J.— PSYCHOLOGY. 169 



varying concomitance. Only by such a principle could the important 

 processes of discrimination, comparison and abstraction be brought within 

 the circle of associationist doctrine. The general scheme of explanation 

 was wrong, in that it dealt with contents of experience when it should 

 have been dealing with acts of experience ; and the general scheme of 

 mental activity which we put in the place of this associationist scheme is 

 that of systems of mental tendencies included within, and in subordination 

 to, a wider system — tendencies towards knowledge and action, and 

 involving feeling. One such system of explanation is that in terms of 

 instinctive-emotional dispositions organised within sentiments, with the 

 sentiments in their turn subordinated to one all-inclusive sentiment or 

 master-interest. A sentiment is an organisation of emotional dis- 

 positions centred about the idea of some object. What are organised 

 are not the presentations or representations, not the contents of experience 

 primarily, but the processes or acts of experience. The tendencies of 

 experience, and the activity and organisation of these tendencies, bring 

 with them an organisation of the objects ; and so our memories, which are 

 retained and which are used for the retention of past experiences, fall into 

 systems because the acts of experience corresponding to those memories 

 fall into systems. And from that point of view we see that the dis- 

 sociations of memory — the gaps in the memory continuum, known as 

 amnesias — find their true significance in the segregation of corresponding 

 acts of experience. 



The question then arises, if we reject the associationist scheme accord- 

 ing to which the mind is built up of presentations and representations 

 cohering together in systems, are we to regard the unity of the mind as an 

 aggregation of mental activities and tendencies ? Are we to put in place 

 of our mosaic of mental contents a collection or a colony of mental 

 tendencies ? The reply is ' No,' because we do not have these mental 

 tendencies separate from one another — just coming together and cohering, 

 just as we do not have the mental contents coming together and cohering. 

 Both subjectively and objectively, we must assume at the beginning a 

 generalised striving and mental tendency, with a generalised objective — 

 e.g. ' the great big buzzing confusion ' of which William James speaks as 

 the world of the new-born babe — a continuum of sensation and movement 

 on one side, and a continuum of mental striving on the other. The 

 general mental striving which we assume at the beginning becomes 

 gradually differentiated in relation to the needs of the organism, and the 

 demands made upon the organism by its environment — a differentiation 

 superimposed upon the differentiations accumulating in the history of the 

 race, and handed on from generation to generation in the form of instinctive 

 endowment and inherited aptitudes. The individual inherits not only 

 separate instincts, but also the tendency towards an organisation of those 

 instincts. He inherits the beginnings of sentiments, as well as instincts. 

 He is already a one-and-many unity, with his mind a plurality of part- 

 tendencies and processes, and his task in life is to carry that organisation 

 to a higher stage. The demands made upon him by his environment 

 bring with them movements in two directions — in the direction of greater 

 unity and greater organisation, and also of greater complexity — a greater 

 degree of differentiation and discrimination. Discrimination is necessary 



