for days and weeks until at last they culminate in some
particularly dirty or cowardly or cruel act, it is hard to
persuade him, in the midst of his remorse, that he might
not have reined them in; hard to make him believe that
this whole goodly universe (which his act so jars upon)
required and exacted it of him at that fatal moment, and
from eternity made aught else impossible. But, on the
other hand, there is the certainty that all his effortless voli-
tions are resultants of interests and associations whose
strength and sequence are mechanically determined by the
structure of that physical mass, his brain; and the general
continuity of things and the monistic conception of the
world may lead one irresistibly to postulate that a little
fact like effort can form no real exception to the over-
whelming reign of deterministic law. Even in effortless
volition we have the consciousness of the alternative being
also possible. This is surely a delusion here; why is it
not a delusion everywhere ?
The fact is that the question of free-ioill is insoluUe on
strictly psychologic grou7ids. After a certain amount of
effort of attention has been given to an idea, it is maui-
WILL. 457
festlv impossible to tell whether either more or less of it
might have been given or not. To tell that, we shouM have
to ascend to the antecedents of the effort, and defining them
with mathematical exactitude, prove, by laws of which we
have not at present even an inkling, that the only amount
of sequent effort which could pnssihli/ comport with them
was the precise amount that actually came. Such measure-
ments, whether of psychic or of neural quantities, and such
deductive reasonings as this method of proof implies, will "
surely be forever beyond human reach. No serious psy-
chologist or physiologist will venture even to suggest a
notion of how they might be practically made. Had one
no motives drawn from elsewhere to make one partial to
either solution, one might easily leave the matter unde-
cided. But a psychologist cannot be expected to be thus
impartial, having a great motive in favor of determinism.
He wants to build a Science; and a Science is a system of
fixed relations. Wherever there are independent variables,
there Science stops. So far, then, as our volitions may be
independent variables, a scientific psychology must ignore
that fact, and treat of them only bo far as they are fixed
functions. In other words, she must deal with the general
laics of volition exclusively; witli the impulsive and in-
hibitory character of ideas; with the nature of their
appeals to the attention; with the conditions under which
effort may arise, etc.; but not with the precise amounts
of effort, for these, if our wills be free, are impossible
to compute. She thus abstracts from free-will, without
necessarily denying its existence. Practically, however,
Ruch abstraction is not distinguished from rejection; and
most actual psychologists have no hesitation in denying
that free-will exists.
For ourselves, we can hand the free-will ctuitrovorsy over
to metaphysics. Psychology will surely never grow refined
enough to discover, in the case of any individual's decision,
a discrepancy between her pcicy.tific cahnUations and the
fact. Ilor prevision will never foretell, whether the effort
468 PSYCHOLOGY.
be completely predestinate or not, the way in which each
individual emergency is resolved. Psychology will be psy-
chology, and Science science, as much as ever (as much
and no more) in this world, whether free-will be true in it
or not.
We can thus ignore the free-will question m psychology.
As we said on p. 452, the operation of free efEort, if it existed,
could only be to hold some one ideal object, or part of an
object, a little longer or a little more intensely before the
mind. Amongst the alternatives which present themselves
as geiiuine possibles, it would thus make one effective.
And although such quickening of one idea might be
morally and historically momentous, yet, if considered
dynamically, it would be an operation amongst those
physiological infinitesimals which an actual science must
forever neglect.
Ethical Importance of the Phenomenon of Effort. — But
whilst eliminating the question about the amount of our
effort as one which psychology will never have a practical
call to decide, I must say one word about the extraor-
dinarily intimate and important character which the
phenomenon of effort assumes in our own eyes as individ-
ual men. Of course we measure ourselves by many stand-
ards. Our strength and our intelligence, our wealth and
even our good luck, are things which warm our heart and
make us feel ourselves a match for life. But deeper than
all such things, and able to suffice unto itself without them,
is the sense of the amount of effort which we can put
forth. Those are, after all, but effects, products, and
reflections of the outer world within. But the effort
eeems to belong to an altogether different realm, as if it
were the substantive thing which we are, and those were
but externals which we carry. If the 'searching of our
heart and reins ' be the purpose of this human drama, then
what is sought seems to be what effort we can make. He
who can make none is but a shadow; he who can make
much is a hero. The huge world that girdles us about
WILL. 459
puts all sorts of questions to us, and tests us in all sorts of
ways. Some of the tests we meet by actions that are easy,
and some of the questions we answer in articulately
formulated words. But the deepest question that is ever
asked admits of no reply but the dumb turning of the will
and tightening of our heart-strings as we say, " Yes, 1 will
even have it so I" ^Vhen a dreadful object is presented, or
when life as a whole turns up its dark abysses to our view,
then the worthless ones among us lose their hold on the
situation altogether, and either escape from its difliculties
by averting their attention, or if they cannot do that,
collapse into yielding masses of plaintiveness and fear.
