English psychology

Introduction

PAGE

I. Past and future Philosophy — 2. Two meanings of the word Philosophy — 3. Why the Sciences become independent — 4. That Philosophy will become Metaphysics ; Poetry and Metaphysics— 5. Psychology as an independent science — 6. Object and method of ordinary Psychology — 7. Object and method of experimental Psychology — 8. Divisions of Psychology ; general, comparative, teratological Psychology, — science of characteristics— 9. Object of the work, ....... I

Chapter I. — Sensations And Ideas

Sensations and Ideas. — 1. The association of ideas — 2. Language — 3.

Memory, imagination, classification, abstraction — 4. Belief, . 47

Chap. II. Abstract Terms

General terms. — 1. Of general terms — 2. Space, time, movement, the

Chap. III. — The Feelings And The Will

Feeling and Will. — I. The insufficiency of English Psychology on this

point — 2. Feelings — 3. Free-will, 67 vi Contents.

CHAPTER I. — OF METHOD IN PSYCHOLOGY.

Of Method in Psychology. — I. The aim of psychology — 2. Method of psychology : positivists, metaphysicians, and associationalists — 3. The science of character, or Ethology, . . . .81

CHAP. II.— PSYCHOLOGY.

Psychology. — I. Consciousness — 2. Exterior perception — 3. Association of ideas— 4. Causality — 5. Necessary truths— 6. Reasoning — 7- Will, 92

CHAP. III. PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF MATTER AND

OF MIND.

Psychological Theory of Matter and Mind. — 1. Matter — 2. Mind—

3. The phenomenism of Hume and Mill, . . . .113

CHAPTER I. THE LAW OF EVOLUTION.

The Law of Evolution. — 1. Progress consists in the passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous : its law — 2. The hypothesis of the nebulus — 3. Living organism and social organism — 4. The genesis of science — 5. The knowable and the unknowable, 130

CHAP. II. — PSYCHOLOGY.

Psychology. — I. The principles of psychology — 2. Continuity and correspondence. Progress of correspondences, their co-ordination and integration — 3. The law of intelligence — 4. Unity of composition of psychological phenomena. Consciousness reduced to a double processus of assimilation and dissimilation — 5. Summary — 6. Is Mr. Herbert Spencer a Positivist ? . . 14S

Contents. vii

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CHAPTER I. — OF THE SENSES, THE APPETITES, AND THE INSTINCTS.

The Sensations. — 1. Muscular Sense— 2. Sight and Touch — 3. Instinct,

CHAP. II. — INTELLIGENCE.

Jtihll'tgcnce. — 1. Association of Ideas — 2. Of Consciousness — 3* Association by contiguity : exterior perception — 4. Association by resemblance : scientific processus — 5. Compound association — 6. Constructive association, or imagination, . . . . . 210

CHAP. III. THE EMOTIONS.

The Feelings. — I. Judgment of Mr. Herbert Spencer — 2. Classification of the emotions — 3. ^Esthetic feeling : of laughter — 4. Moral feelings, ......... . . 225

Chap. IV. Will

Will. — I. Division of the subject — 2. Of the germ of the will— 3. Growth of the voluntary power —4. Motives and resolution — 5. Free-will — 6. Conclusion, ....... 242

MR. GEORGE HENRY LEWES, 255

CHAPTER I. — THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY.

The History of Philosophy.— 1. Characteristics of his History— 2. His philosophy— 3. The ancients : Sophists, Plato, the Academicians : of exterior perception — 4. The moderns : Descartes, Hobbes, Berkeley (Idealism and Realism), Cabanis, Gall ; French Eclecticism, . 257 viii Contents.

CHAP. II. PSYCHOLOGY.

PAGE

Psychology — I. Physiology of common life — 2. Organism and mechanism— 3. Consciousness ; its various forms — 4. Discussion of the current doctrine of reflex actions — 5. Of sleep and heredity, . 291

CONCLUSION, 323

ENGLISH PSYCHOLOGY.

INTRODUCTION.

