76 



Such facts as the above clearly indicate that the conten- 

 tion of the British Psychologists and their successors, that the 

 determining factor of association lies in physical and physio- 

 logical processes, has not been shown to be true, for mani- 

 festly nothing is directly known of any 'outside something' 

 by means of which conscious association may be explained. 

 The Associationists, instead of ascertaining, by direct in- 

 vestigation, what the nature of this conscious process is, have 

 constantly prejudged its nature; they have attempted to 

 go beyond consciousness to find its source, and from their sup- 

 posed findings in this outside realm, to affirm what such pro- 

 cesses must be, because of that something predicated as beyond. 

 In other words, the whole account of association has been in 

 terms of speculation, and one fundamental defect of this 

 method is the attempt to derive psychical processes from pro- 

 cesses non-psychical, which are too often matters of specula- 

 tion or of definition. 



2. MATHEMATICAL NECESSITY. 



In the preceding pages it has been seen that the psycho- 

 logical problem of association is capable of direct investigation 

 from a psychological standpoint, and that, in consequence, it 

 is not necessary, as Ribot claimed, that, "every study of ex- 

 perimental psychology, whose object is the exact description 

 of facts, and research into their laws, must henceforth set out 

 with a physiological exposition, that of the nervous system". 

 The above-mentioned problem is being investigated to-day as 

 a psychological problem without postulating any physiological 

 hypothesis. 



It would be quite appropriate just here, however, to ofTer 

 a brief critical examination of such physiological associative 

 hypothesis, as a means of accounting for the complexity and 

 characteristics of conscious processes. As a typical case, may 

 be considered the account which Spencer gives of how the 

 operation of this physiological associative substratum has 

 produced the fixed intuitions with which mathematics deals. 

 Spencer himself intimates that the process for the production 

 of such fixed intuitions in the race has been as f ollow r s : 



In the beginning, the two great subsequent divisions of 

 life, physiological and psychological, were one, that is, physio- 

 logical. As a result of differentiation and disintegration, the 

 psychical life was somehow evolved, and rendered more and 

 more distinct from the physical life by its changes being 

 brought more and more into serial order. 'Internal' actions 

 are initiated by 'external' ones, to which the senses are sub- 



