The groundwork of psychology

Front matter

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Class Book.

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Preface

The aim of this book is to present a general view of mental process and mental development which shall be comprehensive and yet not vague and sketchy. I have attempted to omit all matter which can be omitted without interfering with my main purpose. Thus I have passed by all questions of detail connected with the Psychology of the Special Senses. My endeavor has been to present only what is essential to insight into the constitution of our mental life as a whole.

The work is a new one. It is not an abridgment of my Manual of Psychology. Even where the matter presented is substantially the same, the mode of presentation is different. The two books have no more in common than is inevitable in works on the same subject by the same person. In some respects the Groundwork is in my own opinion an improvement on the Manual, because, since the Manual was written, my own views on certain questions have become more clear and precise. One distinctive feature of the present work is the free use which it makes of material derived from observation of young children.

iv PREFACE

I am indebted to Mr. A. F. Shand for a valuable chapter on the Psychology of the Tender Emotions. I am also indebted to him for many useful suggestions mainly gathered from manuscript notes which he kindly communicated to me.

My best thanks are also due to Mr. Boyce Gibson and Mr. H. Sturt for their kindness in looking over proofs and in offering valuable suggestions and criticisms. The index is the work of my brother, Mr. J. F. Stout.

G. F. STOUT.

June 19, 1903.

Chapter I Page

The Subject-matter of Psychology i

What is a psychical process ? — The relation of psychical process to its object. — Subjective state not synonymous with psychical state. — How the psychologist is concerned with objects. — Nature of the " subject." — Conditions of psychical process.

CHAPTER XIV The World and the Self as known through Ideal Construction 164

General nature of antithesis between self and external reality at the ideational level. — Growth of intersubjective intercourse. — Intersubjective intercourse and self-consciousness. — Intersubjective intercourse and the external world.

CHAPTER XV Emotion 188

General nature of the emotions. — Emotion and organic sensation. James's theory. — Emotions as primary and derivative.

Chapter XVI

A psychological method for dealing with the emotions. — Tender emotion and sympathy. — Pity and the fundamental impulses of sorrow. — Reproach. — Gratitude. — Benevolence. — Aspiration, trust, resignation, reverence, repentance. — Love. — Tenderness as a complex and derived emotion.

Chapter XVII

Differentiation of interest. — The genesis of sentiments. — Sentiments are dispositions, not actual feelings. — Development of sentiments in complexity and abstractness.

Chapter XVIII

Development of will. — Actions which are intentional, but not due to voluntary decision. — Self-consciousness as the essential factor in voluntary decisions. — Motives and their fluctuations. — What is a voluntary decision ? — Freedom of the will.

INDEX 241

THE GROUNDWORK OF PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter I

Psychology treats of psychical states and processes, their objects as such, and the conditions of their occurrence. We have to inquire : (i) What is a psychical state or process? (2) What is meant by saying that it has an object, and in what way is psychology concerned with such objects ? (3) Of what nature are the conditions of its occurrence ?

What is a Psychical Process ? — A psychical process is a process forming part of the life history of some individual consciousness. It is some one's experience, and it actually exists only while it is being actually experienced. I experience the sensation of yellow. When I turn away and think of something else, the sensation ceases to exist in ceasing to be experienced. On the contrary, the orange continues to be yellow when I no longer look at it, and it was yellow before I began to look at it. Yellowness as a quality of the orange is not a psychical state.

The Relation of Psychical Process to its Object. — Turning to our second question, — What do we mean when we say that a psychical process has an object? — we have first to note that subject and object are terms that have meaning only in relation to each other. What is this relation ?

Unhappily there is much ambiguity and confusion in current usage. Sometimes the relation of subject and object is identified with the relation between psychical process and its material conditions. ' The vibrations of a bell, the consequent agitation of the air, and the resulting occurrences in the ear and brain are regarded as objective in contrast with the sensation of sound which arises in connection with them. Sometimes only the conditions external to the body are said to be objective ; those within the body are ranked as subjective. Thus a singing in the ears is said to be a subjective sensation because its material conditions are subjective in the sense of being found within the body itself, independently of stimulation from outside.

Both these usages agree in treating the distinction of subject and object as one of causality or of condition and consequence or something analogous.

There would be no harm in this were it not that the terms are imperatively required for another purpose. They are required to express a relation which cannot be expressed in any other way. This relation is unique and ultimate, and it cannot therefore be formally defined. But we may so indicate it as to make plain what is meant.

