Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/50

Rh 38 PSYCHOLOGY Mental ind material Stand- ?oint of ogy- time, presentation (or non-presentation) to a given subject, and so forth, we still find psychologists more or less consciously con- fused between "internal," meaning " presented" in the psychological sense, and "external," meaning not "not-presented" but corporeal or oftener extra - corporeal. But (2), when used to distinguish between presentations (some of which, or some relations of which with respect to others, are called "internal," and others or other relations, " extemal "), these terms are at all events accurate ; only then they cease to mark off the psychological from the extra- psychological, inasmuch as psychology has to analyse this distinc- tion and to exhibit the steps by which it has come about. But we have still to examine whether the distinction of phenomena of Matter and phenomena of Mind furnishes a better dividing line than the distinction of internal and external. A phenomenon, as commonly understood, is what is manifest, sensible, evident, the implication being that there are eyes to see, ears to hear, and so forth, in other words, that there is presenta- tion to a subject ; and wherever there is presentation to a subject it will be allowed that we are in the domain of psychology. But in talking of physical phenomena we, in a way, abstract from this fact of presentation. Though consciousness should cease, the physicist would consider the sum total of objects to remain the same : the orange would still be round, yellow, and fragrant as before. For the physicist whether aware of it or not has taken up a position which for the present may be described by saying that phenomenon with him means appearance or manifestation, or as we had better say object, not for a concrete individual, but rather for what Kant called Beicusstsein ilberhaupt, or, as some render it, the objective consciousness, i.e., for an imaginary subject freed from all the limitations of actual subjects save that of depending on "sensi- bility " for the material of experience. However, this is not all, for, as we shall see presently, the psychologist also occupies this posi- tion ; at least if he does not, his is not a true science. But further, the physicist leaves out of sight altogether the facts of attention, feeling, and so forth, all which actual presentation entails. From the psychological point of view, on the other hand, the removal of the subject removes not only all such facts as attention and feeling, but all presentation or possibility of presentation whatever. Surely, then, to call a certain object, when we abstract from its presentation, a material phenomenon, and to call the actual presentation of this object a mental phenomenon,, is a clumsy and confusing way of representing the difference between the two points of view. For the terms "material" and "mental" seem to imply that the two so-called phenomena have nothing in common, whereas the same object is involved in both, while the term " phenomenon " implies that the point of view is in each case the same, when in truth what is emphasized by the one the other ignores. Paradoxical though it may be, we must then conclude that psychology cannot be defined by reference to a special subject-matter as such concrete sciences, for example, as mineralogy and botany can ; and, since it deals in some sort with the whole of experience, it is obviously not an abstract science, in any ordinary sense of that term. To be characterized at all, therefore, apart from metaphysical assumptions, it must be characterized by the standpoint from which this experience is viewed. It is by way of expressing this that widely different schools of psychology define it as subjective, all other positive sciences being distinguished as objective. But this seems scarcely more than a first approximation to the truth, and, as we have seen incidentally, is apt to be misleading. The distinction rather is that the standpoint of psychology is what is some- times termed " individualistic," that of the so-called object- sciences being " universalistic," both alike being objective in the sense of being true for all, consisting of what Kant would call judgments of experience. For psychology is not a biography in any sense, still less a biography deal- ing with idiosyncrasies, and in an idiom having an interest and a meaning for one subject only, and incommunicable to any other. Locke, Berkeley, and Hume have been of late severely handled because they regarded the critical investigation of knowledge as a psychological problem, and set to work to study the individual mind simply for the sake of this problem. But none the less their stand- point was the proper one for the science of psychology itself; and, however surely their philosophy was fore- doomed to a collapse, there is no denying a steady psycho- logical advance as we pass from Locke to Hume and his modern representatives. By "idea" Locke tells us he means "whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks " (i.e., is conscious), and having, as it were, shut himself within such a circle of ideas he finds himself powerless to explain his knowledge of a world that is independent of it ; but he is able to give a very good account of some of these ideas themselves. He cannot justify his belief in the world of things whence certain of his simple ideas "were conveyed" anymore than Robinson Crusoe could have explored the continents whose products were drifted to his desert island, though he might perhaps survey the island itself well enough. Berkeley accord- ingly, as Professor Fraser happily puts it, abolished Locke's hypothetical outer circle. Thereby he made the psycho- logical standpoint clearer than ever hence the truth of Hume's remark, that Berkeley's arguments " admit of n<? answer " ; at the same time the epistemological problem was as hopeless as before hence again the truth of Hume's remark that those arguments "produced no conviction." Of all the facts with which he deals, the psychologist may truly say that their esse is percipi, inasmuch as all his facts are facts of presentation, are ideas in Locke's sense, or objects which imply a subject. Before we became con- scious there was no world for us ; should our consciousness cease, the world for us ceases too ; had we been born blind, the world would for us have had no colour ; if deaf, it would have had no sounds ; if idiotic, it would have had no meaning. Psychology, then, never transcends the limits of the individual ; even the knowledge that there is a real world, as common-sense assumes, is, when psycho- logically regarded, an individual's knowledge, which had a beginning and a growth, and can have an end. In fact, for the psychologist it is not essentially knowledge, but presentations, partly possible, partly actual, in the mind of A, B, or C ; just as this page is for the printer essentially " copy," and only for the reader essentially "discourse." But what the psychologist has to say about knowledge is, of course, itself knowledge, i.e., assuming it to be correct ; the knowledge about which he knows is, however, for him not primarily knowledge, but " states of consciousness." But now, though this Berkeleyan standpoint is the standpoint of psychology as we find it occupied, say, by J. S. Mill and Dr Bain psychology is not pledged to the method employed by Berkeley and by Locke. Psycho- logy may be individualistic without being confined ex- clusively to the introspective method. There is nothing to hinder the psychologist from employing materials fur- nished by his observations of other men, of infants, of the lower animals, or of the insane; nothing to hinder him taking counsel with the philologist or even the physiologist, provided always he can show the psychological bearings of those facts which are not directly psychological. Nor, again, are we bound, because we take the individualistic stand- point as psychologists, to accept the philosophical conclu- sions that have been reached from it, unless, indeed, we hold that it is the right point of view for philosophical speculation. A psychologist may be an idealist in Berkeley's sense or in Fichte's, but he need not ; he is just as free, if he see reason, to call himself, after Hamilton, a natural real- ist; only psychology will afford him no safe warrant for the realism part of it. The standpoint of psychology, then, is individualistic; by whatever methods, from whatever sources its facts are ascertained, they must to have a psychological import be regarded as having place in, or as being part of, some one's consciousness. In this sense, i.e., as presented to an individual, " the whole choir of heaven and furniture of earth " may belong to psychology, but otherwise they are psychological nonentities. The problem of psychology, in dealing with this complex sub- ject-matter, is in general first, to ascertain its constituent