The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Baldwin - Handbook of Psychology: Feeling and Will

by Frank Angell

Handbook of Psychology. Feeling and Will. By James Mark Baldwin, M.A., Ph.D., Professor in the University of Toronto. New York, Henry Holt & Company, 1891. — pp. xi, 394.

In this volume we have the realization of the promise made by the author in the preface to the second edition of the first part of his Handbook of Psychology — "Senses and Intellect." As was to have been expected, the breadth of view and clearness of conception, which had won for the earlier volume the cordial recognition of the most eminent psychologists, have here been successfully operative in straightening out some of the "confusion, illusion and relation" which has made the subject of 'Feeling' the dark continent of psychological exploration. And as was to have been expected too, we find not merely a logical arrangement of generally accepted facts and principles, but positive contributions to the science. Still, the work is less to be considered a vehicle for the publication of original views and the results of investigations than as a university text-book, — a function for which the mechanical arrangement of the book, with its copious references to psychological literature, and its 'problems' given at the end of each chapter, well fit it.

At first glance it would seem that a work on the feelings and the will, contained in less than four hundred loosely printed pages, of which eighty-four are given up to a consideration of "The Nervous System" and "The Nervous System and Consciousness," must show either sins of omission or of superficiality. But the fulness of the table of contents would preclude the one, as the scholarship shown in "The Senses and Intellect" would make the latter impossible. Condensation is obtained partly through compactness of statement, partly through the free use of space-saving technical terms. Of the need "of the latter in Psychology there is no doubt, not alone to save time and space, but to replace or set aside the traditional, popular terms with their many colorings of meanings. But it seems to us that in this respect the author has gone a trifle too far, — his pages bristle with 'coefficients' of all kinds — coefficients of reality, of belief, of right — coefficients ethical, æsthetical and logical.

It must not be forgotten too, that at this stage of Psychology, full, clear descriptions of the contents of consciousness are desirable, even at the risk of clumsiness of construction, and that time and space-saving terms are, even for practical psychologists, too apt to be thought-saving terms. As Mill says, "We must ever be living in habitual contemplation of the phenomena themselves, and not resting in our familiarity with the words which express them." Further condensation is effected by the frequent use of compact general statements without much illustration — a practice which we surmise will make the book fairly hard reading for those whose training has been limited to the usual collegiate term of Psychology. This is not saying that Professor Baldwin has not carefully thought out what he has to say, and expressed his thoughts with clearness, but it does mean that he who reads this book with understanding will have to supply no small amount of context out of the works to which references are given.

The author prefaces his discussion of the nervous system by saying, "It would be entirely gratuitous as well as misleading to burden an exposition of mental processes with a mass of detailed physiological data. . . . This has been done too much in the 'physiological psychologies.'" Still, the claims of Physiology are so far recognized that forty pages are given to the consideration of nerve-structure and processes. Postulating that all mental processes are correlated with physical changes, that there is a uniform psycho-physical connection (p. 2), the author advocates the 'dynamic' theory of nervous action — i.e. "that the nervous system is a living organism instinct with nervous force or neural properties throughout" (p. 20). This is assuredly the philosophical theory, but the evidence on which it rests, in so far as it is drawn from the phenomena of contrast, is not without flaw. The terms 'neurility' and 'sentience' are adopted to designate respectively the functions of conduction and registration; sentience includes integration, retention and selection. Under the head of 'selection' we think it would 'puzzle' the undergraduate to explain what is meant by 'memory' in the case of the brainless carp (p. 27). Inhibition is considered "possible in proportion as the system grows away from a single line of action and reaction toward a complex interplay of force-pressures" (p. 37). Still, it is well to call to mind that the comparative lack of reflex action in the spinal cord of man is attributed not to cerebral inhibition, but to want of reflex mechanism in the cord (Foster's Phys. III⁵, p. 918). In the laws of habit and accommodation and their results as transmitted by generation according to the laws of inheritance, are found the general conception of nervous function (p. 49).