I. Fast and future Philosophy — 2. Two meanings of the word Philosophy — 3. Why the Sciences become independent — 4. That Philosophy will become Metaphysics ; Poetiy and Metaphysics — 5- Psychology as an independent science — 6. Object and method of ordinary Psychology — 7. Object and method of experimental Psychology — 8. Divisions of Psychology ; general, comparative, teratological Psychology, — science of characteristics — 9. Object of the work.

I

To the question, What was philosophy in the beginning 1 a reply is easy. It was universal science. It would be more difficult to answer an inquiry as to what it is to be in the future; and yet the study of the past, and certain inductions founded upon history, may perhaps enable us to foretell its destiny. At its origin philosophy has for its object the universality of things, the All, and philosophy, like its object, is One ; outside it there is no idea of distinct and independent sciences. It resembles those rudimentary organisms in which the physiological distribution of labour has not yet taken place. The slow and continuous labour of life, a natural tendency towards progress, will bring the sciences out of philosophy, as the organs are brought out of the embryo. Let us follow the march of this development in the past ; it may cast a light upon the future, and afford us a glimpse of it.

The first branch which became detached from the common tree, and entered upon a separate life, is the science of numbers and of sizes — Mathematics. The Pythagorean school confounded mathematics with philosophy, but two centuries later they became clearly separate. Plato did not admit that a man might be a philosopher without having been a geometrician, but thenceforth geometry did without philosophy. The nature of mathematics explains this. Among all the sciences, not one has less need to disquiet itself concerning facts and experience. If, at their origin, mathematics were empirical, as they probably were, they speedily elevated themselves to the abstract notions which form their bases, and found their true method. In the third century B.C. there existed in Greece an order of precise, rigorous sciences, recognised as such, and perfectly distinct from philosophical researches. We are about to trace the continuation of the first example of this emancipation of the particular sciences.

Many ages had to elapse before a new science was to achieve its autonomy. The ancient philosophy, which reached its greatest height in Plato and Aristotle, still remains the universal science, or nearly so; in it metaphysics follow physics, politics follow morals, studies in physiology were weighed with studies in psychology (TimceuSy De Am'md) ; it is still the science of all that is ; it studies man, nature, and God. Thus it remains in the Middle Ages ; outside of philosophy, there is nothing but mathematics and that which relates to them, and the Arts, such as medicine and alchemy. But now we find a new science growing up, aided by calculation and experience, which accumulates facts and seeks out laws, which observes instead of reasoning, and which speedily finds itself strong enough to assert its independence. This science is called physics. It was a slow and progressive emanation, whose facts are nearer to us, and better known, so that we can follow them. Galileo, though breaking away from Aristotle, is still a ' philosopher/ He boasted of having devoted ' more years to philosophy than months to mathematics/ and his doctrine is declared ' absurd in philosophy' in the judgment of the Inquisition. Descartes held that philosophy is ' a. tree whose root is metaphysics, and whose trunk is physics.' His system of physics, like that of Newton, is explained under the title Pri?icipia Philosophic*. Philosophical instruction, which from its nature can only follow workers and inventors from afar, comprised physics until the end of the eighteenth century. The disruption was not rude ; it took place because it was inevitable. When the domain of a science is actively utilized, when every corner of it is explored

Introduction.

and turned over, when its object and its means are thoroughly understood, then that science has won her right to independence by success.

But thenceforth philosophy could no longer claim as its object everything which exists : man, nature, and God. Physics and the kindred sciences wrest from it nature ; shall man and God be left to it 1

The science of language is a purely human science, cultivated by philosophers at first rather by chance, but whose importance never escaped their notice. Plato gives a sketch of it in his Cratylus. The Epicureans and the Stoics, two schools which had then fallen into decadence, had written largely on this subject. Among moderns, we need only recall the names of Leibnitz, Locke, Condillac, and their disciples. Less than a century ago, the science of language was at that point, when the discovery of Sanscrit enabled it to find its true method and line, and to establish itself as an independent science. Since then, it has collected facts, defined laws, classified languages, determined roots ; it is constantly advancing in its almost chemical analysis of words ; it has its own vocabulary, its distinct parts, its phonetics, its morphology, etc. It is singularly jealous of its independence. It will have nothing in common with metaphysics, but repels such relation as a crime. Here then is a purely human science detached from the common trunk.

