Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/215

] is not to be confused with epistemology, it must deal with cognitive states in the way in which it deals with affective or volitional states, i.e., it must content itself with the description and classification of psychical processes as existing. " Ideas . . . as mere fact sequences cease to be considered cognitive at all. We work, as in science, with the category of cause and effect, investigating the causes which have produced these facts, and the further fact-combinations to which they in turn give rise. This is the province of psychology." And it is also necessary to remember that though the psychological processes are continuous, yet they do not constitute a unity for Knowledge. For the latter always demands some universal objective factor, while the concrete processes are only subjective fleeting particulars. They are, just as much as the atomistic impressions and ideas of Hume and the Associationists, as good as nothing for Knowledge.

Notwithstanding Professor James's polemic against the Transcendentalists, then, the problem of knowledge still remains. Psychology indeed exhibits to us the continuity of mental processes, but there is still a gulf fixed between these taken as existing continuously, and the unity of knowledge. No matter what new facts psychology may reveal regarding the nature of the concrete mental processes, we shall fall into error if we forget for a moment that such facts do not form part of a theory of knowledge. We have an example of this in Professor James Seth's article, "The Truth of Empiricism," which appeared in the September number of this. The author in that paper undertakes to show that Kant attempted a wholly gratuitous task—to relate what was already given as related. He rests his contention (1) upon Dr. Stirling's criticism of Kant's doctrine of Causality, and (2) upon the doctrine of the unity of the conscious life, which, he informs us, is fast becoming a commonplace of the new psychology. With the first of these positions I am not here directly concerned. But, in view of the frequent reference to those articles which has lately been made, I should like to remark in passing, that Dr. Stirling's criticism is not wholly free from the con- fusion with which I have been charging certain psychologists; and that it seems to me wholly ineffective, if it is to be taken as anything more than a criticism of Kant's unfortunate method of exposition. But let us look a little more closely at the second argument. Professor Seth writes: "Its representatives [i.e., of the new psychology] are