CHAPTER III
MALE AND FEMALE CONSCIOUSNESS
Before proceeding to consider the main difference between the psychical life of the sexes, so far as the latter takes subjective and objective things as its contents, a few psychological soundings must be taken, and conceptions formulated. As the views and principles of prevailing systems of psychology have been formed without consideration of the subject of this book, it is not surprising that they contain little that I am able to use. At present there is no psychology but many psychologists, and it would really be a matter of caprice on my part to choose any particular school and attempt to apply its principles to my subject. I shall rather try to lay down a few useful principles on my own account.
The endeavours to reach a comprehensive and unifying conception of the whole psychical process by referring it to a single principle have been particularly evident in the relations between perceptions and sensations suggested by different psychologists. Herbart, for instance, derived the sensations from elementary ideas, whilst Horwicz supposed them to come from perceptions. Most modern psychologists have insisted that such monistic attempts must be fruitless. None the less there was some truth in the view.
To discover this truth, however, it is necessary to make a distinction that has been overlooked by modern workers. We must distinguish between the perceiving of a perception, feeling of a sensation, thinking a thought from the later repetitions of the process in which recognition plays a
