The "conscious cross-section"

Front matter

Class Book.

in_^ n.

Gppigirtl^?..

Chapter I

1. There are two fallacies, either of which usually bothers the tyro in psychology: the first is, that since everybody has a mind, each one on that account knows more than any one else can know about his own mind; and the other is, that mind, being that unique and most intricate thing in the whole universe, contains something so elusive and mysterious that it can never be fully known.

2. The first thing to do is to surmount both of these statements so that they will not plague us any longer. They are both samples of reasoning by analogy, rather than reasoning from principles concerning which there is no room for quibbling. If a thing can be disproven by the same sort of reasoning by w^hich it was proven, it cannot be sound. We shall, then, first disprove them by analogical reasoning, and later on, by another and better kind, so that they will be permanently surmounted. Now, everybody not only has a mind, but a deceased ancestor, a mesentery, and at an early

THE CONSCIOUS CROSS-SECTION age, a future. But who would claim to know his own deceased ancestor as well as some one else might have known him, or that the healthy or diseased state of his own mesentery were as plainly before him as the news of today's paper? Nor, again, can it be maintained that one necessarily knows his own future or what its development will be as well as those who, having followed his family history, might safely predict after watching his habit formations ripen into maturity beyond voluntary recall. This shows sufficiently the purely verbal character of the first fallacy in the preceding paragraph.

3. For the second one, a similar treatment will suffice. The mysterious element in mind is said to stand in the way of a scientific psychology, inasmuch as mystery is a word usually employed to indicate an inherent property of things not yet known. But, besides this, there is no reason why one should reserve his mysteries until the last chapter of psychology, rather than plant them squarely at the beginning, or why that part of psychology which is open to investigation must therefore be pestered by some beetling mystery which comes ominously near and provokingly soon. To carry this fallacious argument to its limits, one would be permitted, in solving a mathematical problem, to excuse his errors in calculation on the ground that numbers were pure figments of the imagination anyway, and that his imagination was at least as good as that of the early Egyptians.

4. This is, however, only meeting poor arguments with equally poor ones. A fallacy is not merely something that can be laughed off, but in these cases it is something which needs to be surmounted by an appeal to exact principles rather than to the playfulness of w^ords. As soon as one begins an argument, he lays himself open to the perils of argument; it will also be public information whether what goes for proof can withstand all inquiry that is brought to bear upon the statements uttered and defended. The difficulty wdth these two fallacies is that they contain words which cannot be pressed for their meaning within the total context in which they are embedded ; lacking the form of clear-cut statements, they cannot be pressed for conclusions. Chaff put into a hopper will not grind into wheat in any mill except the one owned by Grimm and Grimm. Let us carefully show how this is.

5. Every science is a collection of observed facts gathered together under the guidance of a permanent interest, plus as many conjectures as to the relationships of these facts to one another as are required to arrange them in a system or to apply them to things of the street. A system is an arrangement of things from simple to complex, fundamental to variable; a pile of rubbish is not a system, while the plans for building a pyramid are. The facts of a science must first be supplied with names, and the significance of the names lies in what the things named will do to one another under certatin fixed conditions. So that which was first named by means of a noun, implying substance and fixity, often later on comes to mean what we express by verbs, — valences, chronic instabilities, readiness to affect or be affected by other things. Over the terminology, however, usually not much difficulty seriously arises; our language is not so petrified as to forbid a change of meaning without a change of form. But it is not such a simple matter when one comes to the conjectural part of a science. To formulate the laws of the way things behave, to be sure that one's sampling of behaviors is broad and salient, and to arrange the laws in a logical system, — here in the case of every science there is much difficulty, more disagreement and a maximum of doubt as to what can actually be deduced from a system so formed, no matter what the science may be, — Geometry or Ethics.

6. Every science, therefore, might be said to have two sides, — one of observation and the other of logic. We perceive well enough, perhaps, what is before us, but we cannot speak well enough to cover the facts or to convince the audience. To offset this as much as possible, every science reducible to exact terminology and quantification is phrased in symbols peculiarly specific and univocal in character. Words of many meanings will not do. It thus uses expressions which are defined, or limited in scope which cover precisely the data involved and have the same, rather than a different meaning to every one more or less concerned. One beginning the study of such a science often is disappointed at finding himself in the dark in regard to the thing to be studied, — he had thought that it w as to have much more connection with his daily, pressing needs. The reason for this is that those who have developed the science had first themselves to unlearn the current, metaphorical, inexact speech in order to make any headway in it. To command nature, they found they had first to obey it, and so the lesser good had been butchered without a public ceremony of apology.