Consider the following list : Rejoicing, hoping, fearing, desiring, disliking, believing, questioning, doubting, being perplexed, feeling interest, failing to understand, purposing, choosing. Each of these psychical states implies by its intrinsic nature a reference to something other than itself, which in common speech we should call its object. To choose is to choose something, to question is to question something, to fear is to fear something, and so on.

SUBJECTIVE STATES VS. PSYCHICAL STATES 3

The choosing, questioning, and fearing are subjective processes ; what in any case is chosen, called in question, or feared is the object of these processes.

The subjective process may be contrasted with its object in various ways. They differ in their time relations. When I think of a future event as such, and desire it, the processes of thinking and desiring are not future, but present. Besides such formal differences there are also material differences. Subjective processes have a positive nature distinctively belonging to them, and not to their objects. Consider the process of questioning. When you inquire, What is this ? or What next ? the question expresses your subjective attitude only. The object you are thinking of is not thought of as having an interrogative nature. In asking the question you presuppose that so far as your object itself is concerned the answer is already predetermined. It is only you who hesitate between alternatives. Similarly with searching and believing. You search more or less keenly, you believe more or less strongly. The strength of your belief and the keenness of your search are qualifications of your subjective attitude, and not of the object.

Subjective State not synonymous with Psychical State.

— All subjective states are psychical; but not all psychical states are subjective. Sensations in general, so far as they enter into the relation of subject and object at all, fall to the side of the object, and not to that of the subject. When I listen to the sound of a bell, the act of listening is subjective. But the sensation of sound is my object. I attend to it. I discriminate it from other simultaneous sounds, and perhaps compare it with these. I refer it to the bell as its cause. I note or attempt to note its quality, its degree of loudness, its duration. I like it or dislike it. It is essentially an object in relation to these subjective processes of attending, discriminating, comparing, etc. The same holds good of sensations in general, such as those of sight, pressure, taste, and smell. They are all psychical states. They actually exist only while they are being actually experienced. But so far as they enter into the relation of subject and object at all, they are objective and not subjective.

How the Psychologist is concerned with Objects. — The

psychologist is concerned with sensations, inasmuch as they are psychical states. But he is also concerned with objects as such, whether they possess a psychical nature or not. His primary and distinctive interest is in the subjective side of the subject-object relation. But it is impossible to treat of subjective states without reference to their objects. It is impossible, for instance, to think of attention without reference to something attended to, or of a specific case of attention without reference to something specific which is attended to. The essential point is that psychology considers objects only in their relation to subjective process. An object of cognitive process interests the psychologist only in so far as somebody knows it, or comes to know it, or attempts to know it, or forgets it, or remembers it, or fails to remember it, and so on. An object of volition interests the psychologist only in so far as some one wills it, or comes to will it, or ceases to will it, etc. His interest in the object known or willed is conditioned by his interest in the processes of knowing and willing.

Thus he has no direct concern with the constitution and laws of the external world. But it is his especial business to exhibit the process through which such a world

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comes to be presented to the individual consciousness. He has no direct concern with spatial relations. But it is part of his task to show how the young child becomes aware of such relations. He is not called upon to define the real distinction between right and wrong, or to determine the answer to any properly ethical question ; but it belongs to his business as a psychologist to show how the individual comes to make a distinction between what is morally right and what is morally wrong.

Nature of the "Subject." — There is one thorny question which we have so far evaded. We have spoken freely of subjective processes ; but we have not discussed the nature of the subject whose processes they are. Yet it seems evident that attending implies some one who attends, that desiring implies some one who desires, and so on. Sensations also, though they are not subjective states, are states of a subject. They exist only in being experienced by some one.

What has the psychologist to say concerning this some one who owns all the psychical states which are referred to one and the same mind ? On one point there is general agreement. The psychical states belonging to the same subject are connected with each other in an altogether peculiar way so as to form a unity of a unique kind. But here there is a divergence of opinion. Some maintain that the term "subject " is merely a name for the unified system of psychical processes, actual and possible, present, past, and future. On this view, when we say that a desire is some one's desire, we merely mean that it forms part of a certain connected totality of conscious experiences. Others regard the subject not as identical with the unified experience, but as a ground of union, a unifying principle.

It is supposed to be something which persists through its varying states and binds them together.

