gers, 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 unsystem-
atic. 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 Psy-
chology, 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 writ-
ings 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.
tain data uncritically, and declines to challenge the ele-
ments 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 dis-
cussion of them (as of other elements) is called meta-
physics 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,
asca 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 dis-
tinctly conscious of its great extent. Metaphysics fragmen-
tary, irresponsible, and half-awake, and unconscious that
she is metaphysical, spoils two good things when she in-
jects 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 inte-
gers, 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 unsystem-
atic. 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 Psy-
chology, 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 writ-
ings 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.
tain data uncritically, and declines to challenge the ele-
ments 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 dis-
cussion of them (as of other elements) is called meta-
physics 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 dis-
tinctly conscious of its great extent. Metaphysics fragmen-
tary, irresponsible, and half-awake, and unconscious that
she is metaphysical, spoils two good things when she in-
jects 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 inte-
gers, 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.
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