7. Thus every science aims to be symbolical and univocal in its terminology. However, in psychology, one can hardly ever be said to be clear of that realm of discourse where the private interpretation of a word may not interrupt all attempts at deductive formulation. Almost every statement can be challenged, almost every fact be named in several fairly satisfactory ways. But this by no means relegates it to the realm of clannish prejudice. For when a fact has the possibility of being named in many ways, it means only one thing, — that it is no simple, single fact that is before one. One must then look to his terminology to see how much and in what essentials his names for facts have differences irreconcilable with straightforward deductive formulation. Everything is equally a matter of fact, and no datum has any special privileges. If one's logic cannot take care of this or that sufiicient statement, it is time for logic to be amended to fit a world whose scientific battles it fights.

8. One thing more : no facts have the plastic character which language has. One goes to the facts, observes them, analyses and orders them; reconsiders, re-observes and carefully names them over again, — if his need for naming comes out of a dominant motive in his endeavors, — and no amount of juggling with the words apart from the facts can alter their status in the universe whose laws they exhibit. Hasty conclusions, private uses, idealistic or theological motives may seem to have the power of twisting out of their orders in the world the brute items of empirical nature, but a little watchfulness will serve to undermine such traducing of things empirical and render again to the Caesar of organized facts the things that are none but his. Even the private realm of one's own thoughts has of late years been obliged to yield to exact statement. Where, too, formal logic was insufficient to show the bearings of private thoughts upon behavior, an informal logic has been used to suit each individual case, thus meeting the unique and "mysterious" upon its own grounds. The growth of abnormal psychology has done much to tear away the mask from the so-called "inner self" and render its crab-like movements painfully visible to any curious passerby.

9. But to the theme. The first two statements of this chapter were called fallacies not only because of their being controvertible by a mere twist of words, but rather because they used concepts in a way totally inadequate to their logical significance in psychology. One argues only by means of logic. There are no "psychological" or "moral" or "economic" reasons, — not to say, of course, that psychologists or moralists or economists do not argue. Nothing powerful or superior, however, lies in any special kind of reasoning. All reasons are couched in "the rules of the game of talk," as my colleague. Dr. Ducasse, would say, and have validity only in so far as they conform to that pattern of expression. Other things may provoke belief, or persuade the lazy not to stew any longer in their own juice, but reasoning is like a game of chess, — it has inviolable rules. It has more, since every science is a case of applied logic. The data of science are not invented, but discovered, and certain few things can be done with them and certain others cannot. Only when "dass Lied ist auss," does there come a hankering after any "special" type of reasoning.

10. "Because I have a mind, therefore I should know more about it than any one else," — were this merely a verbal fallacy, one could easily laugh it down; but it contains a more serious fallacy than that. The expression, "I have a mind," harmless enough in itself, is a statement from which nothing can be argued, IF THAT STATEMENT IS THE STARTING POINT. The speaker of it considers himself a psychologist and intends that it shall be valid for psychology. What else could it purport to be? But as formulated, it is an inexact observation, a bit of random thinking that needs to be drawn and quartered rather than employed determinately. It is really a coalescence of two statements, and belongs to the introspective psychology of selfhood rather than to the outspoken formulations of mental life. As a random thought, it exhibits the informal logic of random thinking; but statements meant for the public ear must be couched in the rules of the game of talk. It is not a premiss from which, by itself, anything whatever can be concluded. "Having," in fact, is a derivative of other things, — familiarity, acquisition, constant dealings with, something spoken or spoken of, and the like, and not an orginal, first-hand matter at all. The other statement, — the one involving the Mystery and tacitly invoking her at the saine time, — exhibits several fallacies, which are: (1) that a mystery would not remain a mystery if it were knowable, and (2) that the part depends upon the whole for its existence and significance. It will be seen later on in the chapter on psychological analysis that, even if the naming of all the parts of a whole does not appear to exhaust or explain the properties of that whole, it is not due to thinking, but to the organization of the parts by an extra-mental set of functions, which accounts for the "mysterious" element to a large degree. The first of these statements under discussion is a fallacy, therefore, because it is an inexact formulation. The second, likewise, because it violates a law of the logic of organization.

