PROBLEMS OF GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 647 



but the whole organism, the atomistic analogy fails us at once. 

 Functionally regarded, the organism is from first to last a con- 

 tinuous whole; phylogenetically and ontogenetically it is gradually 

 differentiated from a single cell, not compounded by the juxtaposi- 

 tion of several originally distinct cells. There is in this respect the 

 closest correspondence between life and mind; one of the best 

 things Herbert Spencer did was to trace this correspondence in 

 detail. If a chemical theory of life is for the present improbable, 

 a quasi-chemical theory of mind is more improbable still. The 

 individual subject we must regard so it seems to me as en rap- 

 port with a certain objective continuum characterized by indefinite 

 plasticity, or possibility of differentiation, retentiveness, and assim- 

 ilation. The progress of experience, alike in the individual life and 

 in the evolution of mind as a whole, may then be described as one 

 of continuous differentiation or specialization; diffused and simple 

 changes of situation giving place to restricted and complex ones, 

 vague presentations to definite ones. But under all, the objective 

 unity and continuity persists, and we never reach a mere aggre- 

 gate or manifold of chaotic particulars, such as Kant assumed to 

 start with. 



Yes, but to describe experience as progressive differentiation 

 and organization on more or less biological lines is mere natural 

 history, the psychological atomist objects: it is only description, 

 not explanation. But then psychology, or more exactly its sub- 

 ject-matter, individual experience, is historical; that is to say, 

 though psychology is not biography but science, does not nar- 

 rate but generalizes, yet its generalizations all relate to individ- 

 ual experience as such; and here what we may call the historical 

 or biological categories teleological categories, in other words 



are surely supreme. It is remarkable how long the physical or 

 atomistic bias has prevailed in human thought, but happily at 

 length modern ideas of evolution have secured a juster recogni- 

 tion of the claims of the historical: I may refer in passing to the 

 admirable philosophical expositions of these claims which we owe 

 to Professors Windelband and Rickert. And surely it may be con- 

 tended that an orderly and coherent account of the development 

 of individual experience one exhibiting its rationale, so to speak 

 is better entitled to be called explanatory than any theory can 

 be that sets aside the essential features of experience as life in 

 order to make room for the categories of mechanism and chem- 

 ism, which are inadequate and inappropriate to the living world. 

 As I have just said, such attempts are natural enough, but they 

 are also naive, and their inaptness becomes increasingly manifest as 

 reflection and criticism deepen. At the outset men talk of thoughts 



as if they were isolated and independent existences, just as they 



