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The treatise which follows has in the main grown up in connection with the author's class - room instruction in Psychology , although it is true that some of the chapters are more ' metaphysical , ' and others fuller of detail , than is suitable for students who are going over the subject for the first time . The consequence of this is that , in spite of the exclusion of the important subjects of pleasure and pain , and moral and æsthetic feelings and judgments , the work has grown to a length which no one can regret more than the writer himself . The man must indeed be sanguine who , in this crowded age , can hope to have many readers for fourteen hundred continuous pages from his pen . But wer Vieles bringt wird Manchem etwas bringen ; and , by judiciously skipping according to their several needs , I am sure that many sorts of readers , even those who are just beginning the study of the subject , will find my book of use . Since the beginners are most in need of guidance , I suggest for their behoof that they omit altogether on a first reading chapters 6 , 7 , 8 , 10 ( from page 330 to page 371 ) , 12 , 13 , 15 , 17 , 20 , 21 , and 28 . The better to awaken the neophyte's interest , it is possible that the wise order would be to pass directly from chapter 4 to chapters 23 , 24 , 25 , and 26 , and thence to return to the first volume again . Chapter 20 , on Space - perception , is a terrible thing , which , unless written with all that detail , could not be fairly treated at all . An abridgment of it , called ' The Spatial Quale , ' which appeared in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy , vol . xiii , p . 64 , may be found by some persons a useful substitute for the entire chapter . I have kept close to the point of view of natural science throughout the book . Every natural science assumes certain [ Pg vi ] data uncritically , and declines to challenge the elements between which its own ' laws ' obtain , and from which its own deductions are carried on . Psychology , the science of finite individual minds , assumes as its data ( 1 ) thoughts and feelings , and ( 2 ) a physical world in time and space with which they coexist and which ( 3 ) they know . Of course these data themselves are discussable ; but the discussion of them ( as of other elements ) is called metaphysics and falls outside the province of this book . This book , assuming that thoughts and feelings exist and are vehicles of knowledge , thereupon contends that psychology when she has ascertained the empirical correlation of the various sorts of thought or feeling with definite conditions of the brain , can go no farther — can go no farther , that is , as a natural science . If she goes farther she becomes metaphysical . All attempts to explain our phenomenally given thoughts as products of deeper - lying entities ( whether the latter be named ' Soul , ' ' Transcendental Ego , ' ' Ideas , ' or ' Elementary Units of Consciousness ' ) are metaphysical . This book consequently rejects both the associationist and the spiritualist theories ; and in this strictly positivistic point of view consists the only feature of it for which I feel tempted to claim originality .
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