Philosophical Review The Postulates of a Structural Psychology
Author(s): E. B. Titchener
Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 7, No. 5 (Sep., 1898), pp. 449-465
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Volume VIL.
Number 5. September, i898. Whole
Number 4u. THE PHILOSOPHICAL THE REVIEW. POSTULATES OF A STRUCTURAL
PSYCHOLOGY.' IOLOGY, defined in its widest sense as the science of life and
of living things, falls into three parts, or may be approached
1J
from any one of three points of view. We may enquire into the
structure of an organism, without regard to function,-by analysis
determining its component parts, and by synthesis exhibiting the
mode of its formation from the parts. Or we may enquire into
the function of the various structures which our analysis has revealed, and into the manner of their interrelation as functional
organs. Or, again, we may enquire into the changes of form
IAt the Ithaca meeting of the American Psychological Association, December,
i897, ProfessorCaldwell read a paper (printed in the Psychological Review of July,
i898) upon the view of the psychological self sketched in my Outline of Psychol- ogy. The present article contains a part of my reply to the criticism of Professor
Caldwell; a full answer would require a definition of science and a discussion of the
relation of science to philosophy. J hope to publish, later on, a second article, dealing
with these topics. Since Professor Caldwell is really attacking, not an individual psychologist, but a general psychological position, the discussion of the questions raised
by him can take an objective form. A polemic is always more telling if it be directed
against an individual, and ProfessorCaldwell doubtless recognized this fact when he
selected my book as whipping-boy. But a rejoinder in kind would, I think, be
dreary reading, while the issues involved are serious enough to justify a broader treatment.
As I shall not return to the point, I may note here that a few of Professor Caldwell's objections rest upon technical errors. This is true at least of nos. i, 8, and 9
of his twelve arguments. Such lapses are hardly to be avoided by any one who
travels out of his own special field into that of another discipline; they do not at all
impair the value of Professor Caldwell's contentions regarded as a whole. This content downloaded from 209.65.177.129 on Wed, 9 Oct 2013 12:56:15 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 450 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [VOL. VII. and function that accompany the persistence of the organism in
time, the phenomena of growth and of decay. Biology, the
science of living things, comprises the three mutually interdependent sciences of morphology, physiology, and ontogeny.
This account is, however, incomplete. The life which forms
the subject matter of science is not merely the life of an individual; it is species life, collective life, as well. Corresponding
to morphology, we have taxonomy or systematic zoology, the
science of classification. The whole world of living things is
here the organism, and species and sub-species and races are its
parts. Corresponding to physiology, we have that department of
biology-it has been termed I cecology '-which deals with questions of geographical distribution, of the function of species in
the general economy of nature. Corresponding to ontogeny
we have the science of phylogeny (in Cope's sense): the biology
of evolution, with its problems of descent and of transmission.
We may accept this scheme as a 'working' classification of
the biological sciences. It is indifferent, for my present purpose,
whether or not the classification is exhaustive, as it is indifferent
whether the reader regards psychology as a subdivision of biology or as a separate province of knowledge. The point which
I wish now to make is this: that, employing the same principle
of division, we can represent modern psychology as the exact
counterpart of modern biology. There are three ways of approaching the one, as there are the three ways of approaching
the other; and the subject matter in every case may be individual
or general. A little consideration will make this clear.1
i. We find a parallel to morphology in a very large portion
The primary aim of the experiof ' experimental' psychology.
