Volume 1

Analytic psychology.

  • Stout, George Frederick, 1860-1944.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Analytic psychology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    events is not regulated by discoverable uniformities capable of being interconnected so as to form a coherent system, the psychologist has nothing to do. It is incorrect to say that on this assumption his science becomes absorbed in physiology. It does not become absorbed ; it simply ceases to exist in any form whatever. The claim of physiology to be the only possible basis of psychological theory is sometimes urged on what may be called a metaphysical ground. The ground on which this claim is founded is most distinctly and intelligibly formulated by Mr. Shadworth Hodgson. He lays down the general principle that explanation of how things come to be, as distinguished from analysis of what they are, must be ex- pressed in terms of matter, because matter, being the only known real agent, is the only real condition of genesis. As against this view, I would urge, in the first place, that even if material agency were the only real condition of mental occurrences, it would not follow that all psychological ex- planation must be physiological. If certain uniformities can be observed or inferred in the course of the mental events themselves, there is no valid reason why we should not investigate them for their own sake, even though their real ground should remain for ever hidden. Uniformities of co- existence and sequence on the physiological side may find an expression more or less complete on the mental side also; and they may therefore be independently studied from this side. Nay, they not only may, but they must be so studied, if they are to be investigated at all. This may be confidently affirmed on the ground that there is no direct means of tracing the connection between a mental fact and the corresponding physiological fact. There is a gulf fixed between the physical and the psychical, of such a nature that it is impossible coincidently to observe an event of the one kind and an event of the other kind, so as to apprehend