Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/33

 ON SOME OMISSIONS OF INTROSPECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 21 I may mention immediately that the doctrine of the post- Kaiitians, that all knowledge is also self-knowledge, seems to flow from this confusion. Empirically, of course, an awareness of self accompanies most of our thinking. But that it should be needed to make that thinking " objective " is quite another matter. " Green-after-red-and-other-than-it " is an absolutely complete object of thought, ideally con- sidered, and needs no added element. The fallacy seenls to arise from some such reflection as this, that since the feeling is what it feels itself to be, so it must feel itself to be what it is, namely, related to each of its objects. That the last is covers much more ground than the first, the philosopher here does not notice. The first is signifies only the feeling's inward quality ; the last is covers all possible facts about the feeling, relational facts, which can only be known from out- side points of view like that of the philosopher himself. 1 But the great Tummelplatz of the confusion of the stand- points is the question of perception, and the whole problem of the manner in which the object is present to the mind in cognition. Distinguishing the standpoints explicitly leads us here to a very simple solution ; and at the same time it clears up the subjective constitution of great tracts of our thinking, on which introspection hitherto has thrown but the most insufficient of lights. The psychologist, studying this question, stands, as afore- said, outside of the cognitive state-of-consciousness he is analysing, and compares it with its supposed object, which he thinks he really knows. Let us call the object as known to him " the reality ". Then the question is : Is the reality directly present to the feeling under observation, or is it represented by a mental substitute ? And, if the latter : Is the representative like the reality, a copy of it, or is it not ? A word about the back-bone of the human mind, the psy- chological principle of identity, will help us here. Logic and ontology both have their principles of identity, but the psychological principle is different from either, being a highly synthetic proposition, which affirms that different mental acts can contemplate, mean to contemplate, and know that they mean to contemplate, the same objective matter, quality, thing or truth. The notion of sameness-wdth-somethiug-else is in fact one of the " fringes " in which a substantive men- " tal kernel-of-conteut can appear enveloped. The same reality, 1 The criticisms of the late Professor T. H. Green on empiricist writers seem to me to be so saturated with this confusion of the two standpoints, that their in many respects excellent teaching sadly loses its effectiveness.