic, and not of the synthetic judgment, I replied in good introspective faith tha,t my account was intended to cover both f orms.^^ |lt is clear, how- ever, that the discovery of the Aufgabe makes all content-psychology of the Wundtian sort, how- ever accurate within its limits, appear partial 3,nd incomplete^^ When, again, I was looking about for in- stances of the judgment, I took it for granted that such statements as 'Socrates is a-man,' 'Hon- 190 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT esty is the best policy' are not judgments at all, in any distinctive sense, — that they are, on the contrary, just as mechanical as is the pianist's rendering of a certain composition in a certain key. CMarbe's investigation of judgment seems to me TO" be open to the criticism that, in a great many of his experiments, no judgment is in- volveSft When, for instance, he asks Kiilpe, pointing at the same time to an object on the table, "What is that?" and Kiilpe answers "An ink bottle," there is a touch of comedy in the ziigehorige Aussage that the answer came 'quite reflexly.' How else should it have come? Well! now hear Watt on the other side: "There is no reason to suppose," he tells us, "that a certain typical course of consciousness is the indis- pensable condition of logical thinking. We have to fix our attention upon the result (^Leistung) and upon that alone; we need not assume that a certain rapidity of reproduction and mode of apperception are essential conditions of a logical act. I find no logical difference between the first, slow, hesitating reproduction of an idea and the quickest, such as we have in the pair rat- bat. It has, however, become the rule with many psy- chologists to speak of a thinking that has grown mechanical by practice, in opposition to a thinking that is active, novel and valuable. This is a vulgar differ- ence, which has little import for psychological analysis and for experiment.'"' I can only say that, so far as I see, the differ- THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JUDGMENT 191 ence — ^be it as vulgar as possible — has a great deal of import for analysis and experimentation. Watt, I may remind you, is convinced that all his experiments vvere judgments, because all alike stood under the influence of the Aufgabe. But, if we find that consciousness under that influence shows all manner of variation, it is our business, as psychologists, to make the variation explicit; to bring the diff'erent forms, by ex- perimental control, to a psychological analysis. At the same time the fact that Watt adopts so general a criterion of judgment shows the un- certainty of its psychological definition ; just as the adoption of a similarly general criterion of voluntary action, by Thorndike and Woodworth, shows how far we are, in that field also, from clear-cut distinctions.^* ^ny proposed definition must have sometliing personal and arbitrary about itj Yet ]^hler started out with the simple in- tention of making his observers think, and! have been saying that his method was a failure-P Yes, — not because the intention was wrong, but fbecause the method at once escaped experimental control and put a premium on the stimulus-error^ I venture to propose a middle way. I have pointed out that we- are all exposed to infection from logic, though we recognise the symptoms 192 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT of the disease in others more readily than we observe them in ourselves. Now let us face the facts; and, if we can, let us agree with Royce that "every advance upon one of these two sides of the study of the intellectual life makes possi- ble, under the conditions to which all our human progress is naturally subject, a new advance upon the other side."^^ Then a programme for the experimental study of judgment lies before us. We have to work steadily and one by one at the part-problems set by the investigations already made, and we have to compare our results with the teachings of the standard books on logic. The logicians disagree, as the psychologists dis- agree. But we shall find out, by our comparison and by the suggestion of further work that issues from it, what types of consciousness there are that correspond with current logical definitions of judgment. As the exploration goes on, uni- formities will appear of themselves; and ulti- mately we shall be able to decide whether judgment is a general term for a great variety of consciousnesses, a name like 'perception,' or whether it is, like 'fusion,' the name of a specific mode of conscious arrangement. To make the idea more concrete, I propose, for instance, that we combine Wundt's notion of the apperceptively analysed aggregate idea with the doctrine of CONCLUSION 193 'AufgabCj and discover experimentally how far the combination takes us. Or, to illustrate it from another point of view, I suggest that Mes- ser's mistake lay in his outright acceptance of Erdmann's definition of judgment; that he should not have instructed his observers to find the predicative relation, but should have put them under conditions where they might find it if it was iiieise. The advantages of this procedure are that we secure a definite starting point for experimental work, and carry on that work under the guidance of some definite hypothesis. The obvious disadvantage is the dependence of a psy- chological enquiry upon logical presuppositions. But we ought to have our eyes open: and, if we nod, our friends will not scruple to arouse us.^® It is, as everyone knows, far easier to propose than to carry the proposal out in experimental performance. Once upon a time, I innocently gave a trio of students the topics of expectation, practice and habituation, with the idea that a year's experimental work would reveal everything about them that we need to know. The three reports are still extant, and I find their perusal whole- some. It is easy to suggest: but here there has been no alternative, — or at best the alternative of a sheer dogmatism. My task has been to per- suade you that there is no need, as things are, to 13 194 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT swell the number of the mental elements; that the psychology of thought, so far as we have it, may be interpreted from the sensationalistic standpoint, and so far as we stiU await it, may be approached by sensationalistic methods. What the future will bring forth, no one can foresee: it may be that the essential problems are already before us, or it may be that we are still at the threshold of a thought-psychology, that, psycho- logically as well as logically, judgment is but the first step on a long road of scientific inquiry. In any event, I see less prospect of gain from a revolution thanf rom persistent work imder the existing regin^iSti We have acknowledged our indebtedness to the psychologists of imageless thinking. We have admitted and considered the fact of con- stitutional bias. On the other hand, Qve have proved that much can be analysed which had been pronounced simple and unanalysable, and we have found a direction for research that is prov- ing itself practicable in the laboratory. The final decision between the opposing views may now be left, with confidence, to the outcome of future experiment^ NOTES NOTES TO LECTURE I ^ K. Marhe's work on judgment ( 1901) has proved to be thTsiarting-point of a long and important series of investigations, and it is becomi ng customar y tn ^ateJiha experimgntal ps ychology of thought frogL -tbe anpear- ance - o f t h r Ei t ip erimrn f f ll petf c h nla^hrhr — Untermch- ungeri jiher das Urt eil^ eine Ekde itun^ in di^, T,(\f^ik.* as we date the experimental psychology of memory from Ebbinghaus' Ueher das Geddchtnis. I have, naturally, no wish to detract from Marbe's service and originality. But in fact there were experiments on thought before 1901 ; Binet seems to have known nothing of Marbe when he wrote his own book; and Marbe's work — with its negative result on the side of psychological analysis, and its strongly logical leanings — would hardly have had the influence that it has actually exerted unless the ground had been prepared to receive it. Hence it would, perhaps, be more nearly true to say that Marbe stands to the experimental psychology of thought as Leh- mann (with his Die Hauptgesetze des menscMichen Gefiihlslebens, 1892) stands to the experimental psy- chology of the affective processes. ^ So A. Binet, L'Stude experimentale de I'imtelligence,^ 1903, 1 f. "II est incontestable, pour ceux qui suivent les progrfes de la psychologic experimentale, que cette science subit en ce moment meme une evolution decisive. . . . Le mouvement nouveau . . . consiste a faire une * Cited, in the following Notes, as 'Marbe.' t Cited, in the following Notes, as 'Binet.' 197 198 NOTES TO LECTURE I plus iStg^-jdagea I'introspection, et a porter I'investi- gation vers les pKenomei»i& superieurs de I'esprit, tels que la memoire, I'attention, Pimaghaatjon, I'orientation des idees." * Vdlkerpgychologie. Eine Untersuchmig der Ent- wicklwngsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus und Sitte. I. Die Sprache, 1900 ; second edition, 1904. * Principles of Physiological Psychology, i., 1904, 5 ; Grundziige der physiologischen Psychologies i., 1908, 5. The idea is implied ibid., 1874, 5, but is not clearly expressed before i., 1887, 5 f. See also Beitrdge zur Theorie der Svimeswdhmehmwng, 186S, Einleitung ; Essays, 1885, 144 fF. (1906, 207 ff.); Ueber Ziele und Wege der Volkerpsychologie, Philosophische Studien, iv., 1888, 1 fF. ; Ueber Ausfrageexperimente und iiber die Methoden zur Psychologic des Denkens, Psychologische Studien, iii., 1907, S40 ff. Ct. N. Ach, Ueher d. WUlenstatigkeit u. d. Denhen, 1905, 21. I have spoken in the text of Wundt's overt challenge to the experimentalists. It should be remembered, fur- ther, that the Psychology of Language is itself couched throughout in terms of a definite systematic psychology, and therefore challenges by implication all those who are unable to accept the system. ^ All these and other, similar influences are traceable in the German work. The most important references are: B. Erdmann, Logik, i., 1893, 1907. Die psychologischen Grundlagen der Beziehungen zwischen Sprechen und Denken, Arch. f. gyst. Philos., ii., 1896, 355-416; iu., 1897, 31-48, 150-173. Umrisse zur Psychologie des Denkens, in PhiloiophUche Abhandhmgen, Chr. Sigwart zu teinem 70. Oeburtttage gewidmet, 1900, 3-40. NOTES TO LECTURE I 199 E. G. Husserl, LogUche Unterauchungen, i. Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, 1900. it. Untersuchungen zmr Phiinomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntim, 1901. T. Lipps, Einheiten und Relationen, eine Skizze zur Psychologie der Apperzeption, 1903. Vom Fiihlen, Wollen und Denken, 1903. Einige psychologische Streitpunkte: m. Die Relation der Aehnlichkeit, Zeitg. f. Psychol., xxviii., 1903, 166-178. Fortsetzung der "Psychologischen Streitpunkte": v. Zur Psychologie der "Annahmen," ibid., xxxi., 1903, 67-78. Leitfaden der Psychologie, 1903, 1906. Bewusstsein und GegenstSnde, Psychologische Untersuchungen, t, 190S, 1-303. Inhalt und Gegenstand; Psychologie vuid Logik, Sitzungsber. d. philos.-philol. Kl. d. k. b. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Miinehen, Jahrgang 1905, 1906, Sll-669. A. Meinong, Zur Psychologie der Komplexionen und Relationen, Zeits. f. Psychol, u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorgane, ii., 1891, 245- 365. Beitrage zur Theorie der psychischen Analyse, ibid., vi., 1893-4, 340-385, 417-455. Ueber Gegenstande hoherer Ordnung und deren Verhaltniss zur inneren Wahrnehmung, ibid., xxi., 1899, 182-273. Abstrahiren und Vergleichen, ibid., xxiv., 1900, 34-82. Ueber Annahmen, 1903. Untersuchungen zur Oegenstandstheorie und Psychologie, 1904; Ueber Gegenstandstheorie, 1-50. Ueber die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften, Zeits. f. Philos. u. philos. Kritik, cxxix., 1906, 48-93; 1907, 155-307; cxxx., 1907, 1-46. In Sachen der Annahmen, Zeits. f. Psychol., xli., 1906, 1-14. C. Stumpf, Erseheimungen und psychische Funktionen, 1907. (Aus den Abhandlungen der konigl. preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften vom Jahre 1906.) Zur EinteiUtng der Wissenschaften, 1907. (Aus den Abhand- lungen der konigl. preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften vom Jahre 1906.) The range of discussion, to which these references may serve as introduction, is already wide, and the questions at issue are of great moment for a systematic 200 NOTES TO LECTURE I psychology; they lie, however, beyond the scope of the present Lectures. * R. S. Woodworth, Non-Sensory Components of Sense Perception, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology ajid Scientific Methods, iv., 1907, 170 ; The Consciousness of Relation, Essays Philosophical and Psychological vn, Honour of WUliam James, 1908, 602 ; M. W. Calkins, The Abandonment of Sensationalism in Psychology, American Journal of Psychology, xx., 1909, 269 ff. ^ See my Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feelmg and Attention, 1908, 172. Useful references are: C. Sigwart, Die Unterschiede der Individualitaten, Kleine Schnften, u., 1889, 213 ff. W. Dilthey, Beitrage zum Studium der Individualitat, Sitzungs- ber. d. kgl. preuss. Akad. d. Wiss., 1896, 395 ff. M. Dessoir, Beitrage zur Aesthetik, i. Seelenkunst und Psycho- gnosis. Arch. f. syst. Philos., iii., 1897, 374 ff. L. W. Stern, Ueber Psychologie der individuellen Differenzen, 1900. (Bibliography, 133 ff.) E. Meumann, Vorlesungen znr Einfiihrung in die experimentelle Padagogik und ihre psychologischen Orundlagen, i., 1907, 322 ff. (Bibliography, SS3 ff.) R. MuUer-Freienfels, Individuelle Verschiedenheiten in der Kunst, Zeits. f. Psych., 1., 1908, 1 ff. It was the search for individual differences that prompted Ribot to undertake his study of 'general ideas' : Enquete sur les idees generales, Revue philos., xxxii., 1891, 376 ff. ; Resultat d'une enquete sur les concepts, Intemat. Congress of Exper. Psych., 1892, 20 ff. (re- marks by H. Sidgwick, 23 f . ; note by E. E. C. Jones, 181); The Evolution of General Ideas, 1899, 111 ff. R ibot wis hed to ascertain if there are types of concep - tion as there are types of imagination or ideation, and found in fact three such types, the concrete, the visual NOTES TO LECTURE I 201 typographic and the auditorj. His method (the pre- sentation of smglfi Wfttds or of sentences) anticipates in crude form those of Binet, of the Wiirzburg investi- gators, and of Woodworth. His most important re- sult is, without question, the d iscovery that m eaning oftentim es has n o represen tatio n in con sciousness. "We learn to understand a concept as we learn to walk, dance, fence, or play a musical instrument; it is a habit, i.e. an organised memory" (General Ideas, 131). *F. Galton, Inquiries into Himian Faculty amd its Development, 1883. "Scientific men, as a class, have feeble powers of visual representation" (87). "After maturity is reached, the further advance of age does not seem to dim the faculty, but rather the reverse, , . . but advancing years are sometimes accompanied by a growing habit of hard abstract thinking, and in these cases . . . the faculty undoubtedly becomes impaired. . . . Language and book-learning certainly tend to dull it" (99 f.). "I could mention instances within my own experience in which the visualising faculty has become strengthened by practice" (106). "I cannot discover any closer relation between high visualising power and the intellectual faculties than between verbal memory and those same faculties" (111). Binet is evidently writing from an imperfect memory when he says (Binet, 111) : "il y a . . . une opinion tres repandtie d'aprfes laquellel les images intenses se rencon- trent chez les femmes et les errfants, tandis que ceux qui ont I'habitude de I'abstraction, les adultes reflechis, n'ont pas de belles images de la realite, mais de pauvres fant6mes sans couleur et sans relief. Je suppose que toutes ces questions sont un peu embarrassees d'idees 202 NOTES TO LECTURE I precon9ues; ce ne sont point la des observations regu- lieres, et il ne faut pas s'y arreter trop longtemps." But Galton's stfitements are both careful and explicit. Cf . W. James, Principles of Psych., i., 1890, 266. * The following is a characteristic illustration of my use of imagery. I had to carry across the room, from book-shelf to typewriter, four references, — three vol- ume-numbers of a magazine, three dates, and four page- numbers. The volumes and years I said aloud, and then consigned to the care of the perseverative tenden- cies. Of the four page-numbers, I held two by visual images, one by auditory, and one by kinsesthesis. After I had written the references out, it occurred to me that the procedure — ^which at the time was adopted naturally and without reflection — had been somewhat dangerous ; the record proved, however, to be accurate. Experi- ences of the sort are, indeed, very common with me, and I should hardly have noted the occurrence had I not been recently engaged in the writing of this Lecture. Similar tricks of retention are, very possibly, em- ployed by imaginal minds at large. But, until we have detailed descriptions, the range of the mixed memory- type must remain uncertain. I put the above observa- tion on record in the hope that it may elicit others of hke tenor. — It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add that the 'having' of images and the 'using' of images are very difi'erent things, and that the determination of type must always take account of conditions. See, e.g., H. J. Watt, Experimentelle Beitrage zu einer Theorie des Denkens,* Arch. f. d. get. Psych., iv., 1905, 812, 368; Md., vii., 1906, Literaturbericht, 44, 47; M. •Cited, in the following Notes, as Watt.' NOTES TO LECTURE I 203 F. Washburn, A. Bell and L. Muckenhoupt, A Com- parison of Methods for the Determination of Ideational Type, Amer. Joum. Psychol., xvii., 1906, 126; E. L. Thorndike, On the Function of Visual Images, Joum. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iv., 1907, 324 ff. ; J. Segal, Ueber den Reproduktionstypus und das Reproduzieren von Vorstellungen, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xii., 1908, 124 ff. For a discussion of internal speech, see J. M. Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes, 1906, 409 ff. ^° The topic of visual reading is discussed by E. B. Huey, The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, 1908, 10, 117 ff., 180 f. Huey gives, as a "very rare" instance of rapid reading, the case of a mathematician who "has read the whole of a standard novel of 320 pages in two and one-fourth hours." "I am in- clined to think," he says, "that at any such speed the meanings suggested immediately by the visual forms suffice for all but the more important parts, and that these meanings are felt sufficiently, without inner ut- terance, to permit selection of what is more Important, the more important places themselves having a fleeting inner utterance to vivify their meaning. We must in- deed experiment further before we can conclude against the possibility of mainly visual reading, at the very high speeds." I should not have supposed that the rate of reading mentioned by Huey was exceptional; I certainly often read at the same or at a higher speed. But my rate varies enormously, both with the subject-matter of the work read and with my purpose in reading. I usually 204 NOTES TO LECTURE I take a new book, or a new article, at a rush, and then— if I want to savour the style or to assimilate the details — go over it again slowly and minutely. It is surprising how accurate an impression may be gained by hurried, selective reading, 'skimming,' if only one has had suffi- cient practice; I come back to this point in Note 13 below. There is no question, I think, that purely visual read- ing is possible, and that its habit may be cultivated. Here is an instance. I used to read the abbreviation Vp., in terms of internal speech, as Versuchsperson. Then, for a time, I read it as Vop or Vup; later, again, as a mere breath on the V; now I take it altogether by eye. The same thing holds of such forms as bzw., u. dgl. m., m. E., u. s. w., etc. When I am reading care- fully, and when the abbreviations have an argumenta- tive significance, I take them by a shadowy form of the kinasthBtic feels discussed in Lecture V.; in ordinary reading, however, they are simply seen.* Professor Whipple (whose general type is auditory- motor) tells me that he has had similar experiences, but far more frequently with foreign languages than with English. I have not noticed this difference in my own case. * In my study of the authors now under discussion, I at first read the abbreviation B»l. as Bewuast^inslage. This soon simpli- fied to something like 'bizzle.' This, again, simplified to a mixture of internal speech and vision; the 6 came in terms of spei^ and the al tE^ed off in terms of sight alone. Oftentimes there was an unpleasant bitch or catch in consciousness ("1 can't pronounce that I"), which was due, apparently, to a momentary inhibition of breathing, accompanied by an incipient shrug. At present, I get either the speech-sight mixture without the hitch, or I read over the abbreviation visually. NOTES TO LECTURE I ^ 205 ^^I have practically no gift of musical composition, and my skill as a' performer is below zero. On the other hand, I come of a musical family, and was fortunate enough to hear a great deal of the best piano music in my childhood. My musical endowment — apart from this haunting by orchestral performances — consists in a quick and comprehensive understanding of a composi- tion, a sort of logical and aesthetic EmfUhlung, an immediate (or very rapid) grasp of the sense and fitness of the musical structure. There is thus a fairly close analogy between my apprehension of music and the visual schematising of arguments which is described in the Lecture. It would be interesting to know whether the correlation is at all general. — Cf. Lecture V., Note 22. My use of the visual schema itself suggests the re- course to simple mechanical analogies (models of the atom, representation of gravitational attractions by means of pulsating bodies in a liquid medium, etc., etc.) for the illustration of physical phenomena of a more complicated kind, which is often said to be characteristic of British physicists. Galton mentions physicists only casually (113). " In this regard, my type is that of Marguerite and not of Armande : see Binet, 155 ff. Galton (Inquiries, 109) speaks of person# who "have a complete mastery over fheir mental images," and remarks that "this free action of a vivid visualising faculty is of much im- portance in connedtion with the higher processes of gen- eralised thought, though it is commonly put to no such purpose." It is, accordingly, only natural that I have no such imaginal experiences as those of Goethe (series 206 NOTES TO LECTURE I of unfolding roses; Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, Abth. 2, xi., 283) or of G. Henslow (spontaneous transforma- tion of images: Galton, Inquiries, 159 ff.). ^* Huey, in discussing aids to quick and selective reading (op. cit., 411, 423), mentions with approval the German use of capital initials for substantives, the use of italics, etc. "The special temporary character- isation of the important words or phrases in any given article, by changes in type, etc., may also aid much in speed and ease of reading whenever the reader's aim is selective, purposing to get quickly the kernels or gist of the matter read." The German capitals become so ac- customed that I doubt if they do any service. Wundt, it is true, argues that "jede Einbusse an difFerenzirend- en Merkmalen eine Erschwerung der Unterscheidung bedeutet, die dadurch, dass man sie nicht mehr bemerkt, noch nicht verschwindet" {Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 608) ; but an argument of this sort may easily be pushed too far. On the other points I was formerly of Huey's opinion ; now, however, I rather suspect the value of the change of type. For one thing, spaced or italicised matter is difficult to read; the eye balks at it. For an- other, I very often find that the spaced or italicised items are not those that I myself should wish to have emphasised. Just as a summary, while useful in its way, is a very dangerous substitute for the article which it professes to reproduce, so are the author's ital- ics very unreliable guides to the contents of his pages; for the motives that prompt the writer to accentuate are not necessarily those that dominate the reader. It is both amusing and instructive to have one of your own essays read aloud by an intelligent student, and to note NOTES TO LECTURE I 207 the slurring of what you thought important and the stressing of what appeals to the reader. So I should suppose that the ideal arrangement for a text-book, e.g., is that which allows of short and sharply separated paragraphs, as an aid to the untrained at- tention, but which within the paragraph keeps as a rule to a strict uniformity of type. "Any arrangement," Huey tells us, "which makes comprehensive skimming an easy matter will be of great benefit for large parts of our reading": but the skimming which relies upon italics or black-faced type is scrappy rather than com- prehensive. The ability to skim, like the ability to cram, is a valuable intellectual asset; only one must learn to skim for oneself, as one must learn to prepare one's own abstract or digest for memorising. In my experience, the headlong first reading of a new work, to which reference was made in Note 10 above, is for the most part visual and difFusedly organic in character. I have never attempted its analysis, un- der experimental conditions; and the procedure is so habitual that a complete analysis would at the best be exceedingly difiicult. On the side of vision, I seem to pay little regard to headings or italics; I read straight ahead, taking in the first few words of a sentence and then jumping to catch-words ; sometimes I skip entire sentences, even entire paragraphs. If there is a hitch of any sort, breathing is inhibited, and internal speech appears. The organic reaction is wide-spread, and strongly affective. I warm eagerly to any novelty of method, to