Every hour of human life could contribute
to the picture gallery; and this is the
only fault that one can find with such descriptive
industry -- where is it going to stop?
Ought we to listen forever to verbal pictures
of what we have already in concrete form in
our own breasts?(2) They never take us off the
superficial plane. We knew the facts already --
less spread out and separated, to be sure -- but
---
1 Their existence forms a curious commentary on Prof. Munsterberg's
dogma that will-attitudes are not describable. He himself has
contributed in a superior way to their description, both in his
_Willenshandlung_, and in his _Grundzuge_ [_der_Psychologie_], part II,
chap. IX, section 7.
2 I ought myself to cry _peccavi_, having been a voluminous sinner in
my own chapter on the will. [_Principles_of_Psychology_, vol. II, chap.
XXVI.]
165
we knew them still. We always felt our own
activity, for example, as 'the expansion of an
idea with which our Self is identified, against
an obstacle';(1) and the following out of such a
definition through a multitude of cases elaborates
the obvious so as to be little more than an
exercise in synonymic speech.
All the descriptions have to trace familiar
outlines, and to use familiar terms.
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