Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/14

 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 3 to think any more into it, and especially to avoid reading into it any assumption, regarding its ' individual ' and ' introspective ' character. The further development of the standpoint can come only in the course of the article. Now that Locke, having stated his method, immediately deserted it, will, I suppose, be admitted by all. Instead of determining the nature of objects of experience by an account of our knowledge, he proceeded to explain our knowledge by reference to certain unknowable substances, called by the name of matter, making impressions on an unknowable sub- stance, called mind. While, by his method he should explain the nature of ' matter ' and of ' mind ' two " inquiries the mind of man is very apt to run into " from our own under- standings, from ' ideas,' he actually explains the nature of our ideas, of our consciousness, whether sensitive or reflective, from that whose characteristic, whether mind or matter, is to be not ideas nor consciousness nor in any possible re- lation thereto, because utterly unknowable. Berkeley, in effect, though not necessarily, as it seems to me, in inten- tion, deserted the method in his reference of ideas to a purely transcendent spirit. Whether or not he conceived it as purely transcendent, yet at all events, he did not show its necessary immanence in our conscious experience. But Hume ? Hume, it must be confessed, is generally thought to stand on purely psychological ground. This is asserted as his merit by those who regard the theory of the associa- tion of ideas as the basis of all philosophy ; it is asserted as his defect by those who look at his sceptical mocking of knowledge as following necessarily from his method. But according to both, he, at least, was consistently psycho- logical. Now the psychological standpoint is this : nothing shall be admitted into philosophy which does not show itself in experience, and its nature, that is, its place in experience shall be fixed by an account of the process of knowledge by Psychology. Hume reversed this. He started with a theory as to the nature of reality and determined experience from that. The only reals for him were certain irrelated sensations and out of these knowledge arises or becomes. But if knowledge or experience becomes from them, then they are never known and never can be. If experience originates from them, they never were and never can be elements in ex- perience. Sensations as known or experienced are always related, classified sensations. That which is known as existing only in experience, which has its existence only as an element of knowledge, cannot be the same when trans- ported out of knowledge, and made its origin. A known