a. The relation of man to the world around him,--in what sense and
within what limits can he withdraw from its laws or assert himself
against them (Freedom and Necessity), and what is that which we suppose
to be thus independent and which we call ourselves? How does the inward
differ from the outward and what is the relation between them, and where
do we draw the line by which we separate mind from matter, the soul
from the body? Is the mind active or passive, or partly both? Are its
movements identical with those of the body, or only preconcerted and
coincident with them, or is one simply an aspect of the other?
b. What are we to think of time and space? Time seems to have a nearer
connexion with the mind, space with the body; yet time, as well as
space, is necessary to our idea of either. We see also that they have
an analogy with one another, and that in Mathematics they often
interpenetrate. Space or place has been said by Kant to be the form of
the outward, time of the inward sense. He regards them as parts or
forms of the mind. But this is an unfortunate and inexpressive way of
describing their relation to us. For of all the phenomena present to the
human mind they seem to have most the character of objective existence.
There is no use in asking what is beyond or behind them; we cannot get
rid of them. And to throw the laws of external nature which to us are
the type of the immutable into the subjective side of the antithesis
seems to be equally inappropriate.
c. When in imagination we enter into the closet of the mind and withdraw
ourselves from the external world, we seem to find there more or less
distinct processes which may be described by the words, 'I perceive,' 'I
feel,' 'I think,' 'I want,' 'I wish,' 'I like,' 'I dislike,' 'I fear,'
'I know,' 'I remember,' 'I imagine,' 'I dream,' 'I act,' 'I endeavour,'
'I hope.' These processes would seem to have the same notions attached
to them in the minds of all educated persons. They are distinguished
from one another in thought, but they intermingle. It is possible to
reflect upon them or to become conscious of them in a greater or less
degree, or with a greater or less continuity or attention, and thus
arise the intermittent phenomena of consciousness or self-consciousness.
The use of all of them is possible to us at all times; and therefore
in any operation of the mind the whole are latent. But we are able to
characterise them sufficiently by that part of the complex action which
is the most prominent. We have no difficulty in distinguishing an act
of sight or an act of will from an act of thought, although thought is
present in both of them. Hence the conception of different faculties or
different virtues is precarious, because each of them is passing into
the other, and they are all one in the mind itself; they appear and
reappear, and may all be regarded as the ever-varying phases or aspects
or differences of the same mind or person.
d. Nearest the sense in the scale of the intellectual faculties
is memory, which is a mode rather than a faculty of the mind, and
accompanies all mental operations. There are two principal kinds of it,
recollection and recognition,--recollection in which forgotten things
are recalled or return to the mind, recognition in which the mind finds
itself again among things once familiar. The simplest way in which we
can represent the former to ourselves is by shutting our eyes and trying
to recall in what we term the mind's eye the picture of the
surrounding scene, or by laying down the book which we are reading and
recapitulating what we can remember of it. But many times more powerful
than recollection is recognition, perhaps because it is more assisted by
association. We have known and forgotten, and after a long interval the
thing which we have seen once is seen again by us, but with a different
feeling, and comes back to us, not as new knowledge, but as a thing to
which we ourselves impart a notion already present to us; in Plato's
words, we set the stamp upon the wax. Every one is aware of the
difference between the first and second sight of a place, between a
scene clothed with associations or bare and divested of them. We say to
ourselves on revisiting a spot after a long interval: How many things
have happened since I last saw this! There is probably no impression
ever received by us of which we can venture to say that the vestiges are
altogether lost, or that we might not, under some circumstances, recover
it. A long-forgotten knowledge may be easily renewed and therefore is
very different from ignorance. Of the language learnt in childhood not
a word may be remembered, and yet, when a new beginning is made, the
old habit soon returns, the neglected organs come back into use, and the
river of speech finds out the dried-up channel.
e. 'Consciousness' is the most treacherous word which is employed in
the study of the mind, for it is used in many senses, and has rarely,
if ever, been minutely analyzed. Like memory, it accompanies all mental
operations, but not always continuously, and it exists in various
degrees. It may be imperceptible or hardly perceptible: it may be the
living sense that our thoughts, actions, sufferings, are our own. It
is a kind of attention which we pay to ourselves, and is intermittent
rather than continuous. Its sphere has been exaggerated. It is sometimes
said to assure us of our freedom; but this is an illusion: as there
may be a real freedom without consciousness of it, so there may be a
consciousness of freedom without the reality. It may be regarded as a
higher degree of knowledge when we not only know but know that we know.
