Realise, thirdly, that a system of science, whether the science be psychology or any other, is built up of nothing else than facts and logic. The facts of observation are the essential things; without them there is no science possible; but logic makes the facts available and rememberable; it groups and classifies, decides the sequence of chapters and paragraphs, points to gaps and discrepancies in the record of facts, governs the whole presentation. So there should be nothing more in a text-book of science than facts and logic. The man of science, trying to answer an unanswered question (p. 277), will guess and forecast and speculate and imagine; and some of his guesses and speculations may be worthy of mention in the history of his science; but there should be no glimmer of them in the scientific system. Science, you remember, is impersonal and disinterested, dry fact and cold logic; there are all sorts of personal adventures and interesting episodes by the way, while science is in the making; but if you have the scientific temperament, you feel the fascination of fact and logic themselves.
And, in any case, they are all that science gives you! So realise, lastly, the limitations of science; do not expect from it more than it can give. Over and over you hear it said ‘Science has failed to satisfy us about this’ and ‘Science has shown itself unable to deal with that’; but ask yourself—if you deem the statements true—what are the ‘this’ and the ‘that,’ and whether science ever gave any pledge that she would handle them. Scientific discoveries have had far-reaching consequences for practice, and have changed our whole mode of living; but the fact remains that “the most useful parts of science have been investigated for the sake of truth, and not for their usefulness.” Scientific progress is reflected in the systems of logic and ethics and æsthetics, even in metaphysics itself; but theoretical values lie, as practical values also lie, beyond the purview of the scientific enquirer. Science is bound down from the outset to a certain method, the method of observation; to a certain point of view, the existential as opposed to the significant; to a certain task, the task of description and correlation. Beyond these limits, science has no pretensions; within them, she has accomplished much, and is earnest to accomplish more.
(1) Keep a pad by you for a week, and note down the occasions when your experience is wholly selfless and markedly selfful. Describe, as well as you can, the various self-experiences.
(2) Mention some of the superstitions that connect the name with the personality (p. 313). Is there any echo of these superstitions in our own civilised experience?
(3) On p. 319 a hint is given of the way in which vision, kinæsthesis and organic sensation, and verbal ideas might come to be preferred, as vehicles of the meaning of self. Can you make any further suggestion as regards kinæsthesis and organic sensation?
(4) A well-known medical writer remarks: “Self is stomach. The function of assimilating food is the most fundamental of all the functions; it is antecedent even to locomotion and propagation. Hence anything which directly affects the organism as a whole affects the stomach.” What self is here referred to?
(5) Professor Mach tells the following story. “I got into an omnibus one morning, after a tiring night on the train, just as some one else was entering from the far end. ‘Some broken-down schoolmaster,’ I thought. It was myself; there was a large mirror opposite the omnibus door” (see Analysis of Sensations, 1910, 4). What psychological laws does the story illustrate?
(6) What is meant by the ‘unity of consciousness’?