distinction made by the ancients between αἰσθητά and νοητά, φαινόμενον
and νοούμενον, the authors of this distinction, the philosophers of
Elea are almost nearer to us than Aristotle." The distinction between
thought and sensation is indeed of extraordinary importance. Ideas
(thoughts) and sensations are different, but the recognition of this
difference is no reason to declare dualism as permanently established.
Is not the reason of their difference the difference of abstraction
made in each case.
By noumena, i. e. thoughts or ideas, we understand all mental symbols
representing things. The ideas "man," "manhood," "virtue," etc., are
not sensations, but symbols representing some qualities abstracted from
sensations. In making the abstraction "idea" we confine the term, i.
e. the symbol "idea," to its representative element alone. We leave
out of sight that real ideas vibrating through our brain are at the
same time nervous structures in actions; we leave also out of sight
that they possess the state of awareness in common with sensations. We
do it because their representative nature is of paramount importance.
However, in making the abstraction "sensation" we do not exclude the
state of awareness, we think first of all of the feeling of a sensation
and then also of its form, viz. the special sense-impression. "I have
a sensation" is almost equivalent to the phrase "I have a feeling";
a sensation of light means a feeling of the effect of ether-waves
upon the retina; a sensation of sound is a feeling of the effect of
air-waves upon the drum of the ear; etc. Just as much as ether-waves
are not light, and air-waves not sound, (the latter being the effect
of the former upon specially adapted feeling substance), so also the
sensations light and sound are not the ideas we have of light and
sound. The ideas of light and sound are symbols representing in feeling
substance the sensations light and sound. These symbols, we suppose,
have developed from the memory-images of sensations. They must in
their turn also be considered as effects. They are the effects of
sense-impressions upon specially adapted feeling substance, viz. upon
a higher system of nervous structures, not in direct contact with the
periphery, but growing upon and from the peripheral sensory reflex
centres. The physiological activity of thoughts is accompanied also
with the feeling element; or in other words, thoughts are, as much as
sensations, states of awareness. Yet they differ from sensations in
that they do not contain anything of sense-impressions; the latter
being an exclusive characteristic of the action of sensory organs.
The memory-picture of blackness is not a sensation and the idea of
blackness still less.
The distinction between noumena or things of thought and æstheta
or sensations is by no means so distinct as is often assumed; for,
as we have seen, the most prominent feature of the noumenon is its
representative character. Isolated sense-impressions possess no
representative character, but sensations do possess it. Sensations are
the connecting link between sense-impressions and thoughts, between
meaningless feeling and mental states or mind, i. e. representative
states of awareness. Ideas are, as it were, an extract of the
representative value contained in sensations. This is my conception
of the distinction to be made between αἰσθητά and νοητά, between
sense-activity and thought-activity, between the phenomenon and
noumenon. It is set forth at length in the discussion with Professor E.
Mach in this number. It has been here again set forth at such length,
because I am convinced that a final solution of the problem is of great
importance. (Heidelberg: George Weiss.)
κ.
MINERVA. Rassegna Internazionale. January, 1891.
_Minerva_ will represent the first Italian venture in the direction
of a comprehensive magazine of international reference and literary
record. The editors, in stating the aims of their new publication,
acknowledge that Italy keenly feels the lack of an international
intellectual magazine. In Italy the reading public, and persons of
an average culture, still seem to be cut off from all stimulating
intellectual contact with the outside civilised world; while beyond
the Alps, on the contrary, and across the seas, any book, or a simple
magazine-article even, be it written in German, English, or French,
and legitimately claim from any point of view a certain importance, is
at once read by innumerable persons from San Francisco all the way to
St. Petersburg. Through the intellectual medium of their international
reviews, these nations seem actually to have realised one of Goethe's
most ardent aspirations,—the dream of a noble and humanising
"world-literature." Nearly all of the articles contained in the present
issue of _Minerva_ are ably condensed translations and epitomes of
articles that have recently appeared in leading English, American, and
German reviews and magazines. _La Minerva_ is under the direction of
Prof. Federico Garlanda of the University of Rome. (Rome: La Società
Laziale. Tip Editrice.)
