Wilhelm Wundt Quotes

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

2. “The materialistic point of view in psychology can claim, at best, only the value of an heuristic hypothesis.”

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

4. “In the animal world, on the other hand, the process of evolution is characterised by the progressive discrimination of the animal and vegetative functions, and a consequent differentiation of these two great provinces into their separate departments.”

5. “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.”

6. “Physiology is concerned with all those phenomena of life that present them selves to us in sense perception as bodily processes, and accordingly form part of that total environment which we name the external world.”

7. “Philosophical reflection could not leave the relation of mind and spirit in the obscurity which had satisfied the needs of the naive consciousness.”

8. “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.”

9. “The task of physiological psychology remains the same in the analysis of ideas that it was in the investigation of sensations: to act as mediator between the neighbouring sciences of physiology and psychology.”

10. “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.”