Outlines of Psychology Book

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Excerpt from book:
§ 4. GENERAL SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT. 1. The immediate contents of experience which constitute the subject-matter of psychology, are in all cases processes of a composite character. Sense perceptions of external objects, memories of such sense perceptions, feelings, emotions, and volitional acts, are not only continually united in the most various ways, but each of these processes is itself a more or less composite whole. The idea of an external body, for example, is made up of partial ideas of its parts. A tone may be ever so simple, but we localize it in some direction, thus bringing it into connection with the idea of external space which is highly composite. Every feeling is referred to some sensation that aroused the feeling, and every volition is referred to an object willed. In dealing with a complex fact of this kind, scientific investigation has three problems to he solved in succession. The first is the analysis of composite processes; the second is the demonstration of the combinations into which the elements discovered by analysis enter; the third is the investigation of the laws that are operative in the formation of such combinations. 2. The second, or synthetic, problem is made up of several partial problems. In the first place, the psychical elements unite to form composite psychical compounds which are separate and relatively independent of one another in the continual flow of psychical processes. One group of examples of such compounds is to be found in ideas, whetherreferred directly to external impressions or objects, or interpreted by us as memories of impressions and objects perceived before. Other examples are composite feelings, emotions, or volitions. Then again, these psychical compounds stand in the most various interconnections with one another. Th...