As psychologists we are not bound to decide in favor of either of these opposing doctrines. For, as psychologists, our concern is with psychical states and processes, and the unifying principle, if it exists, can only be known to us in and through the unity and continuity of conscious life, which it makes possible. We have no independent knowledge of it which could be of assistance to us in our special line of inquiry. The student of physical science is in a similar position as regards the problem of the thing and its qualities. He can do his work quite well without ever inquiring whether a material thing is simply the total complex of what are called its attributes, or a connecting principle which binds these attributes together. We need not attempt to determine what is ultimately implied in the use of the term "subject," just as the chemist or physicist need not attempt to determine what is ultimately implied in the use of the term "thing."

What we have to investigate is the unity and continuity of the individual consciousness in its various forms, phases, and stages of development.

In this investigation there is one principle never to be lost sight of. The unity of the subject is inseparably correlated with the unity of its object as such. As typical examples of the unity of consciousness we may take the connection of a desire and its gratification, or that of asking a question and finding or receiving an answer. The continuity of desire and its gratification implies that what is obtained is identified with what was desired. Similarly the question which is answered must be identified with the question which was asked. In general, psychical process is one and continuous only in virtue of

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the recognized identity of its object. I am one in so far as my world is one.

Conditions of Psychical Process. — We come now to the third of the questions with which we started. Psychology investigates the conditions of the occurrence of psychical states. What are these ? In part they are themselves psychical. They fall within the process of consciousness itself. Conscious life is a development in which preceding stages form the basis and presupposition of succeeding stages. But this internal development is not self-supporting. It requires a multitude of contributory conditions which are not themselves psychical states or processes. The flow of individual consciousness is closely connected with and constantly dependent on a particular bodily organism with its organs of sense and movement. The psychologist cannot give a systematic account of psychical process without reference to these bodily conditions. He is also compelled at every step to recognize the existence of what are called psychical or mental dispositions, inherited and acquired. Our actual experience at any moment is determined by conditions which are not themselves actual experience, but the abiding after-effects left behind by prior experiences. I recognize a man to-day because I met him yesterday, although I may not have thought of him in the interval. This can only be because my experience of yesterday has left behind an after-effect which has persisted through the intervening time and now determines my present experience. This residual after-effect is an acquired disposition.

Again, what are, called in ordinary language friendship and enmity are acquired dispositions of a complex character rather than actual psychical processes. Friendship involves such actual psychical processes as being glad at a person's prosperity, grieved at his misfortune, rejoiced to meet him, sorry to part from him, and so on. But these psychical states are merely partial and transient manifestations of the permanent friendly disposition. This is the abiding condition of these varying phases of actual emotion.

The difference between the musical faculty of a Mozart and that of a man who can hardly learn to tell one note from another is a difference in inherited disposition.

There are three ways in which dispositions may be regarded by the psychologist. Primarily he knows them by the manner in which they operate in determining psychical process. It is from this point of view that he is led in the first instance to posit their existence at all. So regarded, they are merely permanent possibilities of psychical process. But of course they must in reality be more than this. A naked possibility is nothing. A possibility must be founded in the constitution of actual existence. What kind of actual existence does a psychical disposition possess ? It is sometimes said to be an unconscious state, or modification of the subject, and the subject considered as the possessor of such unconscious states or modifications is called a soul. Against this I have nothing to say. It may well be nearer to the ultimate truth than any other statement. But to the psychologist the conception of a soul is not helpful. He has no independent means of knowing anything about it which could be useful to him. For him the term " soul " is virtually only another name for the total system of psychical dispositions and psychical processes. But he has another clue which is more useful. Psychical dispositions, as well as psychical processes, have physiological correlates in states of nervous tissue. A psychical disposition is

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represented on the physiological side by a permanent modification of the substance of the brain. This may be called a physiological disposition. I do not say that the physiological disposition is identical with the psychical. But the two correspond in such a way that for psychological purposes it is within limits a valid procedure to treat them as identical.

Chapter II

Method of Psychology. — The business of Psychology is to furnish a systematic and coherent account of the flow of psychical process in its various forms, phases, and stages, and of the conditions on which it depends. This involves description, generalization, and explanation.

Description in the case of complex process includes analysis. The elementary constituents of the complex process must be discriminated and their form of combination assigned. In dealing with constituents which are too simple to admit of further analysis, we must at least take care so to characterize them as to avoid ambiguity. We must point them out in such a manner that they will not be confused with anything else. This kind of pointing is illustrated by the mode in which I have attempted to indicate what is meant by a subjective process.

