By an idea-force M. Fouillée means a " process indivisibly sensory, emotional and appetitive"
• He conceives the mental
life as consisting throughout in activity directed towards ends, with or without forethought as to the nature of these ends. In the case of psychical process tinal causes and efficient causes are coincident. All specific contents of consciousness, the whole variety of seusory and intellectual experiences, are specitic modes of this all-pervading and persistent nisus in which our very existence as couscious beings consists.
According as this nisus is
thwarted or furthered by the modifications which it receives in the course of experience, these modifications are agreeably or disagreeably toned.
Thus it necessarily tends to maintain
and develop pleasing experiences and to get rid of those which are painful. The proposition that pain consists in thwarted striving and the proposition that we strive ayainst pain are ditferent ways of saying the same thing. • The force inherent in all states of consciousness has its ultimate ground in the inseparable union of ... discernment which is the source of intelligence, and preference which is the source of will. ... Discernment may be implicit when one termn only is present to the mind so that there is no comparison... There exists also an implicit pre-ference, including no comparison. I experience a pain, and I immediately endeavour after its suppression, as is shown by my reactive effort. This requires no reflective comparison of ideas or possible alternatives. ... There is an unreasoned but active preterence mn lavour of pleasure, and there is at the saine time discernment of my actual state."
Every idea or sensation is therefore, according to M. Fouillée, an endeavour thwarted or promoted. He admits that in the mature consciousness the conative and affective aspects of the triple process are sometimes comparatively inconspicuous. But they are never altogether absent. In attitudes of mind which appeur nost purely cognitive, there is always some kind and degree of impulse and interest, e.g..
the disposition to go on
thinking about something whatever it may be and so avoid mental vacuity But even this relative obscuration of the active and emotional consciousness is a comparatively late product of mental evolution. At the outset there is no severance between practical and theoretical interest. Cognition is, to begin with, immediately and entirely subservient to external action for the satisfaction of organic needs. In order to live an organism must adapt itsell to its environment or its environment to itself. In the beginning cognition was inerely & means whereby this adaptation was made possible. The disposition to seek truth for its own sake is a subsequent growth. This principle of the priority of practice to theory is everywhere einphasised by M. Fouillée.
He
uses it as a key to many of the leading problems of psychology.
Indeed, it seems to us that he sometimes pushes this line of explanation too far. It sometimes leads him to commit the psychologist's fallacy of transferring his own point of view to the consciousness whose development he is tracing. Because practical endeavour is of supreme importance at the outset of psychological development, M. Fouillée is apt to fgure the undeveloped consciousness as coucerning itself with its own impulses and its own pleasure and pain, instead of with their objects and occasions.
To complete this account of the theory of idea-forces, we must consider it also on the psychophysical side. M. Fouillee maintains in the most thorough and uncompromising fashion the correlation of mental change aud brain change. The force of ideas whereby they determine changes in the organism, and so indirectly in the environment, does not consist in a mechanical action which they exercise on the body. It rather depends on the necessary law which unites each state of consciousness with a corresponding mode of motion within the brain. It is this correlated neural disturbance which gives rise, according to physical laws, to subsequent physical changes.
* We do not by
any ineans believe that the idea of firing a pistol, for example, acts on the brain as the finger acts on tue trigger.
_Mechanical effects
in space have always, as such other, mechanical effects in space for their antecedents. The idea never intervenes physically so as to make & breach of continuity in the universal mechanism.
The motion is already present while sensation and thought are coining into being, and this motion cannot cease; it passes necessarily from one cell to another. If it does not expend itself in exciting other modes of consciousness, it expends itself in setting the muscles in motion. Or, to speak more correctly, these two effects are always simultaneous, but in varying proportions, and this variation in their relative degree determines the distinction between states which are a potiori called ideational and those which are a potiori called volitional." But M. Fouillée strenuously combats the view that because mechanical effects are always as such traceable to mechanical condition, the psychical side of the total psycho-physical process must be regarded a mere epiphenomenon.
