158 PSYCHOLOGY. 



its separate identity before consciousness, whatever the 

 verdict of the comparison may be.* 



SELF-COMPOUNDING OF MENTAL FACTS IS INADMISSIBLE. 



But there is a still more fatal objection to the theory of 

 mental units * compounding with themselves ' or * integrat- 

 ing.' It is logically unintelligible ; it leaves out the es- 

 sential feature of all the * combinations ' we actually know. 



All the ' combinations ' ivhich ive actually knoio are effects, 

 wrought by the units said to be 'combined,' upon some entity 

 OTHER THAN THEMSELVES. Without tliis feature of a medium 

 or vehicle, the notion of combination has no sense. 



" A multitude of contractile units, by joint action, and by being all 

 connected, for instance, with a single tendon, will pull at the same, and 

 will bring about a dynamical effect which is undoubtedly the resultant 

 of their combined individual energies. ... On the whole, tendons are 

 to muscular fibres, and bones are to tendons, combining recipients of 

 mechanical energies. A medium of composition is indispensable to the 

 summation of energies. To realize the complete dependence of mechan- 

 ical resultants on a combining substratum, one may fancy for a moment 

 all the individually contracting muscular elements severed from their 

 attachments. They might then still be capable of contracting with the 

 same energy as before, yet no co-operative result would be accomplished. 

 The medium of dynamical combination would be wanting. The mul- 

 tiple energies, singly exerted on no common recipient, would lose 

 themselves on entirely isolated and disconnected efforts."! 



In other words, no possible number of entities (call them 

 as you like, whether forces, material particles, or mental 

 elements) can sum themselves together. Each remains, in 

 the sum^ what it always was ; and the sum itself exists only 

 for a bystander who happens to overlook the units and to 



* I find in my students an almost invincible tendency to think that we 

 can immediately perceive that feelings do cornhiue. " What !" they say, 

 " is not the taste of lemonade composed of that of lemon plus that of 

 sugar?" This is taking the combining of objects for that of feelings. 

 The physical lemonade contains both the lemon and the sugar, but its 

 taste does not contain Iheir tastes, for if there are any two things which 

 are certainly not present in ihe taste of lemonade, those are the lemon-sour 

 on the one hand and the sugar-sweet on the other. These tastes are 

 absent utterly. The entirely new taste whicii is present resembles, it is true, 

 both those tastes ; but in Chapter XIII we shall see that resemblance can 

 not always be held to involve partial identity. 



f E Montgomery, in 'Mind,' v. 18-19. See also pp. 34-5. 



