642 GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 



he derides as a "mere bauble." The vitally important thing in 

 experience is a certain teleological quality or significance which the 

 talk about "capacity to accomplish the causal production of deeds" 

 does but obscure. Self-activity he proposes to regard "from the 

 purely psychological point of view," as the conscious aspect or 

 accompaniment of a collection of tendencies of the type which Loeb 

 has called "tropisms," or movements "determined by the nature of 

 the stimulus and of the organism." 1 In brief, we have in three 

 recent writers of mark three conflicting positions: (1) Subject 

 activity is a fact of experience, but psychology cannot deal with it, 

 because it is neither describable nor explicable. (2) Subject activity 

 is not a fact of experience, but it is a transcendent reality without 

 which psychology would be impossible. (3) Subject activity is 

 neither phenomenal nor real: the apparent "originality" or "spon- 

 taneity" of the individual mind is, for psychology at any rate, but 

 the biologist's "tropisms." 



I cannot attempt fully to discuss these views here, but I trust 

 I have described them sufficiently to show that the scandal of which 

 Bradley complained is still a stumbling-block in the way of psycho- 

 logical advance. On one or two remarks I will, however, venture. 

 In the first place, these authors seem entirely to ignore the distinc- 

 tion between immanent action, or doing, and transcendent action, 

 or effectuating: the former directly implies an agent only, the latter 

 a patient also. Nor do these authors appear to distinguish between 

 the so-called logical principle of causation, or natural uniformity, 

 and the bare notion of cause, Ursache, as active. They must of course 

 be well aware that these distinctions exist; and we are therefore 

 left to conclude that they regard them as invalid; for otherwise 

 these distinctions have surely an important bearing on the problem 

 before us. The so-called logical I should prefer to say epistemo- 

 logical principle of causal connection has two forms: (1) Given 

 a certain complex of conditions A, then a certain event B must 

 follow, as we say in the more empirical sciences; and (2) the cause 

 is quantitatively equivalent to the effect, as we say in dynamics. 

 Into neither of these does the notion of activity enter at all: the 

 inductive sciences find no place for it and the exact sciences have 

 no need of it. "Causation," as one of these writers says, "'marries 

 only universals' . . . and universals conceived as the common 

 objects of the experience of many." 2 On this point they seem to 

 be all agreed, and we also shall probably assent. Very good; but if 

 so, they argue, must you not admit that this causation has no place 

 in individual experience? Granted, but then comes the question : 



1 J. Royce, Outlines of Psychology, pp. x, ff.; Review of Stout's Analytic 

 Psychology, Mind, [N. S.] vi, pp. 379 ff. 

 1 Royce, Mind, 1. c. p. 383. 



