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BRENTANO AND WUNDT: EMPIRICAL AND
EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY1

By E. B. TITCHENER

? 1. The year 1874 saw the publication of two books which,

as the event has shown, were of first-rate importance for
the development of modern psychology. Their authors, already
in the full maturity of life, were men of settled reputation,
fired as investigators with the zeal of research, endowed as
teachers with a quite exceptional power to influence younger
minds, ready as polemists to cross swords with a Zeller or
a Helmholtz. Yet one would look in vain for any sign of
closer intellectual kinship between them; hardly, indeed, could
one find a greater divergence either of tendency or of train-
ing. Psychology, seeing how much their work and example
have done to assure her place among the sciences, may gladly
confess her debt to both. The student of psychology, though
his personal indebtedness be also twofold, must still make
his choice for the one or the other. There is no middle way
between Brentano and Wundt.2
Franz Brentano began his career as a catholic theologian.
In 1867 he published an outline of the history of philosophy
within the mediaeval church which sets forth, as clearly and
sharply as the essay of thirty years later, his famous doc-
1 The following paragraphs form the introduction to the first vol-
ume of my long-projected and long-delayed work upon Systematic
Psychology. When I wrote them, Brentano and Wundt were still
living. Brentano died at Zurich, March 17, 1917; Wundt died at
Leipsic, Aug. 31, 1920.
2 F. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte (hence-
forth cited as PES), i, 1874. Cf. the Biographical Note in F. Bren-
tano, The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, trs. C.
Hague, 1902, 119 ff.; M. Heinze, F. Ueberwegs Grundriss der Ge-
schichte der Philosophie, iv, 1906, 332 ff. W. Wundt, Grundziige
der physiologischen Psychologie (henceforth cited as PP), 1874. The
first ten chapters of Wundt's work were issued in 1873 and are util-
ised by Brentano. For a bibliography of Wundt's scientific writings
see Amer. Journ. Psych., xix (1908) ff.;cf. Heinze, op. cit., 322 ff.
108
EMPIRICALAND EXPERIMENTALPSYCHOLOGY 109
trine of the four phases.3 Early and late, however, his in-
tellectual interest has centered in the philosophy of Aristotle.
He came to psychology by way of an intensive study of the
De Anima, and he has made the Aristotelian method his
pattern of scientific procedure. We possess, unfortunately,
only the first volume of his Psychologie: Brentano seems
always to have preferred the spoken to the written word:
but this volume, like everything else that he has given to the
press, is complete in itself, the finished expression of his
mature thought.
Wilhelm Wundt started out as a physiologist, interested in
the special phenomena of nerve and muscle. In 1862 he had
sought to lay the foundations of an 'experimental psychology'
(the phrase now appears in print for the first time)4 in a
theory of sense-perception. Here he fell into the mistake to
which every student of natural science is liable who turns,
without due preparation, to the things of mind: the mistake,
namely, of supposing that psychology is nothing more than
an applied logic; and the mistake was repeated in a popular
work upon human and animal psychology which followed on
the heels of the technical volume. By 1874 he had definitely
discarded this earlier view for the conception of psychology
as an independent science. He still maintained, however,
that the path to it leads through the anatomy and physiology
of the nervous system.
Such, in briefest outline, were the conditions under which
the two psychologies acquired their form and substance. We
see, on the one hand, a man who has devoted his 'hours of
solitary reflection' to ancient and mediaeval philosophy; we
see, on the other hand, a man who has wrought out in the
laboratory his contributions to the latest-born of the ex-
perimental sciences. They are both professors of philosophy,
and they are both to range widely, in the future, over the
varied fields of philosophical enquiry. Yet it would be wrong
to suppose that the psychology to which they have now at-
tained, and which, by a happy chance, they give to the world
in the same year, represents merely an incident, even if it
were the central incident, of their philosophical history. Psy-
chology, on the contrary, has laid strong hands upon them,
and is to dominate all their further thinking. Wundt, a gen-
3 J. A. Mohler, Kirchengeschichte, ii, 1867, 539 f.; F. Brentano, Die
vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand, 1895.
The four phases, repeated in the three great philosophical periods,
are those of scientific construction, failure or perversion of the scien-
tific interest, scepticism and mysticism.
4 W. Wundt,
Beitrdge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung, 1862, vi.
110 TITCHENER