Analysis sometimes discriminates items A and B which are really separable, so that A is capable of existing in the absence of B, and B in the absence of A. Thus the total process of learning a list of dates includes the several acts of learning each separate date, and each of these could take place without the others. Sometimes A and B may be only distinguishable, but not separable. Thus pleasure and pain and the degree of intensity which belongs to them are indivisible ; and the same holds good of the act of believing and the degree of conviction with which the

METHOD OF PSYCHOLOGY I I

belief is held. Sometimes A may be separable from B but not B from A. It is possible to understand the meaning of a proposition without believing it ; but it is not possible to believe it without understanding its meaning.

Generalization consists in the formulation of uniformities of coexistence and sequence. In psychology it consists in assigning the necessary and sufficient, or at any rate the necessary conditions of the occurrence of the various forms of psychical process. The conditions thus assigned are partly found within the flow of psychical life itself, and partly outside it. Thus the visual perception of an orange is in part conditioned by the structure and movement of the eye. But the structure and movement of the eye are facts of our bodily organization, not of our conscious life. On the other hand, the orange could not be perceived as such merely in virtue of ocular sensations. It is necessary that the percipient should have had previous conscious experience in which he has not only seen, but handled, tasted, and smelled oranges. Conditions of this kind are themselves psychical in their nature.

Many rough and ready psychological generalizations are embodied in common proverbs. E.g. " The burnt child dreads the fire." " Bullies are cowards." " New brooms sweep clean." " Put a beggar on horseback and he will ride to the devil." " The wish is father to the thought." " Pride goes before a fall."

Explanation consists in showing how general principles operate in relatively special cases, so as to answer the questions, why ? or how ? Thus on the basis of the general principles of the perception of spatial relations we may explain why the sun looks larger when it is near the horizon, or why the interval between two lines on a printed page appears greater when it is only brighter. Or, starting from the general laws of emotion and sentiment, we may explain why when love gives place to dislike, the dislike is frequently more intense because it was preceded by love.

The power of explanation should involve some power of prediction more or less precise. This power is restricted in psychology because of the extreme complexity of the conditions of the mental life. But it is not absent. We can, for instance, prove that the exclusive use of certain kindergarten methods in the education of young children will arrest the development of imagination and lower the general level of intelligence. We can predict that close contact of savages with a civilization which they cannot assimilate will demoralize them in some respects, if not on the whole. We can predict that a body seen with one eye at a certain distance from the observer will alter its apparent configuration if the distribution of light and shade on its surface is altered in certain ways. Such examples might be indefinitely multiplied. But it is to be remembered that such prediction is nearly always conditional and liable to exceptions, owing to the presence of factors which counteract those on which the prediction is founded. For instance, we cannot by altering the distribution of light and shade cause a human face to appear concave instead of convex. The ordinary appearance is too familiar and habitual for this to be possible.

Sources of Data. — The sources of psychological data are manifold and diverse. But they can be ultimately grouped under three heads: (i) Introspection, or "the notice which the mind takes of its own operations " (Locke) ; (2) Inference from the behavior of others to their psychical processes ; (3) The results of previous mental devel-

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opment as supplying a clue to the processes through which they have been reached.

(1) Introspection is sometimes called inner perception, and also inner sense. The term "sense" in this application is, however, really nonsense. When I perceive a tree, the tree acts on a sense-organ — say the eye — and so gives rise to sensations of color. When I notice that I am desiring, doubting, impatient, or resentful, these processes do not act on any sense-organ or produce anything analogous to a sensation. My perception of them is not sense-perception. But though it is not sense-perception, it may be appropriately called perception. Roughly speaking, the essential character of perception is that the actual existence of its object operates as a factor directly determining our cognition of that object. When I perceive a tree, the tree itself as an actual existence contributes to determine my cognition of it by acting on my sense-organs, and so giving rise to sensations. This is not so when I merely remember the tree in its absence. Similarly, when I am feeling disappointed and take note of my feeling, the feeling itself as it exists at the moment is a factor determining my apprehension of it. In a mere remembrance of having felt disappointment in the past, this would not be so.

The actual existence and agency of what is perceived at the moment of perception is neyer the sole factor determining cognition, whether what is perceived be a material thing or a psychical state. Its controlling influence is always blended with that of previous experience and the direction of attention at the moment. What the botanist perceives when he looks at a plant is different from what a child of three would perceive, though both may have virtually the same sensations. The sense presentation is differently interpreted, and different features are noticed.

