PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON PSYCHOLOGY.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3124, 21 February 1879, Page 4

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON PSYCHOLOGY.

. On Mod day evening the lecture season at the London Institution was opened ■with a discourse from Professor Huxley, F. 8.5., on " The Elements of Psychol°gy*" Starting from the trite observation that man is composed of body and mind, thought and emotion being referable to the latter, while to the former belong form, sensation, and motion, he said that if we follow common experience doubt may often arise as to where the line is

rightly to be drawn between what is mental and what is corporeal. There are, however, certain broad and ineffaceable distinctions, and we soon learn, for ex-

ample, to distinguish between two kinds of pleasure and pain. Nobody would -describe a toothache as mental distress,

nor would the pleasure derived from eating a good dinner be spoken as an ideal one. Though a good concert affects the ear and a fine picture the eye, yet all would agree that they appeal also to the artistic sense of the mind. Language is thus found to be ambiguous, and in order to distinguish clearly between mental and bodily phenomena they must look closely at the facts. He would suppose a man to be walking along the highway and to be thrown into consternation by hearing a pistol suddenly fired. The wayfarer would say he heard a loud sound, started, and felt alarm. A scientific physiologist whom we may supSose stone-deaf,. would give a somewhat ifferent account of the matter. He would speak of the air between the pistol and the man's ear being thrown into a state of vibration; this would affect the mechanism of the ear, causing first a

finer sort of vibration 1 to be communicated from the drum of the ear to the auditory nerve, and at length setting up a molecular motion of the muscles, making the hearer

start. The tidings passing to the brain would account for the emotion of alarm.

This physiological series of movements was objective, and could be made palpable to well-trained observation. But parallel and contemporaneous with these objective phenomena there were other subjective processes, which we could know in no other way than through the testimony of individuals experiencing them. The scientific investigation of these subjective phenomena was the province of the psychologist, just as physiology and anatomy dealt with the parallel series of objective facts. Of the strange obscurity thrown around the study of psychology, or the Bcience of mental phenomena, by excessive speculation and complicated hypothesis, he would try to keep clear by sticking to the simple terminology of Hume, who proposed to call all the phenomena of consciousness "perceptions" or " states of mind." These Hume subdivided into the

original impressions made upon the senses and the reproduct^^ *£-]>,.^-f r -xresn-imprßSSions through the faculty ot memory. Professor Huxley would not discuss whether Hume's account of mental

phenomena was an exact or an exhaustive one. But there could be no doubt as to what that philosopher meant by the terms he employed, and in this respect he had a great advantage over more modern psychologists. It was clear that some account must now be taken of the muscular sense, in additien to the five

known to the ancients, and Professor Huxley was himself prepared to add relational perceptions to the two subdivisions proposed by Hume. Perceptions of relation arose from the co-existence of sensations. For example from the co-exis-tence of certain sounds arose the perception of harmony, and the pleasure thus caused. So'there was a harmony of colour, appealing to the sense of sight. We could even speak of a harmony and ' melody of the palate, with which the culinary art had to deal. Besides the coexistence of sensations, relational perceptions comprehended their succession, and and their likeness or their unlikeness. Professor Huxley was disposed to think that the primary perceptions or states of consciousness caused by first hand sensation might very likely be the only ones known to beings in the earliest stages of animated life. But higher up in the scale there was a power 6f reproducing sensations, which might be termed idealation. How many ideas, for instance were suggestion by the word " rose P " He - himself was wont to recall the flower's form, colour, and even the pricking of his finger by the thorn. They would be astonished on trying the experiment , to find how many things might be suggested by the word which symbolized the rose. The name called up the thing, and the thing the name, by a magic law of association which, however difficult to explain, none the less gave a true statement o£ the facts. Professor Huxley then discußsed the theory of our beliefs as to both past and future events — i.e., our remembrances and our expectations. It was declared to be a fundamental and principal law of psychology that all belief as to the past must rest on experience. So, too, with our belief of expectation, as when a burnt child dreads the. fire. Thn lecture concluded with a comprehensive survey of the border land connecting physiology and psychology, lie rejected the Cartesian hypothesis which interpolated between the objective and subjective phenomena an immaterial something without form, shape, or dimensions. So, too, he could see no good reason for adopting Leibnitz's hypothesis of concurrence between the two series, as between two . clocks set by an external power to keep the same time. He thought that as a working hypothesis at least, the materialistic was the best, although he by no means affirmed that it was free from serious difficulties of its own.