The conceptions of action, effort, tendency,
enforcement, and so forth, are, according to him, ultimately derived from the experience of that appetitive activity which constitutes the existence of conscious beings. If we are to use the term " epiphenomenon" there is far better reason for applying it to physical than to conscious process. Not only the brain but the whole of the material world way be regarded as relatively phenomenal, by comparison with psychical activity-as but the outward and visible sign of an inward psychical reality.
The general point of view, which we have sketched in outline,
is applied by M. Fouillée
in a thorough-going manner to the
whole round of psychological problems. Everywhere the leading ides-force which guides his investigations is the primacy of practical experience as compared with theoretical, and the oinnipre-sence of appetitive activity. The order of treatment is in the main synthetic. The first volume is devoted chiefly to those primitive stages of the mental life in which it is immediately conditioned by sense impressions, and in which its activity consists in muscular reactions in more or less inmediate response to these impressions. M. Fouillée endeavours to show that appetitive activity and the movements correlated with it are essentially implicated: (1) in sensation; (2) in sensuous pleasure and pain;
(3) in the primitive reactions which constitute the germs of voli-tion. Under the first head, he inquires why anong the innumerable physical agencies which environ us, we are sensitive to certain selected groups to the exclusion of the rest. Accepting the biological answer that the selection of special modes of sentience depends on the comparative advantage which the individual derives from them in the struggle for existence, he formulates this explanation from the psychological point of view. Sensation is originally a modification of the appetitive activity which constitutes conscious life, either in the way of advancement or obstruction-pleasure or pain. The evolution of sensations— their gradual differentiation—-is determined by felt need, by what Schopenhauer called the " will to live". It is the relation of sensations to agreeable or disagreeable feeling-to the satisfaction or thwarting of felt needs-and to the corresponding movements of advance or withdrawal, which has determined the selection from all possible modes of sentience of these most advantageous to the individual. As regards the manner in which ditferences of sensory quality originate, M. Fouillée fully accepts Ward's theory of a presentation-continuum gradually differentiated.
He rejects the theory which would reduce all
specific qualities to various combinations of the same elementary unit. On the other hand, he denies that the unique character of a sensory quality and its apparent simplicity are satisfactory evidence that it contains no complexity.
" Our most specific
sensations of taste are precisely those which are complicated with sensations of touch and sinell." What is said on this question is interesting; but the difficulty of conceiving sensory differences, which no etfort of attention can distinguish, is not removed.
Ward's criticism of the doctrine of the relativity of
sensations is reproduced with a lucidity which adds to its force.
Finally, M. Fouillée insists on the constant and necessary cou-nexion of sensation and inotor reaction.
The physiological and psychological causes of pleasure and pain are next examined.
Pleasure is inade to depend on efficient
psychophysical activity, and pain on the existence of obstructions which render it inefficient and tend to suppress or destroy it.
The special conditions of pleasure-pain, such as the relation of wear to repair in nerve-tissue, are brought under this general principle.
at 1s denied that feeling-tone is a function mereis of
the intensity of sensations as distinguished from their quality.
Cogent arguments are brought against the pessinistic theory that pleasure consists in release from pain. Of course this theory is
utterly irreconciluble with the position that we are essentially active, and that activity as such is pleasurable, in so far as it is not defeated. The same general thesis is skilfally applied to the refutation of the theory that pain is the sole or the principal factor in mental evolution. At the same time the thesis itsell is corroborated in the course of the argument by reference to the facts which support it. The sume general point of view is empha-sised and developed in opposition to the Herbartian attempt to find the sole conditions of pleaste-pain in the interaction of pre-sentations.
M. Fouillée scarcely does justice to the Herbartian
doctrine.
Herbart reduced both feeling and presentation to
modes of the self-preservation of the soul. Mutatis mutamlis, this self-preserving tendency corresponds to M. Fouillée's appetitive activity.
Next arises the vexed question whether pleasure
as such or pain as such varies in quality as well as in intensity.
* According to us,
" suys M. Fouillée, " there underlies all plea-
sures, however much they may ditfer, a kind of fundamental pleasure, which is the pleasure of being alive . . .; but it does not follow that the existence of this common element, which enables us to compare diverse pleasures by referring them to the root-pleusure of being active, excludes all differences of quality between pleasures.