eration later, will round off the manifold list of his books
with the encyclopaedic folk-psychology, and Brentano never
gives up the hope of a descriptive-to be followed, perhaps,
at long last by a genetic-psychology as the ripe fruit of his
studious old age.
? 2. We shall better understand the nature of this choice
which lies before us if we first note the points of resemblance
between the two systems. For even in 1874 psychology was
not in such bad case that Brentano and Wundt are always
at variance. They agree that psychology holds a place of
high importance in the fellowship of the sciences, and that
it is logically prior to natural science.5 They agree that it
may dispense with the concept of substance and confine itself
to an account of phenomena.6 They reject the unconscious
as a principle of psychological explanation.7 They define the
unity of consciousness in substantially the same terms.8 So
far there is agreement: and though the agreement is largely
of a formal kind, and though a good deal of it has a negative
ground in the reaction against Herbart, it serves nevertheless
to mark out a common universe of discourse.
On the material side there is also agreement, with such
difference of emphasis as the difference of authorship would
lead us to expect. We find, for instance, that Brentano deals
at length with the general method of psychology, and is at
pains to distinguish inner perception from inner observation,
while Wundt takes inner observation for granted and describes
in detail only those special procedures which raise it to the
rank of experiment.9. We find that Wundt devotes much
space to Fechnerian psychophysics, and interprets the psycho-
physical law as a general psychological law of relativity, while
Brentano makes only incidental and critical mention of Fech-
ner's work.10 The differences are striking enough, but behind
them 'lies agreement regardin.g the subject-matter of psy-
chology. Even in the extreme case, where the one book
emphasises what the other omits, difference does not of neces-
sity mean disagreement. We find, again, that Wundt says
nothing of a question which for Brentano is the essential
problem of psychology as it was the first problem of psycho-
physics, the question of 'immortality,' of the continuance of
our mental life after death, and conversely that Brentano fails
5PES, 24 ff., 119; PP, 4, 863.
6 PES, 10 ff.; PP, 9, 12, 20.
7PES, 133 ff.; PP, 644 f., 664, 708 f., 712, 790 ff.
s PES, 204 ff.; PP, 715 ff., 860 ff.
9 PES, 34 ff., 184; PP, 1 ff.
0 PP, 421; PES, 9 f., 87 ff.
EMPIRICALAND EXPERIMENTALPSYCHOLOGY 111
to discuss Wundt's cardinal problem of attention. Yet Wundt
had touched upon the question of immortality in his earlier
writing, and Brentano plainly recognises that there is a prob-
lem of attention, although (as we may suppose) he has put
off its discussion to his second volume."1
So the student of psychology who read these two books
in their year of issue might, if he had made due allowance
for the training and natural tendencies of the authors, have
entertained a reasonable hope for the future of his science;
and we ourselves, who see their differences far more plainly
than was possible for him, may still hope that the main issue
can be taken on common ground and fought out at close
quarters.
? 3. Brentano entitles his book 'psychology from the em-
pirical standpoint,' and Wundt writes 'physiological psychol-
ogy' on his title-page and suggests 'experimental psychology'
in his text.1 The adjectives do not greatly help us. For all
experimental psychology is in the broad sense empirical, and
a psychology which is in the narrow sense empirical may
still have recourse to experiment. To show the real difference
between the books, the difference that runs through their
whole texture and composition, we need at this stage terms
that are both familiar and clear; the time has not yet come
for technicalities and definitions. We may say, as a first
approximation, that Brentano's psychology is essentially a
matter of argument, and that Wundt's is essentially a matter
of description.
At the end of his discussion of method Brentano refers
with approval to Aristotle's use of aporiae, of difficulties and
objections, wherein a subject is viewed from various sides,
and opinion is weighed against opinion and argument against
argument, until by comparison of pros and cons a reasonable
conclusion is reached.13 This is, in the large, his own way
of working. He appeals but rarely, and then only in general
terms, to facts of observation. His rule is to find out what
other psychologists have said, to submit their statements to a
close logical scrutiny, and so by a process of sifting to pre-
1 PES, 17 ff., 32 f., 95 f.; Wundttakes up the questionof immor-
tality (indirectly,it is true) in Vorlesungen,etc., ii, 1863,436, 442;
cf. the direct treatmentin the later edition, 1892,476 ff. Brentano
recognisesthe problemof attentionin PES, 91, 155; cf. 263, and
C. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie,i, 1883,68; ii, 1890,279 f.
12pp, 3.
13PES, 96 f.; cf. J. S. Mill, Grote'sAristotle,FortnightlyRev., N. S.
xiii, 1873,48 ff. Brentanohad earliernoted,with the same approval,
the use of aporiaeby Thomas Aquinas: see J. A. M6hler,Kirchen-
geschichte,ii, 1867,555.
112 TITCHENER

