Chapter I: The Logical Character of Psychological Science

§ 1. The various sciences which deal with the interpretation
of human life all avail themselves of the fundamental
categories of Psychology. Hence we must ask how the
concepts of Psychology are related to actual experience.
§ 2. Psychology is a body of abstract descriptive
formulæ, not a direct transcript of the individual
processes of real life. It presupposes the previous
construction of the physical order. § 3. The
psychological conception of conscious life as a
succession of “mental states” or “images” is a
transformation of actual experience devised primarily to
account for the experience of other subjects, and
subsequently extended to my own. The transformation is
effected by the hypothesis of “introjection.” §§ 4, 5.
The logical justification of the psychological
transformation of facts is twofold. The psychological
scheme serves partly to fill up the gaps in our theories
of physiological Mechanism, and also, in respect of the
teleological categories of Psychology, to describe the
course of human conduct in a form capable of ethical and
historical appreciation. Psychology may legitimately
employ both mechanical and teleological categories. § 6.
The objections sometimes brought against the possibility
of (_a_) psychological, (_b_) teleological description
are untenable 294