The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
Now what I contend for, and accumulate examples to show, is that
'tendencies' are not only descriptions from without, but that they are
among the _objects_ of the stream, which is thus aware of them from
within, and must be described as in very large measure constituted of
_feelings_ of _tendency_, often so vague that we are unable to name
them at all. It is, in short, the re-instatement of the vague to its
proper place in our mental life which I am so anxious to press on the
attention. Mr. Galton and Prof. Huxley have, as we shall see in Chapter
XVIII, made one step in advance in exploding the ridiculous theory of
Hume and Berkeley that we can have no images but of perfectly definite
things. Another is made in the overthrow of the equally ridiculous
notion that, whilst simple objective qualities are revealed to our
knowledge in subjective feelings, relations are not. But these reforms
are not half sweeping and radical enough. What must be admitted is
that the definite images of traditional psychology form but the very
smallest part of our minds as they actually live. The traditional
psychology talks like one who should say a river consists of nothing
but pailsful, spoonsful, quartpotsful, barrelsful, and other moulded
forms of water. Even were the pails and the pots all actually standing
in the stream, still between them the free water would continue to
flow. It is just this free water of consciousness that psychologists
resolutely overlook. Every definite image in the mind is steeped and
dyed in the free water that flows round it. With it goes the sense of
its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to
us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead. The significance, the
value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra that surrounds and
escorts it,--or rather that is fused into one with it and has become
bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh; leaving it, it is true, an
image of the same _thing_ it was before, but making it an image of that
thing newly taken and freshly understood.
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