The question is largely one of definition
and division. But those who, like Lehmann and Ward, taking the experience of being pleased in its abstract purity, exclude from it all qualitative distinctions as belonging rather to the cognitive consciousness, appear to us to divide more skilfully—to carve where the joints are.
The primitive stages of volition are treated in a very interesting way.
M. Fouillée, in agreement with Spencer, regards nascent movement as essential to desire in its primitive form. What Spencer has failed to bring out clearly enough is that the nascent novement has for its counterpart mn consciousness
" a certain
tension, a certain psychical endeavour, the consciousness of an activity which demands exercise, which tends to work itself out and attain completion. ... Indefinable as the idea of activity may be in virtue of its very simplicity, it is inherent in conscious-mess. It is implied in the idea of passivity. A felt modification is a felt activity" Desire is the felt tendeney of an idea to actualise itself.
But though the idea is potent to produce more-
ment, it is impotent to produce sensations directly. It thus gives rise simultaneously (1) to a lively sense of power to actualise movements, (2) & lively sense of impotence to actualise sensations: the result is sense of power arrested and checked, with conse quent effort and pain. The idea thus tends, by means of nove-ment, to become sensation, to acquire that supreme intensity which attaches to actuality.
The first germs of volition consist,
according to M. Fouillée, in indefinite appetitive movements preceding definite appetitive movements. In tracing the mode in whicl this indefinite mobility becones differentiated and confined to definite channels he follows Ward.
Passing over the interesting discussion of the emotions and of their expression, we come to bk. iii., which treats of memory and its relation to conation and movement. M. Fouillée first discusses the mechanical basis of memory. He begins by laying down two very dubious propositions: (1) that every idea includes an unage which is a faint revival of sensation; (2) that the revival 1s localised in the same parts of the brain as the original impression.
He then proceeds to discuss the competing hypotheses which respectively seek the physiological explanation of retentiveness in the persistence of inolecular vibration, of structural modifications, and of functional dispositions. In regard to the problem of the survival of ideas, he claims to be more of a " mecaniste" than the most convinced advocates of mechanism.
At the same time
he endeavours to show that mechanical explanations represent only one side of the case, and that by no means the most essen-tial. His own interest is mainly in the " mental aspect " of the process.
* When we pass to the psychological point of view, we
. can no longer say with Maudsley that the face disgured by Sinal-pox remembers the virus."
Here, as everywhere, MI.
Foullée emphasises the importance of appetitive activity. He is willing to admit that in the case of after-sensations, recurrent sensations, and hallucinations we are relatively passive.
But
when we pass from these to consider the retention of the primary memory image, we fnd that our own activity plays a prominent and essential part in the process.
•The ninemonic image
depels predominantly on the attention given to it. ... If this attention has a sufficient intensity, the image of even a faint impression may be renewed and retained for a long time.
Apart from attention, the image even of a faint impression soon disappears. The innemonic image is not therefore the passive residuum of the impression. It is a combination of the residua of the impression with the residua of the cerebral and mental reaction."
The treatment of the laws of association
is on similar lines. James' account of the brain process involved is reproduced with full approval. But the correlated mental aspect is also brought out, though not perhaps so fully as we might expect.
Stress is laid on the controlling influence of the
generl direction of mental activity and general emotional state on the course taken by the ideal train. The association of ideas is said to have for its presupposition the association by analogy and by contrast of emotional states and of active tendencies.
Here
there appears to be a clear abuse of language. A dominant impulse such as hate may, as M. Fouillée says, awaken secondary impulses having a similar direction, such as anger, resentment, and desire for vengeance.
But it does not do so by association.
Still less is this the case when the transition from one emotional and active disposition to another depends on contrast.
Foullee further refers to the part played by intellectual activity in the original synthesis on which subsequent associative reproduction depends. He scarcely seems to us to attach enough importance to this point.
Reference might have been made to the
extremely valuable observations of hypnotised subjects and hys-terica patients recorded by Janet, which clearly show that the power of forming new ideal combination is strictly limited by the power of attending.
Reproduction, as M. Fouillée clearly shows, is not identica with recognition: it is not even always coincident with it. M.