pare the reader's mind for a positive determination. When

the ground has thus been cleared Brentano's doctrine, novel
though it may be, has the appearance (so to say) of a neces-
sary truth; we feel that we have duly considered the possi-
bilities in the case and have come to the one rational decision;
and if for conscience' sake we go on to deduce and to verify,
we still are assured beforehand that everything will fit together
within the system. Minor points may need to be expanded;
even, perhaps, in the light of further aporiae, to be corrected;
but the whole exposition gives the impression of finality.l4 It
is no wonder, then, that many students have judged the author
successful in his aim of writing, not Brentano's psychology,
nor yet a national psychology, but-psychology.15
Wundt's book, on the contrary, abounds in facts of obser-
vation: anatomical facts, physiological facts, results of psycho-
physical and psychological experiment. Its introductory chap-
ter is brief to the point of perfunctoriness, and criticism of
psychological theories is packed away into fine-print para-
graphs that, to all intents and purposes, are a series of appen-
dices. There is, to be sure, a great deal of argument. Where
the facts are scanty, they must not only be generously inter-
preted but must also be eked out by hypothesis; if a leading
physiologist has mistaken the problem of sense-perception,
14I know of only three corrections that Brentano has made to his
psychology. (1) In PES 292 degree of conviction, as intensity of
judgment, is declared analogous to degree of intensity of love and
hate (cf. 203); in the notes to The Origin of the Knowledge of Right
and Wrong (1889), 1902, 52 f., this analogy is denied. (2) In PES
202 f. feeling is said to be always present along with ideation; the
belief to the contrary is due to the mistaken preference of memory
over inner perception (44); but in Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsy-
chologie, 1907, 119, 124, the acts of the two higher senses are not
intrinsically emotive. (3) In PES 115 the object upon which a
psychical phenomenon is directed is not to be understood as eine
Realitit; but the notes appended to the reprinted section 'Von der
Klassifikation der psychischen Phdnomene '(1911, 149) lay it down
that "nie etwas anderes als Dinge, welche samtlich unter denselben
Begriff des Realen fallen, fur psychische Beziehungen ein Objekt
abgibt."-There would, no doubt, if the book were rewritten, be many
other modificationsof detail, and yet others if the second volume were
undertaken; the discussion of the modi of ideation in the Klassifi-
kation shows that Brentano had not in 1874 thought out the doctrine
of his Bk. iii. In the main, nevertheless, the doctrine of 1874 has
stood the test of Brentano's own continued reflection and of the
attacks of critics.
Such an achievement is worthy of all admiration. Only we must
add-those of us who challenge IBrentano'spremises-that even iso-
lated changes are disconcerting. The first statement is so serenely
confident, and the changes are again so confidently made!
15
PES, vi.
EMPIRICALAND EXPERIMENTALPSYCHOLOGY 113

