An Introduction to Psychology Translated from the Second German Edition · Wilhelm Max Wundt
APPERCEPTION
Thus ordered thinking arises out of the ordered course of nature in which man finds himself, and this thinking is from the beginning nothing more than the subjective reproduction of the regularity according to law of natural phenomena. On the other hand, this reproduction is only possible by means of the will that controls the concatenation of ideas. Thus human thought, like the human being himself, is at the same time the product of nature and a creation of his own mental life, which in the human will finds that unity which binds together the unbounded manifoldness of mental contents into one whole. In this way the development of apperceptive thought-combinations out of associations corroborates further the result obtained above in considering volitional processes, namely that to every outward voluntary action there correspond inner acts of volition which are occupied in influencing the course of thought. In the close combination between thought and speech this connection between inner and outer volition comes most clearly to light. We cannot act outwardly without at the same time executing inner acts of will. Therefore ordered expression of thought in speech corresponds as outward volitional activity to the control of the will over the associations that originally stray here and there without order.
Even although thought in a primitive speech, as in the above example, may be ever so near to mere association of ideas, yet the control by the will is also to be seen in it, from the fact that the association series is one that inwardly is connected together. And with this we have the basis upon which the more complicated forms of apperception can rise, because of the continuous concentrations and combinations in thinking, and these latter at the same time find their adequate expression in the forms of speech. This connection between inner and outer volition, as we see it living in the connection between thought and speech, is ultimately of as great practical as theoretical importance. Only by considering this connection do we arrive at a sufficient understanding for the higher productions of human mental life. It also points forcibly to the fact that the most important part of education for the formation of character--i.e. the training of the will--should not only, and not even in the first instance, be directed to the outward act. Rather must education pay most attention to that inner volition which is occupied with ordered thinking. To make this strong, to make this able to resist the distracting play of associations, is its most important and also one of its most difficult tasks.
Many attempts have been made to investigate the processes of thought in other ways than in the way described above. At first it was thought that the surest way would be to take as a foundation for the psychological analysis of the thought-processes the laws of logical thinking, as they had been laid down from the time of Aristotle by the science of logic. Scholastic philosophy showed great subtlety in this direction in changing psychical processes into logical judgments and conclusions, and there are still followers of this direction at the present day. Starting with the thought-processes in the narrow meaning of the word, this logical explanation of everything psychical was allowed to spread over to associations, the processes of sense-perception, the pure sensations, feelings, emotions, &c., so that in this old scholastic psychology the human consciousness was in danger of becoming a scholastic philosopher, who regulated each of his actions according to the laws of logic. Now such laws are a late product of scientific thinking, which presupposes a long history of thinking determined by a number of specific factors. These norms, even for the fully-developed consciousness, only apply to a small part of the thought-processes. Any attempt to explain, out of these norms, thought in the psychological sense of the word can only lead to an entanglement of the real facts in a net of logical reflections. We can in fact say of such attempts, that measured by results they have been absolutely fruitless. They have disregarded the psychical processes themselves, and have gained nothing at all for the interpretation of the laws of logic simply because they saw in them the primitive facts of consciousness itself.
Many psychologists thought that this method could be improved by making use of direct introspection. They thought by turning their attention to their own consciousness to be able to explain what happened when we were thinking. Or they sought to attain the same end by asking another person a question, by means of which certain processes of thought would be excited, and then by questioning the person about the introspection he had made. It is obvious to the reader, who has followed our discussion so far, that nothing can be discovered in such experiments, where the most complicated psychical processes are investigated directly and without any further preparation. We need first of all a careful analysis of the more elementary psychical processes, of the facts of attention and of the wider scope of consciousness as well as of the relations between them and of the manifold affective processes that intervene in all these cases. Without having gained by these means the necessary information as to the general conditions and, so to say, as to the scene over which our thought-processes move, it is impossible in any way to understand these themselves in their psychical combinations. Many psychologists have connected this difficulty, not with the wrongness of their own method but with the essence of the thought-process. This was explained as an unconscious and (since all sense-perception belongs to consciousness) as a supersensual phenomenon, in the interpretation of which each one must be left to his own speculation. This opened the door at once to the explanation of psychical phenomena according to logical reflections, that were at will read into such phenomena. This alleged method of exact introspection ended ultimately at the point from whence it started, i.e. the scholastic philosophy.
In contradistinction to all this let us remember the rule, valid for psychology as well as for any other science, that we cannot understand the complex phenomena, before we have become familiar with the simple ones, which presuppose the former. Now the general phenomena of the course of simple processes in consciousness, as we have seen them in their most concrete form and under the simplest conditions in our observations of the combination and comparison of rows of beats, give us the most general preliminary conditions, which must be held as a criterion for much more complicated thought-processes. It is evident, however, that these formal conditions of all processes of consciousness cannot be sufficient to account for the special characteristics and phenomena of the development of thought. To do this we must turn our attention to this development itself, as it is shown in the documents of the spoken expression of thought at different stages of consciousness. It is unfortunate that in these and in other cases the development of the child, that is for us the easiest to observe, can give, as is obvious, only a few and in part only doubtful results.
The speech and thought of the child, under the present conditions of culture, not only presuppose a number of inherited dispositions, whose influences can scarcely be accurately traced, but it is also absolutely impossible to withdraw the child from the influences to which, from the very beginning, its environment gives rise. Therefore the mental development of our children is under all circumstances not only an accelerated but also in many respects an essentially changed one, in comparison to a purely spontaneous development. On the other hand there are, at least in a relative manner, such stages of a spontaneous development of thinking, in many cases relatively independent of outward influences of culture, in the mental life of more primitive peoples. The different stages, which this mental life shows, find their most adequate expression in the outward phenomena of this mental life itself, and above all in those of speech, which is a means of expression and an instrument of thought at the same time. We can by means of the different stages of the development of speech follow that gradual transition of associative into apperceptive processes of consciousness from step to step. The example given above of a relatively primitive form of spoken thought shows the relation in which it stands to our languages of culture. A closer investigation of this subject would lead us beyond the scope of individual psychology into that of racial psychology, where the most important part deals with the psychological development of thought and speech.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.