[153]. While these pages were in press, Lord Haldane in his Montreal address (before the American Bar Association), which has attracted wide attention, developed the psychological principle of “Sittlichkeit,” as applied to communities, the nation and groups of nations. By “Sittlichkeit” is meant the social habit of mind and action underlying social customs, the instinctive sense of social obligation which is the foundation of society. This plainly includes what is often called the social conscience and actions impelled thereby. In further definition of this principle Lord Haldane quotes Fichte as stating “Sittlichkeit” to mean “those principles of conduct which regulate people in their relations to each other, and have become matter of habit and second nature at the stage of culture reached, and of which, therefore, we are not explicitly conscious.” The point was made that the citizen is governed “only to a small extent by law and legality on the one hand, and by the dictates of the individual conscience on the other.” It is the more extensive system of “Sittlichkeit” which plays the predominant rôle. Out of this system there develops a unity of thought and “a common ideal” which can be made to penetrate the soul of a people and to take complete possession of it. Likewise there develops “a general will with which the will of the good citizen is in accord.” This will of the community (inspired by the common ideal) is common to the individuals composing it. Lord Haldane goes on to make the point that what is now true within a single nation may in time come to be true between nations or a group of nations. Thus an international habit of looking to common ideals may grow up sufficiently strong to develop a general will, and to make the binding power of those ideas a reliable sanction for their obligations to each other. With this thesis, ably presented and fortified though it be, we are not here concerned. The point I wish to make is that this conception of “Sittlichkeit” which Lord Haldane in his remarkable address, destined I believe to become historic, so ably develops and applies to the solution of a world-problem is in psychological terms identical with that of complexes of ideas and affects organized in the unconscious.
[154]. Professor G. S. Fullerton, in the course of an essay, “Is the Mind in the Body?” interestingly refers to this fact and points out that common sense directs the common man in repudiating ancient doctrines, and that it is “part of his share in the heritage of the race.” “The common sense which guides men is the resultant attitude due to many influences, some of them dating very far back indeed.” The Popular Science Monthly, May, 1907.
LECTURE X
THE MEANING OF IDEAS AS DETERMINED BY SETTINGS
In the preceding lecture when describing the organization of emotional complexes, I mentioned, somewhat incidentally, that their fuller meaning was to be found in antecedent experiences of life; and that these experiences conserved in the unconscious formed a setting that gave the point of view and attitude of mind. It was pointed out also that if we wish to know the reason why a given experience, like that of Voltaire with Frederick, awakens a strong emotional reaction, and why the memory of this experience continues persistently organized with the emotion or gives rise to the emotional reaction whenever stimulated, we must look to this setting of antecedent experiences which gives the ideas of the complexes meaning. We need now to inquire to what extent the unconscious complex in which the setting has roots may take part in the process which gives meaning to an idea. It is a problem in psychogenesis and psychological mechanisms. As an imperatively recurring emotional complex is an obsession the full meaning of any given obsession is involved in the psychological problem of “Idea and Meaning.”
Let us, then, take up for discussion this latter problem as preliminary to the study of that important psychosis—obsessing ideas and emotions.
A perception, or, what is in principle the same thing, an idea of an object, although apparently a simple thing, is really, as a rule, a complex affair. Without attempting to enter deeply into the psychology of perception (and ideas), and particularly into the conventional conception of perception as usually expounded in the text-books—a conception which to my mind is inadequate and incomplete[[155]]—it is sufficient for our immediate purposes to point out in a general rough way the following facts concerning perception.
Perception a synthesis of primary and secondary images.—Perception may be regarded both as a process and as a group of conscious elements some of which are within the focus of attention or awareness and some of which are outside this focus. As a process it undoubtedly may include much that is entirely subconscious and therefore without conscious equivalents, and much that appears in consciousness. As a group of conscious elements it is a fusion, amalgamation, or compounding of many elements.
My perception of X., for example, whom I recognize as an acquaintance, is much more than a cluster of visual sensations—I mean the sensations of color and form that come from the stimulation of my retina. Besides these sensations it includes a number of imaginal memory images some of which are only in the fringe of consciousness and can only be recognized by introspection or under special conditions. These secondary images, as they are called, may be (as they most often are) visual, orienting him in space and in past associative relations, according to my previous experiences; they may be auditory—the imaginal sound of his voice or verbal images of his name; or they may be the so-called kinesthetic images, etc.; and all these images supplement the actual visual sensations of color and form.
That such images take part in perception is of course well recognized in every text-book on psychology where they will be found described. It is easy to become aware of them under certain conditions. For instance, to take an auditory perception from every-day life, you are listening through the telephone and hear a strange voice speaking. Aside from the meaning of the words you are conscious of little more than auditory sensations although you do perceive them as those of a human voice and not of a phonograph. Then of a sudden you recognize the voice as that of an acquaintance. Instantly visual images of his face, and perhaps of the room in which he is speaking and his situation therein, of the furnishings of the room, etc., become associated with the voice. Your perception of the voice now takes on a fuller meaning in accordance with these imaginal images. In such an experience, common probably to everybody, the secondary images which take part in perception are unusually clear and easily detected.
Again, let us take a visual perception. You meet face to face a person whom at first sight seems unfamiliar; then in a flash visual images of a scene in a room where you first met, verbal images of his name, and the sound of his voice rush into consciousness. The comparatively simple perception of a man has now given place to a more complex perception (apperception) of an acquaintance and has acquired a new meaning. This new meaning is in part due to these images which have supplemented the visual sensations; but it is also due to the coöperation of another and important factor—the context—which I will presently consider.