A manual of psychology.

  • Stout, George Frederick, 1860-1944.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of psychology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    CHAPTER IP THE DATA ANT) METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY. § 1. Presented Objects as Data.—Psychology has to discuss mental processes, such as sensation, perception, attention, volition, and the like. But except in the case of pure sensation, * none of these processes can either exist or be conceived apart from a presented object. We cannot attend, perceive, or will, without perceiving, willing, or attending to something. Now, the object which is presented to any individual subject at any moment exists for it at that moment only in virtue of subjective processes which are then occurring, or which have occurred previously. The development of an individual mind is at the same time the development of the objective world as presented to that individual mind. The limits of its possible development are also the limits of the real world as a possible presenta- tion to its consciousness. It follows from this that presented objects are most essential and important data for psychology. Being the effects of psychological causes, they form an indispensable starting-point in investigating tho nature of those causes. In this respect psychology presents an analogy to other sciences of development, such as geology and biology. Geology finds an actual formation of tho earth’s crust: it finds a certain arrangement of strata, and it inquires by what processes this arrangement has arisen. * This exception will be explained in Book ii„ Ch. I,