Chapter XVII: Part IX: , p. 475, 1890), Dr. Johnstone Stoney, F. R. S., published an (7)

“3) Anger. As I think I mentioned in my last letter, the
patient has been a person of unusually equal temper; an
outbreak of real passion has never been observed with her.
When annoyed or teased by some of the other women, there is
a distinct corrugation of the forehead, accompanied by an
exceedingly slight general movement as if of aversion, no
words, movement of the chest, clenching of the hands, etc. She
describes the sensation as one of repulsion.

“Like Strümpell’s case she shows definitely shame, grief,
surprise, fear, and substituting for anger, repulsion.

“My own impression derived from observation of the patient
is, that all mental emotional sensibilities are present and
only a little less vivid than in the unanæsthetic state; and
that emotions are approximately natural, and not at all coldly
dispassionate.”

In the second case, that of a Russian woman, aged thirty-five, there was complete loss of cutaneous sensibility in all its qualities: the sense of position (“muscular sense”) was almost completely abolished; the sense of taste was absent in the anterior two-thirds of the tongue. Smell, sight, and hearing were preserved. She had left the hospital before the article was written. In regard to her case, Dr. Berkley writes:

“While in the most absolute state of anæsthesia (auditory
and visual excepted) there was no departure from a normal
psyche; the woman would sometimes be angered when she did not
understand a question, at others would smile or shake her head,
and would frequently laugh and talk with another Russian woman
in the same ward. There was never the slightest apathy manifest
after the first few days of febrile movement.”

I give these cases for what they are worth. In the first, it is evidently impossible to entirely exclude the presence of sensations caused by the reflex acts, and the second, not having, apparently, been examined with special reference to the subjective side of her emotional manifestations, may be open to the same objection which Professor James makes against Strümpell’s case. To me it seems extremely unlikely that, if the theory under discussion is correct, such an amount of anæsthesia as existed in these cases would have produced no obvious effect on the emotions. The fact that voluntary acts were performed by both these patients as well as by Strümpell’s case, seems to me conclusive as to the existence of emotions of some sort in all of them.

It seems clear to me, from the foregoing considerations, that there are serious difficulties in the way of accepting Professor James’s theory as an adequate explanation of all the phenomena of emotion. On the other hand, I think it contains an important truth, and that, by calling attention to it, he has rendered a real service to psychology. In order to make it clear how far I agree with him, it will be necessary to consider just what feelings are to be classed together under the head of emotion.

If we touch our fingers to a live coal, we are conscious of a sensation of heat, and also of pain. If we take quinine into our mouths, it tastes bitter, and also disagreeable. So in regard to a very large proportion of our sensations, we recognise two elements—one which has to do with the qualities of the object, and, another consisting of the pleasurable or painful way in which those qualities affect us. The former may be called the objective element in sensation. We think of the heat as residing in the coal, whether we are touching it or not, but it never occurs to us to think of the coal as in pain. The pain is in us—an entirely subjective feeling. Doubtless there is no more reason to think of heat, as it is appreciated by our senses, as a property of the coal, than pain, but that is the way in which we naturally think of it. That these two elements are really distinct is evident from the fact that the different senses furnish them in different proportions. Comparatively few sights, for instance, give any such sensuous pain to the eye as the sensation produced by getting a grain of sand under the lid, which gives us very little information in regard to the qualities of the offending substance. In fact, it is generally true that intensity of pleasurable or painful sensation is a hindrance to exact knowledge of its object. It is further evident from the fact that, in disease, one form of sensibility may be abolished while the other is retained. A person may be able to feel the slightest touch, and to recognise perfectly the size, shape, and texture of the objects he handles, and yet feel no pain when cut, struck, nor burned, or he may have even heightened sensibility to painful impressions with loss of the power to recognise the sensible qualities of objects.

Now, although we are accustomed to distinguish between emotions and purely sensuous pleasures and pains, there are some points, at least, at which it is not easy to draw the line. My pleasure in the anticipation of a good dinner is undoubtedly an emotion. Is not my pleasure in eating it entitled to the same name, and does not the latter consist in the reality of the sensations which in the former case were enjoyed in imagination? Is not the enjoyment we feel in the smell of mignonette, the tone of a sweet voice, the color and form of the rainbow, emotion? Yet it consists largely, if not entirely, in the agreeableness of the sensations. Most people would probably think it strange to hear hunger and thirst spoken of as emotions but would readily agree that desire of food or drink is as much an emotion as any other desire. Is the desire in this case anything more than the hunger or thirst?

