The Evolution of the Psychical Element, By George Herbert Mead (Dec. 1899–March 1900 or 1898–1899)

Note appended to the beginning of the manuscript:

Even Prof. Dewey seems to think that the Even Prof. Dewey seems to think that the problem is absent from the animal consciousness, when he says, "That which was unconscious adaptation in the animal, taking place by the "cut and try" method until it worked itself out, is with man conscious deliberation and experimentation." ("Evolution and Ethics," Monist, April 1898, 340). (Cf. "Logic of E, 1900, 79). Cf. "Outlines of Ethics," 158–159. (He doesn't mean the problem is absent, but that consciousness of it is.)

[1] The relation between the psychology of the Ancients and of the Scholastics

The psychology of the ancients was objective in its character. Ancient science considered the soul of man as it did the other objects of investigation, from the standpoint of deductive method. That is, the ancients (pre-eminently the Greeks) aimed to bring to knowledge the ideas and habits that lay at the foundation of their society. They were in search of what had organized the community, not of new principles. Socrates was no less turning to the past in his idea of the education of the good citizen than was Aristotle in his deductive logic—knowledge based upon memory. The character of ancient science, from the stand point of method, was that the universal existed apart from the particular which suggested it or was its possibility, and also independent of the reason that perceives it. The universal, with them, was in no sense the product of thought or activity. The attitude of the thinker toward the universal was that of passive perception. There might be ethical and emotional identification of the thinker with the universal reason, but the attitude of the reason remained that of contemplation. [2] What the modern mind regards as the resultant of the process of knowledge and of intelligent conduct (the universal, the law, the principle, the rule, the habit), is conceived of by the ancient mind as given independent of the thinker or doer. Ancient method was bringing into explicit consciousness the universals implicit in actual thought and action.

The modern scientist seeks to find in the particular a new universal, a new meaning not involved in the interpretations of the past. The ancient scientist sought to draw out of the attitude or action of the thinker toward the particular what was the universal already given in that attitude or action. Socrates thus called the dialectic of philosophy the art of the midwife to birth (into explicitness) what was already there (implicit). Hence their analysis was the analysis of the objective, physical world, and subjective phenomena or world, the psychical, was valueless. The category of subjectivity could appear only when scientific analysis was willing to break up the universal as then existing, that a new universal [3] might arise. While this process is taking place, elements have for the time being only subjective validity, i.e., they are psychical elements.

The general method of the ancient world in reflective thought confines itself to bringing to consciousness the universals involved in their past interpretations of their environment, and their reactions upon it. As long as their analysis went no further than this, there could be no room for category of subjectivity; there could be no such element as the psychical element of modern consciousness, for their search was for the real, that which was objectively valid. What fell short of this fell within the field of non-being, [what was] not within that of being. It follows that the so-called psychology of the ancients attacks the problems of sense-perception, conception, the organization of conduct, and the emotions from that common to our psychological enquiry. We have described it as objective, that is, the object is never analyzed beyond its objective meaning as recognized by any one sense. A seeming contradiction to this is found in the primary and secondary qualities of matter [4] described by Democritus and the Atomists. But though the secondary qualities are...