tailieunhanh - The Principles of Psychology (William James)

Psychology is the Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and of their conditions. The phenomena are such things as we call feelings, desires, cognitions, reasonings, decisions, and the like; and, superficially considered, their variety and complexity is such as to leave a chaotic impression on the observer. The most natural and consequently the earliest way of unifying the material was, first, to classify it as well as might be, and, secondly, to affiliate the diverse mental modes thus found, upon a simple entity, the personal Soul, of which they are taken to be so many facultative manifestations. Now, for instance, the Soul manifests its. | THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 1 The Principles of Psychology By William James Get any book for free on Get any book for free on THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 2 CHAPTER I The Scope of Psychology Psychology is the Science of Mental Life both of its phenomena and of their conditions. The phenomena are such things as we call feelings desires cognitions reasonings decisions and the like and superficially considered their variety and complexity is such as to leave a chaotic impression on the observer. The most natural and consequently the earliest way of unifying the material was first to classify it as well as might be and secondly to affiliate the diverse mental modes thus found upon a simple entity the personal Soul of which they are taken to be so many facultative manifestations. Now for instance the Soul manifests its faculty of Memory now of Reasoning now of Volition or again its Imagination or its Appetite. This is the orthodox spiritualistic theory of scholasticism and of common-sense. Another and a less obvious way of unifying the chaos is to seek common elements in the divers mental facts rather than a common agent behind them and to explain them constructively by the various forms of arrangement of these elements as one explains houses by stones and bricks. The associationist schools of Herbart in Germany and of Hume the Mills and Bain in Britain have thus constructed a psychology without a soul by taking discrete ideas faint or vivid and showing how by their cohesions repulsions and forms of succession such things as reminiscences perceptions emotions volitions passions theories and all the other furnishings of an individual s mind may be engendered. The very Self or ego of the individual comes in this way to be viewed no longer as the pre-existing source of the representations but rather as their last and most complicated fruit. Now if we strive rigorously to simplify the phenomena in either of these ways we soon become aware of