HPB-SB-10-114

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vol. 10, p. 114

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

vol. 10

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< Jesus of Nazareth (continued from page 10-113) >

...

The Progress of Psychology*

By Edward W. Cox, Serjeant-At-Law, President of the Psychological Society.

Has psychology made any and what progress during the five years of the existence of this Society? That is the question I propose to answer to-night.

To do so, I must revert to the origin of our Association.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF PSYCHOLOGY TO MATERIALISM.

Materialism—by which term I mean the dogma that man is material merely, soul a myth, and existence after the mechanism of the body has ceased to be, the dream of poets or the delusions of priests— materialism, in this sense, was proclaimed by the high priests of science upon public platforms and in popular periodicals,

It had become “the fashion,” under divers names. To question it was to be voted unscientific. Hope and faith were shattered in many minds, and all minds were more or less disturbed.

A cry of anguish and despair went up from multitudes whose confidence in man and his destiny had been thus rudely shaken. “Can it be,” they said, “that man everywhere and at all times has believed soul, that is, himself, as being something other than the body, if there be no truth in such a creed? Is there no evidence of the existence of soul? Is there no proof of its being? Is such proof really unattainable, as the scientists say? Is psychology a baseless science? Why have we not a society that will investigate the mechanism of man precisely as the other sciences are investigated—a society for observation of phenomena, gathering of facts, and reasoning to conclusions from those facts; a society that will combat materialism with its own weapons, meeting it not with dogma but with demonstration?

This Association was an answer to that complaint.

Our programme was short and explicit. The Psychological Society of Great Britain was formed purposely to investigate the forces by which the mechanism of man is moved and directed. Two facts were not disputed. The motions of that mechanism are automatic. The motive force is within the mechanism. But in addition to this there is a directing force—a force also within the mechanism—that determines the amount of the motive force, the manner of its exercise, the ends to which it shall be applied.

When it is charged against us that psychology is a very vague science (if it be even entitled to the name of science), we answer with this definition, which has the merit of brevity, simplicity, and comprehensiveness, and may challenge comparison with the definition of any other science.

<... continues on page 10-114.1 >

*The sixth annual presidential address to the Psychological Society of Grea Britain, delivered on Thursday, last week.

Editor's notes

Sources

• 

  London Spiritualist, No. 377, November 14, 1879, pp. 229-31

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< The Progress of Psychology (continued from page 10-114) >

The promulgation of this definition of psychology was in itself a great step in the path of progress, for hitherto the name had been very vaguely used. We now know precisely what we mean by psychology, and we are enabled to convey that meaning distinctly to others. No adversary can now pretend that he does not understand what psychology is, nor can any now deny that it has a very real something to investigate, and that the subjects of it demand investigation.

PSYCHOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS.

The second forward step has been the severance of psychology from metaphysics. This has been the triumph of very recent years. Many among us can remember the time when psychology was looked upon as a purely metaphysical study, and was so held and treated even by its votaries. Most of those who, with myself, are declining in the vale of years, and on whose brows, to use the beautiful Welsh metaphor the flowers of the grave are blooming, will remember with what eagerness they plunged into that which was called “Philosophy;” how they revelled in diverging theories of mind, its powers and capacities, as imagined by the ingenuity of such thinkers as Reid, and Stewart, and Hamilton, and Browne——theories evolved from their inner consciousness, and moulded entirely from introspection instead of observation; how they rose from these studies charmed but not enlightened; their intellects, indeed, refined and strengthened by exercise, but nothing added to their positive knowledge. The first conception of a real psychology, based upon observation and experiment—as a science founded upon facts — was undoubtedly duo to Gall and his fellow-labourer Spurzheim, who taught that mind must be explored, like the body, by noting its various developments in various persons, and then seeking if there be in the structure of those individuals any and what peculiarities apparently associated with these developments. If they were successful in their researches, if the coincidences they noted were actual or only accidental, is still a subject of dispute. But not the less to them is due the merit of having removed psychology from the realms of fancy to the region of fact. They taught the right method of pursuit, even if they failed to secure its object, and from that moment we may date a new departure in mental and psychical science. The influence of that method was manifest in the works even of its opponents. Gradually it grew in favour, while its authors were disowned and discredited. The most notable of its acknowledged disciples were George and Andrew Combo, whose works will live to benefit future generations. They acknowledged the obligation and boasted themselves disciples. Others less scrupulous, as the manner is, learned the lesson and ignored the master. Abercrombie, in his Intellectual Powers, Dr. Moore, in his Duality of the Mind, and many of lesser fame, made practical application of the new and true method of psychological science. They proved what might be accomplished for menial science by noting phenomena and facts, and now they are but few who venture to treat of psychology on any other basis. Although dissenting from many of his conclusions, and protesting against the unfairness, because onesidedness, of many of his judgments, and lamenting that so keen a mind should be so much the victim of prepossession and dominant idea, it would be unjust not to recognise the service done to psychology by Dr. Carpenter by accepting the new conditions of study, by the valuable collection of observed facts he has stored up in his books, and by the popularity which he has thus given to a science which had been formerly the property of but few, when in truth it is the science that more than any other ought to be the possession of every man, because it is the knowledge of himself.

