An Introduction to Psychology Translated from the Second German Edition · Wilhelm Max Wundt
THE LAWS OF PSYCHICAL LIFE
Let us now consider the connection of the four principles we have discussed. The second and fourth may be looked upon as special applications of the two fundamental principles of creative resultants and conditioning relations. We see also that they are not only joined very closely together, but that they stand, as absolutely disparate incomparable laws, in contradistinction to those general principles to which all natural phenomena are subjected. A contradiction has very often been thought to exist in the relation between the universal mental and natural laws. And since the natural laws are considered to be the more general and more necessary, these psychical principles have been looked upon as inadmissible generalisations, if they have not been absolutely ignored, which has more often been the case. Now we have seen in our whole discussion, that in reality we cannot move a step in the interpretation of psychical processes from the simplest sense-perceptions and affective combinations to the most complicated mental processes, as shown in society and history, without meeting with these principles always and everywhere. We must of course keep strictly to the maxim of analysing the psychical processes in their own connections and as processes joined together in themselves, as far as they so appear to us.
Now the neglect of this maxim has led to the above-mentioned contradiction and to the disregard of these laws. In fact the reverse maxim has been formed, namely, that psychical processes should not be held as decisive for the principles that condition them, but rather that the laws of nature, founded upon external natural phenomena, should also rule our mental life. In this sense the law of the conservation of energy has been considered a fundamental law of all mental development. For this purpose, and also in order to preserve a kind of independence for our mental life, the conception of "psychical energy" has been formed. This, in all the changes it undergoes, is supposed to be subject to the law of the conservation of energy just like mechanical, thermal, electro-magnetic, or any other energy. Since we do not possess a definite unit of measurement for this psychical energy, and since it always occurs between two other physical energies, it was taken for granted that it could be indirectly measured. It could be placed in the middle of a series of transformations that took place according to constant equivalents as a value to be measured indirectly by the physical energy equivalent to it.
For example, it could be placed between a given quantity of chemical energy, supplied from outside to the organism, and an equivalent quantity of warmth and mechanical work-energy, which the organism produces. If this were the case we could not reconcile with it a principle such as the one of creative resultants. Such a principle could not be included among the universal psychical laws; it would have to lie outside the general regularity of our psychical life. We can of course reverse this relation. Then we come to the result, that psychical regularity lies outside the law of energy, and in that case it would have no sense to place this psychical energy between two other physical energies and then attempt a measurement. Such a measurement is a pure fiction. We might just as well take any other fictitious process, say a miracle, and place it in the series of transformations.
These applications of physical laws to psychical phenomena are not based upon empirical facts, but they arise from a metaphysical principle, namely, the demand for a monistic view of life. Now this idea certainly has a justification, inasmuch as it rests upon a logical demand which it seeks to satisfy. If the so-called monism does not do this, it changes into a real dualism, as would clearly happen in the above-suggested rationalistic explanation of a miracle. In fact monism is only scientifically justified in its view of the relation between psychical and physical, as long as it emphasises the fact that the human being can just as little be considered a purely physical as a purely psychical being, and that man must be considered a psycho-physical individual, as we in reality experience him. This monism alone corresponds to the facts, A dualistic separation of soul and body, even if it sails under a monistic flag in the form of an atom-soul, or of an anonymous psychical energy, is a hypothesis which cannot be proved and which is useless for the interpretation of mental life. From the standpoint of the scientific and only justifiable monism, the mental processes are considered inseparable components of human and animal life.
They must be judged according to the qualities that are immanent in them, and not according to laws which apply to other phenomena, and in the formulation of which no regard was paid to those psychical qualities. There cannot, however, be the least contradiction in the idea that physical and psychical phenomena follow different laws, as long as these laws are not irreconcilable with the actual unity of the psycho-physical individual. In reality we cannot talk of irreconcilability in this case, because firstly, the two series of phenomena are of a disparate nature, and because secondly everywhere, where these two series of phenomena meet together in the unity of the individual, they are really, as far as we know, subject to a principle of regular arrangement. Thus, for example, the law of creative resultants is not the least contradiction to the law of the conservation of energy, because the measures by which we determine psychical values cannot be compared with those with which we measure physical values. We judge the psychical according to its qualitative value, and the physical according to its quantitative value.
