Talks To Teachers On Psychology

hey have a focus and a margin — This description contrast

s and workings of the mind are all that the teacher ab

ver you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life. The existence of this stream is the primal fact, the nature and origin of it form the essential problem, of our science. So far as we class

ow the brain conditions them, we have not the remotest inkling of an answer to give; and, if we ask just how the education moulds the brain, we can speak but in the most abstract, general, and conjectural terms. On the other hand, if we should say that they are due to a spiritual being called our Soul, which reacts on our brain states by these peculiar forms of spiritual energy, our words would be familiar enough, it is true; but I think you will agree t

tain sensations of our bodies and of the objects around us, memories of past experiences and thoughts of distant things, feelings of satisfaction and dissa

on they bear to one another is very shifting. One state will seem to be composed of hardly anything but sensations, another of hardly anything but memories, etc. But ar

are also thinking and feeling, are getting through your eyes sensations of my face and figure, and through your ears sensations o

e I am speaking — your mind, in short, may have wandered from the lecture; and, in that case, the sensations of my face and

ing connected with your own body may have passed fr

n, require, I think, no further explanation. The distinction they embody is a very im

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rs rapidly. Sometimes the focus alters, and the margin stays. Sometimes focus and margin change places. Sometimes, again, abrupt alterations of the whole field occur. There can seldom be a sharp description. All we know is that, for the most part, each fiel

ror and free from admixture of conjecture or hypothesis. An influential school of psychology, seeking to avoid

of ‘mind-stuff,’ out of which all the more immediately known mental states are said to be built up. Locke introduced this theory in a somewhat vague form. Simple ‘ideas’ of sensation and reflection, as he called them, were for him the bricks of which our mental architecture is built up. If I ever have to refer to this theory again, I shall refe