VOPROSY FILOSOFII I PSICHOLOGII.[94]
[94] _Questions of Philosophy and Psychology._ In the Russian
language.
CONTENTS:
FURTHER REMARKS CONCERNING THE TASK OF THIS REVIEW. By the Editor
_Prof. N. Grote_.
ETHICS AND EVOLUTION. By _B. N. Beketov_.
LETTERS ON COUNT TOLSTOI'S BOOK "FROM LIFE." By _A. A. Kozlow_.
CONCERNING THE LAW OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY. By _N. N.
Strachov_.
ON THE NATURE OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. By _Prince C. N.
Trubetzkoi_.
CRITICISM AND BIBLIOGRAPHY.
THE DOCTRINE OF WILL IN THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. By _K. Ventzel_.
BOOK REVIEWS.
REVIEW OF PERIODICALS: 1) Of foreign philosophical Reviews; 2) Of
philosophical articles in Russian ecclesiastical papers.
POLEMICAL.
APPENDIX: 1) Materials for the History of Philosophy in Russia;
2) Transactions of the Moscow Psychological Society.
Russia is perhaps that country of all civilised nations of which we
know least, and even such authors as Tolstoï who are read all over the
world, are perhaps, severed from their surroundings, not correctly
understood by us as the Russian understands them. The present magazine,
_Problems of Philosophy and Psychology_, being a strictly scientific
periodical, is less peculiarly Russian without entirely losing the
national characteristics of its home. The intention of the editor has
been to develop and to give a chance for a further development of an
independent Russian philosophy. The philosophy of the West, we are
informed, does not satisfy the Russian mind; the English philosophy
is one-sided empirical, the French mathematical, the German too
abstract and logical. The Russian philosophy aspires to bring about
a well-balanced and harmonious method of thinking in which reason,
sentiment, and action—science, art and religion—are reconciled.
Professor Grote, the editor of _Problems of Philosophy and Psychology_,
by placing the ethical interest in the foreground, hopes that Russian
philosophy will become "the salvation of the world from evil."
Among the book reviews we find six pages devoted to _The Ethical
Problem_, by Dr. Paul Carus, a translation of which was made for us
by Prof. A. Gunlogsen of Chicago. We find however that the reviewer,
Mr. P. Astafiew, mixes the position of the author up with that of the
societies for ethical culture. If he represents the Magazine's view
of reconciling Science, Art, and Religion, it is sure that Religion
in the shape Of his peculiar creed would get the lion's share. The
interest of the little book consists to him in the fact that it clearly
characterises a singular anarchical condition; by having lost the old
faith, it is utterly unable to replace it. It is an assumption to
base ethics and religion on positive and scientific foundations; yet
the attempt is curious as a symptom of the times and especially of
"enlightened" America.
In answer to one of the most important errors in Mr. Astafiew's
review, we have to state that basing ethics upon the facts of life,
verified and verifiable by science, does not mean that we have to study
psychology in order to be moral. A man can lead a moral life without
understanding anything of ethics, the science of morality. Ethics is
not an indispensable condition of morality. But it is of paramount
importance that ethics—as a science—is not an impossibility.
The data of moral life, the impulses of duty, of conscience, of
the ought, are not mystical or supernatural, i. e. extra-natural,
standing in contradiction to other natural facts; they are not, as the
intuitionists maintain, "unanalysable," they are not, as Professor
Adler, the founder of the Ethical Societies declares, beyond the pale
of science; "the ladder of science," he says, "does not reach so
far." The data of moral life are facts of the natural development of
man and of human society; they can be investigated by science, they
can be compared with other natural facts, they can be classified and
understood.
