Psychological principles / by James Ward.

  • Ward, James, 1843-1925.
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychological principles / by James Ward. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    449/504 (page 429)
    Anlage thus seems to present the subject of experience in a new light. So long as we were dealing with the psychological individual there was no call to talk of Anlage but only of psycho¬ plasm. Now, however, in dealing with concrete individuals this need is obvious; and the difference is important. This Anlage, like experience generally, more or less inhibits development in some directions while more or less facilitating it in others. And yet it is not itself experience, for of the elaboration or synthesis that it implies the concrete individual, to whom it belongs, knows nothing; but that which is not experience for any ex- perient is not experience at all. So, though in itself complex, as implying previous synthesis, yet for the concrete individual concerned it is simple, for what he has not synthesized he can¬ not psychically analyze1. Hence we sometimes call it instinct2. It is anything but a tabula rasa in itself: it is such, however, for the concrete individual; for his experience—so far as we know —begins with it. 1 Cf. above, ch. v, § 2, note 3, p. 105. 2 Cf. above, ch. iv, § 1, pp. 74 f.; ch. vii, § 2, pp. 181 f.