In later times the science of morals has likewise claimed its independence. The task of some of our contemporaries has been to constitute the theory of the rights and duties of man, without asking the aid either of religion or philosophy ; to invest morals with the rank of a primary science, arising from itself alone ; to release it from the preliminary necessity of a metaphysical doctrine whose mere consequence it should be. This undertaking has found many partisans and many enemies. Without entering into the question of the value of this attempt, let us state the fact that the science of morals fearlessly asserts its independence, and claims a separate domain of its own.

This would be the place in which to show that psychology has the same tendencies ; to show that its most recent transformations have set it free from the yoke of metaphysics, and that it also demands its autonomy. But the subject is to be treated at length in a later portion of this work.

Is it necessary to call attention to the fact that physiology is independent of philosophy 1 The truth is, that their relations never were close.1 Physiology is, above all, born of experience. It has been science springing from an art, rather than a particular science arising from general science. Medicine, which has existed always and everywhere, has not been able to dispense with the study of the living body. Thus, physiology was, in the first place, a means, before it became a science with a self-contained object. In this it resembles chemistry, born of certain practical inventions and of the mysterious researches of the Middle Ages into the transmutation of metals, which were not altogether discovered from philosophers, as the name ' hermetic philosophy,' so frequently employed to designate those researches, proves. Besides, the popular imagination readily confounds the philosopher with the alchemist, placing him in one of the dark vaults which Rembrandt has painted, surrounded by books, furnaces, and crucibles.

In short, all the special sciences which now exist have been derived from a double source, — from philosophy and from art. These latter, whose origin is the more humble, are not the least sound or fruitful. In comparing the facts accumulated by experience, they have been able to eliminate accidents, to separate that which is fixed and permanent, and to define its laws ; that is to say, to arrive at precise knowledge, and 'at that essential character of science which is to foresee/ As for the independence of those sciences which have already come out, or are tending towards coming out from philosophy, we have seen it produced naturally, by unceasing and unwitting work, and the severance results from the very nature of things. An exact and positive science cannot limit itself to vague affirmations, it must prove and verify its assertions, it must weigh the most minute details ; a chemist will not hesitate to devote several years to the study of

1 Nevertheless, Aristotle did much for anatomy and biology ; and among the predecessors of Hippocrates his learned translator names the (pvcidkbyoi.

Introduction.

a single body and of its compounds ; a zoologist would do the same for some humble infusoria visible only under the microscope. It is necessary to specialize one's-self, as the present phrase is, to insure the progress of science. But a result of this endless analysis is that each particular science becomes a world. In fact, greatness is a relative thing. If chemistry be only a small item in the total of human knowledge, it is immense when compared to a simple study of azote and its compounds. How can we be surprised that it amply suffices to the labourers in it, and that they seek for nothing beyond its horizon % It is the same everywhere. Beyond this, even ; that interior process which resolves philosophy into particular sciences resolves them again into sub- sciences, physics into thermology, optics, acoustics ; biology into physiology, etc. etc. In this labour of decomposition, which has no assignable limits, each step in analysis leads further away from the primitive unity.

ii.

Let us now inquire what remains to philosophy after those successive subtractions 1 What are its pretensions, it limits, its object'? If we examine the different senses in which the word philosophy is used in correct language, discussions, or books, we shall be struck by the various acceptations to which it lends itself, and by the confusion which it may produce. A man who describes, analyses, and classifies the phenomena of thought like Mr. Herbert Spencer or Mr. A. Bain is called a philosopher. A man who regulates morals, lays down prescriptions, proposes an ideal of conduct, is equally a philosopher. Do you place logic among the recent discoveries of science, as Mr. Stuart Mill has done, or discourse upon the attributes of God, or search into first causes ? — the same title is bestowed upon you. A high philosophical bearing is justly acknowledged as belonging to a theory like that of the unity of physical forces, which establishes their correlations and transformations. Here are different significations, and we may add to them many others. Whence this confusion 1 It seems to us to originate thus : Two very different things may be meant by philosophy • that which is, and that which tends to be ; the first consisting: of a rather incoherent assemblage of four or five sciences ; the second offering a precise rational signification, having a determinate object, and limits assigned by experience.

