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THE end of man’s being is the knowledge, or vision, of God. The secret of his life is to be found not within but without. The purpose of these Lectures is to show that this supplies a principle as necessary to the science of psychology as to theology.
The first problem is that of psychological method. The claims of Behaviourism examined and set aside, and the method established of observation interpreted by introspection.
This gives four main data :
The feeling or ‘ affect ’ as an essential aspect of experience.
Freedom, with purpose as its correlate.
The fundamental experience of worth, or value.
The experience of ‘ otherness,’ which always involves an ultimate personal relationship.
It is wholly unscientific to ignore these data. A fuller exposition of them in the light of the work of James, of Behaviourism, of the psycho-analysts, and of McDougall and Shand reveals the breakdown of all attempts to apply mechanistic principles to the mind. Its purposive aspect, when further analysed, is found to be only in part a principle of self-determination. Its essential background is a relationship of self and other, within which the self comes to be established in its full personal relationship. This reveals itself, in a phrase common to Freudianism and Christianity, in the ‘ love-life.’
Thus psychology itself prepares the way for a view of life in which the principle is love and the goal is God.
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When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
The moon and the stars, which thou has ordained ;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him ?
And the son of man, that thou visitest him ?
For thou hast made him but little lower than God,
And crownest him with glory and honour.
Ps. viii. 3-5.
‘ FINAL and perfect blessedness there cannot be save in the vision of the divine essence.’ So Aquinas, with the austerity of the philosopher-mystic. [1] ‘ It should not be doubted,’ says Anselm, less austerely, ‘ that rational beings were made righteous by God, that they might be blessed in enjoying Him,’ [2] And, least austerely of all, Augustine: ‘ This is our supreme reward, that we should enjoy Him to the full.’ [3] Quem nosse vivere, says the ancient Collect, woefully over-translated in the ‘ in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life ’ of our familiar English version. And the thought goes back to that crowning outburst of Hebrew psalmody :
Whom have I in heaven but thee ?
And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.
My flesh and my heart faileth,
But God is the rock of my heart and my portion lor ever. [4]
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Such is the Christian doctrine of the true nature of man’s being, a doctrine vividly implicit in that ‘ Our Father ’ which has been more to Christianity even than the Creeds. It is the purpose of these lectures to show that this doctrine is more than a barren pietism or an empty hope. Without it the study of human nature is doomed to confusion and incompleteness. Without it the analyses of philosophy and psychology lose themselves in unending distinctions. Only in its light can we find that unity and coherence which is the basic assumption of philosophy and psychology alike, and which philosophers and psychologists so often seek in vain. The secret of man’s life is to be sought in that which lies not within but without. It is not simply by some inner impulse that we are drawn upwards and onwards. ‘ Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it find rest in Thee.’ [5] Not only our salvation but, in a very real sense, our sanity is of God.
The material with which we shall mainly be concerned is that provided by the so-called New Psychology. For though human nature has been observed and studied since the dawn of human thought there can be no question that the discoveries, real and alleged, of the last thirty years have set its problems in a new light. To every science there come occasional periods of sudden and startling development, consequent upon the invention of new modes of enquiry, or the statement of new general principles. Such a period has undoubtedly come to the science of psychology in the opening years of this century, and is now perhaps drawing to its close. The genius of William James and Freud has especially caught the attention of the public, and a host of investigators are busily engaged in working out the practical and theoretical results of their teaching. The world has been a little shocked, and vastly [ p. 5 ] intrigued. The applications of new techniques to education, mental therapy, criminology, and industry are only at the beginning, but it is already clear that a great future is before them. For religion there has been great danger. The believer, who shall not make haste, finds himself faced with a rapidly changing situation, and with confident assertions that his faith is an illusion, an illusion that has no future, resting as it does upon complexes or endocrine reactions. And not unnaturally he is troubled, and does not readily see that all new knowledge is of God, and shall turn to His glory. The mortality amongst false gods shall indeed be great. But truth, being true, has nothing to fear.
Obviously it would be impossible, within the scope of these lectures, to give even a brief outline of the more important schools of modern psychological thought, nor, in fact, is it greatly relevant to our purpose. Our endeavour will rather be to discern some of the fundamental assumptions beneath the mass of empirical material, to observe the general tendencies of psychological enquiry, and amid a multitude of hypotheses to select those few which seem likely to become established. We shall not be concerned overmuch with descriptions of religious behaviour. Such descriptions have been given again and again in the series of books which began with Starbuck’s Psychology of Religion and James’s Varieties of Religious Experience, and of which Dr. Selbie’s Psychology of Religion is the most recent, and not the least distinguished. That ground does not, at the moment, need further exploration. The literature is full and adequate on the empirical side, and even the amateur can find ample guidance if he desires a more detailed study of the subject. But the amateur who seeks an intelligible and defensible psychological position of his own, unencumbered by overmuch detail, a position which will enable him to read intelligently and to judge securely, will find, [ p. 6 ] as things stand to-day, but little help. [6] It will be our aim to see whether indications cannot be found, in the confused mass of modern psychological literature, of such a simplification of outlook, and whether we cannot find some general principle, fundamental to human nature, which will not only stand the test of psychological analysis but also allow an account of religious experience which does not destroy those values which have meant so much to man.
In the opening sentences of this lecture a principle of the most fundamental character was laid down in theological terms, the principle of the dependence of man’s life upon God, and its goal in God. So stated, this is not a principle of psychology, and it is impossible that it should be derived directly from any form of psychological enquiry. For the methods of psychology are the methods of science, and science assumes, but can never prove, the objective reality of the matter with which it is concerned. We must not expect, therefore, to find, as a result of our examination, a new form of the theistic arguments. [7] These stand, both as to validity and as to criticism, exactly where they did before. We shall be concerned later with the meaning which the word ‘ God ’ has come to have for man and with the correspondence of that meaning with reality. Here, at the outset, let two implications of this theological principle [ p. 7 ] suffice : first, that it is in a relationship with that which lies beyond himself that man’s personality achieves its full development ; and secondly, that this relationship is itself essentially personal. If upon investigation of modern psychological theories we find that these two propositions fall naturally into line with them, and help to make them intelligible, then we can fairly say that while we have added nothing to the logical cogency of the proof of the existence of God, we have at least established a natural basis upon which that proof may rest. To this investigation, then, we may now turn.
At the outset we are faced with an issue as to the methods legitimate in psychological enquiry, and upon this issue we must needs be partisans. In the so-called ‘ Battle of Behaviourism ’ [8] there is no room for compromise. If only Behaviourism itself were concerned the matter would not be serious, since Behaviourism can be trusted soon to find its place as one of the lesser auxiliary sciences, of little theoretical importance, though of high value empirically in its relations to physiology on the one hand and sociology on the other. The confident manner in which it eliminates consciousness, [9] responsibility, and freedom, and more recently emotion and instinct [10] as well, from the problems of human conduct is a mere absurdity, though of course it is legitimate enough if it is desired to examine those problems in a manner almost as remote from actual life as the dissecting-room itself. But a real danger arises from the fact that the principles explicitly avowed by the Behaviourists are implicit throughout a wide range of modern [ p. 8 ] psychological work, being indeed the general principles of experimental science, [11] and it is of the greatest importance to recognize them clearly. Psychology has a perfect right to be an experimental science, purely objective and descriptive in character, but in that case it has no bearing at all upon the ultimate problems of religion, and is only of secondary importance for the understanding of human conduct.
