Psychology: an elementary text-book

by Hermann Ebbinghaus

There are many; but in the end they all lead back to one: the rise and progress of natural science since the sixteenth century. However, this has made itself felt in two quite different ways; the force of the first wave was increased to its full magnitude by a closely following second wave. First, natural science served—if we overlook the hasty identification of mind and matter which had its origin in natural science—as a shining and fruitful example to psychology. It suggested conceptions of mental life analogous to those conceptions which had been found to make material processes comprehensible. It led to attempts at employing methods similar to those which had proved valuable in natural science. This influence was especially active in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and lasted into the nineteenth. Later a more direct influence began to make itself felt: an actual invasion by natural science of special provinces of psychology. Natural science, in the course of its further development, was led at many points into investigations which lay as well in the sphere of psychology as in its own prescribed paths. When it attacked them and worked out beautiful solutions for them, psychologists also received a strong impulse not to stand aside, but to take up those problems themselves and pursue them independently for their own quite different purposes. So it was in the nineteenth century, especially in its second half.

Let us discuss more in detail a few particular results of this twofold general influence.

As the first important fruit of that indirect advancement through analogy, may be instanced the idea of the absolute and inevitable subjection to law of all mental processes, which I have just said forms the foundation of all serious psychological work. This was a familiar idea as far back as the later period of ancient philosophy, but was afterwards repudiated by the theological representatives of philosophy and psychology in the Middle Ages. To be sure, they always felt more or less attracted toward this view on account of the doctrine of the omnipotence and omniscience of God. For if God is almighty, then there can be no event in the future, either in the outer world or in the heart of man, which does not depend entirely on him; and if he is also all-knowing, or if in the eternity of God the human differences of past and future altogether disappear, then the future must be already known to God, and in consequence be fixed unalterably. But in spite of this argument, these medieval thinkers felt bound to affirm a spiritual freedom (that is, a merely partial determination) under the pressure of popular psychological and ethical thought and in consequence of their contemplation of the holiness and justice of God. For how could God have willed the sinful deeds of man, or have caused them, even indirectly? Or how could he punish men for doing things which they were compelled to do by unalterable laws which he himself had made? Although, so it was argued, man had his origin in God, he was nevertheless not absolutely bound by the divine within him; he could turn away from it voluntarily, that is, causelessly.

The influence of the rising natural science led to the opposite answer to the question as to whether the basis of our responsibility is spiritual freedom or universal causation. Hobbes and Spinoza became the champions of universal causation, presenting their answer to the question with a clearness and incisiveness imposing even to-day. Leibniz too adopted it, but took care not to offend those holding to the other view. It has never been lost again from psychology. These men teach that the phenomena of the mental life are in one respect exactly like those of external nature, with which they are indeed closely connected: at any moment they are definitely fixed through their causes, and cannot be otherwise than as we actually find them. Freedom of action in the sense of causelessness is an empty concept. It follows from this that one can properly mean by freedom of action only that there is no compulsion from without, that the action of a thing or being is determined only by its own nature, its own indwelling properties. We say of water that it flows along freely if it is not checked by rocks or dams; or of a horse, that it runs about freely, if it is not tied up or locked in a stall. We can in this sense call the good deeds of a person or his living together with other people his own free action, if it springs from his own deliberations and desires and is not coerced by force or threats. Nevertheless all these manifestations, the flowing, the running about, and also the good actions, are alike the regular effects of definite causes.

What constantly prevents men from recognizing this causality and leads them to a belief in a misinterpreted freedom, is solely their ignorance. Out of the multitude of motives for their actions they see, in most cases, only a single one; and if the action which takes place does not correspond with it, they are convinced that the decision occurred without cause. “A top,” says Hobbes, “which is spun by boys and runs about, first towards one wall then towards another, would think, if it perceived its own motion, that it moved about by the exercise of its own will, unless it happened to know what was spinning it.” In the same way people apply for a job or try to make a bargain and think that they do this by their own wills; they do not see the whips by which their wills are driven. In order to understand correctly the thoughts and impulses of man, we must treat them just as we treat material bodies, or as we treat the lines and points of mathematics. The pretended dangers of such a conception of things disappear, as soon as we face them without prejudice and try to understand them. The conception may be misused, especially by people of immature mind, but “for whatever purpose truth may be used, true still remains true,” and the question is not, “what is fit to be preached, but what is true.”