A man can throw a stone without understanding anything of Newton's
laws, he can build a hut without understanding architecture. Yet for
that reason the study of ballistics and of architecture are not
useless. The man who has studied architecture may bridge the Niagara,
which the mound-builders were unable to do. And if a bridge breaks down
while the mounds of the mound-builders are still standing, it proves
nothing against architecture. An ethical student may have proposed
untenable theories in ethics, he may have preached a wrong morality,
and may have gone astray himself: all that would prove nothing against
the science of ethics. It is to be expected that ethical knowledge,
if it leaveneth the whole lump of human society, will raise man's
moral life higher, as surely as our knowledge of architecture made it
possible that we now build palaces upon the places where in former
times stood the wigwams of the Indians. (Moscow, 1891.)
κ.
VOL. I. JULY, 1891. NO. 4.
THE MONIST.
PSYCHOLOGY OF CONCEPTION.
_General Nature of Thought._—The processes marked off by the
psychologist as thinking or thought constitute the highest stage
of intellectual elaboration (intellection). By taking our concrete
percepts and resolving them into so many abstractions, (qualities
or attributes of things, relations between things,) we are enabled
to carry out the process of cognition to the furthest point of
unification. As long as we view a particular object, or an event, alone
apart from other things, we merely _apprehend_ it. But when we bring it
into relation to kindred things we _comprehend_ it. Thus, we comprehend
the tiger by classing it with other members of the feline group.
So we comprehend or understand the movement of the steam-engine by
assimilating it to the more familiar action of the steam in the kettle
in forcing up the lid.
Like imaginative production thinking is nothing but the sum of
processes of separation and combination, carried out on sense-material.
But in this case the elaborative processes assume a new and peculiar
form. It is one thing to build up a pictorial image as the poet does,
another thing to elaborate an abstract idea, such as the scientific
notion of force, fulcrum, and so forth. We must now try to investigate
more thoroughly the nature of this thought-elaboration.
_Thought as Activity._—It is evident that the processes here roughly
described are active processes, that is to say they involve a special
exertion of the forces of attention. In perception, reproduction, and
constructive imagination, this active factor is at work. But it is
only in thought proper that this activity becomes fully developed. To
think of a particular attribute in an object, say the color of a rose,
is as we all know a conscious effort or strain. A child first called
upon to think about abstract qualities, and the general relations of
objects finds the operation difficult and fatiguing. All thinking is
in truth an exercise of the higher form of attention, viz. volitional
concentration of consciousness. We only think when we have some purpose
as the discovery of the likeness or difference among objects, and
such a purpose only develops itself as the individual and the race
attain a certain measure of development or culture. The child and the
savage, like the animal, get on very well without thinking. And even a
large proportion of civilised adults think only in an occasional and
rudimentary way. Thought is thus in all cases a kind of artificial
activity sustained only for short periods and under the stress of
impulses or motives which belong to a high stage of intellectual and
moral development.
The high degree of activity in thought presumably involves
a special amount of that muscular strain which forms the
sensuous base of the attitude of attention. To think is
thus to concentrate consciousness by aid of energetic motor
adjustments. These include the innervation of certain muscles,
more particularly those by which movements of the eyes and
head are carried out. To think is to keep certain ideational
elements in persistent consciousness, and this is probably
effected in part at least by an energetic and sustained
innervation of particular groups of muscles. To this it may
be added that since as we shall see presently all thinking is
bringing together in their relations a number of ideational
elements, the muscular activity in the case is of a specially
difficult kind. Such special muscular efforts would probably
effect a cutting off of other elements and so subserve that
severe narrowing of consciousness which is so marked a feature
in thought.
_Directions of Thought-Activity._—This thought-activity may be viewed
as having two aspects or as following two directions, which it may
be well to view apart, even though, as we shall presently see, they
are inseparable aspects of one process. Just as all intellectual
elaboration is at once differentiation or separation and integration
or combination of what is differentiated, so thought itself is but a
higher development of each phase.