The claim of the Behaviourist is that introspection must be rigorously excluded as unscientific, incompatible with exact observation and measurement, and in itself individual, a personal equation with quantities not only unknown but not even necessarily constant. [12] But, in fact, it was by the methods of introspection and not of experiment that the first great modern advances in mental analysis became possible. Locke is the founder alike of the Facultypsychology and of the Associationist-psychology, though in both respects his inspiration really comes ultimately from Aristotle. [13] The modern study of instinct simply rests upon the possibility of observing the impulses which arise within us, and of noting how we feel and how we act under their influence. This is exactly the method followed by Aristotle in developing his list of the virtues, and by Locke’s successors in developing their system of human faculties. Obviously the whole method depends, first, upon careful [ p. 9 ] introspection, and, secondly, upon the assumption that other men feel and act as we do ourselves. But this assumption is not demonstrable by any scientific method. It is an act of faith, and its subjective character may readily be illustrated by the divergence of view which exists among psychologists as to the very existence of an impulse of pugnacity. The lists of the instincts given by different writers vary, in fact, very widely indeed, [14] and the personal equation of the observer is frequently in clear evidence. It is small wonder that Dr. J. B. Watson, in his latest ultimatum to non-Behaviourists, [15] has added instinct to the already long list of familiar things that do not exist.
So, again, the development of the Association-theories, which are essential to the whole range of psycho-analysis, essential, that is, if that complex technique is ever to have a scientific basis, begins with the observation of mental process. Association by similarity, by difference, by contiguity, and the rest, are observed facts, but observed by introspection before experimental methods were ever applied to them.
More than a century had passed after Locke’s time before experiment came to be used at all freely. Its findings were subjected to interpretation at every point, and it was recognized that in the end the psychologist must find this interpretation by looking inwards and not outwards. We can have first-hand knowledge of the mind nowhere save within our own minds.
To-day we are told that such introspection is wholly unscientific. The facts of experiment must tell their own story, though how a fact is to do any such thing passes comprehension. Psychology must insist upon its scientific [ p. 10 ] status and guard itself at every point against the presuppositions of the observer. And so we are faced with a strange paradox. The physical sciences are being driven further and further away from ordinary conceptions of matter and even of space, reducing them to systems of equations which are in essence an analysis of mental process. Their fundamental principle has been termed, whether properly or not, relativity. [16] It is suggested that even the atom possesses individuality and that its behaviour as an individual is indeterminate. And at this very time Behaviourists, by way of claiming their scientific status, are tending more and more to a mere vulgar^ realism, [17] denying me significance of the very mental processes which they are investigating, and contenting themselves with wholly superficial and external accounts of the behaviour in which these processes result.
This matter of Behaviourism is happily not serious on this side of the Atlantic, though even at this distance it is difficult to contemplate with equanimity the fact that in America, for every serious student of theology, a hundred enthusiastic disciples of Dr. Watson are busy with their child-clinics, their schedules of stimulus and response, and their multitudinous array of apparatus, preparing themselves to condition the reflexes of the community, by scientific methods which provide no clue whatever as to the values and purposes for which its reflexes should be so conditioned. But it has been worth our while to raise the issue, because the whole field of psychological investigation has its Behaviouristic aspect, and it is of the first importance to [ p. 11 ] realize that the material provided by external observation and experiment must not only be supplemented by the data of introspection but that it cannot be rightly interpreted, or safely used, without their aid. [18]
Once admit the necessity of introspection as underlying any true science of the mind and a whole new range of facts comes into view. [19] It will be convenient at this point to enumerate, roughly and uncritically, those with which we shall be mainly concerned.
First of all, we have the affective aspect of experience. The events of life carry with them something more than the characteristic of happening. We feel their happening in various ways, so readily identifiable that such terms as fear, anger, joy, sorrow, are familiar and immediately understood in common speech. We all know how it feels to be afraid, or angry, or joyful, or sorrowful, and this knowledge is derived from within.
Secondly, we have the fact of freedom, quite unmistakable, though singularly difficult to define. Nothing could be further from freedom than the possibility of doing anything whatever, irrespective of precedent causes. Such action would be merely chaotic, and the least free of all things is chaos. With freedom we thus find correlated an awareness of purpose, expressing itself in its lower forms as a tendency or direction, and in its fullest development as the conscious and steadfast choice of an end, in such wise that end and means are not separated but are articulated into a single whole life-purpose. The essence of freedom lies in man’s power to choose between purposes. Freedom to act is a dubious, perhaps a meaningless, phrase, for the action is determined when purpose, freely chosen in the light of the end, uses circumstance for its fulfilment.
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Thirdly, we have the experience of worth or value, which accompanies the purposive choice, and constitutes its moral character. In making our choice of ends we are aware of them as good, in the broad Platonic sense which includes the aesthetic values. And this awareness of the good as good has an absolute, a compulsive, character, which completely resists analysis. We can compare goods, standardize them, schematize them, but the fact of value, worth, goodness, is in itself final and irreducible.
And lastly, and most difficult of all to state clearly, we have the experience of otherness. We are continually aware, so far as we are aware of ourselves at all, of a relationship with that which is not ourselves. What Von Hugel has termed ‘ givenness ’ is not characteristic only of religious experience. It is fundamental to the whole life-process, as we find ourselves aware of living. In one of its aspects it is simply that consciousness which seems so irrelevant to the Behaviourists, for in consciousness that which is conscious goes out to meet that of which it is conscious. Or, again, we may say that in introspection we become aware of the ego, that which experiences. But this ego is never pure, self-contained, and self-conditioned. [20] It cannot be observed in isolation from that to which it is related. We shall see later on reason for thinking that this ego-other relationship has always inherently a personal aspect, that the ego looks beyond itself not to things but to persons, and that things have only meaning, perhaps only existence, as the surrogates and vehicles of such personal relationship. And if we are to vindicate this position we shall require inevitably the hypothesis of a personal God.
Before we deal in more detail with these data of introspection we must observe that it is wholly unscientific either to ignore them or to explain them away. The attempt to [ p. 13 ] express them in terms of something else, supposedly more simple, would not destroy their significance even if it were successful. Vigorous efforts have been made, for example, to show how the not-conscious has risen by not-conscious mechanisms to an illusion of consciousness, or how the wholly determinate has developed, through determinate causes, an illusion of freedom. But though some psychologists seem to have found a certain satisfaction in such explanations, they have in fact explained nothing whatever. At the most they have only called their problem by another name. To take a simple analogy, it may be true that water is a combination of the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, but when this is said water is not explained away. Water and its properties are simply part of the truth of hydrogen and oxygen, as hydrogen and oxygen are part of the truth of water. This is no reduction of the facts to something simpler. From the point of view of direct experience the explanation is more and not less complex than that from which the enquiry started. And so with consciousness, or freedom. These are the simple things, readily comprehended and observed. It is the so-called explanations that are complex, abstract, and obscure. And we have a perfect right to judge between different psychological systems according as they take these simple and primary factors into account or not.
