George Trumbull Ladd

“ For Professor James holds, as we all do, that the "old psychology" was relatively lacking in scientific quality. It described and classified; but it did not explain, by pointing out, and reducing to general terms, the concomitant and antecedent conditions of the phenomena. How greatly disappointed we are, therefore, when an advocate of the new "natural science" of psychology restricts all legitimate explanation, by his very conception of such science, to one class of conditions only, — and these by far the most obscure and unattainable of all. ”

“ But the problem of self-consciousness is not one of "blank unmediated correspondences" between certain series of particular thoughts and other series of particular known brain-processes. It is the far graver and profounder problem of trying to tell how there comes to be an actual distinction made between thoughts and thinker; and how some thoughts are irresistibly referred by the thinker to the thinker as, not himself, but his thoughts; while other thoughts are referred by the same thinker to things as knowledge which the same thinker has of what is not his thoughts. ”

“ What analogy, what thing in common, is there between the fact of the recurrence of an analogous brain-state and the fact, not simply that the corresponding mental state recurs, but that I refer this present state to a past fact, and set it in the past as my past?
How, moreover, shall a writer object to speaking of some psychic synthesis as involved in memory, who has himself maintained (p. 158) : "All the combinations which we actually know are effects, wrought by the units said to be combined, upon some entity other than themselves." ”

“ When, then, we speak of a physical basis of memory, recognition must be made of the complete inability of science to suggest any physical process which can be conceived of as correlated with that peculiar and mysterious actus of the mind, connecting its present and its past, which constitutes the essence of memory. ”

“ The way to the establishment of any science of cerebral psychology is long and thorny and dangerous. It is as yet scarcely open to even the boldest flight of imagination; there will be, in the best estate of cerebral psychology in the future, few who will actually tread, with assurance and safety, terra firma in this path.
What then would be necessary to establish psychology as a natural science after the pattern of Professor James' conception of it? A comprehensive scientific grasp on two related orders of phenomena? ”

“ If, then, it is necessary, laying aside all metaphysical postulating of deeper-lying (psychical) entities, in order to render psychology a natural science, that we should scientifically know the cerebral conditions of our thoughts and feelings, and should bring under terms of exact formulae the relations of the latter to the former, we must at once abandon all pretence of scientific character for psychology. If cerebral psychology is the only scientific psychology, then there is no science of psychology. ”

“ As descriptive science, the work is admirable; for its author is a born, and a thoroughly trained, psychologist. As explanatory science also, — wherever it departs most widely from its own conception — it is generally admirable. As explanatory science, without metaphysics, in the form of the aforesaid "blank unmediated correspondences," it is, at best, not science at all. ”

“ It would be terrible if even such a dear old man as this could saddle our science forever with his patient whimseys, and, in a world so full of more nutritious objects of attention, compel all future students to plough through the difficulties, not only of his own works, but of the still drier ones written in his refutation. ”

“ Is, then, no real science of nerve-physiology, as a part of molecular theory, necessary in order to have a psychology worthy to be dignified with the name of " natural science"?
In one place at least, however, Professor James implies that the brain-processes to which, in this "blank unmediated" fashion, the thoughts and feelings correspond, may differ in kind and not simply in locality and intensity (I, p. 566 f.) . Well then, what we wish to have in the name of cerebral psychology, is a description, in terms of a comprehensible theory of molecular physics, what these differences are ”

“ The theory of a soul to which, as subject, the thoughts and feelings belong, is held to be "needless for expressing the actual subjective phenomena of consciousness as they appear" (p. 344) . But — by the way, I remark — the theory of a brain does not appear to be needless. Says Professor James: the "bald fact is that when the brain acts, a thought occurs." Not at all: we must either say — and adhere to it — the truth demanded by all the science is that, when the brain acts, the mind acts ”

“ But how thoughts can know "objects in a world"; and in what respect the psychologist's knowledge of this world differs from the knowledge of the objects, in this world, by his thoughts; and how the knowledge of the psychologist is going to be identified by himself with the knowledge of the objects by the psychologist's thoughts; — we find it difficult to understand as a matter of cerebral psychology. Professor James makes, on this point, little or no attempt to assist us. ”

“ The existence of some of them can be readily detected by such analysis as self-consciousness can make; while others of them are rather speculative necessities postulated in the effort to account for the varying characteristics of those complex phenomena which constitute the primary problems of psychology.
But besides this explanation by analysis, the science of psychology has the task of tracing the evolution of mental life. The conception of evolution is as much needed, and as light-bringing, in the treatment of mental as of any other form of life. ”

