Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/255

 254 CRITICAL NOTICES : through which the more recondite problems might advantage- ously be approached ? It may even be said psychologists have not been backward in saying it that relatively to mind the learner is placed in an unusually favourable position, for he has his raw materials, so to speak, at command. I would not deny that we are thus able to form the idea of a relatively elementary handling of the problems of psychology ; but it seems to me that there are greater difficulties to be overcome than the argument allows to appear, and that the admission is far from settling the question as to whether psychology in its elementary form is the natural and best introduction to philosophical culture. On the first of these two points a single remark may be permitted. The habitual knowledge of mind with which we start in psycho- logy or in any philosophical discipline seems to me to impose obstacles rather than to afford aid to psychological analysis. Experience, practice and language have brought about a multi- plicity of distinctions familiar enough to us in our direct, non- reflective knowledge of mind. Of the facts so distinguished we become aware not through knowledge of the differing mental processes involved in them, but mainly through differences in the immediately apprehended contents of the various experiences. Recognition of such differences is often called psychological analysis, and a philosophical treatment which involves them is often said to be based on psychology. This is hardly correct ; subjective recognition of a distinction in the content of two ex- periences does not imply either the attitude peculiar to psychology or the ultimate aim characteristic of that science. For example, the distinction in the Kantian philosophy between Intuition and Notion, between Sense and Understanding, is often called psycho- logical, whereas it appears to be based solely on the directly recog- nised differences in apprehended contents, and to be independent "of any special explanation as to the mode in which, in the individual concrete life of mind, the several ultimate factors combine in pro- ducing a definite result. Now all such differences become fixed in language as specific mental processes ; they are the familiar powers or faculties of mind, a term not at all inappropriate when taken within the sphere where the differences manifest them- selves. But as regards psychology proper, they are obstruc- tive abstractions ; and though psychologists have long been in agreement in rejecting the ill-formed theory of faculties, they have not always insisted on the total change of attitude which is involved in passing from these abstractions to the analysis of the real processes making up the mental life. It is possible that a series of analytic studies which should start from the familiar ground of our theoretical or practical experience, and work back- wards to a statement of what is needed for psychological explana- tion, might form an excellent introduction to psychology : it is. certain that any elementary but systematic treatment of mind will find itself in continual danger if the essential distinction be-