and Darwin “dethroned” each other in the same way as Euclid, Lobachevsky, and Riemann did; finally (3) Lobachevsky dethroned Euclid and demonstrated that... [42]. But even people with only elementary knowledge of the subject know that here we are not dealing with the knowledge of real triangles, but with ideal forms in mathematical, deductive systems, that these three theses follow from three different assumptions and do not contradict each other, just like other arithmetical counting systems do not contradict the decimal system. They co-exist and this determines their whole meaning and methodological nature. But what can be the value for the diagnosis of the crisis in an inductive science of a viewpoint which regards each two consecutive names as a crisis and each new opinion as a refutation of the truth?

Kornilov’s (1925) diagnosis is closer to the truth. He views a struggle between two currents—reflexology and empirical psychology and theft synthesis—Marxist psychology.

Already Frankfurt (1926) had advanced the opinion that reflexology cannot be viewed as a united whole, that it consists of contradictory tendencies and directions. This is even more true of empirical psychology. A unitary empirical psychology does not exist at all. In general, this simplified schema was created more as a program for operations, critical understanding, and demarcation than for an analysis of the crisis. For the latter it lacks reference to the causes, tendency, dynamics, and prognosis of the crisis. It is a logical classification of viewpoints present in the USSR and no more than that.

Thus, there has been no theoiy of the crisis in anything so far discussed, but only subjective communiqués compiled by the staffs of the quarreling parties. Here what is important is to beat the enemy; nobody will waste his time studying him.

Still closer to a theory of the crisis comes Lange (1914, p. 43), who already presents an embryonic description of it. But he has more feeling for than understanding of the crisis. Not even his historical information is to be trusted. For him the crisis commenced with the fall of associationism, i.e., he takes an accidental circumstance for the cause. Having established that “presently some general crisis is taking place” in psychology, he continues: “It consists of the replacement of the previous associationism by a new psychological theory.” This is incorrect if only because associationism never was a generally accepted psychological system which formed the core of our science, but to the present day remains one of the fighting currents which has become much stronger lately and has been revived in reflexology and behaviorism. The psychology of Mill, Bain, and Spencer was never more than what it is now. It has fought faculty psychology (Herbart) like it is doing now. To see the root of the crisis in associationism is to give a very subjective assessment. Lange himself views it as the root of the rejection of the sensualistic doctrine. But today as well Gestalt theory views associationism as the main flaw of all psychology, including the newest.

In reality, it is not the adherents and opponents of this principle who are divided by some basic trait, but groups that evolved upon much more fundamental grounds. Furthermore, it is not entirely correct to reduce it to a struggle between the views of individual psychologists: it is important to lay bare what is shared and what is contradictory behind these various opinions. Lange’s false understanding of the crisis ruined his own work. In defending the principle of a realistic, biological psychology, he fights Ribot and relies upon Husserl and other extreme idealists, who reject the possibility of psychology as a natural science. But some things, and not the least important ones, he established correctly. These are his correct propositions:

(1) There is no generally accepted system of our science. Each of the expositions of psychology by eminent authors is based upon an entirely different system.