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CHAPTER II.

THE DATA AND THE METHOD OF PSYCHOLOGY.

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1. The Mode of Inquiry proper to Psychology. In the preceding chapter we have found that the phenomena with which the psychologist deals are unlike all other phenomena, and that owing to the peculiarity of its subject-matter the science occupies a unique position among the sciences. has already been suggested that the distinguishing characters of psychical phenomena necessitate a mode of inquiry dissimilar in some respects to that followed in the physical sciences. We have now to consider this mode of investigation somewhat carefully.

As already pointed out, the psychologist has to collect and arrange his facts and then seek to explain them by the help of general principles or laws. Hence two main questions present themselves in connexion with psychological procedure: (1) How is the psychologist to obtain his facts? (2) In what way or by the help of what principles are the facts to be explained?

§ 2. Different ways of approaching Psychical Facts. There are two sources of psychological knowledge, or two ways by which we may approach psychical facts. We may first of all seek to observe them as they present themselves in our own individual mind. Thus a man may inspect the several operations of thought as they go on in his own consciousness. This is the direct, internal, or subjective study of mind. Or, in the second place, we may inspect the mental processes of others so far as they disclose themselves outwardly, as in expression, language, and action. Here it is evident we are not as in the first case directly observing the mental phenomena themselves; we are using our senses and observing certain facts of the external world (e.g., facial movements, articulate sounds). Hence this

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mode of study is to be distinguished as the indirect, external, or objective mode.

Some writers employ the expression the "objective investigation" of mind with special reference to the study of its physiological conditions (nervous processes). This, however, is an undue narrowing of its meaning. All inquiry into psychical processes is objective which transcends the immediate observation of our own mental processes (introspection), and has consequently to proceed by an examination of physical processes, whether these are the outward expression of mental activity (e.g., looks, words) or its determining conditions (nervous processes).

§ 3. (1) Introspection. Psychology is distinguished by the peculiarity of its one direct way of observing its phenomena. While the physical sciences dealing with objects and processes of the external world employ observation through the senses, and the apparatus by which sense-perception can be extended and rendered more minute and exact, psychology has to make use of a quite different channel of knowledge. In observing any part of the current of our mental life we are drawing our attention away from objects of sense and bending it inwards on ourselves in what Locke called Reflection. This act of concentrating attention on any part of the internal sphere of mind is known as Introspection, or looking within.

Introspection is the primary and as such the most important source of our knowledge respecting mental facts. Whenever we find out what is going on in other minds we do so by help of our own individual mental experience. Thus we understand savage and animal ways just so far as they are analogous to our own feelings and impulses. And when this individual experience fails us a knowledge of foreign mental states is rendered impossible. It is for this reason that one born blind cannot acquire from others' descriptions an idea of sensations of colour, and that we are often unable to interpret the actions of children, savages, animals, and idiots.

§ 3a. Value of Introspection. It is evident from this that the claims of psychology to be a science whose propositions have a high degree of certainty will turn mainly on the value of introspection as a mode or instrument of investigation.

The most conspicuous characteristic of introspective observation is its directness or immediacy. Our own mental states, for example, our emotions of joy or sorrow, are directly cognisable to us as outer physical facts are not. We are all

liable to illusion in using our senses, and to take for actually seen what is only vividly imagined. But we cannot well imagine that we are thinking or suffering when we are not actually doing so.1 Psychology has in this respect a clear superiority over physical science, inasmuch as its facts so far as they are known by internal observation are comparatively free from inference, and therefore liability to error. At the same time this advantage, great as it undoubtedly is, is considerably diminished by certain counter-disadvantages. The very directness of the inspection gives rise to special difficulties. For all accurate and scientific observation requires a certain aloofness of mind and absence of all but a purely scientific interest in what is observed. When, however, we are called on to observe our own mental states we cannot put ourselves into this cool scrutinising attitude. The same person whose mind is agitated by a passion is required to dispassionately inspect its characteristics. Thus in the very process of observing we necessarily change the phenomenon to be observed. This objection has seemed to some, e.g., Kant, Auguste Comte, and Dr. Maudsley, fatal to the pretensions of psychology to be a distinct science. This conclusion is plainly a paradox, for everybody has some power of watching and describing his mental processes; and this power may, like other powers, be so trained and improved as to yield more and more exact results.

