•236 Psyci/OLoaY. 



already impossible for us to follow obediently in the foot- 

 prints of either the Lockian or the Herbartiau school, 

 schools which have had almost unlimited iutiuence in Ger- 

 many and among ourselves. No doubt it is often con- 

 venient to formulate the mental facts in an atomistic sort 

 of way, and to treat the higher states of consciousness as if 

 they Avere all built out of unchanging simple ideas. It is 

 convenient often to treat curves as if they were composed 

 of small straight lines, and electricity and nerve-force as if 

 they were fluids. But in the one case as in the other we 

 must never forget that we are talking symbolically, and 

 that there is nothing in nature to answer to our words. A 

 fermanently existing ' idea ' or ' Vorstellung ' ivliich makes its 

 appearance before the footlights of consciousness at periodical 

 intervals, is as mythological an entity as the Jack of Spades. 



What makes it convenient to use the mythological for- 

 mulas is the whole organization of speech, which, as was 

 remarked a while ago, was not made by psychologists, but 

 by men who were as a rule only interested in the facts their 

 mental states revealed. They only spoke of their states as 

 ideas of this or of that thing. What wonder, then, that the 

 thought is most easily conceived under the law of the thing 

 whose name it bears ! If the thing is composed of parts, 

 then we suppose that the thought of the thing must be 

 composed of the thoughts of the parts. If one part of the 

 thing have appeared in the same thing or in other things on 

 former occasions, why then we must be having even now the 

 very same ' idea ' of that part which was there on those occa- 

 sions. If the thing is simple, its thought is simple. If it 

 is multitudinous, it must require a multitude of thoughts 

 to think it. If a succession, only a succession of thoughts 

 can know it. If permanent, its thought is permanent. And 

 so on ad libitum. What after all is so natural as to assume 

 that one object, called by one name, should be known by 

 one aftection of the mind ? But, if language must thus in- 

 fluence us, the agglutinative languages, and even Greek and 

 Latin with their declensions, would be the better guides. 

 Names did not appear in them inalterable, but changed 

 their shape to suit the context in which they lay. It must 

 have been easier then than now to conceive of the same 



