The results of ethnic psychology constitute, at the same time, our chief source of information regarding the general psychology of the complex mental processes.

The results of ethnic psychology constitute, at the same time, our chief source of information regarding the general psychology of the complex mental processes.

If we take an unprejudiced view of the processes of consciousness, free from all the so-called association rules and theories, we see at once that an idea is no more an even relatively constant thing than is a feeling or emotion or volitional process. There exist only changing and transient ideational processes ; there are no permanent ideas that return again and disappear again.

Physiology, in its analysis of the physiological functions of the sense organs, must use the results of subjective observation of sensations; and psychology, in its turn, needs to know the physiological aspects of sensory function, in order rightly to appreciate the psychological.

Thus ordered thinking arises out of the ordered course of nature in which man finds himself, and this thinking is from the beginning nothing more than the subjective reproduction of the regularity according to the law of natural phenomena. On the other hand, this reproduction is only possible by means of the will that controls the concatenation of ideas.

The distinguishing characteristics of mind are of a subjective sort; we know them only from the contents of our own consciousness.

Hence, wherever we meet with vital phenomena that present the two aspects, physical and psychical there naturally arises a question as to the relations in which these aspects stand to each other.