Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/22

 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 11 problem not by bringing the elements together, but by holding them apart. It does not seek the higher unity which enables each to be seen as indeed true, but it attempts to divide. It attributes one element of the contradiction to our conscious- ness, and another to a thing-in-itself the unknown reality. But this is only an express statement of the contradiction. If all be relative to consciousness, there is no thing-in-itself, just consciousness itself. If there be a thing-in-itself then all is not relative to consciousness. Let a man hold the latter if he will, but let him expressly recognise that thereby he has put himself on ' ontological ' ground and adopted an ' ontological ' method. Psychology he has for ever aban- doned. The other evasion is much more subtle and 'reasoned'. It is a genuine attempt to untie the Gordian knot, as the other was a slashing attempt to cut it with the sword of a thing-in-itself. It is Subjective Idealism. And I wish now to show that Subjective Idealism is not the meaning of the psychological standpoint applied to the relation of subject and object. It is rather a misinterpretation of it based upon the same refusal to think two undoubted facts in their unity, the same attempt to divide the contradiction instead of solving it, which we have seen in the case of attempts to determine the origin of knowledge, and of Transfigured Realism. The position is this : The necessary relation of the world of existences to consciousness is recognised. " There is no possible knowledge of a world except in refer- ence to our minds knowledge is a state of mind. The notion of material things is a mental fact. We are incapable even of discussing the existence of an independent material world ; the very fact is a contradiction. We can speak only of a world presented to our own minds" (Bain : The Senses and the Intellect, p. 375). But this being stated, conscious- ness is now separated into two parts one of which is the subject, which is identified with mind, Ego, the Internal ; while the other is the object, which is identified with the External, the Non-Ego, Matter. " Mind is definable, in the first instance, by the method of contrast, or as a remainder arising from subtracting the object world from the totality of conscious experience " (Ibid., p. 1). " The totality of our mental life is made up of two kinds of consciousness the object consciousness and the subject consciousness. The first is the external world, or Non-Ego; the second is our Ego, or mind proper" (ibid., p. 370). Consciousness "includes our object states as well as our subject states. The object and subject are both parts of our being, as I conceive, and