We start, then, with the affect, or feeling, this latter term being convenient but highly ambiguous unless we carefully distinguish the experience as observed from the experience as felt. The distinction becomes clearer if we note that it is possible to be aware of strong feeling without being directly conscious of the experience to which it is attached. The importance of feeling was noted by James, and it has been given a primary position by such writers as McDougall and Shand [21] in their analysis of instinct and the emotions.
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The theory of the affects which characterize the different types of instinctive behaviour, and of their organization into emotional systems, is perhaps one of the most secure results of modern psychology, and we shall have to revert to it frequently. The point which concerns us here is that in the affect we are closer to the living moment of experience than in the observation which transforms that experience into a concept, capable of being stored up as a memory. Life is more than history, and this is as true of individuals as it is of nations. So soon as we begin to think of life as a series of events, capable of being noted and recorded, we have already destroyed its essential character. Herein lies the fallacy of all the atomistic philosophies, from Hume to Mr. Bertrand Russell. It is the fallacy even of Kant’s incomparable analysis in the Critique of Pure Reason, which depends upon this serial view. [22] For the essence of life is not that it is successive but that it is an experienced whole in so far as it is present to our awareness at all. And it is in the affect, the feeling of the experience, that this unity of experience expresses itself most directly. Bradley [23] in his [ p. 15 ] striking description of the ‘ stream of thought ’ declares that life is not a series of point-events but rather resembles a patch of light upon the current of a river. There is an area of clear definition and the edges shade off vaguely into the darkness, but the patch of light is seen as one. It is possible to analyse it into parts, and to carry this analysis out in more and more minute detail. But this whole process is secondary and unnatural, the work of that understanding which ever follows the living moment, conducting unending post-mortem examinations upon that which has just passed away. As we judge, we slay. And life goes on, creative and new-born, eluding thought.
It was at one time fashionable to hold the ideo-motor theory, the view that an idea present to the mind tends to produce, by some impulse of its own, the appropriate response. [24] This theory is, in fact, though it is never, I think, [ p. 16 ] explicitly stated by him, the basis of Freud’s conception of mental process, in which the individual concrete symbols play a curiously dominant part. Here Freud’s psychology seems to be astonishingly out of date. He has accepted quite naively the doctrine of the association of ideas, as we find it in Locke and his successors. And in this theory little is left to the mind itself. Ideas are linked together through resemblance, contiguity, and the rest, presumably on the simple ground that they have a natural tendency of their own to behave in this way. In Freud’s system the sexual impulse upon which he lays such great stress makes use of this ideal mechanism—symbolization, as he calls it—to attain satisfaction in a form which the censor, himself only a transmuted form of that impulse, can allow. [25] But the impulse does not create the symbolic structure of which it makes use. That seems to be the work of the ideas themselves.
The modern tendency is to transfer this impulsive power from the idea or image to the affect. The change of outlook has come gradually. The first step was to argue that an idea gained dominance when it became associated with an idea of pleasure or pain. Thus the general Associationist conception of the mind as consisting wholly in a complex of ideas was preserved for a time, making possible incidentally the unpleasant philosophy of Hedonism, with its unending quest for that pleasure which, if sought as a concrete entity in its own right, for ever vanishes in the moment of capture. This position reappears in the Freudian assertion of the ‘ Pleasure-Pain ’ principle, [26] though the terms Lust and Unlust undoubtedly give this a wider meaning than the English equivalent suggests. But in such a [ p. 17 ] psychological theory as that of Shand, [27] it is the whole group of affects, developed and organized into emotional systems, which carries the impulse to action. And this has great theoretical advantages. The ideas are infinitely varied and immense difficulties arise when we ask why it is that in this particular case we note similarity and in that case our attention is fixed upon difference. But affects are few in kind, and homogeneous. Fear is always fear ; anger is always anger. It is probable that this homogeneity of the affect is one of the most important factors in the psychological explanation of memory. In this respect at least the present event which acts as a stimulus of recall is literally one with the past which is recalled. There is a certain timelessness of feeling which is most suggestive. [28]
But this is due to the inseparable unity of the affective system with the ego itself. The unity of the ego from past to present, with reference to a future in which that unity will still remain, is again one of those things which we know and cannot prove to be true. The psychologist makes the assumption as simply and necessarily as any one of us. He may not care overmuch to talk about the soul, [29] and indeed that term, admirable enough in its theological use and as guarded by the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, is apt as it stands to suggest a division of human nature satisfying only to primitive Animists and to Dr. McDougall, [30] [ p. 18 ] and of ill omen when we ask in what immortality might possibly consist. But the continuing and abiding ego is a basic fact as to which we need have no doubts, and can have no doubts. Those writers who have tried to show how the ego came to exist do not touch the supreme mystery of the fact that it does exist. [31] Their argument, so far as it is true at all, is simply an account of the way in which the ego becomes aware of its existence, a very different, and a not very important, matter.
It is interesting to notice that in theology the stress upon feeling came earlier than it did in psychology. The genius of Schleiermacher forced the theological world to recognize the living and felt moment of religious life as prior to any theological statement. [32] Religion, he says, is a teleological piety. What matters more than any particular belief is that we should be religious. ‘ God-consciousness,’ ’ Christ-consciousness,’ are more than Creeds. Often he calls this simply ‘ feeling,’ and the feeling of which he is speaking is clearly affective. It is filled with warmth and emotion. In a word, it is alive. From the time of Schleiermacher onwards the affective aspect of religion has been fully recognized, and there has been only too much danger that, just because it is so obviously fundamental, its natural and necessary counterpart in a rational theology may fall [ p. 19 ] altogether into disrepute. We have seen the Ritschlians reducing theology to value-judgments, and if that mystery of Ritschlianism means anything it is Schleiermacher’s ‘ feeling ’ again, the affective aspect of religious behaviour. Thus came the Liberal Protestant reduction of religion to ethics. William James, again, seeking to determine which experiences are to be admitted in evidence as religious, speaks in terms of affects. ‘ There must be something solemn, serious, and tender,’ he says, ‘ about any attitude which we denominate religious.’ [33] And to-day we find Otto [34] defining religion by mystery, terror, and fascination, blended into awe.
Yet in the very nature of things all such treatments of the nature of religion are unconvincing. They are true as far as they go, but they are inevitably incomplete. For just as feeling is closer to life than knowledge, so life itseli is more than the feeling of living. Definitions of religion which depend for their content upon feeling must inevitably fail. And religion has notoriously proved itself astonishingly difficult to define. [35] For religion is a matter between the soul or self, and God. And that which is between the self and God is just life, neither more nor less. To isolate part of life and to call it religious, is to degrade life and to destroy religion. That is why the God of our worship claims all or nothing. A divided allegiance He may not accept, if He is to be God.
