Empirical psychology

Front matter

ic^m,

Wm-

<1« re

CHAPTER I. General Method. ----- 60

1. Attain facts. ----- 61

2. Criterion for disputed facts. - - 64

3. Classification of facts. - - • - 70 CHAPTER II. General Facts of Mind. - - - 73

1. The existence of mind; ... 73

2. Mind not phenomenal nor ideal. - 75

3. Mind has perpetuated identity. - 76

4. Mind is self-active. - 77

5. Distinguishes itself from its objects. - 79 CHAPTER III. Primitive Facts of Mind. - 82

1. Sensation. 82

2. Consciousness. 88

3. Capacities for knowing, feeling and willing. 93

FIRST DIVISION.

CHAPTER I. The Sense. 113

Distinguishes and defines phenomena.

CHAPTER II. Man has this Capacity of Will. - - 259

Argument. I. Conscious Responsibility. - - 260

Argument II. Distinction of Brute and Human Will. 261

Argument III. Man discriminates his own. - - 263

Argument IV. Reciprocal Complacency. - - 265

Argument V. Man can resist Nature. - - - 268

Argument VI. Consciousness. - 270

Introduction

Psychology is comprehensive of all the necessary principles and the developed facts of mind. The necessary principles determine the possibility of an intelligent agency, and reveal in the reason how mind must be constituted in order to any cognition of a nature of things as existing in space and time ; and is thus distinguished as Rational Psychology. The developed facts of mind are taken as they reveal themselves through an actual experience in consciousness, and when combined in systematic arrangement they give the specific science known as Empirical Psychology. It is this last only which comes within the field of present investigation.

Empirical Psychology is thus inclusive of all mental facts which may come within human consciousness. The being of mind, with all its faculties and their functions ; every phenomenon in its own manifestation, and its law of connection with other phenomena ; all, indeed, about which an intelligent enquiry can be made in reference to mental existence and action, come within the province where this philosophy should make itself thoroughly and familiarly conversant. As an empirical science, it is demanded that aU the facts be collected, and that they be orderly arranged according to their known connections and dependencies. All that belongs to mind must have place, and each element its right place, in the system.

Mental Philosophy has not thus, as yet, attained its consummation. All the facts of mind are not probably yet found : many that have been attained are not clearly discriminated ; and what have been used have never appeared in any system with exact order and perfect harmony. Much more labor of observation, analysis and combination is to be expended on this field, before it can be said to be fully in possession, and all its parts completely subjected to science. Peculiar difficulties and special hindrances he in the way of mental investigation. The subject itself is for many reasons obscure, demanding the most patient and profound study. The most subtile analysis and the most comprehensive generalization are at times necessary, and in addition to the acuteness of the perception and the intensity of the thinking which are called into requisition, there are various liabilities to error from certain sources of deceptive bias and delusive influence. These operate at the presentas they have clone in the past, and a preliminary examination of them may best facilitate an entrance upon this investigation, and prepare the student the most effectually to resist all perverting tendencies, and attain the truth by holding the facts in a clear light and looking at them in the right direction.

Among the more prominent difficulties and sources of error, are —

1. The inverted method of the mind's operation in attaining its facts.

The elements for Empirical Psychology are the facts of mind which come -within every man's own experience. We may not assume what the facts are from any presumption of what they should be, nor take them upon trust because others have said what and how they are ; we must find them within ourselves, and clearly apprehend them in our own consciousness, or they may prove utterly false and thus wholly worthless. Others may have observed the same facts, and used them in their way in their philosophy, and their statement of them may direct our minds to them and greatly facilitate us in the attainment of them ; but their descriptions and assertions must not be allowed to stand valid, except through our own conscious apprehension and conviction. A fact, that has not been held in the clear light of my own consciousness, can truly be no fact for my philosophy. All the facts I use must come within my cognition, or I can make nothing but a borrowed science out of them.