mental psychologist has been to analyze the structure of mind;
to ravel out the elemental processes from the tangle of consciousness, or (if we may change the metaphor) to isolate the
constituents in the given conscious formation. His task is a vivisection, but a vivisection which shall yield structural, not functional results. He tries to discover, first of all, what is there
and in what quantity, not what it is there for. Indeed, this work
1 The comparison has been drawn, in part, by Professor Ebbinghaus. See his
Grundziige der Psychologie, I, pp. i6i if. This content downloaded from 209.65.177.129 on Wed, 9 Oct 2013 12:56:15 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions No. 5.] POS TULA TES OF PSYCHOLOGY 451 of analysis bulks so largely in the literature of experimental psychology that a recent writer has questioned the right of the
science to its adjective, declaring that an experiment is something more than a measurement made by the help of delicate
instruments.' And there can be no doubt that much of the
criticism passed upon the new psychology depends on the critic's
failure to recognize its morphological character. We are often
told that our treatment of feeling and emotion, of reasoning, of
the self is inadequate; that the experimental method is valuable
for the investigation of sensation and idea, but can carry us no
farther. The answer is that the results gained by dissection of
the ' higher' processes will always be disappointing to those who
have not themselves adopted the dissector's standpoint. Protoplasm consists, we are told, of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and
hydrogen; but this statement would prove exceedingly disappointing to one who had thought to be informed of the phenomena of contractility and metabolism, respiration and reproduction. Taken in its appropriate context, the jejuneness of
certain chapters in mental anatomy, implying, as it does, the
fewness of the mental elements, is a fact of extreme importance.
2. There is, however, a functional psychology, over and above
this psychology of structure. We may regard mind, on the one
hand, as a complex of processes, shaped and moulded under the
conditions of the physical organism. We may regard it, on the
other hand, as the collective name for a system of functions of
the psychophysical organism. The two points of view are not
seldom confused. The phrase 'association of ideas,' e. g., may
denote either the structural complex, the associated sensation
group, or the functional process of recognition and recall, the
associating of formation to formation. In the former sense it is
morphological material, in the latter it belongs to what I must
name (the phrase will not be misunderstood) a physiological psychology.2
1G. Wol, in Zeits. f Psych. u. Physiol. d. Sinnesorgane, XV, p. I (August, i897) - 2An article by ProfessorDewey, entitled " The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," Psychological Review, July, i896, seems to contain this idea of a functional
The article is especially valuable in that it
psychology: cf pp. 358, 364 f., 370. This content downloaded from 209.65.177.129 on Wed, 9 Oct 2013 12:56:15 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 452 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW [VOL. VII Just as experimental psychology is to a large extent concerned
with problems of structure, so is ' descriptive' psychology,
ancient and modern, chiefly occupied with problems of function.
Memory, recognition, imagination, conception, judgment, attention, apperception, volition, and a host of verbal nouns, wider or
narrower in denotation, connote, in the discussions of descriptive
psychology, functions of the total organism. That their underlying processes are psychical in character is, so to speak, an
accident; for all practical purposes they stand upon the same
level as digestion and locomotion, secretion and excretion. The
organism remembers, wills, judges, recognizes, etc., and is assisted in its life-struggle by remembering and willing. Such
functions are, however, rightly included in mental science, inasmuch as they constitute, in sum, the actual, working mind of the
individual man. They are not functions of the body, but functions of the organism, and they may-nay, they must-be examined by the methods and under the regulative principles of a
The adoption of these methods does not
mental 'physiology.'
at all prejudice the ultimate and extra-psychological problem of
the function of mentality at large in the universe of things.
Whether consciousness really has a survival-value, as James supposes, or whether it is a mere epiphenomenon, as Ribot teaches,
is here an entirely irrelevant question.
It cannot be said that this functional psychology, despite what
we may call its greater obviousness to investigation, has been
worked out either with as much patient enthusiasm or with as
much scientific accuracy as has the psychology of mind structure. It is true, and it is a truth which the experimentalist
has direct reference to the experimental work of Angell and Moore (Psychological
Professor Caldwell, too, insists on the importance of the
Review, May, i896).
study of psychological function, but forgets that function presupposesstructure (International Journal of Ethics, July, I898, p. 466).
