Volume 2

Darwin, and after Darwin : an exposition of the Darwinian theory and a discussion of post-Darwinian questions / by George John Romanes.

  • Romanes George John, 1848-1894.
Date:
1892-1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Darwin, and after Darwin : an exposition of the Darwinian theory and a discussion of post-Darwinian questions / by George John Romanes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    47/390 (page 29)
    as imposing limits on the powers of natural causation, my criticism is as follows. In the first place, it is a psychological fallacy to regard the so-called faculties of mind as analogous to organs of the body. To classify the latter with reference to the functions which they severally perform is to follow a natural method of classification. But it is an artificial method which seeks to partition mental faculty into this, that, and the other mental faculties. Like all other purely artificial classifications, this one has its practical uses; but, also like them, it is destitute of philosophical meaning. This statement is so well recognized by psychologists, that there is no occasion to justify it. But I must remark that any cogency which Mr. Wallace's argument may appear to present, arises from his not having recognized the fact which the statement conveys. For, had he considered the mind as a whole, instead of having contemplated it under the artificial categories of constituent faculties, he would probably not have laid any such special stress upon some of the latter. In other words, he would have seen that the general development of the human mind as a whole has presumably involved the growth of those conven- tionally abstracted parts, which he regards as really separate endowments. Or, if he should find it easier to retain the terms of his metaphor, we may answer him by saying that the faculties of mind are correlated, like organs of the body; and, there- fore, that any general development of the various other faculties have presumably entailed a collateral development of the two in question. Again, in the second place, it would seem that