Supported by this view of a universal determination of mental activity, there has arisen the idea of a special determination, likewise copied from natural science. The coming and going of our thoughts is ordinarily considered as an unregulated play, defying calculation. That order rules even here, that the train of thought is governed by similarity to the mental states just present, or by a previous connection with these mental states, was clearly recognized and expressed even in the times of Plato and Aristotle. Yet this had remained merely the knowledge of a curiosity; no theoretical use whatever was made of it. Now it was brought into connection with newly recognized physical facts. This determination of the trains of thought depends, according to Hobbes, on the fact that our ideas are connected with material movements within the nerves and other organs, and that these movements, when once started, cannot immediately cease, but must gradually be consumed by resistance. The laws of association are to him in the spiritual sphere, what the law of inertia is in the physical. To Hume, a hundred years later, they depend on a kind of attraction, an idea suggested by Newton’s law of gravitation. And since inertia and attraction had been recognized as the most important and fundamental causes of material processes, it was a natural thing to regard the laws of association, which had been compared with them, as the fundamental phenomena of mental life, and to derive from them as manifold and important consequences as had been done in the case of the physical world. So arose the English associational psychology. It attempted to explain the traditional faculties of the mind, such as memory, imagination, judgment, and also the results of their combined activity (for instance, the consciousness of self and of the outer world) as natural and, so to speak, mechanical effects of the laws of association governing the processes of mind. No doubt this attempt, appearing also in a somewhat different form in the sensationalism of France, represents, in spite of its one-sidedness, a very great advance over the psychology of the past.

Just as associationism corresponds to the explanatory natural science of Galileo and Newton, the empirical psychology of the German enlightenment corresponds to the descriptive science of Linnæus and Buffon. But aside from a few exceptions, such as Tetens, its work must be regarded as a failure. To be sure, its intention is also to explain mental phenomena, to comprehend them first by careful introspection, and then to find by analysis the simplest faculties from which they have sprung. But its actual accomplishment does not go beyond a mere description of the occurrences offering themselves to first observation. And the results reached teach impressively that description is an unfruitful task unless, as sometimes of late, it is made to include also explanation. The numerous different expressions of mind, already distinguished by popular psychology, are only arranged in certain groups beside and above each other, and the explanation consists in presenting each expression as the effect of a special faculty. Thus we obtain a great multitude of complicated mental performances, inwardly related to each other, which are made to stand on a footing of equality and perfect independence, for example, perception, judgment, reason, imagination, and also abstraction, wit, symbolism, and so on. Like mere little homunculi in the large homo, they act now in harmony, now in opposition. The poetic faculty, for example, “is a coöperation of imagination with judgment.” In connection with reason, imagination produces foresight. “Wit often does harm to judgment, and leads it to false verdicts.... Judgment must therefore be constantly on its guard against wit.” The advancement in this case did not result from a development of these views, but from their overthrow. But the opposition raised was turned also against associationism.

Of the defects of associationism this is the greatest: it gives no explanation of the phenomenon of attention. The peculiar fact that of a great number of conscious impressions or ideas simultaneously offered to the mind, only a few can ever be carried through and become effective, is not to be explained on the basis of the associative connection of ideas. The associationists pass over this important fact either with complete silence or with a very insufficient treatment, and thus put a weapon into the hands of their opponents. The mind seems, in fact, in the case of attention to mock at all attempts at explanation and to prove itself, quite in the sense of the popular conception, a reality separable from its own contents—standing face to face with them, and treating them capriciously now in one way, now in another.

It is the chief service of Herbart to have recognized a weak point here, and to have attempted to remedy it. “The regularity of the mental life,” he is convinced, “is fully equal to that of the movements of the stars.” Physical analogies guide him in his attempt at explanation. He regards ideas as mutually repellent structures, or, as it were, elastic bodies, assigned to a space of limited capacity, forced together and made smaller by mutual pressure, but never annihilating each other. If several ideas are simultaneously called forth, they become conflicting forces, on account of the unity of the mind, in which they are compelled to be together, and on account of the opposition which exists among them. In this struggle their clearness suffers and their influence on consciousness is impaired. However, they do not perish, but become, to the extent that they suffer, latent forces.

As soon as the opposing factors lose their strength these latent forces emerge again into full consciousness out of the obscurity in which they have been buried. After making some further simple assumptions as to the strength of these interferences, Herbart concludes that two ideas are sufficient to crowd a third completely out of consciousness. To his great satisfaction he thus gains from the consideration of a simple mechanism “a solution of the most general of all psychological problems.” By this problem he means the fact that of all the knowing, thinking, wishing, which at any moment might be brought about by the proper causes, only a very small part plays a significant rôle, while the rest is not really lost. That is, he means the fact of attention. But this principle of the mutual interference of ideas is not the only one he uses. The second principle upon which his theory is based is that of association. With these two weapons he takes up the fight against the faculty psychology, and carries it to a successful end. He believes that all those activities traditionally placed side by side, even feeling and desire, can be made comprehensible as results of the mechanics of ideas.