Wilhelm Wundt Quotes

The distinguishing characteristics of mind are of a subjective sort; we know them only from the contents of our own consciousness.

Physiology seeks to derive the processes in our own nervous system from general physical forces, without considering whether these processes are or are not accompanied by processes of consciousness.

We speak of virtue, honour, reason; but our thought does not translate any one of these concepts into a substance.

Physiology and psychology cover, between them, the field of vital phenomena; they deal with the facts of life at large, and in particular with the facts of human life.

The old metaphysical prejudice that man ‘always thinks’ has not yet entirely disappeared. I am myself inclined to hold that man really thinks very little and very seldom.

If we take an unprejudiced view of the processes of consciousness, free from all the so-called association rules and theories, we see at once that an idea is no more an even relatively constant thing than is a feeling or emotion or volitional process. There exist only changing and transient ideational processes ; there are no permanent ideas that return again and disappear again.

Many psychologists … thought by turning their attention to their own consciousness to be able to explain what happened when we were thnking. Or they sought to attain the same end by asking another person a question, by means of which certain processes of thought would be excited, and then by questioning the person about the introspection he had made. It is obvious … that nothing can be discovered in such experiments.

We know, from ordinary life, that we are not able to direct our attention perfectly steadily and uniformly to one and the same object… At times the attention turns towards the object most intensely, and at times the energy flags.

Experimental psychology itself has, it is true, now and again suffered relapse into a metaphysical treatment of its problems.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

Physiological psychology, on the other hand, is competent to investigate the relations that hold between the processes of the physical and those of the mental life.

The general statement that the mental faculties are class concepts, belonging to descriptive psychology, relieves us of the necessity of discussing them and their significance at the present stage of our inquiry.