Classics in the History of Psychology
An internet resource developed by
Christopher D. Green
ISSN 1492-3173
(Return to Classics index)
James
Gibson Hume (1898)
First
published in Psychological Review, 5, 162-163.
[Abstract of paper presented at the sixth annual meeting of the
American Psychological Association,
Posted
October 2001
An appreciative
statement of the chief results of recent advances in psychology and an endeavor
to justify a still wider application of thorough psychological analysis,
experiment and theoretical reconstruction
Former objections
to experimental psychology from introspective psychologists and natural
scientists were due to a misunderstanding and to an abstract dualistic theory.
The psychologist
is not merely entitled to a scientific field beside others, he should claim all
psychical facts directly accessible to his inquiries, and should contribute
toward the reconstruction of other sciences.
He should assist the natural scientist in guarding him against the misconceptions of materialism. A psychology that takes its stand upon the actual, concrete, active self is the most positive refutation of the abstractions of materialism and pantheism. This self-revealing active self enables us to meet the old difficulties of ethics with new insight. Theory must not be separated from practice. Neither should morality be separated from religion nor religion from morality. Religion includes and transforms morality. The Divine Being is personal and in social cooperation with the struggling finite moral self.