It may be mentioned, further, that a good deal of the introductory writing in
works upon modem logic and theory of knowledge-Bosanquet, Bradley, Hobhouse,
Wundt-falls within the scope of functional psychology as here defined. Professor
Creighton, indeed, suggests that logic may be distinguished from the psychology of
thought as physiology, the science of function, from morphology, the science of
structure (An IntroductoryLogic, p. 6). I think that, in spite of present overlapping, logic has a field of its own, which is not the field of functional psychology
-though the question cannot be gone into in this place. This content downloaded from 209.65.177.129 on Wed, 9 Oct 2013 12:56:15 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions POS7ILA TES OF PSYCHOLOGY No. 5.] 453 should be quick to recognizeand emphasize,that there is very
much of value itf descriptive psychology. But it is also true
that the methods of descriptivepsychology cannot, in the nature
of the case, lead to results of scientificfinality. The same criticism holds, as things stand, of individualpsychology, which is
doing excellent pioneerwork in the sphere of function. Experimental psychology has added much to our knowledge,functional
as well as structural,of memory, attention,imagination,etc., and
Will,in the future,absorband quantifythe results of these other,
new coordinatebranches. Still, I do not think that anyone who
has followed the course of the experimentalmethod, in its application to the higher processesand states of mind, can doubt that
the main interestthroughout has lain in morphologicalanalysis,
ratherthan in ascertainmentof function. Nor are the reasonsfar
to seek. We must remember that experimental psychology
arose by way of reaction against the faculty psychology of the
last century. This was a metaphysical,not a scientific,psychology. There is, in reality, a great differencebetween,say, memory regarded as a functionof the psychophysicalorganism,and
memory regarded as a faculty of the substantial mind. At the
same time, these two memories are nearertogether than are the
faculty memory and the memoriesor memory complexes of psychological anatomy. There is, further,the danger that, if function is studied before structure has been fully elucidated, the
student may fall into that acceptanceof teleological explanation
which is fatal to scientificadvance: witness, if witness be necessary, the recrudescenceof vitalism in physiology.' Psychology
might thus put herself for the second time, and no less surely
though by different means, under the dominion of philosophy.
In a word, the historicalconditionsof psychology renderedit inevitable that, when the time came for the transformationfrom
philosophy to science, problemsshould be formulated,explicitly
or implicitly,as static ratherthan dynamic,structuralratherthan
functional. We may notice also the fact that elementarymorphology is intrinsicallyan easier study than elementaryphysiology, and that scientific men are so far subject to the law of
I Cf BurdonSanderson,in Science Progress, March,I896. This content downloaded from 209.65.177.129 on Wed, 9 Oct 2013 12:56:15 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 454 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [VOL, VII. inertia, whose effects we see in the conservatism of mankind at
large, that they prefer the continued application of a fruitful
method to the adoption of a new standpoint for the standpoint's
sake.
I may, perhaps, digress here for a moment, to raise and attempt to answer two questions which naturally suggest themselves: the questions whether this conservatism is wise, and
whether it is likely to persist. I believe that both should be answered in the affirmative. As has been indicated above, the
morphological study of mind serves, as no other method of study
can, to enforce and sustain the thesis that psychology is a science,
and not a province of metaphysics; and recent writing shows
clearly enough that this truth has need of constant reiteration.
Moreover, there is still so much to be done in the field of analysis
(not simply analysis of the higher processes, though these will
of course benefit in the long run, but also analysis of perception
and feeling and idea) that a general swing of the laboratories towards functional work would be most regrettable.
It seems
probable, if one may presume to read the signs of the times, that
experimental psychology has before it a long period of analytical
research, whose results, direct and indirect, shall ultimately serve
as basis for the psychology of function; unless, indeed,-and this
is beyond predicting,-the demands laid upon psychology by the
educationalist becodie so insistent as partially to divert the natural channels of investigation.'
The remaining four psychologies may be dismissed with a
briefer mention. 3. Ontogenetic psychology, the psychology of
individual childhood and adolescence, is now a subject of wide
interest, and has a large literature of its own. 4 Taxonomic
psychology is not yet, and in all likelihood will not be, for some
time to come, anything more than an ingredient in ' descriptive,'
and a portion of individual, psychology.
It deals with such topics
as the classification of emotions, instincts and impulses, temperaments, etc., the hierarchy of psychological ' selves,' the typical
mind of social classes (artists, soldiers, literary men), and so forth.
I I have elsewhere given reasons for the opinion that it is functional psychology
which may be expected to bring direct assistance to the teacher: e. g., in the Ame.
