Page:Mind and the Brain (1907).djvu/150

 always spoken of the internal life of the mind as contrasted with the external life, of subjective reality as contrasted with objective reality; and in the same way we oppose the external senses to the inner sense (the internal perception), which it has at times been proposed to erect into a sixth sense. Though no longer quite the Cartesian dualism, this is still a dualism.

It has also been said that psychology is the science of introspection, and, in addition, that scientific psychology is a controlled introspection. This science of the “internal facts of man” would thus be distinguished from the other natural sciences which are formed by the use of our outer senses, by external observation—that is to say, to use a neologism, by externospection. This verbal symmetry may satisfy for a moment minds given to words, but on reflection it is perceived that the distinction between introspection and externospection does not correspond to a fundamental and constant difference in the nature of things or in the processes of cognition. I acknowledge it with some regret, and thus place myself in contradiction with myself; for I for a long time believed, and have even said in print, that psychology is the science of introspection. My error arose from my having made too many analyses of detail, and not having mounted to a sufficiently wide-reaching conception.