In the ordinary sense of the word this is philosophy. It is a study which comes from the human mind and from its various manifestations, which, by the faculty of reasoning, is led up to logic, and, by the faculty of willing and acting conformably to a law, is led up to morals, and from thence mounts up to the first cause of all things, to God ; it is completed by some metaphyseal researches into the essence of the soul, the nature of certitude, and the fundamental principles of morals. Can this be rightly designated a science having an object 1 If you ask what is the object of physics, astronomy, chemistry, anthropology, the reply is easy and ready. But has philosophy an object, or objects, or portions of objects? It has one, in the first place, with which no other science occupies itself. That object is God. Must we add to this, Man 1 Assuredly not man as a whole, for anatomy, physiology, in short the biological sciences, have taken a share in him for themselves. A portion of man then, — his soul 1 This is also to be contested. History, in its extended sense, the science of language, jurisprudence, even political economy, claim their share of that. It comes to this, then, that the object of philosophy is God, plus a certain portion of man, — an object, plus a portion of an object. How can it henceforth claim the title of a primary and universal science % How, above all, can it arrive at unity % That would be possible only according to the idealist solution, which holds that God, nature, history, everything, has no reality except in human thought.

This is what philosophy actually is. But what does it tend to become 1 If we admit, as facts constrain us to admit, that the special sciences detach themselves from it, as time goes on, at uncertain intervals, — if it be granted that this rupture is naturally produced by the accumulation of facts, the incessant progress of analysis, and the necessity of specialization, — if we remark that psychology is already almost independent, that morals desires to become so, and that logic is only a portion of psychology, we foresee the possibility of new sciences, more or less distant, and a further impoverishment of philosophy, at least in appearance.

Introduction.

Its actual incoherence appears to us to be caused by its containing, besides general science, special sciences, which are regarded as an integral part of itself. It resembles those beings which are reproduced by division, or cutting into pieces, and which, at certain moments, present the strange spectacle of three or four individuals still adhering to the common stem.

hi.

In order that we may understand what philosophy tends to become by the progress of human knowledge, let us see what iS produced in the special sciences when they detach themselves. Let us suppose mathematics cultivated by the philosophers, not as a special science, but as forming a portion of philosophy ; this is what would happen. The method of all philosophic minds is to give the precedence to questions of principles over everything else ; they will therefore begin by examining axioms, discussing the legitimacy of method, investigating quantity, measuring time and space, at the risk of never believing themselves sufficiently certain to begin. They may even lose themselves in strange systems of numbers, like the Pythagoreans and Plato. Mathematicians go to work differently. They do not trouble themselves to reconcile Newton with Leibnitz, or Locke with Kant, on the nature of time and space ; they accept axioms without discussing them, on the guarantee of common sense only, but they go on. The constitution and development of this science depended upon the condition that they should lay aside at the outset a number of unresolved questions, abandoning them to discussion by the philosophers.

It is the same with physics. Before Galileo, physics were merely metaphysics with some roughly explained facts over and above. In Aristotle's works the one is hardly to be distinguished from the other, — they succeed and supplement, and naturally suppose each other. What is matter 1 What is nature ? Does it comprehend matter and form 2 What is motion? Is it infinitely divisible % What is power, and what is action % Does the external world exist 1 What is the worth of our senses % May we trust them ] All these questions are put aside by the physicist. He accepts the faith of common sense in the material world, and the senses which reveal it to us ; he deals not with the essence, but with the facts and their laws ; he controls the testimony of the senses without discussing it. He relegates to philosophy all researches into the ultimate reasons of things; let philosophy solve them, if it can. Even chemistry, which in analysis descends to quite the last elements, does not go beyond the study of secondary causes.

