Note 171 — Chapter I · THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

This is strikingly illustrated by the procedure of Professor Münsterberg himself. He expels selective interest from his psychological account of attention, in obedience to the principle that teleological ideas must be kept out of a descriptive science, and then, when confronted with the problem what it is that does decide what presentations shall actually be attended to, makes the selection a function of the sub-cortical motor-centres in the brain, thus reintroducing into biology the teleological categories previously declared inadmissible. See Grundzüge der Psychologie, vol. i. chap. 15, pp. 525-562. I may once more note, for the benefit of the reader who is interested in methodology, that whereas the processes of the mechanical sciences are essentially continuous, the teleological processes of finite life as conceived by ethical and historical science appear, as Professor Royce has insisted, to be of the nature of discontinuous series, i.e. to consist of terms between which intermediate links cannot be interpolated. Why I cannot accept what appears to be Professor Royce’s view, that ultimate Reality itself is a discontinuous series, will perhaps be clear from Chap. 3 and the following chapter of the present Book. But see also the Supplementary Note at the end of the present chapter.