that the class name does not obscure other essential features of an action, when enough is stated to give a complete picture of the action, the objection to this or that label is lessened. For it really matters little whether an action, a piece of conduct is called a, b, c, x or y. The more important concern is that if x and y are present that they shall not be blurred over by calling the expression a or b or c.
Again, one is continually brought to a standstill by the inadequacy of the terminology of the adult, functional psychology—which is largely an inheritance from the "faculty" psychology—as an instrument of description in dealing with primitive mental processes. And the unfitness of the rubrics of the faculty psychology is realized whether one is concerned with the data of child psychology from the genetic view-point, or merely in an endeavor to describe primitive mental phenomena. In the first instance, as Dewey shows, because the genetic method "fixes its attention on growth, on continuity of function; it substitutes the idea of gradual differentiation for the notion of separate mental faculties, it must end by substituting the conception of organic interdependence and of coöperation for the notion [maintained by faculty psychology] of mechanical juxtaposition and external association.[1]" The difficulty from the latter standpoint—that
- ↑ Dewey, Transactions of the Illinois Soc. for Child-Study, Vol. IV, p. 65f.