In the science of language, the question dear to philosophy is that of origin. Put forward in the time of Democritus, it has been again debated in our days by the theological school of De Maistre and De Bonald. But when linguistics was definitively constituted a special science, this question of origin was laid aside, and though it appears obscure rather than insoluble, it is banished from the positive study of languages. The linguist accepts the existence of various idioms and dialects as a fact ; he classifies them, traces them, and explains their radiations, but the question of origin he regards as hazardous or at least premature.

The study of economical facts is gaining in importance every day; in France especially, notwithstanding the strong prejudices against it. The dissent of the economists does not hinder the science from establishing itself, little by little, and destroying the pretended axioms of common sense by solid reasons. But political economy holds by facts, and though it presupposes philosophical principles, it does not discuss them. Locke, in his Essay on Civil Government, did not separate this science from the other methods of being of social life. Boisguillebert gave it a more distinct position ; at length Quesnay and Smith constituted for it an independent domain, and since that time its independence, with respect to metaphysics, has increased daily.

It would be easy to multiply proofs by mentioning other sciences ; for instance, to show that biology deals only with manifestations of life, but resolutely sets aside all theories on its nature and origin; — it places them outside scientific knowledge — that biology regards vitalism, animism, organism, etc., merely as ingenious, unverified systems.

It appears still more unfortunate for philosophy, that from the moment at which any science shakes itself free from metaphysical

Introduction.

researches, it immediately begins to make progress. This is exemplified by mathematics, with Archimedes and Euclid ; astronomy, with Kepler and Copernicus ; physics, with Galileo, Huyghens, and Newton ; chemistry, with Lavoisier ; biology, with Bichat and contemporaries ; the science of language with Bopp and Max Miiller. And yet this is not in reality surprising ; there are very plain reasons for it : in the first place, because the genius which was expended in solving the insoluble and finding the undiscoverable is now devoted only to purely scientific researches ; and in the second, because the aim of science is changed ; theories are now subordinated to facts, and not facts to theories ; systems pass away, but experiences remain.

Thus then, everywhere and always, particular sciences which have a special object are only constituted by leaving a balance of unsolved questions aside at their outset. Exactly speaking, they have no commencement ; they come out by chance, as they can ; no one knows from whence they come, nor whither they go ; but on the other hand, every one knows what they are. To those who judge them as philosophers, their point of departure is ruinous, ill established, not discussed ; but if philosophy condemns, experience absolves them. And even logic does the same, by proving that thus they ought to proceed. Now we can understand under what conditions the particular sciences still adherent to philosophy will be able to render themselves independent of it. They must start from some postulate, from certain rational or experimental truths ; they must not stop at questions of principles, and they must leave discussions to philosophy. Morals, for instance, will not seek beyond that which is good in itself. Psychology will not ask what the soul is ; it will interdict all excursions into the region of primary causes. This is the absolute condition of their existence as exact sciences capable of progress. Those who have reproached these attempts at emancipation, with an absence of foundation, who have said to morals and to psychology : * It is anti-philosophical to endeavour to do without preliminary metaphysics; your commencement is arbitrary ; your data are affirmed, not discussed ; you are not fixed upon principles ' — how have they failed to see that this was a logical necessity, and that debates on principles prevent arrival at io English Psychology.

consequences 1 How have they failed to see that their reproaches might as well be directed to geometry, to physics, to chemistry, in short, to all the actually constituted sciences'? Will they oppose the gratuitous difficulty that that which is possible for the study of nature is not possible for that of man ; that we may do without first principles in investigating matter and its properties, but that we cannot dispense with them when we are concerned with mind and its manifestations ? Not only would this assertion be devoid of facts, but it would be in contradiction to the facts. For, among the number of the sciences which are called moral, — that is to say, whose objects are the manifestations of human thought and will, do we not place the science of languages, law, political economy, which interdict as much as possible, and every day more strongly, all metaphysical discussions %

iv.

