Note 42 — Chapter I · REALITY AND EXPERIENCE

The reader will do well to compare with the whole of the foregoing section the treatment of perception as essentially teleological in Dr. Stout’s Manual of Psychology,3 bk. iii. pt. 1, chap. 2.

I need hardly observe that recognition of the fundamental significance of purpose and selection for mental life does not of itself entail the adoption of “voluntarist” views in Psychology. What is fundamental for real mental life may perfectly well admit of analysis into hypothetical simpler elements for the purpose of the psychologist. Thus the admission that all mental life is teleological and selective need not involve the adoption of such metaphysical theories of activity as are adversely criticised by Mr. Bradley in his Appearance and Reality, chap. 7, or the introduction of a peculiar “consciousness of activity” as an unanalysable datum into Psychology. The antithesis between the actualities of life and the data of Psychology maintained by Prof. Münsterberg in his Psychology and Life, and Grundzüge der Psychologie, if untenable in the extreme form in which he states it, is important as a corrective of the opposite tendency to treat as ultimate for psychological analysis whatever is of supreme importance for life.life.