he must be argued into a better way of thinking; in any case,

the new science of experimental psychology must offer a bold
front to her elder sisters.16 The argument, none the less, is
always secondary and oftentimes plainly tentative; so that
the book as a whole gives the impression of incompleteness,
of a first essay which can be improved when more work (and
a great many suggestions of further work are thrown out17)
has been accomplished. Hence it is no accident, but rather a
direct reflex of the spirit in which the authors approached
their task, that Brentano's volume still bears the date 1874
while Wundt's book, grown to nearly triple its original size,
has come to a sixth edition.l8
This thorough-going difference of argument and descrip-
tion means, of course, a radical difference of attitude toward
psychology itself. It means that Brentano and Wundt, in
spite of formal and material agreement, psychologise in dif-
ferent ways. Our next step, therefore, is to place ourselves
inside the systems and to realise, so far as we may without
too much detail, what manner of discipline they intend psy-
chology to be. We have to choose: and the illustrations that
follow will show the alternatives of choice in concrete and
tangible form.
? 4. Brentano defines psychology as the science of psy-
chical phenomena. The term may easily be misleading: for
the phenomena in question are very far from being static
appearances. Generically they are activities; in the individual
case they are acts. Hence they can properly be named only
by an active verb. They fall into three fundamental classes:
those, namely, of Ideating (I see, I hear, I imagine), of Judg-
ing (I acknowledge, I reject, I perceive, I recall), and of
Loving-Hating (I feel, I wish, I resolve, I intend, I desire).
We may use substantives if we will, and may speak of sensa-
tion and idea, memory and imagination, opinion, doubt, judg-
ment, joy and sorrow, desire and aversion, intention and
resolution; but we must always bear in mind that the psychical
phenomenon is active, is a sensing or a doubting or a recalling
or a willing.
It is true that we never have act without content. When
we ideate, we sense or imagine something; when we judge,
16pp, Vorwort.
17
pp, 284, 293, 314, 317, 373, 394, 399, etc., etc.
18 See the prefaces to the successive editions of the PP. Even the
sixth edition, as I have shown elsewhere (Psych. Rev., xxiv, 1917,
52 f.), has not attained to systematic completion, and only in the fifth
(PP, i, 1902, ix) did Wundt set himself definitely to the task of
system-making.
114 TITCHENER

we perceive something, acknowledge the truth of something,

recall something; when we love or hate, we take interest in
something, desire or repudiate something. This, however,
is precisely the difference between psychical and physical
phenomena. The latter are blank and inert: the color or figure
or landscape that I see, the chord that I hear, the warmth or
cold or odor that I sense, the like objects that I imagine, all
these things are described when their given appearance is
described; their appearance sums them up and exhausts them;
they have no reference, and do not carry us beyond them-
selves. Psychical phenomena, on the other hand, are pre-
cisely characterised by relation to a content, by reference to
an object; they contain an object intentionally within them;
and this character of immanent objectivity, in virtue of which
they are active, marks them off uniquely from the physical
phenomena upon which they are directed or toward which they
point. Even in cases where the content of a psychical phe-
nomenon is not physical, but is another psychical phenomenon,
the distinction holds good. For the act which becomes content
or object of another act is not thereby deprived of its essen-
tial character; it is still active in its own right; and it is
therefore by no means confusable with bare physical ap-
pearance.19
These are Brentano's views of the subject-matter of psy-
chology. He begins by considering the alleged differences
between physical and psychical, finds an adequate differentia
of the psychical, and is therefore able to define psychology in
terms of the matter with which it deals. He then reviews the
principal classifications hitherto made of psychical phenomena,
and arrives at a classification of his own, in which judgment
is accorded independent rank, and feeling and will are brack-
eted under a single heading. Throughout the discussion his
chief reliance is upon argument. To be sure, he takes the
testimony of inner perception; but inner perception is not
observation; it is rather a self-evident cognition or judgment;
and as such it is, if we may use the phrase, of the same stuff
as argument.20 Psychological observation is possible for Bren-
tano only when past acts are recalled in memory; then indeed,
as he admits, even a sort of experimentation becomes pos-
sible. Not only, however, is memory subject to gross illusion,
but the act of memory, once more, falls under the category
of judgment, so that experiment itself takes place in the world
19 PES, 23 f, 35, 101 ff, 161, 167, 256 ff. On the problem of natural
science as an explanatory discipline, see 127 ff.
20
PES, 35 ff, 181 ff (summary 202 f), 262. Cf. Klassifikation,
1911, 129.
EMPIRICALAND EXPERIMENTALPSYCHOLOGY 115

