228 The Unity of the Organism 



ena soon reveal their inadequacy and finally break down as 

 the efforts come to face the increasing complexity which 

 progress of objective research always finds in such phenom- 

 ena. 



Associationist Psychology a Special Case of Elementalist 



Biology 



In the particular psychical realm we are now to examine, 

 elementalist theory has appeared most prominently as what 

 is called Associationism. This flourished first in England as 

 the school of English Associationists, David Hartley, near 

 the middle of the eighteenth century, being usually consid- 

 ered its founder. Psychologists of this group hold that 

 ideas, which for them appear to be identical with sensations, 

 are the "ultimate elements" of psychic phenomena. "Ac- 

 cording to this theory, rigidly carried out, all genesis of new 

 products is due to the combination of pre-existing ele- 

 ments." Even the passions, according to Hartley "must 

 be aggregates of the ideas, or traces of the sensible pleas- 

 ures and pains ; which ideas make up, by their number and 

 mutual influence upon one another, for the faintness and 

 transitory nature of each singly taken." 9 The "piling up 

 of fancy upon fancy, of jest upon jest, the long embel- 

 lishment of humor and foolery and horseplay" which Pro- 

 fessor Manly shows characterize many of the Shakespearian 

 plays, would be explained, according to this kind of psy- 

 chology, not really by the author Shakespeare but by the 

 "aggregation," in some way, within him of ideas. 



And, similarly, the works which in popular language are 

 said to be by a Darwin, a Humboldt, a Copernicus, an Aris- 

 totle, are in reality not by but merely m these men. The men 

 were only the places of aggregation of the elements the 

 ultimates by which the teaching on the .origin of species, 

 on the general character of the earth, on the solar system, 