We turn next to freedom and its correlate, purpose. It is here that the clash between experimentaLand introspective psychology is most acute. For Behaviourism, of course, freedom can have no meaning at all, save in that general and unilluminating sense in which all things are [ p. 20 ] free to do exactly what they are doing. Freedom and necessity in this case mean exactly the same. Anselm [36] calls it necessitas sequens, the necessity which the event itself creates, and of which the formula is ‘ Whatever was, .was of necessity ; whatever is, is of necessity ; whatever will be, will be of necessity.’ This necessity is exactly that of the current popular phrase, ‘ We shall all die when our time comes,’ a fatalistic formula which does not in the least prevent those who use it from taking every possible precaution against an untimely death. It is a very different matter, as Anselm points out, when we turn to ‘ precedent and efficient necessity,’ [37] ‘ There is precedent necessity, which causes the event, and sequent necessity, which the event causes,’ And he goes on to contrast human speech with the rotation of the heavens, in words which, after a hundred pages of persistent cross-examination by his disciple Boso, have perhaps a touch of quiet humour, ’ It is sequent necessity causing nothing, but itself caused, when I say that you are talking because you re talking. For when I say this I signify that when you are talking nothing can cause you not to be talking, not that anything [38] compels you to talk. For the violence of natural conditions compels the heavens to revolve, but no necessity makes you talk/
Such a quotation brings us to the very heart of the difficulties of the modern psychologist. For the problem which he has set himself to solve is just the problem of the necessity which makes Boso talk. Why do any of us talk, or carry out any of those actions which go to make up our life-story ? Is there simply some ‘ violence of natural conditions ’ upon us, and nothing more, or have we in ourselves the dignity of ‘ precedent and efficient necessity,’ [ p. 21 ] that purposive freedom in which, to however small a degree, we mould our own lives.
Here, naturally enough, the psychologists differ. There is general agreement among them as to the existence of some kind of life-impulse. Even the most rigid of experimentalists must concede this, since his experiments are conducted upon living and continuing organisms, and not upon corpses. No psychologist could possibly confuse his science with anatomy. But as to the nature and operation of this life-impulse the very widest range of view may be found. And here again we shall find ourselves compelled to take a decisive stand, and perhaps in the interests of a true psychology to claim a little more than would be granted us even by some of those writers with whom, in the main, we agree.
The whole method and aim of experimental psychology is to reduce to a minimum those aspects of human behaviour which are indeterminate and unpredictable. And it is of great importance to realize that this method is valid for a much larger area of human life than, at first sight, we might be prepared to allow. [39] Reflexes, simple, complex, and conditioned, exist beyond all doubt, and form an important element in our total response to any situation. And when the more absurd claims of Behaviourism have been happily forgotten there will remain a large body of most valuable experimental work, adding enormously to the already vast achievements of biology. The fundamental presupposition of all this is determinism, the operation of strict laws of cause and effect. It might not unsuitably be termed ‘ mechanistic freedom,’ the freedom of a machine constructed to respond to certain situations in [ p. 22 ] certain ways, and entirely expressing in its behaviour the law of its construction. So far as experimental science seeks for fixed laws at all it must necessarily be along these lines, and it can give no explanation at all of the inner movement of causality, the impulse which carries cause over into effect. Behaviourism leaves the matter there, merely denying the existence of these minor philosophical difficulties. ‘ It is different from physiology,’ says Watson, frankly enough, ’ only in the grouping of its problems, not in fundamentals or in central view-point,’ [40] Thus the Behaviourist claims, and may well be allowed to take, his true place, and we shall have little occasion to refer to him further.
When we turn to the analytic^schools of thought which have arisen on the basis of Freud’s theories, we find a very striking and hopeful development of outlook. Freud himself, especially in his earlier work, must be classed as definitely mechanistic^ and deterministic. [41] But the mechanism is now applied to mental process and we are no longer upon the borders of physiology. There is no denial of the existence of consciousness, or of the ego itself. [42] The greater part of Freud’s material is, in fact, derived from the introspection of his patients, who are asked to report faithfully and uncritically exactly what is passing in their minds. And Freud recognizes to the full that there must be some lifeimpulse behind the whole process. That he sees one of the main aspects of this impulse in sex, a term to which he gives a very wide connotation, [43] is a comparatively unimportant [ p. 23 ] detail. It is, as he himself has said again and again, for reasons wholly unscientific that criticisms of his theory have turned almost entirely upon its sexual implications, and the unblushing prominence which he has given to sexual facts. [44] But science has no right to blush, and, however unsuitable his writings may be for general reading, no serious student of the facts revealed in modern analysis can doubt the essential truth and the clinicaHmportance of much of his work. Sex may be a dangerous topic to handle, but that very fact is witness to its immense significance. Its dangers are in no way diminished if we ignore its existence, or treat it with surreptitious and hypocritically horrified whisperings, forgetting that it is part of that creation which God made, and saw that it was good.
The real danger of Freudianism lies in its mechanistic conception of the mind. The impulse of life is for him a system of forces, as closed and determinate in their application as the forces of physics. They can be summed up as three, the impulse to live, the impulse to pass life on in procreation, and the impulse to die. [45] And the principle which controls this is itself interpreted as mechanical in its operation. ‘ It seems,’ he says, ‘ that our entire psychical activity is bent upon procuring pleasure and avoiding pain, that is automatically regulated by the PLEASURE-PRINCIPLE.’ [46]
Freud recognizes also a ’ reality-principle,’ by which he means that the hard facts of life must also be taken into account. But this is again viewed as operating upon lines strictly mechanistic, and as securing what pleasure is possible by transforming and controlling our [ p. 24 ] attempts at self-gratification. A further quotation will illustrate this :
It is quite plain that the sexual instincts pursue the aim of gratification from the beginning to the end of their development ; throughout they keep up this primary function without alteration. At first the other group, the Ego-instincts, do the same ; but under the influence of necessity, their mistress, they soon learn to replace the pleasure-principle by a modification of it. … Thus trained, the Ego becomes ‘ reasonable ’ ; is no longer controlled by the pleasure-principle, but follows the REALITY-PRINCIPLE, which at bottom also seeks pleasure although a delayed and diminished pleasure, one which is assured by its realization of fact, its relation to reality. [47]
Although this exposition remains mechanistic in principle we can at least welcome the recognition of the objective facts of life as significant and valuable. Further, the adumbration of this ‘ pleasure-principle,’ however inadequate it may appear in this form, is at least a step towards the admission of an end towards which the activities of life are directed. It is the first rung of the ladder which leads us subjectively to holiness and objectively to God.
