The metaphysical assumption of the soul’s simplicity immediately puts Herbart at odds with the traditional “psychology of faculties”, according to which mental phenomena and conscious processes are derived from “special[ized] powers of the psyche” (Weiss 1928: 69; cf. esp. PsW: 11, ff.; Beiser 2014: 136, ff.).[4] He attacks this view, held prominently by Kant, with a battery of arguments. First, he claims that these so-called faculties are really nothing more than class concepts (PsW: 16). While we may tend to ascribe individual instances of recall to a faculty called “memory”, this term is just a catchall for the instances. Rather than a “power”, it is an abstraction, and hence no explanation of the phenomena from which it has been abstracted (PsW: 25, ff.; cf. LPs [1850]: 8–9). Second, the theory fails to account for the 