Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/145

Volume I. Number 2.

IN what is called in the widest sense "philosophical" discussion it is tolerably well known by this time that a fruitful source of confusion and controversy has been the mixing up of psychological with strictly philosophical or metaphysical questions. This is one of the current criticisms upon the English school of thinkers as represented by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and their successors in the present century like the Mills. It is said that when we ask them for a philosophical theory of knowledge and existence, they reply with an account of the growth of consciousness in the individual sentient organism. There is a great measure of truth in this criticism. The fault of these philosophers lies, however, not in their exclusively psychological attitude, — for in that case their theories would stand as psychology, and we should look for our philosophy elsewhere, — but in their unconscious shifting from one point of view to the other. They are far from being pure psychologists; there is a great deal of philosophy or theory of knowledge in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. But they speak sometimes from one point of view, sometimes from the other, without being aware that the two points of view are different. This criticism, however, — though it is specially true of English philosophy, — applies more or less to philosophical writers in general, and hence it is encouraging to note that within quite recent times a sense of the need of greater precision has shown Rh