Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/166

 PSYCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD. 155 the object of a special science, psychology, which, like every other special science, deals with its material as pure object, abstracting from that creative synthesis of subject and object, self-consciousness, through which all things are and are known. It is therefore, like all the special sciences, partial and utterly inadequate to determining the nature and mean- ing of that whole with which philosophy has to deal. Nay more, it is itself ultimately dependent upon philosophy for the determination of the meaning, validity and limits of the principles, categories and method which it unconsciously assumes. To regard psychology therefore as philosophic method is to be guilty of the same error as it would be to regard the highest generalisations of, say, physics, as ade- quate to determining the problems of philosophy. It is an attempt to determine the unconditioned whole, self-con- sciousness, by that which has no existence except as a conditioned part of this very whole. "Metaphysics (says Prof. Caird) lias to deal with conditions of the knowable, and hence with self-consciousness or that unity which is im- plied in all that is and is known. Psychology has to inquire how this self-consciousness is realised or developed in man, in whom the conscious- ness of self grows with the consciousness of a world in time and space, of which he individually is only a part, and to parts of which only he stands in immediate relation. In considering the former question we are con- sidering the sphere within which all knowledge and all objects of know- ledge are contained. In considering the latter, we are selecting one particular object or class of objects within this sphere. ... It is possible to have a purely objective anthropology or psychology which abstracts from the relation of man to the mind that knows him just as it is possible to have a purely objective science of nature." 1 The other aspect of man is that in which he, as self-con- scious, has manifested in him the unity of all being and knowing, and is not finite, i.e., an object or event, but is, in virtue of his self-conscious nature, infinite, the bond, the living union of all objects and events. With this infinite, universal self-consciousness, philosophy deals ; with man as the object of experience, psychology deals. In stating the position of the post- Kantian movement, I used the word seemed, and used it advisedly, as I do not conceive that at bottom there is any difference of opinion. But it seems to me that there are invariably involved in the reasonings of this school certain presuppositions regarding the real science of psychology which, probably for the reason that the writers have seen such misuse made of a false 1 Art. " Metaphysic," Ency. Sritt.. xvi., 89. Cp. Prof. Adamson, Philo- sophy of Kant, pp. 22 ff., Fichtf, pp. 109 ff. ; Essays in Philosophical Criticism, pp. 44 ff.; Prof. A. Seth, Ency. Britt, art. " Philosophy".