Brett - A history of psychology. / Vol. II, Mediaeval and early modern period

Muirhead Library of Philosophy

A HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY

MUIRHEAD

Muirhead Library of Philosophy

PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND PSYCHOLOGY

In 17 Volumes

A HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY

Mediaeval & Early Modern Period

Volume II

GEORGE SIDNEY BRETT

First published 1921 by Routledge

Published 2013 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright holders of the works reprinted in the Muirhead Library of Philosophy. This has not been possible in every case, however, and we would welcome correspondence from those individuals/companies we have been unable to trace.

These reprints are taken from original copies of each book. In many cases the condition of these originals is not perfect. The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of these reprints, but wishes to point out that certain characteristics of the original copies will, of necessity, be apparent in reprints thereof.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-29609-0 (hbk)

A HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY

BY

GEORGE SIDNEY BRETT

M.A. (O XON .)

Professor of Philosophy in the University of Toronto

VOL. II

MEDIVAL & EARLY MODERN PERIOD

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.

RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1

NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

First published in 1921

(All rights reserved)

PREFACE

THE first period of the history of psychology was described in a volume published in 1912 under the title, History of Psychology: Ancient and Patristic. The volumes now published comprise (a) the medival and early modern period, forming this (second) volume, and (b) the nineteenth century, forming a third volume.

The original plan of work has been retained without more change than the differences of the material required. As originally planned this history was to record, in their chronological order, the steps by which psychology has reached its present stage of development. At the same time indications would be given of the relation between psychology and those phases of human thought to which it was allied. The complexity of the result is due to the subject-matter. No one will deny that psychology has intimately affected many spheres of human thought: religion, metaphysics, logic, ethics, politics, sociology, pdagogy, criminology, and other subjects have all felt its impact; in a different way, physics, anatomy, physiology, neurology, chemistry and the general theories of organic life have stood in close relation to its successes and failures: a history of psychology must therefore be highly complex, and any attempt to construct a record of all its currents and cross-currents is sure to seem irrelevant in some respects, inadequate in others.

In order to cope as well as possible with the material, each period has been treated on the same plan. First comes an estimate of the condition of those sciences which at the time were clearly important in the eyes of the authors whose work is to be treated: next comes the description of the works upon psychological topics written during the period: to this is added an account of the general influence of psychology and of the applications of the theories during the period in question. While this conception of the subject involves a large amount of material, an exhaustive encyclopdia of all known writers or works was never contemplated: if it were possible to realize such completeness in the earlier stages, it would still be an unattainable ideal at the later periods. In any case the powers of the historian dwindle perceptibly as his perspective grows shorter. The limit of this work was fixed at the close of the nineteenth century, and that limit has only been overstepped where the line of thought or the sequence of an authors work required completion.

In view of some criticisms passed upon the former volume, some further remarks may be pardoned. A history of a science is a unique species of history. For the content of the science the student may go to the last textbook, where he may learn the established truths without any reference to their genesis or to the men who established them. For those who require no more a history is superfluous: it can add nothing to that knowledge and may be wholly disregarded. But there is another and a different object for which it has a specific function. If the student is not to be left with the idea that knowledge is a fixed quantity of indisputable facts, if on the contrary he is to acquire a real understanding of the process by which knowledge is continually made and remade, he must learn to look at the movement of ideas without prejudice as a separate fact with its own significance and its own meaning for humanity. To despise forgotten theories because they no longer hold good, and refuse on that account to look backward, is in the end to forget that mans highest ambition is to make progress possible, to make the truth of to-day into the error of yesterdayin short, to make history.

Psychology is in some sense a new science, but it has progressed far enough to be conscious of its own claims. It seems, therefore, worth while at this stage to give it the support which may be derived from history. The importance claimed for that history is derived from the ideas expressed above. It is not the kind of importance which belongs either to new discoveries or to antiquarian lore. It is rather the importance that belongs to the great panorama of human effort which it consistently unfolds. However many new psychologies rise and fall, however much the final solution of all problems seems to us to be given only to our own generation, it will still be worth while to contemplate this spectacle of a quest which has called forth from the beginning of time the most passionate desires, the most distorted theories, the most bitter disputes, and the most refined thought possible to the human being. It is not for the historian to utter prophesy, but the eye which surveys the whole course of this subject from its meagre beginnings to its present vastness cannot but anticipate a future growth no less significant and perhaps of incredible importance to the human race.