Similarly, what the trained psychologist may perceive when he observes his own anger may be different from what the untrained would discern. Both in observation of material phenomena and of psychical processes, what you find depends on what you bring with you. It depends on the questions you are primed with, and on your explicit or implicit anticipations, assumptions, inferences, or interpretations.

(2) Logically, the knowledge of self has always a certain priority as compared with knowledge of others. We can only interpret manifestations of mind in others on the analogy of our own mental processes. But in their actual development, the two kinds of knowledge show the closest interdependence. The growth of self-knowledge and of knowledge of others are virtually two aspects of a single process. It is mainly in the attempt to find out what goes on in other minds that we are led to notice what goes on in our own. Inner observation finds here the most potent motive and its guiding clue. Further, though in the first instance interpretation of the manifestations of the working of other minds logically presupposes acquaintance with our own, yet the success or failure of the interpretation supplies an all-important means of testing the validity and adequacy of our self-knowledge. The success or failure of our interpretation is tested by its power to cover all the relevant facts gained by observation and experiment in a coherent and systematic way. If we succeed in giving a coherent and systematic account of the behavior of young children and animals, this is the best verification we can have of the validity and adequacy of the psychological analysis which forms the basis of our explanation. It is hardly too much to say that while children and animals are mysteries to us, we do not fully understand ourselves.

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(3) Mental life is a progressive development in which we come to perceive, imagine, believe, desire, will, love, or hate, objects which were not previously objects of our perception, imagination, belief, desire, or hatred, or love. So far as this gradual growth of the objective content of consciousness is due to psychical processes, proceeding in accordance with general laws, or in a systematic order, it is the business of the psychologist to trace it. Suppose that we have a series of letters by the same person, beginning at six years old, and continued at weekly intervals until he reaches the age of twenty. We may assume that the letters contain little in the way of direct description of the workings of his own mind. They are, let us say, occupied mainly with things he has seen or heard, things he wants to do or get, expressions of opinion, and of approval and disapproval of what goes on around him. Any one with a psychological bias, who should read these letters, would naturally attempt to frame a connected view of the course of mental development represented by them. This might be merely biographical. It might be only a more or less systematic representation of the mental history of this particular individual. But the reader of the letters may also attempt to generalize. He may attempt to discover in the particular case before him forms and principles of mental development which apply beyond this particular case. So far as he generalizes in this way he has entered upon the province of Psychology.

This illustration is drawn from the course of mental development in a single individual. But for Psychology the most important data of the kind are results of mental process common to whole societies, and in some cases to all normal human beings. For instance, the presentation of a surrounding world of material things and processes is in certain broad features the same for all men. As the great logician, Sigwart, puts it, " We all comprehend and distinguish the same things in the same space and in the same spatial relations, and agree in the way in which we connect our experiences in time, and recognize the same similarities and differences." We know that this world, which is the common possession of normal adults, does not exist for the consciousness of the young child. The young child shows an extremely vague apprehension of spatial relations and a still vaguer apprehension of time relations. His apprehension of a world ordered in space and time, such as we ourselves have cognizance of, comes as the result of a long and complex series of psychical processes, and it therefore constitutes a psychological problem. But the existence and nature of the result, the fact that we do now all apprehend a world so constituted, forms an indispensable datum from which the psychologist starts, and to which he must constantly return in order to test his hypotheses concerning the nature of the process by which this result has been attained.

If we neglect to emphasize the importance of such relatively fixed and universal products of mental process as data and starting points, we are likely to form a wrong view of the general aim of psychology. It may be falsely supposed that it is the business of the psychologist to perform such feats as are attributed to Sherlock Holmes or to E. A. Poe's detective hero. It may be supposed that the psychologist ought to have the power of following the actual course of consciousness in this or that individual so as to be able to discover from slight indications what he has been thinking of during the last half-hour, or even to predict what he is going to think of during the next half-hour. Such demands are illegitimate. Like every

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other science psychology must simplify its problems. It cannot, any more than mechanics, physics, or physiology, unravel the actual complexity of the concrete. Hence it must frame for itself by abstraction and generalization problems which are capable of solution. For this purpose, it is important to take as points of departure well-defined, general products of mental development, and then inquire into the nature of the process through which these products have arisen.