of argument.21 The empirical psychology thus employs the

same psychical activities to establish the nature of its subject-
matter and to discuss the variety of psychological opinion.
? 5. For Wundt, psychology is a part of the science of
life. Vital processes may be viewed from the outside, and
then we have the subject-matter of physiology, or they may
be viewed from within, and then we have the subject-matter
of psychology.22 The data, the items of this subject-matter,
are always complex, and the task of experimental psychology
is to analyse them into "the elementary psychical processes."
If we know the elements, and can compare them with the
resulting complexes, we may hope to understand the nature
of integration, which according to Wundt is the distinguishing
character of consciousness.23
Analysis of the processes of the inner life brings us, in the
last resort, to pure sensations, constituted originally of intensity
and quality. Sensations carry no reference; they look neither
before nor after; they tell us nothing of their stimuli, whether
external or organic, and nothing of their point of excitation,
whether peripheral or central, nor do they forecast the ideas
in which we find them synthetised. They simply run their
course, qualitatively and intensively, and may be observed and
described as they proceed.24 Ideas, in their turn, are origin-
ally constituted of these sensations; there is nothing within
or upon them to show whether they are ideas of imagination
or perceptions.25 Individual ideas differ psychologically from
general ideas solely in the nature of their sensory constitu-
ents: in the former the complex of sensations is constant, in
the latter it is variable.26 Concepts are not "psychical forma-
tions " at all; if we psychologise them, we discover only their
substitutes in consciousness, spoken or written words, accom-
panied by a vague and indeterminate feeling.27 Judgments,
in the same way, belong to logic, and not primarily to psy-
chology; logic and psychology approximate only as a result
of the parallel growth, long continued, of conceptual thinking
and its expression in language; our " conscious psychological
21PES, 42 ff, 162, 169, 262; Klassifikation, 130.
22 1 ff.
pp,
23
PP, 5, 20, 717.
24 pp, 273 ff., 484 f. When sensations enter into connection with one
another, the third attribute of affective tone or sensory feeling is
added. Intensity and quality are, however, the "more original" con-
stituents.
25 pp, 464 f.
26 pp, 468.
27 PP, 672.
116 TITCHENER

processes " consist originally of nothing more than ideas and

their connections.28
The trend of all this analysis is clear: Wundt is trying to
describe mind, to show the stuff of which it is made, to reduce
it to its lowest terms. When, however, he turns from analysis
to synthesis, the exposition is less easy to follow. Sensa-
tions are integrated into ideas by a "psychical synthesis"
which Wundt himself compares to a chemical synthesis and
which critics have assimilated to Mill's " mental chemistry."29
Ideas gain their objective reference by a "secondary act"
which seems to consist, psychologically, in the simple addition
of further ideas;30 yet the objective reference is itself put,
later on, to psychological purposes. Concepts and forms of
intuition are made 'postulates' of advancing thought,31 as
if the logical and practical aspects of mind were necessarily
implied in its given or phenomenal aspect, and as if the psy-
chologist might shift from one aspect to another without
breach of scientific continuity. But though we may puzzle
over details, there is nothing obscure in the general situation.
Wundt, like many others of his generation, is dazzled by the
vast promise of the evolutionary principle ;32 'original' is
for him more or less what 'nascent' is for Spencer; the later
must derive from the earlier, because that is the way of things,
and the later has no other basis. Let us remember, all the
same, that Wundt's primary effort is to describe, and that
he falls back upon 'genetic explanation' only when some
phase of the traditional subject-matter of psychology proves
to be indescribable.
That, then, is one of the threads of Wundt's system. Even
a descriptive psychology cannot, however, be written simply
in terms of sensations and their modes and levels of psycho-
logical integration. For the field of consciousness, Wundt
reminds us, is not uniformly illuminated; it shows a small
bright area at its centre and a darker region round about; the
ideas which occupy it differ in their conscious status. So
arises the problem of attention. Descriptively-Wundt takes
up the task of description piecemeal, in different contexts, as
28 pp, 709 ff.
29 PP, 484 f; J. S. Mill, A Wystem of Logic, 1843, bk. vi, ch. iv (ii,
1856,429); An Examinationof Sir WilliamHamilton'sPhilosophy,
1865, 286 f; note in J. Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human
Mind, i, 1869, 106 ff. The original source is D. Hartley, Observa-
tions on Man, 1749, pt. i, ch. i, sect. 2, prop. 12, cor. 1 (i, 1810, 77 f.).
so pp, 465.
31 PP, 672, 680.
32 vi.
pp,
EMPIRICALAND EXPERIMENTALPSYCHOLOGY 117
if it were 'on his conscience '-attention reduces to clearness
of ideas and characteristic feelings of effort or strain.33 It
has two concrete manifestations, apperception and voluntary
action; we speak of apperception when we are considering
the internal course of ideas, and of voluntary action when
we are considering the issue of an emotion in external move-
ment.34 Both forms of the attentional process are subject to
conditions, and both are strictly correlated with physiological
processes in the cerebral cortex; they therefore fall within the
limits of a scientific psychology.35 Yet psychologists have
neglected them, and have paid the penalty of this neglect in
inadequate psychology and untenable philosophy.36
We need not here trace the doctrine of attention further;
we need not either debate whether the problem of attention
is included in Wundt's formal statement of the task of ex-
perimental psychology. We may, however, as an illustration
of the interweaving of the two systematic threads, glance at
his treatment of the association of ideas. He begins, as we
might expect, with mode of integration; and under this head-
ing declares that the recognised laws, of similarity and of
frequency of connection in space and time, are imperfect
even as empirical generalisations. We find, it is true, two
forms of association, distinguishable in the free play of fancy
and in reflective thought. But the one is wider than asso-
ciation by similarity, in that the effective resemblance may
reside in any and every sensory constituent of the ideas con-
cerned, and especially in their affective tone, while the other
reveals itself simply as an affair of habit. Wundt therefore
proposes to term them, respectively, 'association by rela-
tionship' and 'association by habituation.' The new names,
he maintains, are not indifferent; for they do fuller justice
than the old to the facts of self-observation, and they also
point us to the conditions of association in the central nervous
substance.37
Here then is an improvement on the side of analysis and
synthesis; but that is not enough. For ideas do not associate
automatically, as it were of their own motion; the laws of
association are, on the contrary, under the universal domin-
ance of attention. And now there opens up, for experi-
mental attack, a whole series of special problems which an
empirical psychology, following only the single line of enquiry,
33PP, 717 ff., esp. 724.
34PP, 831, 835.
35 PP, 720 f., 723 f., 834 f.
3a PP, 792 f., 831 ff.
37pp, 788 ff.
118 TITCHENER

