Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/69

 THE METAPHYSICAL METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY. 57 noinena under examination, we should seek to formulate and distinguish the part which we contribute to the pursuit, from that which is due to the phenomena themselves. We then know where we stand, and what we are doing. This is a thought closely similar to that conception of the pro- vince of Critic analogous to that of Logic, which was Kant's guiding thought in instituting the Critical Philosophy, to test the powers of the mind, and see what part the mind contributed to experience. Only, as I have shown, Kant mixed the assumption of agency with his conception of the mind and its contribution ; whereby not only his philosophy became a positive and transcendental (as well as a critical) philosophy, but also this further result came out, that the mind's action was in some cases constitutive of truth, in others regulative only. Whereas, the fact is, that the mind's action is regulative from the first, and regulative exclu- sively ; and to distinguish and formulate that regulative action is to distinguish and formulate the Method of Philo- sophy. n. Having thus attempted to show the necessity of a method in philosophy, distinct from the phenomena to be examined and from the results to be reached, and having sketched in outline the requirements which a method must fulfil, and the services which it may be expected to render, it follows that I should attempt to show you its practicability, or how it will present itself when we propose actually to apply it. in the first or analytical branch of philosophy. I will accordingly exhibit it under two heads, first, its main charac- teristic of being subjective analysis of experience, directed to separate the involuntary admixtures of thought from the content of thought as a whole, and prevent them from being adopted as assumptions of independent truths ; secondly, its guiding principle in this process, which is nothing more than the effectuation of the subjective analysis, and consists in the analytical distinction between the question, what things arc known as, which I call their nature, and the question, how things come to be what they are known as, which I call their genesis or history. This distinction is due to Aristotle ; it is his rt ecrriv and TTW? Traparyiverai, We shall see the import of each of these characteristics as we proceed. But first and foremost there are two distinctions to be mentioned, subsidiary to this process, and of a logical