June, 1894. EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. 447 



elements being sensation, affection ( = pleasure - pain), and conation 

 (effort or activity). ^ Those who adopt the views of (2) or (3) have 

 protested, and must continue to protest, against the restriction of 

 their science to the description of and theorising upon a single 

 psychical ultimate. And as more authors are drawn from their ranks 

 than from those of (i), and the literature of affection and conation is 

 quite extensive, while the term " sensation " tends to be used, even by 

 psychologists of the first type, in its more narrow and usual sense, it 

 would seem that the objection stated at the beginning of this para- 

 graph can only be accounted for by the assumption of ignorance of 

 general psychological literature on the part of those who raise it. 



Still, there is no smoke without fire. How did the erroneous 

 opinion arise in the first place ? There are several reasons that 

 might be alleged, (i.) An experimental psychology must logically 

 begin with (technical 2) sensation {cf. Wundt, Vorlesungen, 2nd ed., 

 pp. 14, 15). (ii.) Chronologically, it did so begin, (iii.) Sensation- 

 investigations tend to be assigned as theses for University degrees, 

 because they are easier than are investigations into affection, 

 conation, or the more complex mental processes, (iv.) This greater 

 easiness is partly conditioned by a fact which deserves special 

 mention : that language is the language of sensation and its deriva- 

 tives ; not of affection, conation, and their derivatives. For these 

 processes gesture-language is the only direct means cf communica- 

 tion. All spoken or written communication of them first translates 

 them into terms of sensation and idea, (v.) There are, on the lowest 

 estimate, over 50,000 irresolvable qualities of sensation. There are 

 only two of affection, and only one of conation. Hence, even if 

 sensations are grouped into modalities, the psychological literature of 

 sensation must be far more bulky than that of affection and conation, 

 (vi.) Physiologists — who have done much good service to experi- 

 mental psychology, and service all the more valuable so long as 

 psychology remained or remains without endowment — know, as a 

 rule, a great deal about sensation, but little either of the literature of 

 the other two claimants for recognition as conscious ultimates, or of 

 that of concrete psychology (the " higher " mental processes). Other 

 reasons might doubtless be added to these. 



I have (i) not attempted to arrange the following rough list of 

 current investigations. Indeed, classification would be impossible 

 except in terms of a committal psychology. For the difference 

 between the old and the new psychologies here is just this : that the 

 old drew their parallel columns, and headed them " Intellect," 

 " Feeling," and " Will " ; while the new, however many or few the 

 ultimates which it postulates, regards every complex psychosis as 



^ I omit, for brevity's sake, the various sub-forms of these views. 



2 " A sensation is that simple, conscious process which stands in a relation 

 of dependence to definite nervous organs at periphery and centre." — Kiilpe, 

 Grundnss, p. 30. 



