It is clear that mind lasts longer than any single men- tal process; it is a sum or series of mental processes. It must be noted further that the processes which make up mind do not occur one by one; our mental experi- ence, even in moments of extreme preoccupation or con- centration, is complex. As you read this page, your mind is composed of a large number of processes: the sense of the printed page; satisfaction or dissatisfaction with that sense; pressures from your clothing, chair, etc.; internal sensations and feelings which make up your bodily comfort or discomfort, which inform you of the position of your limbs, etc.; probably a medley of sounds from neighbouring rooms or from the street, and so on. Just as life consists of a sum of simultaneous processes, — secretion and excretion, decomposition and recomposition, — so mind is a stream of processes, more or less numer- ous, which run their course in time together.
My * consciousness ' is the sum of mental processes which make up my experience noiv; it is the mind of any given ' present ' time. We might, perhaps, consider it as a cross-section of mind. This section may be either arti- ficial or natural. We may deliberately cut across mind, in order to investigate it for psychological purposes. We have then interfered with the natural succession of our mental processes. On the other hand, mind falls of itself into a series of consciousnesses, each separate conscious- ness being dominated by some particular group of pro- cesses. We enter a scientific lecture room with a science- consciousness; we leave it with a dinner-consciousness; we lay down the day's work with a rest-consciousness. These are natural divisions of mind; they are not so complete and radical as those artificially distinguished, but they are sufficiently independent of one another for us to recognise their existence in our everyday experience.
The artificial consciousness lasts, as a rule, only for an instant. We make our section of mind, glance at the pro- cesses in which we are interested, and then move on at once to a new consciousness. The natural consciousness varies in duration from a few seconds to several hours or even days. If a gun is fired unexpectedly outside the win- dow of a room in which I am reading an interesting novel, I have a momentary sound-consciousness, which immedi- ately relapses into the story-consciousness. But if I am anticipating a great joy or sorrow, the group of processes 12 The Meaning and Problem of Psychology which constitutes the special joy-consciousness or sorrow- consciousness may persist for some length of time.
The natural consciousness, indeed, differs precisely as the time which we speak of as * the present time ' differs. It is * now ' for the whole hour that we spend in the den- tist's chair, or for the whole afternoon that we devote to the reading of a new book. For the runner who is await- ing the signal to start, it is * now ' only for two or three seconds. Each of these * now's ' in mental experience is a natural consciousness.
Most analogies and comparisons are in some respects mislead- ing; and our comparison of consciousness to a cross-section of mind is no exception to the rule. A cross-section of a group of processes will show (i) cut ends (cross-sections of processes act- ually cut through), and (2) ' tails ' of processes which are just dis- appearing. Now when we examine an artificial consciousness, we never look at cut ends. The ' looking at ' a process, while it is running its course, alters the process, — and so defeats its own object (§ 9). The only processes which the psychologist can usefully observe are those which are just vanishing at the moment when the cross-section is taken.
§ 4. The Problem of Psychology. — The aim of the psy- chologist is threefold. He seeks (i) to analyse concrete (actual) mental experience into its simplest components, (2) to discover how these elements combine, what are the laws which govern thgir combination, and (3) to bring them into connection with their physiological (bodily) conditions.
(i) We saw above that all science begins with analysis. The original material of science is complex; science itself introduces order into chaos by reducing the complex to its elements, by tracing the proportion of identical elements in different complexes, and by determining (where that is possible) the relations of the elements to one another. Psychology is no exception to the rule. Our concrete mental experience, the experience of 'real life,' is always complex. However small a fragment we may seize upon, — a single wish, a single idea, a single resolution, — we find invariably that close inspection of it will reveal its complexity, will show that it is composed of a number of more rudimentary processes. The first object of the psy- chologist, therefore, is to ascertain the nature and number of the mental elements. He takes up mental experience, bit by bit, dividing and subdividing, until the division can go no further. When that point is reached, he has found a conscious element.
The mental or conscious elements are those mental processes which cannot be further analysed, which are absolutely simple in nature, and which consequently cannot be reduced, even in part, to other processes. The special reasons which lead the psychol- ogist to look upon various special processes as elements will be discussed in their places, in following chapters.