The effort required for facing and consenting to such
objects is beyond their power to make. But the heroic
mind dues differently. To it, too, the objects are sinii-ter
and dreadful, unwelcome, incompatible with wished-for
things. But it can face them if necessary, witliout for
tliat losing its hold upon the rest of life. The world thus
finds in the heroic man its worthy match and mate; and
tho effort which he is able to put forth to hold himself
erect and keep his heart unshaken is the direct measure
of his worth and function in the game of human life. lie
can stand this Universe. He can meet it and keep up his
faith in it in presence of those same features which lay his
weaker brethren low. He can still find a zest in it, not by
'ostrich-like forgetfulness,* but by pure inward willingness
to face it with those deterrent objects there. And herel)y
he makes himself one of tlie masters and the lords of life.
He must be counted with hencefortli; he forms a i)art of
human destiny. Neither in the theoretic nor in tlie jtrac-
tical sphere do we care for, or go for help to, those who
have no head for risks, or sense for living on tlie jierilous
edge. Our religious life lies more, our practical life lies
less, than it used to, on the perilous edge, liut just as
our courage is so often a reflex of another's courage, so our
faith is aj)t to be a faith in some one else's faith. Wo
iriiw new life from the heroic example. The prophet hud
460 PSTCHOLOOY.
drunk more deeply than anyone of the cup of bitterness,
but his countenance is so unshaken and he speaks such
mighty words of cheer that his will becomes our will, and
our life is kindled at his own.
Thus not only our morality but our religion, so tar as
the latter is deliberate, depend on the effort which we can
make. " Will you or luonH you have it so?" is the most
probing question we are ever asked; we are asked it every
tiour of the day, and about the largest as well as the
smallest, the most theoretical as well as the most practical,
things. We answer by co7isents or non-consents and not by
words. What wonder that these dumb responses should
seem our deepest organs of communication with the nature
of things! What wonder if the effort demanded by them
be the measure of our worth as men ! What wonder if the
amount which we accord of it were the one strictly un-
derived and original contribution which we make to the
world 1
EPILOGUE-
PSYCHOLOGY AND nilLOSOPHY.
What the Word Metaphysics means. — In the hist chapter
we handed the question of free- will over to ' metaphysics.'
