Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/20

 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 9 of the psychologist is to give a genetic account of the various elements within this consciousness, and thereby fix their place, determine their validity, and at the same time show definitely what the real and eternal nature of this conscious- ness is. If we actually believe in experience, let us be in earnest with it, and believe also that if we only ask, instead of assuming at the outset, we shall find what the infinite content of experience is. How experience became we shall never find out, for the reason that experience always is. We shall never account for it by referring it to something else, for ' something else ' always is only for and in experience. Why it is, we shall never discover, for it is a whole. But how the elements within the whole become we may find out, and thereby account for them by referring them to each other and to the whole, and thereby also discover why they are. We have now reached positive ground, and, in the re- mainder of the paper, I wish to consider the relations, within this whole, of various specific elements which have always been " inquiries into which the mind of man was very apt to run," viz. : the relations of Subject and Object, and the relations of Universal and Individual, or Absolute and Finite. n. From the psychological standpoint the relation of Subject and Object is one which exists within consciousness. And its nature or meaning must be determined by an examina- tion of consciousness itself. The duty of the psychologist is to show how it arises for consciousness. Put from the positive side, he must point out how consciousness differentiates itself so as to give rise to the existence within, that is for, itself of subject and object. This operation fixes the nature of the two (for they have no nature aside from their relation in consciousness), and at the same time ex- plicates or develops the nature of consciousness itself. In this case, it reveals that consciousness is precisely the unity of subject and object. Now psychology has never been so false to itself as to utterly forget that this is its task. From Locke downwards we find it dealing with the problems of the origin of space, time, the ' ideas ' of the external world, of matter, of body, of the JEyo, &c., &c. But it has interpreted its results so as to deprive them of all their meaning. It has most successfully avoided seeing the necessary implications of its own pro-