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.

    759/800 page 735
    conscious life exists and manifests itself in systematic consistency of conduct. Animals can scarcely be said to have a character, because their actions flow from dis- connected impulse. “ If an animal could be supposed to think and speak, it could not refer its actions to itself, but only to its impulse at this or that moment.” ^ Character is little developed in savages as compared with civilised men ; for they have relatively little power of considering particular actions in relation to an organised system of conduct. Now the development of character and the development of freedom are two aspects of the same process. A man’s acts “ are his own only when he is himself in doing them,”^—when they express his total character rather than his momentary impulse. It follows from this account that freedom is an ideal which can never be completely realised, and this ideal coincides with that of self-realisation, as expounded in Professor J. S. Mackenzie’s Manual of Ethics.^ But the last word about freedom lies neither with Psychology nor with Ethics. Its full discussion involves an examination of the relation between the thought and will of the individual mind, and the reality of the universe. This relation from the point of view of any finite science such as Psychology is utterly inexplicable. The more closely and conscientiously we endeavour to explain it by the ordinary categories of any special science, the more plain it becomes that so regarded it is a miracle,—indeed the miracle of miracles. Psychology cannot explain how it is possible that an individual can consciously mean or intend something. To say that he has a present modification of consciousness which resembles an object is very far from 1 J. S. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, fifth edition, p. 97. * Ibid., p. 98. ® See especially bk. ii., ch. y., § 12, “ The True Self.”
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