that the latter construes the relation
of the present to the future experience wholly in static terms, the
functional relation being left out of account. The later experience is
read back into its predecessor in the form of dim or marginal images,
which need but show themselves more completely to make the two
identical. If these sensations were intended only as symbols of a
functional relationship, it would perhaps be scarcely worth while to
enter a protest against them. But when the functional relationship is
quite overlooked, the explanation that is given becomes exceedingly
dubious. The ticking of the clock, for example, that is present, though
unnoticed, the overtones of the note that suffuse the whole without
diverting attention to their individual qualities,--in what precise way
are facts of this kind concerned in the description of the experience
which they modify? A study of the clock or of the overtones can hardly
pass as an analysis of consciousness; it is too obviously an affair of
physics. Such a study becomes merely an excuse for repeating the
analyses of physics and reading them off in terms of sensations and
images. Moreover, the transfer of all this material to consciousness
looks suspiciously like a transaction in mental chemistry. Where, then,
is psychology to gain a foothold? What is the meaning of these uncanny
sensations and images, which nobody experiences, unless it be their
character as symbols of adjustment? They have no legitimate status, and
psychology, by consequence, has no legitimate problem, except in so far
as they represent those possible acts of adaptation which are the sole
and proper concern of psychology.

It remains to point out briefly the bearing of these results on what is
called "the method of introspection." We are sometimes assured that
introspection has discarded the belief in a separate mental stuff or
subject-matter, but there is ground for the suspicion that such
protestations are made in the same spirit that we affirm our belief in
the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule, with no thought of being taken
seriously. At all events, without a literal "looking within" it seems to
become exceedingly difficult to differentiate introspection from
ordinary observation as practised in the other sciences. The reason for
this difficulty is that there is nothing left in introspection by which
it can be differentiated. The term introspection properly designates,
not a method but a probl