I am inclined to think that it is proper to call such pleasures and pains as I have instanced above emotions, and if so, I see no reason for denying the name to any sensuous pleasures and pains. If Professor James’s view is that all feeling is sensation, I should say that all feeling is emotion. Whether this view is correct or not, I do not see how Professor James can consistently refuse to accept it. On his theory, the emotions which he discusses must owe their pleasurable or painful quality to the pleasurable or painful nature of the sensations in which they consist. I can see no valid ground for saying that some such feelings are emotions and others are not. But the essence of emotion is pleasure or pain. Abstracting these qualities, it would be an indifferent emotion, which, I think all would agree, is a contradiction in terms. Possibly he might wish to limit the use of the term to those pleasurable and painful feelings, which arise not directly, but in a reflex way. He might say, for instance, that the disagreeableness to the ear of the creaking of an ungreased axle is not, but the shudder which it gives a sensitive person is, emotion. In that case, it must be admitted that a sneeze is emotion. His contention is that we have no other pleasures or pains than those of sensation. If this be true, a setting off of some sensations as emotions is, if not an arbitrary, a comparatively useless procedure.

My own view, then, is that the elements of sensation which I have spoken of as objective and subjective might, with equal propriety, be characterised respectively as intellectual and emotional, and that in this direction the theory under discussion, although true as far as it goes, does not go far enough.

However this may be, the admission or denial that these feelings are emotions does not necessarily affect the question whether or not this is the only origin, of pleasure and pain. As has already been said, those feelings to which no one will deny the name of emotions are not usually, in adult human beings, at least, direct reactions on sensation. If it be true that the start we give at the unexpected slamming of a door is a sort of fright, it is a very rudimentary sort compared with that which one feels when the cry of fire is raised in a crowded theatre. “A burnt child dreads the fire.” It is not the sight of the fire, but the thought of the burning, that arouses the emotion. When a man reads in the newspaper of the death of a friend, or a rise in the value of property in which he is interested, it is not the sight of the black marks on the white paper, but the beliefs which, through a long and intricate series of associations they call up, which move his feelings. If he could not read, he would see the same announcement without any emotion. The usual origin of the emotions _par excellence_ is by way of association.

Suppose that I have taken a nauseous dose, and made a wry face over it. No one, I presume, would question that the disagreeableness lay in the unpleasant taste, and not in the distortion of the countenance. Now, suppose I have to repeat the dose, and my face takes on a similar expression at the anticipation to that which it wore when I took it originally. How does this come about? If I can trust my own consciousness, it is because the vivid reproduction, in memory, of the unpleasant taste is itself unpleasant. I do not see how it can well be otherwise. Professor James says (p. 649) that “the first element of memory is the revival in the mind of an image or copy of the original event.” How can I have a copy in my mind of a pain if it is not painful? Take away the painfulness of it and there would be nothing left. I might remember the circumstances under which it occurred, and judge from them that I must have suffered pain, but I could not, it seems to me, remember the pain itself. Whether that is possible or not, I feel sure that the fact, in my own case, is, that my memory of a pain resembles it in the same way that my memory of the circumstances in which it occurred resembles them. If this be the fact, what can be more natural than that it should excite the same sort of associated movements that were excited by the original sensation? I cannot make it seem any more credible, to return to the example mentioned above, that my repugnance to a repetition of the dose is due to my involuntary movements than that my discomfort in taking it originally was due to the similar movements that occurred then.

Suppose that a child who has eaten and enjoyed an orange is offered another. The sight of it calls up the recollection of the agreeable taste, and the expectation of a repetition of the pleasant experience excites expressions of pleasure. If the fruit is snatched away, the disappointment at the loss of the expected pleasure is distressing, and very probably may result in his weeping. I hardly think that any one who will consult his own consciousness will say that the reason he likes the taste of an orange is that it makes him laugh or smile to get it. He likes it because it tastes good, and is sorry to lose it for the same reason. The laughing or weeping is, I think, unquestionably the result of the pleasure or grief, not of the mere perception of an object in itself indifferent.

It is true that emotions of this sort do not always arise by way of personal association. Young children are apt to be afraid of strangers, of large animals, and of loud noises. I can remember being frightened at my first sight of a locomotive. Here we come upon the questions of inherited experience and natural selection, which can hardly be discussed in an article like this. The objects of which young children are instinctively afraid, as a rule, are either dangerous themselves, or more or less similar to dangerous objects. I see no more difficulty in supposing that mental pleasure and pain, on the sight of special objects, may be a matter of organisation than in the case of the analogous physical sensations.

My view of the matter, then, is that emotion in the sense in which the word is commonly used bears the same relation to perceptions or beliefs that feelings of physical pleasure or pain do to the objective or intellectual quality of sensations. I am inclined to think it proper to class all pleasurable and painful feelings together as emotions. If this view is correct, it would, of course, include those feelings to which Professor James would confine the term. I should not at all hesitate to admit that the emotional state of a person who trembles and turns pale with fear is different from that of one who preserves his self-possession in the presence of a danger that he realises and dreads. I think it is true that the voluntary actions prompted by an emotion have some tendency to intensify it. But, so far as I can analyse my own feelings, the pleasures and pains of memory and imagination seem to me just as real as those of sensation, and not at all to be confounded with them. When I try to subtract all motor reactions and resulting sensations from the feeling of fear, for instance, there remains not merely the intellectual perception that the event dreaded is not desirable, but the perfectly distinct emotional consciousness that I do not desire it.

