/06 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION.
[f, then, we may trust the author’s own account of his work, that work is
certainly empirical. Yet we find Professor Muensterberg repeatedly rep-
resenting the Wundtian apperception as a foreign power which arbitrarily
invades the content of consciousness ;* and Dr. Ziehen finds in Wundt’s
doctrine of the will a survival from the old faculty-theories, a return to
:he pre-Herbartian standpoint ; + while the views which these two writers
have propounded to the German public have been set before the English
hy Professor Bain § and Dr. Bastian.§
These, then, are the reasons which have led me to present to you a
purely exegetical paper, rather than one which should be critical or con-
structive. We cannot criticise until we have understood ; we should not
construct without reference to the labors of those who laid the founda-
clons of our science.
[.—THE CONATIVE ELEMENT, QUALITATIVELY REGARDED. |
The datum of psychology is consciousness, as this term has been defined
above. Its first problem is the determination of the number of the ulti-
mate conscious elements, from the interaction—fusion and combination—
of which we may build up this consciousness. We have seen that various
writers posit variously one or two or three such elements. Our question
here runs: Is conation a mental ultimate or a mental derivative ?
[f now, as we say by metaphor, we ‘“look into ” the mind—*¢‘ introspect ”
—we find among the ideas which go to compose it at the moment a certain
Jifference. (1) Some are clear, vivid; some indistinct, blurred. Retain-
ing our visual metaphor, we may say that the former are situated at the
conscious fixation-point, while the latter are scattered over the conscious
jeld-of-vision—not in the least meaning to imply, by this language, that
there is a ¢“ consciousness” outside of or beyond the ideas, which turns to
shem, and illuminates them, as the eye turns to the objects of the external
world ; but simply wishing to illustrate by a familiar analogy what is a
striking fact to the beginner in introspection. (2) But not only are the
“‘ fixated ”’ ideas more distinct and vivid than the rest; they are more
anified, more firmly welded together. They constitute a whole, which is,
:omparatively speaking, permanent; the remaining ideas are detached,
deeting, unconnected. (3) Further, if we consider the indefinite ideas
which lie outside of the conscious fixation-point, we find that they pass,
and are succeeded by others, in a kind of independent panorama. We
are not “interested” in them: we are passive, as they come or go.
* Beitrdge, i., ii, iil., passim. .
t+ Leitfaden, 1st ed., pp. iil., 118, ete. Cf. Wundt, in Phil. Stud., vi., p. 17. Cf. G. E. Miller, in Gott.
yel. Anz., June, 1891, p. 429.
t Mind, 1887, p. 161 ff. § Brain, pt. lvii., p. 20.
{ Phys. Psych., ii., 3d ed., p. 235 ff. Ethik, 2d ed.,p. 433 ff. Phil. Stud.,i., p. 837. System, vp. 380 ff.
Vorlesunaen. 24 ed., p. 252 ff. Kiilpe, .. c., p. 427 ff.
