354 PSYCUOLOOr. 



Germany, tried to show how a conflict of ideas would fuse 

 into a manner of representing itself for which / was the con- 

 secrated name.* 



The defect of all these attempts is that the conclusion 

 pretended to follow from certain premises is by no means 

 rationally involved in the premises. A feeling of any kind, 

 if it simply retui^ns, ought to be nothing else than Avliat it 

 was at first. If memory of previous existence and all sorts 

 of other cognitive functions are attributed to it when it re- 

 turns, it is no longer the same, but a widely different feel- 

 ing, and ought to be so described. We have so described 

 it with the greatest explicitness. We have said that feel- 

 ings never do return. We have not pretended to explain 

 this ; we have recorded it as an empirically ascertained 

 law, analogous to certain laws of brain-physiology ; and, 

 seeking to define the w^ay in which new feelings do differ 

 from the old, we have found them to be cognizant and ap- 

 propriative of the old, whereas the old were always cogni- 

 zant and appropriative of something else. Once more, this 

 account pretended to be nothing more than a complete 

 description of the facts. It explained them no more than 

 the associationist account explains them. But the latter 

 both assumes to explain them and in the same breath falsi- 

 fies them, and for each reason stands condemned. 



It is but just to say that the associationist writers as a 

 rule seem to have a lurking bad conscience about the Self; 

 and that although they are explicit enough about what it is, 

 namely, a train of feelings or thoughts, they are very shy 

 about openly tackling the problem of how it comes to be 

 aware of itself. Neither Bain nor Spencer, for example, 

 directly touch this problem. As a rule, associationist 

 writers keep talking about ' the mind ' and about what ' we ' 

 do ; and so, smuggling in surreptitiously what they ought 

 avowedly to have postulated in the form of a present 

 'judging Thought,' they either trade upon their reader's 

 lack of discernment or are undiscerning themselves. 



Mr. D. G. Thompson is the only associationist writer I 

 know who perfectly escapes this confusion, and postulates 



* Compare again the remarks on pp. 158-163 above. 