This view seems to be favored by the analogy between the relations of sensation to reflex movement on the one hand, and of perception to voluntary movement on the other, which will, I think, be found to be very complete. We have reflex acts which are useful, such as breathing, the beating of the heart, swallowing and coughing; and others, like groaning, weeping, and trembling, which seem to be useless. In like manner, emotions of hope or fear may give rise to voluntary acts calculated to enable the subject of the emotion to secure or avoid its object. If I burn my fingers, my hand is involuntarily snatched away. Such would not be the case if the burn caused no pain. If I see that the house is on fire, I try to escape, either by extinguishing the fire or by getting out of the house. It seems to me evident that I should not do so if the thought of being burned were not painful. Such emotions may also occasion useless acts, more or less similar to those mentioned above. A person who saw no way of escape from a burning house might tremble, weep, or groan from fear.

On the evolutionary hypothesis, it seems easy to understand how the reproduction, by memory or imagination, of certain feelings might bring about movements like those excited by the original feelings. Professor James would have us believe that this reproduction is always, in itself, indifferent, that is, merely intellectual; but that it is, nevertheless, capable of setting up the movements which, in the case of peripheral stimuli, are the results of pleasure and pain, and that the consciousness of these movements is, in such cases, the sole cause of the emotional condition. Such a reversal of relations seems to me highly improbable. Each one must decide for himself which view is more in accordance with the facts of his own consciousness.

W. L. WORCESTER.

FOOTNOTES:

[57] _Two Cases of General Cutaneous and Sensory Anæsthesia, without Marked Psychical Implication._ By Henry J. Berkley, M. D., Baltimore. [Brain, Part IV. 1891.]

PROFESSOR ERNST MACH’S TERM SENSATION.

SUPPLEMENTARY TO HIS CONTROVERSY WITH THE EDITOR.

_The Monist_, Vol. I, No. 3, contains a controversy between Prof. Ernst Mach and myself on some questions of psycho-physics in which Professor Mach, having reference to an editorial article on “Feeling and Motion,” regards sensations as the “elements of reality,” “while motion,” he says, “is a mere mental auxiliary, an artificial expedient.” “Physicists,” we are told, “have accustomed us to regard the motions of atoms as more real than the green of trees. In the latter I see a (sensory) fact, in the former a _Gedankending_, a thing of thought.”

In contradistinction to Professor Mach I maintained that our scientific terms, although abstract concepts and things of thought, or noumena, are after all descriptive of actual facts; they are symbols representing features of reality. Motions, i. e., that which is meant by the term motion, is a reality, and what the chemist calls atoms is a definite quality of certain facts of experience. Atoms are not things in themselves, as the name seems to suggest, but rather proportional relations conveniently so expressed as if they were ultimate units or concrete little bodies of a definite mass or weight. What atoms are, aside from representing the proportions in which elements combine, we do not know. We may define “atom” as the minimal weight in which an element enters into chemical combinations, but such atoms have never been an object of observation. For aught we know, they may as little be discrete bodies as a curve consists of discrete straight lines, which, as such, would be unobservable only because infinitesimally small. The infinitely small straight line into which a curve is analysed by mathematicians is a fiction, wisely devised for calculating the path of the curve. This fiction is as Professor Mach says, an artifice only, not a reality, or as I say, an allegoric expression to characterise not whole concrete realities, but certain features of reality in their abstractness.

Scientific terms are comparable to myths that contain deep religious truths. The fiction of the myth is only the vehicle of its meaning. The naked meaning in its abstract purity may be difficult to grasp. Thus our imagination steps in and completes the picture so as to render it concrete and easily thinkable.

Now, when several months ago I met Professor Mach at Prague, our conversation naturally touched upon the problems which had formed the subject of our discussion. Professor Mach assented to my speaking of scientific terms as abstracts. That, accordingly, must be considered as the point of agreement. But when I proposed that the term sensation also was according to my terminology an abstract term representing one feature of reality only and excluding other features, Professor Mach took exception to it, saying that he understands by sensation reality itself. Very well then, this is the difference; and this difference is after all a difference of terms only. I understand by sensation the psychical feature of the data of experience only, to the exclusion of what may be called its physical aspect. Sensation accordingly, as I use the term, is not the whole of the given reality but only one of its qualities. If, as Professor Mach uses the term, sensation is another name for reality, the main difference between our views appears to be removed.

P. CARUS.

BOOK REVIEWS.

VORLESUNGEN ÜBER DIE MENSCHEN- UND THIERSEELE. By _Wilhelm Wundt_. Zweite umgearbeitete Auflage. Hamburg and Leipsic: Leopold Voss. 1892.

The new edition of Wundt’s _Menschen- und Thierseele_ is one of the best existing general introductions to psychology. It preserves nearly the just mean between the purely introspective and abstract treatment and the substitution of physiology for psychology with which recent treatises have familiarised us. The author has completely rewritten the edition of 1863, which he regards as a youthful indiscretion (_Jugendsünde_)—retaining only such chapters as could be brought into harmony with his maturer views and with the developed science of psycho-physics that has taken the place of the _Zukunftsprogramm_ of thirty years ago. He has wisely omitted all the superficial and diffuse chapters on comparative psychology and ethnology which cumbered the original work; has silently ignored the fantastic speculations as to the identity of electricity and nerve-force (one of the worst of the aforesaid youthful sins); and practically abandoned (perhaps as too esoteric for popular exposition) the elaborate reduction of sensations and perceptions to unconscious judgments and inferences.

