What is left after the division, will go to the realm of art. Already now Frank [1917/1964, p. 16] calls the writers of novels the teachers of psychology. [67] For Dilthey [1894/1977, p. 36] psychology’s task is to catch in the web of its descriptions what is hidden in King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth as he saw in them “more psychology than in all the manuals of psychology together.” [68] It is true, Stem laughed maliciously at such a psychology procured from novels and said that you cannot milk a painted cow. But in contrast with his idea and in accordance with Dilthey’s, descriptive psychology is really developing into fiction. The first congress on individual psychology, which regards itself as this second psychology, heard Oppenheim’s paper, who seized in the web of his concepts what Shakespeare gave in images—exactly what Dilthey wanted. [69] The second psychology becomes metaphysics whatever it is called. It is precisely the impossibility of such knowledge as science which determines our choice.

Thus, there is only one heir for the name of our science. But, perhaps, it should decline the heritage? Not at all. We are dialecticians. We do not at all think that the developmental path of science follows a straight line, and if it has had zigzags, returns, and loops we understand their historical significance and consider them to be necessary links in our chain, inevitable stages of our path, just as capitalism is an inevitable stage on the road toward socialism. We have set store by each step which our science has ever made toward the truth. We do not think that our science started with us. We will not concede to anyone Aristotle’s idea of association, nor the theory about the subjective illusions of sensations by him and the skeptics, nor J. Mill’s idea of causality, nor J. S. Mill’s idea of psychological chemistry, nor the “refined materialism” of Spencer which Dilthey [1924, p. 45] viewed not as a “sure foundation, but a danger.” In a word, we will not concede to anyone this whole line of materialism in psychology which the idealists sweep, aside so carefully. We know that they are right in one thing: “The hidden materialism of [Spencerian] explanatory psychology has played a disintegrating role in the economic and political sciences and in criminal law” (ibid., p. 45).

Herbart’s idea of a dynamic and mathematical psychology, the works of Fechner and Helmholtz, Tame’s idea about the motor nature of the mind as well as Binet’s theory of the mental pose or internal mimics, Ribot’s motor theory, the James—Lange peripheral theory of emotions, even the WUrzburg school’s theory of thinking and of attention as activity—in one word, every step toward truth in our science, belongs to us. After all, we did not choose one of the two roads because we liked it, but because we consider it to be the right one.

Consequently, this road encompasses absolutely everything which was scientific in psychology. The attempt itself to study the mind scientifically, the effort of free thought to master the mind, however it became obscured and paralyzed by mythology, i.e., the very idea of a scientific conception of the soul, contains the whole future path of psychology. For science is the path to truth, even if by way of delusion. But this is precisely the road of our science: we struggle, we overcome errors, via incredible complications, in a superhuman fight with age-old prejudices. We do not want to deny our past. We do not suffer from megalomania by thinking that history begins with us. We do not want a brand-new and trivial name from history. We want a name covered by the dust of the centuries. We regard this as our historical right, as an indication of our historical role, our claim to realize psychology as a science. We must view ourselves in connection with and in relation to the past. Even when denying it we rely upon it.

It might be said that in its literal sense this name is not applicable to our science now, as it changes its meaning in every epoch. But be so kind as to mention a single word that has not changed its meaning. Don’t we make a logical mistake