PSYCHOLOGY
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PSYCHOLOGY
chology, gradually grew up and received its final
elaboration in the Middle Ages in the metaphysical
theology of the Schoolmen. The Christian mystics
were naturally led to consider the character of the
soul's knowledge of God. But their treatment of
psychological questions is generally vague and obscure,
whilst their language indulges much in allegory and
symbolism. Indeed, the greatest of the mystics were
not sympathetic with the employment of Scholastic
or scientific methods in the handling of mystic experi-
ence. The great controversy between Realism and
Nominalism from the early Middle Ages directed
much attention to the theory of knowledge and the
problem of the origin of ideas. However, although
psychological observation was appealed to, the epis-
temological discussions were largely metaphysical in
character during this period. To Albertus Magnus
and St. Thomas the popularization of the psychology
of Aristotle throughout Europe during the thirteenth
century was mainly due. In Questions Ixxv to xc of
part I of the "Summa Theologica", St. Thomas gives
a very fairly complete and systematic account of the
leading topics connected with the soul. However,
questions of biology, general metaphysics, and theol-
ogy were constantly interwoven with psychology for
many centuries afterwards. Indeed, the liberal use
made of physiological evidence in psychological dis-
cussions is a marked feature in the treatment of this
branch of philosophy throughout the entire history
of scholastic philosophy. But although there is plenty
of proof of acute obser\'ation of mental activities, the
usual appeal in discussion is rather to metaphysical
analj'sis and deductive argument than to systematic
introspective observation and induction, so character-
istic of modern psychology. The treatise "De
Anima" of Suarez is a verj- good example of scholastic
psychology at the close of the Middle Ages. The
treatise, containing six books, starts in book I with an
inquiry into the essence of the soul. Recalling Aris-
totle's definition of the soul as the form of the body,
the author proceeds to examine the relations of the
vegetative, sensitive, and rational soul. Next, in
book II he treats of the faculties of the soul in general
and their relation to the soul as an essence. In book
III he investigates the nature and working of the
cognitive faculties, and especially of the senses. In
book IV he inquires into the character of the activity
of the intellect. In book V he deals with faculties of
appetency and free will. Book VI is devoted to a
speculative consideration of the condition and mode of
operation of the soul in a future life. In each question
he begins with a summary of previous opinions and
then puts forward his own solution. The order of
treatment starting from the essence and passing thence
to the faculties and their operations is characteristic
of the scholastic treatises generally. The method is
mainly deductive and the argument metaphysical,
though in dealing with the senses there is constant
appeal to recognized physiological authorities from
Aristotle to Vesalius.
In psychology as well as in other branches of philos- ophy the influence of Descartes was considerable though indirect. His subjective starting-point, cogilo, ergo siim, his insistence on methodic doubt, his ad- vocacy of reflection on thought and close scrutiny of our fundamental ideas, all tended to encourage (he method of internal observation, whilst the mechanical explanation of the "Traite des Passions" favoured the advent of physiological psychology. It was prob- ably, however, .John Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding" (1690) which did most to foster the method of analytic introspection which constitutes the principal feature of modern psychological method. Notwithstanding the confused and inconsistent meta- physics and the many grave psychological blunders with which that work abouniLs, yet his frequent appeal to inner experience, his honest efforts to describe
mental processes, and the quantity of acute observa-
tions scattered throughout the work, coming also at
an age when the inductive method was rapidly rising
in popularity, achieved a speedy and wide success for
his book, and gave a marked empirical bent to all
future English psychology'.
Psychological observation and analysis were still more skilfully used by Bishop Berkeley as a principle of explanation in his "Theory of Vision", and then employed by him to establish his psychological creed of Idealism. Finally, David Hume, the true founder of the Associationist school of psychology, still further increased the importance of the method of introspec- tive analysis by the daring sceptical conclusions he claimed to establish by its means. The subsequent British adherents of the Associationist school, Hart- ley, the two Mills, Bain, and Herbert Spencer, con- tinued this method and tradition along the same lines. There is constant direct appeal to inner experience combined with systematic effort to trace the genesis of the highest, most spiritual, and most complex mental conceptions back to elementary atomic states of sensuous consciousness. Universal ideas, necessary truths, the ideas of self, time, space, causality as well as the conviction of an external material world were all explained as the outcome of sensations and asso- ciation. The reality of any higher activities or fac- ulties essentially different from the lower sensuous powers was denied, and all the chief data formerly employed in establishing the simplicity, spirituality, and substantiality of the soul were rejected. Rational or metaphysical psychology was thus virtually ex- tinguished find erased from English philosophical literature during the nineteenth century. Even the more orthodox representatives of the Scotch school, Reid and Dugald Stewart, who avoided all meta- physical argument and endeavoured to controvert Hume with his own weapons of appeal exclusively to experience and observation, had only further con- firmed the tendency in the direction of a purely em- pirical psychology. The great need in English psy- chological literature throughout most of the nine- teenth century, on the side of those defending a spiritual doctrine of the human mind, was a systematic and thorough treatment of empirical psychology. Excellent pieces of work on particular questions were done by Martineau, W. G. Ward, and other writers, but nearly all the systematic treatises on psychology were produced by the disciples of the Sensationist or Materialistic schools. Yet, if philosophy is to be based on experience, then assuredly it is on the care- fully-scrutinized and well-established results of em- pirical psychology that any satisfactory rational metaphysical doctrine respecting the nature of the soul, its origin, and its destinj' must be built. It was in their faulty though often plausible analysis and interpretation of our states of consciousness that the greatest errors in philosophy and psychology of Bain, the two Mills, Spencer, and their disciples had their source; it is only by more careful introspective ob- servation and a more searching analysis of the same mental facts that these errors can be exposed and solid foundations laid for a true metaphysical psy- chology of the soul.
In France, Condillac, La Mettrie, Holbach, an<I Bonnet developed the Sensationalism of Locke's psychology into an increasingly crude Materialism. To oppose this .school later on, Roycr-Collard, Cousin, .louffroy, and Maine de Biran turned to the work of Reid and the "common sense" Scotch school, appro- priating their method and results in empirical psy- cliology. Some of these writers, moreover, sought to carry their reasoning beyond the mere inductions of em])irical psychology, in order to construct on this enlarged experience a genuine philosophy of the soul, as "principle" and subject of the states and activities immediately revealed to introspective observation,
