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.

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    forecourt of spirit ’ ( Vorstufe des Geistes) Hegel acknowledges this continuity. At the same time in contrasting the isolation and the immediacy of ‘ the living individual ’ with the community and the transsubjective outlook that ‘ spirit ’ and personality imply, he brings out the higher category to which they belong1. The general synthesis of this personality from its irreducible minimum onwards we have in the course of this essay tried to trace. It remains to bring the concrete individual into line with this, now that we have tried to clear up ‘ the problems that beset it.’ Though these preliminaries have been tedious, this final step may be brief. Gathering up results—we call human beings persons when they can talk intelligibly of Me and Mine; when, that is, they have attained to the consciousness of Self as continuously related to whatever affects them and whatever they can affect. It is not the bare cognition of situations, but the conative attitude towards them, that primarily distinguishes one person from another. The Mine varies with Me, though ultimately there is but one objective universe for all; and were such subjective selection concerned with the world sub specie aeternitatis so to say, then—in that realm of essence—Schopenhauer’s operari sequitur esse might be all there was to say. In this actual world of time and change, however, it is equally true that esse sequitur operari. Here being is always becoming, and development implies progression as well as stability. His personality, then, will not be shewn merely in what a man is but in what he is striving to be. But to be personal, the ideal for which he strives must be his own, must originate in himself—however impersonal its goal may be. These two characteristics, stability as the basis of progression, and originality in shaping its course, seem to be the two essentials of any living personality. We may now attempt a general survey of concrete individuals in respect of these2. Whereas the mere animal practically begins and ends with the stability of its instincts—is from first to last confined to the level and individuals of which the like is true. Such cases, however, belong to the details of characterology and do not now concern us. 1 This higher category, called Cognition, is here—following a hint of Dr McTaggart’s —identified with the self-consciousness that renders the true and the good explicit for the experient. Cf. Dr McTaggart’s Commentary on HegeVs Logic, p. 292. 2 Cf. above, ch. xvii, § 2, p. 415 and p. 417.