Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/186

172 B. BOSANQUET : social territory is enough to show that some fundamental assumption is leading us astray. If we turn to Prof. Baldwin's analysis, we find, as we might expect, a resolute repudiation of dualism. "We 1 cannot divide the child into two parts, two realities coming up to the facts of life with different capabilities, one fitted only to imitate, and the other fitted to invent. Of course it is the same child whatever he does ; and if he be gifted with the power of invention at all, this power should show itself in all that he does even in his imitations." He recognises that frequently in discussion "the two types of function are as far removed from each other as the letters vs put between them would suggest ". But we have seen protests of this kind before, and we know that they decide nothing. For, only too often, they herald no comprehensive principle of unity, but a resolution of one thing into terms of another, the other being a mere fragment of the whole in which both should be comple- mentary aspects. Have we not, I ask with diffidence in presence of Prof. Baldwin's suggestive and laborious re- searches have we not, in principle, got a case of this kind here ? I have heard it said, perhaps too curtly, that Prof. Baldwin explains invention as the failure to imitate. He does not use the phrase ; but does not the theory and de- scription of the child's invention bear it out ? 2 If the criticism is justified, his theory will remind us of the famous definition of mythology as a disease of language the work of poetic imagination being regarded as a degeneration of the meanings of words. In some degree, indeed, as I under- stand him, " the valuable variations of thoughts are clearly more or less determined in their direction by reason of the particular system in which they occur ". 3 But yet, it would seem, in the main they have to be picked out by selection, 4 and therefore are conceived as after all mere variations, gene- rated in an attempted imitation, and presented for a choice of survivors to be made from them, not thought-products with an inherent rule and direction which govern the adapted difference with which they come into being. In as far as the pregnant passages just alluded to can be shown to contain the essentials of the view to which I am about to refer, I shall admit my criticism to have been unjustified. Subject to this reservation, it appears to me that the whole tradition of the sociological psychology in question is vitiated by a fallacy which has its roots in the atomic doctrine of 1 Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development, p. 90. 2 16., pp. 105, 107. 3 Ib. id., 96. * 16., 120.