280 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



to make a systematic attempt to elaborate psychology as 

 an independent science ; in this he contrasts with some 

 of his predecessors {e.g., Bain), who endeavoured equally 

 to give scientific character to psychology, but helped 

 themselves out by reference to physiological facts. 

 Great care is also taken to get behind the words and 

 terms of language which are habitually used in describ- 

 ing mental states, and which have the tendency to put in 

 the place of the inner world an artificial and conven- 

 tional picture or image of it.-^ 



In his more recent deliverances on the subject Prof. 

 Ward gives further precision to the definition of 

 psychology as an analysis of individual experience. In 

 emphasising individual experience as not consisting of 

 definite and separated sensations or ideas, but as a 

 continuum or a plenum, a new problem arises for the 

 psychologist which did not exist for earlier schools, which, 

 starting from verbal expressions, dealt with what might 



(or actual together) of presenta- 

 tions, the disintegration of the 

 association -psychology is got over. 



^ One of the most important 

 deliverances of Ward, especially for 

 an historian of thought, is his 

 article in 'Mind' (1893, p. 54), 

 entitled " Modern Psychology : a 

 Reflection." It was occasioned by 

 a controversy started in Germany 

 among the followers of Prof. Wundt 

 over the theory of the latter regard- 

 ing apperception and his search for 

 a centre or organ of apperception. 

 Some of his disciples have not been 

 able to follow him into this specu- 

 lation, which indicates the difficulty 

 of all purely psycho-physical or 

 physiological psychology in finding 

 an expression for, and dealing with, 

 the unity of mental life. In fact, 

 they cannot find an entry into that 



central region which has always 

 been held. sacred by the introspect- 

 ive school. " Spite of all," Ward 

 says, " there are, I believe, good 

 grounds for the view that the dif- 

 ference as regards the immediacy 

 between feeling and presentation 

 is a difierence of kind ; that feeling 

 is not obscure cognition nor sensa- 

 tion objectified feeling ; that feel- 

 ing, in a word, is always subjective 

 and sensations always objective, 

 objective of course I mean in a 

 psychological sense. According to 

 this view, the duality of conscious- 

 ness or the antithesis of subject 

 and object is fundamental ; accord- 

 ing to the opposite view, the dififer- 

 ence of subject and object gradually 

 'emerges ' as the result of develop- 

 ment or ' differentiation ' " (' Mind,' 

 1893, p. 62). 