But, from its first conscious apprehension, the mind has been accustomed, in its agency, to turn its attention outwardly to the phenomena of nature, and gain its facts in the perception of the objects of an external world. It has steadied itself in its operations upon the organs of sensation, and thus long habit has made it to be easy and pleasant for the mind to increase its knowledge, in the attainment of new facts through sensible observation. The facts we now need lie in altogether another direction, and are to bo gathered from an entirely different field. The old habit of throwing the attention outwards is now to be broken up, and an entire inversion of the mental action is to be practised. The mind is to make its own phenomena its study, and turn the attention inward upon its own action. It is, as it were, to hold itself out to its own inspection, and turn itself round on all sides to its own observation. This position of the mind is always at first difficult to assume, and the perpetual counteraction of its wonted course is ever, hi the beginning, painful to sustain. The effort, steadily to look in this unaccustomed direction, induces a weariness that destroys the capacity for clear perception and patient investigation. Eepeated attempts, and decided and perpetuated effort, which shall ultimately habituate the mind to give this intro-version to its attention, can alone secure that there shall be any deep interest and delight in this order of mental operation. A fixed and prolonged observation and examination of the phenomena of the inner mental world is, on this account, the agreeable and chosen employment of comparatively very few minds, probably less than one in a thousand in our more enlightened communities.

The perpetual tendency from this is to induce impatience and haste in the induction of mental facts, and to leave the whole philosophy of mind to a superficial examination. The assertions of one, hastily made, are taken upon trust by others ; specious appearances are carelessly assumed to be veritable realities ; complex operations are left unanalyzed, and erroneous conclusions drawn from partial inductions ; and then the whole is put together through the connections of mere casual or fancied resemblances ; often even mingling contradictions and absurdities in the system; thus making the result to be a spurious and worthless philosophy. Certainly many doctrines, which falsify the very distinctions between mind and matter, and the grounds of all responsibility, and the order of discipline and culture, are left to spread themselvts among the people, and influence opinion and practice, solely because the common mind is unaccustomed to accurately note the daily experiences in its own consciousness.

This difficulty is to be overcome, and the liability to error thereby avoided, only by a resolute perseverance in overcoming the old habit, and learning the method of readily reading the lessons from our own inward experience. The organs of sense must be shut up, and the material world shut out, and the mind for the time shut in upon itself, and made to become familiar with its own action. The man must learn to commune with himself; to study himself; to know himself; to live amid the phenomena of his own spiritual being. When this habit of intro-spection has been gained, the investigation of mental facts becomes not only possible, but facile and delightful. It should not be anticipated by any student, that this difficulty will be overcome without rigid and persevering self-discipline ; nor that any satisfactory progress will be made in mental science, until this difficulty is thus surmounted; but all may be assured that the narrow way may be passed into spacious and pleasant fields of truth, by fixing a manly resolution, and persisting a while in its execution.

2. The ambiguity of language.

Language is the outer body of thought. Words, without thought, are empty ; and thought, without words, is helpless. The common speech is thus the outer expression of the common thoughts of mankind. Philosophy attains the necessary principles, and determines the rules for the grammatical construction of language ; but philosophy does not make nor change language. The working of the human mind within determines for itself its own outer expression, and, as an inner spirit and life, builds up its own body, and gives to it a form according to the inherent law of its own activity

But the great mass of mankind are conversant mainly with the objects of the sensible world. They think, and thus speak, of little else than those phenomena which meet them face to face through the organs of sense. Daily experience fixes their habits and limits their mental action, while few only turn their minds in upon themselves, and think and speak of the facts of their spiritual being. The common language of mankind is thus only an expression of what they find in their daily experience. When man begins to reflect, and philosophize concerning himself and nature around him, he needs a new language for his new thoughts ; but his first reflection and philosophizing is about natural objects, and physical science occupies his study and opens the way to mental and metaphysical investigations. His philosophical terms are such still as give expression to his reflections upon nature, and his whole technical phraseology is readily referred, for its interpretation, to the outer objects of which it is the symbol, and thus gives little ambiguity, or mistake and confusion in apprehending the thought. And when mathematical science is studied, the conceptions are pure numbers and diagrams, and can be constructed as pure objects alike by all mathematicians, and thereby all mathematical language comes readily to possess a definite meaning, and can at once be referred to its pure figure as an exposition of the thought, and preclude all possible obscurity in the apprehension. Physical and Mathematical Sciences give little occasion for verbal ambiguities.