the original application of a familiar idea, to any extension of experiment, to anything that supports or amplifies my own thinking; I am troubled and rest- 208 NOTES TO LECTURE I less when I find a discrepancy between evidence and in- ference, a reference omitted, a set of observations that threatens to overturn a belief. There is also, I think, a fairly marked play of facial expression; I have caught myself smiling or frowning, pursing the lips or raising the eyebrows (see Lecture V., Note 22). This is a clumsy and banal account of a very vivid and varied experience; it may, however, have been worth while to emphasise the fact that sight and attitudinal feel (Lec- ture V.) do my skimming for me, with only occasional assistance from internal speech. ^* Galton {Inquiries, 157 f.) remarks that a "curious and abiding fantasy of certain persons is invariably to connect visualised pictures with words, the same picture •to the same word." The figures "are not the capricious creations of the fancy of the moment, but are the regu- lar concomitants of the words, and have been so as far back as the memory is able to recall." Galton does not explain whether these visual pictures are merely ac- cessory, or whether they form part of the psychological meaning of the words. One of Messer's observers replies to the stimulus-word Christin as follows: "Als ich 'Christ — ^ gelesen hatte, optisches Bild einer weissen Wachskerze (diese Vorstel- lung habfi ich immer bei 'Christ' ; sie erscheint mir blod- sinnig) ..." Here, too, we are left in doubt whether the visual associate is accessory or has its share in mean- ing; the 'foolishness' of the image, to a later reflection, is not decisive. See A. Messer, Experimentell-psycholo- gische Untersuchungen iiber das Denken,* Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., viii., 1906, 68. Another instance is fur- * Cited, in the following Notes, as 'Messer.' NOTES TO LECTURE I 209 nished by H. Sidgwick (Intemat. Congress of Exper. Psych., 1892, M). "In his reasonings on political econ- omy he found that the general terms were almost al- ways accompanied by some visual image besides and along with the image of the word itself; but the images were often curiously arbitrary and sometimes almost un- decipherably symbolic. For example, it took him a long time to discover that an odd symbolic image which ac- companied the word 'value' was a faint, partial image of a man putting something in a scale. On the other hand in logical or mathematical reasoning he could usually detect no image except that of the printed word." Cf. W. C. Bagley, Amer. Joum. Psych., xii., 1900, 118 f. ; Binet, 100. Many of my own students, and a number of persons in my audience at the University of Illinois, have in- formed me that the visual, pictorial representation of meaning is natural and familiar to them. But like- attracts like; and we shall not know the relative fre- quency of the type until we have made one of those statistical investigations which Binet (299) hands over to "les auteurs americains, qui aiment faire grand." — In general, there seems to be no more reason to doubt the occurrence of pictorial, non-verbal thinking than there is to doubt that of a purely visual reading. Watt became familiar with it: "da werden die Gesichtsvor- stellungen oft Arbeitsplatze fiir das Denken" (312; cf. the discussion of visual ideas, 361 fF., 432 f., and the recommendation of further enquiry, 436) ; and Messer accords it a certain place in the process of thought (87) ; cf. also Bovet, Arch, de Psych., viii., 1908, 26, 37. For certain minds, at certain times, Taine's statement 14 210 NOTES TO LECTURE I that "I'esprit agissant est un polypier d'images mu- tuellement dependantes" would then be strictly and liter- ally true {De I'mtelligence, i., 1883, 124<). " J. Locke, An Essay Concernmg Human Under- standing, [1690] Bk. iv., ch. 7, §9. " G. Berkeley, A Treatise Cancemvng the Principles of Human Knowledge, [1710] Introduction, §§10, 13. The passages have been rearranged. D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, [1739] Bk. i., pt. i., §7. " W. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics, ii., 1859, 300 (Lect. XXXV.). " T. H. Huxley, Hume, 1881, ch. iv., 96 f. " See the discussions of Binet, 113, 141 ff., 150, 153; Watt, 364. f., 431 fF.; Watt, Literaturbericht, Arch, f. d. ges. Psych., vii., 1906, 42 ff. ; Messer, 66 f ., 85 if. ; K. Biihler, Tatsachen und Probleme zu einer Psychol- ogie der Denkvorgange, i. Ueber Gedanken,* Arch, f. d. ges. Psych., ix., 1907, 363 f. (cf. 352) ; A. Wresch- ner. Die Reproduktion und Assoziation von Vorstel- lvjigen,i 1907-1909, 158 ff., etc. Messer writes (85 f.): "je lebhafter und anschau- licher, je reicher an individuellen Ziigen [die repro- duzierten Gesichtsvorstellungen] sind, um so weniger decken sie sich mit der mehr oder minder allgemeinen Bedeutung der Worte. . . . Je schematischer, blasser, unbestimmter und insofern 'allgemeiner' die optischen Vorstellungen sind, un so weniger unterscheiden sie sich also im Grunde von jener anderen Klasse der (unanschau- lichen) Bedeutungserlebnisse." He seems, however, to have anticipated this result; at any rate he takes it as * Cited, in the following Notes as 'Biihler.' t Cited, in the following Notes, as 'Wreschner.' NOTES TO LECTURE I 211 a matter of course. I give my own experience in the text. ^" A. Fraser (Visualisation as a Chief Source of the Psychology of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, Amer. Joum. Psych., iv., 1891, 230 ff.) remarks that "in Berkeley and Hume we have the philosophy of youth. At the age of twenty-five both these men had completed their chief philosophical works. And here again we have an illustration of Galton's results. Their powers of visualisation were much higher than in the case of [Hobbes and Locke] — so high, in fact, that they could visualise enough to make them believe that anything they couldn't visualise did not exist" (Ml). Locke "was somewhat advanced in years when he pre- sented his philosophical works . . • ; and . . . his philos- ophy . . . was under the necessity of leaving a great part of the verbal web untranslated" (ibid.). Fraser does not discuss the passage from the fourth Book. This argument can hardly be accepted in its appli- cation to the general idea; conceptualism as well as nominalism may have a basis in visualisation (cf. Fra- ser's own admission, quoted in the following Note) ; Locke and Berkeley differed in the mode or character of their visualisation, but not necessarily in visualising power. The argument would apply only if we could be- lieve that Locke did not actually see his "general idea of a triangle," but — to put it bluntly — made up the idea out of words. I grant that there is something, both in context and style, to suggest that view. Never- theless, I get the definite impression that Locke is writ- ing from an introspective cue ; we have, in the passage, simply one of those bits of translation out of psychol- 212 NOTES TO LECTURE I ogy into the logic of common sense with which the Essay abounds. The logical aspect is again to the fore in Bk. ii., eh. xi., §9. But in Bk. ii., eh. xxxii., §8 we are told that the abstract idea is "something in the mind between the thing that exists, and the name that is given to it"; and in Bk. iii., ch. iii., ^9 the intro- spective appeal is directly made. It is very instructive to compare the parallel pas- sages in the writings of J. S. MiU. If we had no more than the bare references to the selective power of at- tention in the Logic (1846,* Bk. ii., ch. v., §1; Bk. iv., ch. ii., §1), we might well suppose that Mill was arguing only, and not introspecting. But the passage in An Eivammation of Sir William. Hamilton's Philosophy, 1865, 320 f., bears all the marks of a first-hand observa- tion, — marks that are made the plainer by the writer's theoretical confusion (James, Princ. of Psych., i., 470). And observation reappears in the note to J. Mill's Anor lysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, i., 1869, 289, where the artificiality of Locke's account of the idea of triangle is expressly recognised. Mill's psychology is annoyingly schematic; but I do not think that any reader of psychological insight will doubt that he is psychologising. — Relevant observations are noted by Binet, 153 ; Mes- ser, 54. Cf . also the ideation of Eigenschaften, Messer, 66 f. ^^ So Fraser (op. eit., 244) : "In this case the generic character does not consist in the name, it is in the idea. Neither is the idea a 'blur,' it is clear and distinct. To what extent this degree of visualisation exists in the * I have not been able to consult the first edition, of 1843. NOTES TO LECTURE I 213 world I cannot say, but there can be no doubt as to its possibility." Binet (14!6 f.) is somewhat sceptical. "L'idee de cette combinaison [d'images particulieres, individuelles], qui est toute gratuite, car personne n'a pu I'observer, appartient a Huxley, qui a donne une forme trSs originale a son hypothese en comparant la formation des idees generales k ces photographies com- posites que Galton a obtenues en superposant sur une meme plaque les images de plusieurs objets un peu analogues. . . . L'explication de Huxley fut d'abord acceptee avec faveur, generalise sans retenue, et finale- ment elle a ete reduite par Ribot a un role plus modeste. . . . Je n'ai point rencontre chez [mes deux sujets] d'images dans lesquelles se marquerait avec evidence la combinaison de plusieurs perceptions differentes." Of course, the whole question is a matter of individual psychology: but I have no doubt that Huxley did, in his own case and under the conditions of his special oc- cupation, observe the formation of the type-idea, in stages, from the combination of individual perceptions. "^ Hamilton, op. c'lt,, 312. ^^ Biihler, 363. ^* Further instances were supplied by members of my audience at the University of Illinois. I mention one case only, that of a trained psychologist. Meaning, for this observer, consisted psychologically in the kin- aesthetic image (sometimes connected with actual in- nervation) of lifting the right hand and arm, as if to open a closed box. Here, as in the examples given in the text, the explanation comes ex post facto; the ex- perience of meaning, as such, has nothing in it to suggest or recall the opening of the box; but reflection 214 NOTES TO LECTURE I shows that the imaged gesture is of the box-opening kind. Meaning, therefore, is something that you re- veal or disclose. " Organic Images, Joum. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., i., 1904, 38. "^ I find a similar observation in Messer (59). One of the observers reports "eine gewisse innere Zuneigung. Wenn ich nachtraglich versuche, eine gleichartige Be- wegung auszufiihren, wie sie mir gegeben zu sein schien, so sehe ich, dass die Bewegungen alle viel zu lebhaft imd grob ausf alien als die friiher erlebten" (ital- ics mine). " This account has been compiled, for the most part, from notes jotted down as I read the successive ex- perimental studies from the Wiirzburg laboratory. It is, therefore, relevant only to the individual psychol- ogy of thought, — thinking, reading, writing, teaching, — and not to the intellectual processes at large; while, even so, it has in all probabihty been narrowed down by the consideration of the specific problems raised by the Wiirzburg school. However, it is with that school — with Marbe and Orth, Watt and Ach, Messer and Biihler — that the Lectures are mainly concerned. "Diet. Philos. Psych., ii., 1902, 515 f.— A great deal of confusion would be avoided if psychologists at large recognised the fact that the sensation of experi- mental psychology is a simple, meaningless (or, rather, non-meaningful) process, definable only by an enumer- ation of its attributes. Until this recognition is ac- corded, discussion between the experimentalists and the non-experimentalists (I apologise for the negative term!) must be largely a matter of beating the air. I have NOTES TO LECTURE I 215 tried to do my share towards clarity, — e.g., in Exp. Psych., I., ii., 1901, 3 f. ; Feelmg and Attention, 1908, Lect. i. ; Text-book, 1909, 46 ff . But James has defined sensation as the (cognitively and chronologically) first thing in consciousness ; the Dictionary offers a definition which it admits to be "not strictly psychological" and which ignores experimental usage; and psychology in general still shows the uncertainty which Bain deplored (Mill's Analysis, i., 65 ff.) as "causing serious embroil- ments in philosophical controversy." Experimental psychology has, of course, no exclusive rights in the word; but it has the right to define for itself, and to have its definition respected within its own universe of discourse. It is, for instance, axiomatic for the ex- perimentalist that a sensation cannot function alone; at least two sensations must come together, if there is to be a meaning; the single element can do nothing more than go on; so far as cognition or function is concerned, sentire semper idem, et non sentire, ad idem recidumt. '''Ibid., i., 1901, 80. '" A. Seth, Man's Place in the Cosmos and Other Es- says, 1897, 47, 65. The addresses from which these quotations are taken contain some useful criticism; but I do not recommend them to the reader who wishes to acquaint himself with the aim and status of experi- mental psychology. *^ H. Ebbinghaus, Veber das Geddchtnis, 1885, 31 ff. *^ In order to make my point clearly and sharply, I have here spoken as if modern psychology were de- scriptive only, and not descriptive and explanatory. Later Lectures furnish the necessary corrective: to 216 NOTES TO LECTURE I bring explanation into the present discussion would obscure the issue. ** W. Wundt, Ueber psychische Causalitat und das Princip des psychophysischen Parallelismus, PhUos. Stu- dkn, X., 1894, 123. '* Zur Lehre von den Gremiithsbewegungen, ibid., vi., 1891, 389. Cf. 391: "Die Objecte der Psychologie sind sammtlich Vorgange, Ereignisse." *" Princ. of Psych., i., 243 f. Woodworth reinterprets: "I do not understand the author of the 'Stream of Thought' to assert that feelings of relation must always be evanescent" (Essays PhUos. and Psychol., 1908, 494). '^ Ibid., 300. It is curious to note the differences in psychological attitude! Stout, commenting on this passage (which I have quoted with hearty approval), remarks: "Could anything be more perverse.'' Profes- sor James is looking for his spectacles when he has them on. He is seeking for his own 'palpitating in- ward life,' the activity in which his very being consists, and he expects to find it in certain particulars, certain special contents of presentation," and so on .{Analyt. Psych., i., 1896, 162). But this — with allowance made for the caricature — is, I should suppose, precisely what every psychologist, as psychologist, must try and ex- pect to do. On the other hand. Stout apparently ap- proves James' account of the feelings of relation (218), which I have criticised. He and I, then, are opposed but consistent; and James can, accordingly, satisfy neither of us. ''' Analysis, i., 1869, 90 f., 115. " Bk. vi., ch, iv., §3. NOTES TO LECTURE I 217 *" Examination, 1865, 286 f . ; cf. the preceding chapter, on Inseparable Association, and editorial note in J. Mill's Analysis, i., 106 ff. *° Treatise of Human Nature, bk. i., pt. i., §4. " So Biihler, 328. Cf. F. H. Bradley, The Principles of Logic, 1883, 320 f . ; W. James, Prime, of Psych., i., 1890, 161; G. F. Stout, A Manual of Psych., 1899, 110 fF. ; C. Stumpf, Ueber d. psychol. Ursprung d. Raumvorstellimg, 1873, 103 ff. ; Tonpsychologie, ii., 1890, 208 ff. (see other refs. in Index) ; W. Wundt, Physiol. Psych., ii., 1902, 500 f., 684- (see refs. under Resultante in Index). "D. Hartley, Observations on Man, [1749] pt. i., eh. i., §2, prop, xii., cor. 1 (ed. of 1810, i., 78). "See i., 205. ** Analysis, ii., 1869, 190 f. *^ See, e.g., P. Flechsig, Ueber die Associationscen- tren des menschlichen Gehirns, and the following discus- sion, in Dritter Internationaler Congress f. Psychologic, 1897, 49 ff. *" See, e.g., H. Miinsterberg, Grundzilge der Psychol- ogic, i., 1900, 307 ff. " W. Wundt, Ueber die Definition der Psychologie, Philos. Studien, xii., 1895, 51 ff. NOTES TO LECTURE II ^ R. F. A. Hoernle, Image, Idea and Meaning, Mind, N. S., xvi., 1907, 82 f. The writer adds that James' "account is wholly untrue as regards our ordinary con- sciousness of meaning. For what normally occupies the focus of attention is the meaning, the objective reference, whereas the sign forms the fringe, of which we have but a more or less shadowy consciousness. Professor James exactly reverses the true state of affairs, for according to his theory, the sign should occupy the centre of atten- tion, and the meaning form the vague background." The fringe-terminology is, no doubt, apt to set up mis- leading associations (G. F. Stout, Analytic Psych., i., 1896, 93). But, as I have tried to show in my Feeling and Attention, 239 ff., image and fringe are, for James, both alike in the focus of attention : fringe is not to be rendered as "vague background." ^ F. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Stand- punkte, i., 1874, bk. ii., ch. v. (summary, p. 255). ^ Ibid., 115 f.; cf. 127, 260. Brentano has other criteria, but these are of secondary importance. Cf. A. Hofler, Psychologie, 1897, 2 ff. * Ibid., 103 f . ° Lectures on Metaphysics, ii., 432 (Lect. xlii). « Op. cit., 117 f. ^ Ibid., 167. 8 O. Kiilpe, Outlines of Psychology, 1909, 227 f. ^ G. T. Ladd, Psychology, Descriptive and Explana- tory, 1894, 181. 318 NOTES TO LECTURE II 219 ^"Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 112 fF., 121 f., 614 f., 552 ff., 625; Grundriss d. Psych., 1905, (Engl., 1907, 243) ; etc. ^* Cf. T. Nakashima, Contributions to the Study of the AflPective Processes, Amer. Joum. Psych., xx., 1909, 181 f., 193. 12 Brentano, op. cit., 261, 264. 1* Ibid., 161. "Mit unmittelbarer Evidenz zeigt uns die innere Wahrnehmung dass das Horen einen von ihm selbst verschiedenen Inhalt hat"; "eine Meinung, die so deutlich der inneren Erfahrung und dem Urtheile jedes Unbefangenen widerspricht." "/bid., 162. Brentano refers to A. Bain, Mental Science, 1872, 199 (bk. ii., ch. vii.. Perception of a Material World, no. 4): "In purely passive feeling, as in those of our sensations that do not call forth our muscular energies, we are not perceiving matter. . . . The feeling of warmth, as in the bath, is an example. . . . All our senses may yield similar experiences, if we resign ourselves to their purely sensible or passive side." The same doctrine of 'passive sensibility' may be found in the notes to J. Mill's Analysis, i., 5 f., 35; ii., 149. Brentano also refers, in general terms, to J. S. Mill's Examination (I suppose, to chs. xi. and xii.) and to his notes in the Analysis (I suppose, to such notes as that in i., 229 ff.). I have preferred to take the obvious illus- tration from J. Mill himself: Analysis, i., 224 f. (cf. 16 ff.). It should be added, by way of caution, that the criticism of associationism in Lecture I. holds of all the passages here cited; we are taking Brentano's argument at its face-value. 220 NOTES TO LECTURE II " Examination, 212. The criticism passed upon Brentano in the foot-note is supported by the treatment of memory and expectation in S. Witasek's Grundlvnien der Psychologie, 1908. See 290 : "noch deutlicher als an der Wahrnehmung ist an der Erinnerung die wesent- liche Mitwirkung des Urteilsaktes ersichtlich" ; and 317 : "Ueberraschung und Erwartung . . . sind bestimmte eigentiimliche Arten des Eintritts, der Vorbereitung, des Ablaufs von Urteilen" (italics mine). " Op. cit., 73 ff. " In a review of Brentano's Psychologie {Mind, O. S., i., 1876, 122), R. Flint remarks: "As regards conception [Flint's translation of Vorstellung'\, our au- thor is unfortunate in his language. His use of the term Vorstellung is extremely vague, confused, and self- contradictory. It is wider and looser even than Her- bart's or Lotze's. In fact, the term, as employed by him, is not only incapable of accurate translation into English or any other language, but corresponds to no generic fact, no peculiar faculty, and no distinctive province of mind." These statements are, I think, jus- tified by the facts; and the reason for the looseness of usage is, surely, that Brentano's Vorstellimg is the direct descendant of the ms reprcssentativa of the faculty psychologists. More than that: while much psychological water has flowed under the bridges since 1874, and while Witasek is accordingly clearer and closer in definition than was his master, I believe that the primacy of ideation in the Gnmdlilnien is an after-effect of the same faculty influence. "7bR, 81. " Ibid., 6 f . NOTES TO LECTURE II 221 "" Ibid., 76. " Ibid., 318 f . "" Ibid., 281. ^' Ibid., 280-287. Even if we concede that Witasek's analyses are phenomenologically correct, it would still remain true that phenomenology is not psychology. Science implies attitude, standpoint, consistent adhesion to a special and voluntarily selected aspect of phe- nomena: cf. my Text-book of Psych., 1909, §1. ^* Brentano's psychology, despite its unfinished con- dition (vol. i. contains but two of the proposed six books), has exerted a powerful and wide-spread influ- ence. The tracing of this influence lies beside my present purpose: let the space that I have devoted to act and content bear witness to my appreciation of it! I note here only a few typical criticisms. That Bren- tano's psychology is a psychology of reflection has been urged in various connections: so, e.g., by Wundt, Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 234 f., 240, and by F. Jodl, Lehrbuch d. Pysch., 1896, 180 (in i., 1903, 211 the reference to Brentano is omitted). His principle of classification is rejected by J. Rehmke, Lehrbuch d. allg. Psych., 1894, 349 ff., and by W. Jerusalem, Die Urteilsftmction, eime psychologische und erkermtnis- kritische Untersuchung, 1895, 4 fi'., — a book which takes constant account of Brentano's doctrine of judgment, and cites authorities for and against. In particular, Brentano's identification of feeling and will is criticised by C. von Ehrenfels, Ueber Fiihlen und WoUen: eine psychologische Studie, Sitzwngsber. d. philos.-hist. CI. d. Wiener Akad., cxiv., Heft 2, 1887, §5, and by Rehmke, op. cit., 363 fi'. ; his distinction of idea and 222 NOTES TO LECTURE II judgment is criticised by Ebbinghaus, Grv/ndzilge, i., 1905, 183. These general references must suffice. Lest, however, I should seem to have overestimated the part played in Brentano's thinking by the doctrine of intentional in- existence, I quote the relevant passages from some contemporary reviews of his work. "The general im- pression which this chapter leaves on the mind of the reviewer is that a considerable number of the particular criticisms are just, but that the discussion as a whole is not successful, because these two essential questions are uninvestigated, viz.: Are perceptions not so in- separable from the act of perceiving as to be, in some measure at least, if not entirely, psychical phenomena? and. Are there really any such phenomena as those which our author frequently speaks of, any 'physical phenomena in the phantasy'.?" (R. Flint, in Mind, O. S., i., 1876, 120.) "Von Anfang an begrenzt er willkiirlich das Gebiet des Psychischen, indem er Tone, Farben, Geruch, Figur u. s. w. dem Physischen zuweist. Wohlgemerkt der Act des Sehens, Horens u. s. w. sowie die Phantasievorstellung ist psychisch, das Gesehene, Gehorte, Empfundene, Vorgestellte ist physisch. OfFen- bar die grosste Willkiir! Was ist denn die Farbe, der Ton, sobald man vom psychischen Moment absieht? Doch etwas ganz Anderes als Farbe und Ton, namlich Molecularschwingung. . . . Man sieht, das Ganze ist ein unfruchtbarer Wortkram, . . . AUes gestiitzt auf die ganz unhaltbare Unterscheidung des Psychi- schen und des Physischen" (A. Horwicz, in PhUos. Monatshefte, x., 1874, 269 f.). "Fragen wir danach, so wird sich doch wohl kaum eine andere Antwort geben NOTES TO LECTURE II 223 lassen als : der Unterschied zwischen dem 'Act des Vorstel- lens' und 'dem, was vorgestellt wird,' also zwischen dem Act des Sehens und der gesehenen Farbe bestehe darin, dass das Vorstellen diejenige Thatigkeit sey, welche die Vorstellung mit ihrem Inhalt (dem vorgestellten Ob- ject) erzeugt. Dann aber folgt unabweislich : ist das Vorstellen eine psychische Thatigkeit, so ist nothwendig auch das vorgestellte Object ein psychisches Erzeugniss und mithin ein psychisches Phanomen. . . . Ja, dem vorgestellten Object wird zunachst und vorzugsweise der Name: psychisches Phanomen beigelegt werden miissen. Denn es ist unbestreitbare Thatsache, dass das vor- gestellte Object zunachst und unmittelbar erscheint, der Act des Vorstellens dagegen nur mittelbar, mit Hilfe des erscheinenden Objects und von ihm aus, zur Erschei- nung (zum Bewusstseyn) gelangt" (H. Ulrici, in Zeits. f. Philos. u. philos. Kntik, N. F. Ixvii., 1875, 293 f.)- I have not purposely picked out the unfavourable no- tices ; but, so far as I have read, the appreciative reviews (e.g., J. Rehmke, Philos. Monatshefte, xi., 1875, 113 fF.) simply postpone their criticism till the appearance of the second volume; and the second volume has not appeared. ^^ I therefore subscribe to Kiilpe's statement : "es giebt keine Thatigkeit des Empfindens oder Vorstellens oder Wahrnehmens, die neben dem Wahrgenommenen, Vorgestellten, Empfundenen eine besondere Existenz hatte" (Das Ich und die Aussenwelt, i., Philos. Studien, vii., 1892, 405 ; cf. Outlines of Psych., 1909, 25 f.)