A Full Life: The Works of Charlotte Mason

Modern Physiological Psychology.––The modern school, which regards psychology strictly as a ‘natural science,’ works more or less on the basis of Locke, plus an illuminating knowledge of biology. Here, as with Locke, the ‘mind’ is apprehended only as ’states of consciousness’; the senses are the sole avenues of knowledge, which reaches the brain in the form of ideas or images. But I shall represent this ‘rational psychology’ best by citing a few sentences from Professor James (Harvard University), whose wise and temperate treatment of the subject commands the respect and attention of even those who differ from him. He opens with a limiting definition of psychology as the ‘description and explanation of states of consciousness as such.’ He treats psychology as a ‘natural science.’ After bringing forward facts familiar to most of us, showing the intimate connection between acts of thought and the cerebral hemisphere, he says: “Taking all such facts together, the simple and radical conception dawns upon the mind that mental action may be uniformly and absolutely a function of brain action varying as the latter varies, and being to the brain action as effect to cause. This conception is the working hypothesis which underlies all the physiological-psychology of recent years.” This is not far removed from the announcement of the Frenchman that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile, both processes being purely material and mechanical, and doing away with any requirement for the profoundest thinking beyond that of a well-nourished brain.