ELEMENTS, Conscious. As is the case with any other process of analysis, the analysis of experience must disclose certain component factors from which more complicated experi ences are built, and these are called conscious elements. It is by no means obvious that the psychical fragments which form the elements in the psychology of the present day are not subject to further fragmentation, nor, for the matter oi that, that there are any conscious ele ments whatever insusceptible to further f rag mentation. .Furthermore, the subdivision of an experience into its elements does not exhaust its analysis any more than the analysis of a mosaic is exhausted by an enumeration of the constituent bits of stone. Just as the arrange ment of the constituent bits of stone is the really vital part of a mosaic, so the arrangement of the constituent bits of experience is the vital part of a mental state. The tentative character of conscious elements and the inadequacy of a psychology which confines itself to cataloguing them are all but entirely overlooked by perhaps the majority of experimental psychologists.
The general consensus of opinion among psychologists is that the structural elements — the items—out of which experience at any one moment is built are sensations and affections (qq.v.), and these alone. In determining what
constitutes a single sensation, our laiowledge of the physiological processes of the sense-organs often yields us indications which are contra dicted by introspection, as in the c.ase of the sensation of a color, which does not show upon introspection the division into separate light and color processes which is indicated by its physiology.
There is not so much agreement as to the nature of the simple psychological functions, or temporal sequences of psychological units. Stout assumes that the simple processes are cognition — i.e., sentience, simple apprehension, and be lief and will—i.e., hedonic tone and desire or aversion. Brentano separates ideation or aware ness from belief. Wundt regards all experi ence as a manifestation of the volitional process of impulse, which involves both sensory and affective factors. Consult Brentano, (Psychol ogie' (Leipzig 1874) ; Stout, (Analytic Psychol Nor) (London 1896) ; Titchener, (An Outline of Psychology) (New York 1907) ; Wundt, (Grundriss der Psychologie) (Leipzig 1897) ; id., (Physiologische Psychologie) (ib. 1902-03).