SECTION A GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 



(Hall 6, September 23, 3 p. m.) 



CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR JOSEPH ROYCE, Harvard University. 

 SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR HARALD HOFFDING, University of Copenhagen. 



PROFESSOR JAMES WARD, University of Cambridge, England. 

 SECRETARY: DR. W. H. DAVIS, Lehigh University. 



THE PRESENT STATE OF PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS RELA- 

 TIONS TO THE NEIGHBORING SCIENCES 



BY HARALD HOFFDING 



[Harold H off ding, Professor of Philosophy, University of Copenhagen, b. Copen- 

 hagen, Denmark, March 11, 1843. Student, Copenhagen, 1861; Candidate 

 of Theology, 1865; Ph.D. Copenhagen, 1870; LL.D. St. Andrews, 1898; D.S. 

 Oxford, 1904. Privat-docent, Copenhagen, 1872; Public-decent, ibid. 1880; 

 Ordinary Professor of Philosophy, ibid. 1883; Rector of the University of 

 Copenhagen, 1902-03. Member of Royal Danish Society of Science and Letters; 

 Society of Science and Letters, Gothenberg, Sweden; Philosophical Society of 

 Moscow; correspondant de 1'Institut de France. Author of Psychology (1882); 

 Ethics (1887); History of Modern Philosophy; Philosophy of Religion; Philo- 

 sophical Problems; Philosophers of Our Days, in Danish, translated into several 

 languages.] 



I 



TO-DAY we have arrived at the conviction, that though the great and 

 complex totality, which we call reality, cannot be understood without 

 more or less artificial isolation of elements and without an analytical 

 investigation of the mutual relations of such elements, yet the ele- 

 ments, which our science so distinguishes, are not to be considered 

 as the constituent elements of the reality itself. In other words: 

 the conditions of knowledge and of existence are not the same. 

 Our ways of understanding are not necessarily the ways nature 

 follows in her production. This is the old fundamental thought 

 of critical philosophy, which has slowly made its way, especially 

 during the later years, not only among philosophers, but also among 

 naturalists who have discussed the first principles of their science. 

 Then the possibility appears of an irrational relation between 

 thought and reality, the possibility, that the analysis of thought 

 cannot do justice to the great synthesis of reality. The validity 

 of science does not suffer by this, because the analyses and dis- 

 tinctions, which we undertake in order to arrive at a scientific 

 understanding, ought to be founded, point by point, in observa- 

 tions of the living and concrete reality. 



