ART. II.-PROFESSOR BOWNE'S PSYCHOLOGY.* PROFESSOR BOWNE is no stranger to students of metaphysics. His trenchant and brilliant criticism of Herbert Spencer gained their attention, while his Theism and Metaphysics gave him an assured place among the first metaphysicians of America. All worshipers, therefore, at the shrine of philosophy-and there are still a few such--will be glad to hear of this new offering. Nor will their hopes be disappointed. They will find the same lucidity of exposition, the same power of illustration, the same merciless scorn of opponents, and the same acuteness of thought that characterized his earlier works.

In the book before us Professor Bowne attempts to answer two questions: 1) What are the ultimate elements of the facts and processes of the human mind? 2) What is our actual mental life as a combination of these elements? In opposition to Comte and his school, his method is mainly introspective, though he admits that we cannot gain a complete knowledge of the human mind by the study of the individual consciousness alone, and that the narrow and one-sided results of such a study need to be corrected and supplemented by a study of life and history and literature.

The author begins his answer to his first question by maintaining the existence of the self as the subject of our mental states. The followers of Hume assure us that the sensations, thoughts, feelings, and volitions which we experience constitute the entire content of our being. It is not true, they say, as common sense imagines, that I am something different from these experiences, something which has them; on the contrary, I am the experiences which reveal themselves to my consciousness from moment to moment and nothing more; my entire being is poured out into them without remainder.

The attentive reader will observe that this view is not only inconceivable-it cannot even be stated except in terms that imply its opposite. "I am the sensations, thoughts, feelings, and volitions which reveal themselves to my consciousness," What does "my" mean? If there is no subject, if these vanishing experiences are all there is of me, is not the "

etc.

*Introduction to Isychological Theory, by Borden P. Bowne.

my "

altogether meaningless? But if we not only omit it from the sentence, but seek to banish the fact implied by it from the thought of which the sentence professes to be the expression, we shall realize that we are in a new difficulty. For what is meant by "consciousness?" Is it something in addition to the experiences which, in order to be intelligible, I have been in the habit of calling mine? Evidently not, for according to the hypothesis they constitute my entire being. The term consciousness, then, either means nothing at all or is merely a collective term to denote the facts that are said to reveal themselves to it, and we are left with the statement, "I am sensations, thoughts, feelings, and volitions." But which group am I? To use the language of the ordinary creed-and no other is intelligible-there are many persons in the world. What characteristic or quality or attribute attaches to the group of experiences which constitute me, and differentiates it from those that constitute all other persons?

But, granting the possibility of mental states apart from a subject, such mental states could not account for the unity of our mental life. The co-existence and succession of mental states is one thing, a knowledge of such co-existence and succession quite another. Now if what we call a mind consists of particular experiences, though co-existent they cannot be known as such, since each, being particular, cannot know any thing of the others; for in knowing any thing of the others it would assume the character of universality-cease to be what the theory requires it to be.

Professor Bowne's illustration will make this clearer:

Let a, b, c, and d be respectively a sensation of color, of odor, of taste, and of sound. Plainly no consciousness can be built out of these elements. The color knows nothing of the odor, the taste knows nothing of the sound. Each is a particular and isolated unit, and must remain so until some common subject, m, is given, in the unity of whose consciousness these elements may be united. For as long a, b, c, etc., are all, there is no common consciousness, and hence no rational consciousness at all. We conclude, then, that the mental life, both in its elements and in its combinations, must have a subject. It is not only unintelligible, it is impossible, without it.-Page 13.

It should be carefully noted, that if this reasoning is just, we reach a subject of our mental states not. by an inference

43-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. III.

from the facts of consciousness, but by an actual analysis of them. The co-existence of mental states is an absolute certainty. That is universally conceded to be a fact of consciousness. What is involved in it? There is involved in it an element in our conscious lives over and above the co-existent states; a universal element present to each of these particular and co-existing states, and making possible the knowledge of their co-existence. Precisely as an analysis of water shows that it is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, so an analysis of the fact that states of consciousness are known to be co-existent, shows the presence of something besides the co-existent facts: a subject to which these co-existing facts appear, and which knows them as co-existent.

