Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/82

 70 SHADWORTH H. HODGSON. are its conditions cognoscendi, and (2) some action or actions of real existents which are its conditions existendi, I mean processes either in the sentient being, or in the external world in action and re-action with it. States of conscious- ness have thus a double aspect, (1) qua content of conscious- ness, (2) qua states of consciousness of a sentient being ; and each aspect has its own set of conditions. They have thus a double dependence. As contents of consciousness, related to other contents, they depend on conditions cognoscendi, and as belonging to sentient beings they depend on real existents as their conditions existendi. When once the distinction creating psychology has been drawn, states of consciousness have to be treated under both heads of conditions, because they are placed, by that distinction, under two categories. But then the two kinds of conditions are distinguished for the express purpose of corresponding to these two categories, and properly treating the things which belong to them severally. Kesting on these two correspondent distinctions, and to meet the demands of this double work, we have the division of labour between psychology and philosophy. Psychology has nothing to do with consciousness qud content, or with the relations of its parts as content, in which aspect it is the mirror or subjective side of the universe of things. That is the domain of philosophy. The business of psychology is with sentient beings, with the classification and examination of their faculties, the genesis of the various modes of their sentience and intelligence, and generally the real actions and re-actions between them and their environment. Dreams, for instance, are as much the object of psychology as truths, and in the same sense, namely, in their genesis and depend- ence on their real conditions, whether they be truth or dream ; but dreams are not the object of philosophy in the same sense as truths are. The province of psychology is marked out for it by the distinction between nature and genesis, which is the main distinction of philosophical method, and is a distinction drawn by philosophy. Without this distinction and method, the spheres of psychology and philosophy would be inextri- cably confused ; which indeed is universally the case at pre- sent, the confusion often being carried so far as to assign to psychology the assumption of a conscious Subject and the analysis of its states of consciousness as such, while leaving for philosophy to investigate the nature, and prove, if it can^ the real existence of this hypothetical Subject. In reality, psychology stands, with respect to distinction of province, in precisely the same relation to philosophy as the other posi- tive sciences stand. The business of science is with real