Jour. of Psych., April, 1898, pp. 420 f. This content downloaded from 209.65.177.129 on Wed, 9 Oct 2013 12:56:15 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions No. 5.] POSTULATES OF PSYCHOLOGY 455 5. The functional psychology of the collective mind is, as might
be expected, in a very rudimentary condition. We can delimit
its sphere and indicate its problems; minbr contributions to it
may be found here and there in the pages of works upon psychology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, sociology, and anthropology;
and a few salient points-the question, e. g., of the part played
by the aesthetic sentiment in the make-up of a national mindhave been touched upon in essays. But we must have an experimental physiology of the individual mind, before there can
be any great progress. 6. Lastly, the labors of the evolutionary
school have set phylogenetic psychology upon a fairly secure
foundation, and the number of workers is a guarantee of rapid
advance in our understanding of mental development.
The object of the present paper is to set forth the state of current opinion upon the question of the structural elements of
mind, their number and nature. It may be doubted, at first sight,
whether anything like a consensus of opinion can be made out.
" Every psychologist of standing," wrote Kiilpe in I893, " has his
own laws of association."' Every psychologist of standing in
the year of grace i898, SO the reader may think, has his own
favorite ' unique' process. Does not Brentano advocate an ultimate 'judgment,' and James a ' fiat of the will,' and Stout an
Is there not the perennial controversy
ultimate 'thought'?
about the ' third conscious element,' the process of conation, the
' activity experience'? Are not even the clear waters of the psychology of sensation troubled by the possibility of an ' efferent'
conscious process, a sensation of innervation ? The questions are
importunate, and cannot be lightly brushed aside. We will begin,
therefore, by examining a test case: Brentano's irreducible ' judgment.' I select this, because Professor Ebbinghaus, in his recent
Psychology, seems to put a structural interpretation upon it. He
himself classifies the elements of mind (we shall return to this
classification later) as sensations, ideas, and feelings; Brentano, he
says, ranks alongside of ideas the element of judgment.2 If this
1 Outlines of Psychology, p. I9o. Grundzfige, p. i68. It is only fair to say that Professor Ebbinghaus' remarks
here are very brief, and that he promises to return to the subject in his second volume.
2 This content downloaded from 209.65.177.129 on Wed, 9 Oct 2013 12:56:15 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE PHILOSOPHICAL 456 REVIEW [VOL. VII. account is correct, we must admit that the morphology of mind
is still a battlefield for individual opinions; we-shall hardly escape
the difficulty by the mere statement that Ebbinghaus is an experimentalist, and Brentano not.
When, however, we turn to Brentano himself, the matter assumes a different complexion. Brentano's principal criterion of
psychical, as contradistinguished from physical phenomena, is that
of ' intentional inexistence' or ' immanent objectivity,' which we
may paraphrase as reference to contents, direction upon something as object.' " Every psychical phenomenon contains in it
something as object, though not every one in the same way. In
ideation something is ideated, in judgment something admitted or
rejected, in love and hate something loved and hated, in desire
something desired, etc."2 This is evidently the language of function, not of structure. Indeed, Brentano uses the phrasespsychischesPhinomen and Seelenthktigkeitinterchangeably; his ' fundamental' or ' principal classes of psychical phenomena' are the
'mental activities' of ideation (not 'idea ! '), judgment and interest
(love and hate, the emotive processes).3 The spirit of his whole
psychology is physiological; and when, on occasion, he discusses
a point in anatomy,4 he leaves his reader in no doubt as to the shift
of venue. Now the mental elements of the experimentalists, the
bare sensation and the bare feeling, are abstractions, innocent of
any sort of objective reference.5 We cannot fairly compare Brentano's 'judgment' with them. Nay, more, we cannot fairly say
that he would have posited an ultimate judgment process if he
had adopted the anatomical point of view; since he has not
adopted it, the speculation is absurd. The ' psychology from the
empirical standpoint' is a systematization of mental ' activities,'
i. e., of the mental functions of the human organism.
