706 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 279. 



not read out of the successive strata of mind the 

 distinctive features of an eopsychic, a meso- 

 psychic, and a cenopsychic period? The best 

 answer to these questions at present (and the 

 best is poor) is given in the few comprehensive 

 attempts really to write genetic psychology. 

 I say ' few ' because so much of the mass of 

 what is called genetic work has been built 

 upon a generous and sympathetic interest in 

 brutes and infants instead of upon firm psycho- 

 logical principles, and has simply washed 

 away. 



These are some of the circumstances which 

 make the present volume so sincerely welcome 

 at the door of psychology. It comes from a pen 

 which has already traced its way through the 

 intricacies of the problems of the developed 

 human consciousness under the lead of the 

 whole English school of psychological thought. 



What the author understands by the genetic 

 method is clearly stated in the preface to the 

 'Analytic' volumes. Stout says: "What is 

 called the genetic or synthetic method, instead 

 of attempting merely to ascertain and define 

 the processes of the developed consciousness as 

 we now find them, proposes to itself the task 

 of tracing the evolution of mind from its low- 

 est to its highest planes." Let us see how the 

 program has been carried out in the Manual. 



The general arrangement of the book is 

 very much like that of the Analytic Psychology. 

 Each has a number of introductory sections on 

 the scope and methods of psychology, followed 

 by a ' general analysis,' and this, in turn, by a 

 discussion of mental processes. But here the 

 similarity ceases. The Earlier work deals 

 largely with matters of methodology and of 

 psychological theory ; . filling out what Kant 

 would call the architectonic of the science ; 

 while the Manual deals directly with its subject- 

 matter. Since it is more concrete and less 

 formal, the genetic volume approaches much 

 nearer the actual mind of experience. After 

 the ground has been cleared, three stages in the 

 development of mind, the sensational, the per- 

 ceptual, and the ideational, are treated in turn 

 and furnish material for the main divisions of 

 the work. 



It is to be noticed at the outset that the mind 

 with which the Manual deals is the knowing 



and doing mind. "Psychology," we read, 

 " is the science of the processes whereby an in- 

 dividual becomes aware of a world of objects 

 and adjusts his actions accordingly." And 

 again, "psychology finds a certain world of 

 objects presented, let us say, to an educated 

 Englishman of the 19th century, and it inquires 

 how this world has come to be presented. * * * 

 The world of the young child, or the world of 

 the Australian aborigine, are comparatively 

 primitive formations ; and the psychological 

 problem is to discover how the transition has 

 been made from these earlier stages to the later 

 stages with which civilized adults are now 

 familiar." The author, following Ward, makes 

 the presented object the important datum for 

 psychology: " except in the case of pure sen- 

 sation," we read, "none of these processes 

 (sensation, perception, attention, volition, etc.) 

 can either exist or be conceived apart from a 

 presented object." And, " the development of 

 an individual mind is at the same time the de- 

 velopment of the objective world as presented 

 to that individual mind." That is, the prob- 

 lem of psychology as it appears to Stout is 

 the functioning of mental processes : ' how does 

 mind make its world ? ' rather than ' what proc- 

 esses at this or that level of development exist 

 as processes in consciousness ? ' It is rather 

 the efficiency of the machine than its construc- 

 tion that is investigated. 



We may arrive at the same point from an- 

 other direction. The author's ' ultimate modes 

 of being conscious ' are those which are marked 

 out in the Analytic Psychology. They are the 

 cognitive attitude, the feeling attitude, the con- 

 atiye attitude. These are all, notice, attitudes 

 toward an object ; they all depend upon the 

 presentation of an object. Hence, the refer- 

 ence of consciousness beyond itself is kept con- 

 stantly in the foreground.* Modes of being 

 conscious resolve themselves into ' modes of 

 being conscious of an object.' 



For the cognitive experience the author re- 

 tains Ward's 'presentation ' using it, however, 



* One exception is made : sensation is defined as 

 conscious event (thongh it was said earlier that sen- 

 sation could not be conceived apart from a presented 

 object), but the author soon gets from this into cogni- 

 tion through the sensation reflex. 