Consciousness is opposed to habit, inattention, sleep, death. It may be
illustrated by its derivative conscience, which speaks to men, not only
of right and wrong in the abstract, but of right and wrong actions in
reference to themselves and their circumstances.
f. Association is another of the ever-present phenomena of the human
mind. We speak of the laws of association, but this is an expression
which is confusing, for the phenomenon itself is of the most capricious
and uncertain sort. It may be briefly described as follows. The simplest
case of association is that of sense. When we see or hear separately
one of two things, which we have previously seen or heard together, the
occurrence of the one has a tendency to suggest the other. So the sight
or name of a house may recall to our minds the memory of those who once
lived there. Like may recall like and everything its opposite. The parts
of a whole, the terms of a series, objects lying near, words having
a customary order stick together in the mind. A word may bring back a
passage of poetry or a whole system of philosophy; from one end of the
world or from one pole of knowledge we may travel to the other in an
indivisible instant. The long train of association by which we pass from
one point to the other, involving every sort of complex relation, so
sudden, so accidental, is one of the greatest wonders of mind...This
process however is not always continuous, but often intermittent: we can
think of things in isolation as well as in association; we do not mean
that they must all hang from one another. We can begin again after an
interval of rest or vacancy, as a new train of thought suddenly arises,
as, for example, when we wake of a morning or after violent exercise.
Time, place, the same colour or sound or smell or taste, will often
call up some thought or recollection either accidentally or naturally
associated with them. But it is equally noticeable that the new thought
may occur to us, we cannot tell how or why, by the spontaneous action of
the mind itself or by the latent influence of the body. Both science and
poetry are made up of associations or recollections, but we must observe
also that the mind is not wholly dependent on them, having also the
power of origination.
There are other processes of the mind which it is good for us to study
when we are at home and by ourselves,--the manner in which thought
passes into act, the conflict of passion and reason in many stages, the
transition from sensuality to love or sentiment and from earthly love to
heavenly, the slow and silent influence of habit, which little by little
changes the nature of men, the sudden change of the old nature of man
into a new one, wrought by shame or by some other overwhelming impulse.
These are the greater phenomena of mind, and he who has thought of
them for himself will live and move in a better-ordered world, and will
himself be a better-ordered man.
At the other end of the 'globus intellectualis,' nearest, not to earth
and sense, but to heaven and God, is the personality of man, by which
he holds communion with the unseen world. Somehow, he knows not how,
somewhere, he knows not where, under this higher aspect of his being he
grasps the ideas of God, freedom and immortality; he sees the forms of
truth, holiness and love, and is satisfied with them. No account of the
mind can be complete which does not admit the reality or the possibility
of another life. Whether regarded as an ideal or as a fact, the highest
part of man's nature and that in which it seems most nearly to approach
the divine, is a phenomenon which exists, and must therefore be included
within the domain of Psychology.
IV. We admit that there is no perfect or ideal Psychology. It is not a
whole in the same sense in which Chemistry, Physiology, or Mathematics
are wholes: that is to say, it is not a connected unity of knowledge.
Compared with the wealth of other sciences, it rests upon a small number
of facts; and when we go beyond these, we fall into conjectures and
verbal discussions. The facts themselves are disjointed; the causes of
them run up into other sciences, and we have no means of tracing
them from one to the other. Yet it may be true of this, as of other
beginnings of knowledge, that the attempt to put them together has
tested the truth of them, and given a stimulus to the enquiry into them.
Psychology should be natural, not technical. It should take the form
which is the most intelligible to the common understanding, because it
has to do with common things, which are familiar to us all. It should
aim at no more than every reflecting man knows or can easily verify for
himself. When simple and unpretentious, it is least obscured by words,
least liable to fall under the influence of Physiology or Metaphysic.
It should argue, not from exceptional, but from ordinary phenomena. It
should be careful to distinguish the higher and the lower elements of
human nature, and not allow one to be veiled in the disguise of the
other, lest through the slippery nature of language we should pass
imperceptibly from good to evil, from nature in the higher to nature in
the neutral or lower sense. It should assert consistently the unity of
the human faculties, the unity of knowledge, the unity of God and law.
The difference between the will and the affections and between the
reason and the passions should also be recognized by it.
Its sphere is supposed to be narrowed to the individual soul; but it
cannot be thus separated in fact. It goes back to the beginnings of
things, to the first growth of language and philosophy, and to the whole
science of man. There can be no truth or completeness in any study of
the mind which is confined to the individual. The nature of language,
though not the whole, is perhaps at present the most important element
in our knowledge of it. It is not impossible that some numerical laws
may be found to have a place in the relations of mind and matter, as in
the rest of nature. The old Pythagorean fancy that the soul 'is or has
in it harmony' may in some degree be realized. But the indications
of such numerical harmonies are faint; either the secret of them lies
deeper than we can discover, or nature may have rebelled against the use
of them in the composition of men and animals. It is with qualitative
rather than with quantitative differences that we are concerned
in Psychology. The facts relating to the mind which we obtain from
Physiology are negative rather than positive. They show us, not the
processes of mental action, but the conditions of which when deprived
the mind ceases to act. It would seem as if the time had not yet arrived
when we can hope to add anything of much importance to our knowledge
of the mind from the investigations of the microscope. The elements of
Psychology can still only be learnt from reflections on ourselves, which
interpret and are also interpreted by our experience of others. The
history of language, of philosophy, and religion, the great thoughts or
inventions or discoveries which move mankind, furnish the larger moulds
or outlines in which the human mind has been cast. From these the
individual derives so much as he is able to comprehend or has the
opportunity of learning.