The first thirteen or fourteen chapters offer a very clear and interesting résumé of the chief doctrines of the _Physiologische Psychologie_ in regard to sensations generally, their measurements and qualities, Weber’s and Fechner’s laws, the special sensations of color, hearing, and the muscular sense, and the problem of space perception. Following the plan of the original work in these chapters, the author aims less at completeness of statement than to present clearly the distinctive doctrines of modern psychology. In the treatment of certain themes, e. g. Fechner’s law, and the perception of space, he neglects, for the sake of clearness, qualifications of detail which the special student must look for in the larger work. The last sixteen chapters deal with the feelings, the will, consciousness, attention, association and apperception, conception, abnormal and animal psychology and instinct, concluding with two notable lectures on the “Freedom of the Will” and the “Immortality of the Soul.” It is to these chapters that we must look for Wundt’s general psychological and philosophical system. Profiting by recent criticisms he has here set forth his characteristic doctrines in so clear and definite a final statement that further misconception of them is hardly permissible. The remainder of this notice will be devoted to what is perhaps the most interesting question thus suggested: Wundt’s relation to the associationist psychology of Spencer on the one side, and to the younger German school of experimental psychologists on the other. Wundt ignores the Spencerian form of the associationist psychology, and the young psychologists do injustice to Wundt, neither side apparently condescending to read with attention the writings of the other. The debate, so far as it is not merely verbal, springs from two real differences of method: (1) Wundt in his psychological analysis habitually takes account of the problems of the theory of knowledge (_Erkenntnisstheorie_), or ultimate metaphysics, which the young psychologists endeavor (not always with success) systematically to exclude. (2) Wundt, gifted with superior powers of introspection, is more aware than the young psychologists of the infinite complexity and subtlety of mental states. He prefers, therefore, to a schematic simplification of the phenomena a terminology and descriptive analysis that reflect in some measure their manifold diversity. And thus while Wundt finds the pure associationist psychology barren and tautologous, the young psychologists see in Wundt’s complicated terminology only a shamefaced reversion to the discarded psychology of a substantial soul endowed with autonomous “faculties.” But the analysis of our mental states which Wundt gives by means of this terminology is really only a subtler restatement of the analysis of Mill, Spencer, and Taine, to which the new psychology has not been able to add anything of moment. It is true that he proclaims the inadequacy of association, even when translated into the diagrams of a hypothetical cerebral anatomy, to “explain” fully our conscious active mental life. But in this he is at one with Spencer (ultimate scientific ideas), J. S. Mill (Examination of Hamilton), and Schopenhauer (_Epiphilosophie_). It is gross injustice to stigmatise as an abandonment of the scientific attitude of mind this occasional passing recognition of the seeming ultimate inexplicability of things. In no single concrete instance can it be shown that Wundt now sacrifices the recognised methods and postulates of modern scientific investigation to the psychological hypostisations which his opponents detect in his terminology.

In confirmation of these statements I will give a brief summary of Wundt’s doctrine of association and apperception with an occasional indication of its relation to the psychology of Spencer. Wundt distinguishes the totality of mental states which are perceived from the presentation at the focus of consciousness which is apperceived. In this way (substituting everywhere _dunkel bewusst_ for _unbewusst_) he avoids the metaphysics of the unconscious, while getting the benefit of the entire analysis of its advocates. I do not think the ultimate difficulty can be evaded in this way, but will not stop to argue the point. A further advantage of this distinction is that it makes possible a dynamic treatment of mental states as “events” in place of the crude psychology that deals with the conditions of any mental state as so many ready-made parts externally dovetailed into the completed product. The active side of consciousness is taken into account from the outset. The mental state at any moment is described by indicating the presentation which is then at the focus of consciousness (apperceived) and the accompanying faintly conscious presentations that qualify its tone and total effect. The given mental state is “explained” by tracing out the dynamic readjustments that brought this particular presentation to the focus, and grouped the faintly conscious presentations about it. Now the bringing of a presentation to the focus of conscious attention is the primitive psychical activity, the elementary act of will,[58] and since Wundt places this at the beginning he rejects all evolution of will or instinct from reflex action, and thus, it will be said, here at least puts himself in distinct opposition to advanced scientific thought. Let us distinguish. So far as we are dealing with the developed minds we know, Wundt’s distinction is merely the expression of an observed psychological fact. External volition does go back to internal voluntary attention and this to a focussing of consciousness for which apperception is as good a term as another. Such focussing of the attention is for us now the primary reaction of the “self” on its received impressions. Out of a given group of presentations I apperceive by preference one and you another, because at the time my “self,” my mind, differs from yours. This self may be only a convenient shorthand expression for a passive product of external forces. The feeling of the reaction of the self may be an illusion, and its activity may be merely the mechanical action of a relatively coherent group of presentations when a new presentation is introduced among them, and the whole process may be explicable in terms of associations. But the feeling exists, and Wundt has described and analysed it better than any of his critics.