But, in mental science, the case becomes quite different. The thought must have its word, and the science its philosophical phraseology ; but the thoughts, as elements of mental science, are quite peculiar — even thought itself, and all the inner faculties and functions of a spiritual existence. The word, as symbol, cannot be explained by any reference to sensible objects, but must carry its meaning over to another mind, only by inducing the conception of the same mental fact in his own consciousness. All these distinct and peculiar mental facts call for their expressive terms in language, and the science of mind cannot proceed until the words for mental phenomena are appropriated. To give to all these new thoughts entirely new words, would be laborious in the invention and burdensome to the memory. The mind naturally and readily accommodates the language, already appropriated to sensible objects, in application also to these inner spiritual phenomena. Where there was apprehended some striking analogy between the outer and the inner fact, the word for the outer was used also by accommodation of meaning for the inner, and thus often the same word came to possess its two meanings ; one in reference to the physical, and the other to the metaphysical world of thought. The mind, though wholly spiritual, unextended and illimitable by any of the forms of space, is thus said to be fixed or to wander, to be dull or acute, narrow or comprehensive. The names for tangible qualities in nature are also transferred to the intangible characteristics of the spirit, and the feelings of the human soul are said to be frigid or ardent, lax or intense; and the heart cold or ivarm, hard or tender ; and the will to be firm or toeak, stable or flexible; according to such supposed resemblances. The mind as well as matter has its inclinations and impressions ; and many words taken from the outer come at length to have an almost exclusive application to the inner ; as disposition, induction, conclusion, abstraction, etc. Very many words in all languages have thus their primary and secondary significations ; and in the science of mind we are perpetually thrown back upon the analogies of matter. Ambiguous words and equivocal expressions repeatedly occur, and thus a constant liability is induced to mistake and confound things which greatly differ. The thought is widely misapprehended, in the illusion from the two-faced symbol that conveys it. Sturdy controversies have been often mere logomachies ;

the philosophy alike, and only the phraseology differently apprehended.

The errors from this source are to be avoided, not by excluding all such ambiguities, which will be wholly impracticable, but by universally bringing the fact within the light of consciousness. By whatever symbol the mental fact may be communicated, the conception must be known as that of some phenomenon within us, and not some quality from the world without us. The analogy must not be permitted to delude, but the fact itself must be found amid the conscious elements of our own mental experience. The truths we want in psychology are not to be sought in the heavens above, nor in the depth beneath ; but they are nigh us, even in our own being, and amid the hourly revealings of our own consciousness.

3. Inadequate conceptions of mental being and development.

The complete conception of a plant includes far more than its sensible phenomena of color, shape, size and motion; or that of all its separate parts of stock, branches and leaves. It must especially include its vital force as an inner agency which develops itself in a progressive and orderly growth to maturity. This is widely different from all conceptions of mechanical combinations, in winch the structure is put together from the outside, according to some preconceived plan of arrangement. There is, both in the plant and the machine, the conception of some law of combination, and in this a rational idea which expounds each its own structure ; but hi the plant it is that of an inner living law, spontaneously working out its organic development, "while in the mechanism it is an artificial process for putting dead matter together. The former conception is far more difficult adequately to attain than the latter.

