If we look at the history of mental science we are immediately struck by
diverse tendencies among its several cultivators, the consequence being a
certain opposition of schools and some repugnance among their disciples.
Apart from the great contrasts between minds that are teleological or
biological and minds that are mechanical, between the animists and the
associationists in psychology, there is the entirely different contrast
between what I will call the classic-academic and the romantic type of
imagination. The former has a fondness for clean pure lines and noble
simplicity in its constructions. It explains things by as few principles
as possible and is intolerant of either nondescript facts or clumsy
formulas. The facts must lie in a neat assemblage, and the psychologist
must be enabled to cover them and "tuck them in" as safely under his
system as a mother tucks her babe in under the down coverlet on a winter
night. Until quite recently all psychology, whether animistic or
associationistic, was written on classic-academic lines. The consequence
was that the human mind, as it is figured in this literature, was largely
an abstraction. Its normal adult traits were recognized. A sort of
sun-lit terrace was exhibited on which it took its exercise. But where
that terrace stopped, the mind stopped; and there was nothing farther
left to tell of in this kind of philosophy but the brain and the other
physical facts of nature on the one hand, and the absolute metaphysical
ground of the universe on the other.
But of late years the terrace has been overrun by romantic improvers, and
to pass to their work is like going from classic to gothic architecture,
where few outlines are pure and where uncouth forms lurk in the shadows.
A mass of mental phenomena are now seen in the shrubbery beyond the
parapet. Fantastic, ignoble, hardly human, or frankly non-human are some
of these new candidates for psychological description. The menagerie and
the madhouse, the nursery, the prison, and the hospital, have been made
to deliver up their material. The world of mind is shown as something
infinitely more complex than was suspected; and whatever beauties it may
still possess, it has lost at any rate the beauty of academic neatness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account