4 Chapter I. 



chology, 1 which is thought to suffice for the require- 

 ments of ordinary life, and too often also for the sciences 

 which cannot do without psychological reference. The 

 one great defect of this popular psychology is, that it 

 does not take mental processes for what they show 

 themselves to be to a direct and unprejudiced view, but 

 imports into them the reflections of the observer about 

 them. The necessary consequence for animal psy- 

 chology is, that the mental actions of the animals, from 

 the lowest to the highest, are interpreted as acts of the 

 understanding. If any vital manifestation of the 

 organism is capable of possible derivation from a series 

 of reflections and inferences, that is taken as sufficient 

 proof, that these reflections and inferences actually led 

 up to it. And, indeed, in the absence of a careful anyalsis 

 of our subjective perceptions we can hardly avoid this 

 conclusion. Logical reflection is the logical process most 

 familiar to us, because we discover its presence when 

 we think about any object whatsoever. So that for 

 popular psychology mental life in general is dissolved 

 in the medium of logical reflection. The question 

 whether there are not perhaps other mental processes 

 of a simpler nature is not asked at all, for the one reason 

 that whenever self -observation is required, it discovers 

 this reflective process in the human consciousness. The 

 same idea is applied to feelings, impulses and voluntary 

 actions which are regarded, if not as acts of intelligence, 

 still as affective states which belong to the intellectual 

 sphere. 



'This mistake, then, springs from ignorance of ex- 



l ) "Jener vulgaeren Psychologic" (German text.) 