The conception of animal life and development rises quite above that of the vegetable, and includes the superadded forces of an appetitive craving, an instinctive selection of its peculiar food, with the faculty of locomotion to bring itself to it ; and the capacity for mastication, digestion, assimilation and incorporation into its own substance, and thus a growth in the whole system of the body and its members. Superior in degree, in man, is the faculty of judging from sensible experience, and thus acting from the dictates of prudence ; and the distinctive and far more elevated endowment in kind of rational faculty, in its artistic, philosophic, ethic and religious capacities, gives to Mm the prerogatives of action in liberty and moral responsibility, thereby lifting him from the bondage of all necessitated things into the sphere of personality. All this complexity of superinduced faculties, from mere vital force up to rational being, has its complete organic unity, constituting but one existence in its own identity, and its own inner spirit works out a complete development of the whole, through all the manifestations of growth and mature activity. One life pervades the whole, and one law of being makes every part reciprocally subservient and accordant with all other parts.

If then, an adequate conception of merely vegetable organism, as distinct from the combinations of mechanism, be difficult to attain, how greatly is the difficulty augmented in attaining the full conception of humanity with all its included capacities and exalted prerogatives ! From these inadequate conceptions of humanity, must necessarily originate very faulty systems of psychology. All resting in the analogies of mere mechanical combinations and movements must be "widely erroneous ; and any failure clearly to discriminate between the animal and the rational, must necessarily fail in the attainment of a spiritual philosophy ; and any complete conceptions of man's spirituality, which do not at the same time recognise the modification therein given from its combination with the material and the animal, will also necessarily render the person incompetent to study and attain the science of mind as it dwells in a tabernacle of flesh and blood. An exclusion, in fact, of any one of the superinduced powers and faculties in humanity, and their reciprocal dependencies and modifications, must so far vitiate the system of philosophy which is thus attempted to be constructed. Liabilities to error here are greater than from all other sources.

The only way to obviate these difficulties, and escape these liabilities to error, is by cultivating the intellect and elevating the conception to the essential spiritual being of the subject to be investigated. The use of any mechanical analogies or animal resemblances must not be allowed to delude the mind, and induce the conclusion that the rational and spiritual part of humanity can be at all adequately apprehended through any such media. The mind must be studied in the light of its own conscious operations, and the perpetual interactions of the sense and the spirit, " the law in the members'' and " the law of the mind," must be accurately observed, and while the philosophy thus knows to distinguish things that differ, it must also know to estimate the modifications which these different things make reciprocally upon each other. All material and animal being has a law imposed upon it, while all spiritual being has its law written within it ; the first moves wholly within the chain of necessity, the last has its action in liberty and under inalienable responsibility ; and all philosophy is falsely so called, which does not adequately discriminate between them.

4. The broad comprehension necessary to an accurate classification of mental facts.

The mind is a unit in its existence, through all its yaried states of activity and all its successive stages of development. It is moreover a living unity, growing to maturity and maintaining the integrity of its organization, by the perpetuated energy of one and the same vital principle. When, then, w^e have attained all the single facts of mind which can be given in any experience, and know how to analyze every fact to its simple elements, we have not yet completed our mental philosophy. The philosophy truly consists in the combination of all these discriminated facts into one complete system. But there are very many ways in which a classification of the facts found may be made, and thus systerns from the same facts may be as various as their varied combinations may admit. Merely casual relationships may be taken, or even fancied or arbitrary connections assumed, and made the principle by which the facts are brought into system ; or a blind imitation of another man's system may be followed, with no independent examination and determination of what the true order of classification may be.

