780 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



41. definite picture of external persons and things rises 



Regions in . i t i 



thefirma- with ever crreater clearness out of the totality and con- 



ment of *=> '' _ 



the soul. tinuum of inner experience is a problem for genetic 

 psychology. 



Various beginnings of a solution of this problem are 

 to be found in philosophical writings, ever since the 

 time of Locke and Berkeley. By many psychological 

 inquirers different stages of this prehistoric develop- 

 ment of the individual consciousness have been traced. 

 Such accounts, it must be admitted, can never be any- 

 thing more than conjectural ; yet they are not more 

 so than the genealogical trees in recent biology, or the 

 attempts to discover and fix the stages of civilisa- 

 tion, the growth of language and ideas, in prehistoric 

 times and among primitive peoples. Such a genetic 

 psychology would have to fix what may be termed the 

 primordial data of consciousness, such as change and 

 unrest, impulse and desire, attention, memory, and 

 oblivion, intersubjective intercourse, words, signs, and 

 language, &c. It would have to work in a manner 

 analogous to that of gravitational astronomy, dealing 

 with mental (as the other does with physical) agencies 

 or forces which, in the fully developed adult mind, are 

 still at play. 



But as little as the modern astronomer can content 

 himself with physical astronomy, — having now to resort 

 to other means in order to explore what to earlier ages 

 was the supposed void of space, the background of the 

 firmament, — as little can the psychologist content himself 

 with an exploration and analysis of that cluster of 

 sensations which is distinctly traceable, which we have 



