An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German EditionWundt, Wilhelm Max
Science
An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German Edition
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Educational psychology; Psychology
Let us now in the light of these considerations, universally
acknowledged in natural science, consider the question of the existence
or non-existence of psychical laws. It is of course self-evident
that we may consider as laws only such regularities that lie within
the process of consciousness, and not such as lie outside of
consciousness, e.g. such as belong to physiological processes of the
brain. Accordingly we may call combinations of sensations or of simple
feelings into complex ideas, emotions, &c., psychical laws, if they
in any way take place regularly. On the other hand, the fact that, if
a bright point appears on a dark field of vision, the lines of vision
of the two eyes are at once directed towards this point--this fact
is a physiological and not a psychical law. Naturally such physical
laws, as the one in our example, may have a determining influence upon
the operation of certain psychical laws. But this does not hinder
us from making a sharp distinction between the two kinds of law. We
keep as a principle for a psychical law, that the components as well
as the resultants of the effects of such laws are parts of immediate
consciousness, i.e. sensations, feelings and their combinations. Now
if we cast a glance, while keeping firmly to this criterion, over the
manifold processes of consciousness, which have been touched upon in
this book, we see at once that all these processes bear the character
of a stem regularity. Not in the sense that these laws are fixed rules
without exceptions (such laws as we have seen above do not exist,
because of the never-failing interference from other influences), but
in the only sense permissible, i.e. that each complex phenomenon can
be reduced to a lawful co-operation of elements. If this requirement
were not fulfilled, there would be no cohesion in our psychical
life. It would break up into a chaos of unconnected elements, and
consciousness itself, which is just the opposite of such a chaotic
disarrangement, would be impossible. Therefore each separate idea is a
combination of sensations according to law. A given clang of a definite
timbre is put together unchangeably in the same way out of elementary
tone-sensations. That certain objective sources of sound, e.g. strings,
air spaces, possess physical qualities, by means of which such regular
combinations of tone-quality arise, is undoubtedly a very important
factor for the psychical law of the blending of tones. But these
physical facts have in themselves nothing whatever to do with this law.
If our consciousness was not disposed to such regular combinations,
those objective factors would remain powerless. And it is exactly the
same with the combination of light-sensations into spatial ideas, with
the union of the images of an object in the right and left eye into
one total image, with the rise of peculiar total feelings out of their
partial feelings, as we have observed in the organic feeling and in the
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