The Herbartian psychology applied to education : being a series of essays applying the psychology of Johann Friedrich Herbart / by John Adams.

  • Adams, John, 1857-1934.
Date:
[1900?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Herbartian psychology applied to education : being a series of essays applying the psychology of Johann Friedrich Herbart / by John Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    266/316 (page 254)
    of course, means that force must be drawn from cer- tain parts. Attention, as the psychophysicists have it, is inhibition. We do not really direct our attention to this or that object. We simply call it off from all other objects. We are told that the phenomena attend- ing attention are of three kinds, — vasomotor, respira- tory, and motory (or motions of expression). We cannot here do more than touch the fringe of an in- tensely interesting discussion at present going on as to the relation between emotion and the expression of the emotion. As far back ^ as Plato, we find complaints that the playing of the parts of bad men has a tendency to make the actors become bad men.^ What we might be inclined to smile at as a playful fancy in the Repub- lic^ we must look upon with other eyes when we find it in the pages of a psychologist of the standing of Mr. W. James. This writer is inclined to reverse the usual view of the causal relation between emotion and its expression. His thesis is that the bodily changes follow directly the 'perception of the exciting fact^ and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion. Common sense says: 'We lose our fortune, are sorry, and weep.'^ But Mr. James would say, we lose our fortune, we weep, and then are sorry. I am insulted, I clench my fists and contract my brows, and then I proceed to get angry. Stated in this crude way, says Mr. James, the hypothesis is pretty sure to meet with immediate dis- 1 Bepublic, III. 395. 2 Principles of Psychology^ Vol. II., p. 449. Every teacher should read the whole of Chap. XXV.