Consciousness is divided into passive, reactive, and voluntary, and it seems to us that the recognition given to 'passive consciousness,' i.e. the purely affective state of mind, must influence future theories of sense-attention. In combating Maudsley's theory of the organic unity of consciousness, the author has taken full space, and given an acute analysis that makes us regret the more the compression of other parts of his work. "Sensibility is the primary and most general form of consciousness" (p. 84) and "sensation is a form of sensibility." Perhaps it is impossible in this connection to avoid the consideration of the relativity of sense-qualities and of contrast. But there is hardly any psychological doctrine which is to be more cautiously treated than that of relativity. Stumpf has called attention to the fact that there are no less than five different laws of relativity (Ton-Psychologie, I, p. 10). Moreover, many of the so-called phenomena of contrast, notably in sound, yet lack experimental confirmation.

After sensation and knowledge and the several classes of feelings comes the discussion of pleasure and pain. Here the definitions of the older psychologists are supplemented by the addition of the development factor. "Pleasure is the conscious effect of that which makes for the continuance of the bodily life or its advancement" (p. 126), 'life' being here equivalent to life-development as well as to simple life. This, of course, is a statement of the objective conditions of pleasure; what it is psychologically remains unanswered. In the section on Ideal Feeling, interest, reality, and belief are discussed. In marking off 'reality feeling' from belief, the author introduces a new distinction into Psychology. "The phrase 'reality feeling' denotes the fundamental modification of consciousness which attaches to the presentative side of sensational states — the feeling which means, as the child afterwards learns, that an object is really there" (p. 149). Belief is more representative, and "indicates the amount of assurance we have at the time that an object is there." The distinction is new, though the facts had been noticed before, particularly, as the author notes, by Bain. We have not space to discuss this highly interesting subject in full, but we cannot agree with the author in identifying reality feeling with passive consciousness; to say that existence (at the dawn of consciousness) is simply presence, that presence is existence and that whatever is in consciousness is real (p. 150), seems simply a matter, not of fact, but of dialectics. Preyer's child, on the first day of its life, changed its expression when its face was shaded from the light. Here it seems to us that the reality feeling was present, i.e. not in the passive consciousness, but in the reactive sense, consciousness containing as a germ the element of volition, which later on forms an essential part of belief.

Following German classifications, the author divides the special ideal feelings or emotions into emotions of activity and emotions of content, but under the heading of 'emotions of relation' we find a new point of view in the treatment of 'conceptual emotions,' i.e. emotions accompanying those processes of thought which just fall short of judgment.

The discussion of the will proper is preceded by a section on the motor consciousness. We wish, here, that the law of 'mental dynamo-genesis' had received full illustration, as again we wish that more facts had been adduced to show "there is often attention which gives us knowledge by simple reflex stimulation" (p. 293). In calling attention to 'suggestion' as a motor stimulus, a valuable contribution is made to Psychology, but in terming instinctive action 'reflex' the popular conception of the mechanical precision and invariability of instincts is made too prominent. In the fiat of voluntary action Professor Baldwin finds seven distinct elements, and in the 'neget' of negative volition the element of 'conflict' in addition. Volition in muscular action is marked off from the volition of attention and it is shown that the two forms may often be distinguished in consciousness. As of these two the act of attention is the fundamental form, the problem of volition resolves itself into the problem of voluntary attention. Volition results from a more or less complex aggregation of motives which exhaust the possible alternatives of present action. In general these motives are comprised in two classes — affects and ends — and the value of the affects lies in brightening and strengthening the ends. But this picturing of ends is not different from the picturing of anything else it is an ordinary act of apperception." Just as soon as the elements of the end-complex cease to act as partial influences, causing the movements of attention by their very vividness, and the attention gets its hold upon its integrated content as a grand related situation, the fiat goes forth " (p. 355). Volitional apperception is therefore a case of general apperception with an "explicit motor reference." Lack of space prevents anything more than the above presentation of the bare skeleton of Professor Baldwin's views in regard to voluntary action, as it prevents any discussion of them. It is one of the most satisfactory parts of a book which, taken as a whole, distinctly raises the level of psychological thought in America.

Frank Angell.