In Freud’s later writings the inadequacy of his original thesis comes clearly into view. His attention is turned to what he had already called the Ego-instincts, and it is worth while to quote his words, since this aspect of his work is constantly ignored. ‘ Psycho-analysis has never forgotten that non-sexual instincts also exist ; it has been built upon a sharp distinction between sexual instincts and Egoinstincts ; and in the face of all opposition it has insisted, not that they arise from sexuality, but that the neuroses owe their origin to a conflict between the Ego and sexuality,’ [48] When he comes to study the ego more closely he finds the creative tendency of the sexual impulses, themselves ultimately only creative in the sense of being conservative of the [ p. 25 ] species, continually opposed to the tendency of the organism to secure its own continuance. And thus, curiously enough, the ego becomes identified with the refusal to develop. Its tendency is indeed rather towards retrogression. Freud actually speaks of it as bound up with ‘ the instincts which lead towards death.’ [49] The aim of the ego is to persist as it is, to secure its own permanence, to repeat that which has been. Freud denies the very existence of any impulse in man towards a higher perfection, and regards the apparent evidence for such an impulse, which has been the main support of so many attempts to find a natural basis for religion, as arising solely from ‘ that repression of instinct upon which what is most valuable in human culture is built,’ [50] For such repressed instincts never cease to seek their own appropriate satisfaction, a satisfaction most naturally found in the repetition of the primary experience with which it was originally connected. Thus the tendency of the ego is to revert to the non-personal and non-creative. Das Ich is bound up with das Es, and as soon as the stream of life passes on, the final objective^ the individual is death. The longing for quiescence, for peace at the last, the Nirvana-principle, as Miss Low has termed it, [51] is theoretically as fundamental to Freudianism as the creative but temporary sex-impulse.
Again we need not deny the truth and importance of this brilliant generalization. One of the world’s greatest religious systems bears witness to its significance. And practically it is of immense value for the understanding of certain types of neurosis, the ‘ compulsion-neuroses,’ though we may add that unless we can supplement it by that which Freud denies, the creative possibilities inherent in human nature, understanding of these disorders does not lead us [ p. 26 ] hopefully towards their cure. Clearly it is not the whole truth and we must now turn to the attempts which have been made to supplement it in a manner which indicates a brighter destiny for the individual and for the race.
Freud’s followers have diverged from their master mainly in two directions. In Adler’s Individual Psychology we have a theory still mechanistic in principle, but recognizing an end or goal of life far more adequate than that of Freud. ‘ We can best understand the manifold and diverse movement of the psyche as soon as our most general presupposition, that the psyche has as its objective the goal of superiority, is recognised.’ [52] In the broadest terms this is the universal end to which life is directed. It is the impulse of selfassertion, the basis of that bitter warfare of life in which the fittest survive. But Adler goes much further when he recognizes the significance of the individual. Cases are not the same. To understand a man we must understand his own individual life-plan, which expresses itself both as a final goal and as separate tendencies converging upon that goal. ‘ We insist,’ he says, ‘ that without worrying about the tendencies, milieu, and experiences, all psychical powers are under the control of a directive idea and all expressions of emotion, feeling, willing, acting, dreaming as well as psycho-pathological phenomena are permeated by one unified life-plan,’ Adler insists that this conception is dynamic and that herein it is an advance upon the ‘ static words and pictures,’ and the ‘ unified formulas,’ of the Freudian schools. Dynamic it may be, but it is still mechanistic in principle. It is as a result of what he terms ‘ the subjective evaluation,’ which is rather a permanent mood, or feeling, than a conscious system of judgments, that ‘ there arises, depending upon the unconscious technique of our thought-apparatus, an imagined goal, an attempt at [ p. 27 ] a planned final compensation and a life-plan,’ Here then we have the full recognition of a direction or tendency in the individual life. That Adler comes to wholly negative results as regards religion is due to his treatment of this tendency as a closed and determinate system for each individual. He carries us a little further than Freud, but still leaves us without any indication of an end or goal subserved by the whole system of individual ends. The way to God is not yet made plain. At the most he allows us to envisage a race of supermen, attaining for a brief hour, and perishing as they attain.
The other great analytic school is that of Jung, a writer of astonishing industry, learning, and perversity, with an almost incredible persistence in finding mythology where ordinary folk see facts. It is discouraging to the theologian to find that he takes his conception of Christianity from Drews and similar writers. In a whole series of passages in his Psychology of the Unconscious he treats the most plainly historical details of the life of Christ as examples of solar mythology, itself with an underlying and unconscious sexual significance. [53] A single quotation will suffice to illustrate his general outlook in its provoking inadequacy, and, as we shall see, in its strength :
Comparison with the Sun teaches us over and over again L*at the gods are libido. It is that part of us which is immortal, since it represents that bond through which we feel that in the race we are never extinguished. It is life from the life of mankind. Its springs, which well up from the depths of the unconscious, come, as does our life in general, from the root of the whole of humanity, since we are indeed only a twig broken off from the mother and transplanted. [54]
‘ The divine in us is the libido,’ he continues, and proceeds to expound this upon lines which render further quotation [ p. 28 ] impossible. But behind this obvious failure to understand either history or the religious conception of God, there is a principle of such importance that Jung’s psychology has become the basis of almost all the more living recent developments in psychotherapy. In this country it would be true, if paradoxical, to say that by far the majority of those who are engaged in the treatment of mental disorder are disciples of Jung, and that they disagree with almost everything that he has said. This principle is that of the creative quality of the fundamental impulses of life. The ‘ libido ’ in Jung is ‘ a continuous life impulse, a will to live which aims at attaining the creation of the whole species through the preservation of the individual.’ [55] At every point it is creative. Jung’s treatment of the neuroses looks not back to a disordered past but forward to new possibilities, developing along lines which the analyst can already observe as foreshadowed in the unconscious symbolisms of the patient. [56] But this is to the Freudian nothing short of heresy, since it breaks down the security of his determinism, the very basis of his claim to status as a scientist. No wonder that Freud declares that Jung has ceased to be a psycho-analyst and now aspires to be a prophet. [57] In truth it is the pupil who is more scientific than his master. For the creative impulse, which is freedom, is fundamental to human life, and if analysis is to have any future at all it must do full justice to the fact that life is governed by something" more than law. Creative striving towards a goal is more powerful than the goddess Necessity. [58] To ignore this fact, directly given in any unbiased attempt at introspection, is obviously to destroy science as well as hope.
[ p. 29 ]
We may take McDougall as representing a broader conception of psychology and its methods, representative both in the definite stand which he has made against Behaviourism, and in the firm basis upon which he has placed the study of instinct, subject to correction though this may be in all manner of details. [59] Here the implications of the theories of Jung and Adler are stated in the simplest of terms. Behaviour is purposive, and that which is not purposive is not behaviour. [60] It is the behaviour of a conscious, thinking, subject, [61] who is aware, however incompletely and vaguely, of an end in his action. [62] So far as his actions are mere movements not purposive, they cannot properly be called behaviour and they are not the subjectmatter of psychology, but of some other science, such as physics or physiology. Psychology has nothing to say as to the trajectory of a man falling freely from an aeroplane under the influence of gravity, or as to the contraction of the pupil of the eye when a strong light is flashed upon it. But wherever the action is related, however indirectly, to an end beyond itself, there we have behaviour properly so called. And since it is in the valuation and choice of ends that freedom consists, we find volition or free will to be a further datum which must not be ignored. [63]
[ p. 30 ]
The study of the instincts is peculiarly illuminating in this respect. Each instinct is marked by its own specific type of activity, often highly organized and complex. It has, further, its own peculiar quality of feeling or affect, clearly enough distinguished in introspection, though in some cases, such as the satisfaction of the appetites, or of the impulse of curiosity, these affects have no precise definition in popular speech. But in none of the instincts is the specific behaviour or the affect sufficiently isolated to make a precise analysis of our instinctive equipment at all an easy matter. The only simple mode of approach is to be found in the end which the instinct fulfils. James, in fact, has defined instinct_as ‘ a faculty of acting in such a way as to bring about certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance.’ [64] And when these ends are examined it is at once seen that instinct seeks its own satisfaction only in the service of ends which lie beyond itself, the maintenance of life in the individual, or in the race, and its protection from danger. To understand instinct at all we must seek its significance in the ego and in that wider whole of which the ego forms a part.