must naturally miss. In their light we pass beyond associa-

tionism to a more faithful transcript of the 'course and con-
nection of ideas ';38 and in like manner we avoid, in our
psychology of will, the philosophical impasse of indeter-
minism.39
These paragraphs express, in rough summary, the teaching
of the Wundt of 1874. He does not give psychology a dis-
tinct and peculiar subject-matter; the difference between physi-
ology and psychology lies simply in our point of view. Wundt
had already published a comprehensive work upon physiology,
and now that he has turned to psychology he carries his
knowledge and method with him; he is convinced that the
processes of the inner life are best set forth in close con-
nection with those of the outer life, and that the results of
inner observation are surest when the appliances of external
observation, the procedures of physiology, are pressed into
psychological service. He spends little time upon prelimin-
aries, but gets as quickly as may be to the exposition of facts.
Where facts are few or lacking, he seeks to supplement or to
supply them by observations of his own. His primary aim in
all cases is to describe the phenomena of mind as the physi-
ologist describes the phenomena of the living body, to write
down what is there, going on observably before him: witness
his treatment of idea, of concept, of attention, of association.
There is still great space for argument, and the argument,
we must admit, is often influenced by previous habits of
thought, by psychological tradition, by a certain tendency to
round things off to a logical completeness, by a somewhat naive
trust in the principle of evolution. The argument, however,
does not impress the reader as anything but secondary: Wundt
is at once too dogmatic and too ready to change his views.
The recurring need of further facts and the patchwork char-
acter of the argument suggest, both alike, that psychology,
under his guidance, has still a long systematic road to travel.
? 6. We have now viewed our two psychologies from
within. Brentano, we have found, looks back over the past,
weeds out its errors with a sympathetic hand, accepts from
it whatever will stand the test of his criticism, and organises
old truth and new into a system meant, in all essentials, to
last as long as psychology shall be studied; Wundt, after he
has acknowledged his debt to the past, turns away from it
and plunges into the multifarious and detailed work of the
laboratories, producing a psychology that is as much encyclo-
38 pp,793; cf. the earlier sections of ch. xix.
39pp, 837 f.
EMPIRICALAND EXPERIMENTALPSYCHOLOGY 119