- But I think, at the same time, that the logical or phenom- enological dualism is a distorted reflection of psycholog- ical fact. 224 NOTES TO LECTURE II G. Spiller (The Mind of Man, 1902, 135) remarks: "to me this distinction [between act and content of presentation] appears untenable, as would be the sug- gestion that one could distinguish between the act of a stone falling and the stone which is falling. . . . An act of presentation ... is something presented. It is a misfortune for psychology that men with anti-scien- tific interests like Brentano profess to be psychologists, and champion opinions on the subject that have no real psychological value." I subscribe, again, to the factual criticism, but I should be sorry to lose anything that Brentano has written; I know of no modern psycholo- gist whose work is more challenging, insistent, thought- compelling. =°G. F. Stout, A Manual of Psych., 1899, 56 f. Stout's views on classification are set forth in three works: the Analytic Psych., 1896; the Manual,* and The Groundwork of Psych., 1903. I must go into some little detail regarding them. (1) In the Manual, as the quotation shows, knowing, feeling and striving are the ultimate modes of being conscious of an object, and human consciousness is nor- mally concerned with some object. The "normally' is explained by the following sentence: "In waking life, we are usually, and perhaps always, perceiving some- thing or thinking about something." Why should there be any doubt.'' Apparently, because those modifica- * I learn from Mind, N. S. x., 1901, 545 that a second edition of this work appeared in 1901. The American publishers, how- ever, are still supplying the edition of 1899, from which I am accordingly obliged to quote. I merely note the statement (547) that Stout "no longer identifies subconsciousness with 'sentience"'; 1 cannot tell how it is to be interpreted. NOTES TO LECTURE II 225 tions of consciousness which are capable of fulfilling the presentative function may exist even when they are not the means of cognising objects; there is, at any given moment, much material of experience which is to that extent without objective reference (68 f.). Cognition, as modification of consciousness, may be out of function, and may thus become sentience or subconsciousness. There is, then, the bare possibility that our conscious- ness may be objectless, and we ourselves merely sentient. Altogether objectless.'' What of the qualifying 'to that extent'.'' This is explained in Analyt. Psych., i., 48 f. (quoted in the Manual). "They [i.e., the modi- fications of consciousness just referred to] may exist as possible material for discriminative thinking without being actually utilised to the full extent in which they are susceptible of being utilised." "The essential point is the antithesis between the detailed determinateness of presentation [i.e., of the presented objects] and the comparative indeterminateness of discriminative think- ing" (italics mine). The meaning seems to be that sen- tience stands to cogilition or knowing as inattentive, diffused and obscure apprehension stands to attentive, individual and clear apprehension. Cf. A. P., 180: "the distinction between attention and inattention is . . . coincident with the distinction between noetic and anoetic experience." i The difference, therefore, appears to be a difference of degree. "We have no sufficient ground for asserting that any experience of a normal human being is so com- pletely anoetic that it has no objective reference what- ever"; "the indefinite objective reference has for its vehicle a single massive sentience" {A. P., 180 f.). 15 226 NOTES TO LECTURE II Yet we read in A. P., 50 that "thought and sentience are fundamentally distinct mental functions" ; and this 'thought' is identical with the cognition of the Manual (69). Hence the difference must, at the same t^me, be a difference in kind! So, in the Manual itself, we find that sensation can exist "without cognitive function"; we may "have a variation in the sense-experience which makes no difference to cognition" (120; italics mine). Sensations "may exist as possible material for percep- tual consciousness, without being actually utilised" (130). The corresponding passage in A. P., 48 reads, as we have seen, "without being actually utilised to the full extent in which they are susceptible of being util- ised"; but the qualification, retained in the earlier quotation of Manual 69, is now omitted. Cf. the Groundwork, 55 : nothing is said here of sentience or subconsciousness or anoetic experience; but the objects of the "outlying field of inattention" are "in no way developed in consciousness" and "do not form part of a stream of thought or train of ideas" (italics mine). So the A. P., 113: "Agreeable and disagreeable experiences may exist apart from objective reference" (italics mine). And even the passage just quoted (180 f.) qualifies its statement by referring to the 'normal' human being, and goes on to say that the mass of sensations and imagery "which constitute the field of inattention at any moment occupy this position because they do not refer to the . . . discriminated object which specially occupies our thoughts. Nevertheless, they may mediate an in- determine awareness" (italics mine). May? But do they? — that is, do they always? Stout seems to vacil- NOTES TO LECTURE II 227 late between the answers Yes and No. I cannot make the passages consistent. (2) I think, however, that I can see a reason for inconsistency. Cognition, as functionless modification of consciousness, becomes sentience. Is there, now, any- thing that stands to feeHng and striving as sentience stands to knowing? "In a merely anoetic experience . . . the mere experience of struggle or effort, activity free or impeded, may still remain" (A. P., 113). There is "conation in some form or degree," some amount of felt mental activity, even when "in a state of delicious languor I enjoy the organic sensations produced by a warm bath" (A. P., 160 f., 170 ff. ; Manual, 67 f.). We have, then, an objectless (or practically objectless) conation or striving. So with feeling. "Agreeable and disagreeable experiences may exist apart from objec- tive reference. My consciousness may be agreeably toned by -organic sensations of which I take no note" (A. P., 113); "the presumption appears to be that our total consciousness is never '[i.e., whether noetic or anoetic] entirely neutral" (Manual, 62). We have an objectless (or practically objectless) feeling. Very well! But the basis of Stout's classification of mental phenomena is "the ways in which our conscious- ness is related to its object" {Manual, 56), "the ulti- mately distinct modes of being conscious of an object" (Groundwork, 18), "the attitude or posture of conscious- ness towards objects" (A. P., 40 ff.). If, then, he ad- mits a pure sentience, a wholly objectless feeHng, a wholly objectless conation, he is in a dilemma : either these three modes of mental function are one and indistinguishable, a matrix of experience lying behind and beyond the ■228 NOTES TO LECTURE II possibility of classification; or, the three modes being already distinguishable, his principle of classification breaks down. Stout is led (I imagine, by his own in- trospection) to recognise the objectless sentience of the conscious margin and the objectless character of much feeling-experience, and is also bound by his doctrine of mental activity to read a conative factor into every sort and kind of consciousness. Now the difference in feeling and conation, as between the noetic and the anoetic consciousnesses, is obviously a diflperence only of degree ; feeling is still recognisable in anoesis as feeling, conation as conation ; we are, in so far, upon the second horn of the dilemma. Rather than give up his principle of classification, however. Stout qualifies his account of anoetic experience: consciousness "usually and per- haps always" refers to an object; the modifications of the marginal consciousness are not utilised "to the full extent," but nevertheless "may mediate an indeterminate awareness" : — passages of this nature, which save the principle, alternate with the passages which make thought and sentience "fundamentally distinct," and regard the marginal objects as "in no way developed in consciousness." The inconsistency, therefore, appears to be due, roughly, to the confiict between introspection (rein- forced by the doctrine of conation) and preconceived ideas of the nature and function of consciousness. I cannot accept Stout's doctrine of mental activity. But the introspective testimony to sentience and objectless feeling seems to me to invalidate the principle of ob- jective reference. NOTES TO LECTURE II 229 (8) The principle itself has led, in Stout's hands, to varying results. Thus, in the A. P., we have: I. Cognition a. Sentience b. Simple apprehension c. Belief or judgment These "three fundamental modes of consciousness" are "combined in every complete cognitive act as in- tegral constituents of it" (115). We have already discussed the possibility of a purely objectless sentience. II. Volition o. Feeling b. Conation. "Every mental attitude which partakes of the nature of volition includes two fundamentally distinct modes of reference to an object, — (1) being pleased or dis- pleased with it or with its absence, and (2) striving after it or striving to avoid it, — desire or aversion" (115 f.). In the Manual we find (56 ff.): I. Ultimate modes of being conscious of an object a. Cognitive attitude or knowing 6. Feeling-attitude or feeling c. Conatlve attitude or striving II. Experience not at the moment contributing to the cognitive function of consciousness d. Sentience or Sub-Consciousness. Finally, we have in the Groundwork (19) the schema: Cognition Interest Simple Apprehension Judgment Conation Feeling-attitude Sentience is not named; it appears only as a form of relative inattention (54 f.). It may be freely admitted that a classification is, 230 NOTES TO LECTURE II primarily, a matter of convenience, and that a satis- factory classification of mental phenomena, on any principle, is not easy. It is again clear, however, that 'reference to an object' is not an unerring or unequiv- ocal guide to grouping. " Analyt. Psych., i., 41, 46. ^' Grundlinien d. Psych., 3 ; of. 5 f. '» Ibid., 12. '" So I understand the passages in A, P., 40 fF., 46 f.j 58 ff., 61 fF. ; Manual, 56 fF., 122 ff. Thus, sensation is distinguished from image, not by any difference in act, but by "peculiar intensity, steadiness, and other distinctive characters" {Manual, 119), i.e., by attri- butes of the total mental process. Or again, sentience passes into thought, not by the supervention of an act of apprehension upon a bare content, but by a gradual process of transfusion, one of whose "most prominent forms is the progress in delicacy of discrimination" {A. P., 58) ; the total mental process is transformed in the passage. Difficulty arises, I think, only if we take Stout to recognise the occasional existence of a wholly functionless sentience, or a wholly objectless feeling and striving. '^Buhler, 354 f. "^ Op. cit., 3 f . Cf . 5 : "mit dem Erleben einer psy- chischen Tatsache ist uns in zweifachem Sinne etwas 'gegeben': direkt und unmittelbar die psychische Tat- sache selbst, mittelbar und in iibertragenem Sinne eben das, worauf sie gerichtet ist" ; and 6 : "unser Vorstellen ist so beschaffen, dass es uns Dinge zur Vorstellung bringt." This transitive character is apparent to a direct observation of mental phenomena themselves, i.e., to NOTES TO LECTURE II 231 introspection; direct observation of physical phenom- ena, inspection, reveals nothing of the sort (4). I take Biihler and Witasek as typical representatives, in a professedly psychological context, of the opposing views with regard to mental transcendence; I am, how- ever, not further concerned with that function, consid- ered either psychologically or epistemologically. The interested reader may refer to a series of papers by F. J. E. Woodbridge, in Congress of Arts and Science, i., 1905 ; Studies in Philosophy and Psychology (Garman Commemorative Volume), 1906; Essays Philosophical and Psychological (in honour of W. James), 1908; Joum. Philos. Psych. Set. Meth., ii., 1905 ; to articles by other hands in the same Joum. ; and to the papers by R. B. Perry, F. Arnold, S. S. Colvin and others in recent volumes of the Psych. Review. The annual bibli- ographies will supply further references. '* Stout, Analyt. Psych., i., 49 ; Manual, 70. ^* See references in Note 14 above. Cf. also The Senses and the Intellect, 1868, 364 fF. ; The Emotions and the Will, 1880, 574 ff. '^ See Note 26 above. ^' Ueber die Objectivirung und Subjectivirung von Sinneseindriicken, Philos. Studien, xix., 1902, 508 fF. Similar results, mentioned in my Text-book, 1909, §61, will shortly be published in the Amer. Joum. Psych, by M. C. West. " Messer, 69. "'Op. cit., 116. '°0p. cit., 4. *° ii., 1902, 260 f. " G. H. T. Eimer, On Orthogenesis, 1898, 2, 22, 21 ; 232 NOTES TO LECTURE II the address was delivered in 1895. See also Orgame Evolution as the Result of the Inheritance of Acquired Characters according to the Laws of Organic Growth, 1890, Appendix, 431 : "[my] conclusion . . . recog- nises a perfectly definite direction in the evolution and continuous modification of organisms, which even down to the smallest detail is prescribed by the material com- position (constitution) of the body" (from an address delivered in 1883) ; and 4, 20, etc., etc. *" ii., 251. *' Witasek terms the relation an "inneres Bezogensein, Gerichtetsein, Hinweisen auf ein anderes" {op. cit., 4). ** Perhaps I am unduly afraid of a word. Huxley, who wrote in 1864 that "that which struck the present writer most forcibly on his first perusal of the 'Origin of Species' was the conviction that Teleology, as commonly understood, had received its deathblow at Mr. Darwin's hands" (Criticisms on "The Origin of Species," in Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews, 1887, 261 f.) — that same Huxley wrote in 1869 that "there is a wider Tele- ology, which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of Evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interac- tion, according to definite laws> of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the uni- verse was composed" (The Genealogy of Animals, in Critiques and Addresses, 1883, 305). I suppose that this 'wider teleology' is, at bottom, identical with what I have called organisation. Jodl, again, commenting upon the sentence: "es besteht ein teleologischer Zu- sammenhang zwischen Vermogen und Reiz" {Lehrbuch, NOTES TO LECTURE II 233 1896, 185), writes: "der Sinn dieses Ausdruckes kann auf dem Boden unserer heutigen Weltanschauung nicht zweifelhaft sein, welche die Teleologie xmt als Ergebniss des gesetzmassigen Zusaramenwirkens der Naturkrslfte, der Anpassung vorhandener Formeti und Combinationen an die uiiigebenden Medien, der Umbildung des Beste- henden durch die Summation kleinster Wirkungen und durch die Auslese der giinstigen, den Bestand und die Leistung einer Combination sichernden, Abanderungen erklart. Die empfindenden Organe sind nicht von irgend einer zwecksetzenden Thatigkeit zur Aufnahme be- stimmter Reize eingerichtet ; ... die Welt der physi- kalisch-chemischen Reize hat sich durch fortgesetzte Einwirkung auf das Protoplasma im Zusammenhang der organischen Entwicklung die Organe, welche diesen Reizen entsprechen und eine Abbildung derselben ermog- lichen, selbst geschafFen."* I suppose that, in principle, this view of teleology is also very like my own view of organisation. Nevertheless, I have a rooted temper- amental aversion to the word teleology and to its idea, — a constitutional fear of "mistaking the mere tick- ing of the clock for its function." I have, similarly, an aversion to the term 'concept,' a constitutional fear of hypostatising a mental construction. There is, per- haps, some connection between these temperamental reactions and the habit of thinking in visual schemata, described in Lecture I. *^0p. cit., 4. ** We are all too apt to speak of the 'physical organ- *The sentences immediately following this quotation are modi- fied in i., 1903, 219; and in both editions the initial statements are qualified by a reference to "die Spontaneitat des Bewusstseins." 234 NOTES TO LECTURE II ism,' as if a human being were, as organism, complete without mind; and then we are all too apt to parallel the physical by a 'psychical organism,' as if there were a perfect mental organisation apart from body. I have argued against the latter view in Text-book, 1909, §9. Cf. F. Jodl, Lehrhuch d. Psych., 1896, M ff. ; J. M. Baldwin, Mind and Body from the Genetic Point of View, Psych. Review, x., 1903, 242 if. NOTES TO LECTURE III * W. Wundt, Ueber Ausf rageexperimente und iiber die Methoden zur Psychologic des Denkens, Psychol. Studien, iii., 1907, 334; cf. the account of the method, 302 ff., and ct. esp. Ach,* 21, 27 f. Buhler replies in an Antwort auf die von W. Wundt erhobenen Einwande gegen die Methode der Selbstbeobachtung an experi- mentell erzeugten Erlebnissen, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xii., 1908, 93 fF. It will be observed that the title of this rejoinder neatly begs the whole question. Wundt returns to the fray in Kritische Nachlese zur Ausfrage- methode, ibid., xi., 1908, 445 ff. (issued later than the first part of vol. xii.). Buhler defends himself, briefly, in Zur Kritik der Denkexperimente, Zeits. f. Psych., li., 1909, 108 f. Marbe, who in his Beitrage zur Logik und ihren Grenzwissenschaften {Vjs. f. rmss. Philos. m. Soziol., xxx., 1906, 465 ff.) had already protested against Wundt's comments in the Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 579 ff., also takes a hand in the present controversy: W. Wundts Stellung zu meiner Theorie der stroboskop- ischen Erscheinungen und zur systematischen Selbst- wahrnehmung, Zeits. f. Psych., xlvi., 1908, 352 ff. Wundt barely notices his strictures in the Kritische Nachlese, 445. The discussion, throughout, strikes the disinterested observer as too warm for either comfort or dignity. " Marbe, 15. ' Ibid., 9 f. * Ibid., 16. *See below. Note 13. 236 NOTES TO LECTURE III ° Marbe made two principal series of experiments. The first is aimed at the psychology of Urteilsvorstel- hmgen, Urteilsgeharden, Urteilsworte, Urteitssatze (15 ff.), the second at that of the Verstehen und Beurteilen der Urteile (ideas, gestures, words and phrases, proposi- tions: 58 ff.). It is not necessary here to treat the series separately. « Binet, 10. ^ Ibid., 2, 9, 301. " Ibid., 21 f . ' Ibid., 306 ff. " "Les recherches que j'ai pu faire sur ces deux enfants . . . se sont espacees sur trois ans. Elles s'y ont pretees avec beaucoup de bonne grace, sans timidite, ni fou rire; elles ont tou jours compris qu'il s'agissait d'une chose serieuse, et elles etaient persuadees que la moindre erreur pouvait me causer un prejudice des plus graves. Plut au ciel que les adultes qui servent de sujets aux psychologues eussent tou jours une attitude aussi bonne!" Ibid., 10. Cf. 51, 82, IfiT, 308. " Watt, 289 f . Cf . F. Schumann, Bericht iiber d. I. Kongress f. exper. Psych., 1904<, 124. " Ibid., 316 f. ^' N. Ach, Veber die Willenstatigkeit und das Denken : eime experimentelle Untersuchung mit einem Anhange iiber das Hippsche Chronoskop,* 1905. Ach's experi- mental work was begun in 1900, and a first draught of his results was submitted to the Gottingen faculty as Habilitationsschrift in 1902, but apparently was not published. A brief abstract, printed in Schumann, Bericht, etc., 80 ff., mentions the method of "syste- matische experimentelle Selbstbeobachtung." The ex- pression is, I think, needlessly clumsy, since an • Cited, in the following Notes, as 'Ach.' NOTES TO LECTURE III 237 experimental procedure is ex vi definitionis a systematic procedure. ^* Ach, 8 ff . I have no quarrel with Ach on the score of fact ; but I must dissent from his theory of introspec- tion. "Dass die Selbstbeobachtung auf das Erlebnis, so lange dasselbe sich nicht ofters wiederholt hat, einen storenden Einfluss ausiibt, davon konnte ich mich bei meinen Untersuchungen vielfach iiberzeugen. Dass das Erlebnis wahrend seines Gegebenseins in der Regel nicht beobachtet werden kann, hat seinen Grund darin, dass sich . . . determinierende Tendenzen [see Note 49 be- low] verschiedenen Inhaltes, die sich auf dasselbe Er- lebnis beziehen, gegenseitig ausschliessen. Die Deter- minierung kann nur in einer bestimmten Richtung erfolgen. Diese Richtung ist aber durch den Verlauf des Erlebnisses selbst gegeben. Es kann also wahrend des Erlebens nicht noch eine weitere Determinierung z. B. eine Selbstbeobachtung stattfinden, die eine andere JElichtung der Aufmerksamkeit — eine Richtung wie sie durch das Verhalten des Subjektes zum Objekt char- akterisiert ist — in sich schliesst" (9 f.). But why drag in subject and object? The fact is, simply, that when an experience is in progress you cannot (unless the experience moves very slowly, or is very habitual, or you yourself are very highly practised) take note of it, find forms of verbal expression for it, report upon it ; the experience will not wait for you. And what holds of inner holds under like conditions, in precisely the same way, of outer experience; there are many observa- tions in microscopy, in natural history, that you cannot report, by words or by drawings, while they are in course; all that you can do is to live them attentively, 238 NOTES TO LECTURE III and then recover them in the memory after-image. The introspective determination is twofold; you are to attend and you are to report. But then the inspective determination, the instruction given for observation in natural science, is also twofold; you are to attend and you are to report. There is absolutely no difference in principle between introspection and inspection; whether you are able to attend and to report simultaneously (or, rather, while the observation is going on) depends, in both cases, upon the circumstances of the moment. I have tried to make the point clear in my Feeling and Attention, 1908, 174 ff. ; Text-book, 1909, §6. Storring, in his Vorlesungen iiher Psychopathologie (1900, 5 ff. ; Eng., 1907, 3 ff.), takes practically the same ground, although he does not distinguish between attention and report; and Meumann {Exper. Pddagogik, i., 1907, 14«) expresses agreement with Storring. Nevertheless, in Germany the Kantian tradition dies hard; and in our own psychology John Mill's reply to Comte (James, Princ, i., 188 f.), while it saved the situation on the practical side, naturally tended to overemphasize the part played by memory or 'reflection.' I agree with Ach that introspection of the thought- processes is extremely difficult (16 f., 41, 215), and I do not question the advantage of his method (19 f.).* But I contend that the disturbances ascribed to Selbstbeo- bachtimg (22, 37) are not intrinsic to introspection. They are due to the observer's effort, in a case where experience is both complex and fleeting, to take fuU mental notes, as he goes along, without losing the •Cf. Messer, 15 f.; Storring, Arch. f. d. get. Psych., xi., 1908, S9 f. NOTES TO LECTURE III 239 experience itself, — ^to translate adequately into words, for subsequent report, a consciousness that is moving, changing, with great rapidity, and that will not stand still to be described. Given a simpler experience, a slower movement of consciousness, and it would be altogether possible for report to keep even pace with attention. The fact of disturbance is attested by Messer (20): "kommt es . . . zu einer eigentlichen Selbstbeobachtung wahrend des Erlebnisses, so wirkt diese storend" (cf. Storring, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xi., 1908, 3, 92 ; ibid., xiv., 1909, If.). Yet one of Messer's observers writes: "bei den Aussagen wird das Erlebte nicht immer re- produziert, aber es kommt vielfach dazu. Eigentiimlich ist dies: wo derartige Aussagen sich nicht mit dem Erlebten bereit gestellt haben, da wissen wir nichts davon" (16). Messer himself generalises this remark (21), and refers the 'Bereitschaft der Aussagen' to the 'Wirksamkeit der Aufgabe, ProtokoU zu geben.' It is, indeed, generally acknowledged that introspection is advantaged by the purpose to introspect (Messer, 20 f. ; Binet, 92; Ach, 11, 19). I cannot but think that the getting ready of the verbal expression is a mental note- taking, of a simple and schematic sort, and that in his account of it Messer has really furnished an argument against his own and Ach's position. '° The term is Woodworth's : Joum. