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A DEFENCE OF PHENOMENALISM IN PSYCHOLOGY. 35 may be identified with a conation. 1 Now if and so far as by this identification we can better bring the particular facts under their laws of happening, the use of conation would be an explanation and would therefore be justified as a working fiction. But otherwise its employment would be at best useless and would probably be hurtful. It would be hurtful because it tends to suggest that we understand and have explained facts, where we do not understand them and where no explanation has been given. But in this way attention may be diverted from the real problems to be solved. f~ Ton can only explain events, I would repeat, by the laws i of their happening, and it does not matter for your purpose, /> so long as these laws work, whether they possess ultimate {< _truth or are more or less fictitious and fa]sej~ And anything other than these laws is useless at best, and therefore prob- ably mischievous. And if the object and scope of psychology could be agreed on, and could be limited explicitly to the mere study and explanation of phenomena, I believe the rest of this conclusion would be readily evident. What in short we want in psychology are explanations that truly explain, and above all things we do not want true explanations. 2 I have now tried to state in general what is to be under- stood by phenomenalism in psychology, and I have replied to certain objections as they have been made or as they have occurred to me. But there remain two other objections, more or less connected, which I will now proceed to notice. These objections are directed against a false view of phenomenalism, and themselves seem based on a radical misunderstanding of that term. They in fact rest in great part on doctrines which I should regard as wholly indefensible. These objections may instance, appears to assume it as self-evident that a disposition is an actual mental state into the nature of which as psychologists we are bound to inquire. The account which he himself seems to give of it I have never found to be really intelligible. Mr. Stout (Analytic Psycho- logy, i., 24-6) has criticised this account, but I could not say whether he has understood it rightly or not. 1 A conation, that is, which is not actually experienced. To reduce a disposition to an actually experienced conation would of course, if prac- ticable, be perfectly legitimate. 2 1 was glad to see that Wundt, in the fourth edition of his Physiologische Psycholoyie, ii., 283-84, appears to state definitely that his " Apperception " is to be understood in psychology merely as the name of a class of psychical phenomena with its laws of happening. How far, so understood, Wundt's doctrine is tenable, and how far again his practice has been wholly con- sistent with his present statement, are questions I do not discuss.