MR. HERBERT SPENCER ON PSYCHOLOGY.

But more than to any other is psychology indebted to Mr. Herbert Spencer for its present position. He has fully accepted the method es investigation by observation and of study by fact rather than by fancy. He has examined mind as he would have examined body, noting its operations—that is to say, what it doth under various conditions, and have the forces that move and direct the body manifest themselves in action; but his great achievement—that winch will make his works for ever valuable, if only as museums of psychological facts—is the bold endeavour to apply to mind the Darwinian theory of evolution. Accepting that now basis of philosophy as indisputably true, he contends that, if it be true, it must be applicable to mind as to body. If man is a development so must be the mind if man. If the law of “the survival of the fittest,” which is the necessary accompaniment of evolution, be a reality, and not a magnificent dream, traces of it will be found in the mental condition of man as exhibited in the actions and thoughts of men under the various conditions of their being—their present and past histories, and the environments of climatic and other influences. With enormous labour he has gathered together a vast mass of these facts, materials to be hereafter classified, compared, and examined. It is much to be lamented that this great student of psychology should have neglected that which, more than any other, must supply material for the investigation of the forces by which the mechanism of man is moved and directed—namely, the action of those forces when the mechanism is disordered; the observation of mind in its abnormal conditions—in sleep, in dream, in insanity, in somnambulism. If Mr. Herbert Spenser would apply the same laborious industry to collection of the facts and phenomena thus exhibited by mind itself, he would lay deep and broad the foundation which at present is only a partial one.

And this raises the question why he has avoided so obvious a source of knowledge? It is not a dread of unpopularity, for he dares an open acknowledgment of materialism. Wherefore, then, does he decline to enter this straight pathway to what he most desires to learn?

The reason is too plain. He fears whither it will conduct him. Even his great mind is not free from the influence of prepossession and dominant idea. With the late Professor Clifford, Huxley, Tyndall, and indeed the vast majority of our most eminent scientists, he has embraced two conclusions as absolute truths. First, he assumes that the mechanism of man is nothing more than the perishable structure perceptible by our senses: and, second, that whatever our senses cannot perceive, even if it be, mustnecessarily be unknown and unknowable, and therefore that it is a waste of time and toil to seek for it. Absolutely confident of this assumption, he and those who hold with him at once and peremptorily reject as false or fanciful any phenomena that appear to be inconsistent with that assumption. It is not with them a question of evidence—of degree of proof. No amount of proof will be accepted, because in their minds the alleged fact is simply impossible. “It cannot be,” he says, “and therefore it is not. It is useless to look when, even if I saw, I should not believe. I will not accept the evidence of my senses as against my preformed mental judgment. I should prefer to conclude that all my senses are deceiving me rather than that my mental convictions should have failed me.”

With such a mental condition it is impossible to contend. It is deaf to argument. In vain it is urged that we are as yet on the threshold merely of science—that our knowledge of Nature and of Nature’s laws is still very limited—that proofs present themselves almost daily that things science has pronounced impossible nevertheless come to be. Dogmatism is not to be moved. But still, as ever it must, the denied fact lives, and in due time is established, and then it is found to square with all other scientific truths because its causes and conditions have been explored and examined.

SB, v. 10, p. 114, back

Editor's notes