Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/493

 492 S. H. HODGSON : It cannot be denied that there is such a branch of in- tellectual work as I have sketched, distinguished sharply from all other branches (1) by its being analytic of ex- perience, as such, and without any presuppositions or assumptions, (2) by its giving an account of the pre- suppositions of all the other branches, and of their points of departure from its own universal content. Its existence is a logical necessity. But how soon it will be recognised, how soon it will begin to be generally cultivated, or cultivated under its proper and specific name Metaphysic, is another thing. In this country the name metaphysic is usually reserved for speculations like those of Mr. Dewey. We are slow to recognise in the analysis of experience without assumptions Aristotle's science of Being qua Being. Never- theless that is the plain truth. If we want to know what Being is, we must ask what it is known as. The words are almost a tautology. It follows that, if you can discover anything which belongs universally to the whole of conscious- ness as a generalised content, you have found something which is a predicate of the whole of Being as a generalised content ; for Being is the object known in consciousness. And this is a very different thing from any mere Theory of Cognition, as the Germans call it, which, from ignoring the distinction of experience between the content of conscious- ness and the agent, or agency, supporting consciousness, leaves consciousness and Being standing severally and apart, over against each other, cogitatio cogitantis on one side, and res existentes on the other, which like two clocks require, in theory, some third thing to harmonise them, so giving rise to absolutist and transcendental hypotheses, which never can be verified in experience. The content of consciousness simply as content is the object-matter of metaphysic. Each individual examines the content of his own consciousness, but simply as content, that is, abstracting from the question of its genesis and history in himself, which he leaves to psychology. The content taken in this abstraction is not many but OIK; ; the individuals in whom each content originates, its tc/'tiiuti so to speak, are many ; but the content is one, common to all the individuals, that is, it is the Universe as known or knowable. Psychology is not the science of the universe, but of the soul, that is, of the individuals in relation to consciousness. Metaphysic is the science of the universe, the common content of all individual consciousnesses. In metaphysic we have to harmonise what we know ourselves with what we know that others know. In psychology we search for the conditions which govern the nature and order of our own