Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/184

 PSYCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD. 173 its being. It is with this fact, conscious experience in its entirety, that psychology as method begins. It thus brings to clear light of day the presupposition implicit in every philosophy, and thereby affords logic, as well as the philo- sophy of nature, its basis, ideal and surety. If we have determined the nature of reality, by a process whose con- tent equals its form, we can show the meaning, worth and limits of any one moment of this reality. The conclusion of the whole matter is that a " being like man," since self-conscious, is an individualised universe, and hence that his nature is the proper material of philosophy, and in its wholeness the only material. Psychology is the science of this nature, and no dualism in it, or in ways of regarding it, is tenable. Whatever the dualism may be, it is only relative, and one which occurs within, not without, psychological experience. Psychology, as the complete sys- tematic account of man, at the same time shows the value and meaning, and affords the condition, of the special sciences, the philosophy of nature and of logic. Or, in a word, if the reality of spirit be the presupposition, the prius and the goal, the condition and the end of all reality, the science of spirit must occupy a corresponding position with relation to all science. Surely then, as the Editor of this Journal formerly urged, " the method of psychological approach is not philosophically valueless," and we have "ground for the belief that it has only to be more systematically followed out for the attaining of as great results as have been claimed for another way, while in this way the results are more likely to secure general acceptance," l because, we may add, it simply expresses in a scientific way that which lies at the basis of all that has been otherwise secured. 1 " Psychology arid Philosophy," MIND, Vol. viii. 20.