Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/73

 THE METAPHYSICAL METHOD EN* PHILOSOPHY. 61 one side, and to objects external to the organism, and to the mind localised therein, on the other ; and thus the whole group of states of consciousness, composing the object as known, is analysed ; and its genesis partial!}' explained. But that is not the method of philosophy, which is not permitted to assume powers, either in the mind, or organ- ism, or in external things, producing the states of conscious- ness in combination which is called a tree. Be these agents and agencies real or unreal, knowable or unknowable, it may be psychological, but it is certainly not philosophical to assume them. Xor does philosophy indemnify itself for its abstinence in respect of these assumptions, by indulging in assumptions of another kind, such as a general conscious- ness, or a iioumenal substrate, or a potency of matter, deter- mining that what I call 7 shall what I call see what I call a //, where I call here, when I call nou:. The method of philosophy is simply to turn the tapestry. Instead of taking experience in the form of objects, it takes it in a stream, as it comes, not drafted off, by an art so old and familiar that it has become wholly unnoticed, into several rounded-off objects, a bit to this and a bit to that ; as when, for instance, seeing a brown and green expanse of a certain outline, and with parts of it in a particular kind of motion, I instantaneously connect it with certain re- membered sensations of touch, locomotion, &c., and draft it off into a mental pigeon-hole labelled tree. That is not what philosophy does. Its business is to undo, to invert, that process. It takes the green and brown expanse as it comes, in its proper place in the stream of consciousness, its business being to analyse consciousness, not trees. So tak- ing it, I am aware of the larger visual expanse of which it was a part, and also that while seeing it I heard (suppose) a sound, making part with it of one stream of consciousness. Philosophy does not, by instantaneous association, draft off that sound into another pigeon-hole labelled thunder, but analyses the stream, consisting of tree, thunder, and other varied contents, without stopping to notice that they are called so, and compose a world of external objects. Its business is with the stream, and the features which belong to it as a stream of consciousness. The fact that these objects come to us in a varied stream of consciousness entirely escapes the notice, or at any rate is held irrelevant to the purpose of psychology, a science which studies the relation of an assumed percipient to an assumed external world, and therefore makes its beginning with the tree ready marked off, as an object of the sentient ego. Xow subjective