On the other hand, if the question is of the hypothetical origin of mind, we are at once brought face to face with an ultimate metaphysical problem which the new psychology impatiently ignores, which Spencer grudgingly acknowledges, but which Wundt and Kantians like Riehl find confronting them at every stage of their analysis. Conscious mind cannot conceive of its own origin, and therefore all psychological theories of development must postulate in some form the elements of consciousness and will. Nothing that I could add to the dialectics of this question would influence those who feel no difficulty here. They require a long course of Kantian criticism or its equivalent. At any rate it is not fair polemic to class a thinker as unscientific merely because he recognises this difficulty and gives it expression in his psychology, instead of contemptuously relegating it to metaphysics.

After thus laying the foundations in the doctrine of apperception for the psychology both of cognition and of the will, Wundt proceeds to restate the associationist analysis of Mill and Spencer in a more elaborate terminology but in substantial agreement with Spencer till he reaches the “concept,” when the introduction of apperception gives rise to a seeming difference. Spencer distinguishes simultaneous from successive association as carefully as Wundt. What Wundt, after Herbart calls “complications,” namely the joint reference to one object of a number of disparate presentations of sense, is clearly described by Spencer (“Principles of Psychology,” §§ 315-355); and Wundt’s “assimilations” do not differ appreciably from Spencer’s “still less conscious” processes of “organic classification” (“Principles of Psychology,” § 320). Into the metaphysics of the ultimate relations of contiguity and similarity as laws of association I cannot enter here. Similarity will always be recognised as ultimate by those who, like Spencer, approach the problem first from the psychical side, while a purely materialistic treatment in terms of nervous currents, such as we find in James, will endeavor to do away altogether with similarity, which simply cannot be expressed in terms of nerve-structure without reasoning in a circle. Wundt retains similarity but endeavors to coördinate it with contiguity. The problem is really identical with the final question of the relations of “mind” and “body,” and cannot be profitably discussed apart from that question.

Coming now to the concept and the judgment, we find Wundt affirming that the different forms of simultaneous and successive association (as he has defined them) are not an exhaustive classification of mental processes—that they do not include the concept. Well, he is at liberty to define his own terms, and before we accuse him of hypostasising a new faculty to account for the concept, let us scrutinise his meaning. We shall find that he merely repeats, in a subtler terminology of his own, the analysis of Berkeley, Mill, Taine, Spencer, and Romanes. These writers treat the concept as a complicated associational group held together by the word. Now Wundt, while conceding the theoretic admissibility of this form of statement, holds that such groups present so many distinct characteristics that all delicacy of psychological discrimination is sacrificed by confounding them under one denomination with other associational complexes. He does not, like Professor James, bid introspective psychology “throw up the sponge” here, but wishes to carry his analysis into recesses which the instruments of the associationists are too clumsy to explore. In the interests of this analysis he limits the term association to combinations mediated by a limited number of elements. The (apperceived) concept, on the other hand, is the product of the reaction of the total mind. This distinction (whatever we may think of its absolute validity) expresses a finely observed psychological truth. The distinctive quality of a concept consists, Wundt says, “_in dem begleitenden Bewusstsein, dass die einzelne Vorstellung einen bloss stellvertretenden Werth besitze_.” This feeling he calls the _Begriffsgefühl_, meaning thereby exactly what Professor James means when he says that “the thoughts by which we know that we mean the same thing are apt to be very different indeed from each other,” and that “a polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of ‘Hollo! thingumbob again!’ ever flitted through its mind.” Only, instead of “throwing up the sponge,” Wundt goes on to give a very interesting account of this feeling in its various degrees of clearness between the conceptual polyp and the conceiving man. Apperception is invoked only to name and emphasise the feeling of activity of the self that enters into the _Begriffsgefühl_, distinguishing it as a reaction of the total consciousness from the relatively passive associations of what Romanes would call “recepts.” Psychologists, however, will continue their fruitless debates on questions of terminology and will still imagine that Wundt is a belated reactionist.

PAUL SHOREY.

BEITRÄGE ZUR EXPERIMENTELLEN PSYCHOLOGIE. By _Hugo Münsterberg_. Heft 4. Freiburg i. B. 1892.

Münsterberg’s fourth _Heft_ begins with studies in association. If _a_ and _b_ have been independently associated with _m_, can _a_ call up _b_ without the appearance in consciousness of _m_? The affirmative answer of common experience was confirmed by Scripture’s experiments. Associating five Japanese symbols with two series of five German words, he found that a word of one series tended (without conscious recollection of the Japanese symbol) to revive the particular word in the other series that had been associated with the same symbol. Münsterberg, after repeating and varying the experiment in a number of fields, denies that any such relation can be observed. He may very well be right on the question of facts. It is _a priori_ improbable that a transitory and arbitrary association of a meaningless symbol could modify appreciably the independent and accidental associative attractions of familiar words and presentations. The philosophic interpretation is another question. For our real knowledge it is a matter of indifference whether we fill out “missing links” with “_dunkel bewusst_,” “_unbewusst_,” or “cerebral processes that have no psychical correlates.” And yet how much of contemporary psychologising is a logomachy raging around just this question.