It is hardly necessary to say that an analysis of the knowl edge of likeness and unlikeness, of cause and effect, of here and there, of motion, of any relation, in short, will reveal the same fact. Two things may be like or unlike; they may be, in a word, relative to each other, one may be here and the other there, they may change their places, but the knowledge of these things is impossible if mental life consists of particular experiences not brought into unity by their relation to a common subject. If one man sees a moving ball for an indivisible point of time and no longer, and another for another, there can be no perception of motion, because there can be no comparison of successive positions. There are successive positions, but they are not known as such; A saw the ball at a, and B at b, but A's perception a and B's perception b are not sufficient to constitute a perception of motion-though they are a percep tion of successive positions-because they are not known as successive positions since they are not the experiences of one and the same person.

These considerations appear to me a demonstration of the reality of the mental subject. But this is so emphatically denied by materialism that it may be well to examine its grounds before proceeding.

No one denies that the mental life is in some way dependent upon the organism, especially upon the brain and nervous system. But materialism is not the necessary inference from such dependence. For though the explanation of it may be that the organism produces the facts of consciousness, it may

be, also, that the relation between those facts and the organism is not that of cause and effect, but of condition and conditioned, and that though the mind is conditioned in its activities by the organism, it is nevertheless distinct from it. Which of these is the true explanation?

We note in the first place the utter unlikeness of physical and mental facts. Matter has form and position; its forces are moving forces. How can they produce thought? The most plausible answer which materialism makes to this question is based on the doctrine of the transformation of energy. As in certain relations matter manifests gravity, in certain others affinity, in still others magnetism, so in others, it is claimed, it manifests vital and mental properties. Now, granting the utmost that this theory contends for, all it can do is to account for states of consciousness. But we have seen that though we cannot deny the possibility of a sentient life consisting simply of states of consciousness, the mental life of man consists in something entirely different-a consciousness of states. Thoughts and feelings, as we have seen, demand a subject, and are meaningless and impossible apart from it. In order to nake out its case, materialism must not only account for thoughts and feelings, but also for the subject of them. Until it has solved this problem-until it has shown that co-existing facts are the same thing as the knowledge of co-existence-it has no claim upon our attention.

In the second place, materialism is not a workable theory. We are not merely or chiefly intellectual beings; we have a practical nature, and it is as incumbent in a theory to make provision for its legitimate demands as it is that it should have logical consistency. But if materialism be true, we are merely the creatures and tools of blind unconscious forces, and tragedy is comedy, and aspiration and heroism and self-sacrifice are entirely due to a certain collocation of the particles of our nervous systems. Will such a theory work?

We pass to consider sensation. Sensation is the effect produced in consciousness by certain nervous changes. The apparent causal order is, 1) the action of an external stimulus; 2) the resulting nervous change; 3) the conscious sensation. Some psychologists, Hamilton for instance, contend that there is something of a psychical nature intermediate between the

nervous action and the conscious sensation. The existence of this something-Hamilton called it latent modification of consciousness-is contended for on several grounds. One of them is, that the physical antecedents of sensation are often present when there is no sensation. There are authentic accounts of soldiers who were severely wounded in battle and remained unconscious of it until the excitement of the fight was over. But because there was no conscious psychical state are we justified in assuming an unconscious one? I cannot see why. Apart from experience, we should have no more reason to suppose that the infliction of a wound would cause pain than we have to suppose that a tree feels pain when it is cut down. Experience has taught us that under normal circumstances the infliction of a wound causes pain; if there are abnormal circumstances under which this is not the case, have we any right to invent a sub-conscious state in order to account for it? I cannot think so. For aught we can say, one is just as natural as the other. When the attention is free to follow the solicitations of feeling, the infliction of a wound causes pain. Will some one tell why? When the attention is powerfully drawn in another direction, the infliction of a wound may not cause pain. Will some one say why it may not be so? In the one case we have the infliction of a wound, and as its concomitant conscious pain; in the other we have the infliction of a wound and no conscious concomitant. Surely, before we are justified. in assuming that there must be a psychical concomitant below consciousness, we must be able to explain why it is that the infliction of pain under normal circumstances has a psychical concomitant. The argument is based on a suicidal assumption. That assumption is, that an external stimulus must produce its full nervous effect without regard to the condition of the nervous system; and that the nervous system, in turn, must produce its full mental effect without regard to the state of mind. Now if this assumption is valid we are entitled-or rather compelled to assume that this mental effect must in turn produce its full conscious result without regard to the state of the attention, which does not happen.

The existence of sub-conscious states is also based on such facts as the following:

a. The physical stimulus which excites the nervous action