Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/579

 566 J. WAED : ' psychical ' does not qualify phenomenon simply in this sense. A psychical event is not a mere a as distinct from a chemical event which is a b, or an electrical which is a c ; for b and c become psychical events so soon as we regard them as part of the ex- perience of a particular M or N. This is a point that seems past all disputing, as even Mr. Bradley's own language may serve to show. Pyschology occupies what I have called the individual- istic standpoint, not by way of excluding metaphysics, as Mr. Bradley supposes, nor by choice at all, but of necessity, in order to be psychology. And this necessity asserts itself, I say, in Mr. Bradley's definition of his events as " the facts immediately experienced within a single soul or organism ". " 'Experience,'" he adds, "is not definable: it can only be indicated." Very good ; let it be indicated. To what will Mr. Bradley direct us ? Will he say : ' The sun shines, Honey is sweet : these are facts, are experience ' ? Is it not obvious that he will say : ' You see or feel the sunshine ; That bee tastes the honey-sweet, or the like ' ? In other words, " immediate experience within a single soul or organism " is not a or &, sunlight or honey-sweet simply, but a or b as they are for some sentient, percipient or intelligent sub- ject. I have endeavoured to express this symbolically by saying that the psychical fact is Spa or Spb or generally Spo. The difference in question is recognised in the old scholastic distinction of esse reale and esse intentionale, and more ambiguously in the modern one of subjective and objective. Half the problems of philosophy spring from this difference, and if it could be resolved into a difference of phenomena we should have heard the last of such problems long ago. It may be that the difficulties which have so often driven speculation from idealism to realism, and from realism back to idealism, may never be resolved ; but this is no warrant for trying to suppress a distinction which is, so to speak, in the nature of things. I have never said that psychologists should be idealists as metaphysicians ; but that they do and must occupy an idealist standpoint in scientifically expounding the facts of mind, just as the physicist does and must occupy a realist standpoint in treating scientifically of the facts of matter. It is the endeavour to transcend this dualism, not the frank recognition of it, that is really an intrusion of speculation into science. Within that important department of psychology occupied with the quality, duration and intensity of presentations, or with their interactions " the machinery," as Mr. Bradley calls it it is often convenient to regard a presentation as a, or b, or c. But before we have done with psychical facts, we have to take account of what is meant by "immediate experience". Whether or no they can settle " the amount of continuity and ideal identity required to make a single soul," Mr. Bradley, and psychologists too, have to admit, tacitly at least, that presentation implies con- sciousness, and that consciousness implies a subject and activity.