Fouillée's account of recognition is somewhat elaborate and difi-cult to grasp. But the essence of it may be stated as follows. At the outset of mental development, the feeling of recognition was implicit in the satisfaction of appetite; the infant at the breast with each successive draught of milk "feels the coincidence of the new sensation with the image of the past sensation: his imagination flls itself, so to speak, in the same manner as his tet and the milk alrethat he thus recognises the pleasure already development recognition. • . extends to more indifferent objects, but it always retains this active element of an energy easily ex-pended, which comes and goes from one term to auother without check or shock of collision." It must be noted that a necessary condition of the perception of identity is the intervening differ-ence, the partial cessation or fading of the previous sensation.
Non-recognition or the experience of diterence is implicit in disappointed appetition, as recognition is implicit in appetition fulfilled. Thus, if for any reason while the child is sucking the milk fails to come, he feels the discrepancy between the fading after-sensation, or " image," which be strives to main-tain, and the new experience. M. Fouillée is aware that what is here described is a mere experience of resemblance or differ-ence, and not an idea or perception. But he maintains that when this merely felt resemblance or difference is sufficiently
" reinforced " by repetition and concentration, so that it acquires a certain salience or prominence within the total experiences in which it 18 embedded, it is eo ipso transformed into a perception or idea of difference or resemblance. At this point we fall to follow him. He assigns correctly enough the conditions under which the mere experience passes into an idea.
But he refuses
to see that the advent of the idea is the advent of an entirely new and irreducible mode of being conscious. This new mode of consciousness consists in the objective reference whereby, as Mr.
Bradley would say, part of the content of immediate experience becomes " referred away from itself and made adjectival to some. thing else".
• The object of an idea, whether it be mental or
physical, a quality, a thing, or a relation, is never wholly identical with any immediate experience of the subject who thinks of the object at the moment in which he thinks of it.
Immediate
experience is coincident with the momentary consciousness, but the essence of thought is reference beyond the momentary con-sciousness. I may think of a momentary modification of my consciousness as an occurrence in my mental history, an incident in my experience. But neither my experience as a whole, nor the position and relations of any part within that whole, can be given as the content of momentary consciousness.
Again, I may
think of the quality of an immediate experience abstracting from the fact that it is experienced. In this case also I am obviously not thinking merely of the momentary appearance at the moment in which it appears. The ideal content is regarded as something which remains identical through the fleeting moments of its ap-pearance.
We have dwelt on this point because it constitutes our
chief disagreement with M. Fouillée's treatment of the process of mental development. We cordially admit that relations may be merely felt just as sensory qualities may; though we should say that, as far as regards the feeling consciousness in distinction from the consciousness of the psychologist, the application of the terms relation and quulity is proleptic. We agree also that perception and ideas arise at the outset in connexion with the practical experiences described by M. Fouillée.
But we insist that
the transition from mere feeling to idea involves a radically new mode of being conscious. On the other hand, we are at one with
M. Fouillée in his opposition to the Platonisers, who require the intervention of a "pure spirit " for the perception of relations What we demand is the recognition of thought as a distinct mental function, having its distinctive cerebral counterpart in the action, let us say, of a "higher level centre"
• M. Fouilléc
brings his first volume to a close by a detailed and successful attempt to show that the higher forins of intellectual process, generalisation, judgment and reasoning, are also forms of appeti-tion. General notions are general tendencies to action. To formulate a new idea in consciousness is to acquire a new mode and direction of activity.
We have not space to dwell at any length
on the contents of the second volume. It treats mainlv of the origin and influence of the " principal idea-forces,
" and of the
nature and development of the will. Under the frst head are discussed the genesis of the ideas of the external world, of space, of the self, and of time, the origin and operation of the principles of identity and of sufficient reason, and so forth. The central principle of the explanation of the growth of the idea of an
ex- ternal world is the antithesis between our own activity and passivity. fouillees treatment of this topic, as of all the others, is luminous and instructive. In dealing with the space question, he follows in the main in the footsteps of Ward and James. His most distinctive contribution to the subject lies in the was in which he brings out the fundamental importance of the extensity of organic sensations. The most noteworthy and valuable feature in the chapter on the self is the stress which is laid on the in-portance of the idea of self, when once it has become distinetly formulated in consciousness, as a factor in the subsequent evolution of the mental life.