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iv., 1907, 170. ^° Ach, 11 ; Fechner, Elem. d. Psychophys'ik, ii., xliv., b (1860, 1889, 491 ff.). Muller and Pilzecker {Exper. Beitrdge zur Lehre vom Gedachtniss, 1900, 58 f.) refer only to Fechner's "Phantome des sogennanten Sinnen- 240 NOTES TO LECTURE III gedachtnisses" (498 fF.), which they name "Wide^ holungsempfindungen." There seems, however, to be no reason why Fechner's term 'memory after-image' should not cover Ach's phenomena of perseveration. For a general account of the part played in recent work by the 'perseverative tendencies,' see Watt, Arch, f. d. ges. Psych., vii., 1906, Literaturbericht, 17 fF. ; and cf . Watt, 341 ff. ; Messer, 17, 20, 63, 66 ; Wresch- ner, 11 iF., 237 fF. " Ach, 17 f . ; Durr, Zeits. f. Psych., xUx., 1908, 327. " Gnmdriss d. Psych., 421 ; Outlines, 1909, 407. " See PhUos. Studien, x., 1894, 498 ; Logik, ii., 2, 1895, 226; Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 305, 383, 452. '" Messer, 4, 22 fF., 108 f. The use of free associa- tions had been criticised by Watt, 296 ff., on the ground that the results would be indefinite, and the discrimina- tion of factors and influences difficult or impossible. Watt's objection that "es scheint kaum moglich, einen Bewi;gstseinszustand vorzubereiten, in dem jedes Richten der Aufmerksamkeit auf irgend etwas unterdriickt wird" is, however, transformed by Messer into a merit of the method: "[es ist] sehr haufig zu konstatieren, dass sich die Vp. . . . unwillkiirlich eine speziellere Aufgabe stellten, — was methodisch recht beachtenswert ist." Cf. Binet, 54 f . ; Ach's account of determinate abstraction (successive form), 240 ff. ; P. Bovet, Arch, de psych., viii., 1908, 14, 19; Wreschner, 125 ff., 145, 480, 491; E. Meumann, Vorlesungen z. Einfiihrumg in d. exper. Padagogik, i., 1907, 213. This specialisation of the Aufgabe may be brought into connection with the specialisation of verbal mean- ing. "[Es] findet unter Umstanden eine Prazisjerung, NOTES TO LECTURE III 241 eine Einschrankung des Sinnes [des Reizwortes] statt, die weder durch das Reizwort, noch etwa durch die Aufgabe bedingt ist, sondern sich wohl aus dem in der allgemeinen Konstellation begriindeten Vorherrschen bestimmter Reproduktionstendenzen erklart" (Messer, 81 f.; cf. Wreschner, 148 fF., 480). It seems also to be related to the specialisation of the visual image which accompanies and partly expresses a thought: Binet, 85 f. ; Watt, 369 ; Messer, 88 ; Wreschner, 180 fF. At any rate, this phenomenon of specialisation, of partial expression, is to be distinguished from the occurrence of incongruous or wholly irrelevant visual images. I have on occasion been tempted to think, further, that these various types of specialisation — possibly the various phases of the psychology of Aufgabe at large — have something to do with Royce's problem of the 'in- hibitory consciousness' (Recent Logical Inquiries and their Psychological Bearings, Psychol. Review, ix., 1902, 131, 133 ff.). Royce, however, assumes that our "motor acts," our "positive tendencies and inhibitions" must, in "live thinking," come to consciousness ; "our abstract ideas are products of ... an organised union of negative and positive tendencies" ; and we can under- stand the psychology of thinking "only in case we un- derstand when, how far, and under what conditions, inhibition becomes a conscious process." The psychology of Aufgabe has tended rather to emphasise the uncon- scious direction and determination of consciousness. I make the suggestion for what it is worth; I am not at all sure that I have understood Royce. ^^ Ibid., 4 ff. On "begriffliches und gegenstandliches Denken," see esp. 148 ff. The distinction is criticised by 16 242 NOTES TO LECTURE III Biihler, Remarques sur les problemes de, la psychologic de la pensee. Archives de Psych., vi., 1907, 383 f . ; de^ fended by Messer, Bemerkungen zu meinen 'Experi- mentell-psychologischen Untersuchungen iiber das Den- ken,' Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., x., 1907, 419 fF. ; and relegated by Biihler to epistemology, Ueber Gedanken- zusammenhange, ibid., xii., 1908, 12. Bovet {Arch, de Psych., viii., 1908, 29) ascribes it to individual differ- ence; von Aster (Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 97, 100 f.) thinks that 'begriffliches Denken' is a matter of direct impression ('Uebergangserlebnis' : see Lecture IV., Note 66) and that 'gegenstandliches Denken' involves the comparison of attitudes or images. Wreschner has a new distinction, that of 'Vorstellungen schlechthin' and of 'Zentral erregte Empfindungen' (6 f-)- ^* A statement of this sort can rest on nothing more tangible than general impression. Watt's paper seems to me to bear all the marks of an unitary conception. Ach's work is admittedly incomplete (v.) and the "und das Denken" of the title is an afterthought (vi.) ; but the work itself is organic, and the inclusion of thought is logically sanctioned by the whole trend of the investigation. Biihler writes (Archives, 377) : "Messer a interprete [son] materiel en logicien. . . . Cela fait paraitre, d'un cote, ses recherches tres etendues. . . . Mais d'un autre cote 9a leur donne un certain air d'incoherence, car les resultats obtenus ne sont pas plus rattaches entre eux que les questions auxquelles ils doivent repondre." Cf. 386, and Biihler, 303. "Messer, 12; so Biihler, 308. "Biihler, 300 ff. '"'Ibid., 306, 309. Cf. Binet, 300 f. ""Ibid., 305. NOTES TO LECTURE III 243 27 R. S. Woodworth, Imageless Thought, Joum. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iii., 1906, 703 f. '^ Ueber Gedankenerinnerungen, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xii., 1908, 24 fF. On the method of right asso- ciates, see G. E. Miiller and A. Pilzecker, Exper. Beitrage zur Lehre vow, Geddchtniss, 1900. ^* Wundt, Psych. Studien, iii., 1907, 305 ; Durr, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 330. '" G. Storring, Experimentelle Ubitersuchungen iiber einfache Schlussprozesse, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xi., 1908, 1 iF. The illustrations occur on pp. 7, 126. See also Experimentelle und psychopathologische Untersuch- ungen iiber das Bewusstsein der Giiltigkeit, ibid., xiv., 1909, 1 fF. ''Woodworth, The Consciousness of Relation, in Essays Philosophical and Psychological, 1908, 489 fF. '^ There is a certain fatality about these dates. Ach, publishing in 1905, brings his references only "bis zum Jahre 1904" (vi.); Watt's dissertation, published in the Archiv for January, 1905, was current in separate form late in 1904, and is dated 1904. Messer's manu- script went to the printer in May, 1906; but he says that Ach's book "wurde mir erst bekannt als die Ver- arbeitung meines Materials schon fast ganz beendet war" (11) — ^too late, therefore, to influence his per- spective; Ach's work is referred to only in foot-notes. Wreschner, again, performed his experiments in the years 1900-1903 (Wreschner, 21). ^^Analyt. Psych., i., 85 f. Cf. Manual, 394 fF.; 248 ff. ; Growndwork, 104 ff. 244 NOTES TO LECTURE III ** J. R. Angell, Thought and Imagery, Philos. Rev., vi., 1897, 648 f. Cf. ibid., 534 f. *^ Ibid., vii., 1898, 74 f. *" A. Mayer und J. Orth, Zur qualitativen Un- tersuchung der Association. Zeits. f. Psych, u. Physiol, d. Sirmesorg., xxvl., 1901, 1 fF., esp. 5 f. '^ I give some illustrative references to Marbe's work. The observers were Kiilpe, Mayer, Orth, Pfister and Roetteken. Doubt, K p. 18, O p. 88 ; uneasiness, R 38 ; difficulty, K 21 ; uncertainty, R 30 ; effort, R 27 ; hesi- tation, K 29; vacillation, R 18; incapacity, M 81; ignorance, K 65 ; certainty, R 30 ; assent, O 87, M 88 ; conviction of right or wrong judgment, R 18, R 36, K 39. Surprise appears as emotion, K 70, 71, and as Bewusstseinslage, O 87 ; wonder as emotion, K 79, M 80 ; astonishment, R 85 ; expectation, K 71, K 79, O 81 (as Bewusstseinslage, K 65 ) ; curiosity, O 80. Remembrance of instructions, R 18 ; of answering in sentences, K 37 ; of past conversations, P 87 ; nonsense has come before, O 88; sense or nonsense is coming, O 88, 89 ; division leaves no remainder, K 35. Cf . also unnaturalness of form of answer, K 37; must compare, K 60 ; must calculate, K 79 ; that is too big, K 66 ; that is wrong, R 66 ; is it winter now ? M 80 ; range of mean- ing of word lock (of hair), P 87. The Bewusstsei/nslagen are reported sometimes with, sometimes without an affective concomitant: see, e.g., the reports of R and P, 85-87. Associative arousal, K 23; part played in associative consciousness, R 24; at- tended to, R 24 ; forgotten, R 31. NOTES TO LECTURE III 245 Indefinite or indescribable forms, e.g., K 35, R 1% P 85, 86. «*H. Hoffding, Psych, in Umrissen, 1887, 162 f.; 1893, 163: Ueber Wiederkennen, etc., Vjs. f. wiss. Philos., xiii., 1889, 427: Zur Theorie des Wiedererken- nens, Philos. Studien, viii., 1893, 94. Cf. W. Wundt, ibid., vii., 1892, 33; Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 536; Ach, 236. Ach refers also to J. Volkelt's Erinnerungsgewissheit : Beitrage zur Analyse des Bewusstseins, Zeits. f. Philos. u. philos. Kritik, cxviii. (1), 1 if. In a characteristic review of this article {Zeits. f. Psych, u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorg., xxix., 1902, 142 ff.), Witasek remarks: "Bei manchem der Ergebnisse hat man fiirs Erste frei- Hch den Eindruck, dass es weniger aus den Thatsachen herausanalysirt als vielmehr in diese hineindeducirt ist," and transforms Volkelt's 'Gewissheit' into 'Evidenz des Urtheils,' — Evidenz meaning 'psychisch-actuelle Ueber- zeugungs-Berechtigung.' Cf. the account of Witasek's psychology of judgment in Lecture II. above. Ach mentions, further, F. Schumann's 'Nebenein- driicke der Spannung der Ewartung' and 'der Ueber- raschung' (Zeits. f. Psych, u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorg., iv., 1892, 2, etc.), and the 'absolute impression' of the metric methods of psychophysics (L. J. Martin u. G. E. Miiller, Zur Analyse d. Unterschiedsempfindlichkeit, 1899, 43). '» See, e.g., Physiol. Psych., ii., 1893, 501, 521 ; iii., 1903, 121 f., 625. I suppose that neither Orth's nor Ach's list of references is meant to be more than sug- gestive. It would be easy to add others; but I doubt if anything is to be gained by bracketing together a 246 NOTES TO LECTURE III number of experiences which obviously await analysis, and which are very differently placed in different systems. *" J. Orth, Gefiihl und Bewusstseinslage, eine kritisch- experimentelle Studie, 1903, esp. 69-75, 130. I am not able to gather anything new from Orth's tables. Cf. Ach, 238 f., and ct. von Aster, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 104 ff. " Ach, 210, 215, 238. On previous use of the term Bewusstheit, see note, 239. *' Ibid., 11, 211. The Bewusstheit may be attended to, as if it were a Wahmehmungsinhalt; 211, 214. *''Ibid., 213. **Ibid., 217 f. "/bid., 96 f., 212 f., 219. Cf. the discussion of contributory factors, 220. *'Ibid., 230, 235. " Ibid., 232, 235. Cf. Watt, 368 f . ; E. Claparede, U association des idees, 1903, 228 ff. " Ibid., 235 ff. ** The 'determining tendencies' are placed by Ach alongside of the perseverative and associative tenden- cies to reproduction (187, 195, 247), and are defined as follows (187): "Unter den determinierenden Ten- denzen sind Wirkungen zu verstehen, welche von einem eigenartigen Vorstellungsinhalte der Zielvorstellung aus- gehen und eine Determinierung im Sinne oder gemass der Bedeutung dieser Zielvorstellung nach sich ziehen." Cf. 224 f. : "Es ist . . . die Regel, dass die wirksame Zielvorstellung beim Auftreten der konkreten Bezugs- vorstellung als seiche nicht im Bewusstsein erscheint, aber trotzdem einen bestimmenden Einfluss ausiibt. In dieser eigentiimlichen Wirksamkeit sehen wir neben den friiher NOTES TO LECTURE III 247 angegebenen Merkraalen ein charakteristisches Zeichen fiir die Determinierung, und diese eigenartigen von der Zielvorstellung ausgehenden, sich auf die Bezugsvors- tellung beziehenden Wirkungen bezeichnen wir als die determinierenden Tendenzen." Or again (228) : "[Die] im Unbewussten wirkenden, von der Bedeutung der Zielvorstellung ausgehenden, auf die kommende Bezugs- vorstellung gerichteten Einstellungen, welche ein spon- tanes Auftreten der determinierten Vorstellung nach sich Ziehen, bezeichnen wir als determinierende Tenden- zen." The effects of these tendencies are described 196, 209 f., 222, 234. '"' Messer, 184). " Ibid., 180. '"Ibid., 180 f. '^Ibid., 181 ff. ^* Ibid., 184s ff., 188. Messer's terms are Gedanken and Begriffe. The latter are "die Bsl von der Bedeu- tung einzelner Worte oder Phrasen." " Ibid., 187. '« Ibid., 84. "Ach, 219. "'Messer, 51. Cf. 188 ff. =« Ibid., 71 f ., 83, 85. '" C. L. Taylor (Ueber das Verstehen von Worten und Satzen, Zeits. f. Psych., xL, 1905, 225 ff.) notes that both the imaginal representation of meaning and the attitude of 'understanding' tend to lapse as a printed text becomes familiar (241, 246). More to our present point, however, is the fact that an observer, who finds visual ideas essential (229) or at any rate useful (235) in the solution of a given problem, drops these ideas and employs simply 'thoughts' and attitudes in the solution of further problems of the same kind (236). It would be overhasty to suppose that the visual ideas formed, in these cases, the sole psychological representatives of 248 NOTES TO LECTURE III logical meaning ; that state of affairs is possible, but not probable. Hence we may not either infer that the attitudes and the attitudinal constituents of the thoughts (these are described as "kompliziertere Gefiige von Bewusstseinslagen und Wortvorstellungen" : 235 ) are vestigial derivatives of visual imagery ; they might also derive, e.g., from kinaesthetic complexes that had en- tered, along with the visual ideas, into the representa- tion of meaning. In any event, the change from imagery to attitude, within the individual mind, appears to proceed rather by way of substitution and short cut than by way of gradual reduction, — ^though there may, doubtless, be individual differences (cf. Stout, Analytic Psych., i., 83 f.). The point is taken up in Lecture V. It is a fortunate chance that my colleague. Dr. L. R. Geissler, has — like Ach (216) — "eine ausgesprochene Veranlagung in Bewusstheiten zu denken," so that we may hope presently to throw some light upon the prob- lem set in the text. So far, I can report only that the assimilation of a new idea, or the understanding of a novel term, is for Dr. Geissler a definitely imaginal ex- perience, but that with growing familiarity the images very quickly lapse, and are replaced by an awareness which (though we have as yet had no opportunity to at- tempt its complete analysis) appears to be predominantly kinaesthetic in composition. " Binet, 82. NOTES TO LECTURE IV ^ References are given in Notes ii., viii., pp. 239, 246, of Veitch's translation of The Meditations, and Selec- tions from the Principles, of Rene Descartes, reprint of 1901. Add Med., iii., p. 45. The letters here quoted will be found in CEuvres, ed. C. Adam et P. Tannery, iii., 1899, 395, 691 f. ^ "Thought is impossible without an image," On Memory and Recollection, 449 b, sub fin. (W. A. Hammond, Aristotle's Psychology, 1902, 197. Cf. 6, 106, 123). ^ Marbe, 9 f., 15, 44. The phrasing of this result is Marbe's. * Ibid., 43. ■> Ibid., 90. " Ibid., 52. ' Ibid., 52 f. ^Ibid., 91. ^ Ibid., 92. Messer seeks to effect a reconciliation between Ach and Marbe; the latter's 'Wissen' is "ledig- lich eine Disposition" (207). "/bid., 92. ^^ Ibid., 52 : "in den ProtokoUen unserer Versuche von einer derartigen Absicht nichts nachgewiesen wurde." " Watt, 412. *' Ibid., 413. The influence of the Aufgabe is also plainly apparent in 0. Kiilpe's Versuche iiber Abstrak- tion (Bericht iiber d. I. Kongress f. exper. Psych., 1904, 56 ff.), published in the same year: cf. Watt, 426; Ach, 239 f. ; Starring, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xi., 1908, 7 f. ; Wreschner, 493 f., etc.; E. Meumann, Ueber 250 NOTES TO LECTURE IV Assoziationsexperimente mit Beeinflussung der Repro- duktionszeit. Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., ix., 1907, 117 fiF. (answered by Messer, ibid., x., 1907, 409 ff.). For further references see Watt, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., vii., 1906, Literaturbericht, 25 ff. " Ibid., 413. " Ibid., 410. ^° Marbe, 54 : "doch irgend welche Absichtlichkeit im Bewusstsein des Erlebenden nicht nachweisbar zu sein braucht." "Watt, 346. "/bid., 416. ^^ Ibid., 300. Note the lapse into phenomenology, as soon as a mental formation is mentioned which the writer has not himself analysed ! "In einem Zustand der Erwartung, die von mehr oder weniger lebhaften Span- nungsempfindungen begleitet wird" — so the phrase runs. But why 'accompanied'? May not the kinaesthesis be an integral constituent of the expectation ? Cf . a forth- coming paper on Expectation by W. H. Pyle, in the Amer. Joum. Psych. "> Messer, 7 f. Cf. 108 f., 126, 208 f. ^^ Ibid., 109 f. It may be questioned whether this "Aufgabe, das Seiende zu erkennen" is not, in reality, of an instinctive nature ; — whether the Einstellung which underlies it is not a matter of racial heritage. The psychophysical organism has, after all, been developed, throughout the course of evolution, in interaction with its natural environment. If this hypothesis is sound, the Aufgabe need never come to consciousness : not be- cause it is "ganz gewohnlich und selbstverstandlich" — for what is customary now must once have been novel and unaccustomed; but rather because instinctive atti- tudes are normally and intrinsically unconscious. NOTES TO LECTURE IV 251 The Feeling of Reality. — There are, however, explicit *f eelings' of reality and unreality ; there are times when we say, quite naturally, 'How real it all was!' or 'The whole thing struck me as unreal.' What is the syste- matic position of these 'feelings'? Calkins (An Introd. to Psych., 1901 or 1905, 124 fF.) recognises 'feelings of realness' as a sub-group of the 'attributive elements of consciousness.' The feeling of realness or consciousness of reality (126) can best be illustrated by a contrast of memory with imagination ; there is an elementary experience, 'embedded' in the memory-image, which is utterly lacking to images of imagination. It resembles affection in that "it is al- ways realised as belonging to some element or complex of elements" and "is not always present" in consciousness. It has, however, no simple opposite, as pleasantness has an opposite in unpleasantness (113 ff.); for the "feel- ing of the not-real is evidently a composite of the con- sciousness of opposition [a probably elemental relational experience: 131] and the consciousness of reality" (126). Whether it evinces a qualitative variety we are not told; the section-heading speaks of 'the feelings,' the text of 'the feeling' of realness. In support of the elementary character of the feehng of realness, the writer appeals, first, to John Mill's note in Analysis, i., 1869, 412. Mill here raises the question "what IS the difference to our minds between thinking of a reality, and representing to ourselves an imaginary picture," and decides that "the distinction is ultimate and primordial." The following discussion (413) is not very clear; but I do not find that Mill ascribes the difference to any feeling of realness that is 'embedded' 252 NOTES TO LECTURE IV in memory, or that may 'attach' to an image (Calkins, 187 ) ; he seems rather to regard imagination and beUef (memory or expectation) as coordinate mental func- tions, differing in what Brentano would term their 'act.' Later, however, he writes (423) that "there is in the remembrance of a real fact, as distinguished from that of a thought, an element" which is other than a differ- ence between ideas. This 'element,' then, might be con- sidered as a feeling of realness superadded upon or attached to mere imagination. But then Mill terms it belief: "this element, howsoever we define it, constitutes Belief": whereas Calkins defines belief as "an idea distinguished both by the feeling of realness and by the [relational] feeling of congruence" (305). James, too, identifies the 'sense of reality' with 'belief (Prime, ii., 283 ff.). The reference to Baldwin's Handbook of Psych.: Feeling and Will, 1891, 155, is erroneous. The feeling which there "cannot be explained, any more than any other feeling ; it must be felt" is not the reality-feeling • — which is discussed 148 ff. — but belief. Baldwin, of course, posits a reality-feeling. "Two different sorts of feeling may be denoted by the terms reality-feeling and belief. . . . To the mind of the writer this distinc- tion is a fundamental and vital one'' (149). Calkins' feeling of realness is, however, not identical with Bald- win's reality-feeling. It is rather — as is shown by the instances given (C, 124; B., 152 f.), and by the fact that the reality-feeling is correlated with an equally simple and original unreality-feeling (B., 151) — a blend of Baldwin's reality- feeling and belief. But there is a wider difference between Calkins' posi- NOTES TO LECTURE IV 253 tion and that of the three psychologists to whom she refers. I can best express it by using the terminology, — which of late has been somewhat abused — of structure and function.* The feeling of realness is, for Calkins, an element of mental structure. Mill and James and Baldwin speak the language of function. How else could Baldwin write that "the feeling of reality is simply consciousness itself" (154), or James describe belief' as "the psychic attitude in which our mind stands towards the proposition taken as a whole" (287).'' We have, accordingly, to consider whether Calkins is justi- fied in ranking the feeling or feelings of reality among the "structural elements of consciousness" (17). I have already said that the existence of 'feelings of reality' is beyond question. We have them when we * James writes, in 1907: "We habitually hear much nowadays of the difference between structural and functional psychology. I am not sure that I understand the difference" {Philos. Rev., xvi., 1). And yet James coined the terms, so lately as 1884i, and uses them in his Principles, so lately as 1890! "[There are] two aspects^ he says, "in which all mental facts without exception may be taken; their structural aspect, as being subjective, and their functional aspect, as being cognitions. In the former aspect, the highest as well as the lowest is a feeling, a peculiarly tinged segment of the stream. This tingeing is its sensitive body, the wie ikm zu Muthe ist, the way it feels whilst passing. In the latter aspect, the lowest mental fact as well as the highest grasps some bit of universal truth as its content, even though that truth were as relationless as a bare unlocalised and undated quality of pain. From the cognitive point of view, all mental facts are intellections. From the subjective point of view all are feelings" (Mind, O. S., ix., 1884, 18 f.; Princ., i., 478). There are prob- ably a good many psychologists who would object to the identi- fication of mental function with the function of cognition; but apart from this — ^which is, after all, only an accident, due to the context in which James is writing— the distinction is perfectly clear and genuine. 254 NOTES TO LECTURE IV find that the brooch we have picked up is real gold, and the table we have spied in the second-hand store real mahogany ; we have them when, after ploughing through the introductory pages, we come to the real point of a scientific paper; we have them, in very uncanny form, if we happen to be alone in a room full of waxwork figures. We say — and feel — ^that Colonel Newcome and M'r. Micawber, Becky Sharp and Dora, are more real than half the people of our acquaintance. We often get a particularly keen sense of the reality of the third dimension from perspective figures.* An unexpected meeting with a friend ; the express recognition of a half- heard sound as that of the fire alarm ; the taking of a 'day off"; the first hint of the possibilities of a theory: all these experiences, and a hundred others, give us the feeling of reality. And there are counter-feelings of unreality, over and above that special feeling of unreal- ity which comes in states of lassitude and fatigue, when the world of men and things is as shadowy and insub- stantial as the world of the Lotos-eaters. There are, indeed, as many feelings of reality and of unreality as there are distinguishable meanings of the words real and unreal. But elementary feelings.'' elemental experiences.'' Surely not : surely, on the contrary, a very heterogeneous group of complex formations, every one of which de- mands its own analysis. We have feelings of reality as we have feelings of utility, feelings of superiority, feelings of amity: as, in the sphere of the concrete, we have feelings of tables and chairs, horses and carts, *Wundt, Vdlkerpsychologie: My thus unci Religion, ii., 1, 1905, 44. NOTES TO LECTURE IV 255 books and papers. If we are to classify mental processes as feelings 'of anything, we can multiply our elements ad infinitum.* But, for a psychology of structure, that 'of which we have the feeling is irrelevant. The psy- chological datum is the feeling itself, the feeling as felt ; and the business of psychology, as a descriptive science, is to analyse the conscious representation of meaning — in the present case, the representation of the meaning 'real' — which the feeling is or contains. It seems to me (though I speak' with reserve, as I have not yet carried the question into the laboratory) that the feelings of reality are always of an emotive character, implying affective process in connection with kinaesthetic or other organic sensations, and running their course under the influence of an Aufgabe or Einstellimg. I am sure that, in my own experience, they are complex. Nevertheless, they might stiU include an unanalysable core or residuum, a non-sensational and non-affective * Woodworth, in his Non-Sensory Elements of Sense Perception (Journ. Philas. Psych. 