We can now perceive what philosophy tends to become, and what a transformation the continuous coalition of the sciences must inevitably oblige it to undergo. Universal in its origin, philosophy will in the future be still universal, but in another manner. Formerly, it contained everything — principles and consequences, causes and facts, general truths and results. It now presents the strange spectacle of a science, universal on certain sides, particular on others. At a later date, it will contain only the general speculations of the human mind upon the first principles and the last reasons of all things. 77 will be metaphysics and nothing more. That which will thus occupy the philosophers, and constitute their own domain, will be that unknown upon which every science establishes itself, and which it then abandons to their disputes. In that there will still be an eternal source of discussion and research : and, as they will extend over the whole field of human knowledge, of all sciences which exist, or which shall come into being, philosophy will remain universal. Nor is this all. The progress of particular sciences leads them necessarily to wider and wider generalizations, supported upon facts indeed, but which frequently outrun them — such are the hypotheses which explain so many phenomena, summarize so many laws, have resisted so many verifications, that they are almost demonstrated truths. In these will be other materials for future philosophy. The law of universal attraction, and that of the correlation of forces, enable us to foresee what the sciences may discover by the accumulation of facts, by calculation, and exact methods.

Let us suppose some analogous discovery in chemistry. Let us admit that some of its mysteries are stolen from life, and that biology finds its Newton. Let us hope for some generalization in the phenomena of thought, which shall associate them with those of life ; that history will, in part at least, yield up its secret to us. Let us add all the great views which we cannot forestal, all that the sciences yet unborn shall reveal to us ; can we then believe that method will be wanting to philosophical minds, that is to say, to minds engaged upon the general whole? Let it not be said either that there is a contradiction in maintaining that the progress of the sciences brings them back to philosophy, after its having been stated that it detaches them from it. All science is contradicted by the double action of analysis and synthesis. It arrives at precise, active, verified knowledge, only by constantly descending towards the infinitely little ; it distinguishes, separates, divides, seeks out exceptions and differences. But a heap of well-established facts is not a science ; the relations remain to be appreciated, the resemblances to be grouped, the laws to be reached by induction, the whole to be sought out. There must, therefore, be two orders of problems in philosophy, identical at bottom : those from which sciences spring, and those which are their result. Philosophy will be always sounding this double ignorance. The entire collection of human knowledge resembles a great river flowing full between its banks, under a sky glowing with light, but whose source and mouth are unknown, which springs and dies in the clouds. Bold spirits have never been able either to solve this mystery or to forget it. There are always some sufficiently intrepid to throw themselves resolutely into this inaccessible region, whence they return blinded, giddy, and relating such strange things that the world holds them to be hallucinations.

Is philosophy, thus understood, to remain a science? How can it so remain, if everything which is scientifically to be known is taken away from it, if, wherever there are facts to be observed, laws to be sought into, rotations to be calculated, some particular science constitutes a domain of its own, and leaves to philosophy such questions only as it cannot solve? How can there be a science where there is no measure or verification possible? Metaphysics is a collection of truths outside and above all demonstration, because they are the foundation of all demonstration ; it is negatively determined by the collective action of all the sciences, which eliminates everything that outruns them. Besides this, metaphysics is subjective, and science ought to be objective. That which is demonstrated, established, formulated in laws, is invariably acquired independently of time and place. Mathematical truths are the same for the Hindu and the Greek, the Italian and the Englishman. Science does not reflect the genius of a race, it is the work of an impersonal spirit. There is no such thing as French physics as opposed to English physics ; that which was true for Galileo is true for Ampere and Faraday. This must be so, since the afhrmations of science are capable of verification, since science fashions the human mind after nature, instead of fashioning nature according to the arbitrary conceptions of the human mind. In metaphysics the contrary is the case ; the work is personal, it is impressed with the character of an individual, or at least of a race. It is local and ephemeral, for the individual communicates his fragility to his work.