Münsterberg’s second series of experiments show clearly the part played by such missing links in perception. A word is called out just before a complicated picture is exhibited to the subject. He will usually perceive first in the picture some object naturally associated with the word, even though the word has aroused no conscious associations.

Similarly (III) a hastily seen misprinted word will be interpreted variously according to the associations of another word called out to the subject in advance.

Another series of experiments has for result that even the most commonly associated word-couples, as table and chair, have no fixed, unconditional associative attraction for each other in the same or in different minds, but that the unit of attraction is the “associative constellation.” This is only common sense, and artificial experiments will never reveal anything in this field that we cannot learn quite as well in the class room. “Table” will suggest “logarithm” if the boy is fresh from the class in trigonometry.

“The difference between men is in their principle of association” said Emerson long ago. Münsterberg, who has in his archives records of fifty thousand experiments in verbal associations, presents a table of the comparative frequency with which substantives are associated with superior (more general) or inferior class names, with adjectives or with verbs to which they stand in the relation of subject or of object. His chief result is that minds which associate a noun with its higher class name (_Ueberordner_) think of it as the subject of a verb and do not associate it with an adjective. The _Unterordner_ thinks of the noun as object of a verb and associates it with an adjective. The adjective, then, is not the higher class to which the substantive belongs, but a limitation of the substantive. The French, if they please, may use this conclusion to refute Spencer’s contention that “white horse” is a more natural order than _cheval blanc_.

The first topic in “memory studies” is the persistence in the psycho-physical mechanism of the disposition to an acquired automatic movement, even after the memory of the nerve has been seemingly displaced by the habit of its contrary. The experiments were trivial, such as shifting the position of an inkstand from right to left in alternate months, or wearing a watch alternately in the right or left fob. The result, a progressive diminution of the mistakes made after every change, may plausibly be explained by the stimulated attention and consequent care of the experimenter. The second topic treats of the effect of a time interval on the exactness of our memory of sensations of movement in eyes and limbs. The section on “chain reactions” is a methodological study of the various applications of this experimental method. “The influence of nervous stimulants on psychic activities” is rather interesting reading, but yields no important results. Alcohol depresses, tea and coffee heighten the powers of memory and perception for an hour or two after absorption. But the harmful effect of the alcohol sometimes passes away after the first hour. _Grössenschätzung_ is a study of our estimates of distances on a surface, made by passing the hand over it at arm’s length, at half arm’s length, etc. From experiments as to the estimate of absolute tone-distances (as distinguished from musical intervals) Münsterberg concludes that pure measurements are not possible with three tones only. Experiments with four tones do not, he says, confirm the law that distances corresponding to equal differences of vibration are felt as equal.

Physiologists have assumed that the symmetrical movement of the limbs as in swimming or rowing is the natural one; and the alternating or independent movements, as in walking or writing, are an acquisition involving inhibitions of the natural innervations. “Even in adult life,” says Professor James, “there is an instinctive tendency to revert to the bilateral movements of childhood.” Professor Münsterberg was led to doubt this view by observing the unsymmetrical motions of a baby in a warm bath, and experiment has confirmed his scepticism. Complicated joint motions of both hands (tracing circles or other geometrical figures on a surface) do not exhibit any tendency, when the attention is distracted, to assume the symmetrical form. They rather tend to compensate each other in such a way as to preserve equilibrium with the minimum strain on the other muscles of the body, and this law leads as often to alternating as to symmetrical movements of the arms or legs. The case is different of course with the muscles of the trunk, and may be different in birds, as it would in us if we spent our lives in swimming or rowing.

A new method of attacking the problem of localisation is to observe the effect of altering the circulation in different parts of the brain. Tentative experiments on one subject seem to show that verbal associations are readiest when the victim lies on his left side, which is a happy coincidence with the localisation of the speech centres in the left frontal convolutions. If these statistics can be trusted, it is inadvisable to undertake hard mental labor with the head hanging back over the edge of a chair!

