attains, the independence of a mechanism. Similarly, voluntary action is more typical of the educated being than habit, though habit again approaches, though it never quite attains, the status of a mechanism.

Experiments with the conditioned reflex imply association of stimuli which seem to be unrelated and diverse, e.g., the conditioned pupillary reflex. What these experiments reveal is that temporal and spatial aspects of the stimulus-complex are more effective than the qualitative, which the impression also contain. That is, the sight of the color or the sound of a bell is integrated into the pattern of the normal stimulus. Thus in time these members come to effect the result by recreating the pattern even when some of its original qualities are lacking. The stimulus and response may be considered in terms of space and time as well as in terms of discrete qualities. As a promising field of investigation, then, I would suggest a study of orthogenic forms, both of stimulation and response, meaning those configurations of perception and response for which the organism is predisposed, and upon the basis of which its later development through education essentially depends. Finally, this conception of original nature as an innate capacity for reactions of a quantum type has no need of recourse to the mysteries of vitalism or to the metaphysics of purposiveness. It merely substitutes the notion of "integrals" for the notion of "integers" and the procedure of analyzing wholes into parts as members of wholes, for the procedure which first seeks the parts as the elements or ultimates out of which the wholes are presumed to be assembled.

Learning.-Current hypotheses are mostly of a mechanistic type. Practice or exercise are supposed to "stamp in" the bonds of connection between the ultimate parts in any sequential performance or act. All is reduced to association-frequency, recency, and innate or acquired readiness for response. The interpretation of learning as a conditioned reflex adds nothing to older principles of association, except that it restates them in terms of behavior without reference to any mental content. But the crux of the problem lies in the learning of a new act, in the achievement of a new adjustment; and whether this be under the conditions of a blindly groping trial and error, or whether it be the sudden and forthright adoption of a means to an end, the mechanistic interpretation fails because it does not allow for the continuity and the dynamic unity of organic behavior. A hungry dog seeking food is dominated by its desire.

It seeks with its whole being, and all its behavior is integrated, not only with reference to its desire, but also with reference to the fulfillment of this desire. Thus the selection of a new mode of response involves a transformation of the situation, and the new act which is thus acquired integrates with the animal's desire and with its achievement, whereas the abortive acts which do not accomplish this end are eliminated, because they do not participate in this integration. Any attempt to break up the continuity of learning into separate acts, and to conceive them as being associated together as so many different parts ignores the observed facts of behavior. Furthermore, the attempt leaves us with the insoluble problem of explaining the selection of an appropriate or "right" action by means of something that affects the organism only after the act has occurred, namely, by means of the satisfaction that comes only after a way has already been found to attain it.

One of the most fundamental aspects of the pattern of learning is the underlying rhythm of behavior which demands completion and is satisfied only by the appropriate filling-in of the gaps which occur whenever an obstacle to the attainment of our end is introduced. In this connection the rhythms of organic behavior, as well as the corresponding rhythms of consciousness, are subjects of study which demand much closer investigation than they have thus far obtained. We are too apt to regard rhythm as a mere matter of a uniform succession of beats, whereas the patterns of organic behavior are likely to evince typical configurations of an order that cannot be reduced to simple unilinear sequences of time.

Individual Differences.-The present conception must change if we regard the individual as an integral whole rather than an assemblage of parts. Individual anomalies can be more accurately conceived as functional peculiarities within the general plan of behavior characteristic of the species than as structural defects, or the absence of parts, or peculiar combination of parts.

The notion of unit-characters, as regards psychological traits, is likely to divert us from the true nature of behavior unless we hold fast to a functional conception. Regarded as patterns of response rather than as aggregates of part-activities aroused by an aggregate of differential sensitiveness, traits like moral delinquencies can be thought of as perverse formulations rather than as defects or accretions depending upon a peculiar sensitivity to discrete stimuli. Similarly in the cases of mental acuity and obtuseness, we can more readily comprehend the in

dividual differences of brightness or dullness when these differences are measured with scales of more than one dimension.

The conception of school work is likewise in need of reinterpretation, for the values of method and content are obviously relational and functional rather than static and structural. The theory of "identical elements" is a perversion of the facts by its implication that study has to do with just so many counters which must be arranged in just such a sequence, in order to constitute knowledge and a basis for right action. The instruments of knowledge and the instruments of conduct are both transitional media bridging gaps between perceived wholes, and thus creating new configurations of insight and intelligence. The perceived wholes first to be grasped are the orthogenic forms and figures to which we are predisposed by nature. In other words, these outstanding figures and patterns of responses are the objects of experience and types of behavior with which we begin our course through life. Education, then, is but the elaboration of these patterns, at first vague and crude, with which we are originally endowed.

