The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
Now, if we strive rigorously to simplify the phenomena in either of
these ways, we soon become aware of inadequacies in our method. Any
particular cognition, for example, or recollection, is accounted for
on the soul-theory by being referred to the spiritual faculties of
Cognition or of Memory. These faculties themselves are thought of as
absolute properties of the soul; that is, to take the case of memory,
no reason is given why we should remember a fact as it happened, except
that so to remember it constitutes the essence of our Recollective
Power. We may, as spiritualists, try to explain our memory's failures
and blunders by secondary causes. But its _successes_ can invoke no
factors save the existence of certain objective things to be remembered
on the one hand, and of our faculty of memory on the other. When,
for instance, I recall my graduation-day, and drag all its incidents
and emotions up from death's dateless night, no mechanical cause can
explain this process, nor can any analysis reduce it to lower terms or
make its nature seem other than an ultimate _datum_, which, whether we
rebel or not at its mysteriousness, must simply be taken for granted if
we are to psychologize at all. However the associationist may represent
the present ideas as thronging and arranging themselves, still, the
spiritualist insists, he has in the end to admit that _something_,
be it brain, be it 'ideas,' be it 'association,' _knows_ past time
_as_ past, and fills it out with this or that event. And when the
spiritualist calls memory an 'irreducible faculty,' he says no more
than this admission of the associationist already grants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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