In the last chapter, certain simple experiments in our estimates of voluntary movements in varying conditions of mind and body are made the basis of a far-reaching theory of pleasure, pain, and judgment, the elements of which can be found in Aristotle, Herbert Spencer, and James. Münsterberg found by repeated experiments that the accuracy of attempted reproduction of a fixed and familiar amount of centripetal or centrifugal movement of finger and thumb along a rod perpendicular to his waistcoat varied with his condition of fatigue, pleasure, or pain. In a pleasurable state of consciousness the centrifugal movement was exaggerated while the centripetal fell short. In pain the reverse relation obtained. Hence he infers a connection between pain and muscular flexion and pleasure and muscular extension, or rather, he distinguishes the mere sensation of pain (_Schmerz_) and pleasure (_Lust_) which may depend on integrations and disintegrations in the nerve-tissue, from the accompanying feelings of agreeableness (_Wollust_) or disagreeableness (_Unlust_) which are due to sensations aroused at the centres by movements of flexion and extension throughout the body. He thus attaches his special theory of pleasure and pain to Lange’s and James’s theory of the identity of the emotions with their bodily concomitants—though he protests against the metaphysical implications of the doctrine. The origin of the existing coördination of muscular flexions and extensions with pleasure and pain, he explains teleologically on the principles of the Spencerian psychology of evolution. He then proceeds, after Sigwart and Brentano, to revive the old idea of Aristotle (whom he does not mention) that the judgment (affirmative or negative) is rather the assumption of an attitude toward a presentation (_Stellungsnehmende Akte_) than a mere conjunction of presentations. The affirmative judgment is a faint incipient represented movement of the self towards a suggested conjunction of presentations. The negative judgment is a similar movement in the opposite direction. Ontogenetically these inchoate movements are later than the movements of acceptance or rejection called forth by a painful or pleasurable stimulus, and must therefore be treated as derivative phenomena. But the Kantians may derive some comfort from Münsterberg’s final assurance that he too believes that “_Erkenntnisstheoretisch das Urtheil primär ist_.”

PAUL SHOREY.

THE SPIRIT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. By _Josiah Royce_, Ph. D. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

We are told by Professor Royce in the preface to this book, that we are indebted for it to the lady friend to whom it is gracefully dedicated, who asked him “for some account of the more significant spiritual possessions of a few prominent modern thinkers,” to be related “in comparatively brief and untechnical fashion.” The larger portion of the work is taken up with that subject, exhibiting the general growth of modern philosophical thought beginning with Spinozism, and terminating with Monism as the outcome of the doctrine of Evolution. The author’s purpose is constructive, however, as well as expository. He has his own philosophical creed, suggested by what he knows of the progress and outcome of modern thought, and the second portion of the work is the expression of his thoughts on the world-conception which he regards as embodying the true spirit of modern philosophy. Professor Royce justly lays stress on the fact that the theory of evolution is the product of a genuine and continuous growth. He dwells particularly, moreover, on the distinction between the _epistemological_ sense of idealism, which “involves a theory of the nature of our human knowledge,” and its _metaphysical_ sense, in which it is “a theory as to the nature of the real world, however we may come to know that nature.” It is in accord with the latter sense that Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and their allies, as believing matter to be an expression of the world-spirit, are referred to as the idealistic school; and it is in the metaphysical and not the epistemological sense that the term idealism has been used since Hegel. The opposite of a metaphysical idealist is “one who maintains the ultimate existence of wholly unspiritual realities at the basis of experience and as the genuine truth of the world—such unspiritual realities for instance as an absolute ‘Unknowable,’ or, again, as what Hobbes meant by ‘Body.’” This is not, however, the view of the author, who thinks that the metaphysical idealist alone is in possession of a successful solution for the epistemological problem.

Professor Royce divides modern philosophy into three great periods, of which the first was one of pure and simple naturalism. The supernatural had then only a secondary interest, and thought was governed by three ideas—“that nature is a mechanism, that human reason is competent to grasp the truth of nature, and that, since nature’s truth is essentially mathematical, geometry is the model science, whose precision and necessity philosophy, too, must imitate.” During the second period of modern philosophy there was a gradual change of thought objectivity. Reason was still the instrument, but it was employed on the mind itself. It came to be recognised that if man is part of nature’s mechanism, he is a knowing mechanism. The age was, however, more than one of self-analysis. Rousseau introduced a sentimental tendency from which came “a revival of passion, of poetry, and of enthusiasm, whose influence we shall never outgrow.” To it is traceable the French Revolution which overthrew all the mechanical restraints of civilisation, and “demonstrated afresh to the world’s outer sense the central importance of passion in the whole life of humanity.”

The period of modern philosophy, which still continues, began with the publication of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” the essential doctrine of which is that man’s nature is the real creator of man’s world, that visible nature is the expression of the human spirit, the inner structure of which is therefore the deepest truth for us. This idea is “as old as deeper spiritual faith itself,” and yet it is the very soul of all our modern life because it is “the essentially humane view of reality.” For fifty years Kant’s ideas ruled philosophic thought, and then, through the progress of science, the doctrine of evolution received formulation, and confirmation and “external nature has once more gained for us an imposing authority which makes us in many ways sympathise afresh with the pure naturalism of the seventeenth century.” We are compelled to omit any account of the author’s study of the philosophies of Spinoza, Locke, and Berkeley, or the philosophic systems of Kant and his successors of the German School of Idealists. Nor can we say anything as to the doctrine of Evolution, which Professor Royce rightly regards as having had its rise long before Darwin or Herbert Spencer. Before proceeding to state his own views, the author takes a cursory glance at modern empirical monism which he affirms to be rather a suggestion than a philosophy. It is not surprising, therefore, that he is not content with it although he makes use of its ideas.

