712 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



processes. When I first approached psychological 

 problems I shared the general prejudice natural to 

 physiologists, that the formation of sense-perceptions is 

 merely the work of the physiological properties of our 

 sense-organs. I learnt for the first time when studying 

 the performance of the visual sense (especially as regards 

 space- perception) to understand that act of ' creative 

 synthesis ' which gradually became for me a guide at the 

 hand of which I could also gain a psychological com- 

 prehension of the development of the higher functions of 

 imagination and intellect ; for this the older psychology 

 gave us no assistance. When I then approached the 

 investigation of the time-relations in the sequence of our 

 ideas a new insight was afforded me into the develop- 

 ment of the functions of the will (viz., through the 

 influence of preparation and tension upon the shortening 

 of physiological time) ... an insight likewise into 

 the close connection of all such psychical functions 

 as were separated through artificial abstractions and 

 terms such as ' representing,' ' feeling,' and ' willing ' ; in 

 one word, an insight into the indivisibility and the inner 

 similarity of mental life in all its stages." ^ 



This passage is characteristic of Wundt's philosophy 

 and differentiates it from that of Kant on one side, from 

 that of Spencer on the other. Kant had recognised the 

 synthetic function of the intellect, and had fixed upon 

 the process of apperception as the centre of this mental 

 77. synthesis. Wundt goes a step further, and defines it as 



"Creative . i • i t 



Synthesis." a Creative act which produces something more than a 



^ See ' Philosophische Studien,' I section in the second volume of 

 1894, pp. 122-124; also the first | Wundt's ' Kleine Schriften,' 1911. 



