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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XX. No. 505 



is usually as misleading as to consult them for light on geology 

 or botany. Even the fuller treatises on the subject of feeling 

 rarely reach beyond literary method and common observation, 

 being for the most part a collection and arrangement of the re- 

 sults of common sense, accepting common definitions, terms, and 

 classifications. Now, science is always more than common sense 

 and common perception, it is uncommon sense; it is an insight 

 and a prolonged special investigation which penetrates beneath the 

 surface of things and shows them in those inner and deeper relations 

 which are entirely hid from general observation. Common views 

 in psychology are likely to be as untrustworthy as in physics or 

 astronomy, or any other department. Science must, indeed, 

 start with common sense but it does not deserve the name of sci- 

 ence till it gets beyond it. 



Again, the subject of pleasure, pain, and emotion, is usually 

 discussed with considerable ethical or philosophical bias. The 

 whole subject of feeling has been so naturally associated with 

 ethics and philosophy from the earliest period of Greek thought that 

 a purely colorless scientific treatment is quite difficult. Further- 

 more, feeling has been too often discussed from an a priori point 

 of view, as iu the rigid following out of the Herbartian theory of 

 feeling as connected with hindrance or furtherance of representa- 

 tion. StUl further, the physical side of emotion has been so em- 

 phasized by the physiological school as to distract attention from 

 purely psychological investigation. How far this may lead is 

 seen in Professor James's theory of emotion which makes it the 

 reflex of the so-called expression. 



It is obvious, then, on the most cursory review that very little 

 has bpen accomplished in the pure psychology of feeling. Here 

 is a region almost unexplored, and which, by reason of the 

 -plusiveness and obscurity of the phenomena has seemed to some 

 quite unexplorable. Dr. Nahlowsky truly remarks, that feeling 

 is a "strange mysterious world, and the entrance to it is dark as 

 to Hades of old." Is there any way out of this darkness and con- 

 fusion ? If the study of feeling is to become scientific and give 

 assured results, we must, I think, assume that all feeling is a 

 biological function governed by the general laws of life and sub- 

 ject in origin and development to the law of struggle for exist- 

 ence. Assuming this strictly scientific point of view we have to 

 point out some difficulties in the way of the introspective psy- 

 chology of feeling as compared with other departments of bio- 

 logical science. 



We trace directly and with comparative ease any physical organ 

 and function from its simplest to its most complex form; for 

 example, in the circulation of the blood there is clearly observable 

 a connected series from the most elementary to the most special- 

 ized heart as developed through the principle of serviceability. 

 In some cases, as in the orohippus, a form in the evolution of the 

 horse, we are able to predict an intermediate organism. Psy- 

 chology is still far from this deductive stage; we have no analo- 

 gous series of psychic forms, much less are able to supply, a 

 priori, the gaps in a series. The reason for this is mainly the 

 Inevitable automorphism of psychological method. In biology 

 we are not driven to understand life solely tlirough analogy with 

 ■our own life, but in psychology mind in general must be inter- 

 preted through t;he self-observation of the human mind. In 

 biology we see without effort facts and forms of life most diverse 

 from our own ; the most strange and primitive types are as readily 

 discernible as the mast familiar and advanced, the most simple 

 as the most complex. We study a fish just as readily as a human 

 body, but the fish's mind — if it has any — seems beyond our 

 ken, at least is not susceptible of direct study, but a matter for 

 •doubtful inference and speculation. Whether a given action 

 does or does not indicate consciousness, and what kind of con- 

 sciousness, this is most difficult to determine. Thus we have the 

 most various interpretations, some, as Clifford, even going so far 

 as to make psychic phenomena universal in matter, others, on the 

 other hand, as Descartes, limiting them to man alone. 



The difficulty of this subjective method, this reflex investiga- 

 tion, is almost insurmountable. Consciousness must act as both 

 revealer and revealed, must be a light which enlightens itself. A 

 fact of consciousness to be known must not simply exist like a 

 physical fact or object, as a piece of stone, but it must be such 



that the observing consciousness realizes or re-enacts it. To 

 know the fact we must have the fact, we must he what we know. 