paedia as system, and that bears on its face the need for con-
tinual revision. Which of the two books holds the key to a
science of psychology?
Brentano has all the advantage that comes with historical
continuity. His doctrine of immanent objectivity goes back to
Aristotle and the Schoolmen, and the classification of psy-
chical acts into ideas, judgments, and phenomena of love and
hate goes back to Descartes.40 More than this: he can claim
kinship with every psychologist, of whatever school, who has
approached his subject from the technically 'empirical' stand-
point. For the 'empirical' psychologist means to take mind
as he finds it; and like the rest of the world, who are not psy-
chologists, he finds it in use; he finds it actively at work in
man's intercourse with nature and with his fellow-man, as
well as in his discourse with himself. Terms may change
and classifications may vary, but the items of classification are
always activities, and the terms employed-faculties, capacities,
powers, operations, functions, acts, states-all belong to the
same logical universe. Brentano, innovator though he is, takes
his place as of right in a great psychological community.41
To offset this advantage, and to justify his own break with
tradition, Wundt holds out the promise of an experimental
40 PES, 115 f.; The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, 47.
41 In spite of the remarks in ?3 and in ?6 below it may seem unjust
to Brentano if, even in this preliminary sketch of the psycho-
logical issue, his interest in experiment is left without record. We
note, then, that as early as 1874 he urged the establishment at
Vienna of a psychological laboratory (Ueber die Zunkunft der Phil-
osophie, 1893, 47 f.); that he has published Untersuchungen zur
Sinnespsychologie (1907) and in particular that he brought the Muller-
Lyer illusion to the attention of psychologists (Zeits. f. Psych. u.
Phys. d. Sinnesorgane, iii, 1892, 349); and that Stumpf, who was his
pupil (Ueberweg-Heinze, iv, 1906, 334 f.), has given us the experi-
mental Tonpsychologie. All this, however, does not prevent his being,
in the narrow sense, an 'empirical' psychologist. Stumpf tells us
that his own work is to "describe the psychical functions that are
set in action by tones " (Tonpsych., i, 1883, v) and declares later that
"there cannot be a psychology of tones; only a psychology of tonal
perceptions, tonal judgments, tonal feelings" (Zur Eiinteilung der
Wissenschaften, 1907, 30). Brentano, even with a laboratory, would
not have been, in Wundt's sense, an 'experimental' psychologist.
We know, besides, something of Brentano's systematic programme.
The empirical psychology is not to be concluded; it is to be supple-
mented and replaced by a 'descriptive' psychology (The Origin, etc.,
vii, 51 f.), fragments of which have appeared in The Origin of the
Knowledge of Right and Wrong (dealing with the phenomena of love
and hate and, in the Notes, with judgment) and in the Untersuchung-
en sense-perception). This in turn is to be followed by an ex-
planatory' or 'genetic' psychology, a sample of which is given in
Das Genie, 1892 (see The Origin, etc., 123).
120 TITCHENER
method. He should have been more explicit: for technology
as well as science-medicine as well as physiology, engineering
as well as physics-makes use of experiment. His actual pur-
pose, as we trace it in the chapters of his book, is to,transform
psychology into an experimental science of the strict type, a
science that shall run parallel with experimental physiology.42
He failed, no doubt, to see all that this purpose implied, and
his earlier readers may be excused if they looked upon his work
as an empirical psychology prefaced by anatomy and physi-
ology and interspersed with psychophysical experiments.
There is plenty of empirical psychology in the volume. If,
however, we go behind the letter to the informing spirit; if
we search out the common motive in Wundt's treatment of
the familiar topics; if we carry ourselves back in thought to
the scientific atmosphere of the seventies, and try in that
atmosphere to formulate the purpose that stands out sharp
and clear to our modern vision; then the real significance
of the Physiological Psychology cannot be mistaken. It speaks
the language of science, in the rigorous sense of the word,
and it promises us in this sense a science of psychology.
But Brentano also speaks of a 'science' of psychology.
Which of the two authors is in the right?
42 The substitutionof folk-psychologyfor experimentin the study
of the more complicatedmental processes appears in the fourth
edition (PP, i, 1893,5); the reservationin regardto psychophysical
parallelismin the fifth edition (PP, iii, 1903,775 ff.).