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More psychic nourishment is poured into the laboratory of psychic life thru this one channel alone than thru all others combined. Indeed, one of our most eminent scientific psychologists after making most careful investigation of the matter, estimates that the eye's contribution is about 74% as against the other 26% that comes thru all the other sources.
The notion of "data" is familiar throughout science, and is usually treated by men of science as though it were perfectly clear. Psychologists, on the other hand, find great difficulty in the conception.
We have already seen that the sub-conscious mind, wonderful though it be, is instinctive merely, lacking inspiration and what we call originality. All inspiration comes from the Universal Mind, via the super-conscious. All poets and inspired writers get their inspiration in this way. This higher mind is not recognized by Psychologists, but it has long been known to searchers for spiritual truth.
It is a fact placed for ever beyond doubt, say the modern psychologists, that every perception received by the mind is determined by certain general laws which govern the mind; is moulded, so to speak, in certain types pre-existing in our understanding, and which constitutes its original condition.
All these activities may be developed by means of an exercise comparable to a system of mental "gymnastics" to collect numerous sensations, to put them constantly in relation one with another, to deduce judgments therefrom, to acquire the habit of manifesting these freely, all this ought, as the psychologists would say, to render the conductive channels and the associative channels more and more permeable, and the "period of reaction" ever briefer.
Such considerations have impelled psychologists of eminence to maintain, in flat contradiction to what seems to be the unequivocal testimony of direct introspection, that the total content of consciousness at any moment must be looked upon as an indivisible, part-less unit. We cannot, then, depend merely on direct introspection. It is too uncertain in its deliverances.
That curious reservoir where forgotten experiences lie waiting in every man's mind, as vivid as on the day of first impression, is the chief concern of psychologists nowadays. But it has never yet had due recognition from literary criticism.
And yet this is what psychologists must finally do if the use by teachers of these tendencies is to be both economical and wise. Just as an illustration of the possibilities of analysis, Thorndike in his "Original Nature of Man" lists eleven different situations which call out an instinctive expression of fear and thirty-one different responses which may occur in that expression.
In thus referring all mental action and growth to experience, in the narrow limits he draws for the original powers of the mind, Herbart stands opposed to the older and to many more recent psychologists. He has been called the father of empirical psychology.
When we consider the various emotions growing from the force of this vital urge, as developed by adaptation to an ever-changing environment, we are able to realize fully why it bulks so large in moulding and shaping the destiny of the race. All psychologists are agreed in classing under the nutritive instinct such activities as acquisition, storing and hoarding.
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