 Mind is pure activity, we do not see an organ and ask what it is 

 for, what does it do; but we are immediately conscious of con- 

 sciousness as activity, and not as an objective organ. We must 

 here then reverse the general order and know the activity before 

 we can identify the organ as a physical basis. 



By the purely objective vision of the lower sciences we can 

 easily determine a genetic series of forms most remote from our 

 own life, but in psychology, mind can be for us only what mind 

 is in us. The primitive type-: of psychosis are, no doubt, as re- 

 mote and foreign from our own as is the primitive type of heart 

 or nervous system from that of man's In the case of heart and 

 nerve vve can objectively trace with certainty the successive 

 steps, but in endeavoring to realize hy subjective method the 

 evolution of mind we are involved in great doubt and perplexity. 

 How can we understand an insect's feelings ? How can we ap- 

 preciate minds which are without apprehension of object, though 

 there is reason to believe such minis exist ? Only to a very lim- 

 ited extent can a trained and sympathetic mind project itself 

 back into some of its immediately antecedent stages. Conscious- 

 ness, because of its self directive and self-reflective power, is the 

 most elastic of functions, yet it can never attain the power 

 of realizing all its previous stages. Sometimes, however, the 

 mind in perfect quiescence tends to relapse into primitive 

 modes, which may afterward be noted by reflection, but such 

 occasions are comparatively rare. The subjective method means 

 a commonalty of experience which is often impossible to attain. 

 Thus a man may believe there are feelings of maternity ; he has 

 observed the expression of nursing mothers, and knows in a gen- 

 eral way that here is a peculiar psych Dsis into which he can never 

 enter, and which is, therefore, beyond his scientific analysis. 

 The psychic life of the child is more akin to his than that of the 

 mother; yet it is only by an incessant cultivation of receptivity 

 and repression of adult propensities that one can ever attain any 

 true inkling of infant experience. There is then, I think, a vast 

 range of psychic lif? which must forever lie wholly hidden from 

 lis either as infinitely below or infinitely above us; there is also 

 an immense realm where we can only doubtfully infer the pres- 

 ence of some form of consciousness without being able to discrimi- 

 nate its quality, or in exceptional cases to know it very partially; 

 and there is but a relatively small sphere where scientific results 

 of any large value may be expected. By reason of its objective 

 method the realm of physical science is practically illimitable, 

 but psychic science is by reason of its subjective method kept 

 forever within narrow boundaries. 



We must then take into account the inherent difficulties of the 

 subjective method as applied to the study of feeling and mind in 

 general and yet we must recognize its necessity. No amount of 

 objective physiological research can tell us anything about the 

 real nature of a feeling, or can discover new feelings. Granting 

 that neural processes are at the basis of all feelings as of all men- 

 tal activities, we can infer nothing from the physiological activity 

 as to the nature of the psychic process. It is only such feelings 

 and elements as we have already discovered and analyzed by in- 

 trospection that can be correlated with a physical process. Nor 

 can we gain much light even if we suppose — which is granting 

 a good deal in our present state of knowledge — that there exists 

 a general analogy between nerve growth and activity, and mental 

 operations. If relating, i.e., cognition, is established on basis of 

 inter-relation in brain tissue, if every mental connecting means a 

 connecting of brain fibres, we might, indeed, determine the num- 

 ber of thoughts but we could not tell what the thoughts were. 

 So if mental disturbance always means bodily disturbance, we 

 can stiU tell nothing more about the nature of each emotion than 

 we knew before. We must first know fear, anger, etc., as ex- 

 periences in consciousness before we can correlate them with cor- 

 poreal acts. 



Is now this necessarily subjective method peculiarly limited as 

 to feeling? Can we know feeling directly as psychic act or only 

 indirectly through accompaniments? Mr. James Ward (vide. 

 article on Psychology in the Encyclopiedla Britannica, p. 49 cf. 

 p. 71) remarks that feelings cannot be known as objects of dii-ect 



