Physiological psychology / by W. McDougall.

  • William McDougall
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Physiological psychology / by W. McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    certain similarities and differences of kind. The common speech that he has learnt without effort or reflection pro- vides him with a rough classification of these different kinds of experiences, he finds that he uses different words to denote the different kinds ; and he finds that his fellow- men claim to have experiences similar to his own, which they describe in similar terms and express by similar gestures and movements. He therefore unhesitatingly assumes that they enjoy experiences like his own, perceive the same things, have similar ideas, feel pain and pleasure, and that their conduct is the outcome of a similar play of impulses and restraints. And he notes too that the higher animals, though incapable of speech, behave in many ways like himself and his fellow-men, that their movements seem to show that they too perceive the same objects, suffer pain and pleasure, experience joy and tenderness and rage, and act accordingly. To this extent all intelligent men are, and always have been, psycholo- gists. But from the earliest times there have been men who have sought to gain a deeper understanding of experience and to explain it to others. They have made many guesses, many wild speculations, and many vague hypotheses. But some of them founded the science of psychology by observing carefully their own experiences, analyzing the more complex, defining, classifying and naming the fundamental kinds. This was the descriptive stage of the science, the necessary first stage of every science of observation. It endured for many centuries. The second stage was characterized by the noting of certain orderly sequences, or tendencies to co-existence and sequence, among these kinds of experience, and by the attempt to formulate the laws of these co-existences and sequences. It was attempted to show that all our experience consists of sense-impressions and ideas or faint copies of sense-impres- sions, and that, while the character and order of our sense- impressions is determined by the action of the things of the physical world upon our sense-organs, the conjunctions and sequences of our ideas can be wholly accounted for by one great law or principle, the law of association of ideas. Thii
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