526 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



world, has treated the subject comprehensively, and fairly 

 and fully tried to grapple with these two facts peculiar 

 to the inner world its centralised unity and its capacity 

 of unlimited growth through a process of externalisation. 

 He has done so by his philosophical theory of " ap- 

 perception and will," and of the "growth of mental 

 values," two conceptions which lead us into the realm 

 of philosophical thought. 1 



But, before closing this chapter, which deals with the 

 study of the phenomena of an inner life and the inter- 

 action of body and mind by the methods of exact research, 

 it is well to note that long before psychology existed as 

 a natural science, a large amount of knowledge had been 

 accumulated by a different method. Especially in this 

 country ever since the time of Locke there has existed 

 a very large and influential school of thinkers who studied 

 the inner phenomena by what has been appropriately 

 termed the inner sense ; every observer recording his 

 own inner experience and leaving it to others, by doing 

 the same, to confirm or correct his statements. Psy- 

 chology, carried on through self-observation or by the 



1 It would serve no good pur- 

 pose to string together a list of 

 quotations from Prof. Wundt's 

 voluminous writings in which these 

 two central ideas of his philosophy 

 find expression, especially as there 

 is no one passage to be found in 

 which his highest abstractions and 

 final conclusions find an adequate 

 expression, still less one which could 

 be conveniently rendered in the 

 English language. Konig has, it 

 seems to me, done much to make 

 Wundt's view more easily under- 

 stood, and I must content myself 

 at present with referring to his little 



volume, notably to the extracts 

 given on pp. 134, 141, and 167, 

 which explain more clearly the 

 theory of apperception and will. 

 On the theory of the " growth 

 of mental values," see especially 

 Wundt, ' System der Philosophic ' 

 (2 AufL, pp. 307, 596), "Mental 

 life is, extensively and intensively, 

 governed by a law of growth of 

 values : extensively, inasmuch as the 

 multiplicity of mental developments 

 is always on the increase ; inten- 

 sively, inasmuch as the values 

 which appear in these develop- 

 ments increase in degree" (p. 304). 