_a_) _Analysis, Abstraction._—First of all, then, thought may be
viewed as a carrying further and into higher forms the process of
differentiation or separation of presentative elements by means of
isolating acts of attention. Thus on selectively considering the
color of a rose, or the form of a crystal, we are it is evident
differentiating what is given in perception as a complex into a number
of parts, and rendering one of these specially prominent and distinct.
Such thought-separation is commonly spoken of as Analysis, i. e. the
taking apart of what is conjoined in a whole, and also as Abstraction
or the withdrawal of attention from what is for the moment irrelevant
and confining it to one particular point, feature, or quality (Latin ab
or abs, and traho).
Here it is evident a special attitude and effort of attention is
required. It is one thing to note carefully a presentative complex just
as it is, another thing to single out some element of this and fix the
attention on it. The peculiar difficulty of this analytic attention
is due to the firm coherence of the complex. The child cannot see the
color of the orange just because the orange as a whole stands in the
way. Hence this analytic attention is abstraction in the fullest sense,
that is a deliberate turning aside from what stimulates or attracts
this attention at the moment.
Such abstract singling out of an element may be supposed to involve
a special modification of the muscular adjustment in attention.
Hence perhaps the comparative ease with which we can single out for
observation locally distinct features of an object, to which correspond
different movements of the sense-organ. On the other hand the great
difficulty of mentally separating the color from the form of an object
may arise from the common element in the muscular adjustments concerned.
The nature of this process of analysis or abstract attention is best
seen in those comparatively simple operations in which an actual
presentation-complex as a group of tones or colors is being analysed.
The carrying out of such a process of analysis is aided by certain
conditions objective or external, and subjective or internal. Thus
it is found that the closer the degree of the complication the more
difficult the isolating fixation. Thus while it is comparatively
easy to attend to one detail of color in an object locally separated
from other color-details it is exceedingly difficult to attend to
the brightness or the degree of saturation of a color apart from the
quality of the tone itself. In the case of tone-masses, again, it is
found that certain combinations, more especially that of the octave,
are difficult to distinguish because of the tendency in this case to
fusion.[95]
[95] This is Stumpf's explanation. See his account of the
different degrees of fusion. _Tonpsychologie_ ii. p. 65, and
p. 127 et seqq.
Coming now to subjective conditions we find that the detection of an
element in a complex is aided by a previous familiarity with this apart
from its present concomitants. Thus the singling out of the partial
tones of a clang is greatly aided by the circumstance that these occur
and so are known apart from the ground-tone and thus are more readily
picked out and recognised.[96] Again, the separate detection of a
presentative element is aided by special interest in the particular
material. A fine ear for clang-effect or timbre can more readily fix
its attention on this.
[96] According to Helmholtz this previous familiarity with
the elements of a composite whole when it gives rise to a
vivid expectation may produce an illusory analysis, as when
certain opticians affirmed that they could detect the supposed
constituents of green, blue, and yellow, in that color. See
_Physiol. Optik_, p. 273.
Such special interest works mainly through what is known as practice.
What we are accustomed to note, and exercised in picking out from its
surroundings, we are able to detect readily. This effect of practice
in facilitating analysis or abstract attention to this and that
constituent of a presentation-complex is abundantly shown throughout
the whole domain of recent experimental inquiry into the nature and
relations of sensation.
Of course all such analytical separation of presentative constituents
is limited by certain conditions in our sensibility. Thus the limits
of local discrimination obviously confine the range of isolating
attention to local detail in our tactual and visual presentations.
Since too such isolation is differentiation, i. e. the singling out
of some trait or feature different in quality or intensity from
surrounding features, it follows that our abstraction is in all cases
limited by our discrimination. We cannot separately fixate a local
detail of color if this is not qualitatively distinguishable from its
surroundings, nor a local detail of form if this is not distinguishable
in luminous intensity from its entourage. Similarly with respect to
the difficult analysis of complex tone-presentations or clangs and
taste-presentations, as the mixed flavors of a dish.
