such a system of necessary changes in the positions of the lasting
atoms.
For the psychologist there is no hope of finding such necessity in the
mental processes. The point is not that psychology is to-day too far
removed from the fulfillment of such an ideal, the point is rather that
such an ideal would be meaningless for the psychologist. His materials,
the psychical contents of consciousness, are by their nature unfit to
enter into such necessary connections; they cannot do it because they
cannot last. The physical object, we saw, is the object which is common
property, which we all feel in common, which must thus exist for all
time. The things in nature may burn down or decay, but no atom of them
can ever disappear from the universe, each must enter into new and ever
new combinations and last through all changes. The psychical thing, on
the other hand, can exist only for the one immediate experience. Every
sensation which enters into my ideas or volitions or emotions is a new
creation of the instant which cannot last; each one flashes up and is
lost with the moment's experience. My will to-day may have the same aim
as my will of yesterday, but as psychical object, my will to-day is a
new will, is a new creation in every pulse beat of my life. I must will
it again, I cannot store it up. And my joy of to-day can never be as
psychical fact the same joy which I may have to-morrow. Mental objects
as such, as psychological material, are not destined to last. It has no
meaning whatever to think of their being kept over until another time.
It is a coarse materialism to conceive the mental contents like pebbles
which may remain on the road from one day to another. Our ideas and
feelings are mental appearances which have their existence in the act of
the one experience; each new experience must be an entirely new
creation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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