Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/12

 No. 41.] [JANUARY, 1886.

MIND A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY. — I.—THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. By JOHN DEWEY. I. IT is a good omen for the future of philosophy that there is now a disposition to avoid discussion of particular cases in dispute, and to examine instead the fundamental presuppositions and method. This is the sole condition of discussion which shall be fruitful, and not word-bandying. It is the sole way of discovering whatever of fundamental agreement there is between different tendencies of thought, as well as of showing on what grounds the radical differences are based. It is therefore a most auspicious sign that, instead of eagerly clamouring forth our views on various subjects, we are now trying to show why we hold them and why we reject others. It is hardly too much to say that it is only within the past ten years that what is vaguely called Transcendentalism has shown to the English reading world just why it holds what it does, and just what are its objections to the method most characteristically associated with English thinking. Assertion of its results, accompanied with attacks upon the results of Empiricism, and vice versa, we had before ; but it is only recently that the grounds, the reasons, the method have been stated. And no one can deny that the work has been done