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PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE
PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE
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PREFACE
The following volume contains six essays which have been brought before the public during the last year at very different opportunities. The paper on History was delivered as the presidential address before the New York meeting of the American Psychological Association, and was published in the "Psychological Review." That on Education was read before the Harvard Teachers' Association at their last Cambridge meeting and printed in the "Educational Review." The essay on Physiology is an extension of a paper read before the American Physiological Society in New York, and has not as yet been published. The three other papers appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly." That on Mysticism was read before the Buffalo meeting of the Unitarian Ministers' Institute, and before the Philosophical Department of Princeton University; that on Art was written for the Detroit meeting of the American Drawing -Teachers' Association, and that on Real Life was an address to Wellesley College. Two other papers on educational problems which I have also published during the last year in the " Atlantic Monthly" series, the one under the title " The Danger from Experimental Psychology," and the other " The Teacher and the Laboratory," are not reprinted here because the one was chiefly the criticism of a book and the other a rejoinder to an attack, but they may be mentioned here as supplementary interpretations of my educational views.
While the six essays were thus presented at first to very various audiences, this book is in no way a chance collection of disconnected pieces. The contrary is true. They represent six, chapters of a book which was from the first planned as a unity, and the separate publication of the special parts is merely accidental. The group should decidedly be taken as a whole. One fundamental thought controls the book, and each essay leads only from a different point to the same central conviction.
This chief aim is the separation of the conceptions of psychology from the conceptions of our real life. Popular ideas about psychology suggest that the psychological description and explanation of mental facts expresses the reality of our inner experience. It is a natural consequence of such a view that our ethical and æsthetical, our practical and educational, our social and historical views are subordinated to the doctrines of psychology. These papers endeavor to show that psychology is not at all an expression of reality, but a complicated transformation of it, worked out for special logical purposes in the service of our life. Psychology is thus a special abstract construction which has a right to consider everything from its own important standpoint, but which has nothing to assert in regard to the interpretation and appreciation of our real freedom and duty, our real values and ideals. The aim is thus a limitation of that psychology which wrongly proclaims its results as a kind of philosophy; but this limitation, which makes the traditional conflicts with idealistic views impossible, gives at the same time to the well-understood psychology an absolute freedom in its own field, and the whole effort is thus as much in the service of psychology itself as in the service of the rights of life. A scientific synthesis of the ethical idealism with the physiological psychology of our days is thus my purpose. Every unscientific and unphilosophical synthesis remains there necessarily an insincere compromise in which science sacrifices its consistency and idealism sacrifices its beliefs; it is the task of true synthesis to show how the one includes the other, and how every conflict is a misunderstanding.
The first paper gives the fundamental tone and characterizes the problem of the whole book. The second paper, on Physiology, develops the real functions of a scientific psychology, and defends its absolute freedom in the consistent construction of theories of mind and brain. The following three papers show in three important directions, in art, education, and history, how such a consistent psychology, even though most radical, cannot interfere with the conceptions and categories which belong to the activities of life and to their historical aspect. The last paper finally makes a test for this separation, showing that just as psychology is not to interfere with the conceptions of life, these latter must not interfere with the conceptions of psychology; wherever this happens, the scientific aspect of mental life goes over into mysticism.
The isolated appearance of the different essays has made it necessary that each could be understood alone without presupposing the knowledge of the foregoing papers; frequent repetitions were thus unavoidable. It would have been easy to eliminate these in reprinted form, and to link the papers so that each should presuppose acquaintance with the preceding parts....
PREFACE
The following volume contains six essays which have been brought before the public during the last year at very different opportunities. The paper on History was delivered as the presidential address before the New York meeting of the American Psychological Association, and was published in the "Psychological Review." That on Education was read before the Harvard Teachers' Association at their last Cambridge meeting and printed in the "Educational Review." The essay on Physiology is an extension of a paper read before the American Physiological Society in New York, and has not as yet been published. The three other papers appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly." That on Mysticism was read before the Buffalo meeting of the Unitarian Ministers' Institute, and before the Philosophical Department of Princeton University; that on Art was written for the Detroit meeting of the American Drawing -Teachers' Association, and that on Real Life was an address to Wellesley College. Two other papers on educational problems which I have also published during the last year in the " Atlantic Monthly" series, the one under the title " The Danger from Experimental Psychology," and the other " The Teacher and the Laboratory," are not reprinted here because the one was chiefly the criticism of a book and the other a rejoinder to an attack, but they may be mentioned here as supplementary interpretations of my educational views.
While the six essays were thus presented at first to very various audiences, this book is in no way a chance collection of disconnected pieces. The contrary is true. They represent six, chapters of a book which was from the first planned as a unity, and the separate publication of the special parts is merely accidental. The group should decidedly be taken as a whole. One fundamental thought controls the book, and each essay leads only from a different point to the same central conviction.
This chief aim is the separation of the conceptions of psychology from the conceptions of our real life. Popular ideas about psychology suggest that the psychological description and explanation of mental facts expresses the reality of our inner experience. It is a natural consequence of such a view that our ethical and æsthetical, our practical and educational, our social and historical views are subordinated to the doctrines of psychology. These papers endeavor to show that psychology is not at all an expression of reality, but a complicated transformation of it, worked out for special logical purposes in the service of our life. Psychology is thus a special abstract construction which has a right to consider everything from its own important standpoint, but which has nothing to assert in regard to the interpretation and appreciation of our real freedom and duty, our real values and ideals. The aim is thus a limitation of that psychology which wrongly proclaims its results as a kind of philosophy; but this limitation, which makes the traditional conflicts with idealistic views impossible, gives at the same time to the well-understood psychology an absolute freedom in its own field, and the whole effort is thus as much in the service of psychology itself as in the service of the rights of life. A scientific synthesis of the ethical idealism with the physiological psychology of our days is thus my purpose. Every unscientific and unphilosophical synthesis remains there necessarily an insincere compromise in which science sacrifices its consistency and idealism sacrifices its beliefs; it is the task of true synthesis to show how the one includes the other, and how every conflict is a misunderstanding.
The first paper gives the fundamental tone and characterizes the problem of the whole book. The second paper, on Physiology, develops the real functions of a scientific psychology, and defends its absolute freedom in the consistent construction of theories of mind and brain. The following three papers show in three important directions, in art, education, and history, how such a consistent psychology, even though most radical, cannot interfere with the conceptions and categories which belong to the activities of life and to their historical aspect. The last paper finally makes a test for this separation, showing that just as psychology is not to interfere with the conceptions of life, these latter must not interfere with the conceptions of psychology; wherever this happens, the scientific aspect of mental life goes over into mysticism.
The isolated appearance of the different essays has made it necessary that each could be understood alone without presupposing the knowledge of the foregoing papers; frequent repetitions were thus unavoidable. It would have been easy to eliminate these in reprinted form, and to link the papers so that each should presuppose acquaintance with the preceding parts....
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