8ci. Meth., iv., 1907, 169 ff.), seems actu- ally to accept this conclusion. "Each thing perceived, each size and shape distinguished, probably we should add each relation observed, has its own felt quality, which is not one of the qualities of sensation." "The appropriate size qualities and distance qual- ities are clapped on to the sense presentation without the inter- mediary of sensorial imagery." "The thing quality must be present if we are to have the consciousness of a thing or of properties of a thing." The doctrine is, evidently, an extreme form of Mach's doctrine of sensations and von Ehrenfels' doctrine of Oestaltqualitdten (to which Woodworth refers, 171). It in- volves, among other things, that arithmetical treatment of psycho- logy which Woodworth elsewhere (Essays Philosophical and Psychological, 1908, 493) rightly rejects: see I. M. Bentley, The Psych, of Mental Arrangement, Amer. Journ. Psych., xiii., 1902, 376 ff. For a general criticism, vrith which I am in substantial agreement, I may refer to Bentley, loe. cit., 238 ff. 256 NOTES TO LECTURE IV elementary process; and this core or residuum might be their essential feature, as reality-feelings. I reply, first, that I do not find it, although I know well enough what the 'contrast' is between a memory-image of the Doge's palace and a poetry image of the towers of Camelot. And I reply, secondly, that — even if we grant its exist- ence, in minds of a certain type — it cannot rank as a mental element until it has been characterised as mental content, defined in attributive terms. On this point I take issue, not only with Calkins, but with James as well. "Damit," says Messer, "dass gelegentlich unter beson- deren Bedingungen die Erfassung der Bedeutung, das Verstehen, als besonderes Erlebnis zu Bewusstsein kommt, ist nun natiirlich noch nicht gegeben, dass dies Erlebnis genauer beschrieben oder analysiert werden kann" (77). That is true, if it is a little obvious. "Die klare Erkennung eines bestimmten psychischen Phanomens und sein Unterscheiden von anderen psychischen Phanomenen kann stattfinden," says Storring, "ohne dass deshalb das Individuum in der Lage zu sein braucht, eine psy- chologische Beschreibung des betreffenden Phanomens unter Angabe des Unterschieds von ahnlichen Phanom- enen zu vollziehen. Mit anderen Worten: in vielen Fallen wird von dem das psychische Phanomen erleben- den Individuum erkannt, dass es sich um das Phanomen handelt, und es wird deutlich von ahnlichen Phanomenen unterschieden, aber worin der Unterschied besteht, kann nicht im einzelnen angegeben werden oder ist wenigstens schwer angebbar" (Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xiv., 1909, 20). That also, if we take the general sense of the passage, is true. Introspection demands conditions, and demands observers. But if the differentiae are not sped- NOTES TO LECTURE IV 257 fied, we have no right to count the experiences as elemental. When James declares that "the challenge to produce these psychoses [the transitive parts of the stream of thought] . . . is as unfair as Zeno's treat- ment of the advocates of motion" (Prmc, i., 244!), and when Calkins postulates a mental element without men- tioning its attributes, — without anything more than the bare intimation that it will be found 'embedded' in the memory-image if that is contrasted with a poetry image, — ^these writers seem to me to miss the purpose and to underestimate the responsibilities of psychology. For the exhibition of psychoses, their analysis, the discovery and formulation of their laws of connection, all this is precisely the business of psychology:* and indeed, it is but fair to say that James, having made his disclaimer, addresses himself resolutely to the task dis- claimed, f Moreover, the introduction of a new element should, in the present state of psychology, be tentative only, accompanied by references con as well as -pro. Its dogmatic assertion, in a text-book, absolves the student * Biihler is within his rights when he says: "Zu verlangen: Charakterisieren Sie mir dieses Wissen durch Angabe seiner Intensitat und seiner (Empfindungs-)Qualitaten, ist ebenso king als die Forderung: Charakterisieren Sie mir die raumliche Tiefe durch Hohe und Breite'' (361). But he is within his rights be- cause he has 'produced' — by experimental procedure and to his own satisfaction — mental processes which can be grouped neither with ideas nor with feelings nor with attitudes. Marbe writes to the point in Zeits., xlvi., 1908, 353 f. 1 1 have pointed out, in Lect. I., the inconsistency between James' treatment of the transitive feelings and his treatment of the feeling of the central active self. I have referred, in the same Lect., to my personal tendency to travel, under verbal guidance, out of my visual schema, and so to involve myself in contradiction and to become loose-ended in statement. It is not, I hope, 17 258 NOTES TO LECTURE IV from any attempt at introspection in a direction where first-hand judgment is imperatively needed;* its forth- right acceptance, by the psychologist, gives an appear- ance of finality to chapters that are very far from closed.t '^Messer, 209. ='= Ach, 230 fF. Cf . Watt, 368 if. " Watt, 429. ^° Ibid., 423. Watt is at pains, throughout his thesis, to take account of Wundt's opinions, and especially of the Wundtian doctrine of apperception : e.g., 321, 369 f., impertinent to remark that the passage in Prime, i., 244 strikes me as precisely analogous to one of my own verbal rushes; I am speaking simply of mode of composition. In my experience, the verbal flow runs at a white heat; language becomes picturesque, and full of metaphor; 1 achieve sentences that I am heartily sorry to destroy. I infer that James often writes in this way, and that — having no visual schema — ^he lets his loose ends lie. * The sole introspective mark which Calkins offers is that the feeling of realness "is always realised as belonging to some ele- ment or complex of elements" (124). This realisation is, how- ever, a matter of 'reflective observation' (ibid., and 132 f.) ; and, since it attaches equally to the affections and to the feelings of relation, it cannot serve here as differentia. I come back to it in Lect. V. t Cairns' argument runs as follows: "It cannot be too often Tepeated that an obstinately realised difference between one set of psychic phenomena and another, even if the difference cannot be analysed and explained, is nevertheless a sufficient reason for distinguishing the experiences. Now there certainly is a recognised difference between the feelings of like,' 'more' and 'one,' and the feelings of 'red,' 'warm' and "pleasant'; and this difference in itself suffices to mark these off as distinct groups of conscious elements" (132). The first sentence is correct; but the second does not follow from it. Realised differences must be rubricated under the specific headings of their difference. Thus a perception is always and obstinately different from a volition; yet neither perception nor volition is a conscious element. NOTES TO LECTURE IV 259 400, 403 ff., 419, 421 IF. It is strange that he has not sought to bring Wundt's psychology of judgment into connection with his own theory of the Aufgabe. Wundt writes as follows: "Meistens steht . . . die urspriingliche Gesammtvorstellung zuerst nur als ein undeutlicher Complex einzelner Vorstellungen vor un- serem Bewusstsein ; die einzelnen llieile dieses Complexes und die Art ihrer Verbindung treten dann erst bestimmter wahrend der Zerlegung hervor. Es kann so der Schein entstehen, als wenn das Denken erst die Theile zusam- mensuchte, die es in der successiven Gliederung der Gesammtvorstellung an einander fiigt. Nichtsdesto- weniger ergibt es sich auch hier . . . dass das Ganze, wenngleich in undeutlicher Form, friiher appercipirt werden musste, als seine Theile. Nur so erklart sich die bekannte Thatsache, dass wir ein verwickeltes Satz- gefiige leicht ohne Storung zu Ende fiihren konnen. Dies ware unmoglich, wenn nicht bei Beginn desselben schon das Ganze vorgestellt wiirde. Der VoUzug der Urtheilsfunction besteht daher, psychologisch betrachtet, darin, dass wir die dunkeln Umrisse des Gesammtbildes successiv deutlicher machen, so dass dann am Ende des zusammengesetzten Denkactes auch das Ganze klarer vor unserm Bewusstsein steht" {Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 575). Watt, now, has given us his equivalent of the apperceptive activities; and it would seem that he might, similarly, translate the Gesammtvorstellwng — es- pecially in view of its origin in Wundt's system — into an ^a/'g-flbe-consciousness. One may grant that the translation would be forced, and yet see that there is a common element in the two theories. Watt, on the con- 260 NOTES TO LECTURE IV trary, sets them in sharp opposition (412) : ct. refs. in Lecture V., Note 31. =" Ach, 224. " Ibid. "1st die Absicht von guter Konzentration der Aufmerksamkeit begleitet, so besteht auch noch eine Zukunftsbeziehung insofern, als die Absicht auf die Iciinftig eintretende konkrete Bezugsvorstellung gerichtet ist" (the 'concrete idea of object' is the perception of object, the presented stimulus). This 'relation to the future' is, apparently, a conscious process. We need not quarrel with its name, any more than we quarrel with the names 'idea of end' and 'idea of object,' so long as we realise that name does not in any way specify contents. It would, however, be wrong to imagine that there must be, in the Absicht, any conscious representa- tion of futurity, of the temporal to-be or to-come. That is no more the case with purpose than it is with expectation. "" Ibid., 193. ^* Ibid., 228. Ach, like Watt, operates with the con- cept of apperception: see, e.g., 116 ff., 214, 225 fF. '» Marbe, 52. " Ibid., 53 f. «' Watt, 416. *' Ibid., 410. ** Watt, 230; Messer, 111. Watt writes (411) : "alles, was nur vermoge der eigenen Kraft von Reproduktions- tendenzen geschieht, ist noch nicht Urteil. Das sieht man deutlich an alien Gedachtnisversuchen und der- gleichen" ; and refers, apparently with approval, to Wundt, Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 680, where a sharp distinction is drawn between associative and apperceptive processes. "Wird die Reproduktion," he goes on, "bis mi einem gewissen Grade aufdringlich, dann ist die Vp. NOTES TO LECTURE IV 261 nicht mehr geneigt, das Erlebnis iiberhaupt als UrteU anzusehen." And he concludes: "was den Anteil des Faktors der blossen Reproduktion im Urteil betrifft, ist es eine notwendige Bedingung zum Zustandekommen eines Urteils, dass mehr als eine Reproduktion auf das betreffende Reizerlebnis folgen kann" (411 f.). It is regrettable that Watt did not make experiments with free association. Suppose that such experiments are made, and that the observer does not specialise the Aufgabe. The results should, by hypothesis, be associa- tions, not judgments: Messer (95) reports that one of his observers gave himself the express instruction "Sollst nicht assoziieren, sondern ein Urteil aussprechen." Yet, if they proceed from the Aufgabe, they must, according to Watt, be judgments. Aesthetic contemplation, too, seems to me, very definitely, to imply an Einstellung, which in turn implies and is conditioned upon a foregone Aufgabe. And since we have become interested in psy- choanalysis, most of us, I fancy, find that our reveries and day-dreams, the free play of the reproductive im- agination, are also determined by more or less remote Aufgaben. On this side, then, it is difficult to draw the dividing line, by Watt's definition, between judg- ment and non- judgment. On the other side, of singly determined reproduction, there is also a difiiculty. We have, say, the Aufgabe of memorising a set of nonsense-syllables. After a cer- tain number of repetitions, the course of reproduction is determined. But with any less number of repetitions, it is possible "dass mehr als eine Reproduktion auf das betreffende Reizerlebniss folgen kann." The same thing holds, of course, of the memorising of sense-material. 262 NOTES TO LECTURE IV Where does judgment end, and the play of reproductive tendencies begin? Or is judgment involved at all? Moreover, if it is the AufdrmglichTceit of a response to stimulus that differentiates association from judgment, then has not Watt, in this Aufdrmglichkeit, a second (even if a negative) psychological criterion of judg- ment? There are, indeed, various connections in which Watt's analysis appears inadequate: see, e.g., what is said of Verwerfen, 324, 340. '" Messer, 93. Cf. Biihler, 331. """Ibid., 105. In Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., x., 1907, 416, Messer writes: "Auf Grand der Angaben meiner Versuchspersonen hatte ich (a. a. O. S. 105) das Urteilserlebnis bei Reaktionsversuchen so beschrieben" (italics mine) ; and in the following account of the in- struction given to the observers, he makes no mention of the predicative relation. Has he then forgotten the passage a. a. O. S. 93? " Ibid., 3 f . ; Watt, 290. ** Messer, 105 ff. The term Beziehv/ng is here used in its active sense, so that in strictness Beziehwngserlebnis should be translated 'feeling of relating,' and the phrase 'feeling of relation' should be reserved for the experi- ences discussed in Lecture V., Note 28. The observers speak of an 'aktives Zusammenfassen' (99), and Messer himself of 'der Charakter der Aktivitat beim Urteilsvoll- zug' (125). Messer later attempts the analysis of 'bewusstes, aktives Beziehen' (195 ff.), and comes to nothing more definite than phenomena of attention ('Aufmerksamkeitszusammenhang,' 'gleichzeitiges auf- merksames Erfassen'), — ^the same phenomena that are NOTES TO LECTURE IV 263 mentioned by his observers (105 f.) as characteristic of the predicative relation in particular. The 'feeling of relation' is thus, for Messer, a Bewusstsemslage ; the 'feeling of relating' is a matter of attention. The latter explanation, however, has its diffi- culties. Thus, in his discussion of 'bewusstes, aktives Beziehen,' Messer remarks: "freilich fehlt es dabei auch nicht an Fallen, bei denen die Beziehung ohne Zutun des Subjekts gewissermassen von selbst gegeben er- scheint" (195). This may perhaps mean simply that the observer sometimes finds himself relating, slips into relating (under the conditions of the experiment) as a matter of course ; the feeling of relating itself may still be a function of attention. More serious are the ob- jections (198 f.) that the reference to attention does not account for all the various modes of relating, pre- dicative and other, that come to the observer's con- sciousness ; and that it is at least an open question whether simultaneous 'apprehension' by the attention necessarily rouses the feeling of relating. If I may risk an opinion, on the basis of a limited number of rather casual introspections, I should say that these difficulties are not insuperable. Active attention is always 'voluntary' attention, that is, attention under Aufgdbe; and the 'ideas' that are simultaneously appre- hended by active attention are, under Messer's conditions, always meanings (51, 188 ; cf. Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., X., 1907, 418). It might, then, be argued, with some plausibility, that the sets and adjustments of active at- tention form the conscious representation of 'relating': that differences of Aufgdbe account for the various modes of this relating, and that the determinate appre- 264 NOTES TO LECTURE IV hension of two meanings, their apprehension under a single Aufgabe, must arouse the relating consciousness. However, the question can be decided only by further experimental work. — The slipperiness of terms is attested by Biihler's criti- cisms (Biihler, 34.6 [cf . 316] ; Arch, de Psych., vi., 1907, 378) and by Messer's replies {Arch. f. d. ges. Psych,, X., 1907, 418 f.). It is inevitable, so long as the terms are common to psychology and to logic, — not to speak of the looseness of their ordinary, everyday use. '* Ihid., 107 f. *° Ihid., 112, 114. " Ihid., 109. '' Ihid., 112. *nhid., 113. ** Ihid., 113. Messer is speaking of Ebbinghaus' memory-work. He does not, himself, raise the ques- tion of justification; he simply says: "es ist daher charakteristisch, dass [dieser] Forschungszweig erst dann die entscheidende Wendung zu exakterer Grestaltung nahm, als H. Ebbinghaus . . . dazu griif, als Unter- suchungsmaterial sinnlose Silben zu verwenden." The 'daher' follows from the bare fact of there being two "Wege der psychologischen Forschung" (112). ^'■Ihid., 111. Cf. Ach's 'Einverstandnis des Sub- jektes,' 230 fF. "/bit?.. 111. Cf. P. Bovet, Arch, de Psych., viii., 1908, 20. — Here I am interpreting. Messer does not say that the discovery of the 'eigenartiges Erlebnis' of voli- tion or intention is due to the existential attitude of de- scriptive psychology; indeed, the trend of his later remarks would seem to make that attitude, over against the judgment, inadequate and mistaken. But if you are to compare an Urteil with a hlosse Assoziation, you must NOTES TO LECTURE IV 265 compare them under the same conditions. To get a mere association, you must have the artificial idea-atti- tude, the attitude that makes the conscious contents as such the object of attention: I suppose, then, that in the comparison of judgment with association, for the discovery of a 'besondere BewusstseinsquaKtat,' this attitude must be continued. Indeed, it seems to be im- plied in all of Messer's introspective work. *''Ibid., 121. *' Ibid., 115 ff., esp. 121. "Dass in diesem Bejahen und Verneinen, Anerkennen und Verwerfen ein Erlebnis spezifischer Art vorliegt, dass es jedenfalls von den 'Vorstellungen' zu unterscheiden ist, das diirfte das Berechtigte an Brentanos Urteilslehre sein." ** Ach, 209 f . °" Messer, 112. I have already, in Note 46, pointed out what I take to be Messer's inconsistency in this connection, and I refer to the "stimulus error' (in con- nection with Biihler's results) in Note 64i below. What I say in the text has, of course, been said over and over again by the experimentalists. I quote the last author to come into my hands: "Unser gewohnliches Leben bewegt sich in der Welt der Gegenstande ; jeder Eindruck ist fiir uns nur Seite eines Gegenstandes. Das Ex- periment dagegen sucht mit reinen Eindriicken zu arbeiten" (O. Klemm, Psychol. Studien, v., 1909, 85). " Ibid., 121 f. " Ibid., 8 f ., 10, 208. °^ Ibid., 209 ; cf . Biihler, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xii., 1908, 5. "Tfeid, 125 f., 126 f., 145 f.; cf. Biihler, Arch, de Psych., vi., 1907, S79. Messer defends himself {Arch. 266 NOTES TO LECTURE IV f. d. ges. Psych., x., 1907, 420 f.) by the statement that " 'Erlebt' und 'Bemerkt' werden ist nicht dasselbe." But what — for descriptive psychology — is an 'unbemerktes Erlebnis'? Messer himself had previously applied the law of growth and decay in a very diflFerent fashion: see the ref. in Note 22 above. »=Buhler, 310. " Ibid., 310 f ., 313 f., 347 f., 351 ff. " Ibid., 315 f. " Ibid., 317. °* Biihler, 315. Cf. von Aster, Zeits. f. Pgych., xlix., 1908, 63. "Ich glaube [Biihler] nicht misszuverstehen, wenn ich annehme, dass der Ausdruck 'zustandliche' Erlebnisstrecke die Bewusstseinslage . . . gerade im Gegensatz zu den Gedanken charakterisieren soil. Das Zustandliche steht, scheint mir, hier entgegen dem In- tentionalen, wenn wir diesen Husserlschen Ausdruck im weitesten Sinn nehmen." Biihler, in fact, says very little ; and I doubt if he has thought out the distinction in the way suggested. '" Watt, 430 : instances occur 304, 324, 332, 339, etc. The difficulty lies in such instances as day-dreaming. If that type of consciousness is not determined by an Aufgabe, how can the attitude be so determined? — for day-dreaming is, at times, little more than a succession of attitudes. " Biihler, 318 ; cf. 321 : "ich behaupte . . . dass prinzipiell jeder Gegenstand vollstandig ohne Anschau- ungshilfen bestimmt gedacht (gemeint) werden kann." " Ibid., 361. °' Ibid., 329, 330. Biihler is criticised in some detail by Messer, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., x., 1907, 421 ff., and NOTES TO LECTURE IV 267 by Diirr, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 318 fF. Cf. also Bovet, Arch, de Psych., viii., 1908, 33 fF. "* On the stimulus-error see my Exp. Psych., II., ii., 1905, Ixiii., etc. The name 'stimulus-error' is natural, since the confusion lies, in terms of Fechnerian psycho- physics, between 'sensation' and 'stimulus.' Intrinsically, however, 'thing-error' or 'object-error' would be a better phrase ; what the naive observer confuses with his mental process is not the physical stimulus, but the thing of common sense. The error itself is widespread and in- sidious. It is responsible, I believe, among other things, for the current tendency to deny the attribute of in- tensity to; the image. "' Biihier, 311. °° E. von Aster, Die psychologische Beobachtung und experimentelle Untersuchung von Denkvorgangen, Zeita. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 102 ; cf. 77. The writer himself tentatively reduces the experiences that are character- isable as 'Bewusstsein von,' 'Wissen um,' to three types: (1) "gefiihlsbetonte Bewusstseinslagen, seien sie nun direkt erlebte oder eingefiihlte 'zustandliche Erlebnis- strecken"'; (2) 'Uebergangserlebnisse,' that is, direct impressions of sameness, difference, relation, in which a comparison is not involved; and (3) "optische, akust- ische, haptische u. s. w. Vorstellungsinhalte." °' Ibid., 69, 71. Obvious instances of the substitu- tion of Kundgahe for Beschreibung will be found in E. D. Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion; an Em- pirical Study of the Growth of Religious Consciousness, 1899 (cf. J. H. Leuba, Psychol. Review, vii., 1900, 515). A much subtler instance is afforded by W. H, Sheldon, Analysis of Simple Apprehension, Psychol. Review, xvi., 268 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 1909, 107 ff. Reference may be made also to Binet's list of characterising terms, 303; to various phrases employed by Storring's observers in their study of the 'Bewusstsein d. Giiltigkeit' {Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xiv., 1909, 1 fF.)> and to Ach's 'intentional' movement sen- sations (Ach, 40, 4.9 fF., 149 ff.; Messer, 59 f.)- The sensations themselves are described, but the adjective 'intentional' is not descriptive; it is, however, introduced with the explicit statement that "eine genauere Analyse . . . war nicht moglich." I may add that one of the principal difficulties in the way of a psychology of the Aufgabe itself lies in the fact that the problem, as given to the observer, must be couched in terms of information. The observer, respond- ing to the informatory attitude of the experimenter, will naturally take up the same attitude to himself, — will repeat 'subordinate idea, superordinate idea, find a part,' etc., without effort to translate the instruction into descriptive terms. °' E. Diirr, Ueber die experimentelle Untersuchung der Denkvorgange, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 315, 323, etc. Diirr's own view is given as follows: "ich schliesse mich der Ansicht derjenigen an, die in dem Raumbewusstsein, im Zeitbewusstsein, im Bewusstsein von Gleichheit, Aehnlichkeit, Verschiedenheit oder (zu- sammengefasst) im Vergleichsbewusstsein und im Be- wusstsein von Indentitat und Einheit . . . ein . . . Plus anerkennen, welches im Vorstellungsleben neben den Empfindungen vorhanden ist. Und eben dieses Plus, von den Empfindungen abgelost, scheint mir das Wesen des abstrakten Denkens auszumachen. Als zusammenfas- sender Name fiir dieses Plus scheint mir der Name NOTES TO LECTURE IV 269 Beziehungsbewusstsein geeignet, wenn man dieses Wort ohne Nebenbedeutung lediglich als Bezeichnung fiir die betreffende Klasse von Bewusstseinstatsachen gebraucht. Man muss sich dabei freilich sehr hiiten, an die Beziehungen zu denken, die wir neben den Dingen, Eigenschaften und Zustanden als die vierte Klasse von Denkobjekten zu betrachten gewbhnt sind. Durch das Beziehungsbewusstsein erf assen wir nicht nur Beziehung- en, sondern auch Dinge, Eigenschaften und Zustande" (326). "' Ibid., 816. In his reply to von Aster and Diirr (Zeits. f. Psych., li., 1909, 108 ff.), Biihler makes two points which call for notice here. (1 ) He doubts whether von Aster's Kundgabe is identical with Diirr's sprach- licher Ausdruck (118; cf. Bericht uber d. III. Kongress f. exp. Psych., 1909, 104). The identification is made by von Aster {ibid., xlix., 107) ; and it seems to me that the Kundgabe, the sprachliche Ausdruck, and my own reference to the stimulus-error all contain practically the same criticism, though the form in which the criticism is presented naturally varies with the standpoint and preoccupation of the critic. (2) Biihler admits that his observers' reports contain a large proportion of Kund- gabe and sprachliche Darstellung; but he adds: "man darf dabei auch nicht aus dem Auge verlieren, dass ich vieles mitteilen musste, nur urn den Zusammenhang verstandlich zu machen, in dem das stand, worauf es gerade in dem Protokoll ankam" (118). He refers also to his original article, 318: "es kommt darin [in the reports quoted] jeweils nur auf den hervorgehobenen Teil an, wir miissen aber hier die Protokolle ganz an- fiihren, damit man sehen kann, in welchem Zusammen- 270 NOTES TO LECTURE IV hang die anschauungslosen Gedanken aufgetreten sind." The reply does not fit the criticism. It is, of course, precisely the 'anschauungslosen Gedanken' against which von Aster is arguing ; it is the italicised part of the pro- tocols that is in question ; von Aster would not for a moment deny that true psychological description, true introspective detail is mixed in with the Kwndgahe, where the report is not concerned with what Biihler interprets as the thought-element. Besides: if Biihler knew that his observers' reports were only in part descriptive, in- trospective, why did he not attempt to separate the essential from the inessential, the description from the connective intimation? Why does he fall, for instance, into an obvious confusion of the two in his reference to the range of consciousness (Biihler, 848)? I agree with von Aster that the experimenters of the Wiirzburg school began with a descriptive problem; the Bewusstseinslage was, avowedly, introduced to save the situation in cases where introspective analysis, under the conditions of the experiment, was at fault. But the whole tendency of the work has been away from de- scription, and towards Kundgabe. Watt (345) cen- sures an observer for confining his introspective report to perception and sensation, idea, feeling and attitude; the effort at rubrication is likely to miss the transitory phases of consciousness. Watt, of course, was justified from his own point of view ; he could rubricate for himself, after the report was handed in. Nevertheless, the call for a full description of a complex consciousness puts a premium on Kundgabe. The tendency becomes increasingly manifest in Messer and Ach; and is clearly realised in Biihler. Every one of Messer's attitudes NOTES TO LECTURE IV 271 (181 fF.) and feelings (187) sets a problem to descrip- tive psychology. " Binet, e.g., 81 f . '^Joum. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iii., 1906, 704. " Essays PUlos. and Psychol., 1908, 491 f., 4.99. I return to the question of the 'feelings of relation' in Lecture V. '^Messer, 51 ff. '* G. Storring, Experimentelle Untersuchungen iiber einfache Schlussprozesse, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xi., 1908, 1 fF. Storring's interest is primarily logical; he wishes to ascertain whether inference necessarily implies spatial ideation, whether the conclusion is derived from the premisses by a synthesis of the thoughts contained in the premisses, etc. ; though he also acknowledges the suggestion received from the Wiirzburg studies of con- cept and judgment (1 f.). The paper has no sum- mary; nor is there any explicit reference in the text (save that to space, 77 f.) to the problems mentioned in the introduction : the reason is, perhaps, that the pre- sent investigation, with visual material, is to be supple- mented by another, in which the premisses are to be given in auditory form. The article is difficult reading, since Storring describes his observers' 'operations' in logical terms, and throws the introspective reports into running narrative. I take a simple instance. "Hier tritt," says Storring, of a certain inference involving the relations 'larger' and 'smaller,' "hier tritt das Bewusstsein der nur reprasen- tativen Bedeutung dieser Lagebeziehungen sehr schon hervor." The introspective report, after characterising the observer's efforts at visual localisation, reads: "dabei 272 NOTES TO LECTURE IV wurde gedacht: je hoher um so grosser" (55). This, then, is the consciousness of the merely representative significance of the positional relations. But what was 'dieser Gedanke'.? Was it a series of words, or an atti- tude, or a complex of words and attitude? Or is the term 'thought' used in its popular meaning, without reflection upon its psychological significance.? In order to gain light upon this and similar ques- tions, I have myself worked through a fairly large num- ber of examples of the same sort as those used by Storring. Unfortunately, my tendency is towards a purely mechanical procedure (cf. Storring, e.g., 65, 72, 97, 107) ; I 'read off" the conclusion from the premisses, oftentimes without any special 'Auff'assung' of the premisses themselves, very much as one factorises a familiar algebraical expression. Sometimes I get a visual schema, into which I 'throw' the terms of the premisses by movement of finger or eyes or head : even so, however, the conclusion shoots to a point, in verbal terms, almost before I am aware of the visual and kinaesthetic images. I may add that the placing of an 'earlier' to the left and of a 'later' to the right is, for me, as nat- ural as the placing of a 'past' behind my back and a 'future' in front of me; so that if I come, without practice, to the major premiss "Process A later than process C," I instinctively throw C over to the other side of A, — I see the curve of the path, and feel the move- ment of throwing; though, with a little practice, this imagery disappears. I doubt if the localisation has anything to do with the left-to-right movements of reading (36 f.