Human Nature and Conduct: Dewey. A History of Magic and Science: Thorndike. Les Epistres de Sènèque: Pintrel. Seneca, the Philosopher: Gummere. Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy: Lucas. An Introduction to Philosophy: Windelband. History of Indian Philosophy: Dasgupta. Indian Philosophy: Radhakrishnan. Der Euckenbund is a new periodical issuing from Jena, Germany, under the direction of Rudolph Eucken and his disciples. A recent number contained exhaustive reference to The Personalist from which we extract the following: "We greet with ardent joy the appearance of a philosophical and literary periodical, The Personalist. ****** It is maintained throughout from the standpoint of an ethical idealism. Besides philosophy it treats especially religious and literary problems of the immediate present in a fresh, highly intelligent and independent manner." This generous tribute from Professor Eucken is deeply appreciated and leads to the conviction that there should be a great coming together of minds of the personalist type around the world. Would it not be well for us to forget our particular brand of personalism in the interest of a wider and more far-reaching movement. The moment seems opportune and the need of the world in its present confusion very great. We believe The Personalist to have been founded in the interest of this larger group which we live to serve. Will you not, gentle reader, help us to reach this wider clientele. We have already come into touch with many of them. The varied interests of our contributors are helping that, but if you will send us a few choice addresses with consent to use your name we will mail free a sample copy of The Personalist, accompanied by a personal letter from the Editor. It will help amazingly. The Personalist Volume V Number I JANUARY, 1924 THE PERSONAL IDEALIST'S CONCERN FOR BY MARY WHITON CALKINS Wellesley College I. Contemporary Psychology exhibits three main forms. (i) There is first the conception of psychology as science of "ideas," experience, so-called mental processes, succeeding one upon the other-an atomistic or "mosaic" psychology as William McDougall calls it. This, the prevalent conception ten or fifteen years ago, is still extant and is well represented in the system of Titchener and in the earlier books of Muensterberg. (ii) Second, and nowadays most vociferous, is behavioristic psychology. In its naive form this consists merely in an emphasis on the fact that psychology must concern itself with the reactions of animal and human beings-that it must, for example, study perceptual as compared with deliberative reactions, impulsive as contrasted with volitional, instinctive as opposed to acquired. Much of the vogue of behaviorism is due to its facility in illustrating and enforcing this point of view. But, thus conceived, behaviorism is no new type of psychology at all but an accepted part of all contemporary introspective psychology. In its extreme form, however, behaviorism is sharply contrasted with psychology of the introspective type, for it is the conception of psychology as a science of the reactions of organic bodies to their environments. Psychology of this type eschews the attempt at an introspective study of consciousness and confines its attention to the behavior of organisms. It identifies sensations with simple reflex movements, associative imagination with conditional reflexes, thinking with sub-vocal lingual reactions, volition with impulsive movement. Dr. John Watson is the Moses, and Professor A. P. Weiss perhaps the Aaron, of this exodus of psychology from introspective bondage; but their followers are legion. (iii) There is finally a third conception of psychology. Upholders of this view, in full agreement with atomistic or idea psychology, insist that psychology is an introspective study and that behaviorism, however justified in achievement and in outcome, is a form of physiology or of zoology, not of psychology at all. On the other hand, self-psychologists unite with behaviorists in the belief that the introspective psychology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century -atomistic psychology or, as we have called it, idea-psychology-is an over-abstract treatment of observed experience. With the behaviorists, they believe that psychology should not study percepts, concepts or emotions "lying about loose in the world," but they substitute for the detached percepts and emotions not reacting organisms but perceiving or feeling selves. In a word, they agree with William McDougall that "All experiencing or thinking is the experiencing or thinking of some one They point out that specific experiences can not adequately be described without reference to the experiencing self and its characters-that, for example, recognition is not recognition if it does not include the consciousness of oneself as persisting and that sympathy is not differentiated from other affective experiences unless described as consciousness of oneself "sharing" other selves' experience.** "Outline of Psychology," chap. I., p. 40. **Explicit upholders of self psychology, though many of them do not desig nate it by precisely this name, are James Ward, J. Rehnke, R. M. Yerkes, W Mitchell, N. Ach, A. Pfander, E. A. McC. Gamble, and the writer of this paper. A much longer list might be given of psychologists who definitely take, but do not stress, the standpoint of self-psychology. Among these are II. This account of contemporary forms of psychology is by way of introduction to the statement of the first problem of this paper: what should be the personal idealist's attitude to psychology? By personal idealist is meant the philosopher who conceives the universe as through and through not merely mental but personal, that is, as constituted of selves or persons of many varying levels, or grades of personality, existing either separately (according to the pluralistic personalist) or as parts, or members, of the One or Absolute Person (in the view of the monistic personalist). It is a curious fact that many personal idealists have shown very little concern for psychology. To take recent examples: both Croce and Gentile claim for philosophy the function of studying spirits or persons and relegate to psychology what is to Croce the purely classificatory study of mental processes. "Psychology, an empirical and natural science," Croce says, "permits us to summarize and to remember very many effective manifestations of the spirit, by classifying as well as may be the species or classes of facts of representation, facts of sentiment, and volitional facts or by classifying these same facts according to groups of individuals (the Psychology of animals, of children, of savages, of criminals. ..") This "wholly extrinsic mode of consideration" Croce sharply contrasts with the philosophical "understanding" of spirit.* It may at once be admitted that psychology, if identified with behaviorism, concerns the personal idealist no more— J. R. Angell, C. S. Judd, E. Meumann and virtually all "Freudian" psychologists. The most important of the relatively recent advocates of self-psychology is William McDougall. The introductory chapter of his recent "Outline of Psychology" vigorously opposes both behaviorism and the "atomistic or mosaic" idea psychology and insists, as my quotation has indicated, that psychology is the study of "some one thinking some thing." McDougall, to be sure, often speaks of the "hypothesis" of mind, while radical self-psychology conceives self as observed phenomenon; and McDougall, like Muensterberg, describes self-psychology in too exclusively "purposive" terms; but his psychological theory is none the less, fundamentally and effectively, that of the self-psychologist. For exact references cf. the writer's "The Self in Scientific Psychology," Amer. Journal of Psychology, 1915, XXVI., pp. 516 ff. B. Croce, Logic. Translation by D. Ainslee, pp. 359 f. |