Let us now see what are the “Suggestions” which Professor Royce offers as his contribution towards the formation of a world-conception. These occupy the last four chapters of the work, which are supplemented by a general summary in the appendix, to the book. For the sake of conciseness we will make use of this summary, according to which there are two phases of idealistic doctrine, the Analytic Idealism of Berkeley and the Synthetic Idealism of Kant and his successors. The former shows that if the world is to be knowable at all, it must be, in its deepest nature, a world of ideas, that is, it exists “only in so far as beings with minds actually _know it to be_.” The objection that nobody can _know_ any reality beyond his own self, is met by the synthetic phase of idealism which shows us that “there is but one self in the world, the logos or world-mind. The _finite_ self knows truth beyond its own limitations, just because it is an organic part of the complete Self.” What are the demands of idealism as thus stated? They have relation, first, to the interpretation of the facts of experience, which must be in terms of the doctrine of the world-mind, and, secondly, to experience itself, on which we depend “for the revelation of that truth which, for us finite beings, must remain a fast ‘outer’ truth, just because it is the content of other mind than our own bits of selfhood, and is universally true for all intelligences.” The philosophy of experience having to do with facts and with the interpretation of facts, it is necessary to distinguish between what is really “outer” and what is “inner” about our finite experience. The former embraces the world of facts, and a fact is something which must be describable in some sort of universal terms. The principle of ordinary realism, “that you must not be sentimental or otherwise emotional in your account of the truth of things, but rather _exact in your descriptions of what things are_,” has a thoroughly idealistic justification. Not appreciation, but description gives us outer truth, and this is the characteristic presupposition of all natural science, which is concerned with the universal aspects of things, as opposed to momentary and transient aspects. That presupposition involves the assumption that the world is _essentially describable_. But as only the well-knit, the orderly, that which conforms to law, can be described science assumes the universality and rigidity of the laws of nature. It assumes further, since the most exact descriptions are possible only in the case of processes in Space and Time, of a mechanical type, that everything including man himself, is a part of nature’s mechanism. A closer analysis, however, shows that, as one can only describe what has been first appreciated, there must be universal types of appreciation, and therefore, that “Ideals must be deeper than Mechanism, so that, in order to be relatively describable, nature must embody purposes, and so be possessed of worth.” The author’s conclusion is that the natural order is also a moral order, and that therefore “the world of absolute self must appear to us as having two aspects, one a temporal, the other an eternal aspect, one of law and one of worth. Man then turns out to be at once a part of nature’s mechanism, and a part of the moral order; at once temporally determined and morally free.”

The final lecture presents the author’s views as to the solution of the problem of evil. Professor Royce believes that all evil is part of a good order, and hence he agrees with Hegel, who declared that life, however good, will always be restless, longing, suffering, and who gloried in the paradox as the very essence of spirituality; rather than with Schopenhauer, whose recognition, in another light, of the universality of the same truth led him to abandon all hope in life. The justification of the existence of an evil impulse comes just at the instant when it is hated and condemned. Thus “condemning and conquering the evil will, makes it part of a good will”; as pain and suffering have their compensation in their chastening effect on the spirit. But to the enlightened soul it is not so much the painfulness as “the blind irrationality of fortune that seems to drive God out of our thoughts when we look at our world.” It is the capriciousness of life, arising from human stupidity, that really makes it seem like an evil dream. What is the explanation of this caprice given by the author? It is to be found in the creed of his idealism, “This world is the world of the Logos.” It is “the suffering God, who is just our own true self, who actually and in our flesh bears the sins of the world, and whose natural body is pierced by the capricious wounds that hateful fools inflict upon him.” And as our defeats are his, so his triumph and his eternal peace are ours also.

Prof. Royce in making “only one more effort to define a ‘double-aspect’ theory of the relations of the physical and the moral and æsthetic worlds,” affirms that our philosophic insight teaches us that the world of matter in motion is simply an external aspect of the appreciable world, that is, of the world of the Logos. Of this, it is such an aspect “as can be expressed by finite consciousness in terms of the space and time forms, and of the categories of empirical science.... Consequently all its laws, all its necessity, its causation, its uniformity, belong, not to its inner nature as such, but to the external show of this nature.” That which actually appears to us is matter in motion, which furnishes the fact of the double aspect, the inner intelligibility of which fact is problematical to us, but not so for the Logos, who is our true Self, and who “completes the insight that for us is so fragmentary.” This true Self, the Logos, is the only Self, and with it the deeper self of man is identical. That this deeper self is “the self that knows in unity all truth,” is declared to be no hypothesis, and therefore the existence of the Infinite Self is perfectly sure. This Self “infinitely and reflectively transcends our consciousness, and therefore, since it includes us, it is at the very least a person, and more definitely conscious than we are; for what it possesses is self-reflecting knowledge.” Finally, the true world, that is the world of appreciation, is the system of the thoughts of the Logos, whose unity we know, just so far as we ourselves consciously and rationally enter into it and form part of it. Therefore “in so far as we have inner unity of thinking, in so far as we commune with our fellows, and in so far as we rightly see significance in the outer universe, we are in and of the world of appreciation that embodies the thought of the Logos.”