96 



The whole question, then, resolves itself into one method; 

 and a genuinely scientific method should not begin with mere 

 speculation and definition, but rather should be to ascertain 

 and to understand facts first, and upon the basis of such facts 

 to construct theory. The failure to do this has been, in the 

 main, the source of the vitiating errors of all the Association- 

 ists, who have sought, not only for the physical causes of asso- 

 ciation, but also for the causes of the sensations associated. 

 The whole procedure, therefore, of seeking the cause of sen- 

 sations and ideas, and their connections, by reference to some- 

 thing by definition non-psychical has been at fault. 



In this view, as applied in the present connection, we find 

 support among some outstanding representatives of the 

 physical sciences. "The question, What produces this sen- 

 sation or idea, contains an error," says Verworn. "The 

 cause of my sensation of the physical is another sensation or 

 idea. Our conception of causality has arisen out of a com- 

 bination of separate experiences which our mind has obtained 

 by observation of the regular sequence of its own elements, 

 its sensations, and ideas." "In other words, causality itself, 

 like all other sensations, ideas, conceptions, or whatever we 

 may term it, exists only in our mind. If, therefore, the cause 

 of my idea of the physical is located within, the supposition 

 of a reality without is wholly unjustified." "The attempt 

 to reduce to the motions of atoms all psychical phenomena, 

 not only ideas of the physical world but others, such as simple 

 sensations, is precisely as absurd as the endeavour to reduce 

 all numbers in the numerical series to two instead of to the 

 numerical unit, for the complex notion of the atom is not a 

 unit, not a psychical element. Herein lies the fallacy of the 

 problem, and hence, as the history of human thought has 

 shown so strikingly, all attempts to explain the psychical by 

 the physical must fail." 



" The actual problem is precisely the reverse. It consists not 

 in explaining psychical by physical phenomena, but rather in 

 reducing to its psychical elements physical, like all other psychical 

 I phenomena." 1 



As significant of this different point of view laid down by 

 Verworn, may be noted the tendency among many physio- 

 logists, more particularly neurologists, to realize more and 

 more the necessity of working from another standpoint than 

 that of nerves and brain, in the treatment of nervous disorders. 

 In connection with the general investigation of neuroses, 

 dreams, and allied phenomena, by Professor Sigmund Freud , 



1U General Physiology", pp. 35-39. 





