William James

“ For my part, I yield to no man in my expectations of what general philosophy will some day do in helping us to rational conceptions of the world. But when I look abroad and see how almost all the fresh life that has come into psychology of recent years has come from the biologists, doctors, and psychical researchers, I feel as if their impulse to constitute the science in their own way, as a branch of biology, were an unsafe one to thwart ”

“ All natural sciences aim at practical prediction and control, and in none of them is this more the case than in psychology to-day. We live surrounded by an enormous body of persons who are most definitely interested in the control of states of mind, and incessantly craving for a sort of psychological science which will teach them how to act. What every educator, every jail-warden, every doctor, every clergyman, every asylum-superintendent, asks of psychology is practical rules. ”

“ As Minerva the goddess of wisdom was said to have leaped forth out of the brain of her father Jupiter, full grown and full armed for the business of life, so was my new life formed apparently mature and complete. The unwomanly treatment of my guardian was, in truth, the direct cause of the evolution of my instinctive — or better speaking — latent feelings for the higher. Not only could I think in pictures, but almost spontaneously I was also able to learn how to think and reason. ”

“ At last he is converted to honesty — by what? Not by the teachings of others, not by detection and punishment, but by the very magnitude of his own crimes. He steals so much that the burden becomes too heavy to bear. It sobers him; and a success which would have turned a non-moral or an immoral boy into a confirmed criminal, produces in him a reaction towards honesty. This would seem to be a common experience. A youth tries dissipation, or indulges himself in tyranny or meanness, till at last an experience supervenes which tastes too strong, even for him, the agent. ”

“ Now if there is any natural science in possession of a subject-matter well set off and contrasted with all others, it is psychology. However much our self-consciousness, our freedom, our ability to conceive universals, or what not, may ally us with the Infinite and Absolute, there is yet an aspect of our being, even of our mental being, which falls wholly within the sphere of natural history. ”

“ How much more this conception may yet help them these men do not know, but they indulge great hopes. Together with the physiologists and naturalists they already form a band of workers, full of enthusiasm and confidence in each other, and are pouring in materials about human nature so copious that the entire working life of a student may easily go to keeping abreast of the tide. ”

“ The book itself, in fact, is little else than a mass of 'suggestions,' humane, unprejudiced, guided by the truest feeling for the facts of human nature, but disconnected, tentative, dubious, and interrogative to such a degree that the reader fairly craves a sharp-cut and decisive formula, even a false one, to give emphasis and relief to the style. ”

“ Why does a man who holds his own obstinately against every opponent in all the ordinary arguments of life submit to everything you tell him after he has made himself passive for a minute and you have performed a little hocus-pocus of passes over his face? The philosophy of the subject probably lies in the direction of Messrs. Myers's, Binet's, and Janet's researches into the different strata of which personality consists. The hypnotic stratum must be thrown uppermost, as in the trance; or in some way the suggestion must penetrate to it and tap it, or there will be no effect. ”

“ The 'psychical researchers,' though kept at present somewhat out in the cold, will inevitably conquer the recognition which their labors also deserve, and will make, perhaps, the most important contributions of all to the pile. But, as I just remarked, few of these persons have any aptitude or fondness for general philosophy; they have quite as little as the pure-blooded philosophers have for discovering particular facts. ”

“ Whatever in our lives follows authority, fashion, or example, whatever starts up at the spell of another's personal fascination, or takes its cue from the secret hopes, fears, likings, and repugnancies of our own inner nature, must be considered as a fruit of suggestion, the law of which, according to Dr. Schmidkunz, is as follows: "Under certain circumstances the mind may be so impressed that the idea of a phenomenon, once communicated to it, develops into the phenomenon itself, or in other words, that the content of the psychical phenomenon becomes a real phenomenon" (p. 56) . ”

“ I wished, by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one. ”

“ The woman sometimes took me with her to his office at the wharf where she usually got meat. Afterwards she sent me alone to the wharf and bring the meat. What a long journey it would take for a small boy to cross a dozen of blocks — alone! However, what a splendid tramp it was! How much I loved to go to the bay! The sea was a wonder to me — nay, a wonder of wonders, since even a boat was a marvel. What a variety of life along the wharves! Such a life with such a variety awakened in me a vague feeling of mystery — sadness (?) — loneliness (?) ”

“ The only way to defend the doctrine of the absolute dependence of thought on language is so to enlarge the sphere of this latter word as to make it cover every possible sort of mental imagery, whether communicable to others or not. Of course no man can think without some kind of mind-stuff to think in. ”

“ Thus physics assumes a material world, but never tries to show how our experience of such a world is 'possible.' It assumes the inter-action of bodies, and the completion by them of continuous changes, without pretending to know how such results can be. ”

“ He ought either to reject it in principle and entirely, but then be willing to throw over, for example, such results as the entire modern doctrine of aphasia — a very hard thing to do; or else he ought to accept it in principle, but then cordially admit that, in spite of present shortcomings, we have here an immense opening upon which a stable phenomenal science must some day appear. We needn't pretend that we have the science already; but we can cheer those on who are working for its future, and clear metaphysical entanglements from their path. ”

“ We need a fair and square and explicit abandonment of such questions as that of the soul, the transcendental ego, the fusion of ideas or particles of mind stuff, etc., by the practical man; and a fair and square determination on the part of the philosophers to keep such questions out of psychology and treat them only in their widest possible connections, amongst the objects of an ultimate critical review of all the elements of the world. ”

