Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/329

 316 NOTES AND COKBESPONDENCE. together, the hypothesis of some real agency in the Subject, the ultimate nature of which is sometimes considered as still open to investigation. It is clear that some such hypothesis is necessary for it as a science, just as physical science requires the hypothesis of the reality and real agency of Matter. The English school of philosophy, on the other hand, has ever since the time of Bacon laid claim to be founded on experience alone. If this be so, then it is a serious misconception to represent English philosophy on psychological method as standing simply and solely on conscious ex- perience. English philosophy does so, but English psychological philosophy does not. The second misconception consists in making the very same supposition with regard to German Transcendentalism, or Transcendentalism simply, if that sounds better, seeing that all Transcendentalism is in point of fact derived from Germany ; I mean the supposition that it also is based directly and solely on conscious experience, without aid from assumption or hypothesis. Down to the time of Berkeley philosophers and psychologists alike had, with few exceptions, accepted the existence of an immaterial soul or mind in some form or other, as matter of philosophical, concurrently with theological, tradition. The soul or mind was in those days conceived as a real empirical agent, only that it was not perceptible by the senses. Kant took the step of substituting for it a more shadowy, but still empirical agent, namely, a noumenal and transcendent one, which by hypothesis could not per se be even thought as an object of experience at all. This is the origin of what is called Transcendentalism, which is nothing but a doubly refined form of empiricism. I mean that both the soul or mind and its transcendent substitute are objects conceived on the same type as ordinary objects of pre-philosophic common sense ; objects not analysed as realities into their constituent elements, but reduced un- analysed to shadows ; the latter of which was at the same time placed (so it was hoped) beyond the reach ot criticism, by the avowal that its nature was to be non-phenomenal itself, but to have phenomenal manifestations. Singularly enough, it was declared to be unthinkable and yet actually thought of as a real agent by one and the same theory. The Soul had been the animating reality of Man, and the Transcendent Subject was the animating reality of Man and Nature. Transcendentalism is thus founded on an a priori assumption. I do not of course say that this original form of it has been retained to the present day. What I do say is, that the various forms of it at the present day have this as their common origin, and in virtue of it are founded upon an a priori assumption, and not upon experience simply. Transcen- dentalists are not conscious of it as an assumption, and that is the worst of the mischief. For in consequence they think that the form or forms of it which they themselves adopt furnish an explanation of the universe. They take their assumption as a vision into the heart of things. Prof. Dewey shows in his Reply that he is very hazy on the nature of assumptions. He says " to make assumptions is simply to see how facts look when some integral factor is omitted " (p. 88). If that is assumption, then what is abstraction 1 He mistakes abstraction for assumption. It follows from the above, that neither of Prof. Dewey's two exhortees, psychological philosophy and transcendentalism, is based upon that principle of appealing to experience alone, which Prof. Dewey attributes to them in common. If they are to forgather, it must be on the basis, not of their common experientialism, but of their common empiricism. Not that such an alliance need be deprecated, provided its true principle be acknowledged, and its true nature understood. If Prof. Dewey had said that English Psychological Philosophy and German Transcendentalism were alike in