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.

    463/504 (page 443)
    The subject, however, if essentially distinct from its psycho¬ plasm and a factor in its elaboration, must be itself a unique agent, conditioned, it may be, but never altogether constituted by what it always partially controls and can control more and more, as it rises in the scale of life. In other words, the whole secret of the concrete individual is not contained in Anlage, whereas to an indefinite extent the secret of Anlagen may be found in concrete individuals. Individual liberty—for that is really the issue— may be a mystery, as Malebranche declared, or it may be, as Du Bois-Reymond thought, the last of the seven world-riddles, or, as Hoffding is content to say—and we agree with him—it may be merely one of the factual bounding-points of knowledge. But whether mystery or riddle, if it be not fact it is hard to see what remains of psychology but illusion. On the other hand, if it be a fact, then a man’s bodily constitution is only one of the factors conditioning the formation of his character, a ‘property’ rather than an attribute of his self and normally, to a greater or less extent, directly and indirectly amenable to his control. Instinct, Talent and Genius. § 3. Included in this complex intermediate factor, the Anlage or psychoplasm with which the concrete experient starts invested, there are still other constituents to examine. They differ from that already considered under the title of temperament in being more restricted and so more differentiated. The clue to them is to be found, not in coenaesthesis, but in more definite or more objective situations. Correlated with these every individual has certain instincts and different individuals tend to display native endowments or defects in very diverse ways. Though instinctive behaviour—to begin with that—is entirely a matter of Anlage and though too it is genetically of quite funda¬ mental importance, nevertheless we need here do little more than recognise its place. Broadly speaking, this is on the lower level common both to man and brute, and so does little to differentiate one human being from another, whether we define instinct more widely or more narrowly. As to this, there is some¬ thing to be said for distinguishing instinctive emotions, instinctive appetites and aversions, and instinctive actions. Thus instinctive