Plato and Aristotle advocated an education in which rhythm, melody, and design replace to a very large extent the arid conning of words, and the exercise of hand and voice in the production of school results which have a significance only to the teacher. In the young infant, when he brings his hand to his mouth he effects a rhythmic transformation. Later he acquires the hand and object coördination of grasping; and still later he sees the object he grasps, and in grasping it is no longer directed by the felt thing alone, but also by its appearance. Only gradually does he come to discern an object by the way it looks without the need of touching it, or grasping it, or manipulating it. In all these various forms of response rhythm guides the selection of the right orthogenic pattern and the rejection of awkward and inappropriate means.

Likewise, in later operations with numbers and with words; at first both are members of the perceptual configurations of things seen, things heard, and things manipulated. Yet, numbers and words have their own rhythmical patterns as melodies of speech, and as designs of vision; and the child learns these no less-indeed he learns them far more concretely-than he learns the detached meaning of numbers and words by themselves. Even before a child can speak he carries on conversation in cadences so true. . . . Why not follow the native, formal methods of the child in introducing him to the more precise

knowledge which the curriculum of schooling is intended to provide? With the more æsthetic conception of rhythm, of melody, and of figural design as our aid, perhaps we shall discover something of human nature which has never yet been fully comprehended. Our alternative to mechanism is integration or formulation.

10. Causal and Purposive Psychology

[MÜNSTERBERG, Hugo, Psychology, General and Applied, pp. 15-17, 295296, 300–301. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1915.]

The classical statement of causal and purposive psychology is set forth in Hugo Münsterberg's epoch-making book entitled Psychology, General and Applied. In this work, the author attempts, as he says, to resolve the personality into the elementary bits of psychological atoms and to bring every will act into a closed system of causes and effects. But in the purposive part he attempts to show with the same consistency the true inner unity of the self and the ultimate freedom of the responsible personality.

Those two accounts do not exclude each other; they supplement each other, they support each other, they demand each other. The last part of the purposive psychology will bring. us to a height from which this inner harmony of the two aspects becomes clear. Then every feeling of contradiction will disappear, and we shall be forced to see that causality and freedom, complexity and unity, natural laws and ideals do not interfere with one another, but can be combined in an ultimate view of pulsating reality.

The psychologist who makes us understand inner life by interpreting the meaning and following up the inner purposes, gives us indeed a perfectly unified view of man's mind; and so does the other psychologist who treats mental life as a mechanism which is to be described and to be explained as a causal system. In other words, we must acknowledge a true psychology as complete only if it allows room for two different aspects of personal experience, each of which must be consistently carried through. Both kinds of psychology are justified, if they are carried through with this consistency. To recognize the difference means to do justice to both sides. Life needs both; science cannot ignore them. A complete psychology must deal with the whole mental life as a system of mental

processes to be explained, and must deal in another part with the whole mental life as an expression of personality to be understood in its meaning. The two parts must supplement each other.

It means very little what name we give to the two aspects of psychical experience, but it means extremely much to keep them cleanly separated and to recognize distinctly the principles which control them. We might call the one aspect objective and the other subjective. Sometimes the first has also been called a psychology of mental states and the other a psychology of the self. Again a quite characteristic choice of titles is to call the first the psychology of the content of consciousness and the other the psychology of meaning. We might also speak of explanatory psychology as against interpretative psychology. Yet we prefer the designation which points most directly to the deepest character of the contrast, and shall call the one the causal psychology, the other the purposive psychology.

To understand mental life as a system of causes and effects is indeed the most significant aim of the one kind of study; and to understand it in its meanings, and that is, in its purpose, is the fundamental condition for the other kind. Everything else, the special principles and the special methods and the special conceptions, follows from this parting of the ways. . . . We do not first find our inner life as an object, but we know it immediately as our purposive deed. We see it stretched out before us as a series of objects only if we purposively seek to understand its causes and effects. The objective appearance is therefore entirely dependent upon our subjective

It is not the structure of mental objects which is the cause of our purpose, but it is our purpose which transforms our purposive life into a causal structure. The deed of the subject is the first, the causal interplay of the objects the dependent reality. Our mental life is free, and through an act of freedom we decide to consider it as a mental mechanism in which nothing is free.

That inner life which man values and wants to see superior to the mere mechanism of matter is not the mind conceived in the thought form of causality. The mere mental processes as such have no dignity since they are not the real inner life, but are merely scientific constructions which we need as counters for our calculation. The inner life in which our duties lie and which alone has value is that which has a meaning and is understood as the expression of a subject.