The weakness of all the psychologies of which we have been speaking, including that of McDougall, is that in their study of man they make man the end of their study. Thus they are unable to develop a system of values , which has for the Christian any validity at all. The values advocated [ p. 31 ] by any individual psychologist are not derived from his psychological theory, but from his own preferences and adjustments of impulse, his individual plan, as Adler would say. And psychology, as psychology, has no means of judging between these values. William James, discussing the value of saintliness, finds no criterion save ‘ practical common sense and the empirical method.’ [65] The one great danger is that the values accepted should be self-centred values, a danger into which McDougall falls, perhaps even more gravely than his Behaviourist opponents. They at least are purely empirical, and even saintliness would be observed by them as an interesting behaviour-type. But McDougall by his stress upon the self-regarding sentiment as the key to the development of the ego has been led into an ethic of self-sufficiency, closely akin to Stoicism, and utterly irreconcilable in principle with the Christian values. [66]
We need not say more at this stage as to this, the third, datum of introspection upon which we found it necessary to insist. For in discussing the problem of an ultimate standard of values we are brought to the most important psychological fact of all, the reference of life to that which lies beyond itself. This was our fourth datum of introspection, the awareness of otherness.
We have already found hints of this in the psychoanalysts. Freud’s recognition of a reality-principle is a starting-point, at least calling our attention to a realm of fact with which analysis has nothing to do. It is in a real world that mental mechanism operates. Ferenczi, quoted with approval by Freud, has carried the suggestion even further. ‘ One is obliged ’ he says, ‘ to gain familiarity with the idea of a tendency to persistence or regression governing organic life also, while the tendency to progress in development, adaptation, etc., is manifested only as [ p. 32 ] against external stimuli.’ [67] Freud himself speaks of ‘ external forces impelling towards adaptation.’ [68] And it is the presupposition of all the variant forms taken by the Darwinian theory of evolution that species attain and persist in their characteristic forms as the result of an environment which they do not themselves create. The most recent development of this type of thought is to be found in the Gestalt-psychologie,[69] with its emphasis upon structures or patterns, in which a single complex and interrelated situation in the environment evokes a complex response in the organism, which despite its complexity is nevertheless one. MacCurdy has made a brilliant attempt to show that these patterns which dominate and shape organic life are one and the same in the psychological and in the physiological spheres. [70] Perhaps there is as yet little more in this than had been already foreshadowed by Kant in his discussion of the organism as an interrelation of ends, a discussion which forms the climax of the three great Critiques, though it should really have been their starting-point. [71]
The reference to Kant reminds us of his insistence that it is rational being, or personality, which must always and [ p. 33 ] in all circumstances be treated as an end and not as a means. And this brings us to the most important suggestion of modern psychology for the understanding of religion. The relationship of self and other, within which the self comes to be established in its full individual status, is always in essence a personal relationship. A first indication of this can be found in Freud himself, when he declares that the essential life of man is the love-life, [72] a Christian phrase, and used in a sense which, despite the most deplorable failures to distinguish between moral values, is not as far removed from a Christian meaning as might at first sight appear. After all, it was a greater than Freud who used the simile of marriage to express the relation of Christ with His Church.
The hint given by Freud is worked out more fully in the generally accepted psychological doctrine of the sentiments, of which Shand has been the most successful exponent. [73] The essence of this doctrine is that man’s inherited store of instinctive tendencies are built up into emotions and dispositions, in a word into character, by direction upon objects which lie beyond their immediate ends. McDougall has especially stressed the significance of the object in this connection, [74] though the suggestion was originally due to Shand. [75] ‘ Our emotional dispositions tend to become organised in systems about the various objects and classes of objects that excite them.’ [76] Of all the sentiments the [ p. 34 ] most characteristic and comprehensive are love and hate, which under different circumstances press into service the impulses of the whole range of instincts and emotions. The wide range of the sentiments in linking together the emotional dispositions has been fully worked out by Shand, whose whole theory must be regarded as one of the most important pieces of pioneer work in recent years. In his later work he has especially considered the inner mechanism of the sentiments, in accordance with his well-known law : ‘ Every sentiment tends to include in its system all those emotions that are of service to its ends, and to exclude all those which are useless or antagonistic.’ [77]
For our purpose the importance of this theory is that the objects which play this immensely important role in human life, being, in fact, the very basis of its coherence and unity, are always, in the last analysis, personal. Thouless has suggested the subdivision of the sentiments into ‘ concrete particular, concrete general, and abstract. ’ [78] This arrangement has obvious empirical value. It is convenient to be able to distinguish the love of a child, love for children, and love for justice. [79] But here the Freudian analysis may give us a clue. When we come to investigate the real character of these apparently higher, more abstract, more disinterested sentiments, we find at once that they rest directly upon simple and direct personal relationship. All alike are modes of love and hate, and love is incapable of resting upon a void. It is always love seeking an object loved. The particular concrete sentiment, in its personal aspect, is the highest and not the lowest form which sentiments can take, and it is in turning out from ourselves to others, and to Another, that our personal life becomes a reality. There is the strange possibility open to us of [ p. 35 ] refusing love. McDougal’s stress upon the self-regarding sentiment at least bears witness to the dreadful possibility of refusing the true way of growth, making ourselves the object towards which we turn, and so forming a character self-reliant indeed, since it has become its own god and for a short season it has its worship. But we cannot form sentiments about things. Always the thing is a symbol and significant of some personal end beyond itself.
Here then we have our foundation for the belief that the life is a matter between God and the souls of men. It is only as yet a foundation and psychology as psychology has told us nothing directly about God at all. But if it has shown us that it is not without good warrant that we look upon life as free, purposive, responsible, looking to ends in and beyond itself, and finding its climax in love, then we have no ill starting-point for our quest into that mystery of human life which expresses itself as religion and of which the goal is God.