\. It is, however, not an easy matter to experiment on NOTES TO LECTURE IV 273 oneself, and I should probably have had fuller con- sciousnesses had I been observing under Storring's instructions. A general appreciation of his work is hardly possible without this first-hand experience. I note only that he cannot at all mean to imply that the various forms of 'consciousness' appearing in (or in- ferred from) the introspective reports are to be regarded, off-hand, as ultimate and unanalysable; for he devotes a later paper to the special analysis of that "Bewusstsein absoluter Sicherheit" with which the observers in the present enquiry were enjoined to draw their conclusions (S: cf. Experimentelle und psychopathologische Unter- suchungen iiber das Bewusstsein der Giiltigkeit, Arch, f. d. ges. Psych., siv., 1909, 1 ff.). NOTES TO LECTURE V ^ W. C. Bagley, The Apperception of the Spoken Sentence, Amer. Journ. Psych., xii., 1900, 80 ff., esp. 126. The admission made in the text has, of course, its obverse side; Stout's observers would, in all probability, have an anti-sensationalistic bias. Bagley, as a matter of fact, recognises the possibility of an effective apper- ception when the only discriminable contents of con- sciousness are verbal ideas (117), and also when the associated imagery is inconsistent with the meaning of the sentence (121). Taylor {Zeits., xl., 1905, 228) brings this latter result into connection with Marbe's conclusions: he himself (239) adduces evidence of the irrelevant visual associates to which I have referred in Lecture I. The marginal theory of meaning, which Bagley developes briefly in Amer. Journ. Psych, and more elaborately in The Educative Process, 1905, gives a consistently sensationalistic account of certain Bewusst- semslagen (Taylor, 248), which seems to fit the observed facts. That it has not been discussed by recent workers in the field of attitude may be ascribed, perhaps, to the difference of material: Bagley worked with auditory, the rest for the most part with visual stimuli. It is further possible that pattern and composition of the attitude vary even with variation of the experimental method, as employed upon the same sort of material: cf. Watt, 367 f. * G. E. Miiller and F. Schumann, Ueber die psychol. 274 NOTES TO LECTURE V 275 Grundlagen der Vergleichung gehobener Gewichte, Arch. f. d. ges. Physiol, xlv., 1889, 37 fF. 'Kiilpe, Grundriss, 1893, 422 f., 427 f., 428 f.; Outlines, 1909, 407 f ., 412, 413 f. ; Anfange u. Aus- sichten d. exper. Psych., Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos., vi., 1893, 466. Cf . the discussion in Watt, 403 ff . ; Ach, 156 ff. * G. Martins, Ueber die musknlare Reaction und die Aufmerksamkeit, Philos. Studien, vi., 1891, e.g., 175 f. ° H. Miinsterberg, Beitr. z. experiment. Psych., i., 1899, e.g., 75 f., 90, 168. ' L. Lange, Neue Experimente iiber d. Vorgang d. einfachen Reactionen auf Sinneseindriicke, Philos^ Studien, iv., 1888, 487 ff. "(1) Es lassen sich einer- seits Reactionen gewinnen, wenn man an den bevor- stehenden Sinneseindruck gar nicht denkt, dagegen so lebhaft als moglich die Innervation der auszufiihrenden Reactionsbewegung vorbereitet. (2) Andererseits kann man, indem man jede vorbereitende BewegunfTsinnerva- tion grundsdtzlich vermeidet, seine ganze vorbereitende Spannung dem zu erwartenden Sinneseindrucke zuwen- den, wobei man sich aber gleichzeitig vornimmt, un- mittelbar nach Auffassung des Eindruckes, ohne bei diesem unnothig zu verweilen, den Impuls zur Bewegung folgen zu lassen. ... Es versteht sich fast von selbst, dass man auch einen Mittelweg zwischen den beiden extremen Methoden einschlagen kann, indem man seine Spannung sozusagen nach irgend einem Theilverhaltniss zwischen Hand und Ohr theilt. . . . Mit Riicksicht auf die extremen Methoden aber miissen wir uns eines immer gegenwartig halten: der Spannungsgrad der Erwartung ist bei beiden voUkommen der nanJiche und 276 NOTES TO LECTURE V nur die Richtung, nach welcher hin die Ei?wartuiig gespannt ist, eine vefschiedene." And again (510): "Die musculare Reaction . . . stellt . . . eine unwill- kiirliche, reflectorische Bewegung dar, allerdings eine solche, die unter dem nachwirkenden Einflusse eines vorangegangenen Willensimpulses erfolgt." This is admirably clear; and Ach remarks, with truth, that "L. Lange hat durch seine Beobachtung, dass die Dauer der Reaktionsvetsuche in enger Beziehung zur vor- bereitenden Aufmerksamkeitsspannutig steht, wohl mehr zur Erforschung dieses Gebietes beigetragen als samt- liche vorhergehenden Untersudhungeii zusammen ge- nommen" (Ach, 6 f.)- ''Leviathan, pt. i., ch. iii. {Wdrks, ed. Molesworth, iii., 1839, 12 ff.). Cf. Human Nature, ch. iv. (iv., 1840, 14) ; Physics, ch. xxv. (i., 1839, 398). * J. Volkelt, Psychologische Streitfragen, i. Selbst- beobachtung und psychol. Analyse, Zeits. f. Philos. u. philos. Kritik, N. F. xc, 1887, 11. Much of the earlier part of this paper, and much of Wundt's controversial reply to it (Selbstbeobachtung und innere Wahrnehm- ung, Philos. Studien, iv., 1888, 292 ff.), are written in the very spirit of an ^wf^abe-psychology. I have already indicated my position on the general question, in Lecture III., Note 14 above. ' I venture to suggest that there is a danger, in some fields of current psychological investigation, that the extreme difficulty of introspection be lost sight of. No one who knows anything of the history of psychology needs to be reminded of this difficulty; it has been dis- cussed, and it has been illustrated, over and over and over again. Yet there are recent writers who take a NOTES TO LECTURE V 277 light-hearted appeal to introspection, — as if vexed ques- tions could be settled out of hand, as if there were nothing to do but to 'look into consciousness,' as if introspective attitude and introspective capacity were the common property of anyone who cares to exercise them. Now, in the first place, there are very different degrees of introspective ability. Whether it is ever entirely lacking, as musical ability may be entirely lacking, I do not know; the historical instances are equivocal; Comte, e.g., may have had it, in some meas- ure, and have lost it by his preoccupation with other methods. But there is no doubt that the introspective talent or the introspective gift differs enormously in different individuals. In the second place, the ability, in whatever degree it is present, must be trained by long and arduous practice, if the results of introspection are to be valid. And even so, the introspective observer is still, to some extent, at the mercy of circumstances. "On pent," remarks Binet (155), "pendant une annee, analyser assiduraent la structure d'un esprit sans s'aper- cevoir d'une propriete mentale de prime importance, que I'echange fortuit d'une question et d'une reponse suffit a decouvrir en moins d'une minute." Yes! and, in the same way, one may live on good psychological terms with one's own mind for a great many years, and fail to see something that — when the psychological moment arrives — stares one in the face. Here, indeed, lies a principal reason for the cultivation of a permanent introspective habit. If one is, always and everywhere, on the alert for psychological observation, chance will throw things in one's way that the special procedure of laboratory experiments may very possibly miss. 278 NOTES TO LECTURE V I have, personally, a profound confidence in intro- spection, and I try to encourage a like confidence in my students. I believe that a great many psychological controversies might be laid to rest if the protagonists could get together, for half a year, and work the issue out under test conditions. We are now, as I have re- marked earlier in this book, sacrificing literary form in order to make a clean breast of our methods and intro- spective results; but nothing in the way of a printed l*eport can, after all, take the place of common work and the conversational interchange of ideas. Psy- chology is here at a great disadvantage, as compared with the sciences of external nature, since physical apparatus and biological specimens may be shipped from place to place unaccompanied by their owners. At the same time, and with all this confidence, I have no respect for introspective authority. I have just referred to the lessons that we may learn from the history of psychology. There are plenty of similar lessons to be learned from individual experience. Again and again I have been honestly sure of an introspective result, only to find that a more refined enquiry, or the shift of the angle of observation, convicts me of error. It is a cer- tain consolation to note that precisely the same thing — despite the advantages of objectivity — ^holds of observa- tion in the natural sciences; the history of the micro- scope, for instance, and the present status of nerve histology, tell a like story. While, therefore, the introspective data of any given period represent, on the whole, the facts of mind so far as examined, we have to remember, first, that the exploration is still partial only, and secondly, that in a NOTES TO LECTURE V 279 new field we are all of us liable to make mistakes. Above all, we have to remember that intrinsic difficulty of introspection to which I made reference at the outset. The hypothesis of fraud (if I may borrow a phrase from the students of Psychical Research) is excluded; we mean to be honest. And there are plenty of estab- lished results, let us say, in the sphere of sensation. Nevertheless, do we agree as regards the qualities of organic sensation? or as regards the 'effect of attention' upon the intensity of sensation? or even as regards the psychological simplicity of colours? So the present discussion between the representatives of sensationalism and intellectualism, in the realm of thought, must continue for a long time, before anything like a settlement can be expected. No single investiga- tion, still less any authoritative pronouncement, can solve or dismiss the problem. We must patiently accumulate and examine evidence, making what allow- ance we may for systematic and controversial bias on both sides, and sharpening oyr wits for the discovery of positive sources of error. (There is no need to hurry; there is every need to take the work seriously. Psy- chology has been in somewhat of a hurry to reform the doctrine of feeling ; but we now see that years of labora- tory research and a great many doctorate theses will be required before we are able to form a decisive judgment.] Psychology and the psychologising philosophers are, similarly, in somewhat of a hurry to accept the unanalys- able attitudes and the thought-elements of a trans- figured intellectualism. They may prove to be in the right, as the champions of a multidimensional feeling may be in the right. But they have not yet made out 280 NOTES TO LECTURE V their case ; and introspection will be as slow as any other court of appeal in rendering a final verdict. Meanwhile, it is the part of wisdom to accept a working hypothesis, and to push it as far as it will go ; but to be clear that it is nothing more than a working hypothesis, and to keep an open mind for the facts that will not fit it. And it is the part, not so much of psychological wisdom as of sheer psychological sanity, to realise the natural and inevitable difficulties of psychological observation. ^^ R. S. Woodworth, in Essays Philos. mid Psychol., 1908, 502 ff. James Angell, reviewing Woodworth's article in the Studies in Philos. and Psych. (1906) dedi- cated to C E . Garman, declares that "the 'naked thought' concept is a logical abstraction finding no real psychological basis in a careful examination of con- sciousness" {Joum. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iii., 1906, 641). Woodworth replies {ibid., 702) that a position like Angell's is much more likely than his own "to owe its acceptance to logical deduction." Biihler thinks that the formulation of the problem, in the work both of Marbe and of Messer, betrays its "logische Herkunft" (303). He further believes that "die Gesichtspunkte [der] Unterscheidung [des direkten und indirekten Meinens], die schon der Wattsehen Arbeit ihrer ganzen Anlage nach zu grunde liegen, sind urspriinglich aus . erkenntnistheoretischen Erwa- gungen hervorgegangen" ; and that Messer is similarly contaminated (359). "Messer a obtenu un important materiel d'observation. . . . Malheureusement, Messer a interprete ce materiel en logicien. . . . II y a un fait specifique de jugement, et, ce fait, [Messer] le con^oit, en s'appuyant evidemment sur les definitions NOTES TO LECTURE V 281 logiques de B. Erdmann, comme la prise de conscience d'une relation predicative" {Arch, de psych., vi., 1907, 377). Messer is at no great pains to deny this impeachment, though he pleads that he has, on the whole, kept his logic separate from his psychology {Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., X., 1907, 419 if.) Nor does he retort on Biihler, except in the assumption that Biihler is influenced by Husserl's and Kiilpe's epistemology {ihid., 421 fF.). That, indeed, is obvious ; and the charge becomes explicit in von Aster's remark that Biihler's "Experimente sind gewissermassen ein mehr oder minder absichtlicher Versuch, Husserls Phanomenologie experimentell zu priifen bzw. zu bestatigen" (Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 62). Diirr suggests that Biihler has commingled metaphysics and psychology: Zeits. f. Psych., xhx., 1908, 319 f. Ach (Vorwort, vi.) expressly reserves the episte- mological implications of his work for a later discussion. ^^ Cf . Wundt's discussion of panoramic and stereo- scopic vision, Prime, of Physiol. Psych., i., 1904, 299 fi'. ; and the discussion of his genetic theory of tactual and visual space perception, Grwndziige d. physio],. Psych., ii., 1902, 489 ff., 668 ff". See also Stumpf, Tonpsych., ii., 1890, 215 fi'.; C. Stumpf and M. Meyer, Zeits. f. Psych, u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorgane, xviii., 1898, 394 (feeling for the purity of musical intervals) ; C. Stumpf, Zeits. f. Psych., xliv., 1906, 44 ff. (sense-feelings); etc. I have touched on this topic in Exp. Psych., I., ii., 1901, 228 ff. ^^ Feeling and Attention, 1908, 291 f.; Text-book, i., 1909, 260 f. 282 NOTES TO LECTURE V '^ A great deal has been written, of late years, against psychological analysis. Consciousness, we are told in effect, is a living continuum; but the analyst kills, in order to make his dissection; and, after killing and dissecting, he is unable to restore the life that he has taken, to show consciousness in its original integrity. The argument, if it were taken seriously, would apply to biology as well as to psychology, and would banish the muscle-nerve preparation and the microtome from the biological laboratory. But, indeed, it rests only upon misunderstanding, — a misunderstanding due in part to temperamental reaction, in part to the pressure of history and tradition. When the physiologist de- scribes a tissue as 'composed' of muscle fibres or nerve cells, nobody takes him to mean that the fibres and cells existed first, in isolation, and that they were presently brought together, by some law of organic growth, to constitute the tissue. What grew was the tissue itself, which the physiologist now finds, in his post mortem examination, to consist of the cells or the fibres. It is worth while to trace the laws of growth ; it is also worth while to know the constitution of the tissue ; knowledge of the one may very well help towards a knowledge of the other; but the two aims are different, and do not cross. Yet the analytical psychologist is supposed to generate his mind by allowing sensations to fuse and colligate, — precisely as the physiologist might be sup- posed to generate his muscle by allowing fibres to 'con- stitute.' Fusion and the rest are patterns of consciousness, recognisable precisely as you recognise a preparation under the miscroscope as a tissue-pattern, and say 'That's liver' or 'That's the optic nerve.' To charge NOTES TO LECTURE V 283 the analytical psychologist with deriving mind from the interconnection of sensations, — and how often and how recklessly has not that charge been made! — is sheerly to misunderstand the purpose of analysis in the hands of those who use it. The scientific legitimacy of the analytical attitude is beyond question. Whether the results of analysis, in the sphere of mind, are of 'value' is another question, and a question whose answer depends on what one is dis- posed to consider valuable. What is psychology 'for'? If the object of the psychologist is to know mind, to understand mind, then it seems to me — in view of the overwhelming complexity of mind in the concrete — ^that the only thing he can do is to pull mind to pieces, and to scrutinise the bits as minutely as possible and from all possible points of view. His results, in synthetic reconstruction, give him the same sort of intelligent grip upon mind that the analytical results of the physiolo- gist give him upon the living body. To approach the study of mind without analysis would, indeed, be nothing less than ridiculous. And in fact no one does it. I pointed out some years ago that the teacher who opens a course in experimental psychology with an exercise in association of ideas, in order to start out from the 'real mind,' falls entirely short of his intention. An asso- ciation is just as 'unreal' as a sensation, just as much an abstraction, known by the same sort of analysis (Exp. Psych., I., ii., 3). It may be preferred for peda- gogical reasons, and these may be sound or unsound; it certainly is not the real mind. Even the integrative psychologists can, after all, trace out only one mental aspect or one mental function at a time. Just as we 284 NOTES TO LECTURE V study separately the embryology of the nervous system, the vascular system, the digestive system, so must we study, in the light of analysis and in analytical terms, the genesis of mind. I have assumed that a result is of 'value' in psychol- ogy in so far as it helps us to an understanding of mind. On this assumption, analysis is not only val- uable, but also indispensable to psychology. I do not say that ^'s particular bit of analysis is more valuable than B's effort at imaginative reconstruction, or than C's flash of inspiration or happy thought. Estimations of that sort are waste of time. I do say that many of the current arguments against psychological 'atomism' show a woeful misunderstanding of scientific method; and that much of the current depreciation of analytical results shows a like misunderstanding of the aim of scientific psychology. All this has been better said by Ebbinghaus, in Psych., i., 1905, 179 ff. But, if Ebbinghaus' statements are to be discounted for their experimental bias, the reader may be referred to the opening paragraphs of Jodl's Psych. The application to the special case is made by Watt (418). After asserting that we have before us, in consciousness, a continuity with varying emphasis. Watt goes on : "Wir gehen also von dem Psychischen, das wir kennen, aus, analysieren die gesammelten Beobacht- ungen und experimentellen Daten und nahem uns allmahlich der FeststeUung etwaiger einheitlicher Zu- stande und deren regelmassiger Aufeinanderfolge als einem fernen Ziele. Wir gehen immer von einem schon kontinuierlichen Psychischen aus. Es ist also keine Aufgabe der Psychologic, das erlebte Psychische am NOTES TO LECTURE V 285 Ende einer Untersuchung wiederherzustellen. Es geniigt, gezeigt zu haben, dass die Beitrage zu seiner Analyse begriindet sind." " Ach, 209 f . ^° Messer, 107. I have already said that I interpret Messer in this way, but that I do not find him clear. ^* J. von Kries, Ueber die Natur gewisser mit den psychischen Vorgangen verkniipfter Gehirnzustande, Zeits. f. Psych, und Physiol, d. Siimesorg., viii., 1894» e.g., 4, 17. Towards the end of the paper, von Kries points out that his own notion of 'connective adjust- ments' agrees very well with Exner's view of the part played by inhibition and facilitation in the processes of attention, reaction, etc. (S. Exner, Entwurf zu einer physiol. Erklarung d. psychischen Erscheinungen, i., 1894). He goes on, however, to say: "auf der anderefl Seite aber kann ich mich doch der Anschauung nicht entschlagen, dass die Psychologie noch eine ganze Reihe von Problemen stellt, fiir welche die physiologischen Vorstellungen eine ahnliche Annftherung noch nicht gestatten. So scheint mir schon ein Verstandnis der dispositiven Einstellungen . . . auf grosse Schwierig- keiten zu stossen. Ebenso ist es mir fraglich, ob es gelingt, von detoi besonderen, dem Urteile zu grunde liegenden Zusammenhange geniigend Rechenschaft zu geben" (32). Reference is made, further, to Ziehen's 'constellation' (Leitfaden der physiol. Psychol, in 14- Vorlesungen, 1891, 119; 1906, 186 ff., etc.; Introduc- tion, 1895, 213: cf. Ach, 248) and — ^to the discussions in B. Erdmann's Logik. In a memoir entitled Ueber die materiellen Grundlagen der Bewusstseinserscheinimgen, 1898, von Kries ques- 286 NOTES TO LECTURE V tions the possibility of transferring to the centre ex- planatory concepts that are derived from observation at the periphery, and presents a detailed criticism of what he terms the Leitungslehre or Leitungsprincip (13). He suggests that there may be a differentiation within the cell, and that such an intracellular function may give the key to mental phenomena which associationism is inadequate to explain (60). O. Gross (Die cerebrate Sekwnddrfunktion, 1902) re- gards the persistence of excitatory function {Nachfunk- tion, Sekimdarfzmktion) as of determining influence upon the processes of thought. "Watt (420) refers only to Ebbinghaus (Psych., l, 1902, 682; i., 1905, 719), whom he wrongly accuses of identifying Aufgabe with inotorische Emstellung: Eb- binghaus speaks of "Falle sensorischer Einstellung." It is a little curious that Ebbinghaus does not refer to von Kries in i., 680 (i., 717) ; but he had mentioned him before, in connection with a reference to Ziehen's constel- lation, in i., 664 (i., 698). The Emstellungen of von Kries are referred to by Ach, 248 ; Messer, 84, 109 ; Buhler, 325, 356 f . ^* "Meaning," says Stout, " . . . is in the scale of evolution prior to the development of ideational con- sciousness" (Philos. Review, vii., 1898, 76). With that statement I heartily agree. And when I call 'motor theories' one-sided (as I called the motor theories of attention one-sided, in Feeling and Attention, 311), I do so only because they seem, as a rule, to forget that ideational consciousness has, as a matter of fact, devel- oped. I take a typical instance. "In each and every case," Bolton writes, "the object becomes what it is NOTES TO LECTURE V 287 conceived to be by acting upon it as you would act upon the object which it is commonly conceived to be. What the object means is. determined by the adjustment that is made to it" (^Psychol. Review, xv., 1908, 169). And he appeals to the lower animals, and the child, and the Indian, as if the child and the poor Indian had no ideas whatsoever. I take it that meaning began to find conscious repre- sentation in this kinsBsthetic way. But then came ideas, and meaning found representation in all sorts of ways. If the kinaesthetic way is still preferred, under certain circumstances or by certain individuals, that may be due either to persistence of type or to the action of the mental law of growth and decay. Descriptive psychol- ogy must work out the details and the percentages. I shall accept the percentages with an open mind; but I protest against a psychology which ignores that tre- mendous event in our mental history, — the appearance of the image. I believe, too, that if Bolton were to go a little more deeply into the psychology of the child and the Indian, he would find plenty of occasions (especially in the acquisition of new meanings) when motor adjust- ment is entirely secondary. Cf. Messer, 86, and the references there given. " Pillsbury writes (Psychol. Review, xv., 1908, 156) : "we always see the meaning as we look, think in mean- ings as we think, act in terms of meaning when we act." If I may wrest this sentence to my own purpose (and I do not think that Pillsbury's idea of meaning is far removed from mine), it forms the obverse of the state- ment in the text. ^^ So Watt, 317 f . : "Vp. I. 'Die voile Bedeutung des 288 NOTES TO LECTURE V Wortes war schon bei der blossen optischen Wahrnehm- ung da. Es ist mir nicht zum Bewusstsein gekammen, dass ich das Wort ausgesprochen hatte, oder dass die Bedeutung in itgendWelcher Vorstellung explicite gege- ben war.' Aber 'eiii iinwillkiirliches, innerliches Aus- sprechen des Reizwortes und zwar, wie ich es selbst aussprechen wiirde, und damit gleichzeitig verbunden das Verstandnis.' 