The psychological approach to reality / by Francis Aveling.

  • Aveling, Francis, 1875-1941.
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychological approach to reality / by Francis Aveling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    not occurring apart in it; and so long as ‘ wholes ’ just occur, and abstraction only is practised upon them, we have put nothing in that we have not actually found there. Elementary sensations, then, and abstract relations may be a condition of further knowledge ; but they do not and cannot constitute of them¬ selves all knowledge. Some further law than those of association is necessary in order to account for the items of knowledge which incontestably occur, and yet are not discoverable as such within empirical reality. Such a law has recently been formulated as the result of extensive work upon the so-called intelligence tests.” These tests, it has been found, measure a mental ability or power which is manifested in three ways. The first of these manifestations of ‘ intelligence ’ is the apprehen¬ sion of the characters of experience itself. This is due to a principle which accounts for the fact that any empirical experience whatever is or can be known. It summarises the transition from lived experience to knowledge. The second is the definite awareness of relations of several kinds as obtaining between aspects of experience ; a fact which was strangely neglected by the associa-