The liabilities to such faulty classifications find their source in the difficulty of attaining comprehensively what is the living order of arrangement, as found in the mind itself. Single facts can much easier be found, than the right place for them in combination with all others. To put each fact in its own place demands a knowledge of its relationship to all others, and thus no classification of it can be known as correct, except through a knowledge of all others with which it must stand in connection. The entire facts in the system must thus be known, each in its own control over others or dependency upon others, before they can be put together in any valid order of systematic arrangement. Such a comprehensive view is not readily attained. Few minds are willing to take the labor necessary to reach such a stand-point, where they may overlook the whole field and accurately note every division and subdivision within it. The several faculties and functions of mind are facts, as really as the phenomena which come out in their particular exercises ; and the whole mind, with all these faculties, is itself a fact, to be accurately known in its completeness as really as any one faculty, or any one act of any faculty. The whole mind can be so known only by knowing all its component elements, and psychology can be consummated only by such induction of every element, and such complete combination of them in a system, accordant with the comprehensive fact in the human mind itself; and only by such comprehensive knowledge can the liability to faulty systems in mental science be excluded.

Thus forewarned of the difficulties in the prosecution of the study of mind, and the liabilities to error thereby induced, the student is better prepared to enter upon the necessary investigations, and to guard against any delusive influences that may assail him. His task is to attain the facts of mind and classify them, exactly as they are found to be in the clear light of conscious experience.

ANTHROPOLOGY.

THE CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY.

Man holds within himself a combination of elements from the material, the animal, and the spiritual worlds ; and while he is to be studied as existing in his own unity, it must still be in the full apprehension of all this complexity of being. The material elements which enter into the composition of the human body are perpetually changing, and are themselves in reality no part of that which is essentially the man ; and yet, both the animal and the rational in man are much modified, by the influences which come in upon them through the body. The mind is the distinct subject for present investigation, but not mind as pure and disembodied. The psychology we attain must recognize, through all its facts, the existence of a rational spirit, which dwells in a tabernacle of flesh and blood.

Physiology would contemplate man solely as living hody, excluding all the peculiar endowments and prerogatives of a spiritual life ; and while the study of man in such a limited view would find facts of much interest, as bearing upon the welfare of his physical constitution, yet would they be only remotely subservient to the investigations of psychology.

Anthropology, on the other hand, contemplates man in his entire being, physically, intellectually and morally ; recognizes the connections of mind with matter, and the influences of one upon the other; and expounds the modifications which mind undergoes, from the action of the external world upon it through the body. The facts attained in such a science have an important bearing upon psychology, where mind is regarded in its own unity, and with all its different faculties and functions of operation relatively to itself. The mind itself, view T ed exclusively in its own inherent relations, is not in humanity as mind would be separately from all bodily connections. The psychology of angels must differ much from that of man, inasmuch as pure spirit must exclude many facts which belong to an existence as incarnate spirit. Preliminary and auxiliary to the study of psychology is, thus, a summary recognition of some of the more prominent facts of anthropology. We need to take mind and body as one living organization, and learn the modifications of the former which are made by its connections with the latter.

Life is a spontaneous force, which collects its materials from the elements of surrounding nature, and assimilating them to its own uses, builds up thereby the organism of its own body. Matter is variously modified by mechanical, chemical and crystaline forces ; but in no w r ay does it take on the forms of an organized existence, except as thus vitalized and constructed into a corporeal dwelling for some living spirit. The crystal may seem in many' respects but a little remove from the plant ; yet is the former the same in quality through every part, and as perfect in the smallest portion as in the whole ; "while the latter has all its parts different from others, and no portion is in perfection without the whole. The crystal is still dead matter, and has no organs which reciprocally exist for each other; the plant is alive, and its root, stock, branches and leaves live each for the others, and all for each.

In the plant we have the lowest forms of living organization, and the life always working outwards to the surface. The growth of the stock and branches is on the outside, and every perpetuated bud successively develops itself only as a perpetual repetition of "what has gone before it. A higher force is superinduced upon vegetable life, and in this we have the animal, in whom every part grows simultaneously. The life is internal; digestion and assimilation are carried on within the body ; and a sentient capacity enables the animal to feel itself and the outer objects which come in contact with itself. Through the appropriate organs of sensation, perception is effected ; and the faculty of locomotion is guided, and the power of selection directed to its objects.