'Es scheint, als wenn dieser Komplex von Schrift-, Sprech- und Lautbild das Verstandnis voU- endete. Sonstige Reprasentation des Verstandnisses gab es nicht.' " Messer, 71 f. : "Gewohnlich tritt nun bei den Vp. das Verstehen mit dem Lesen, also dem sinnlichen Erfassen des Wortbildes gleichzeitig auf, verschmilzt jedenfalls mit ihm zu einem nicht weiter analysierbaren Erlebnis: 'das Reizwort kommt, und ich bin mir iiber die Bedeutung klar' — wie einmal Vp. II. aussagt"; Messer then goes on to discuss the various Nuancen which verbal meaning may display, up to the point at which it "als ein besonderes Erlebnis sich von der Auffassung der Reizworte abhebt" : cf . Biihler, Arch, de Fsych., vi., 1907, 381 f . ; Wreschner, 6, 103 flF.; E. H. Rowland, The Psychol. Experiences cormected with the Dif event Parts of Speech, 1907, 2 ff. I have already referred (Lecture I., Note 7) to the negative result of Ribot's study of general ideas. Bag- ley also reports a few cases in which 'only the auditory experience of the sentence' was in consciousness (op. cit., 108) ; these cases are so few that we cannot, with Biihler {Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xii., 1908, 110), ascribe their occurrence to a general defect of method. Binet has missed the gesture-side of the word; "un mot, en efFet, ne signifie rien par lui mSme, . . . il n'est qu'un element NOTES TO LECTURE V 289 brut, inerte, comme le bruit du vent" {Awnee psychol,, xiv., 1908, 334). ^' I have referred to this experience in a letter to Huey, published in The Psych, and Pedagogy of Reading, 1908, 182 ff. It made a deep impression on me at the time. What actually happened, in experimental terms, was that I had to record a 'yes' or 'no' according as the grey shown was or was not recognised as a grey that had been shown earlier in the series. I found myself, then, writing 'yes' without the least apparent reason for doing so. My nervous system was 'recognising' for me. Storring mentions something similar, in his Exper. und psychopathol. Untersuchungen iib. d. Bewusstsein d. Gultigkeit {Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xiv., 1909, 1 ff.). His observers distinguished, from the 'Bewusstsein der Sicherheit oder Giiltigkeit,' something that they termed 'objektive Sicherheit,' 'Bewusstseinszustand der Sicher- heit,' 'eine Seite der Prozesse,' 'Charakter der Sicherheit' ; Storring himself calls it 'Zustand der Sicherheit.' "Alle Vp. stimmen also darin iiberein, dass in den Schlusspro- zessen ein Etwas eine dominierende RoUe spielt, welches sich deutlich unterscheidet von dem Bewusstsein der Gultigkeit mit oder ohne Worte . . . Dieses mit den Prozessen gegebene Etwas ist so beschaffen, dass auf Grund der Frage nach der Richtigkeit und bei Hinblick auf dasselbe Bejahung eintritt" (9). Storring thus regards the 'Etwas' as conscious; later on (12 ff.), he attempts its closer definition. It is possible that my own introspection, in the case cited, was at fault, and that my 'recognition' was also based upon a conscious 'Etwas.' There is, however, one observer for whom the 'Zustand der Sicherheit' appears to have lapsed into a physio- 19 290 NOTES TO LECTURE V logical disposition. "In der spateren Zeit, als diese Erfahrung der Vp. sehr gelaufig geworden war, benutzt sie gelegentlich das Auftreten des Bewusstseins der Sicherheit auf Grund einer Frage nach der Richtigkeit als Kriteriv/m dafiir, dass die als objektive Sicherheit bezeichneten Bedingungen vorhanden gewesen sind. . . . So sagt sie gelegentlich: 'Objektive Sicherheit war vor- handen, das merke ich, indem ich auf Frage nach der Richtigkeit hin das Bewusstsein der Sicherheit bekom- men habe"' (5). What holds here of assurance may also, one would think, hold of recognition. ^^ I can, in principle, fully endorse what von Aster says of the character of words and of the significance of intonation {Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 78 f., 92 f., 98 ff.), though I interpret the phenomena a little dif- ferently, from the standpoint of systematic psychology. I am as keenly sensitive to the fitness of words and of combinations of words as I am to the fitness of musical phrases (Lecture I., Note 11); and the fitness comes to me by way of audition, as quahty and intonation of voice. I have a different voice, in internal speech, for every author whose style compels me to a rereading ; so that style is for me, in primary experience, a matter of voice heard. Take, for instance, Mr. Quiller Couch's completion of St. Ives. On the side of plot, I have my visual schema ; but my test of style is auditory : does the book continue to talk in the Stevensonian voice. J* The various characters in a novel speak, of course, in their own proper voices, as men and women and children, educated and uneducated ; but they also all speak in the author's voice, — or, if they do. not, they make me very uncomfortable. NOTES TO LECTURE V 291 I cannot represent these diflFerences of quality and in- tonation by speaking or reading aloud ; I am a very poor reader; but I hear them. They have nothing to do with the actual voice or presence of the writer; often- times, indeed, the imaginary and the real come Into sharp conflict, and the imaginary has to fight for what is, nevertheless, a certain victory. I have never tried to classify the voices, as I have never asked the question whether my musical accompaniment in reading shows any constant character, whether the same or a similar composition attends the same or a similar topic, author, degree of difficulty. But I know that there are writers of uncertain voice, shrill or squeaky or uneven, and that there are writers of patchwork voice; if I read them, it is only for the matter that their books contain. It is hardly necessary to say that these imaginal en- dowments do not give my musical or literary criticisms any objective value; they simply furnish the conscious data which find expression in my personal opinions ; they are the imaginal equivalents of what, in other minds, may be 'motor' or 'imageless' processes. — In commenting upon my 'attitudinal feels,' Professor Ck)lvin called my attention to the fact that he had placed on record similar experiences of his own: see Philos. Review, xv., 1906, 308 f., 516; and cf. the later and more explicit statements in Methods of Determining Ideational Types, Psychol. Bulletin, vi., 1909, 236. Several other members of my audience at the University of Illinois testified to the importance of these 'feels' in their thought-experience. E. H. Rowland, discussing the conscious representation of prepositions (op. cit.. 292 NOTES TO LECTURE V 24), writes to the same effect. "All the different preposi- tions can be expressed by some variety of 'huddle', and indeed that is the only way they can be expressed and have any significance." This study contains many note- worthy observations, which the author has unfortunately pressed with undue haste into the service of theory. I owe to my colleague, Dr. W. H. Pyle, the sugges- tion to observe the sensible play of facial expression. I have been surprised to note how widely the expression varies, during reflective thought and silent reading, and I am disposed to believe that the corresponding (cuta- neous and kinaesthetic) sensations play a considerable part in certain conscious attitudes. The observations are easily made by means of a suitably placed mirror, and their 'self -consciousness' soon wears off. ^* Biihler emphasizes, and quite rightly, the critic's need of first-hand experience (Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xii., 1908, 111). I have worked through a large num- ber of observations by myself, and have taken several series under the direction of an experimenter. There were, of course, many experiences that, under the partic- ular conditions, I was unable to analyse, and was there- fore obliged to leave with a mere indication of their presence (incidentally, I gained a high degree of respect for the skill and patience both of Biihler himself and of his two observers) : but there was nothing that drove me to a thought-element. The results will be published elsewhere. It is always in order to make a reservation for pos- sible individual differences (Ach, 216) ; and I have recently received a somewhat severe lesson on that very subject. I have elsewhere argued thalt consciousness NOTES TO LECTURE V 293 has two main levels of clearness, and no more than two, so that the step and wave diagrams, which represent a number of levels or a continuous rise and fall, are incorrect. A quantitative study of attention, carried out in the Cornell laboratory by L. R. Geissler, and soon to be published in Amer. Joum. Psych., seems to show, however, that there are two distinct types of mind, the two-level and the many-level (or continuous?): cer- tain observers constantly report the one formation, and certain others as insistently report the other. It looks, then, — provided that Geissler's results find confirma- tion, — as if individual difference of mental constitution, the possibility of which I admitted more in jest than in earnest in Feeling cmd Attention, 228, were really the explanation of the divergent accounts of the attentive consciousness: Angell and Baldwin and Morgan may be of the many-level, as Geissler and Kiilpe and I myself are of the two-level type. Such a difference in the general configuration of consciousness would itself fur- nish the key to differences in literary style, in manner of presentation, perhaps even in mode and tendency of thought ; its verification is thus a matter of some im- portance ; and I must confess to a feeling of satisfaction that, if I have been wrong, the error has been discovered in my own laboratory and by a firm believer in the two- level theory. Nevertheless, I dislike to 'hedge' in the matter of the thought-element: I do not at all believe that it exists. All that Angell urges against Stout (Philos. Review, vi., 1897, 651 ) tells with increased force against Biihler. Stout himself protests against the supposition that, "when I speak of imageless apprehension, I have in 294 NOTES TO LECTURE V view a total consciousness rather than a partial con- stituent of a total state which contains as another constituent some sensation or image" {ibid., vii., 1898, 75). Calkins, while she regards it as "abundantly proved . . . that along with imagery and often in the focus of attention, when one compares and reasons and recognises, [there] are elements neither sensational nor affective," yet declares that "it is unwise and unnecessary to advance a larger claim," and to assert, with "Stout, Biihler, Woodworth," that "the occurrence of image- less thought has been proved" (Amer. Journ. Psych., XX., 1909, 277; cf. Introd. to Psych., 1905, 136). Calkins' reference to Stout, in this passage, raises the question: Who, as a matter of fact, believes in the thought-element? The distinction which she draws, between an independent imageless thought and a non- sensorial and non-affective constituent of a conscious complex, had already been urged by P. Bovet (L'etude experimentale du jugement et de la pensee, Arch, de Psych., viii., 1908, 9 ff., 35). "Y a-t-il des faits psychologiques, distincts des images et des etats affectifs, et jouant dans les operations de la pensee un role pre- ponderant"? That is one question: we may call it the question of meaning, or attitude, or awareness. "Ces faits, les pensees, se rencontrent-ils dans la conscience sans qu'aucune representation leur serve en quelque sort de support"? That is a different question, the question of the thought-element. I do not find that Stout answers this second question in the affirmative, although he had the two questions before him. I do not find that Messer has even now, after the appearance of Biihler's work, separated the NOTES TO LECTURE V 295 two questions: he formally accepts the thought-element {Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., x., 1907, 421 f.)» but in so doing he brackets Binet with Ach, and refers to pas- sages of his own work (Messer, 77-87, 177-180) which are not to the point. Biihler himself is, of course, ex- plicit; and Bovet follows him (37). Woodworth comes, I think, nearer than Messer to a separation of the questions : the first he answers, very definitely, in the afiirmative ; the second I take him to answer, also in the affirmative, in such passages as the following: "I should . . . insist that such sensory content [as is unavoidable from the continuous stimulation of the sense organs] does not always lie in the field of attention, and that at times it is so marginal as to elude introspection. But principally I should insist that something else does often lie in the field of attention, that, in short, there is non-sensuous content, and that in many cases it is descriptively as well as dynamically the most important component of thought" (Journ. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iii., 1906, 703).— I should be inclined, then, for "Stout, Biihler, Woodworth," to write "Woodworth, Buhler, Bovet." Binet remains. I do not think that Messer is justified in classing Binet with Ach: for, while Binet did not either, in 1903, separate the two questions, his readers have every reason to suppose (on the ground of passages like 104 fl'.) that, had he done so, he would have ac- knowledged the thought-element. Curiously enough, Binet now makes imageless thought a matter of feeling, sentiment (A. Binet et T. Simon, Langage et pensee, Annee psychol., xiv., 1908, 333 fi'.). "Nous croyons avoir mis hors de doute . . . qu'il y a une pensee sans 296 NOTES TO LECTURE V images, qu'il y a une pensee sans mots, et que la pensee est constituee par un sentiment intellectuel." We have, then, an independent thought-process (cf. note, 337 f. ), but it is an intellectual feeling. The specific element in thought "est de la nature du sentiment. Ce serait un sentiment intellectuel, et par consequent (.'') assez vague dans sa nature, mais dont nous percevons la pre- sence, et dont nous percevons surtout les efFets. . . . C'est la perception confuse, et souvent emotionelle, de ce qui se prepare et se fait en nous, qui constituerait la pensee. . . . C'est meme ce sentiment qui dicte les mots et suggere les images ; et, a leur tour, images et mots reagissent sur ce sentiment." This view has evident points of resemblance to that of Wundt. ^* Many writers insist on the distinction of genesis and description, and I should be the last to quarrel with them. But when the formations described are stages in a genetic progression, cross-sections of a single course which leads through growth to culmination and thence to decay, — and when this genetic progression is trace- able (as it is in the case of action) within the lifetime, even within the adult lifetime of the individual, — ^then it seems to me that to make different mental elements out of the different mental stages is, at the least, unneces- sary and inexpedient. "Quand meme toute pensee serait une image transformee," writes Bovet (35), "il n'en faudrait pas moins marquer d'abord en quoi une pensee se distingue d'une image. De meme les caracteres dis- tinctifs de I'homme et du singe subsistent, quelque opi- nion qu'on ait sur la theorie transformiste." We must, of course, distinguish the 'thought' from the 'image'; but that is not the issue ; the issue, for Bovet as for us, NOTES TO LECTURE V 297 IS the establishment of the 'thought' as a new mental element; and a 'transformed image' is still an image. And who ever saw a baby monkey develope into a man? The point is, if I may repeat it: Can the individual observer trace, in his experience, the passage from ex- plicit imagery to conscious attitude? Personally, I think that I can. Why, then, should I introduce a new mental element? ^° Elem. d. Psychophysik, i., I860 or 1889, 242. ^° Biihler distinguishes four views or theories of the nature of thought. Two of these — ^that "die Gedanken seien nichts anderes als eine Reihe von fliichtigen halb unbewussten Einzelvorstellungen," and that "die Denker- lebnisse seien etwas, was psychologisch gar nicht be- stimmt werden konne, was vielmehr nur vor das Forum der Logik gehore" — he dismisses as not worth discus- sion (324). The third, the theory of 'possibility,' has various forms. In general, "die Moglichkeitstheorien suchen eine Erklarung im Unbewussten. Das, was aus- ser sinnlichen Elementen im Denkakt bewusst ist, soil nichts anderes sein als ein Ausdruck dafiir, dass im Un- bewussten schon etwas angeregt ist, was im nachsten Augenblick ins Bewusstsein treten kann. . . . Auch hat man wohl die Fassung des Unbewussten als etwas Dun- kel- oder Halbbewusstes mit im Auge gehabt, so dass die erregten Dispositionen ihren Vorstellungen gegen- iiber nicht als ideelle Moglichkeiten sondern eher als reale, schon partiell verwirklichte Moglichkeiten an- gesehen werden miissten." Of these theories Biihler re- marks: "alle die Moglichkeitstheorien lassen iiber dem Moglichen das Wirkliche zu kurz kommen" (325 f.). 298 NOTES TO LECTURE V I share this view: but cf. von Aster, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 85 fF. The fourth theory, that of 'condensation' {Verdicht- ung), looks upon thoughts as "zusammengeschobene, verkiirzte, in einem Akt zusammengefasste Vorstellungs- reihen, die durch diese Zusammenfassung ihren An- blick etwas geandert haben." This view Biihler rejects for two reasons. (1) "Wenn der Gedanke ein Verdicht- ungsprodukt aus Vorstellungen ware, dann miisste er sich durch dieselben Kategorien bestimmen lassen wie diese Vorstellungen. Nun hat es fiir einen Gedanken aber gar keinen Sinn, nach seiner Intensitat oder gar nach seinen sinnlichen Qualitaten zu fragen" (328). It might be replied that Ach expressly attributes intensity to the Bewusstheit (96 f., 101, 212 f., 218 f.); and that Messer ascribes intensity to the cerebral disposition that underlies understanding, and a corresponding clear- ness, Deutlichkeit, to the understanding itself (84).* On the side of quaHty, too, we might reply that it is not always easy to pick out the constituent qualities even in a tonal or organic fusion, a formation that stands, so to say, only next door to sensation ; and that it will naturally be difficult to pick them out in a formation where ideas — ^themselves complex processes — are 'zusam- mengeschoben,' 'abgekiirzt,' 'beschleunigt.' For this telescoping of ideas implies, of course, all manner of complex synergy in the cortex; it is not, in reality, the ideas that are telescoped, but cortical excitations that are crossed, cut short, interfered with, inhibited. The correlated conscious formation is therefore given under * Certain points in Buhler's own discussion (330 ff.) distinctly suggest the occurrence of tlioughts at various intensities. NOTES TO LECTURE V 299 the worst possible conditions for analysis, and we might conceivably have to rest contient with verifying the pro- cess of reduction at large (from explicit imagery to 'condensed' thought), without being able to trace identi- cal qualities from one level to another. — This is to an- swer Biihler on his own ground. If substitution as well as telescoping takes place, analysis may be rendered easier (as, e.g., by the generic intervention of kinaes- thesis) or more difficult (as by the intercurrence, in abbreviated form, of ideational processes whose pres- ence we do not suspect and for whose search we conse- quently have no cue) ; but the principle of the rejoinder remains the same. (2) Biihler's second and less direct argument de- clares that the laws of the course of thought (Gedanken- fortscJiritt) are different from those of the connection (Verbindtrng) of ideas; "es ware doch durchaus un- begreiflich, wie mit einer Abkiirzung und Beschleunigung von Vorstellungsablaufen, die ihr Automatischwerden mit sich bringt, eine Aenderung ihrer Gesetzlichkeit verbunden sein sollte" (327 f.). We might, however, very well admit that apperceptive differ from associa- tive connections, that determining tendencies shape con- sciousness otherwise than reproductive tendencies, that the judgment (connection under Aufgabe) differs from the free play of association, and yet maintain that the formations connected are, in every case, ideas. More- over, Biihler, in his articles Ueber Gedankenzusammen- hange and Ueber Gedankenerinnerungen (Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xii., 1908, 1 ff., 24 ff.), assumes or presup- poses the elementary character of his 'thoughts' : he is to show, by reference to mode of connection, that thought 300 NOTES TO LECTURE V cannot possibly be explained by condensation of ideas; but he is satisfied, when working out the thought-con- nections, to stop short at thoughts as final terms of analysis. The Zmschenerlebnisbeziehimgen that con- stitute the 'thread' of a thought-connection anil that may link ideas and feelings as well as thoughts proper (5), and the Zwischengegenstandsbeziehimgen that con- stitute logical connection and oftentimes serve to introduce a thought or an idea into a true thought-con- text (7), these Beziehwngen or relations are either secondary thoughts or just 'conscious relations' (5, 12). But it is still an open question, both on the hypothetical ground of Biihler's argument and on the wider field of systematic psychology, whether 'conscious relations' are simple or complex, ultimate or derivative. Again: Biihler makes much of the fact that the thought-con- nections of his memory experiments showed themselves independent of the associative law of temporal contiguity (29 ff.). It might be replied that many modern psychologists, in their doctrine of association, accept a law of 'similarity' as well as a law of 'contiguity,' and that an attempted explanation of these results in associative terms would naturally turn to the former rather than to the latter. More efi'ective, I think, is the reply that the influence of temporal contiguity, in view of the great complication of physiological substrate which the condensation-theory demands, could never be com- parable in its effect with a reinstatement or redintegration of the habitual pattern of the cortical excitation. So far, indeed, is the lack of influence from telling against the theory, that it might have been predicted from the theory. Lastly, I notice that Biihler grants the occui^ NOTES TO LECTURE V 301 rence, in daily life, of mechanised thought-associations; and that, though the conditions of his experiments were distinctly unfavourable to their appearance, he never- theless inclines to the view that he has found cases of 'iteration,' in which thoughts are reproduced as ideas are reproduced in an 'association by contiguity' (70 ff.). But this lapse to the ideational type of behaviour is, so far as it goes, an indication of the ideational nature of the thoughts themselves. I do not find, therefore, that Biihler's two arguments — ^the direct argument from the absence of intensity and quality, and the indirect argument from the nature of thought-connections — are, either separately or in combination, decisive against the theory of condensation. Cf. Binet, 84 fF., 106, 154; Watt, 431 ff.; Messer, 77, 83 ff., 109, 187. ^^M. F. Washburn, The Term 'Feehng,' J (mm. PJiilos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iii., 1906, 63. I may here call attention to the same writer's The Psychology of Deductive Logic, Mind, N. S. vii., 1898, 523 ff. The paper is briefly, almost schematically written, and I do not know whether the author still — after the advent of the ^M^g-abe-psychology — adheres to all of the posi- tions which it takes ; she outlines, however, a consistently imaginal account of concept, judgment, fallacy and inference. ^* Woodworth, in Essays Philos. and Psychol., 1908, 495 f. ; Calkins, Introd. to Psych., 1901 or 1905, 132 f., 136. Woodworth's discussion of the point appears to me to betray an unnecessary sensitiveness: the logician has nothing to say in the matter of conscious content. Calkins has translated logic into psychology, and in so 302 NOTES TO LECTURE V doing has involved herself in a contradiction. For if the 'relational element' comes to consciousness as 'belong- ing to' its concomitant processes, then it comes not as an element at all, but as a connection of two elements: the relational element of 'like,' let us say, plus the relational element of 'belonging to' or of dependence. One then wonders whether the concomitant processes do not come to consciousness with a relational element of possession, of 'having [something] belong to them.' The element of relation has found many supporters. See, e.g. : H. Spencer, Prkic. of Psych., 1855, §81 : "What are these relations.? They can be nothing more than certain secondary states of consciousness, produced by the union of the primary states. . . . The original modifications of consciousness are the feelings produced in us by subjective and objective activities [by our own actions and the actions of surrounding things] ; and any further modifications of consciousness must be such as result from combinations of these original ones" (285). Spencer here comes curiously near to the doctrine of GeslMqualitdten. The passage is retained in the second edition, except that the second sentence ends: "arising through connections of the primary states," and that the third sentence has 'aroused' for 'produced' (ii., 1871, 264: so also the third ed., ii., 1881, 254). The second edition contains, further, the chapter on The Composition of Mind, in which it is said that "under an ultimate analysis, what we call a relation proves to be itself a kind of feeling" (i., 1869, 164; so i., 1881, 164). Structurally, indeed, the relation appears as the typical mental element: for it "may be regarded as one of those nervous shocks which we suspect to be NOTES TO LECTURE V 303 the units of composition of feelings," whereas feelings themselves are "composed of units of feeling, or shocks." Spencer, however, shows the logical bias when he adds: "Take away the terms it unites, and it disappears along with them; having no independent place, — ^no individ- uality of its own." And yet "its qualitative character is appreciable"! Huxley follows Spencer in postulating what he calls, in Humian terminology, 'impressions of relation' {Hume, 1881, 69). In 1893, E. Schrader published a little work entitled Die bewusste BezteTiwng zwischen Vorstel- lungen als konstitutives Bewusstsemselement : em Beitrag zur Psychologie der Denkerscheinungen, in which he maintained a like position. We have already referred to James, Calkins, Binet, Woodworth, and the various members of the Wiirzburg school. Calkins {Arner. Journ. Psych., xx., 1909, 274 f. ; cf. Introd. to Psych., 1905, 136) lengthens the list to include Meinong,* Ebbinghaus, Miinsterberg, etc. But she can do this only by forcing her own system and terminology upon writers who have definitely adopted other terms and other criteria: Ebbinghaus, e.g., — who has three ele- ments, by the way, and not two, — ^would have protested vigorously against the statement that he held "the doctrine of elements of consciousness which are neither sensational nor in any sense coordinate with the affec- tions." Angell, too, in a passage which Calkins does not quote {Psych., 1904, 205 f.), explicitly mentions two views of relation, the attentional theory and the * Bubler (341) also brings the phenomena of Oettaltqualitat under the rubric of his Regelbewa»>Uein; but the reference is rather a suggestion than a claim. 