Summa Theol. i. Q. iii. Art. 8 : Ultima et perfecta beatitude non potest esse nisi in visione divinae essentiae. ↩︎
Cur Dens Homo, ii. i : Rationalem naturam a Deo factam esse justam, ut illo fruendo beata esset, dubitari non debet. ↩︎
De Doct. Christ, i. 22 : Haec autem merces summa est ut eo perfruamur. ↩︎
Ps. lxxiii. 25, 26. ↩︎
Augustine, Confessions, i. I. ↩︎
The confusion is not limited to the Psychology of Religion. Spearman (The Nature of Intelligence and the Principles of Cognition, pp. 23 ff.) makes exactly the same complaint as to general psychology. He cites the systematic works of Ziehen, Mercier, Tansley, and Watson. ‘ In no two of these does the matter seem to deserve even the same name. What a contrast is offered by the unquestionably sound sciences, as physics or chemistry ! In these the divergences always remain confined to points of detail ; in psychology they reach out to the very foundations, even to the whole terminology itself.’ In the educational, medical, and industrial successes of recent psychology he declares that the systematic treatment of the subject has played no active part whatever. And the work of the laboratories is hardly used at all in the bulk of the text-books. ↩︎
Cf. Ward, Psychological Principles, p. 358, and, for a general attempt to estimate the positive value of the psychological study of religious experience, Thouless, Introduction to the Psychology of Religion, pp. 260 ff. ↩︎
See especially the book with this title, consisting of statements by J. B. Watson and W. McDougall. ↩︎
So E. B. Holt, The Concept of Consciousness and The Freudian Wish ; J. B. Watson, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, pp. 1-4, and Behaviorism, pp. 5-10 ; and McDougall’s reply in An Outline of Psychology, pp. 26 ff . Also Tennant, Philosophical Theology, i. p. 366. ↩︎
Watson, Behaviorism, pp. 87 ff. ↩︎
Spearman, The Nature of Intelligence, pp. 34 f. ↩︎
The best account of the general principles and methods of Behaviourism, together with a whole-hearted denunciation of introspection, is to be found in the first two chapters of Watson’s Behaviorism. ↩︎
Both in his Ethics and in his Logic Aristotle is describing the impulses and processes observable by introspection. In forming his table of the virtues he is following exactly the same method as that used, for example, by McDougall in analysing human instinct. And in his central principle of ‘ moderation,’ by which the virtues are adjusted into a stable and balanced character, he is anticipating an important element in modern theories of ‘ sublimation ’ and of the formation of sentiments. Similarly his analysis of the judgment depends upon the observation and classification of the modes of reasoning recognized as valid by the mind. ↩︎
Hocking, Human Nature and its Re-making, pp. 68 ff., gives liata which illustrate the wide range of disagreement. Cf. Pratt, The Religious Consciousness, p. 71. ↩︎
Behaviorism, pp. 83 flf. ↩︎
The term ‘ relativity ’ is, to say the least, misleading. The equations used by Einstein in expressing the characters of a space-time continuum which takes into account the position and motion of the observer are just as rigid, logically speaking, as those which are based upon the Newtonian view of space. There is nothing in any degree contingent about the new physics, on their mathematical side. ↩︎
I venture to appropriate the term applied by Garvie to Ritschlianism. ↩︎
McDougall, An Outline of Psychology, p. 38, and in The Battle of Behaviorism ; W. R. Matthews in Psychology and the Church, pp. 6 flf. ↩︎
Spearman, The Nature of Intelligence, pp. 49 ff . ↩︎
For a full discussion of the theory of the ‘ pure ego ’ cf. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, vol. i. : The Soul and Its Faculties. ↩︎
In Ths Foundations of Character. ↩︎
Kant’s whole treatment of the manifold of experience is based upon the acceptance of its spatial and temporal character. Most of his difficulties are due to the fact that he starts from the ‘ transcendental aesthetic,’ though this aspect of experience is abstract and illusory in the highest degree. The concepts of the End and the Organism, which he reaches in the Critique of Judgment, should have been the starting-point, and not the goal, of his analysis. His negative treatment of the theistic arguments was inevitable so soon as this false start was made. ↩︎
Principles of Logic, p. 54. Compare the similar treatment by James, Principles of Psychology, i. pp. 237 ff., and Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 230 ff. : ‘ As our mental fields succeed one another each has its centre of interest, around which the objects of which we are less and less attentively conscious fade to a margin so faint that its limits are unassignable. Some fields are narrow fields, and some are wide fields. Usually when we have a wide field we rejoice, for we then see masses of truth together, and often get glimpses of relations which we divine rather than see. … At other times, of drowsiness, illness, or fatigue, our fields may narrow almost to a point, and we find ourselves correspondingly oppressed and contracted.’ One of the greatest practical advances, and the greatest theoretical difficulty, of modern psychology is the discovery that ‘ there is not only the consciousness of the ordinary field, with its usual centre and margin, but an addition thereto in the shape of a set of memories, thoughts, and feelings which are extra-marginal and outside of the primary consciousness altogether, but yet must be classed as conscious facts of some sort, able to reveal their presence by unmistakable signs.’ The whole modern theory of the Unconscious is built up round this thesis, and the facts are unquestionable. But extraordinary and unnecessary difficulties have been created by this astonishing misuse of words, by which the term conscious has been applied to that of which the only distinguishing feature is that we are not conscious of it. Freud’s theory at least escapes from this absurdity. ↩︎
So in Herbart, the Mills, and Bam, sufficiently criticized in James, Principles of Psychology, i. pp. i ff . ; ii. pp. 497 and 522 ff . Spearman (The Nature of Intelligence, see esp. pp. 340 ff.) has recently attempted to discover what he terms the ‘ noegenetic ’ principles and processes. The result is far more favourable to the point of view adopted in these lectures than is the older ideo-motor theory, but it seems to be essentially one with it in principle. Thus his first two laws run : ‘ Any lived experience tends to evoke immediately a knowing of its direct attributes and its experiencer,’ and ‘ The presenting of any two or more characters tends to evoke immediately a knowing of relation between them.’ Clearly these laws are merely descriptive, unless something like the old ideo-motor theory is invoked. Otherwise there is no explanation of these tendencies among experiences. It is significant that Spearman sees the nearest parallel to his own point of view in the developed Hegelianism of McTaggart’s The Nature of Existence. But this gives too much life to cognition. It is simpler to believe in personal being, and, in the end, in God. ↩︎
Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, pp. 125 ff . ; E. Jones, Papers on Psycho-analysis, pp. 129 ff. For a fundamental discussion of the real nature of the censorship on the lines of Freud’s later theories see Freud, The Ego and the Id, pp. 40 ff . and pp. 68 ft., and Beyond the Pleasure Principle, pp. 20 f. and pp. 64 ff. ↩︎
Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, pp. 298 ff. ↩︎
The Foundations of Character. ↩︎
If we keep to the language of the theory of association of ideas we note at once, with the older psychologists, such as Bain, the significance of the idea of the affect, which takes a prominent place in the memory of any event. In fact, it is doubtful whether any event could be remembered at all apart from its association with some definite affect.But the full discussion of this point would involve an analysis of the relation between affect, purpose, and the unity of the ego. ↩︎
