The mind of man : a text-book of psychology / by Gustav Spiller.

  • Gustav Spiller
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The mind of man : a text-book of psychology / by Gustav Spiller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    29/576 page 9
    Yet the feeblest attempt at investigation would have shown the difference between complacent popular acquiescence, which selects some superficial aspect, and scientific comprehension, which points to the general facts. The complex nature of habit the student will find exhaustively discussed in ch. 3. As a third illustration in point, one may take Attention. The subject is part of the time-honoured stock-in-trade of psychology. It is also one which has been seriously studied ; and the failure in this case has, therefore, not been so complete, though even here a certain degree of attention has been generally mistaken for attention, as such. Had there been only a consistent and thorough neglect of data other than those arrived at by direct study—a neglect of metaphysics, of irrelevant theology, of slipshod theory, of commonplaces, we might be near the end of its problems instead of near the beginning. The trouble has been that theories have so darkened the minds of students, that the light of the most powerful intellects scarcely shed a glimmer along the path. By means of almost superhuman efforts a trifle was gained here and there, and these trifles tended more to bewilder than to encourage. The primitive tools worked wonders. Taking a general survey, however, the subject is still buried in obscurity, though the outlook is not so unpromising as in the two other cases. As I hope to explain in ch. 2, attention is not an intermittent process requiring strain, but it is activity itself from the point of view of the direction in which it is engaged. The three illustrations I have given—Association, Habit and Attention —are, I believe, typical of the present-day state of reflective psychology as a whole. They justify the contention that the scientific foundations have still to be laid. When one turns to those who emphasise the physiological aspect, scholars such as Maudsley {Physiology of Mind, 1876), Lewes {Problems of Life and Mind, 1874-9), and Bastian {The Brain as an Organ of Mind, 1880), one is even more disappointed. I fully appreciate their insistence upon the neural aspect of thought, with which their work began and ended; but their positive results were most meagre, since they tried to establish a fictitious psychology by means of an admittedly fictitious neurology. The work of the psycho-physical school will be examined in sec. 8. WTiat is the nature of the method which I have called unscientific and barren ? It may be illustrated as follows. Owing to a new departure in psychological thinking some fresh problem has arisen, say, the problem of effort. Men ask themselves accordingly what is effort, and in asking recall what seem relevant illustrations. These illustrations, being what is uppermost in thought, display some particular and striking characteristic, and men then turn over the old clothes of memory for proof. At the same time they more or less carefully note this or that particular case of living effort. Meanwhile (sec. 160) the suggested solution attracts as much what is favourable to itself as it prevents from developing what is unfavourable to the theory, while the situation is aggravated by the fact that the actual things observed are illegitimately suggested by the hypothesis. Thence follows some chance conclusion which, psychologically considered, appears firmly based. As against this method, I would advise the exhaustive study of a large variety of facts, with no anxiety—until we have proceeded far—to obtain conclusions. We would apply impartially such rules as shall eliminate any bias (sec. 136), and we would lay no
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