This wave, then, has not overwhelmed us. Escaping it, we
1 Psychologievom empirischenStandpunkte, I, pp. ioi ff.; esp. p. 2/bid., p. 127. 115. 3Ibid., pp. 44, 50, etc.; pp. 256 ff.
4As in Book ii, ch. I, b3.
5 Reference to contents, meaning, comes with the mental formation. I have at- tempted to show its relation to structure in my Primer of Psychology, pp. 95, 297,
etc. This content downloaded from 209.65.177.129 on Wed, 9 Oct 2013 12:56:15 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions No. 5.] POSTULA TES OF PSYCHOLOGY 457 may turn now to the positive side of our enquiry. Our appeal will
lie, in the first instance, to the experimentalists; but the omission
of references to works on descriptive psychology is largely due to
considerations of space, and does not by any means necessarily
imply that the authors of these works differ from the writers
quoted. Some of the ' unique' processes still left outstanding
will be taken up at the end of this discussion.
We set out from a point of universal agreement. Everyone
admits that sensations are elementary mental processes. There
is, it is true, diversity of opinion as to the range of contents that
the term shall cover. Wundt identifies the peripherally excited
and the centrally excited processes. " For the psychological attributes of a sensation the circumstance [of external or internal
initiation] is entirely irrelevant. . . . It is only the central stimulus that always accompanies sensation." Kfilpe retains the
name ' sensation ' for both classes, but declares that they " must
be treated separately, as they normally present characteristic differences." Ziehen and Ebbinghaus, on the other hand, draw a
sharp line of distinction between the ' sensation,' which is externally aroused, and the 'idea' (in Lotze's sense), which is its
centrally aroused substitute, and so recognize two elements where
Wundt and Kiilpe see only one.' The divergence, however, is
not serious. It seems to depend, primarily, upon the admission
or exclusion of genetic considerations. If we rule that these are
foreign to a strictly morphological examination of mind, the
question of one sense element or two becomes a problem set by
analysis to analysis, capable of resolution by analytic methods; it
is a subject for dispute ' inside the ring,' and is thus upon a quite
different level from the question, e. g., of an elementary will process.-We
may note, in passing, that the innervation sensation,
1Wundt, Grundriss d. Psych., 2te Aufl., pp. 43, 46 (Eng. trs. of ist ed., pp. 36,
39); KUlpe, Outlines, p. 35; Ebbinghaus, Grundzuige, I, pp. i67 ff.; Ziehen,
Leitfaden d. phys. Psych., 4te Aufl., pp. I7, I9, I28 ff. (Eng. trs., 2d ed., pp. 22,
25, I53 ff.); Mfinsterberg, Beitr. z. exjp. Psych., I, Einleitung, {? iv, v; Die
Willenshandlung, ch. ii, and elsewhere. In his recently published book, The
New Psychology, Dr. Scripture puts aside the question of mental classification
altogether (pp. 39, 305), and groups the chief psychological experiments under
physical headings. I cannot but regard this as a retrogradestep. There is, surely,
no reason for giving up, without a struggle, what ourpredecessorshave so hardly won. This content downloaded from 209.65.177.129 on Wed, 9 Oct 2013 12:56:15 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 458 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [VOL. VII. while it remains as a theoretical possibility,' has been generally
given up by the experimental school.2
Simple affective processes, again, are regarded by a large
majority as elemental. Both Wundt and Kilpe are at some
pains to make clear the essential difference between sensation
and affection. Lehmann and Ebbinghaus are equally explicit.
Ziehen does not give a place to feeling beside sensation and idea;
his chapters are entitled ' The Affective Tone of Sensation' and
'The Affective Tone of Ideas,' and his treatment makes affective
tone an attribute, coordinate with the intensity and quality of sensation and the clearness and contents (meaning) of idea. Nevertheless, he speaks in one passage of the cortical substrate of this
tone as "an entirely new psychophysiological process." Minsterberg, on the other hand, denies the ultimateness of feeling
altogether, and seeks to reduce it to the sensations accompanying
movements of flexion and extension, reflexly released.3 There
is, further, an ' inside' cont...

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