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12 Rational Psychology From the study of the character of the activities of the mind in experimental psychology, the student now passes on to inquire into the nature of the principle from which they proceed. This constitutes the more philosophical or metaphysical division of the science. For, as we have indicated, the analysis and explanatory accounts of the higher forms and products of mental activity, which the scientific psychologist is compelled to undertake even in phenomenal psychology, involve metaphysical assumption and conclusions which he cannot escape — certainly not by merely ignoring them. Still, it is in this second stage that he will formally evolve the logical consequences to which his previous study of the several forms of mental activity lead up. His method here will be both inductive and deductive; both analytic and synthetic. He argues from effect to cause. From the character of the mental activities already scrutinized with so much care, he now concludes as to the nature of the subject to which they belong. From what the mind does, he seeks to learn what it is. In particular, from the simple spiritual nature of the higher activities of intellect and will, he infers that the being, the ultimate principle from which they proceed, must be of a simple and spiritual nature. Consequently, it cannot be the brain or any corporeal substance. Having established the simplicity and spirituality of the soul, he then goes on to deduce further conclusions as to its origin, the nature of its union with the body, and its future destiny. In this way by rational arguments the Scholastic thinkers claim to prove that the human soul can only have arisen by creation, that it is naturally incorruptible, and that the boundless aspirations of the intellect, the insatiable yearnings of the will, and the deepest convictions of the moral reason all combine to establish a future life of the soul after death. |
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