The idea of value is in its origin really psychical, and this points to the fact that in reality physical values have in themselves no real measure, and that they only obtain one, if we make them the object of a comparative judgment, i.e. in a sense translate them into the psychological. Disparate values cannot in any way be compared, so long as a transformation of the one into the other is impossible. We can compare warmth and mechanical work, because the one can be transformed into the other according to a strict law of equivalence. But we cannot compare a tone with a sensation of light, or a visual idea with a chord, because a transformation of the one of these practical contents into the other is unthinkable. Now physical values are subject to the principle of the conservation of energy because of the unlimited capacity for transformation of physical energies according to equivalent relations. But it has on the other hand no sense to try to apply this same principle to the qualitative psychical values, which do not in any way admit of such a transformation. This of course stands in close relation with the fact that the subject-matter of psychology is the whole manifoldness of qualitative contents directly presented to our experience, each of which would immediately lose its own peculiar quality, if we tried to transform it into any other. Thus the physical phenomena investigated by the natural sciences and the laws of these phenomena do not in the least contradict the qualitative content of life dealt with by psychology. They rather supplement each other, inasmuch as we must combine them together into one whole, if we wish to understand the life of the psycho-physical being given to us in its unity.
Yet this impossibility of comparison of these qualities could not exist along with the unity of their substratum, if the physical and psychical values were not joined together in this substratum. This connection consists herein, that on the one side the physical elements, whether atoms or parts of one continuous matter, must necessarily be thought by us in forms of spatial and temporal ideas arising in accordance with psychical laws, and on the other side the psychical elements, the simple sensations and feelings, are inalienably bound up with definite physical processes. These latter need by no means be of a simple constitution, as has at times been presupposed by reason of metaphysical prejudices. The opposite is rather the case, as experience, which alone in this question can decide, incontestably teaches. For it shows that each simple sensation is joined to a very complicated combination of peripheral and central nerve-processes, and so also with the most elementary feeling, as is shown by the manifold "expression" phenomena which accompany the simplest feeling.
The actual correlation then is between simple, i.e. not further analysable, psychical content and complex physical processes. If, however, in contradiction to this, we introduce the metaphysical postulate of a correspondence between the psychically simple and the physically simple, we are inclined to go further and to presuppose a continuous correspondence between the two series of phenomena right up to the highest and most complicated content of consciousness. This regular relation between psychical elements and physical processes then becomes changed into a metaphysical parallelism, in which in content as well as in form the psychical becomes a copy of the physical, and the physical a copy of the psychical phenomenon. This hypothesis finds expression in the words of Spinoza, "The order and combination of ideas is the same as the order and combination of things." Such an idea was thinkable as long as the physical side of the qualities of living beings was so little known, and as long as there was no explanation of those psychological principles, which control the combination of processes of consciousness from simple sense-perceptions to complex thought-processes. At that Lime philosophy could take the liberty of building up reality out of abstract ideas, such as substance and causality.
At the present day metaphysics, if it wishes to make any claim to respect, must build upon the real facts and not upon those ideas used from purely logical, dialectical motives. Even from this point of view there remains a "principle of psychological parallelism" in the sense that there is no psychical process, from the simplest sensation and affective elements to the most complex thought-processes, which does not run parallel with a physical process. Now sensation and affective elements cannot be compared in that way, since a simple process in the one case does not correspond to even a relatively simple one in the other, and this of course is valid for all other contents of consciousness formed from these elements. We meet everywhere physical and psychical as incomparable qualities of the united psycho-physical individual, and each of these must be judged according to the laws of combinations of elements, which are expressed in the combination itself.
Since these qualities themselves are disparate, it can therefore never happen that the two principles come into antagonism with each other, whereas on the other hand, if we try to transfer the conditions that are only valid for the one side of the phenomena of life to the other side, we will very soon either come into antagonism with facts, or be forced to abandon an interpretation of a part of life placed in this manner under a strange point of view. Thus from the present-day psychological standpoint, which must be authoritative for a philosophical consideration, we can only speak of a "parallelism" between psychical and physical in as far as all elements of psychical life are joined to physical processes. The combinations of these elements, however, can never be judged according to the laws that are valid for the combination of the physical processes of life. If we try to do this, we eliminate what is most characteristic and important in our mental life. This reduction of the so-called principle of parallelism is occasionally called inconsequent and unsatisfying. This objection rests upon the interference of _a priori_ metaphysical theories of the past, whose principles have long been thrown aside by science, and also upon ignorance of the real problem which psychology has to solve.