The account of the time-perception is especially good.
Foullée's point of departure is the thesis that process and transition in consciousness, Just because it takes place in conscious-ness, 1s Itselt a node of consciousness. Of course he does not mean that changing experience involves the idea of change; but only that it involves the feeling of time-transience, which is the basis of the idea. A man falling from a balloon may have the distinctive feeling of falling without having the corresponding dea of his own motion. Not only is the process of experience, en pan, experienced process, but within this primitive experience, present, past, and future are already differentiated for the merely feeling consciousness. Here, as elsewhere, the clue is found in the conception of appetitive activity.
The distinctive character-
istic of the present is a sense of actuality, a felt adequac! of consciousness to its object, which may be negatively detined as the absence of the sense of deficiency. Attention is endeavour towards the maximum completeness, distinctness, and vividness of presentation. So far as this endeavour meets fultilment, so far as it passes from felt striving and felt shortcoming into felt frui-tion, we have the experience of the present, which coincides with that of the actual. What in immediate experience corresponds to the idea of the future is the feeling of deticiency which attention constantly tends to remove. In the case of the past there is also a felt shortcoming, but its relation to attention is ditterent.
Our appetitive activity is turned towards the future and from the past.
Hence in the experience of pastness the tendency to nake
good the felt shorteoming is absent.
* An animal strives to detain
its prey which is on the point of escaping from its clutches: this is the future. It lets the prey slip and no longer holds it: this is the past. It seizes it again and devours it: this is the present." The apperception of these immediate experiences in their distine-tion and interconnexion yields the germinal idea of temporal suc-cession; and, according to M. Fouillée, the work of apperception is to " distinguish and separate details previously lost or merged in a mass, owing to their insufficient intensity "
. We must here
again desiderate a recognition of thought as objective reference, irreducible to mere intensification. It would be interesting to follow M. Fouillée in his further account of the development of the idea of time. But limits of space forbid more than a brief indication of his general position.
The principles of identity and of suflicient reason are traced to their psychological beginning in practical activity. We find Foule appears de the it, inute of she prince, from relesio
on our own volitional activity. The essence of will is to posit itself in face of other things which oppose it, and in positing itself to affirın itself. . .. Contradiction is excluded from volition.
What I will, I wıll—i.e., being and well-being" We are by no means sure that we understand. But perhaps it is relevant to object, that if we could identify A with Not-A in thought, there would be no difficulty in willing them both in the samne act.
The analysis of voluntary action and the account of the growth of will are excellent and very full. Two chapters are devoted to a vindication of the existence of Will. In view of the theorising of such "presentationists" as Münsterberg, these chapters are by no means superfluous.
In detining the distinctive nature of
voluntary action, M. Fouillée rejects as inadequate the doctrines which explain the will (a) as the tendency of an image to realise itself, or (b) as determination by juigments and ideas.
• The
will is not determination by any judgment; it is determination by a judgment which pronounces that the realisation on an end depends on our own causality. It is not merely the tendency of any idea to its own realisation. It is the tendency of the idea of personal activity to its own realisation." The treatment of the freedom of the will will be in the main familiar to readers of M.
Fouillée's previous writings. Especial stress is laid on the progressive realisation of the idea of freedom.* The book concludes with a discussion of the alterations and transformations of consciousness and of will, which contain some interesting matter, chiefly relating to the hypnotic state.
We find ourselves in such cordial agreement with M. Fouillée's general point of view, and with his opinion on many disputerl questions, that we are perhaps scarcely in a position to pronounce an impartial judgment on the value of his work. But we can at least say with assurance that all psychologists ought to read it, and that those who do so will be fully repaid. It is full of fresh and interesting matter from beginning to end.
EDITOR.
" For a full analysis of these chapters see notice of the numbers of the Berne hilusophique in which they tirst appeared. MIND, N.S., No.
5, pp. 187-39.
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