_b_) _Synthesis: Conscious Relating._—In the second place all thought
is integrating or combining, or, as it is commonly expressed, a
process of Synthesis. In thinking we never merely isolate or abstract.
We analytically resolve the presentative complexes of our concrete
experience only in order to establish certain relations among them. The
most appropriate term for all such conscious relating or discernment of
relation is Comparison.
All our sensational or presentative material is given in certain
relations or connections, including the relation of coexistence, or
coinherence in a substance, of the several qualities of a thing.
Thus the several parts of an extended body stand in certain spatial
relations one to another, one part being situated to the right of the
other, and the object as a whole being above and behind another object,
and so forth. To these space-relations must be added the time-relations
of all events, such as the movements of objects, their changes of form,
and so forth. Lastly with these 'external' relations are given the
so-called 'internal' relations of difference and likeness. The colors,
forms, and so forth that present themselves from time to time exhibit a
large variety of such relations.
As long as we perceive or imagine the concrete object as such we have
only a vague 'implicit' knowledge of these relations. Thus a child
in looking at a house sees _implicitly_ the chimney in a definite
spatial relation to the mass of the building, but the clear explicit
grasp of the relation is a subsequent process going beyond perception
and involving a rudiment of what we mark off as thought. In like
manner when in recollection we recall a sequence of experiences, we
may implicitly recognise one as following another; yet it is only by
a process of thought that we explicitly single out this relation for
special consideration.
The same holds good with regard to the all-comprehensive relations
of dissimilarity and similarity. A child in perceiving a particular
object, say a tree, differentiates it from surrounding objects, other
trees, the background of the sky, etc., and in recognising a familiar
object as his toy, or as an orange, he assimilates it to previous like
presentations. But in these cases the consciousness of difference
and likeness is implicit only. It is some way from this implicit or
unconscious discrimination and assimilation to comparison proper,
issuing in a clear or explicit consciousness of a relation of likeness
or of unlikeness.
It follows from this that thought grows by insensible gradations out
of the lower intellective operations. The perception of objects in
space, and still more, the recollection of events in time, is itself
an incipient subconscious stage of the thought process, i. e. grasp of
relations. Hence our demarcations of the spheres of sense and thought,
of concrete or pictorial and abstract representations, are not to be
taken absolutely. The germ of thought is present throughout, yet as we
shall see presently it is a considerable step from the implicit to the
explicit seizing of these relations.[97]
[97] Cf. Lotze, _Mikrokosmus_, English translation, i. p. 655;
Ward, article "Psychology," _Encycl. Britannica_, p. 75.
All such explicit grasp of relation involves a new direction of
adjustive effort, or of (volitional) attention. Just as the analytic
resolution of a complex demands a special effort in the way of limited
concentration and resistance to irrelevant concomitants, so the
comparison of two presentations in order to discern their relation
imposes a further special task in the shape of a comprehensive grasp.
The special difficulties of the process are manifest. Comparative
attention to two presentations, say two colors in local, or two tones
in temporal juxtaposition is not merely the carrying out of a simple
adjustive process in one direction only, but the carrying out of a
double and yet co-ordinated adjustive process.
The fact that there is a general tendency to simple modes of
adjustment subserving a comparatively simple structure or pattern of
consciousness, and the fact that complex simultaneous adjustments, as
in the case of doing different things at the same time, and in that
of the synthetic relating process of thought, are rare and acquired
with difficulty, suggest that a special nervous process is involved,
consisting of a double and divergent stream of innervation, each branch
of which has to be kept going in certain relations of time, as also of
proportionate strength, with the other branch.
The process of synthetic or relating activity just described may
take the direction of consciously grasping the relations immediately
presented along with presentation, and more particularly the
co-existence of attributes in the same object, and the space and
time relations of presentations. To note the juxtaposition of yellow
and white in a daisy or the co-existence of its form and color, or
the spatial inclusion of its yellow centre in an extended whole,
is evidently to discern relations and so to carry out a process of
conscious synthesis.