It would indeed have been h.isty to settle the question
absolutely, inside the limits of psychology. Lit jisychol-
ogy frankly admit that fur Iter scientific purpnses deter-
minism may be claimed, and no one can find fault. If,
then, it turn out later that the claim has only a relative
purpose, and may be crossed by counter-claims, the re-
adjustment can be made. Now ethics makes a counter-
claim; and tlie present writer, for one, has no hesitation
in regarding her claim as tlie stronger, and in assuming
that our wills are * free.* For him, then, the determi-
nistic assumption of psychology is merely provisional and
methodological. This is no place to argue the ethical
point; and I only mention the conflict to show that all
these special sciences, marked off for convenience from
the remaining body of truth (cf. p. 1), must hold tlioir as-
sumptions and results subject to revision in tlie light of
each others' needs. The forum where they hold discus-
sion is called metaphysics. Metaphysics means only an
unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly and con-
sistently. The special sciences all deal with data that
are full of obscurity and contradiction; but from the point
of view of their limited ])iirposeg these defects may 1)0
overlooked. Hence the disparaging use of the name meta-
physics which is so common. To a man witli a limited
purpose any discussion that is over-subtle for tjiat purpose
is branded as 'metapliysJcal.' A geologist's ])urj)O80H fall
short of understanding Time itself. A mechanist need
462 P8TGE0L00T.
not know now action and reaction are possible at all. A
psychologist lias enough to do witliout asking how both
he and the mind which he studies are able to take cogni-
zance of the same outer Avorld. But it is obvious that
problems irrelevant from one standpoint may be essential
from another. And as soon as one's purpose is the attain-
ment of the maximum of possible insight into the world
as a whole, the metaphysical puzzles become the most
urgent ones of all. Psychology contributes to general
philosophy her full share of these; and I propose in this
last chapter to indicate briedy which of them seem the
more important. And first, of the
Relation of Consciousness to the Brain. — When psychol-
ogy is treated as a natural science (after the fashion in
which it has been treated in this book), 'states of mind'
are taken for granted, as data immediately given in expe-
rience; and the working hypothesis (see p. G) is the mere
empirical law that to the entire state of the brain at anji
moment one unique state of mind always 'corresponds.'
This does very well till we begin to be metaphysical and
ask ourselves just what we mean by such a word as ' cor-
responds.' This notion appears dark in the extreme, the
moment we seek to translate it into something more in-
timate than mere parallel variation. Some think they
make the notion of it clearer by calling the mental state
and the brain the inner and outer 'aspects,' respectively, of
* One and the Same Reality.' Others consider the mental
state as the 'reaction' of a unitary being, the Soul, upon
the multiple activities which the brain presents. Others
again comminute the mystery by supposing each brain-
cell to be separately conscious, and the empirically given
mental state to be the appearance of all the little con-
sciousnesses fused into one, just as the 'brain' itself is
the appearance of all the cells together, when looked at
from one point of view.
We may call these three metaphysical attempts the
monistic, the spiritualistic, and the atomistic theories re-
psTcnoLOOT Axn rniLosopuY. 4G3
Bpectively. Each has its difticulties, of wliich it seems to
me that tliose of the spiritualistic theory are higical/i/ much
the least grave. But the spiritualistic theory is quite out
of touch with the facts of multiple consciousness, alternate
personality, etc. (pp. 207-214). These lend themselves more
naturally to the atomistic formulation, for it seems easier
to think of a lot of minor consciousnesses now gathering
together into one large mass, and now into several smaller
ones, tlian of a Soul now reacting totally, now breaking
into several disconnected simultaneous reactions. The
localization of brain-functions also makes for the atomistic
view. If in my experience, say of a bell, it is my occipital
lobes which are the condition of its being seen, and my
temporal lobes which are the condition of its being heard,
what is more natural than to say that the former see it and
the latter Jica?- it, and then 'combine their information'?
In view of the extreme naturalness of such a way of repre-
senting the well-establislied fact that the appearance of
the several parts of an object to consciousness at any mo-
ment does depend on as many several parts of the brain
being then active, all such objections as were urged, on
pp. 23, 57, and elsewhere, to the notion that 'parts ' of con-
sciousness can 'combine' will be rejected as far-fetched,
unreal, and 'metaphysical' by the atomistic pbilopo])her.
His 'purpose' is to gain a formula which shall unify
things in a natural and easy manner, and for such a pur-
pose the atomistic theory seems expressly made to his hand.
But the difficulty with the problem of 'correspondence'
is not only that of solving it, it is that of even stating it in
elementary terms.
" I/oiubre en ce Ilea s'amasse, et la nuit est la toute."
Before we can know just what sort of goings-on occur
when thought corresponds to a change in the brain, wo
must know the subjects of tlie goings-on. We must know
which sort of mental fart and wliifh stirt of cerebral fact
are, so to speak, in imuicdi.itc! juxtaposition. We uiutit
464 psroHOLoor.
find the minimal mental fact whose being reposes directly
on a brain-fact; and we must similarly find the minimal
brain-event which can have a mental counterpart at all.
Between the mental and the physical minima thus found
there will be an immediate relation, the expression of which,
if we had it, would be the elementary psycho-physic law.
