Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/167

 156 J. DEWEY : psychology, are not distinctly stated, and which, accordingly, not only lessen the convincing force with which their reason- ings are received by those unacquainted with the necessity and rationality of these presuppositions, but which also, as not distinctly thought out, tend at times to involve these reasonings in unnecessary obscurity and even contradictions. It is these presuppositions regarding the nature of a real psychology, lying at the basis of all the work of the post- Kantian school, conditioning it and giving it its worth, which it is the object of this paper to examine. The start is made accordingly from the supposed distinc- tion of aspects in man's nature, according to one of which he is an object of experience and the subject of psychology, and according to the other of which, he, as self-conscious- ness, is the universal condition and unity of all experience, and hence not an object of experience. As I have already referred to Prof. Adamson's treatment of this distinction, let me refer to a later writing of his which seems to retract all that gave validity to this distinction. In a recent number of MIND (ix. 434), after pointing out that the subject-matter of psychology cannot be pure objects but must always be the reference of an individual subject to a content which is universal, he goes on with the following most admirable statement : " It is iu and through the conscious life of the individual that all the thinking and acting which form the material fur other treat- ment is realised. When we isolate the content and treat it as having a (//"^/-existence per se, we are in the attitude of objective <>r natural sci When we endeavour to interpret the significance of the whole, to deter- mine the meaning of the connective links that bind it together, we are in the attitude of philosophy. But when we regard the modes through which knowledge and acting are realised in the life of an individual ject, ve are in the position of the psychological inquirer." Now, when psychology is defined as the science of the realisa- tion of the universe in and through the individual, all pretence of regarding psychology as merely one of the special sciences, whose subject-matter by necessity is simply sonic one department of the universe, considered out of relation to the individual, is, of course, abandoned. With this falls, as a matter of course, the supposed two-fold character of i nan's nature. If the essence of his nature is to be the realisation of the universe, there is no aspect in which, "* man, it ap- pears as a mere object or event in the universe. The dis- tinction is now transferred to the two ways of looking at the same material, and no longer concerns two distinct materials. Is this distinction, however, any more valid ? Is there