Principles of physiological psychology

Part I. The Bodily Substrate Of The Mental Life

^INCIPLES OF

PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY

I

I

i

HY

WILHELM WUNDT

PROFESSOR OK PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNU'EKSITY OK I.EIPSIC

Translated from ihe Fifth German Edition (1902)

BY

EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER

SAGE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY i

VOL. I.

With 105 Figures in the Text lclndox

Author’s Preface to the First Edition

The work which I here present to the public is an attempt to mark out a new domain of science. I am well aware that the question may be raised, whether the time is yet ripe for such an undertaking. The new discipline rests upon anatomical and physiological foundations which, in certain respects, are themselves very far from solid ; while the experimental treatment of psychological problems must be pronounced, from every point of view, to be still in its first beginnings. At the same time the best means of discovering the blanks that our ignorance has left in the subject matter of a developing science is, as we all know, to take a general survey of its present status. A first attempt, such as this book represents, must show many imperfections ; but the more imperfect it is, the more effectively will it call for improvement. Moreover, it is especially true in this field of inquiry that the solution of many problems is intimately bound up with their relation to other groups of facts, facts that often appear remote and disconnected ; so that the wider view is necessary, if we are to find the right path.

In many portions of the book I have made use of my own investigations ; in the others, I have at least tried to acquire an independent judgment. Thus, the outline of the anatomy of the brain, contained in Part I, is based upon a knowledge of morphological relations which I have obtained by repeated dissection of human and animal brains. For part of the material employed in this work, and for frequent assistance in the difficulties which such a study offers, I am indebted to the former Director of the Heidelberg x\natomical Museum, Professor Fr. Arnold. The finer structure of the brain, as revealed by the microscope, is, of course, a subject for the specialist ; all that I have been able to do is to compare the statements of the various authors with one another and with the results of the gross anatomy of the brain. I must leave it to the expert to decide whether the account of the central conduction paths, as drawn from these sources I in chapter iv., is, at least in its main features, correct. I am fully conscious that, in detail, it requires to be supplemented and emendedon m_any sides. Still, it receives a certain confirmation from the fact that the functional derangements induced experimentally by the extirpation and transsection Df various parts of the brain are, as I seek to show in chapter v., readily explicable in terms of the anatomical plan. Most of the phenomena here jdescribed I have had tiequent opportunity to observe in my own exp3ri-

V

VI

AittJior's Preface to First Edition merits. In chapter vi. I have brought together the results of my Untersuchungen zur Mechanik der Nerven und Nervencentren,^ so far as these relate to the question — which is one of psychological importance — regarding the nature of the forces operative in the nervous elements.^

Parts II and III are concerned with the topics that first drew me, many years ago, to psychological studies. When in 1858 I began to work upon my Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahr nehmung,^ German physiology was dominated, almost exclusively, by nativistic conceptions. My principal purpose in writing that work was to demonstrate the insufficiency of current hypotheses regarding the origin of our spatial ideas of touch and sight, and to discover a physiological basis for a psychological theory. The views there set forth have since found general acceptance among physiologists as well as among psychologists ; though in the form which they have usually taken in the physiologies they could, perhaps, hardly hold their own against a rigorous criticism. I hope that, in the present work, I have succeeded in showing the inadequacy of modern physiological empiricism, as well as the relative justification for nativism and the necessity with which both conceptions alike point to a more profound psychological theory. The hypothesis of specific sensory energies, which is really a survival from the older nativism, has, in my opinion, become untenable, despite the convenient explanation it affords of a large body of facts. My critical treatment of this subject will, no doubt, call forth many objections. But if the facts are viewed as a whole, the cogency of the argument will hardly be disputed.

The investigations of Part IV,^ especially the experiments on the appearance and course in consciousness of the sensory ideas aroused by external impressions, have occupied me for fourteen years, though, it is true, with many interruptions, due to other work and to the necessity of procuring appropriate apparatus. The first results were presented, as early as 1861, to the Natural Science Conference at Speyer. Since that time a number of notable papers on the same subject have been published by other investigators. No one, however, has hitherto turned these results to account for a theory of consciousness and of attention. I have here sought to give this important chapter of physiological psychology at any rate a tentative systematic setting.

