Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/396

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

380 CRITICAL NOTICES: he intends to devote later volumes. Analytic Psychology has two divisions. The first deals with the " general analysis of conscious- ness ". It is concerned (vol. i., p. 36) to "ascertain the number and nature and mutual connexion of those ultimate contents of consciousness and modes of being conscious which do not admit of genetic derivation, but at most only of definition and description. This department of Psychology is purely analytical and largely intro- spective. The point of view proper to it is statical, not dynamical. It is not concerned with the transition between one state of con- sciousness and another ; its aim is to discover the ultimate and irreducible constituents of consciousness in general." The second division of Analytical Psychology has to investigate " the general laws and conditions according to which change takes place in consciousness ". This division is still analytic, since its method is an " analysis of what takes place in the fully developed mind ". A Genetic Psychology would undertake the further task of ex- pounding the stages in the development of the individual mind. Of the two divisions thus indicated in our author's work, the first considers, in book i., chapter i., the principle of division of ultimate mental functions. In chapter ii., the " Analysis of Presentations/' in chapters iii. and iv., the forms of " Appre- hension," in chapter v., " Belief," in chapter vi., "Feeling and Conation," are defined and illustrated. The second part depends, in a measure, upon the theory of the nature of mental activity expounded in the opening chapter of book ii. But the most note- worthy and original developments of our author's theories con- cerning the dynamics of the mental process occur in the later chapters of book ii., which fill the second volume. Of the line of discussion thus sketched one is first disposed to remark, not indeed by way of objection, that the first of these sections certainly does not contain as much detailed study of the mere contents of consciousness, apart from their dynamical relations, as the opening statement might lead one to anticipate, especially in view of the usual customs of psychologists. We find no elaborate accounts of the distinctions of the various classes of sensations, no extended dialectics regarding the relations of " intensity " to " quality," and the like. On the contrary, our author confines himself to a general discussion rather of the fundamental "modes" of being conscious, in the sense in w r hich Brentano distinguished such modes, than of the details of the contents of consciousness. But brevity in this region of psychology is not unwelcome, and Mr. Stout has done well to avoid repeating familiar matter. On the other hand, it may at once be said that the second or " dynami- cal" section of Mr. Stout's work is by no means wholly devoted to the laws of mental sequence, but continues the work of the first part by adding many valuable analyses of the contents and modes of consciousness. And, as a fact, it is in this aspect of the second part of the treatise that the present reviewer finds what he most prizes in Mr. Stout's work. Our author's conception of psychical