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Blaisdell—Suggestions for Psychological Study . 
traditional teachers today—will control onr practice as regards the or¬ 
der of our topics in teaching psychology. We may say with Hoefding, 
In the feeling of responsibility and in repentance is implied no more 
than that the individual recognizes that he has willed the action, and, by 
virtue of the better mind to which he has come, condemns himself for 
having done so. The idea that it would have been equally possible to 
have acted in the opposite way does not make itself manifest in all in¬ 
dividuals, and, when manifested, must be explained partly as the con¬ 
fusion of a metaphysical notion with psychological experience, partly as 
an illusion which is very natural when the individual has his new con¬ 
viction and, with a strong desire to have acted otherwise, is vividly con¬ 
scious himself at the moment of action, without, however, being able to 
survey and realize all the inner and outer condition in actual operation 
at the time.” Or with Ziehen, “The idea of a casual relation is an idea 
of similarity. The analysis gives no ground for the assertion of a spe¬ 
cific faculty of will. It is different with the conception of moral respon¬ 
sibility. This conception is contradictory to the deductions of physiol¬ 
ogical psychology.” On the contrary, with the letter of Hoefding’s last 
word, spoken no doubt with another view: “However far it may be pos¬ 
sible to explain man through the world, the world in its turn is always 
explained through man.” According then as we explain mind as a pro¬ 
cedure of persistent and transmitted “cortical irritations,” or as a citizen 
of the spiritual commonwealth, we must determine where in his being 
to begin its study. 
My question is only whether, if we are teaching mind not as a persist¬ 
ing procedure of “cortical irritations,” but as a citizen of a spiritual 
kingdom ordered in good, we had better not begin with the will, which 
in this latter view is the man. In my own practice, if I may be allowed 
to speak of it, I have done this with comparatively most satisfactory re¬ 
sults in ways of which I cannot now speak. It has seemed to me that the 
will should be emphasized in treatment as the prime and mainly con¬ 
stitutive function of personality, the form of the function being care¬ 
fully studied, its relation to causation, its organic connection in the 
mental economy, and the conditions under which it is related to the 
system of which individual mind is itself only a co-operative member. 
If this primary and leading consideration is given to the will, will not 
the intellect and sensibilities take the place in the study of psychology 
not merely secondary in the order of time, but secondary and ancil¬ 
lary in the order of function? Will being the main constituent of 
personality and life being progressive adjustment to environment, envir¬ 
onment will relate itself to personality through avenues of intelligence. 
It becomes then the office of,' the cognitive powers to gather in, as data 
for voluntary procedure, the facts of the environing universe, furnish¬ 
ing them for memory to cherish, judgment to conceive and imagina¬ 
tion to represent, constituting therein science, the handmaid of living. 
For the purposes of character, however, will, and will does not fulfil 
