behind our ultimate in order to explain it, would but repeat the fundamental error of the doctrine of faculties.[1]
The full significance of the new theory of elements and its importance in psychology cannot be appreciated so long as we view it in isolation. So far, we have spoken of it chiefly as concerned with analysis; but it is closely connected with the corresponding synthesis, for the sake of which it exists and in which it finds its completion.
We saw above that the full significance of psychological explanation is not grasped until we understand that it involves, not only analysis, but also synthesis. Hence, when the psychologist has found his ultimates, his work is just begun. There remains the far greater task of building up from its elements the structure of consciousness. This work is carried out in the doctrine of compounds, which naturally succeeds to the doctrine of elements.
In the field of the latter, however, there is still much to be done after the preliminary analysis has been completed. We must carefully study the various elements in order to determine, as far as possible, their nature, their behavior under various circumstances, and the laws of their combination. This is a necessary condition of the subsequent synthesis by which our task of explanation is completed.
It is in this work of preliminary investigation that experiment is now so largely employed. With this method the modern doctrine of elements is closely connected. It would hardly do to say either that the doctrine of elements produced the experimental method, or that the method produced the doctrine; yet the connection between the two is certainly an intimate one. The beginning of the experimental method in the
- ↑ This is the objection to speaking as Wundt does of the attributes of sensation as elements. As we have seen, he distinctly says (Grundzüge, vol. I, p. 555) that "Intensität," "Qualität," and "Gefühlston" are elements. Now, although we readily grant that the first two are elemental attributes of sensation, we cannot in strictness call them elements of consciousness. Our psychological ultimates, as we have just shown, must be discovered from our complex mental states by a single process of analysis. When this first process of analysis is finished, the elements are found.