“ Now out of what may be called the biological study of human nature there has at last been precipitated a very important mass of material strung on a guiding conception which already to some degree meets these persons' needs. The brain-path theory based on reflex action, the conception of the human individual as an organized mass of tendencies to react mentally and muscularly on his environment in ways which may be either preservative or destructive, not only helps them to analyze their cases, but often leads them to the right remedy when perversion has set in. ”

“ What the 'physical world' may be in itself, how 'states of mind' can exist at all, and exactly what 'taking cognizance' may imply, are inevitable further questions; but they are questions of the kind for which general philosophy, not natural science, is held responsible. ”

“ He surely had no conventional gestures for the causal and logical relations involved in his inductions about the moon, for example. So far as it goes, then, his narrative tends to discountenance the notion that no abstract thought is possible without words. Abstract thought of a decidedly subtle kind, both scientific and moral, went on here in advance of the means of expressing it to others. To a great extent it does so in all of us to-day, for nothing is commoner than to have a thought, and then to seek for the proper words in which to clothe its most important features. ”

“ Why do 'mind-curers' so often excite the 'imagination' to heal the body, when regular practitioners fail, with their far more impressive incantations and paraphernalia? Whence are these obstinate 'auto-suggestions' which thwart those of the hypnotizer? The truth is, that all the more distinctive phenomena of suggestion run dead against the ordinary laws of belief and practice. ”

“ Whatever conclusions an ultimate criticism may come to about mental states, they form a practically admitted sort of object whose habits of coexistence and succession and relations with organic conditions form an entirely definite subject of research. Cannot philosophers and biologists both become 'psychologists' on this common basis? Cannot both forego ulterior inquiries, and agree that, provisionally at least, the mental state shall be the ultimate datum so far as 'psychology' cares to go? ”

“ I fully admit that any exact account of brain states is at present far beyond our reach; and I am surprised that Professor Ladd should have read into my pages the opinion that psychology as a natural science must aim at an account of brain states exclusively, as the correlates of states of mind. Our mental states are correlated immediately with brain states, it is true; but, more remotely, they are correlated with many other physical events, peripheral nerve currents for example, and the physical stimuli which occasion these. ”

“ The Mexicans, as well as the people of the Romance races, are expert in pantomimic gestures which they are in the habit of using while speaking to one another. How natural all the imitative signs are! When I came to school, I had no difficulty in understanding the true deaf and dumb language of signs — the conventional language. The sign language is the universal one. (I do not pretend to say that I am about the best sign-maker in this institution. This must be attributed to the early training of the mind during my ante-speech days.)
My guardian let me go about in the rear yard. ”

“ Now the sort of 'fact of experience' on which in my book I have proposed to compromise, is the so-called 'mental state,' in whose existence not only common men but philosophers have uniformly believed. ”

“ Because he had several times watched how cleverly the heathen Chinese spewed the water from his mouth over the washed clothes. The boy did not suppose that the people grew. He seldom saw a baby, but when he did, he hated it, and thought it a horrid-looking thing. He had contempt for girls. He was never bad on Sundays. In fair weather he would always go to church and Sunday-school. Why? Because he fancied that the moon wanted him to go, as he had been in the habit of going to the Catholic church with his mother. ”

“ We don't know exactly what a nerve current is, it is true; but we know a good deal about it. We know that it follows a path, for instance, and consumes a fraction of a second of time in doing so. We know that, physically considered, our brain is only a mass of such paths, which incoming currents must somehow make their way through before they run out. We even know something about the consciousness with which particular paths are specially 'correlated,' those in the occipital lobes, e.g., being connected with the consciousness of visible things. ”

“ Ceasing to put herself forward as philosophy, she has entered upon a new period of development as science; and, in doing so, she has disarmed the jealousy, and is even fast conquering the indifference, of the transcendental philosopher." Why should not Professor Ladd, why should not any 'transcendental philosopher,' be glad to help confirm and develop so beneficial a tendency as this? ”

“ The signs for meat, bread, milk, water, chocolate, horse, cow, were as natural as the Mexicans make nowadays. The Mexicans generally ask with facial gestures, 'What do you do?' 'How do you do?' 'What is the matter?' 'What is the news?' It is natural. ”

“ As constituting the inner life of individual persons who are born and die, our conscious states are temporal events arising in the ordinary course of nature, — events, moreover, the conditions of whose happening or non-happening from one moment to another, lie certainly in large part in the physical world. ”

“ If the 'scientific monists' would only agree to say nothing of the states being produced by the integration and differentiation of 'psychic units' and the 'transcendental metaphysicians' agree to say nothing of their being acts of spiritual entities developing according to laws of their own, peace might long reign, and an enormous booty of natural laws be harvested in with comparatively no time or energy lost in recrimination and dispute about first principles. ”

“ Every special science, in order to get at its own particulars at all, must make a number of convenient assumptions .and decline to be responsible for questions which the human mind will continue to ask about them. ”

“ The actual existence of two utterly distinct types of mind, with their distinct needs, both of them having legitimate business to transact with psychology, must then be recognized; and the only question there can be is the practical one of how to distribute the labor so as to waste it least and get the most efficient results. ”