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Krnst Mach

(or catabolism) and assimilation (or anabolism). The dis$imilativc rcaction givcs whitc, yellow or red rc$pcctivcly in the threc substanccs. Assimilation accounts for black, bluc and green—the quictcr or less “violcnt” colors Thcrc were many othrr rcfincments that had to be includcd in this theory but its historical importancc nowadays is that it represented for almost fifty ycars an cffcctivc altcrnativc to the Young-Hclmholtz theory.³⁵

Mach acccptcd Hering’s revisions of his own idcas, and vcry mod-cstly never attempted to claim any credit for Hcring’s finał product. It sccms only fair, howcvcr, as Professor R. Jung has rcccntly suggested (1967), that Mach’s role in the matter should be givcn a littlc morę promincnce than it has rcceived in the past.³⁰

Hering, in 1870, the same year hc took ovcr Purkyn^s chair in Praguc, gavc a significant lecture bcforc the Austrian Acadcmy of Science: “On Memory as a General Function of Organized Matter." This lcc-turc had a major influence on Mach, dovetailing rcmarkably with his Lam arck-Dar winian view of evolution.

Fcchners theory that all living crcaturcs had “minds” including plants apparently influeneed Hering to attempt a rather swecping gen-eralization. Until then, Jean Baptistc Lamarck’s theory of the inheri-tancc of acquired charactcristics had normally bcen applied to the in-hcritance of physical charactcristics. If, ho\vcvcr, cvcrything physical had a “parallel" mcntal countcrpart, then mcntal charactcristics, cs-pecially ideas, might also be inherited. Normally we suppose that idcas are conscious and that they vanish with the death of particular pcople; hence, if idcas, and in particular "acquircd” idcas are to be inherited, then cvidently somc kind of unconscious memory is rcquircd, and this of course was the hallmark of Hcring’s theory.³⁷ Ile wrotc:

The wholc history of individual dcvclopmcnt, as obscrvcd in higher organized animals, is, from this point of vicw, a continuous chain of remi-nisccnccs of the evolution of all the beings which form the ancestral scrics of the animal.⁸⁸

The conscious memory of m3n dies with his death, but the unconscious memory r f naturę is faithful and indcstructiblc.³⁹

Mach tendcd to place “memory" in quotalion marks, but on the wholc hc acccpted Hering s theory. His last written article, published after his death in 1916, reaffirmed his confidence in Lamarck, Hering, and in unconscious “memory.”⁴⁰ On the other band, thcrc is no evi-dcncc that Mach acccptcd or would cvcr have acceptcd C. G. Jung’s not unrclatcd “unconscious world soul."⁴¹

Wundt vs. Brentano

Ernst Mach not only curtailcd much of his cx_Dcrimr . t •

_ing the middlc 187OS, but at least as far as psychology „72“ 7'

wcrc toncerncd, hc ncvcr significantly resumed _th ^dF^physio!o8y

portant, hc ceascd from then on ,0 attempt ,0 kccp up t^haU 7 latcst thcorctic.il dcvdopmcnts in the two fi_cld< TK    ,    ^{1 thc}

For, i*t « Mach was slacking „ff, ,,„_nz i,ro_ach to psychology was just getting started. In spite „f the lim Of .hc two men wcrc ,o cross morę thL „    "

responded with cach other in iater ycars, and that the nh'!^^ followcrs and disciples of both men werc in frc_qucnt conflS “nhtch other, still, thcrc is no cvidencc that Mach cvcr rcad anv of R , psychology or philosophy books prior to .907-Admittcdly t^bTks were not particularly casy reading, but Mach unncccssarilv h    j

himself by not reading then, It meant that he SSS position to answer the criticisms of Bremano’s followcrs, but would have to rely on the knowledge and wisdom of his own supporters which frcqucntly was not cqual to the task.    ’

Frań/. Brentano (.883-19,7) was born in Marienburg (Marlborkl on the Rhinc, was descended from an old Italian family and was re lated to CIcmens Brentano and Bettina von Arnim, the lnerary figures He began trammg for the priesthood at sixtcen, studied at the univer' sities of Berlin and Witr/burg, and had a number of outstanding teachers. Frtedrich Trendelenburg interested him in Aristotle- Imaz ^von hJólItnger advocated a liberał Catholicism; and Rudolf Lot/e among other things helpcd him to bccome a professor at Vienna in

In this same year both Wundt and Brentano published importam psychology books: Wundt, Fwsdamcntcls of PhyHological Psychology. and Brentano, Psychology from an Etnpirical Sumdpoint.^a From then on one may speak of thc two men as leaders of rival psychological schools, Wundt's "Content Psychology" os. Brentano's "Act Psvchol-ogy"

Wundt's approach was normally labclcd "introspcctise" and "experi. mcntal," two terms that sometimes may seem incompatible or contra-dictory. The solution or “synthesis” lay in the type of ejtperitnentation. Wundt, likc Mach, bclicved that the expcrimcntal subjca or person

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