11. It will be advantageous, then, for the student to approach psychology without any presuppositions. Other assumptions than the aforementioned fallacies may arise in the reader's mind; some of these coming from trivial, others from earnest desires in regard to onesself. Yet hasty formulations are always unwise, and usually, wrong. Psychology is a study of facts, facts not altered by thinking, and only the inability to back off from them as readily as from the facts of the physical sciences is responsible for the popular view of it as being a study of the way one "feels" about things. Only because psychological things make up to so large an extent the tissue of human affairs is one led to infer that the naive expressions of popular speech can become the terminology of the science of psychology without alteration in meaning. "Mind," "consciousness," "thought," "emotion" and the like are all terms as familiar to the psychologist as to the man on the street, but the two cannot converse scientifically on the slender basis of this familiarity. Both careful examination and redefinition are essential if understanding is to accompany the use of such words. The need for such careful examination is nowhere so revealed as in cases of naive prediction and reasoning about things mental. In the writings of certain mental healers of today, for example, alliteration is the highest "logical" category; "experience proves" is a shibboleth from another quarter, from persons blissfully ignorant of the fact that experience is both a noun and a verb, usually employed in an equivocal sense. "It is unthinkable" asserts a third party, and then he goes on to state just how^ carefull}^ the "unthinkable" has been thought out. From such pitfalls of expression one needs to be emphatically w^arned in psychology.

12. Add to that this : there is as yet no complete, univocal terminology in psychology. Modern Logic has evolved a set of symbols which avoid careless interpretation of the processes in that science. The physical sciences, and, to a large extent the biological, also, need not always name their facts by such terms as can be quibbled over by those not initiated. Psychology, however, lying on the topmost froth of things, has never been and can never be, wholly free from the errors of verbalism. If it had radically fashioned its own set terms, and used heiroglyphic symbols to express them, this very fact might be a sign of its incapability to serve that human interest out of which it sprang and whose evolution it seeks to register daily. For while every deductive science is a case of applied logic, and while logic and mathematics are basically one, the universe of science rests not altogether solidly, but rather totters on the mathematical foundations to which we ultimately appeal for proof.

13. For, if one goes to the facts of a science to find out what shall be said about them, and finds there a number of curiously enigmatical things, yes, even "mysterious" things, as one sometimes does, it would be lazy-mindedness and vanity alone which would lead him to call by simple names things which were exceedingly complex. Psychology is full of just such complexities. For example, one starts to investigate a certain phenomenon, say memory; he names it by its accustomed name and sets an experiment which has all possible control over the conditions involved. But frequently the simple, first name given to it begins to prove inadequate; it is not simple, and the single noun, such as memory, adaptation and so on, will no longer do at all. Together with this, frequently conclusions will be drawn from the fact that simple words seemed to fit together to make conclusions sought for as words usually do, w^hereas the facts referred to by such words had need of being reinterpreted for use in any other context than the small one determined by the rigid conditions of a single experiment. The interests of science were thus curtailed. Clean experimentation, however, cannot be satisfied with such methods. If the simple name first given to the phenomenon is inadequate, or if the control of the conditions of experiment interferes with the free operation of the functions to be investigated, the work is dropped, the experiment reset, and the old categories are discarded. In psychology, as the signal example of a science whose reagents in the laboratory are human beings, one must be prepared for any emergency of this kind. Only a few human beings make good subjects in psychology, and even those must go through a serious and long training in accepting the instructions given and keeping even-minded in order to be valuable for the work under investigation. Psychology, as a record from which general statements can be made, is thus a study of the reactions of selected human beings; its data are gathered from persons found fit to accept the conditions of experimentation, and not others. Figuratively, it is an assay of the highest grades of ore. Life is too short to evolve a deductive science of individual meteors. Not to say, however, that with brows uplifted and eyes aloft, psychology neglects those unregenerates who fail to come up to strict laboratory requirements; for this would be both pharisaism in science as well as unfairness to my fellow psychologists. Only this is meant, that to report specifically upon a matter requiring selective attention, selective attenders of such a stripe are the only possible grist. When the erratic are in the majority, we are only experimenting upon erratics and not upon the intended datum set forth.

14. Coupled with the above warnings in the approach to psychology, a little need as well be said about the use of proof and deduction after the data of the science have been correctly named, the experiments cleanly performed, and the chief and siil)sidiary facts arranged in proper order. "This fact proves," it is sometimes said, and about such statements the clans of science divide and dispute. There are cases, of course, where this is true, but one needs to be wary. All the sciences are of two kinds on this score, — those which are altogether deductive and those which are slightly deductive and mostly empirical. Pure mathematics is the only strictly deductive science; all the others are of the latter class.