We have already seen that an ' idea ' is a complex process. We may here illustrate the complexity of concrete mental experi- ences by examining an experience of a different order, — say, an emotion. The emotion of anger seems, at first sight, to be a single experience; it has a single name. Really, it is highly com- plex. It contains, e.g., the idea of the person with whom one is angry; the idea of the act of his, at which one is displeased; the idea of a retahatory action on one's own part; a mass of bodily sensations, attending the flushing of one's face, the tendency to clench the fist, the bracing of the whole muscular system, — one 'feels stronger' when angry. It begins with a feeling of dis- pleasure, of pained surprise or wounded pride; but this soon gives way to the pleasantness of anger itself, the delight in the idea of retaliation and in the fact that one is strong enough to 14 TJie Meaning a7id Problem of Psychology retaliate, — a delight that has come down to civilised man from his primitive ancestors, and that shows itself continually in the actions of the child. These processes — themselves by no means simple — all take part, crossing and recrossing, shifting and recom- bining, in the emotion. They need not all be present together in the angry consciousness of a given moment; but all have their share in the experience of anger.
(2) Analysis needs to be tested in two ways. We must always ask, with regard to it: Has it gone as far as it can go } and: Has it taken account of all the elements which are contained in the experience } To answer the first question, the analysis must be repeated: analysis is its own test. When one psychologist says that a process is elemental, other psychologists repeat his analysis for them- selves, trying to carry it further than he could do. If they stop short where he did, he was right; if they find his ' simple ' process to be complex, he was wrong. As regards the second question, on the other hand, the test of analysis is syjithesis. When we have analysed a complex into the elements a^ b^ r, we test our analysis by trying to put it together again, to get it back from a, b and c. If the complexcan be thus restored, the analysis is correct; but if the combination of a, b and c does not give us back the original complex, the analyst has failed to discover some one or more of its ingredients. Hence the psy- chologist, when he has analysed consciousness, must put together the results of his analysis, must synthetise, and compare his reconstruction of mental experience with the experience as originally given. If the two tally, his work on that mental experience is done, and he can pass on to another; if not, he must repeat his analysis, watching con- stantly for the factors which he had previously missed.
§ 4- The Ptvblem of Psychology 15 If the conscious elements were 'things,' the task of reconstruction of an experience would not be difficult. We should put the simple bits of mind together, as the bits of wood are put together in a child's puzzle-map or kindergarten cube. But the conscious elements are * pro- cesses ': they do not fit together, side to side and angle to angle; they flow together, mix together, overlapping, rein- forcing, modifying or arresting one another, in obedience to certain psychological laws. The psychologist must, therefore, in the second place, seek to ascertain the laivs which govern the connection of the mental elements. Knowledge of these laws renders the synthesis of ele- ments into a concrete experience possible, and is of assist- ance also in subsequent analysis.
When we try for the first time to analyse anger, we may very easily overlook the fourth factor mentioned above, — the mass of sensations accompanying the flush of anger, the doubling of the fist, etc. We discover that we have omitted something, however, as soon as ever we put together the ingredients which we have noticed, and ask if they actually make up the experience of anger, and if they exhaust all that we ' feel ' when we are angry. Some- thiftg is still lacking. This discovery shows us that the processes which our analysis has brought to light must somehow have ob- scured certain other processes, connected with them in the actual emotion. We have now, therefore, to repeat our analysis, keep- ing a sharp lookout for the missing processes: we shall do well to try to analyse some other emotions, since the processes which are obscure in anger may, perhaps, come to the front in them. After many trials we find what the lacking something is; and our syn- thesis is satisfactory. At this stage we note carefully the manner in which the items which we missed at first are connected with the other processes in anger, — we seek to determine how they could have been obscured so completely by the other processes. And having made a large number of similar notes, and compared 1 6 The Meaning and Problem of Psychology them methodically, we are finally able to write out a law of mental combination or connection. When we have our law, we can apply it in difficult cases as they occur, and so gain help in our later analyses.
