German psychology of to-day : the empirical school / by Th. Ribot ; tr. from the 2d French ed. by James Mark Baldwin ; with a preface by James McCosh.

  • Ribot, Th. (Théodule), 1839-1916.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: German psychology of to-day : the empirical school / by Th. Ribot ; tr. from the 2d French ed. by James Mark Baldwin ; with a preface by James McCosh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    This principle admitted,—and it is the basis of physiolo- gical psychology,—the inquiry presents itself under an entirely new aspect, and justifies the employment of a new method. For the vague and commonplace formula of the relations of soul and body, as the old school employs it, for the arbitrary and barren hypothesis of two substances acting upon each other, let us substitute the study of two phenomena which have, for each particular case, so con- stant a connection that they can be most exactly designated as one phenomenon of a double face. Accordingly, the domain of psychology is specific: it has for its object nervous phenomena accompanied by consciousness, finding in man the type most easy of recog- nition, but bound to pursue the investigation through the whole animal series, however difficult. At the same time, the distinction between psychology and physiology is es- tablished. Nervous process in its simple aspect belongs to physiology; nervous process in its double aspect belongs to psychology. There can be no hesitation in cases where consciousness merges little by little into autom- atism (habitude), and in cases where automatism merges into consciousness. The soul and its faculties,, the great entity and the small entities, disappear, and we have to do only with internal events, which as sensations and mental images translate physical events, or which, as ideas, move- ments, volition and desire, are translated into physical events. A great result is thus obtained; the state of con- sciousness ceases to be an abstraction filling a vacuum. It is fixed. By connection with its physical concomitant, it enters with it and through it into determined conditions which make science possible. Psychology is connected again with the laws of life and with its mechanism. This does not, as is unreasonably said, give psychology over to physiology. By a logical necessity the superior science rests upon the inferior. Does not contemporary