Psijchic I ntcy ration }i.'J5 



legitimate and useful as an aid to i.derprcting the plunnm- 

 ena of reflex nerve action, lias no actual cxistcncr in nature. 

 It, like the "psychical element,^' i> .ui abstraction. This is 

 only another way of saying that psychical d.ni.nt^ are 

 what they are because they are parts of the mind as a whole, 

 just as we have seen over and over again physical elements 

 of the body are what they are because they are i)arts of the 

 body. "The specific character of a given psychical process 

 dejjends for the most part not on the nature of its elements 

 so much as on cheir union into a composite ])sychical com- 

 pound. Thus, the idea of an extended body or a rhvthm, are 

 all specific forms of psychical experience. But their charac- 

 ter as such is as little determined by their sensational and af- 

 fective elements as are the chemical properties of a comjjound 

 body by the properties of its chemical elements. Specific char- 

 acter and elementary nature of psychical processes are, ac- 

 cordingly, two entirely different concepts." ^'^ 



We must not miss an essential point in this, that since 

 with psychical elements just as with chemical elements we 

 never know exactly what or how nuich each ])articular ele- 

 ment contributes to the compound, we are obliged to con- 

 ceive the attributes of the compounds as pertaining to the 

 elements collectively even before the compounding lias K-en 

 done. 



So it comes about that because all contents of conscious- 

 ness are fundamentally com})osite, but are also resolvable into 

 components of various grades of complexity, synthesis and 

 analysis have a prominent place in tlu' \\'un(ltian system. 

 Of these, synthesis is the more definitive and fundamental, 

 since it enters into the verv nature of c()ii>(inii>ness itself. 

 Consciousness is, according to \\'undt, the ''inter-connec- 

 tion of psychical compouncis."" "It is the name for the gen- 

 eral synthesis of ])sychical processes, in which synthesis the 

 single com})ounds are markid off as more intimate combina- 

 tions." ^^ The meanino- of this is made clearer bv the state- 