(3) Every mental process is connected with a bodily process; we do not know anything of mind apart from body. Mind and body, that is, always go together in our experience. And ordinary observation will convince us that body influences mind in various ways. Consciousness when the eyes are closed is different from consciousness when the eyes are open; if the bodily state varies, the mental state varies also; the dropping of the eyelids pre- vents the ether waves from gaining access to the sensitive parts of the eyes, and with this physical fact go the men- tal facts of the sensation of darkness, the ' feeling ' of bodily unsteadiness and uncertainty, etc. The mind of a man who has been blind from his birth is essentially dif- ferent from the mind of one endowed with normal vision. Where the latter sees, the former hears and touches: I see my path, but the blind man hears and 'feels ' his way. Even the highest and most abstract processes of thought give evidence of the close connection of mind with body. We cannot think, unless we have ideas in which to think; and ideas are built up from impressions received through bodily sense-organs. Thus most of us remember, imagine, dream, and think in terms of sight. When we remember an event, we see it occurring ' in our mind's eye '; when we ' imagine ' an experience, we have a mental ' image ' of it, we seem to see it take place; when we dream, we ordinarily see ourselves or our friends engaged in this action or in that; and when we think, we often see the words in which we are thinking, as if they were printed or written on an imagined page. Psychology is not com- plete, then, until we have brought the results of our analy- sis of mental experience, the mental elements, into con- nection with the bodily strnctnres and functions which condition them.
Put in another way, the problem of psychology may be said to consist in the description and explanation of mental pro- cesses. Exact description implies analysis and synthesis; you cannot describe accurately unless you have taken the object of your description to pieces, observed it in all its parts, and then replaced the parts and reconstructed the whole. When we have described, we can go on to explain, to state the circumstances under which the process takes place. Explanation is always that: the statement of the circumstances or conditions under which the described phenomenon occurs. The conditions of mental pro- cesses are partly mental and partly bodily: the laws of mental connection, on the one hand, and the laws (functions) of certain bodily structures on the other.
The psychologist has to pull mental experience to pieces, — to put it together again, — and to note what happens to the partic- ular processes involved, and what goes on in the body while the experience is in progress. This is the ' problem ' of psychology.
§ 5. The Subdivisions of Psychology. — The psychology which we defined in § 2 may be termed general psychol- ogy. It includes many special branches of psychological enquiry with which we shall not be directly concerned in this book. The psychology of which we shall treat is nor- mal, adult, human, individual, psychology.
(i) Human psychology confines itself to the human consciousness, and is thus distinguished from animal psy- chology^ which describes and seeks to explain the mental processes of the lower animals. Human and animal psy- chology are included together under the single name com- 1 8 The Meaning and Problem of Psychology parative psychology. The comparative psychologist uses the results of his study of the animal mind to throw light upon the mental processes of man, by comparison of each body of observed facts with the other.
(2) Individual psychology leaves out of account the material dealt with by social psychology. The social psy- chologist examines the mental experience of groups of individuals (societies), as manifested in their myths, lan- guage, customs, etc. Mythology is, as it were, a collection of fossil beliefs, all of which were once living processes in the minds of individuals. Language, again, may be called fossil thought. ' Blue ' is the colour of the ' blow- ing' wind; 'green' the colour of 'growing' vegetation. A knowledge of these and similar relations between words helps us to understand how our ancestors thought. In the same way, custom is very often a fossil expression of some emotion or sentiment; our customary greetings and salutations, e.g., are expressions of the sentiment of rev- erence. The study of the social psychology of primitive or savage races is termed anthropological psychology.
(3) We distinguish adult psychology from child psychol- ogy, which discusses the working of the child's mind at different stages of its development, and the way in which it passes over into the adult mind. The study of the child and animal minds is sometimes termed the study of psychogenesis (mind-growth).
(4) Normal psychology takes no account of the facts of mental patJiology. Mental pathology deals with all that is irregular or unusual in the human consciousness: with the various forms of mental derangement (insanity), with the temporary lapse of consciousness in sleep and the changes which it undergoes in dreaming, with the hyp- § 5- The Subdivisions of Psychology 19 notic consciousness (the phenomena of suggestion), and with the senile mind (gradual loss of memory with ad- vancing age, etc.).
