Our study of the unity of mind and body seems, then, to make it clear that, for the sake of the higher interests themselves, we may not neglect the body. Browning's words come to us, thus, not as a skeptical question, but as an inspiring challenge:

"To man, propose this test

Thy body at its best,

How far can that project thy soul on its lone way ?"

But psychology's emphasis on the unity of man means not only the unity of mind and body, but also the special unity of the mind in all its functions.

CHAPTER VII

THE UNITY OF THE MIND-THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

MODERN psychologists agree in emphasizing the unity of the mind. Insistence on the interdependence of all the phases of the mind has become, indeed, one of the commonplaces of the schools, and is one of the chief points of difference from the older psychology. Isolated faculties are denied.

I. INTERDEPENDENCE OF ALL INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONS

It is recognized that no hard and fast lines can be drawn between the various intellectual activities, that each activity involves the germ of the later developing activities, and that there is always reciprocal aid. Judgment and inference, for example, are seen to be already active in the simplest perception. The danger of all exclusive tendencies is felt. Starr can even say: "All imperfect edu

cational methods which hinder an harmonious development of mental traits and fail to develop character, act as predisposing causes to insanity." Every activity must have its appropriate development for the sake of the whole. Thus Sully says: "An eye uncultivated in a nice detection of form means a limitation of all after-knowledge. Imagination will be hazy, thought loose and inaccurate where the preliminary stage of perception has been hurried over." So, too, as to thinking and imagining, "even when the concepts have been properly formed, they can only be kept distinct, and consequently accurate, by going back again and again to the concrete objects, out of which they have, in a manner, been extracted." "Thinking is not the same thing as imagining, yet it is based on it and cannot safely be divorced from it."2

Royce says still more broadly: "Sensory experience plays its part, and its essential part, in the very highest of our spiritual existence. 1 Diseases of the Mind, p. 46.

2 Op. cit., pp. 213, 372.

These two inferences, it may be said in passing, constitute a considerable part of the psychological basis of the kindergarten. In training both the senses and the imagination, it should also be noticed, room should be left for a child's own imagination, freedom and activity. A rag-baby, thus, may be better than a full-fledged French doll. Cf. Sully, Op. cit., p. 215.

When we wish to cultivate processes of abstract thinking, our devices must, therefore, include a fitting plan for the cultivation of the senses, and must not seek to exclude sense experience as such, but only to select among sensory experiences those that will prove useful for a purpose." "Whatever be the best form of religious training, it ought deliberately to make use of a proper appeal to the senses." Even modern logic follows here the trend of psychology, and refuses to isolate abstractly the processes of conception, judgment, and inference, or even the processes of induction and deduction; it demands, instead, the recognition of the organic unity and continuity of all thinking.2

Indeed, modern psychology may be said to affirm that the intellect has but one fundamental function-the discernment of relationship. The one supreme counsel-consider relations-is counsel to fulfil every mental function: concentrated attention, assimilation, discrimination, selection, and synthesis. For concentrated attention requires considering an object in its varied aspects and relations; assimilation is only seeing the relations of like

1 Op. cit., pp. 128, 129.

"Cf. Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, p. iii, e. g.

ness; discrimination, those of difference; selection is choosing out the more significant relations; and synthesis is but putting things in their relations to the whole. And it is by exactly these processes that we come to the mastery of any situation. To consider a thing in all its relations, it should be noted, moreover, carries with it deliberation, self-control, and open-mindedness, and is the secret of complete mental wakefulness. This is, then, in truth, not only the supreme intellectual counsel, but counsel for all living :- Consider relations. Our mistakes, in every line, are made through failing to preadjust attention, thought, or words to the coming circumstances, overlooking some vital bearing of the matter in hand-forgetting some relation. What a recognition is this, both of the unity of the mind itself, and of its inevitable search for unity.

II. INTERDEPENDENCE OF INTELLECT, FEELING AND WILL

Modern psychologists are also agreed on the complete interdependence of intellect, feeling, and will; that they are, in fact, never separated; that pure feeling, pure willing,