Our own formula has escaped the metempiric assump-
tion of psychic atoms by takiiig the entire tliouglit (even
of a complex object) as the minimum with ivhich it deals
on the mental side, and the entire brain as the minimum
on the physical side. But the 'entire brain' is not a phy-
sical fact at all! It is nothing but our name for the way
in which a billion of molecules arranged in certain posi-
tions may affect our sense. On the principles of the cor-
puscular or mechanical philosophy, the only realities are
the separate molecules, or at most the cells. Their aggre-
gation into a 'brain' is a fiction of popular speech. Such
a figment cannot serve as the objectively real counterpart
to any psychic state whatever. Only a genuinely physical
fact can so serve, and the molecular fact is the only genu-
ine physical fact. Whereupon we seem, if we are to have
an elementary psycho-physic law at all, thrust right back
upon something like the mental-atom-theory, for the
molecular fact, being an element of the 'brain/ would
seem naturally to correspond, not to total thoughts, but
to elements of thoughts. Thus the real in psychics seems
to ' correspond * to the unreal in physics, and vice versa;
and our perplexity is extreme.
The Relation of States of Mind to their 'Objects.' — The
perplexity is not diminished when we reflect upon our as-
sumption that states of consciousness can knoio (pp. 2-13\
From the common-sense point of view (which is that of
all the natural sciences) knowledge is an ultimate rela-
tion between two mutually external entities, the knower
and the known. The world first exists, and then the states
of mind; and these gain a cognizance of the world Avhich
gets gradually more an'^^ niore complete. But it is hard
PSYCHOI.UGY A.\D I'll 1IA»0PJI y. 465
to carry through tliis simple (hialism, for itleahstic reflec-
tions will iutriule. Take the states of mind called i)ure
sensations (so far as suc-h may exist), that for exam{)le of
blue, which we may get from looking into the zenith on a
clear da}'. Is the blue a determination of the feeling itself,
or of its 'oltject'? Shall we describe the exj^erience as a
quality of our feeling or as our feeling of a quality? ()r-
dinar}' sjieech vacillates incessantly on this point. The
ambiguous word 'content' has been recently invented in-
stead of 'oljjc't/ to esca])e a dei-sion; for 'content' sug-
gests something not exactly out of the feeling, nor yet
exactly identical with the feeling, since the latter remains
suggested as the container or vessel. Yet of our feelings as
vessels apart from their content we really have no clear
notion whatever. The fact is that such an exjierience as
blue, as it is immediately given, can only be calleil by some
such neutral name as that of •phenomenon. It does not come
to us immediately as a relation between two realities, one
mental and one physical. It is only when, still thinking
of it as the .sr;//if l)lue (ff. p. 230). we trace relations between
it and other things, that it doubles itself, .so to si)eak, and
develops in two directions; and. taken in connection with
.some a.s.sociates, figures as a phy.sical quahty, whilst with
others it figures as a feeling in the mind.
Our non-sensa*ional, or conce|)tual. states of mind, on
the other hand, .seem to obey a difTerent law. They pre-
sent themselves inmiediately as referring beyond them-
selves. .Mlhough they also posjsess an iiumc<li;itely gixcn
'content.' they have a 'fringe' beyond it (p. iOS). nnd
claim to 'represent' something else than it. The 'blue'
we have just spoken of. for instancj-. w:u<, substantivrly
considered, a word; but it was a word with a tnaitiim/.
The quality blue wjvs the objnt of the thought, tin-
word was its content. The mental state, in short, was not
self-sufficient as sensations are, but expr(>.ssly pointed :ii
pomr-thing more in which it meant to terminate.
But the nujmcnt wluri. as in sensations. obje<-t and cdn-
4Cu PSYCHOLOOT.
scions state seem to be different ways of considering ono
and the same fact, it becomes hard to justify our denial
that mental states consist of parts. The blue sky, consid-
ered physically, is a sum of mutually external parts; why
is it not such a sum, when considered as a content of sen-
sation ?
The only result that is plain from all this is that the
relations of the known and the knower are infinitely
complicated, and that a genial, whole-hearted, popular-
science way of formulating them will not suffice. The
only possible path to understanding them lies through
metaphysical subtlety; and Idealism and Erkenntniss-
theorie must say their say before the natural-science as-
sumption that thoughts ' know ' things grows clear.
