Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/405

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G. F. STOUT, Analytic Psychology. 389 such, universal, are facts whose esse must be, not their percipi, from the point of view of any one observer or moment, but their universal validity for all experience, for all observers, for all times. We are not here concerned with the question how such univer- sally valid connexions can be asserted to be true. We are only concerned with their logical character as causal connexions. This character distinguishes them, by the breadth of the whole logical heaven, from the contents of any immediate experience as such. And consequently, if the connexions introspectively observed are connexions immediately felt, they are simply not causal connexions, unless causation is no longer to mean what it does in the world where universal types of sequence are defined. It is plain, however, that our author, in common with most partisans of mental activity, believes that the connexions immedi- ately felt in the conscious stream are capable of being stated in terms of universally verifiable principles. In other words, he doubtless believes, as appears from his whole discussion, that when you go beyond the immediately felt connexions, and com- pare your own experiences with those of other people, you can indirectly make out that such connexions do stand for a sort of efficaciousness which we can express in universal terms, and verify by ordinary inductive methods. Thus, I attend, and am said immediately to feel my attention to be efficacious in guiding the stream of consciousness. So far I have immediate fact, and not yet general principle. But I compare notes with others, and am supposed to discover reports that agree with mine as to the nature of this immediate feeling about attention. Moreover, in observing people, I note all sorts of indirect expressions of this "efficacy of attention". I thus verify my own impressions, and become assured that mental activity is something of a universally valid meaning. But now, as one must still insist, What is it that I discover when I thus compare notes, and observe the general indications amongst men regarding the causal relations of atten- tion? And one must answer, In case of such comparison I discover, upon the basis of ordinary inductive methods, certain generally verifiable uniformities, certain objective regularities of scientific experience. But what are these uniformities ? Are they uniformities in the sequence of purely internal or mental states ? Answer, No. Every mental state is, by hypothesis, observable, in- trospectively, by one observer only. But inductive science is, logically speaking, always concerned with what is conceived as the universally observable. And now what is, on the basis of the presuppositions of ordinary inductive logic, universally observable about the mental sequences? I answer, with the use of the formula that has lately been employed, in a slightly different way, by Avenarius : What is universally observable is that, at the time when men, viewed as physical or psycho-physical organisms, either " behave .as if they attended," or " report " that they are