A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c6.s3.1

c6.s3.1

16. Modern writers on Psychology give no attention to Rational Psychology ; they consider it either useless or metaphysical. As Prof. James Ward points out, modern psychologists vie with each other in writing a psychology *ohne Seele*. The ancient conception of Soul has evaporated, and in its place we find a self, which is regarded as a “ centre of interest,” and which is supposed to be generated when a new interest springs up and destroyed as soon as the interest terminates. The *impasse* into which such a view brings the Psychologists may be realised at a glance when we consider that some of them have been forced to recognise the continuance of such a bloodless self even after the death of the body, and in place of the old-world view of an immortal Soul we find the idea of a “ centre of interest ” which survives (!) after the death of the body when the interest is not fulfilled in the person’s life-time. The old-world view, as in Plato so in the Upanishads, planted itself squarely on the recognition of the Soul as an entity which was free to take on a body, as it was also free to go away and transmigrate. Whatever the limitations of such a view, it was a view which one could at least understand; but the modern notion of an anæmic "centre of interest," which could continue to exist after the death of the body, passes absolutely beyond the comprehension of anybody except a metaphysician who makes such concessions to naturalism as to make an entire farrago of his philosophical ideas.