The changing character of consciousness presents an-
other puzzle. We first assumed conscious * states ' as the
units with which psychology deals, and we said later that
they were in constant change. Yet any state must have
a certain duration to be effective at all — a pain which
lasted but a hundredth of a second would practically be
no pain — and the question comes up, how long may a
state last and still be treated as one state ? In time-per-
ception for example, if the "present* as known (the
' specious present,' as we called it) may be a dozen seconds
long (p. 281), how long need the present as knower be ?
That is, what is the minimum duration of the conscious-
ness in which those twelve seconds can be apprehended as
just past, the minimum which can be called a ' state,' for
such a cognitive purpose ? Consciousness, as a process in
time, offers the paradoxes which have been found in all
continuous change. There are no ' states ' in such a thing,
any more than there are facets in a circle, or places where
an arrow * is ' when it flies. The vertical raised upon the
time-line on which (p. 285) we represented the past to
be 'projected' at any given instant of memory, is only
an ideal construction. Yet anything broader than that
vertical is not, for the actual present is only the joint be-
PSYCnOLOOY AND PUlLOSOniY. 407
tween the past and future and has no breadth of its own.
Where everything is change and process, how can wc talk
of 'state*? Yet how can we do without 'states/ in do-
scribinf^ wliat the vehicles of our knowledge seem to be?
States of consciousness themselves are uot verifiable facts.
But ' worse remains behind.' Neither coininon-scnscj nor
psychology so far as it has yet been writteji, lias ever
doubted tiiat the states of consciousness which that science
studies are immediate data of ex})erience. 'Things* liave
been doubted, but thoughts and feelings have never been
doubted. The outer world, but never the inner worhi,
has been denied. Everyone assumes that we have direct
introspective acquaintance with our thinking activity as
such, with our consciousness as something inward and
contrasted with the outer objects which it knows. Yet I
must confess that for my part I cannot feel sure of this
conclusion. Whenever I try to become sensible of my
thinking activity as such, what I catch is some bodily
fact, an impression coming from my brow, or head, or
throat, or nose. It seems as if consciousness as an inner
activity were rather a postulate than a sensibly given fact,
the postulate, namely, of a knuwer as correlative to all
this known; and as if * sciouswem^ might be a better
word by which to describe it. But 'sciousncss postulated
as an hypothesis' is practically a very different thing from
'states of consciousness apprehended with inf;illil)le cer-
tainty by an inner sense.* For one thing, it throws the
question of who the kiioirer really is wide open again, and
makes the answer wliich we gave to it at the end of
Chapter XII a mere provisional statement from a popular
and jjrejudiced ])oint of view.
Conclusion.— Wiien, then, we talk of ' pfiycholr.gy as a
natural seience,' wo must not assume that that means a
sort of psychology that stands at last on solid ground. It,
means just the reverse; it means a psychology particularly
fragile, and into which the waters of metaphysical criticism
leak at every joint, a psychology all of whose elumcntary
468 FSTGHOLOOY.
assumptions and data must be reconsidered in wider con-
nections and translated into other terms. It is, in short,
a phrase of diffidence, and not of arrogance; and it is
indeed strange to hear people talk triumphantly of *the
New Psychology,' and write ' Histories of Psychology,'
when into the real elements and forces which the word
covers not the liist glimpse of clear insight exists. A
string of raw facts; a little gossip and wrangle about opin-
ions; a little classification and generalization on the mere
descriptive level; a strong prejudice that we have states of
mind, and that our brain conditions them ; but not a single
law in the sense in which physics shows us laws, not a
single proposition from which any consequence can caus-
ally be deduced. We don't even know the terms between
which the elementary laws would obtain if Ave had them
(p. 464). This is no science, it is only the hope of a science.
The matter of a science is with us. Something definite
happens when to a certain brain-state a certain ' sciousness '
corresponds. A genuine glimpse into what it is would be
the scientific achievement, before which all past achieve-
ments would pale. But at present psychology is in the
condition of physics before Galileo and the laws of mo-
tion, of chemistry before Lavoisier and the notion that
mass is preserved in all reactions. The Galileo and the
Lavoisier of psychology will be famous men indeed when
they come, as come they some day surely will, or past
successes are no index to the future. When they do come,
however, the necessities of the case will make them •meta-
physical.* Meanwhile the best way in which we can facili-
tate their advent is to understand how great is tlie darkness