304 NOTES TO LECTURE V theory of special feelings (of which latter the theory of 'relational elements' is given as a sub-form), and himself decides, with apologies for dogmatism, that "the consciousness of relation is a basal factor in all activities of attention." Judd, again, hardly seems to me to belong to Calkins' list, though I confess that I do not find his writing clear. Thus, in his 'What is Perception ?' {Joum. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., vi., 1909, 41), he remarks: "Once the possibility of recognising a wholly different type of explanation [than that of analysis into sensory elements] is admitted, the conscious process will be treated as a complex made up of sensory elements and other processes which are functional in character and deserving of a separate treatment. We shall then see that any particular phase of experience may be described either with reference to its sensory facts or with refer- ence to its functional phases of activity." I do not gather that Judd accepts 'relational elements' as items of mental structure or of the 'composition of mind,' though I may have misinterpreted this and similar passages. "Wundt," Calkins says (277), "can afford to deny re- lational elements because he illicitly and unwittingly holds them concealed within his heterogeneous class of 'feel- ings.' " It is difficult to see the force of the 'unwittingly.' And if the criticism be valid, is not Wundt more excus- able than Ebbinghaus, — in whom Calkins has found an ally.? For Ebbinghaus holds the relational elements illicitly and •mttingly concealed in his heterogeneous class of 'sensations.' But Wundt can take care of him- self. Why, however, does not Calkins refer to Lehmann.'' The Hauptgesetze d. menschl. Gefuhlslebem (1892, NOTES TO LECTURE V 305 339 fF.) recognises a class of Beziehv/ngsgefuhle, in the technical sense of the word Gefiihl, which includes many of the formations that we have learned to know as Bewusstsemslagen or attitudes. Here, then, the relational element is wittingly concealed in feeling. O facinus indignum ! — Many years ago, I myself wrote a bit of imagemong- ery on the subject of relation; worse yet, I found a logician to agree with me (The Psychology of 'Relation,' Philos. Review, iii., 1894, 193 ff.; J. E. Creighton, Modern Psychology and Theories of Knowledge, ibid., 196 if.). The relation-artists have, wisely enough, passed it by in silence; it represented a crude first attempt at analysis, and I can do better now. But I still hold to the opinion that my 'feelings of relation' are complex and sensory-imaginal in character. No revival-meeting of "enthusiastic upholders of the relational-element doctrine" can shake this conviction. ^^Lehrbuch d. allg. Psych., 1894., 34)9 f. "Wir konnen auch nicht zugeben, dass das 'Urtheil,' diese logische Angelegenheit, zu einer psychologischen 'Grund- classe psychischer Phanomene' gestempelt wird; eine 'Psychologic des Urtheils' ist uns ein Widerspruch in sich." '" The most recent investigator, Storring, offers not a definition but a 'characterisation' of judgment in the following terms: "ein Erlebnis, das sich mit dem Be- wusstsein der Giiltigkeit oder mit dem Zustande der Sich- erheit verbindet, d.h. mit einem Etwas, das, ohne ein Bewusstsein der Gultigkeit zu sein, so beschaffen ist, dass auf Grand der Frage nach der Gultigkeit bei Hinblick auf jenes Erlebnis infolge dieses Etwas Beja- 30 306 NOTES TO LECTURE V hung eintritt" (Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xiv., 1909, 42). It is the introduction of the 'state of assurance' (see Note 21 above) that differentiates this characterisation from the view adopted, e.g., by von Kries : "Die Vertief- ung der Psychologie, die neueren logischen Untersuch- ungen verdankt wird, hat . . . mit Recht dazu gefiihrt, das 'GeltungsgefiihP als eine besondere und vorzugs- weise wichtige Eigenschaft in dem psychologishen Thatbestand eines jeden Urtheils in Anspruch zu neh- men" (Ueber d. mater. Grundlagen, etc., 1898, 52). The new characterisation will probably meet the old objection that it is too wide; for there are plenty of automatic operations whose validity we should affirm if it were questioned, but which assuredly are not judg- ments in any distinctive sense. Cf. W. B. Pillsbury, An Attempt to Harmonise the Current Psychological Theories of the Judgment, Psychol. Bulletin, iv., 1907, 237 ff. "Buhler, 845 f. (cf. 341); cf. Bovet, Arch, de Psych., viii., 1908, 26; Diirr, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 339. Messer (124, 132) brings the Wundtian Gesamtvorstelhmg into direct connection with the psych- ology of Aufgabe: cf. Lecture IV., Note 25. '^ For the experimental status of this distinction, see Messer, 122 fF.; Bovet, 25 ff. '° Watt, 344. Watt refers, I gather with disapproval, to Royce's comment that what Ribot in his work on general ideas and Marbe in his work on judgment "both examined, were relatively reflex processes that express the mere residuum of a mental skill long since acquired by their subjects": Recent Logical Inquiries and their NOTES TO LECTURE V 307 Psychological Bearings, Psychol. Review, ix., 1902, 114; cf. Biihler, 301. Watt accordingly discounts (412) the criticism passed by Wundt upon Marbe's work (Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 580 f.). Messer also moderates that criticism: 111 f., 126. See, however, Biihler, 302; Diirr, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 314. ^* Woodworth, in Studies in Philosophy and Psychol- ogy, 1906, 351 ff. ; cf . Le Mouvement, 1903, 308 ff., esp. 330 fF. ; E. L. Thorndike, Elements of Psych., 1905, 281 ff. ; The Mental Antecedents of Voluntary Movements, Joum. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iv., 1907, 40 ff. '° Royce, op. cit.. Ill f . ; cf. Diirr, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 338. On the chaotic state of the doctrine of judgment, cf. Royce, 110 f . ; Marbe, 13. '" I say nothing of the approach to judgment from the side of language (Wundt, B. Erdmann) — enor- mously important as this aspect of thought-psychology undoubtedly is — ^because I am concerned only with an experimental psychology. It is, however, probable, indeed almost inevitable, that suggestions for experi- mentation come from Volkerpsychologie as well as from logic. Cf . Diirr, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 337 ff. ; Bovet, Arch, de Psych., viii., 1908, 47 ; W. H. Sheldon, Methods of Investigating the Problem of Judgment, Psychol. Bulletin, vi., 1907, 243 ff. INDEX OF NAMES References to the Notes begin with page 197 Ach, N., 86 ff., 89 f., 96 ff., 103- 107, 109, 111 f., 117, 119, 12S- 128, 130, 133, 137, 142, 144, 162 f., 173 f., 183, 198, 235- 240, 242 f., 245-349, 258, 260, 364, 268, 270, 375 f., 281, 285 f., 292, 295, 298 AngeU, J. R., 99, 244, 280, 393, 303 Aristotle, 43, 50, 117, 249 Arnold, F., 331 Aster, E. von, 148 f., 151, 154, 243, 246, 366 f., 269 f, 281, 390, 298 Bagley, W. C, 159, 209, 274, 288 Bain, A., 26, 48, 65, 315, 219 Baldwin, J. M., 23, 203, 234, 352 f., 293 Bell, A., 303 Bentley, I. M., 255 Berkeley, G., 14, 16, 210 Binet, A., 6, 80, 82, 84, 95, 113, 117, 151, 197, 201, 205, 309 f., 212 f., 336, 239-242, 248, 268, 271, 377, 388, 295, 301, 303 Bolton, T. L., 286 f. Bovet, P., 309, 340, 343, 264, 267, 394 ff., 306 f. Bradley, F. H., 317 Brentano, F., 43-53, 60-66, 136, 318-221, 224 BiiMer, K., 64, 90 f., 93 f, 96, 98, 113, 119, 141-144, 146, 148- 153, 154, 168, 189, 191, 210, 213, 317, 230 f., 335, 342, 357, 262, 264-367, 269 f., 280 f., 286, 388, 293-295, 397-301, 303, 306 f. Calkins, M. W., 187, 300, 251 ff., 256 ff., 294, 301, 303 f. ClaparMe, E., 246 Colvin, S. S., 331, 391 Comte, A., 338, 277 Creighton, J. E., 305 Descartes, R., 117, 249 Dessolr, M., 200 Dilthey, W., 200 Durr, E., 149-153, 154, 240, 243, 267 ff., 281, 306 f. Ebbinghaus, H., 35 f., 32, S3, 134, 137 f., 197, 215, 233, 364, 384, 386, 303 f. Ehrenfels, C. von, 321, 355 Eimer, G. H. T., 68, 231 Erdmann, B., 5, 168, 193, 198, 281, 285, 307 Exner, S., 385 Fechner, G. T., 87, 184, 239 f. Flechsig, P., 217 309 310 INDEX OF NAMES FUnt, R., 220, 223 Fraser, A., 211 f. Galton, F., 13, 201, 205 f., 208 Geissler, L. R., 248, 393 Gross, O., 286 Hamilton, W., 14, 18, 45-49, 210, 213 Hartley, D., 32, 217 Hobbes, T., 163 Hoflfding, H., 103, 245 Hofler, A., 218 Hoernl^, R. F. A., 64 f., 318 Horwicz, A., 223 Huey, E. B., 203, 206 f., 289 Hume, D., 31, 210 Husserl, E. G., 5, 199, 266, 281 Huxley, T. H., 14 f., 17 f., 210, 213, 232, 303 James, W., 28 f., 42, 102, 104, 160, 203, 212, 215, 217 f., 252 f., 256 ff., 303 Jerusalem, W., 221 Jodl, F., 221, 232, 234, 284 Jones, E. E. C, 200 Judd, C. H., 304 Klemm, O., 265 Kries, J. von, 174, 285 f., 306 Kulpe, O., 48 f., 53, 66, 87, 152, 162, 218, 233, 249, 275, 281, 393 Ladd, G. T., 49, 218 Lange, C., 160 Lange, L., 163, 275 Lehmann, A., 197, 304 Leuba, J. H., 267 Lipps, T., 6, 199 Locke, J., 14 f., 17 f., 26, 117, 210 fF. Mach, E., 255 Marbe, K., 6, SO f., 84, 93 ff., 100 f., 106 f., 109, 117, 120 ff., 125, 138 ff., 133, 135, 149, 159, 188, 190, 197, 235 f., 244, 249 f., 257 f., 260, 274, 280, 306 f. Martin, L. J., 162, 245 Martius, G., 163, 275 Mayer, A., 100, 244 Meinong, A., 5, 199, 303 Messer, A., 66, 85, 88 f., 90, 96 ff., 107-112, 117, 123 ff., 130-133, 136-139, 141 f., 146, 153 f., 168, 173, 193, 208 ff., 212, 214, 231, 338-243, 247, 249 f., 256, 260-266, 268, 270 f., 280 f., 285-288, 294 f., 298, 301, 306 f. Meumann, E., 200, 238, 240, 249 Meyer, M., 281 MiU, J., 26, 30, 32 f., 35, 53, 96, 219, 338 MiU, J. S., 30, 33, 52, 312, 219, 238, 251 ff. Morgan, C. L., 293 Muckenhoupt, L., 203 Muller, G. E., 93, 162, 239, 243, 245, 274. Miiller-Freienfels, R., 200 Munsterberg, H., 163, 217, 275, 303 Nakashima, T., 219 Orth, J., 93 f., 100, 102 f., 109, 244 ff. Perry, R. B., 231 Pillsbury, W. B., 287, 306 Pilzecker, A., 93, 239, 243 Pyle, W. H., 350, 293 INDEX OF NAMES 311 Rehmke, J., 188, 391, 223 Ribot, T., 200, 288, 306 Rowland, E. H., 288, 291 Royce, J., 192, 240, 306 f. Schrader, E., 303 Schumann, F., 162, 236, 245 274 Segal, J., 203 Seth, A., 215 Sheldon, W. H., 267, 307 Sidgwick, H., 200 Sigwart, C, 200, 209 Simon, T., 295. Spencer, H., 43, 302 f. Spiller, G., 224 Starbuck, E. D., 267 Stern, L. W., 200 Starring, G., 94 f., 152 f., 238 f., 243, 249, 256, 368, 271 ff., 289, 305 Stout, G. F., 62-66, 98 f., 117 159, 216 «., 224, 226 ff., 230 f., 248, 274, 286, 293 ff. Stumpf, C, 170, 199, 217, 281 Taine, H., 209 Taylor, C. L., 247, 274 Thorndike, E. L., 191, 203, 307 Ulrici, H., 223 Volkelt, J., 163, 245, 276 Washburn, M. F., 186, 203, 301 "Watt, H. J., 85 f., 89, 96 f., 98, 112 f., 120 ff., 125-128, 130, 132 f., 141 f., 144, 163, 174, 190 f., 203, 209 f., 236, 240-243, 246, 249 f., 258-262^ 266, 270, 274 f., 284, 286 f., 301, 306 f. Whipple, G. M., 204 Witasek, S., 53 f., 57, 59, 61-67, 70, 73 f., 220 f., 261 f., 245 Woodbridge, F. J. E., 231 Woodworth, R. S., 6, 92, 94 f., 151 f., 167, 187, 191, 200, 216, 239, 243, 256, 280, 294 f., 301, 303, 307 Wreschner, A., 310, 240-243, 349, 288 Wundt, W., 5, 27, 36, 49, 79, 87, 90, 103, 154, 160, 170, 189, 193, 198, 306, 216 f., 231, 235, 243, 245, 264, 258 ff., 276, 381, 396, 304, 306 f. Ziehen, T., 385 f. INDEX OF SUBJECTS References to the Notes begin with page 197 Absicht, see Purpose Abstract idea, see General idea Abstraction, associative. 111 ; determinate, 340; experiments on, 349 Acceptance, psychology of, 131, 136, 138 ff., 263 Act and content, in Brentano's psychology, 44 ff., 51 f.; act as content of another act, 47 f.; a distinction due to reflection, 53, 60, 74; in Witasek's psychology, 64 ff.; leads to dominance of idea, 55 f.; leads to over-articu- lation, 57 ff.; psychologically grounded, 60 f. Action, to be studied histori- cally, 33, 169 f.; akin to thought, 133, 128, 141 f.; as influenced by preparation, 163 f.; criterion of voluntary, 191; see Reaction Affective processes, status of, in older and newer sensat- ionalism, 35 f.; see Feeling Analysis, psycholopcal, 168 ff., 282 ff. Anoetic consciousness, 65, 235 ff. Apperception, 136, 159, 160, 258 ff., 374 Association, Watt's experiments on, 85 f., 96, 340, 361; Mes- ser's experiments on, 88 ff., 96 ff., 340, 261 Associationism, confuses psy- chology and logic, 15 f., 24 ff., 53 f.; definition of, 24; claims of, 31 ; contrasted with newer sensationalism, 34; and experimental psychology, 37; see Sensationalism Assurance, state of, 389 f., 305 f. Atomism, psychological, 27, 30, 34, 284 Attention, 175 ff., 318, 363 ff.; levels of clearness, 393 f. Attitudes, conscious, 98 ff., 117, 143, 151, 154, 171, 180 ff., 344 f., 247 f., 270; first ap- pearance of, 100; instances of, 101 f., 103 f., 107, 109, 113, 153, 344 f.; affective character of, 103, 103, 108 ff.; behaviour of, in con- sciousness, 103, 110, 344; not analysable, 103, 183 f., 345; Messer's classification of, 108 ff.; Messer's theory of, 110 f.; degrees of clearness of, 111, 398; development or ela- boration of, 111 f., 153, 171, 173, 182 f., 248; Buhler's theory of, 144, 366; Watt's 313 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 313 theory of, 144; organic, 31 f., 180 ff., 185, 308, 313 f., 248, SSS, 372, 291 f. Aufgabe, see Problem Auafragemethode, see Examin- ation, method of Awareness, 104 ff., 117, 126, 144, 180 f.; of meaning, 104 ff.; of relation, 104 ff.; of determination, 106; of ten- dency, 106; Ach's theory of, 105 ff., 174, 183 f.; shows degrees of intensity, 105 f., 298; derivation of, 171, 180; behaviour of, in conscious- ness, 246 Belief, 252 Bewuastheit, see Awareness Bewusstseinslage, see Attitudes, conscious Bias, constitutional, 22 f., 37 Chemistry, mental, 30 ff.; mod> ern substitutes for, 32 f. Classification of mental phe- nomena, 43, 50 f., 63, 171 f., 183, 187, 221; Stout's, 224 ff. Clearness, attentional and cogni- tive, 17; levels of, 292 f. Coalescence, associative, 30 ff. Colour mixture, 30 ff. Composition theory of mind, 35 Conation, Stout's doctrine of, 224 ff. Conception, types of, 200 f. Condensation of ideas, theory of, 298 f. Connective adjustment, 174, 285 ; see Predisposition Consciousness, as dependent on complication of physiological conditions, 32 f.; as deter- mined from without, 33, 161 ff. Constellation, 285 f. Contents, passive, 66 Context, psychological, 175 ff. Description, and intimation, 148 ff., 269 ff.; always approxi- mative, 149 Differences, individual, 6 f., 22 f., 166, 183 f., 187, 200 f., 248, 292 f. Dispositional adjustment, 174, 285 f.; see Predisposition Duration, recognition of, in modern psychology, 27 f., 60 f., 169 Element, definition of mental, 170 ff. Emotion, and attitude, 102, 108 ff.; James-Lange theory of, 160 Empathy, 21 f., 181, 185, 205 End, idea of, 126 f., 260 Epistemology, and psychology, 35 f., 56, 73, 166 ff., 281; see Logic Error, stimulus, 146 ff., 191, 267 Evolution, as pointing forward, 69; see Orthogenesis, Ortho- plasy Examination, method of, 79, 90 ff., 96, 98, 142 f., 146 ff., 152, 164 Experiment, range of psycho- logical, 5 Feeling, in Hamilton's psychol- 314 INDEX OF SUBJECTS ogy, 45 f.; as act and con- tent, 4>6 ff., 5S; may it stand alone in consciousness? 48 f., 50; does not show transitive reference, 65, 226 ff.; in Wundt's psychology, 103, 296, 304; Lehmann's relational, 304 f. Fringe, conscious, 103, 318, 228 Fusion, in Hamilton's psychol- ogy, 45, 48 f. General idea, Locke's, 14 ff., 17 f., 211 f.; Berkeley's, 14, 16, 211 f.; HamUton's, 14, 18; Huxley's, 14 ff., 17 f., 213; Ribot's, 200 f. Generation, associative, 30 ff. Genetic consideration of mind, 168 ff., 1T3 f., 281, 296 f. Growth and decay, law of men- tal, 33, 124 f., 169, 266, 396 f.; see Mechanisation Hypnosis, 161 f. Idea, psychological characteri- sation of, 15; as act and content, 44 f., 48, 54, 323 f.; as typical mental process, 55 f., 220; see General idea Ideas, in older and newer sen- sationalism, 35 f., 26 ff. Imagery, auditory, 8, 9 f., 205; visual, 8, 10 ff., 13 f.. Ill f., 201 ff., 205 f., 211 f.; relation of, to meaning, 16 f., 19 f., 33, 41 f., 99, 174 ff.; kinses- thetic, 8 f., 20 ff., 176 ff., 314, 348; verbal, 176 ff. Inexistence, intentional, 43 ff., 933 f. Inference, Storring's experi- ments on, 94 f., 153 f., 371 ff. Inhibition, conscious, 341 Integrative psychology, 172 Intellection, Binet's study of, 80, 83 ff., 95 f., 295 f. Intellectualism, 56, 117; see Sensationalism Intention, as conscious experi- ence, 131 f., 135, 140, 141, 264 f. Interest, as act and content, 44, 46 f. Interweaving of acts, in Bren- tano's system, 47 f., 49 Intimation, and description, 148 ff., 369 ff. Introspection, status of, 4 f., 83, 376 ff.; of transitive states, 28 ff.; appeal to, in support of act and content, 50, 51; in support of transitive refer- ence, 65; in experimental study of thought, 75, 79 f., 82, 84 f., 87, 89 ff., 92, 100 f., 101 f., 103 f., 108, 110, 111 f., 113, 118, 120 f., 124, 131 f., 139, 143 f., 153, 164 f., 197 f., 270, 371 ff.; method of sys- tematic experimental, 86 f., 96 f., 336 ff.; aided by pur- pose to introspect, 339; diffi- culties of, 376 ff. Iteration, 301 Judgment, as act and content, 44 f., 55 f., 138 ff.; Witasek's psychology of, 57 ff., 345; Marbe's work upon, 80 ff., 95, 101 f., 117 ff., 121 f., 128 ff., 190, 197, 244 f.; un- derstanding of, 118 f., 336; INDEX OP SUBJECTS 315 psychology of, 119 f., 133 f., 130, 131 fif., 140 f., 188 flf., 191 ff, 307; Wundt's analysis of, 189, 192, 359; Storring's characterisation of, 305 f. Kinsesthesis, part played by, in meaning, 176 ff., 179, 180 ff., 204, 208, 287; in feelings of relation, 185 ff., 287; see Attitudes, organic; Empa- thy; Imagery Knowledge, introduced by feel- ing, 103; Ach's Wissen, 103 f., 144; for Marbe, never given in consciousness, 119; as general term for thoughts, 144 f., 148; as disposition, 249; von Aster's theory of. Language, psychology of, 5, 198, 307; disadvantages of, for psychology, 38 Logic, relation of, to psychol- ogy, S, 166 ff., 191 ff.; confused with psychology by associationists, 15 f., 34 ff., 52 f.; by the Austrian school, 53, 60, 321; in the psychology of thought, 108 ff., 113, 343, 380 f.; psychol- ogy of deductive, 301 Maxims, regulative, of a psy- chology of thought, 166 ff. Meaning, as visual schema, 10 f., 13 f., 305; as visual sym- bol, 13 f., 17 f., 18 f., 208 f.; relation of, to imagery, 16 f., 19 f., 33, 41 f., 104, 174 ff., 183 f., 310 f., 212 f., 347 f.. 387 ff. ; psychologised by as- sociationism, 35, 26 f.; prob- lem of, in modern psychol- ogy, 26, 174 ff.; as refer- ence to object, 41 f., as awareness, 104 ff.; Ach's theory of, 105; as intellectual attitude, 109; Messer's de- finition of, 110; as imageless thought, 113; as context, 175 ff.; may be carried in physi- ological terms, 178 ff., 201; as kinsesthetic symbol, 213 f.; specialisation of, 240 f.; marginal theory of, 274 ; prior to ideation, 286 f. Mechanisation, of meaning, 178 f., 201; of relation, 187 f.; of judgment, 189 ff., 306; of thought-connection, 301 Memory after-image, 87, 340 Memory of thoughts, Biihler's experiments on, 93 f., 243, 299 ff. Mental tests, 82 ff., 94 Methods of thought-psychology, 80 ff., 164 f.; see Examin- ation, method of; Right associates, method of Movement-sensations, intention- al, 368 Nonsense-syllables, advantage of, in study of association, 35 f. Object, idea of, 136 f., 260 Objectification, 66, 331 Objective of judgment, 57 f., 136 Objectivity, immanent, 44 ff., 50; transitive, 62 ff., 230 f. 316 INDEX OF SUBJECTS Organic sensations, lack objec- tive reference, 65; see Atti- tudes, organic; Empathy; Kinsesthesis Organisation, 71 ff., 74 f., 333 Organism, psychophysical, 233 f . Orthogenesis, 68 f., 231 f. Orthoplasy, 68 f. Perception, to be studied his- torically, 33, 168 flf., 281 Phenomenology, 171, 221, 223, 250, 281 Physical phenomena, in Bren- tano's system, 44f., 63, 66; in Witasek's system, 62 f, 66 f., 70 Physiology, and psychology, 35 f., 37; see Predisposition Possibility, theories of, 297 f. Predisposition, 107, 124, 134, 159, 162, 173 f., 274, 285 f. Preparation, conscious repre- sentation of, 140 Prepositions, conscious repre- sentation of, 291 f. Problem, Watt's criterion of judgment, 120 ff., 125 f., 130 f., 153, 191, 260 ff.; need not be conscious, 122 ff., 127, 135, 152, 178, 250; and Ach's idea of end, 127; and will or intention, 132 f.; and ob- jective reference, 133 ff.; place of, in experimental psychology, 158, 161 ff., 189; specialisation of, 240 f.; of cognition of reality, 250; psychology of, 268; see Situ- ation Process, idea of, as instrument of psychological analysis, 61, 74; see Duration Psychoanalysis, 261 Psychology, progress of ex- perimental, 4; problem of, 75, 108, 133 ff., 257; Car- tesian, of thought, 117; fac- ulty, 220; of structure and function, 253 Purpose, in Marbe's work on judgment, 118 ff., 121 f., 128 ff., 135, 249 f.; in Ach's work on thought, 126; and rela- tion to future, 260 Quality, in Woodworth's psy- chology, 255. Reaction, Ach's experiments on, 86 ff., 96, 236 ff.; method of, in work on thought, 94 f.; Kiilpe's analysis of, 162 f.; Lange's work on, 275 f. Reading, visual, 9 f., 203 t., 207; aids to selective, 206 f. Reality, feelings of, 251 ff. Recognition, unconscious, 179 f., 389 f. Reference, objective, as crite- rion of mind, 43 ff., 61 ff., 66 ff., 74 f., 138, 224 ff.; as due to problem, 133 ff., 137, 141 ; and stimulus error, 146 f . Rejection, see Acceptance, psy- chology of Relation, feelings of, 28 ff., 153, 300, 301 ff.; of pointing- towards, 67 ff., 232; as aware- ness, 104 ff.; identified by Ach with attitude, 106 f.; by Messer with emotional atti- tude, 109; predicative, 131 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 317 f., 132, 135 f., 141, 143, 263; sensationalistic view of, 184 ff.; need not be represented in consciousness, 187 f.; ac- tive, in Messer's work, 262 ff.; as elementary conscious process, 301 ff. Reproduction, mechanics of, 36, 33; see Tendencies Right associates, method of, 93, 243 Rule of three, Woodworth's ejcperiments with, 95, 152 f. Schemata, visual, 10 fF., 63, 267 f.; fixation of, 12 f. Science, progress of, 3 f. Self, feeling of, 39 f. Sensation, use of, in experi- mental psychology, 214 f. Sensationalism, 5, 32 fF., 56; definition of, as a theory of knowledge, 23; thus con- nected with associationism, 24 ff.; here confuses logic and psychology, 24 ff.; newer, adopts existential standpoint, 25 f., 34, 134, 137, 264 f.; treats ideas as processes, 27 ff., 34; contrasted with as- sociationism, 34, 158 f. ; as heuristic principle, 34 ff., 36 f.; older, as form of com- position theory of mind, 35; physiological, 35 f., 37; of Locke and Aristotle, 117; in- trospective confirmations of newer, 180 ff., 188, 194, 274, 291 f., 301 Sensibility, passive, 65, 319 Sentience, 65, 225 ff., 230 Situation, 175 Skimming, 304, 307 Specialisation, 240 f. Speech, internal, 9 f., 11, 147, 303, 208, 290 Statement, and description, 150 f. Subconscious, in Stout's psy- chology, 224, 239 Subject and object, in Hamil- ton's psychology, 45 f., 48, 49 Subjectification, 66, 231 Symbols, visual, 13 f., 17 f., 18 f., 208 f. Teleology, 71, 232 f. Tendencies, perseverative, 87, 202, 240, 346; reproductive, 106 f., 107, 111, 125 f., 127, 173 f., 183 f., 246, 260 f.; determining, 107, 111, 127 f., 163, 174, 246 f. Theories, motor, 286 f. Thought, emergence of problem of, 4 ff.; psychology of, as dependent on ideational type, 7, 209 f. ; visual schemata for, 10 ff.; Watt's study of, 85 f., 96, 120 ff., 125 f., 130 f.; Ach's, 86 f., 96, 103 ff., 136 ff.; Messer's, 88 ff., 96 ff., 107 ff., 123 ff., 131 ff.; Buhler's, 90 ff., 96 ff., 142 ff.; Woodworth's, 92 f., 152 f.; Storring's, 94 f., 153 f.; imageless, 98, 104 f., 113, 117, 151 f., 159, 180, 293 ff.; Messer's definition of, 110; as elementary mental process, 144 f., 151, 154, 182, 193 f., 293 ff., 299 f.; and attitude, 144; results 318 INDEX OP SUBJECTS of experimental work on, 158 ff., 164 f.; proposals for further work on, 163 f.; Royce's theory of, 241; con- ceptual and objective, 241 f.; Aristotle's view of, 249; Durr's psychology of, 268 f.; Binet's theory of, 295 f.; theories of possibility, 297 f.; of condensation, 298 f.; connections, in Biihler's work, 299 ff. Transcendence, concept of, 64 f., 134 f., 141 Transitive states, 28 ff., 216 Triangle, general idea of, 14, 17 f., 211 Types, ideational, 7 f., 32, 202 f.; of conception, 200 f. Understanding, visual, 12 f., ' 209; of judgments, 118 f.. Voluntarism, psychological, 36 f. WiU, 30, 131 f., 136, 140, 141 Wissen, see Knowledge Word, as content and context, 176 ff., 288 f. OTHER WORKS OF PHILOSOPHY The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, An introduction to Philosophy through a Study of Modern Sys- tems. By Mary Whiton Calkins, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Wellesley College. Author of "An Introduction to Psychology," and "Der doppelte Standpunkt in der Psy- chologie." New York, 1907. Cloth, J'^J pages, 8vo, $3.50 nit. An Introduction to Philosophy By George Stuart Fullerton, Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University. New York, 1906. Cloth, 322 pages, I2ma, $l.6o net. A Brief Introduction to Modern Philosophy By Arthur Kemyon Rogers, Professor of Philosophy in Butler College. 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