faculties of the soul by
Locke and Herbart, (the commonly accepted faculties--memory, understanding,
feeling, will--are in fact not simple powers, but mere abstractions,
hypostatized class concepts of extremely complex phenomena,) Beneke seeks
to discover the simple elements from which all mental life is compounded.
He finds these in the numerous elementary faculties of receiving and
appropriating external stimuli, which the soul in part possesses, in part
acquires in the course of its life, and which constitute its substance;
each separate sense of itself includes many such faculties. Every act
or product of the soul is the result of two mutually dependent factors:
_stimulus and receptivity_. Their coming together gives the first of
the _four fundamental processes_, that of perception. The second is
the constant addition of new elementary faculties. By the third,
the equilibration or reciprocal transfer of the movable elements in
representations, Beneke explains the reproduction of an idea through
another associated with it, and the widening of the mental horizon by
emotion, _e.g._, the astounding eloquence of the angry. Since each
representation which passes out of consciousness continues to exist in the
soul as an unconscious product (where we cannot tell; the soul is not in
space), it is not retention, but obliviscence which needs explanation. That
which persists of the representation which is passing into unconsciousness,
and which makes its reappearance in consciousness possible, is called
a "trace" in reference to its departed cause, and a "disposition"
(_Angelegtheit_) in reference to its future results. Every such trace
or germ (_Anlage_)--that which lies intermediate between perception and
recollection--is a force, a striving, a tendency. The fourth of the
fundamental processes (which may be traced downward into the material
world, since the corporeal and the psychical differ only in degree and
pass over into each other) is the combination of mental products according
to the measure of their similarity, as these come to light in the formation
of judgments, comparisons, witticisms, of collective images, collective
feelings, and collective desires. The innate differences among men depend
on the greater or lesser "powerfulness, vivacity, and receptivity" of their
elementary faculties; all further differences arise gradually and are due
to the external stimuli; even the distinction between the human and the
animal