Finally, I would ask the reader, when he comes uj)on polemical passages directed against Herbart, to remember that my criticisms are, at the same time, a proof of the importance which I attach to the psychological works

1 Erlangen, 1871. A second volume followed later : Stuttgart, 1876. — Translator.

2 Chapters iv. and v. of the previous editions represent chapters v. and vi. of the present edition. What was formerly chapter vi. now becomes chapter iii.

Leipsic and Heidelberg, 1862. — Translator.

^ Now Part V.

AtitJior^s Preface to First E.dition vii

of this philosopher. It is to Herbart, next after Kant, that I am chiefly indebted for the development of my own philosophical principles. So with regard to Darwin ; while I have, in one of the concluding chapters, opposed Darwin’s theory of expressive movements, I need hardly say that the present work is deeply imbued with those far-reaching conceptions which, by his labours, have become an inalienable possession of natural science.

W. WUNDT.

Heidelberg, March, 1874.

Author’s Preface to the Fifth Edition

When this book first came before the world, nearly eight and twenty years ago, the status of the science for which it hoped to prepare a place was very different from that of the physiological psychology of to-day. At that time only one successful attempt had been made — in Fechner’s Elemente der Psychophysik — to throw the light of an exact procedure upon philosophical problems that might, in the last resort, be regarded as psychological. Fechner apart, the adventurer of an ‘ experimental psychology ’ ^ was still reduced, in most instances, to borrow what he could from other disciplines, especially from the physiology of sense and nervous system. To-day all this is changed ; there is pouring in from all sides — from the psychological laboratories proper, from neighbouring disciplines, from every science that comes into contact with psychological problems — an amount of expository material that, even now, is hardly calculable. At that time the investigator who sought to employ accuracy of method in any question of psychology was challenged at every point, by philosophy as by natural science, to prove that his endeavours were legitimate. To-day these doubts are hardly to be feared. But, to offset our advantage, there have appeared within psychology itself strongly divergent tendencies, some of which cover profound differences of principle regarding the problems and aims of the science, and the paths that it should pursue.

From edition to edition of the present work, as I have attempted to adapt each successive revision to its altered circumstances, these changes of the times have been to me a source of ever-increasing difficulty. Hence, when the need arose for this fifth edition, I was strongly inclined to close my account with the book, and to leave it in the form which it had finally taken, unsatisfactory as I now felt that form to be. But, tempting as the idea was for many reasons, there was one paramount objection. The former edition contained many passages which I could not allow to pass as an adequate expression of my present convictions : for I would be the last to refuse, in the onward endeavour of our youthful science, to learn all that I can from new experiences, and in their light to better my theories.

I resolved, accordingly, at least to put the book into such a shape that these discrepancies should, so far as possible, be done away with. However, I soon found that this plan could not be carried out ; the result would

1 This phrase ap})ears to have been introduced by Wundt ; see Beiträge, 1862 Vorrede, vi. — Translator.

Vlll

Author s Preface to Fifth Edition

be, after as before, a book that, in all probability, should satisfy the reader as little as it satisfied myself. And so, almost unawares, the new edition has become practically a new work. My principal purpose in this thorough recasting of the material has been not so much to give a complete survey of the entire literature of the subject, in its manifold branches, — the numerous journals that are now published in the interests of experimental psychology render this an easy task for any one who will undertake it, — ■ as rather to present, in more adequate form and (where it seemed desirable) with greater detail of proof than had appeared in previous editions, those experiences and those interpretations of experience which had come to me in the years of helpful association in research with all the younger investigators who have worked in the psychological laboratory at Leipsic. In its present form, therefore, the book is intended, first and foremost, to serve the purpose not of a compilation, but of an exposition of my own experiences and convictions ; though I have, of course, everywhere made grateful use of whatever I could take from the works of others.

Although the text has been curtailed to the utmost, where curtailment was possible, — particularly by the omission of a number of argumentative passages, directed against opinions and theories, current in philosophy or in the older psychology, which may now be regarded as obsolete, — the change of programme has brought with it an increase in the bulk of the work. The two volumes of the previous editions have now become three. Volume ii. will contain the conclusion of the doctrine of mental elements, and the theory of ideas ; volume iii.. Parts dealing with emotion and voluntary action and with the interconnexion of mental processes, together with a closing chapter of philosophical import. ^ Dr. W. Wirth has undertaken the preparation of an index of names and subjects, to be included in this last volume. 2 I have also to thank Dr. Wirth for assistance in reading the proof-sheets.

