OF THE SOUL. 



281 



appear to them to be individual things or elements 1 in 

 the human mind. The problem which arises is to ex- 

 plain how in this continual flow of the inner states, in 

 this continuum of presentations, it comes that we single 

 out and fix upon definite portions which, with the help 

 of words, signs, and symbols, we are able to isolate and 

 to describe. This is effected by the process of attention, 

 of interest, or of conation. This brings at once the active 

 factor into play. What in the older schools of psychology 

 was looked upon as the passive and purely receptive side 

 of mental life has disappeared. Not only do we hereby 

 abandon Locke's tabula rasa, the unwritten sheet, but 

 we do not separate and treat separately the intellect and 

 the will in the way that even writers like Bain have still 

 done. 



And lastly, the new psychology has come under the 

 influence of the genetic view of nature, not only inasmuch 

 as it studies the genesis of individual experience through 

 infancy and childhood, but also by recognising the exist- 

 ence of other and lower experiences than our own. These 

 lead us to believe that, just like the external forms 

 of organic life, the phenomena of consciousness or of 

 individual experience are subject to the general law of 

 development. 2 



1 Faculties or powers on the sub- 

 jective side ; separate sensations or 

 ideas with their combinations or 

 associations on the objective side. 

 The whole of Ward's psychology 

 may be considered as one of the 

 most brilliant examples of the 

 modern tendency of thought men- 

 tioned above (p. 104), to look at 

 things in their "together" instead 

 of in their isolation ; of the synop- 



tical as against the analytical and 

 synthetical view. 



2 The fact that psychology has 

 come under the influence of the 

 genetic view of phenomena not 

 only enlarges very much the region 

 of psychological research ; it also 

 separates it once for all from 

 any theory of knowledge. " Com- 

 paring psychology and epistem- 

 ology, we may say that the former 



