Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/416

A. BINET, LA PSYCHOLOG1E DU HAISONNEMENT. 415 Binet's present work. Nothing could be more trenchant than the manner in which he presents to his readers views which, if less novel in the country of Herbert Spencer than in his own, yet in their ensemble have never been so forcibly expressed on either side of the Channel. The central position among these is held by the doctrine that perception and reasoning are practically one and the same mental process. This posited, any elucidation of perception will serve to clear up the psychology of reasoning, and it is such elucidation that M. Binet offers us. Eeaders of MIND will readily guess the sources whence he draws his light-giving materials. His studies in hallucination, and especially in hypnotic hallucination, have formed some of the most interesting psychological material that has recently been given to the world. Thus hallucination or false perception is to throw light on perception or veridical hallucina- tion, and this in its turn is to elucidate reasoning, which, accord- ing to our author, is but perception long drawn out. The common term in all these is the "image," under which conveniently loose term our author includes all the elements of mind. For from the physiological point of view sensation and image vary only quantitatively : their local habitation is the same. And from the psychological they differ but intensively, so that we come at last to a practical identity of the two: "1'image est presque une sensation" (p. 128). It may be said at once that the weak point of M. Binet's argument is here. It is only by ignoring the sensational element in perception that he is enabled to draw so close a parallel between perception and reasoning. But let us take his points more in order. After denning per- ception as a completion of impression by images of previous similar impressions, he has an interesting digression on the various degrees of prominence of different classes of images in individual minds. He distinguishes four types : (1) minds in which visual images play the leading part ; (2) those in which auditory ones are predominant ; (3) cases where motor represen- tations are the favourite furniture of the mind ; and (4) indifferents in which all three exert equal influence. This division of men into visuals, audiles, motiles and indifferents, as we may respectively call them, is of great interest and importance. This along with other individual differences may serve one day to throw light on what we may term psychologists' psychology. One example of difference of psychological theory due to difference in psycho- logists' minds is given by M. Binet. Strieker, a motile, declares that it is impossible to represent to ourselves other vowels while pronouncing any particular one, say a : he can only represent them as motor images which clash with the motor presentation. M. Paulhan, an audile, declares he can easily do what Strieker declares impossible, for he can represent the auditory images of i and u while the motor presentation of a is being presented. Psychologists need clearly to take account of their 'personal equation ' as much as astronomers.