Septembee 5, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



389 



and for this reason, and this reason only, it is 

 seldom discussed. 



The author says that 'the results of experi- 

 mental psychology are stiU for the most part 

 future,' though we may even now 'obtain some 

 valuable preliminary notions concerning con- 

 sciousness from our present biological knowl- 

 edge.' The statement can be accepted only if 

 one disregard the mass of psychological ma- 

 terial that has been collected since Fechner 

 wrote his 'Elemente der Psychophysik,' Helm- 

 holtz his 'Physiologische Optik' and 'Tonemp- 

 findungen' and Wundt his 'Grundzuege der 

 physiologischen Psychologic.' With a current 

 literature of approximately three thousand 

 titles in the year, a literature that covers every 

 phase of consciousness, with htindreds of 

 trained workers who are making observations 

 in scores of laboratories the year round, it is 

 plain, at least to any one within the science, 

 that disregard of the injunction to observe is 

 not psychology's ruling vice. As for the atti- 

 tude toward mind that psychology should take 

 • — that is, naturally, a problem which the sci- 

 ence must solve for herself. For herself, be- 

 cause psychology's first business is to know 

 mind quite apart from any special use that any 

 other discipline — biology, pedagogy, sociology 

 — may wish to make of mental phenomena. A 

 science must choose her own way; a vis a tergo 

 from a well-wishing friend can only cause her 

 to stumble. 



More specifically, the president's address 

 urges a genetic study of mind because the 

 'why' of mind, its teleological function, can 

 be investigated with profit while the sttidy of 

 'what it is' is 'recondite, metaphysical, and 

 carries us beyond the limits of verifiable hu- 

 man knowledge.' The force of this argument 

 depends entirely upon what one understands 

 by 'why' and 'what.' There is, surely, a sci- 

 entific 'what' as much as there is a scientific 

 'why'; and there is as truly a philosophical 

 'why' as there is a philosophical 'what.' The 

 morphologist and the analytical chemist ask 

 'what.' They deal with structure. On the 

 other hand, the biologist is answering a 'why' 

 when he explains that mind exists for the sake 

 of the body's 'adjustments to the external con- 

 ditions' and that the body exists — at least 'a 



large part of our anatomical characteristics 

 exist for the purpose of increasing the re- 

 sources of consciousness.' Mind for body and 

 body for mind ! That is a game of teleological 

 'tag' that is neither 'recondite nor metaphys- 

 ical.' But should the biologist ask 'why ad- 

 justment at all?' 'why evolutionary process?' 

 'why not being without becoming?' he would 

 find himself as far outside his science as is the 

 hypothetical psychologist who is concerned 

 with the question of the ultimate nature of 

 mind. Surely, observation is, first of all, look- 

 ing for what is 'there'; 'there' for psychology 

 in one's own consciousness, in the conscious- 

 nesses of one's fellows and, later, in the con- 

 sciousness of the child, the animal, the abnor- 

 mal, the savage. It is safe to assert that no 

 one can point to a single piece of successful 

 genetic work in psychology which is not based 

 upon a more or less adequate study of 'what 

 consciousness is' in the human adult. In- 

 deed, this must be the case. The development 

 of a thing cannot be described correctly until 

 the thing itself is known. It is, one may 

 admit, not difficult to construct hypothetical 

 consciousnesses for the amoeba, the jelly-fish, 

 the bee and the beaver; consciousnesses which 

 shall explain beautifully the reactions of these 

 animals. But the question arises whether these 

 hypothetical minds really exist. Oftentimes 

 they do not. The recent history of genetic 

 psychology is filled with fictitious minds which 

 are worse than useless to the psychologist, 

 whatever their value may be to the biologist. 

 One proof of their unsatisfactoriness, even as 

 agents of natural selection, is given, I am in- 

 clined to believe, in the well-marked tendency 

 within biology to explain reactions of the sim- 

 pler organisms in terms of 'tropism' and 

 'taxis' instead of in terms of 'volition' and 

 'reason.' 



The question of the 'epiphenomenal' nature 

 of mind has little interest for the psychologist. 

 'Epiphenomenalism' or 'automatism' is not a 

 psychological concept. Huxley introduced it 

 into biology to show that biology has no real 

 concern with consciousness, since conscious- 

 ness — as he affirms — does not react causally 

 upon the body. Psychology rejects the term 

 'epiphenomenon' not because it denies a 