W. WUNDT.

Leipsic, February, 1902.

^ The present volume contains the Introduction and Part I, On the Bodily Substrate of the Mental Life. The remaining Parts are entitled as follows : Part II, Of the Elements of the Mental Life ; Part III, Of the Formation of Sensory Ideas ; Part IV, Of the Affective Processes and of Voluntary Actions ; Part V, Of the Course and the Connexions of Mental Processes ; Part VI, Final Considerations. — Translator.

2 Now (1903) published separately. — Translator.

Translator’s Preface

When I went to Leipsicin 1890, I carried with me a completed translation of the third (1887) edition of the Gnmdzüge der physiologischen Psychologie.

I spent nearly a year upon its revision, and did not mention it to the author until the late summer of i8gi. Professor Wundt took my presumption ver3^ kindly ; but the fourth edition was already on the horizon, and my manuscript was never offered to a publisher.

I had not, however, given up the idea of a translation. As soon as other engagements allowed — at the end of 1896 — I set to work upon the edition of 1893. The work was finished, except for final revision, in 1899. But I found, on going over the first volume for the press, that certain chapters, especially' those dealing with embryology and neurology, must be corrected and brought up to date. A year went by, with nothing to show for it but the writing of footnotes and additional paragraphs ; and when I was again ready, the fifth edition was in prospect for the immediate future.

I fear that — apart from my rather dearly bought experience, which should have profited me something — the present translation is the worst of the three. I might plead in excuse that one does not undertake th: task of translating a large work for the third time and in mature life with the enthusiasm that one brings to it as a young student. I might also plead that the publishers, disappointed in the matter of the fourth edition, and naturally anxious, in any event, to bring out the translation as soon as possible after the appearance of the original, have put some little pressure upon me, though always of the friendliest kind, to get the work done out of hand. On the whole, however, I prefer to rest my case upon the difficulties of the book itself. Wundt’s style has often, of late years, been termed diffuse and obscure. I should not care to call it either of these things ; but I am sure that it is difficult. It has, perhaps, in a somewhat unusual degree, the typical characteristics of scientific German; the carelessness of verbal repetitions, the long and involved sentences, the lapses into colloquialism, and what not. It has, besides, two special difficulties. The one is intrinsic : Wundt, if I read him aright, has always had the hal)it of thinking two or three things at once, of carrying on certain secondary trains of thought Vv'hile he developes his central idea ; and the habit has grown upon him. The consequence is that his use of connecting particles, of parentheses, of echo clauses, is now always complex, and at times extra-

Translator' s Preface

XI ordinarily complex. The reader who opens the Physiologische Psychologie at haphazard, and runs through a paragraph or two, will think this statement exaggerated. If he will try not to understand, but to translate, and to translate not a page, but a chapter, its truth will be borne in upon him. I had hoped to use, for the present translation, certain parts of my former manuscript. But a new opening or closing sentence, even a new set of connectives, changes the whole colour of the German, and so demands a new phrasing, oftentimes a new vocabulary, from the translator. I soon found that my previous work was more of a hindrance than a help, and relegated it to the waste-paper basket. The second special difficulty in Wundt’s style has also grown with the years ; it is his increasing tendency to clothe his ideas in conceptual garb, to write in a sort of shorthand of abstractions. I have never thought him, for this or for the other reason, obscure ; the meaning is always there, and can be found for the searching. But there are many and many passages where a half-way literal English rendering would be unintelligible ; where one is forced, in translating, to be concrete without losing generality ; and in cases like this the translator’s lot is not a happy one.

The present volume covers the first 338 pages of the German work, or the Introduction and Part I : On the Bodily Substrate of the Mental Life. The German pagination is printed, for convenience of cross-reference, in the page-headings of the translation. For reasons stated in their place, I have included a section from the fourth edition which the author has omitted. I have also added an index of names and subjects.

E. B. TITCHENER.

Cornell Heights, Ithaca, N.Y.

Contents of Vol. I

§ I. The Problem of Physiological Psychology § 2. Survey of the Subject .......

§ 3. Prepsychological Concepts ......

PART I.

THE BODILY SUBSTRATE OF THE MENTAL LIFE