This problem can surely never consist in applying, in connection with psychical processes, principles which do not belong to the psychical side of life. It must much rather consist in the attempt to gain principles out of the contents of our psychical life, just as in the reverse case physiological investigation of the change of matter and energy in the organism does not in the least, and rightly so, trouble itself with the psychical qualities of the organism. For the real unity of life will not be understood by subjecting real phenomena to laws with which they have absolutely no inner relationship. No, we must try to explain all sides of life and then the relations of these to each other. From the standpoints which have here been developed as to the relation of psychical to natural laws and as to their combination into one unity, we may now decide a question which is of mythological origin, and which was transferred by mythology to philosophy and ultimately to psychology. This question is the one as to the nature of the soul. For the primitive thinker the soul was a demoniacal being, which had its seat in the whole body, but especially in certain favoured organs, such as the heart, the kidneys, the liver, or the blood. Besides this oldest idea of a body-soul, there soon arose a second idea of a soul only externally bound to the parts of the body, and this soul left the body at death in the last breath, and also for a short time during sleep, as noticed in the images of dreams. This was called the breath-soul or the shadow-soul. For a long time, in spite of the self-contradiction, these two conceptions were joined together, although we see in the development of mythological thought that the breath-soul or psyche slowly supersedes the idea of a body-soul.
The development of the idea of a soul in philosophy is in essentials a repetition of this mythological development. The ancient philosophy, in whose footsteps mediæval philosophy follows, still holds fast to the idea of a body-soul. The soul is the driving force of all, even physical processes of life, e.g. nutrition and propagation. By the side of this, however, the higher mental activities are bound to a specific being that is separable from the body. This opinion, which gave a concrete, clear form to the mythological ideas, found its most perfect scientific expression in the psychology of Aristotle. The psyche that was separable from the body had thus won a victory over the body-soul both in mythology and in the classical work of Aristotle. This, of course, led ultimately to the absolute dominion of this independent soul, and its qualities were more and more considered to be absolutely opposite to the qualities of the body, that was ruled by purely material laws. This development culminated in the system of Descartes, the last great philosopher of the Renaissance. The body is from now on considered to be an expended substance, subject to mechanical laws only; the soul stands, in contradistinction to this, as an unextended, purely thinking substance. The two substances are, however, during life externally joined together. In one single point of the brain the body was supposed to meet in reciprocal action with the soul, which was thought of as something analogous to a material atom. Descartes fixed upon the pineal gland, but there were countless other hypotheses as to the position of this point.
This is not the place to follow the further changes that these ideas underwent in the history of modern philosophy and psychology. All the later changes of the dualistic hypothesis are not of the first importance. The fundamental principle is, that the soul is a permanent substance, and the psychical processes are looked upon as changing phenomena of this substance, which are, however, different from it. This hypothesis may take the form that Spinoza gave it in presupposing the two substances changed into two attributes which run parallel with each other. There is also the materialistic hypothesis that reduces the soul-substance to a quality of the bodily substance, which alone is recognised as real. It becomes clear to us that such further developments of the "substance" hypothesis become more and more contradictory to the laws of psychical life, the more they attempt to explain the self-contradicting conception of two absolutely different substances which must be bound together into one unity. The Cartesian soul can no longer exist in face of our present-day physiological knowledge of the physical substratum of our mental life. And metaphysical monism in these two forms, which try to combine soul-and body-substance into one unity, would shut out the possibility of any knowledge of our psychical life.
