the sensational and ideal content. In its earliest form it consists only of that cluster of organic sensations which constitutes the perception of the body; but it comes in due course of time to include the past history of the individual, the contents of his memory, and the circle of his interests and aspirations. Though the massive complex thus formed dominates our entire mental life, it consists, when reduced to its elements, of nothing but sensations and mental images bound together by the ties of association. It therefore opposes no obstacle to the universal validity of the theory of parallelism.
Instead of commenting upon Dr. Münsterberg's theory of will, I shall present a summary of the objections urged against it by Professor Wundt,[1] and offer in closing a single criticism upon these.
It is, in the first place, a mistake to classify the voluntary act as a reflex action. It is desirable for purely physiological reasons to limit the use of the word reflex to cases where the nerve-process passes from sensory to motor tracts without accompanying phenomena in consciousness. For only in reflexes proper is the connection between a given sense-impression and a given movement a uniform one. Where events in consciousness intervene, the final motor result becomes incalculable. Of course it is inadmissible, however, to assume that in the latter case the physical chain is anywhere interrupted.
The outcome of Dr. Münsterberg's investigation of the will is already contained in the proposition from which he sets out, that the ultimate constituents of consciousness are sensations. This applies in reality only to the cognitive part of consciousness, not to the feelings and the will.
Dr. Münsterberg lays down the rule that, wherever in thought we have the feeling of our own activity, the idea a, which forms the subsequent state of mind, is implicitly contained in the antecedent state; as where I try to remember a name, think of the circumstances under which I heard it, etc. But his example does not agree with his rule; for what is present in the antecedent state is not a, but certain other ideas which stand in more or less definite relations to a. But upon just such relations as these the association of ideas depends, and it is the ordinary process of association which Dr. Münsterberg is describing. He has failed to point out, as he should have done, the difference between ordinary associations and those with which we connect the idea of our own activity.
In external voluntary action the idea of a movement does as a rule precede its actual execution. Yet even here the theory is inadequate, and overlooks the essential thing in volition. For the facts are not
- ↑ Philosophische Studien, VI, 3 (1890): Zur Lehre von den Gemüthsbewegungen.
