An internet resource developed by
(Return to index)
Preface
The treatise which
follows has in the main grown up in connection with the author's class-room
instruction in Psychology, although if is true that some of the chapters are
more 'metaphysical,' and others fuller of detail, than is suitable for students
who are going over the subject for the first time. The consequence of this is that, in spite of the
exclusion of the important subjects of pleasure and pain, and moral and
aesthetic feelings and judgments, the work has grown to a length which no one
can regret more than the writer himself. The man must indeed be sanguine who,
in this crowded age, can hope to have many readers for fourteen hundred
continuous pages from his pen. But wer Vieles bringt wird Manchem
etwas bringen; and, by
judiciously skipping according to their several needs, I am sure that many
sorts of readers, even those who are just beginning the study of the subject,
will find my book of use. Since the beginners are most in need of guidance, I
suggest for their behoof that they omit altogether on
a first reading chapters 6, 7, 8, 10 (from page 330 to page 371), 12, 13, 15,
17, 20, 21, and 28. The better to awaken
the neophyte's interest, it is possible that the wise order would be to pass directly
from chapter 4 to chapters 23, 24, 25, and 26, and thence to return to the
first volume again. Chapter 20, on Space-perception, is a terrible thing, which,
unless written with all that detail, could not be fairly treated at all. An abridgment of it, called "The Spatial
Quale,' which appeared in the Journal of
Speculative Philosophy, vol. XIII. p. 64, may be found
by some persons a useful substitute for the entire chapter.
I have kept close to the point of view of natural science throughout the
book. Every natural science assumes certain
[p. vi] data uncritically, and declines to challenge
the elements between which its own 'laws' obtain, and from which its own
deductions are carried on. Psychology, the science of finite individual minds,
assumes as its data (1) thoughts and
feelings, and (2) a physical world
in time and space with which they coexist and which (3) they know. Of course these
data themselves are discussable; but the discussion of them (as of other
elements) is called metaphysics and falls outside the province of this
book. This book, assuming that thoughts
and feelings exist and are vehicles of knowledge, thereupon contends that
psychology when she has ascertained the empirical correlation of the various
sorts of thought or feeling with definite conditions of the brain, can go no
farther -- can go no farther, that is, as a, natural science. If she goes
farther she becomes metaphysical. All
attempts to explain our phenomenally given
thoughts as products of deeper-lying entities (whether
the latter be named 'Soul,' 'Transcendental Ego,' 'Ideas,' or 'Elementary Units
of Consciousness') are metaphysical.
This book consequently rejects both the associationist
and the spiritualist theories; and in this strictly positivistic point of view consists the only feature of it for which I feel tempted to
claim originality. Of course this point
of view is anything but ultimate. Men must
keep thinking; and the data assumed by psychology, just like those assumed by
physics and the other natural sciences, must some time be overhauled. The effort to overhaul them clearly and
thoroughly is metaphysics; but metaphysics can only perform her task well when
distinctly conscious of its great extent.
Metaphysics fragmentary, irresponsible, and half-awake, and unconscious
that she is metaphysical, spoils two good things when she injects herself into
a natural science. And it seems to me that
the theories both of a spiritual agent and of associated 'ideas' are, as they figure
in the psychology-books, just such metaphysics as this. Even if their results be true, it would be as
well to keep them, as thus presented,
out of psychology as it is to keep the results of idealism out of physics.
I have therefore treated our passing thoughts as integers, [p. vii] and
regarded the mere laws of their coexistence with brain-states as the ultimate
laws for our science. The reader will
in vain seek for any closed system in the book. It is mainly a mess of
descriptive details, running out into queries which only a
metaphysics alive to the weight of her task can hope successfully to
deal with. That will perhaps be
centuries hence; and meanwhile the best mark of health that a science can show
is this unfinished-seeming front.
The completion of the book has been so slow that several chapters have
been published successively in Mind, the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, the
Popular Science Monthly, and Scribner's Magazine. Acknowledgment is made in the
proper places.
The bibliography, I regret to say, is quite unsystematic. I have habitually given my authority for
special experimental facts; but beyond that I have aimed mainly to cite books
that would probably be actually used by the ordinary American college-student
in his collateral reading. The bibliography in W. Volkmann von Volkmar's Lehrbuch der Psychologie (1875) is so
complete, up to its date, that there is no need of an inferior duplicate. And for more recent references, Sully's Outlines, Dewey's Psychology, and
Finally, where one owes to so many, it seems absurd to single out
particular creditors; yet I cannot resist the temptation at the end of my first
literary venture to record my gratitude for the inspiration I have got from the
writings of J. S. Mill, Lotze, Renouvier,
Hodgson, and Wundt, and from the intellectual
companionship (to name only five names) of Chauncey Wright and Charles Peirce in old times, and more recently of Stanley Hall, James
Putnam, and Josiah Royce.