Every individual life has its own law of working, and builds up its own body after its own pre-conditioned order. The forms are not in the matter, but already given in the vital force itself; and every plant, tree and animal, grows out after that shape wiuch its own inherent law has determined for it. External conditions may force modifications of the primitive form, but it is still easy to find the original pattern, after which the inner life is struggling to shape its corporeal being. The life-force can only develop its own rudiments after its own forms, and can neither give to itself any new faculties, nor work after borrowed patterns. The conditions being supplied, each individual life works out its own organic forms to maturity. It also prepares and perfects the spermatic germs for perpetuating the race ; separating these from itself, and leaving them to begin anew, in their distinct identity, the same work of development according to the old inherited type of existence.

Superinduced, again, upon the animal is the far higher force of a rational existence. The capacity for thought and liberty is given ; and the spiritual is imparted, that is to restrain and control the animal; and in this we have the human, with its intelligent and responsible agency. The man has his life-force, with its own abnormal type of being and development, as has the plant ; and the capacity for inward digestion, assimilation, and nutrition; for locomotion, perception, and selection, as has the animal ; but far above all these is his spiritual endowment ; in which is rationality, personality, and the responsibilities of an immortality. Thus man is not merely life, like the vegetable ; but animal life: and not alone animal life, like the brute ; but a spiritual hie, which enthrones the rational upon the animal, allying him to the angels, and putting on him the likeness of the Divine. The one life, modified by all these superinduced forces, each distinguishable from the others, builds up for man his outer tabernacle from the dust, and develops all his mental faculties to their maturity, and thus presents us with that humanity which is the subject of our philosophy, and all the facts of which, in its purely mental relations, are to be combined in our psychology. The connections of mind with the body, and thus with the agencies of an external world, are mediately through the nerves, and their origin is in the brain and its elongation in the spinal-cord. These nerves, as they go off from the brain and vertebral-column, branch out to all the members, and over the whole body. They thus carry their communications each way, from the mind to the muscles, and from the outer world to the mind. These functions are performed by distinct fibres of the nerves ; those which communicate with the mind, from the outer world, are termed afferent, or sensation fibres ; and those that communicate from the mind, outward, are termed efferent, or motor fibres. Sometimes a fasciculus of nerves may form a plexus with another having quite a different origin, and an inosculation may thus occur, by which the powers of sensation or motion may be given to such nerves as had been before destitute of one or the other. A distinct system of nervous communication is employed for the digestive and nutritive functions, and also for the respiratory operations. The communications of some are voluntary, others involuntary ; some are in consciousness, others in unconsciousness. A perpetually open medium of communication is thus given between the mind and body; and, through the bodily organization, between the mind and the external world. It is thus to be expected that the mind will itself be affected by its bodily connections, and in this respect it is, that it has been said above, the prominent facts of anthropology have an important bearing upon psychology. A few such may be given under the following heads :

1. Modifications from external nature.

Both plants and animals are greatly affected from the surrounding agents in external nature. The soil, the water, the air, the general climate, all modify the vegetable and the animal life, and give the peculiarities of their locality to all living things within the range of their influence. Some plants and animals are indigenous in certain regions, and may be cultivated as exotics over a wider territory, but beyond certain limits, no care can make either the plant or the brute perpetuate themselves. The tropical, the temperate, and the frigid zones, all have their peculiar flora and fauna, and the limited adaptations of circumstances restrict many to a special locality. The cedar has its place on Lebanon, and the hysop, or the ivy, springs out of the wall. The rush does not grow without mire, nor the flag without water. The camel traverses the desert, the wild goat inhabits the mountain crag, and the pelican gathers its fish and feeds alone in the wilderness. Man is far less restricted in his home, than any other living creature on the earth. Though less protected by nature, he can yet feed and clothe himself, and so bend nature to his use, that he may live in any clime, and people every isle and continent. The earth has but very limited regions which man has not traversed, and few localities so inhospitable where he may not make his home. But though