See Watson, Behaviorism, pp. 1-4, for a violent attack upon the influence of this religious terminology upon psychology. ↩︎
McDougall really should not have called his book on the subject Body and Mind, A History and Defence of Animism. The term ‘ animism ’ cannot easily be freed from connotations obviously remote from his meaning. ↩︎
Spearman, The Nature of Intelligence, pp. 54 f., quotes from Ach (Ueber den Willensakt u. das Temperament) : ‘ As regards an energetic act of willing, it must be emphasised that the ego is always lived as the antecedent in this act ; and, indeed, with special impressiveness.’ Spearman concludes : ‘ Pending, then, some much more plausible alternative explanation being proffered for the ubiquitous and indispensable notion of the ego than has ever been suggested hitherto, we will here adopt the conservative attitude of attributing it to direct experiential apprehension,’ He cites, further, Lotze and Ebbmghaus in support of this view. It would be easy to multiply quotations, but the only point of importance here is that such a position can be maintained by experimental psychologists of the first rank. ↩︎
Especially in his Ueber die Religion, Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verdchtern, published in 1799. ↩︎
Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 38. ↩︎
R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy, pp. 12-41. ↩︎
Leuba has collected forty eight in the Appendix to A Psychological Study of Religion. ↩︎
Cur Deus Homo, ii. 18. The rest of the paragraph is abridged from Anselm’s discussion in this chapter. ↩︎
Anselm depends here upon Aristotle’s περί έρμηνείας. ↩︎
Reading aliquid. ↩︎
The situation has not appreciably altered since Temple wrote his Bampton Lectures on The Relations between Religion and Science in 1884 : ‘ The fixity of a large part of our nature nay of all but the whole of it is a moral and spiritual necessity ’ (p. 92 ; cf. pp. 71 fL). ↩︎
Behaviorism, p. 11. ↩︎
See esp. Psychopathology of Everyday Life, pp. 277 ff. ↩︎
It is curious to find that a certain number of psychiatrists in America claim to be both Freudian and Behaviourist. The positions are wholly incompatible. Watson makes short work of psycho-analysis, declaring it to be ‘ based largely upon religion, introspective psychology, and Voodooism ’ (Behaviorism, p. 18). This predisposes us in favour of psycho-analysis at the outset I ↩︎
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, pp. 37-40. ↩︎
See, e.g., his Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, pp. 16-18 and 383 ff. Also E. Jones, Papers on Psycho-analysis, pp. 360 ff. ↩︎
Freud has developed this analysis especially in The Ego and the Id and Beyond the Pleasure Principle. ↩︎
Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, p. 298. The italics and capitals in this and the following quotation are Freud’s own. ↩︎
Freud, op. cit. p. 299. f ↩︎
Op. cit. p. 294 ; cf. pp. 318, 346. ↩︎
Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 50. ↩︎
Ibid. p. 52. ↩︎
B. Low, Psycho-analysis, p. 75. The phrase has been accepted by Freud himself. ↩︎
The italics here and below are Adler’s own, and the references in this paragraph are all to his Individual Psychology, pp. 6, 7. ↩︎
See esp. Psychology of the Unconscious, pp. 120-124. A reference to his index sub voce ‘ Christ ’ will provide numerous other examples. ↩︎
Ibid. p. 125. ↩︎
Jung, op. cit. p. 80. I have ventured slightly to emend the translation. ↩︎
The classical account of a case analysed upon these lines is in Jung’s Analytical Psychology, pp. 417 ff. ↩︎
Lectures on Psycho-analysis, p. 228. ↩︎
The deification is made by Freud himself, and is used by him to illustrate the manner in which he conceives the figures of the gods to have come into view. See Lectures on Psycho-analysis, p. 298, and Future of an Illusion, p. 94. ↩︎
Quite apart from the wide variations in the lists of instincts given by writers of this type (see p. 9), the whole theory of the instincts is being reconstituted in the more recent Gestalt-psychologie, with its substitution of ‘ patterns ’ or ‘ forms ’ for McDougall’s integrated systems of behaviour. The difference is in some respects far-reaching, and in all probability the term ‘ instinct ’ will fall out of use altogether, though for reasons very different from those which have led to its rejection by the Behaviourists. ↩︎
Outline of Psychology, pp. 47 f. ↩︎
Op. cit. p. 39. ↩︎
Op. cit. pp. 48 f. Cf. W. James, Principles of Psychology, i. p. 8 : ‘ The pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment are thus the mark and the criterion of the presence of mentality in a phenomenon.’ ↩︎
Shand, The Foundations of Character, pp. 66 f. : ‘ What higher systems are there than self-love, on the one side, and love of others, or respect for conscience, on the other ? What other system can estimate theirs, and choose between their alternatives ? Yet our personality does not seem to be the sum of the dispositions of our emotions and sentiments. These are our many selves ; but there is also our one self. This enigmatical self which reflects on their systems, estimates them, and, however loath to do it, sometimes chooses between their ends, seems to be the central fact of our personality.’ Ach (cited by Spearman, The Nature of Intelligence, p. 53) has made a special experimental study of the introspective apprehension of the will. ‘ The act of willing as such is immediately given and well characterised : it must be claimed as a specific psychic experience ’ (Ueber den Willensakt u. das Temperament, p. 247). ↩︎
Principles of Psychology, ii. p. 383. ↩︎
Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 377. ↩︎
Especially in his Character and the Conduct of Life. ↩︎
In his Contributions to Psycho-analysis, chap. viii. ↩︎
Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 52. ↩︎
The starting-point of this school is Kohler’s fascinating Mentality of Apes. The most important further works available to English readers are Koffka’s Growth of the Mind and R. M. Ogden’s Psychology and Education. ↩︎
MacCurdy, Common Principles in Psychology and Physiology. See especially pp. 140 ff . and 249 if. for the parallel series of patterns. Dr. MacCurdy would not claim to be a direct follower of the Gestall-psychologists, but his speculations go far to provide an intelligible basis for their theory. As he himself perceives, he is working on lines parallel to those which in the realm of physics have almost (though not quite) reduced matter and its properties to a series of mathematical abstractions (op. cit., Preface, pp. xi-xv). Matter and mind are indeed drawing together. Others besides MacCurdy himself will see in his work a close connection with Whitehead’s mathematical philosophy (e.g. in Science and the Modern World). ↩︎
See p. 14. note. ↩︎
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, pp. 37 f. Here libido is defined as ‘ the energy of those instincts which have to do with all that may be comprised under the word “ love.” . . . We do not separate from this what in any case has a share in name “ love ” on the one hand, self-love, and, on the other, love for parents and children, friendship and love for humanity in general, and also devotion to concrete objects and to abstract ideas.’ Cf. Introductory Lectures, p. 277. ↩︎
In The Foundations of Character. ↩︎
Social Psychology, chaps, v. and vi. ↩︎
In his essays, “Character and the Emotions” (Mind, N.S., vol. v.) and “M. Ribot’s Theory of the Passions” (Mind, N.S., vol. xvi.). ↩︎
Social Psychology, p. 122. ↩︎
The Foundations of Character, p. 62. ↩︎
Social Psychology, p. 106. ↩︎
Ibid. I have slightly changed the illustration used by Thouless in this passage. ↩︎