Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/556

 542 CRITICAL NOTICES I absurdities which render his conclusions unacceptable to all parties and from every point of view. If he had attempted less, he would have confined himself to a definite plane of psychology, if he had pushed his philosophical analysis one step further, he would have seen the way out of the difficulty which forces him into a reductio ad absurdum both of psychology and of ' the real life '. The root of all his errors is that he misconceives the nature of a methodological assumption. It is quite true that the point of view of psychology, as of every science, is abstract, and involves a disregard of all such aspects of the reality as are not germane to the purpose of the particular scientific contemplation. But so long as its nature is clearly apprehended, the inadequacy of any such assumption does no harm. And in no case does it justify a schism in the universe of our experience after the manner Prof. Miinsterberg proposes. What he has forgotten, or has never realised, is that the assumptions of the special sciences may and must receive reinterpretation before their results can take their place in the total system of thought whereby we seek to under- stand our experience. And such a final system cannot possibly acquiesce in a separation of reality and existence, worth and science, will and sensation, personality and organism, purposes and causes. Indeed Prof. Miinsterberg all but sees this himself. He is for ever telling us that psychology effects a ' transformation ' of the actual data of mental life for the sake of its own logical purposes (e.g., pp. 19, 22, 23, 29, 43, etc.). It follows that the sciences of causal connexion are ultimately called into existence by teleological demands, and that their separation from the purposes of the ' real life ' cannot be maintained. We are not indeed told what are the logical purposes for the attainment of which the natural sciences have value, but it is not difficult to see that in the last resort the explanation of this point cannot avoid a reference to the practical value of the scientific ' transformation ' of our experience. If so, the divorce between science and reality will disappear, the supremacy of practical life must be acknowledged, and the sciences also will find their pro'per place as means to the realisation of our ends. If for the sake of cultivating friendly relations with the old-established physical sciences, the psy- chologists at present choose to work with assumptions which are analogous to, or even coincident with, those of physics and mechanics, and if on this account they choose to abstract from the purposive character of mental life and decline to recognise the ' will ' in psychology, they are perfectly within their rights, and their action should not give rise to misconstructions still less to philosophic constructions like Prof. Miinsterberg's. But they are equally entitled to vary their working assumptions, if they find that the prevalent methods are not able to do justice to all the facts and do not lead to valuable results. Even within the limits of the natural- science view there is a hardly-concealed antagonism between mechanical and biological methods, and good reasons