A manual of psychology / by G.F. Stout.

  • George Frederick Stout
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A manual of psychology / by G.F. Stout. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    663/800 page 639
    inena wliicli he cannot neglect. The pressure of practical interests compels him to act and to contrive means of acting. Thus some kind of ideal construction is for him a necessity in order that he may not sit down helpless in face of a vast variety of phenomena which he cannot even think of explaining on mechanical principles. To him it is simply a familiar fact which requires no explanation, that individual things exist, having distinctive properties and modes of behaviour. It is a familiar fact that such things are composed of parts which act and are acted on together, so that change in one part is accompanied by changes in other parts. All this he does not think of explaining, but pre-supposes it without question as a basis of explanation. Hence he follows a line of thought which is opposed to the mechanical. Instead of explaining the unity of the whole by the combination and interaction of the parts, he explains the combination and interaction of the parts by the unity of the whole. He knows that the sole of his foot is part of the same individual unity as the crown of his head ; he knows that if a nail runs into the sole of his foot, his mouth utters a cry of pain. But the connexion of the tAvo facts by a series of intermediate links of a mechanical kind lies entirely outside the circle of his ideas. He knoAvs nothing of afferent and efferent nerves, or of molecular processes in brain and muscle. When the nail runs into his foot, his organs of speech emit a cry simply because he is one individual being of Avhich both foot and organs of speech are part. The important point is that as this mode of explanation takes no account of mechanical conditions, it is not subject to mechanical limitations. The sympathetic communion between the parts of a whole need not be conditioned by those rela- tions in space and time on which mechanical interaction depends. It is thus possible to represent the sympathetic
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