15. Let us elucidate this difference. Deduction starts with principles, which when involved, produce results and conclusions which are new in the sense of not being apparent from the original principles, but are "generated" by the interaction of statements. This does not mean that some stater behind the statements does the generating, but that the empirical properties of a logical statement alone furnish the parts out of which the new formulation is made. For the stater behind the statements is but a mass of unformulated material, which must come out and "lie flat on the brush" before it can be claimed to have the persistent being of generating things. An empirical science, such as geology, on the other hand, first gets principles from observation, and in seeking to deduce other principles from them, MUST ALWAYS FIND FACTS OR TERMS which will satisfy the conclusions arrived at. All else is talking in the air. The chemist or the physicist can see how the conclusions of his statements ought to reach this or that end, but only the residues in the retort or the pattern of crystallization on the stone shows him what the upshot of his statements should have been. To a larger extent than the physicist or chemist will admit, also, most deduction in his science is just plain memory, — "it will happen again because it has happened before," sums up much of the claims for deduction in most of the natural sciences. Their power lies in the control of conditions, rather than in the ability of their conclusions to produce the facts in a presto manner.

16. From all this it can be seen that the words "logical" and "factual" are not synonymous. Arguments about any matter may entirely jump the track and evaporate in nonsense. They may, again, run parallel, and, in that amount of a science which survives time, they do. But one needs always to be alert for the fact that will exactly fit his statements as well as for the statement that will exactly fit his facts, facts being rather hard data and not to be treated with impugnity. For while any statement derived from logic has a certain validity, and may be satisfied with terms from some sort of trans-experiential realm, unless the terms can be plainly exhibited to all comers, they should form no part of the body of the science.

17. The use of the proper language and the understanding of just how much of the language one uses is pertinent to the matter in hand is so important for psychology, that I sha]l give on the next few pages samples of speech containing psychological as well as nonpsychological material, some of which will be analysed for the student, the remainder being left for him to analyse for himself. At first, of course, he will not be able to see the full drift of it, but with further study, new insight will come. To many this will seem a curious and backhanded way of beginning the study of mind, for most text-books start in with an elucidation of neural processes and the gospel of dendrites, — things which only the post-mortem anatomist experiences first hand. These analyses we shall undertake are of things far more of the now and always, and the claim is here made that it is with this sort of thing that psychology is after all mostly concerned. Let

US analyse the following statements in common use:

1. The action of the heart is purely mechanical.

Psychological interest is here focussed on the word "purely." First compare the above statement with what is left with this word omitted.

The action of the heart is mechanical.

The action of the heart is purely mechanical.

Logically it is the same, unless "purely" means "nothing but" or some such equivalence, gratia verborum, but psychologically this word adds one of several items to the situation, (a) It delays the utterance of the adjectival predicate "mechanical," and in so doing intensifies the effect of that predicate, and by the delay it causes also allows the first five words better to be assimilated and perceived as a unit. Or, (b) the word "purely" insinuates, by the tone of voice used in uttering it, something not altogether complimentary to the heart action and we are immediately affected by this bias in it.

2. Where did you go yesterday?

The answering of this question implies a memory. The full psychological putting of the matter would be something like this. The sensations of what objects and movements are restored to you upon the mention of a time twenty-four hours previous to this? Of course as a statement in psychology, it is very condensed, and docs not ask by what means the memory is preserved, whether by vision, audition, movement, or speech; nor whether there is clarity or obscurity in the content of consciousness provoked by the question.

3. I have never heard of it.

We are concerned here with three things: (a) the past tense of the verb "hear," (b) the meaning of "never," and (c) the use of the preposition "of." As for the first of these, it refers again to memory; the second differs from the word "not" by temporal extent, drawn-outness, — "not" meaning a single point of time, while "never" means many "nots" in a continuous stream. The word "of," harmless as it sounds, is indicative of a very complex relationship. Whatever "it" means, whether an engagement between two lovers or a "cat's-paw" in calm weather, is surely a datum mentionable, happening somewhere, and more or less related to other things. But we do not say "I hear of a noise," as the Greek language says it; we say hear a noise, see a light, smell a rose; and only a few verbs in English are followed by the preposition in comparison with many other languages dead or living. What, then, do we mean by "hear of it," in referring to a thing past? Why, this, that the observer himself told it, and we heard him tell it, and thus we use the word "of" for things that come to us in relays rather than directly and immediately. But this does not mean that the expression "think of it" is explained in the same way. "Think" is not always followed by a preposition, nor are the words which follow the prepositions necessarily things relayed to the thinker. We shall take up this matter vigorously when we come to the old bugaboo, "consciousness OF."