“ The " associationist theory" of the pure self is then held to be — as no doubt it is — quite unworkable without secretly summoning to its help some unifying principle, some psychic synthesis, or postulated "deeper-lying entity." While "transcendentalism is only substantialism grown shame-faced, and its Ego only a 'cheap and nasty' edition of the soul" (p. 365) . The conclusion of the whole matter is, then; scientific psychology, abjuring metaphysics, must hold that "thought is itself the thinker, and psychology need not look beyond" (p. 401) . ”

“ But one has no right to pull the pall over the psychic half of the subject only, as the automatists do, and to say that that causation is unintelligible, whilst in the same breath one dogmatizes about material causation as if Hume, Kant, and Lotze had never been born. One cannot thus blow hot and cold. One must be impartially naïf or impartially critical. ”

“ For, according to his conception of this science, no other "conditions" but the processes accomplished in this cerebrum, "explain" the existence of thoughts and feelings. Accordingly, the cerebrum is sometimes spoken of as though it "throws off," as a sort of total epi-phenomenon incapable of being analyzed into psychic factors or explained by reference to antecedent psychic conditions, each state of consciousness. With our author, psychology as a natural science, without metaphysics, is wholly cerebral psychology. ”

“ Nor is interpretation always easy. The distinctions, as they are left expressed by Professor James, are not infrequently too clear-cut, if I may so say. They are made in rather too highly colored, or too coarse and heavy, lines. Thus the scientific principle of continuity seems violated, — doubtless, often, where it would no longer seem to be, if we felt at liberty to disregard the first intent and inevitable effect of the author's language. Nature and reality, we are forced to maintain, nowhere draw such plain' lines. ”

“ With characteristic honesty and thoroughness and acuteness of analysis, Professor James describes what is involved in an act of memory, in the highest, most spiritual — if I may be pardoned the word use of this faculty. It is emphatically said (I, p. 649 f.) that "the revival of an image" is not, as many writers (e.g. Spencer, etc.) suppose, all that is needed to constitute the memory of an actual occurrence. "No memory is involved in the mere fact of recurrence." ”

“ Here the natural sciences — in the strict sense of the word "natural" — may be evoked to tell of the physical conditions, under which the genesis and development of mental life takes place. But we make a very meagre, an unnecessarily meagre, use of the principle of development, if we fail to apply it directly to mental life itself. ”

“ The chapter on "General Conditions of Brain-Activity" is unexpectedly meagre for a writer who proposes to treat psychology as a natural science, without metaphysics, and from a point of view which finds the ascertainable conditions of psychological phenomena solely in brain-processes. ”

“ One can scarcely find fault, however, with Professor James for excessive parsimony in the matter of metaphysics, considering that his intention, avowed and repeated, is to treat of psychology purely as a natural science. ”

“ But of their conditions, as existing in the shape of antecedent or concomitant brain-processes, we have no knowledge worthy of being called science. Exner's declaration is almost as true to-day as it was several years ago, when he made it. "There is no science of cerebral physiology." ”

“ At worst, it is the irresistible but kindly disposition to hit a head wherever one is visible. And those who attend the fair should not feel irritated if they, or their dear friends, are among its temporary victims — so interesting and stimulating is the display of psychological wares and the distribution of the prizes. ”

“ Of course, that particular portion of the physical world, in time and space coexistent with thoughts and feelings and known by them, which Professor James especially needs as datum for his science of psychology, is the human cerebrum. ”

“ We are often prevented, however, from being able to follow the order of this evolution because we are not sure that it corresponds to the order of the chapters.
The learning displayed by Professor James is admirable. The numerous references and citations which his volumes contain never have the appearance of being dragged incontinently forward; they come spontaneously from a real fulness of resource which is the result of years of serious and varied reading. ”

“ I shall myself in later places indulge in much of this schematizing. The reader will understand once for all that it is symbolic; and that the use of it is hardly more than to show what a deep congruity there is between mental processes and mechanical processes of some kind, not necessarily of the exact kind portrayed. ”

“ The life of consciousness falls directly under this principle. Its various stages are related to each other, under law, according to the conception which this principle emphasizes. When we point out 'uniform relations, the dependence of mental state on mental state, of one stage of mental life on other stages of mental life, we render psychology scientific. For the psychologist to surrender all right to claim that he "explains" psychic facts by tracing their causes in other antecedent and concomitant psychic facts — as Mr. ”