Man as he is : essays in a new psychology / by Sir Bampfylde Fuller.

  • Fuller, Bampfylde, Sir, 1854-1937.
Date:
1916
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Man as he is : essays in a new psychology / by Sir Bampfylde Fuller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with them. And there are our wishes: how eagerly, as the war has shown, do we grasp at any excuse for believing what we wish to believe! So long as our judgment is coloured by self-esteem, prejudice, or self-interest, we are unable to see things in the cold light of truth. Nor does cynicism help us. For this may be as misleading as vanity, since it is inclined to make too much of what is evil, and too little of what is good. To draw out a faithful record of the nature of man, it is necessary to maintain the attitude of dis¬ passionate detachment with which one may ob¬ serve the habits of bees. But frigid impartiality is very difficult to preserve when we are consider¬ ing and passing judgment upon ourselves. Our examination will introduce us to im¬ pulsive susceptibilities—energies which are as real as those which we call ‘ physical,’ although of very different quality. Psychologists cannot deny the existence of these forces, but are inclined to relegate their study to the domain of meta¬ physics, since they lie beyond the scope of our perception and can, indeed, hardly be compre¬ hended by our minds. But precisely the same statements may be made concerning gravity, electricity, and chemical affinity. Men of science, however, have not permitted the elusiveness and incomprehensibility of these forces to preclude the study of their character, as shown by the perceptible results which they produce. Why should not the action of human impulses be similarly investigated ? To isolate these living energies and determine