PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 229 



together as individual psychology, while animal psychology and ethnic psy- 

 chology form the two halves of a generic or comparative psychology-. 7 



So far the extensive development. On the side of intensive cen- 

 tralization Wundt's doctrine of apperception provides the necessary 

 hypothesis. To these aspects of the subject I can only refer now. 



Turning at once to the " Physiological Psychology," we find that it 

 proceeds, as scientific method dictates, from the simple to the complex. 

 After an introduction, Part I. discusses the bodily Substrate of the 

 Mental Life; Part II. the Elements of the Mental Life; Part III. the 

 Formation of Sensory Ideas; Part IV. the Affective Process and Voli- 

 tional Action; Part. V. the Course and the Connection of Mental 

 Processes; Part VI. adds Final Considerations. Thus, we pass from 

 the functions of the nervous system, by way of sensation, feeling and 

 presentation, to consciousness in the formation of ideas and in the 

 train of ideas, which, in turn, involves attention, apperception, and 

 will, not forgetting phenomena such as association, imagination and 

 emotion. Two reasons make it hard to select this or that, and to say, 

 Here Wundt excels. First, profuse wealth of suggestion and result 

 is scattered everywhere. Second, the successive editions of the " Phys- 

 iological Psychology " constitute the life history of Wundt's own mind 

 in relation to the subject as a whole; and only psychologists von Fach 

 can supply the necessary light and shade. It appears to me that special 

 interest attaches to his discussion of Muller's theory of specific energies, 

 because it reveals Wundt's view of the part played by the nervous sys- 

 tem in the psychological organization; to his criticism of the Young- 

 Helmholtz theory of color, because it attacks the " mystery " of -space- 

 perception; to the treatment of sensation, the duration of mental 

 processes, and association, because they afford typical instances of the 

 new data which experimental psychology can bestow upon analyses of 

 psychical phenomena. Doubtless, professed psychologists would insist 

 upon other points. For my part, the central interest still attaches 

 to Wundt's theory of apperception and will. I take the former as a 

 typical illustration of the direction in which physiological psychology 

 moves. 



In apperception the conscious being brings his entire unity of ex- 

 perience to bear on the object now in the field of his attention. We 

 light upon an inner and elaborative activity which " bears the stamp of 

 spontaneity." Evidently, a process complex in the highest degree! 

 My expert colleague, Professor Pillsbury, has analyzed it as follows: 

 Apperception involves four elements. "(1) Increase of clearness in 

 the idea directly before the mind, accompanied by the immediate feel- 

 ing of activity; (2) inhibition of other ideas; (3) muscular strain 

 sensations, with the feelings connected with them, intensifying the 



'"Physiol. Psych.," Vol. I., pp. 5-6 (Eng. trans.). 



