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Psychology: the Motive Powers

James McCosh

Dr. McCosh, in his second volume on Psychology, treats of the Motive Powers as distinct from the Cognitive Powers, which were discussed in tho first volume of the series. He regards this division of the human faculties as better and more natural than the more common arrangement of Kant into the faculties of cognition, feeling, and will, the great objection to which is that it leaves out of sight the moral power or conscience. Not that Kant ignores the moral nature, but that he treats it as if it were a phase of the rational faculty — reason having the power to awaken moral susceptibility and to hold it, as it were, to the truth and right action through the will. The motive powers are arranged by Dr. McCosh under three heads, — emotions, conscience, will, — making conscience or the moral faculty one of the leading faculties. Conscience, according to Dr. McCosh, is both a cognitive and a motive power, and so in a sense is superior to all the other faculties. By far the greater part of this book is given to the consideration of the emotions, which are considered in various aspects, and classified and described with great minuteness. The appetences or inclinations, the ruling idea in them, and the causes which excite or repress them, are set forth in methodical order, as also their various complex divisions and characteristics. The last section is devoted to the Will under ten different aspects, and to brief statements with regard to the religious tendency. Dr. McCosh certainly presents us in this treatise with a very compact, lucid, and comprehensive view of the subject under discussion. - Summary by The North American Review