is to be observed, as of considerable importance from the psychological point of view, that in Kant's exposition there is a connexion indicated, but not worked out, between object or objective order and generality. The objective order is the common standard over against which the transitory accidental representations of the individual mind are judged to be subjective. In fact Kant repeatedly, though without sufficiently detailed treatment of the problem implied, identifies 'objective' with 'necessary and universal'; and certainly, whatever else necessary and universal' may signify, they imply generality. It has been already pointed out that one of the difficulties in the comprehension of Kant's work is his identification of the function or process of understanding in its two lines of application. The categories are called by him notions, and put on the same level with the logical concept. The analytical function of thinking is viewed as having some identity of character with the far more important synthetic function.

Perhaps we shall find, in the more minute analysis of the simple manifestations of thinking, a clue to the connexion here indicated by Kant between the notions of 'objective' and 'universal' or 'general.' It is possible at the same time that the result of our analysis will be an important modification of the notion 'objective' as employed by Kant.

(2) In regard to the second point-self-consciousnessbeyond a doubt Kant is naming correctly one important feature of thinking in our experience. Without that kind of combination or connexion in the contents of our experience which we summarily designate by the term 'thought,' self-consciousness would have no existence; but it is impossible to accept the notion 'self-consciousness' as either simple or primitive. From the psychological point of view, at all events, we are compelled to recognise a continuous gradation in the consciousness of self; and we

cannot regard that highly developed form of it, in which it is the correlate of the orderly systematic representation of a world of things in space and time, as being the first form in which it comes forward in our experience. It may be true that what we call thinking-a process which, as we may assume provisionally, presents itself in very different grades of development-is just the operation in and through which self-consciousness develops. But we are not justified in deriving the operation of thought from selfconsciousness, still less from a form of self-consciousness which we cannot suppose to be present from the outset in the development of mind.

These remarks on the Kantian view illustrate what is really the greatest difficulty in the psychological analysis of thinking. The experience in which the manifestations of thinking are to be discovered is so various, that we can hardly suppose that a complete thoroughgoing insight into the nature of thought can be extracted from any one section of it. Moreover, the gradations of the experience from which we have to get our insight into thinking are not all of them, are not even many of them, within reach of psychological analysis. The regressive work which we have to undertake carries us inevitably to regions of the inner life which we have no direct means of inspecting. Much of it, therefore, is inferential, and we have no direct tests to apply to the inferences we make.

257

CHAPTER IV.

SURVEY OF DEVELOPED THINKING.

WITH this precaution as regards the method to be followed, we have now to ask what light is thrown on our problem by a survey of the developed functions of thinking. Such developed functions are manifested in certain distinctions which run through our mature experience, and in certain special products which form parts of that experience. Both require to be handled with care; for neither, according to our methodical principle, can be at once accepted as ultimate. They are to be utilised only as pointing to the earlier, more elementary, processes, from which they may have developed, and to which we may be able to trace them.

Of the distinctions, the most obvious is doubtless that which appeared in Lotze's treatment as the opposition between the psychical mechanism and the activity of thinking. Our ordinary experience seems abundantly to confirm some such contrast. We set on the one side the appearance in consciousness of sense-presentations coming from the objective world, and, in their coming, under no control, or, at best, a very indirect control, by us; likewise the haphazard unregulated flow of ideas, regulated no doubt by principles and explicable by reference to causes, but standing, so far, beyond our control, not dominated by reference to any end proposed by the subject himself. Over against these, we place the exercise of some activity of our own: the expres

VOL. II.

R

sion of ourselves or our own purposes wherein the train of ideas is dominated by some end, theoretical or practical, which was proposed by the subject himself, and in which the combining or separating of the materials appears as a process carried out upon them by the subject. Taken in the mass, our thinking appears (1) as a subjective activity, (2) as the expression of some purpose, and therefore as self-conscious, (3) as relating together the materials supplied by presentation and representation.

It cannot be supposed that, in this distinction, we are really naming fundamental and original oppositions of mental function. The smallest consideration suffices to convince us not only that the distinction is far from being so absolute as it appears in expression, but that, as it occurs in our experience, it is in itself fluctuating and variable. No one of the members of the oppositions it sums up is capable of being taken as simple and ultimate. (1) Subjective and objective, which we contrast with one another, evidently present themselves at different stages of experience in different aspects. (2) The purposes or ends which we seek to realise, and which give to our thinking its self-conscious aspect, are also variable, dependent on accidental circumstances. (3) The relating or combining and separating operation of thinking is evidently only possible if the material be adapted thereto; and the material, therefore, cannot be regarded as quite foreign, distinct in origin, and wholly opposed psychologically, to thinking itself.

In the same way, if we take into account the characteristic products of the activity of thinking-notion, judgment, reasoning-we shall be compelled to allow that the sharp differences which mark them off from one another, and from the other contents of mind in our mature experience, must needs be regarded as results, not as primitive conditions: that the variety in the range of each of them indicates that the

fully formed product is the last term of a development, and that its characteristics are not primitive, and can be taken only as indicating the original features from which the development started.

In reasoning, judgment, and notion there have long been recognised the special forms of mental process in which the activity of thinking is displayed. But the logical analysis of these products of thought, which generally determines the view we take of their natures, contemplates almost inevitably the most matured stage of their existence. Too little attention has been given to two points significant even for logic, namely: (1) the variety of graduated forms in which these products appear, and (2) the common basis which constitutes each of them a product of thinking. The tendency of logical treatment is on the whole to consider exclusively the most developed types, and to regard the three products as either independent of one another or as only in a kind of mechanical relation to one another.

There are thus two lines of consideration to be followed; and these converge towards a common result. In the first place we may seek to connect the developed with the primary stages in these several products of thinking; and secondly, by a consideration of the points they have in common, we may hope to discover what are either fundamental characteristics of thinking or the determining peculiarities which, in the mental life, give a definite impetus in one direction— the direction which we call summarily the development of thought. We take, then, in the first place, the attempt to analyse the more complex forms of the products of thought, and to connect them with their primary stages.