4. I like this ever so much more than that one.

Liking is something peculiarly psychological, and is the starting point for choice. It cannot be referred to logic, for people "like" that which all arguments show is false, dangerous, and sure to produce an aftermath of ill. "Ever so much more" is an attempt to make a scale of values, and is an example of the only "mental" arithmetic there is. "Ever so much more," also differs from plain "more" by the greater number of syllables intervening between "this one" and "that," allowing the voice to add emotion to the comparison.

5. "Sicklied o'er with a pale cast of thought."

This line from Hamlet is an hyperbole in rhetoric, while it is a case of empathy in psychology. Empathy differs from personification in that it neither capitalizes the important word, nor does it imply as much animation as the latter. Thus, empathically, a mountain bears up the sky above it, while in personification the mountain is a man whose shoulders are overburdened with the weight of sky they support. Two of the words in this expression are strictly poetical, — "sicklied" and "o'er." "O'er" is used for smoothness and fine sound, while "sicklied" is a "new" word, psychologically. It arose from the mood background which dominated the author. The word "cast" is used to express inertness, referring at the same time to the fixity and whiteness of plaster; the sound of the word also helps to convey one of these meanings. The above expression, taken as a whole and apart from the context in which it was uttered, need not have any clear, wholesome meaning at all, for it was not uttered as any thing to be formally defined or analysed. Certain sayings are indexes of moods, and moods are not always possible or profitable to press for their signification.

18. The student will analyse for himself as well as he can the following expressions:

2. The price of this waist is $2.98.

3. He completely forgot himself.

4. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

5. By merit raised to that bad eminence.

6. I have a good mind to do it.

7. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

8. Why, then the devil give him good of it.

9. He thanked his stars. 10. I only hope it is not so.

19. Out of the preceding examples much more could be derived than has been indicated, but the analysis of a thing as it stands is quite different from an historical account of its development. This item has particular point in psychology, for here one has to explain how things started as well as why they continued and what they are now. This, of course, brings one face to face with what are called causes, and every science is supposed to have readymade answers to every question beginning with "why" that can be formulated. And while this is a logical matter entirely, this much needs to be said about it at this point. Some questions beginning with "why" are answerable, and some others are not. If the reader will look into a text-book of Logic for the "fallacy of many questions" and study the examples there given, he will understand that every question beginning with "why" is answerable only when it contains one question and only one. Moreover, only such things have a cause as can be analysed where at least one of the elements depends upon a temporal sequence for its specific eff'ect in the whole to which it contributes. Furthermore, there are in every science what are called "elements," "primary facts," "irreducible first principles," and to ask the reasons for them in that science is to ask a question to which there is only an "old wives' fable" for an answer.

20. This can be directly shown by the following: As the writer understands it, the difference between mathematics and the other sciences is Time. There is, indeed, no mention of time in either Geometry or Algebra. Their principles, it is true, were found out by cultured gentlemen in this or that decade or century, but there is no t or t- in mathematics as there is, for example, in physics. Time being the one fundamental, independent variable of science, the sciences are logically arranged in point of the amount of dependence they show upon this temporal factor. In such an arrangement the sciences based on psychology are at the extreme end of the list, farthest from mathematics, — that is, from the mathematics which deals with general data and does not need to discount its answers upon meeting with the empirical situation. Less and less intricately involved in the temporal dilemma than is psychology are first the biological sciences, next the chemical, and next the physical. In the mathematical sciences, which come next, time is replaced by the sort of activity which generates the number system. As the time element increases in complexity in the scale of sciences, also, less and less do they become reducible to a mathematical or equational form. Now the questions propounded to the physicist which ask "why" are explained either by reference to mathematics, or by the elements of his own science; those put to the chemist are referred either to his own data, to those of physics, or those of mathematics; and so on throughout the list. But not every "why" in any one science is necessarily referred beyond that science. Some things are chemical, and that ends it. Thus, also, some things are psychological and nothing else, and the answer is vanity that attempts to find a first cause for them in the realm of things remote. The above-mentioned order, also, of the sciences is not reversible. One does not go to psychology, for instance, to find out the fundamental facts of geology, nor to the realm of esthetics for the fact that there are but three laws in Newton's formulation of the activity of moving bodies.