118 PERSONALITY 



details of bodily activity there is little need for 

 deliberate abstraction, since the psychological 

 element lies only in the background. But 

 when we come to deal with the bodily parts 

 more immediately concerned in perception and 

 voluntary response the case is very different. 

 Perception, voluntary response, and conscious 

 activity of every kind belong to personality, 

 and therefore cannot as such be dealt with 

 scientifically from the merely biological or 

 physiological standpoint. We might as well 

 attempt to establish physics on a basis which 

 totally disregarded the facts on which the 

 conceptions of mass and energy are based, as 

 to establish psychology on a merely physio 

 logical basis. Physiological psychology, in so 

 far as it is such an attempt, is nothing but a 

 misbirth of modern times, inevitably doomed 

 to perish, just as is bio-chemistry in so far as 

 it is an attempt to establish physiology on a 

 purely chemical basis. 



Now all organic activity in a conscious 

 organism is ultimately more or less under con 

 scious control, directly or indirectly ; and from 

 this fact it might be argued that if physiologi 

 cal psychology is impossible, so also is the 