The difficulty is met in a measure by saying that in selfobservation we are not strictly speaking at the same instant subjects affected and scientific observers of such affection. Thus, for example, in trying to detect the characteristic features of an emotion like remorse I choose a moment when the feeling is not at its maximum intensity, but has undergone a certain subsidence, yet a moment when its features are still clear to view. Skill in introspecting depends very much on the ease and rapidity with which the mind throws itself into this reflective or retrospective attitude.

In addition to this fundamental objection to introspection there are others which have been emphasised by some writers: (a) Unlike external phenomena, the facts of mind are only

1 As I have pointed out elsewhere even introspection is not absolutely free from the contamination of illusion. See Illusions, chap. viii.

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directly observable by the mind that experiences them or is their subject. Hence there is no possibility of one observer verifying another's observations as in the case of physical investigation. This difficulty is largely obviated by saying that though my feelings cannot be directly observed by anyone except myself others may observe in themselves feelings which I have good reason to suppose to be like mine. And in this way we do practically secure a comparison and a verification of our psychological observations.

This same line of remark meets too another objection closely related to the foregoing, viz., that self-observation never enables one to transcend the limits of the individual consciousness and so reach that generality which science requires. Strictly speaking this is true. By pure introspection alone nobody can know anything of mental phenomena save those of his own mind. At the same time, since different minds can observe their respective phenomena and afterwards compare these through the medium of language we do in practice secure general results. In spite of the uncertainties of the science the methodical self-observation of psychologists has resulted in a fair number of commonly accepted facts and truths of mind.1

(b) Self-observation is limited to a very small portion of our mental states, viz., our recent feelings. In seeking to recall distant experiences, e.g., those of childhood, we are not, strictly speaking, observing at all, but remembering and inferring. This is a real objection, and points to the need of supplementing internal observation by other sources of knowledge.2

(c) Lastly, it has been contended, e.g., by Kant, that even if we can obtain certain results by self-inspection these can never

1 This, though an organising of subjective introspective research, involves at the same time objective interpretation, viz., of one another's words. Consequently the certainty of the results depends on the assumption that language means precisely the same for different minds. As we shall see presently, all objective study of other minds, even through the most perfect medium, viz., language, is in a measure uncertain. At the same time these uncertainties are in the case of trained scientific observers reduced to a minimum.

On the objections brought against the introspective or subjective investigation of mind see Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, p. 63, seq.; Dr. Maudsley, The Physiology of Mind, chap. i.; G. H. Lewes, The Study of Psychology, chap. v. ; Brentano, Psychologie, buch i. cap. 2; Wundt, Physiologische Psychologie (3rd ed.), p. 6.

be quantitatively exact. We cannot ascertain the precise dimensions of a feeling of pain as we can measure a material body or its movement; although we can say that one pain is more intense than another, we cannot say by how much more. This difficulty, which is real, will have to be dealt with by and by in connexion with certain attempts to measure the intensity and duration of some of the more elementary mental phenomena.

§ 4. (2) Indirect or External Observation of Mind. The difficulties that beset the process of internal inspection of mental processes, though not fatal to it, show the desirability of supplementing this mode of investigation by another. Such an auxiliary and supplementary mode of studying psychical facts is provided in external or indirect observation. Here we have to watch the manifestations of mind in others, and to interpret these by the aid of our own conscious experiences.

§ 4a. Remarkable Minds. Such external or objective study of mind includes, first of all, the careful noting of individual minds, whether personally known to us, or heard or read of from others. In selecting our examples we should be careful to "vary the circumstances," that is, take minds widely unlike one another in their natural tendencies and conditioning circumstances. Thus we should choose our instances from the two sexes, from different races, and so forth. Not only so, we must be careful to take account of minds of exceptional power, or those which exhibit a high degree of individuality. Thus the lives of great men are particularly instructive to the psychologist as displaying mind or certain of its activities in a specially distinct and striking manner.1 So, again, the history of minds which have been subjected to the influence of an unusual environment, as the alleged cases of boys who have cut themselves off from society and lived a solitary and half wild life, would have a special significance for the psychologist.

$4b. Study of Infant Mind. One department of this external investigation of mind requires special mention, viz., that which has recently come to be called Infant Psychology, and which is concerned with the careful and methodical observation of the first manifestations of mind in the human individual. This line

1 A valuable contribution to this branch of psychological observation has been made by M. Henri Joly in his volume, Psychologie des Grands Hommes.

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