This long list of excluded branches of psychological enquiry may lead the reader to suppose that our own psychology is but a small, and perhaps not the most important part of general psychology. The supposition would be incorrect. Animal psy- chology is still in its infancy; child psychology is hardly farther advanced (cf. the following Section); while social psychology is not much more than a programme for the future. Mental pathol- ogy has made better progress: and we shall appeal to it for illustration, wherever its discoveries help us to understand the workings of the normal mind. Our references to animal, child and social psychology will necessarily be less numerous: there are fewer established facts for us to refer to.
Other words or phrases which may usefully be defined here are * experimental psychology,' 'physiological psychol- ogy,' and *psychophysics.' (i) Experimental psychology insists that the psychological method of introspection (§9) shall be employed under ' experimental ' conditions; that is, under conditions which reduce the possibility of mis- takes to a minimum, and which enable one enquirer to test or check the work of another by exactly repeating it for himself (see §§9, 10). It is the psychology of which we shall treat in the present work. It is some- times called * modern ' psychology, or * the new ' psychol- ogy, to distinguish it from the merely ' descriptive ' psy- chology which was current before experiment had been applied to mental processes. (2) Physiological psychology is both wider and narrower than experimental psychology. It is wider, in that it demands a detailed knowledge of certain parts of physiology (the physiology of the central 20 The Meaning and Problem of Psychology nervous system and of the sense-organs attached to it); and it is narrower, in that it employs no methods of inves- tigation except those which are followed in the physio- logical laboratory. ' Psychophysiology ' covers the same ground as physiological psychology, but (as the name im- plies) lays more stress upon the physiological aspect of its subject-matter than upon the psychological. (3) Psy- chophysics is the science of the relation of mind to body. It lays precisely equal weight upon the mental process and the bodily process connected with it. The psycho- physicist desires to know exactly how mind is related to body, and body to mind. He gets his facts or data both from the psychologist (number and nature of the mental elements, laws of mental connection) and the anatomist and physiologist (structure and function of the various parts and organs of the body). His aim is to bring the two sets of facts, the mental and bodily, into connection with each other; to discover the lazvs of the connection.
It will be seen that the problem of psychophysics is identical with the last of the three special enquiries which make up the problem of psychology. The psychologist can borrow facts from the psychophysicist, therefore, as well as the psychophysicist from the psychologist. But though the problem may be identical in the two cases, the standpoint of the enquirers is different. The psy- chophysicist examines the relation of mind to body for its own sake: when he knows the relation, his work is over. The psy- chologist examines the relation from the side of mind, and uses it to assist him in his explanation of mental phenomena.
In just the same way, the problem of psychophysics is part of the problem of physiology. The standpoint differs again, how- ever: the physiologist looks at the relation between body and mind from the side of body, and uses it to assist him in his ex- planation of the phenomena of life. To the psychophysicist, § 6. External Aids to Psychology 21 knowledge of the relation is an end; to the physiologist, as to the psychologist, it is only a meafts to an end.
§ 6. External Aids to Psychology. — The two last Sec- tions will have made it clear that psychology in the narrower sense is closely connected with certain other sciences, and may hope to derive assistance from them in its attempt to describe and explain the facts of our mental life. The sciences to which we shall most nat- urally appeal for help are those of psychogenesis, mental pathology and physiology.
(i) Darwin's work has made every one familiar with the idea of evolution or development, and has taught us that we do not thoroughly understand anything until we have found out how it ' grew,' i.e., how it came to be what it now is. The composite plant and the highly organised animal have developed out of simpler forms of life, and biological science seeks to determine the conditions under which the growth or development took place. Man is no exception to the rule: and we must accordingly suppose that the human mind has developed out of a simpler form of mind.
There are two forms of normal mind which are simpler than our own: the healthy animal mind and the healthy child mind. Careful study of psychogenesis in these two cases may be expected some day to clear up many difficult points in adult human psychology, by showing us how processes, now highly complex, began in a simple way, and have gradually grown to be what they are. At present, however, for reasons which cannot be stated here, but little has been done towards the investigation of the child and animal consciousness, and the results obtained are fragmentary and not very securely established.
