THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND

THE title indicates that this volume is restricted to the group of material conditions which constitute the organism in relation to the physical world—a group which furnishes the data for one half of the psychologist’s quest; the other half being furnished by historical and social conditions. The Human Mind, so far as it is accessible to scientific inquiry, has a twofold root, man being not only an animal organism but an unit in the social organism; and hence the complete theory of its functions and faculties must be sought in this twofold direction. This conception (which has been declared “to amount to a revolution in Psychology”), although slowly prepared by the growing conviction that Man could not be isolated from Humanity, was first expounded in the opening volume of these Problems of Life and Mind; at least, I am not aware that any predecessor had seen how the specially human faculties of Intellect and Conscience were products of social factors co-operating with the animal factors.