Therefore, in contradistinction to this metaphysical concept of a mind-substance, we set up the concept of the actuality of mind. Mental processes are not transient appearances to which the soul stands in contradistinction as a permanent, unknowable being unrelated to them, so that any attempt to combine the two must necessarily lead to a tissue of influences and counter-influences, which were at will given the conventional names: "ideas, feeling, striving, &c." A striking example of the futility of such an attempt to make substance the basis of an explanation of mental life is seen in the last and most thorough-going of these theories, i.e. in Herbart's so-called Mechanism of Ideas. Certainly all psychical phenomena is a continual coming and going, a producing and being produced. But no supersensuous substance, standing in contradistinction to these phenomena, can help us to understand the latter in their separate parts, or even in the connection of these parts into a whole. Sense-perception is a product of elements of pure sensation, an emotion is the course of directly experienced feelings, a thought-process is a combination of its elements established by itself. Nowhere do these facts of real mental life need another substratum for their interpretation beyond the one that is given in the facts themselves. And the unity of this life does not gain in the least, if we add to its own real union another substance, which is neither perceived nor really experienced, but which stands as an abstract conception in contradistinction to that mental life established by itself.
We only need to cast a glance at the sciences most closely connected with psychology, i.e. the so-called mental sciences, in order to become aware of the emptiness and futility of this psychological conception of "substance." The name "mental science" has only the right to exist, so long as these departments of learning are based upon the facts of psychology--the mental science in the most general sense of the term. Now when would a historian, philologist, or jurist make use of any other means to understand some phenomenon or of any other arguments to prove some statement than those which spring from immediate facts of mental life? Why then should the standpoint of psychology be in absolute contradiction to the stand-points of its most nearly related sciences? Psychology must not only strive to become a useful basis for the other mental sciences, but it must also turn again and again to the historical sciences, in order to obtain an understanding for the more highly developed mental processes. Racial psychology is the clearest proof of this latter. It is one of the newest of the mental sciences and depends absolutely on these relations between psychology and the historical sciences. It is the first transition from psychology to the other mental sciences.
The metaphysical psychology of the present day, that has developed out of Descartes' theory of two substances absolutely different and yet externally joined together, this psychology seems unquestionably to be further away from the reality of the mental life than the theories of the ancient metaphysicians were. The old idea saw in the soul the principle of all life, or, according to Aristotle, the energy working towards an end, out of which the whole of the phenomena of life, physical and psychical, sprang. It sought at least to account for that unity of life, which popular dualism must regard as a wonder, if it does not suppose the psychical to be a confused image of the physical, or reversely suppose this latter to be a mere subjective idea without its own reality. And yet this old vitalistic idea of a soul is for us no longer possible. For it tries to explain the unity of life only by postulating an all-embracing idea of purpose or use in place of a causal explanation of phenomena such as is now demanded. This vague notion of purpose does not explain the peculiarity of mental processes, nor does it fulfil the requirements of a natural explanation in regard to the physical side of the phenomena of life.
Nutrition, propagation, movement, on the one hand, and perception, imagination, understanding, on the other, cannot be combined into one unity, even although the facts which these concepts denote are purposeful from the standpoint of the connection of the phenomena of life. They do not resist such a combination because they are bound up with essentially different substrata, but because they depend upon absolutely different stand-points of the phenomena of life given to us as a unity. Nutrition, propagation, movement, are organic processes which belong to objective nature, and for which, because of their own characteristics, the ideas we form of them serve as signs which point to an existence independent of our consciousness. In investigating them, just as in the investigation of natural phenomena outside our own body, we must abstract from the subjective processes of consciousness, to which they are bound, if we wish to understand them in their objective natural connection. On the other hand our ideas, inasmuch as they are subjective, our feelings and our emotions are immediate experiences, which psychology tries to understand exactly in the way in which they arise, continue, and enter into relations with each other in consciousness. Therefore it is one and the same psycho-physical individual forming a unity, which physiology and psychology have as subject-matter.
Each of these, however, views this subject-matter from a different stand-point. Physiology regards it as an object of external nature, belonging to the system of physical-chemical processes, of which organic life consists. Psychology regards it as the system of our experiences in consciousness. Now for every piece of knowledge two factors are necessary--the subject who knows and the object thought about, independent of this subject. The investigation of the subject in his characteristics, as revealed to us in human consciousness, forms therefore not only a necessary supplement to the investigations of natural science, but it also attains to a more universal importance, since all mental values and their development arise from immediately experienced processes of consciousness, and therefore can alone be understood by means of these processes. And this is exactly what we mean by the principle of the actuality of mind.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.