22 The Meaning and Problem of Psychology The value of comparative study to the psychologist may be shown by an instance taken from the psychology of action. When we are angry, grieved, etc., — emotionally 'moved,' — we express our emotion by certain bodily movements, known technically as * expressive movements.' Many of these movements are unintel- ligible until viewed in the light of mental history, of psychogenesis. Thus the face of proud contempt, "curving a contumelious lip," is only the human copy of the snarl of the dog or wolf. There seems to be no reason why we should curl our upper lip to express scorn; but there is good reason why the animal should do so, — the upward curl lays bare the sharp ' canine ' teeth, and is there- fore a preparation for actual attack of the enemy. In this case, then, as in many others, the human expressive movement is a sur- vival, in weakened form, of an association (§2) which originally served a definite and important purpose in mental Hfe.
(2) Mental pathology has proved more useful than psychogenesis to the normal psychologist. Just as the study of bodily disease helps us to understand what health is, and to take measures for the preservation of health, so the study of mental lack or mental derange- ment brings to light both the nature and the importance of certain normal processes.
*' Prevention is better than cure." But prevention is only possible after a long series of particular cures has been performed. The different diseases show us what conditions are favourable to health, and what are un- favourable; and we learn to avoid over-eating, cold draughts, etc. In other words, the different diseases help us to analyse health into a number of factors: good digestion, uniform temperature, moderate exercise. In just the same way, the occurrence of various forms of mental disease helps us to analyse the normal conscious- ness; we see what kinds of processes are grouped to- § 6. External Aids to Psychology 23 gether, and what processes are relatively independent; and we may have factors brought under our notice which would have escaped us altogether in the normal mind, because masked or obscured by the presence of other processes. As the first business of the psycholo- gist is analysis, this assistance from mental pathology is very important.
Again: it is often said that one does not realise the blessing of health unless one has recently recovered from an illness. Health is appreciated by contrast with ill- health. So in psychology: when we contrast the normal consciousness with the abnormal, we are better able to ap- preciate what the normal consciousness z>, and to under- stand its mechanism or working.
A case of blind-deaf-mutism, like that of Laura Bridgman,^ is, so to speak, a psychological experiment made for us by Nature herself. When we observe how a mind works, which lacks the perceptions of sight and hearing, and the sensations accompanying the movements of speech, we can estimate the place which these sensations and perceptions occupy in our own conscious life; and the makeshifts of the defective mind, the various ways in which the processes remaining to compose it are made to do double or triple duty, give us welcome hints as to the hidden resources and obscurer functions of our own fuller and richer consciousness. Or again: suppose that a man, bhnd from his birth, is rendered able 1 Laura Dewey Bridgman was born in 1829 at Hanover, New Hampshire, and died in 1889, ^t the Perkins Institution for the BHnd, Boston, Massachu- setts. An attack of scarlet fever at the age of two years deprived her of hear- ing and of the sight of her left eye, while it greatly impaired the senses of smell and taste. Speech was lost with the loss of hearing; and the sight of the right eye disappeared entirely six years after the illness.
A special system of education was devised for Laura Bridgman, and ex- tended from 1837 to 1850. From the reports of her mental development during this period, and from examinations of her capacities made at a later date, much valuable psychological information has been obtained.
24 The Meaning and Problem of Psychology to see by a surgical operation. He must learn to use his eyes, as a child learns to walk. And the gradual perfecting of his vision, the mistakes and confusions to which he is liable, all the details of his visual education, form a storehouse of facts upon which the psychologist can draw, when he seeks to illustrate the develop- ment of the perception of space in the normal mind, — the manner in which we come to judge of the distance of objects from one another, of their direction, and of their size and shape. Once more: those forms of mental unsoundness which consist in the decay or derangement of a single group of processes are of great use to the psychologist. They show him how the mind works without that particular group, or how it works when the group occupies too large and prominent a place in the field of consciousness; and thus enable him to trace its normal function in the healthy mind. What is called ' agoraphobia ' — a morbid fear of being alone in open spaces, of crossing a street, etc. — is only an exaggerated form of an experience which most of us have had, the experience of ' losing our head,' when we pass suddenly from a quiet country Hfe to the bustle of a large town; and the study of this experience