OF NATURE. 



595 



processes of visual sensation, to appreciate that act of 

 creative synthesis which became to me gradually a 

 leader by whose hand to gain also a psychological 

 insight into the development of the higher functions 

 of the imagination and the intellect, towards which the 

 older psychology had given me no assistance. As I then 

 approached the temporal relations in the flow of our 

 ideas, a new insight was given me into the develop- 

 ment of the functions of the Will, — of the external out 

 of the internal, of the complex out of the simple, an 

 insight also into the intimate connection of all psychical 

 functions, which we artificially separate by such abstract 

 names as intelligence, feeling, and willing : in short, I 

 recognised the indivisibility and homogeneity of mental 

 life in all its phases." ^ 



The idea mentioned in this passage has gradually 

 gained the supremacy in Prof. Wundt's speculation. 

 Actuality appears more and more as the central idea of Actuality 

 his philosophical creed, and he traces this factor back 

 not only into the elementary and primary functions of 



37. 

 Wundt on 



^ This explanation was published 

 in the year 1894 in the ' Philoso- 

 phische Studien ' (vol. x.), and has 

 since been reprinted in the 2nd 

 volume of ' Kleine Schriften,' 1911, 

 see p. 111. This collection of his 

 scattered contributions in two vol- 

 umes will much facilitate the study 

 of ^YuHdt's philosophy, thougli, in 

 consequence of the alterations in- 

 troduced in the reprint, a reference 

 to the original articles would, in 

 the interest of a history of the 

 development of Wundt's ideas, be 

 necessary. In a note on pp. 103 

 and 104 of the reprint, Wundt 

 traces his valuable conception of 

 creative synthesis far back into the 



period of his researches into the 

 physiology of visual sensations. 

 This happened in the year 1858 

 or 1859, when he combined the 

 nativistic and empirical theories 

 of visual perception in his theory 

 of "complex local signs." He then 

 recognised that he had "to do with 

 a process which was fully intel- 

 ligible through its elements, but 

 which was nevertheless, compared 

 with them, something new, — a 

 creative synthesis of these ele- 

 ments. And so this simple pro- 

 cess of perception seemed to me 

 to throw a clear light on the 

 essence of psychical processes in 

 general, &c." 



