Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/761

745 create a mind, instead of analyzing one. All psychology, then, is an attempt to realize the mind, which thus becomes the final cause of psychology. The mind is only an ideal, and with each thinker a preconceived ideal. But there is also an immanent ideal of what the soul ought to be, considered as object, not as subject. The conditions of realization of this immanent ideal are these: Psychology seeks stable results, results, that is, which can be remembered. These are to be reached by strict observance of logical principle and respect for fact. Not fact-worship, though; that is a survival of realism. Thought is not representative, but of independent value. Fact is worth nothing; its interpretation everything. The times are tending to the true conception of psychology, psychology as an art. The attempt now making is to 'reproduce' a mental state as 'nature' made it. But we are nature; let us create freely, at first hand. 'Reproduction' of events existing only in time is pure illusion. The criterion of truth and falsehood cannot here be applied, for the standard is something to be realized. The criterion in psychology is a moral one, what the mind ought to be. Do not mistake; it is not meant that psychology should submit to the direction of ethics. It has its 'ought,' that is all, like painting or any other art, and the realization of this 'ought' is purely a matter of art.

Pessimism is an example of one-sided development. In the eighteenth century Eudaemonism was another example of false emphasis. Widely different theories emphasize merely aspects of the truth, and when brought together furnish a more complete view. Pessimism as a final theory of life is one-sided and false, but as a description of a particular phase of life, it shows the one-sidedness of extreme hedonism and individualism, and must be taken account of in any optimistic theory that aims at rationality and completeness. Schopenhauer in his The World as Will and Idea finds two ways to prove that life contains more pain than pleasure. First, empirically, by making an actual comparison of the pleasures and pains of life. Secondly, by a priori speculation. He constructs a theory of the