Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/256

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J. C. MUREAY, A HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY. 255 tween the two modes of viewing mental activities be not kept in sight from the first. It appears to me that Prof. Murray's praiseworthy volume furnishes unmistakeable evidences of the risks just alluded to. The position it occupies is midway between general subjective analysis and psychology in the stricter sense midway, e.g., be- tween such treatments as that of Hamilton and that of Herbart or Lotze. It has the merits and defects of its position. Like Hamilton's Lectures, it is an excellent and stimulating introduc- tion to reflective philosophy in general, but it endeavours also to be a systematic psychology, and the two functions can hardly be discharged simultaneously. Where the attitude is least that of the psychologist proper, Prof. Murray is at his best ; the sections on the Feelings, on Idealisation, and the briefer discussions of visual perception and of the primum cognitum are admirable specimens of his expository method. Where the business is peculiarly tho analysis of the forms of mental processes, Prof. Murray does not seem so successful. The section on the Will, and in particular the meagre notice accorded to the function of Comparison, but poorly represent even the present incomplete state of our know- ledge. It is, however, the structure of the whole work that illustrates most pointedly the peculiar difficulty in which his treatment has involved him, a difficulty, as I think, due to quite general causes. Prof. Murray adopts a division, beginning to be familiar to us, into General Psychology, a treatment of the ele- mentary factors and fundamental processes of the mental life, and Special Psychology, the handling of the more complex forms which come forward in the development of mind. Under ths first falls the consideration of Sensation and of the processes of Association and Comparison ; under the second, Cognitions, Feelings and the Will. The author shows himself fully aware of the extreme difficulty of defining an elementary fact or process of mind, but he contents himself, in regard to Sensations, with a condensed and on the whole not unsatisfactory summary of the familiar psychological propositions respecting sense-presentations. In regard to Association, his treatment, which is both interesting and instructive, concerns rather the laws of suggestion among formed Vorstelluncjen than the ultimate links of connexion through which continuity, coherence and development in the mental life become possible. The section on Comparison is quite unsatis- factory, merely refers to the three logical laws of thought, and, when viewed in conjunction with the later sections on Generali- sation and Eeasoning, can only be interpreted as signifying that Prof. Murray has not yet brought his logical training into any intimate relation with his psychology. Now, were one to take Prof. Murray's general assertions regarding these elementary facts and processes literally, we should understand him to mean that out of the qualitative differences, quantitative changes and variations in the conditions of the origination of Sensations,