bserve the stars well or discover the facts about them,
because his introspection in reporting what he sees proceeds on the
imperfect and distorted images coming in from his defective eyesight.
So a man given to exaggeration, who is not able to report truthfully
what he remembers, can not be a good botanist, since this defect in
introspection will render his observation of the plants unreliable.
In practice the introspective method has been most important, and the
development of psychology has been up to very recently mainly due to
its use. As a consequence, there are many general principles of mental
action and many laws of mental growth already discovered which should
in the first instance engage our attention. They constitute the main
framework of the building; and we should master them well before we go
on to find the various applications which they have in the other
departments of the subject.
The greater results of "Introspective" or, as it is very often called,
"General" psychology may be summed up in a few leading principles,
which sound more or less abstract and difficult, but which will have
many concrete illustrations in the subsequent chapters. The facts of
experience, the actual events which we find taking place in our minds,
fall naturally into certain great divisions. These are very easily
distinguished from one another. The first distinction is covered by
the popularly recognised difference between "thought and conduct," or
"knowledge and life." On the one hand, the mind is looked at as
receiving, taking in, learning; and on the other hand, as acting,
willing, doing this or that. Another great distinction contrasts a
third mental condition, "feeling," with both of the other two. We say
a man has knowledge, but little feeling, head but no heart; or that he
knows and feels the right but does not live up to it.
I. On the side of Reception we may first point out the avenues through
which our experiences come to us: these are the senses--a great
number, not simply the five special senses of which we were taught in
our childhood. Besides Sight, Hearing, Taste, Smell, and Touch, we now
know of certain others very definitely. There are Muscle sensations
coming from the moving of our limbs, Organic sensations from the inner
vital organs, Heat and Cold sensations which are no doubt distinct
from each other, Pain sensations probably having their own physical
apparatus, sensations from the Joints, sensations of
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