The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
Phrenology hardly does more than restate the problem. To answer the
question, "Why do I like children?" by saying, "Because you have a
large organ of philoprogenitiveness," but renames the phenomenon
to be explained. What _is_ my philoprogenitiveness? Of what mental
elements does it consist? And how _can_ a part of the brain be its
organ? A science of the mind must reduce such complex manifestations
as 'philoprogenitiveness' to their _elements_. A science of the brain
must point out the functions of _its_ elements. A science of the
relations of mind and brain must show how the elementary ingredients
of the former correspond to the elementary functions of the latter.
But phrenology, except by occasional coincidence, takes no account of
elements at all. Its 'faculties,' as a rule, are fully equipped persons
in a particular mental attitude. Take, for example, the 'faculty' of
language. It involves in reality a host of distinct powers. We must
first have images of concrete things and ideas of abstract qualities
and relations; we must next have the memory of words and then the
capacity so to associate each idea or image with a particular word
that, when the word is heard, the idea shall forthwith enter our mind.
We must conversely, as soon as the idea arises in our mind, associate
with it a mental image of the word, and by means of this image we must
innervate our articulatory apparatus so as to reproduce the word as
physical sound. To read or to write a language other elements still
must be introduced. But it is plain that the faculty of spoken language
alone is so complicated as to call into play almost all the elementary
powers which the mind possesses, memory, imagination, association,
judgment, and volition. A portion of the brain competent to be the
adequate seat of such a faculty would needs be an entire brain in
miniature,--just as the faculty itself is really a specification of the
entire man, a sort of homunculus.
Yet just such homunculi are for the most part the phrenological organs.
As Lange says:
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