THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
BY
WILLIAM JAMES
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1918
TO
MY DEAR FRIEND
FRANÇOIS PILLON.
AS A TOKEN OF AFFECTION,
AND AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF WHAT I OWE
TO THE
CRITIQUE PHILOSOPHIQUE.
PREFACE.
The treatise which follows has in the main grown up in connection with
the author's class-room instruction in Psychology, although it 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
æsthetic 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 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, 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 mass 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 Baldwin's
Handbook of Psychology may be advantageously used.
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.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, August 1890.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY,
Mental Manifestations depend on Cerebral Conditions, 1. Pursuit of ends
and choice are the marks of Mind's presence.