Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/444

428 of the book deal respectively with the standpoint of Psychology, the nature of the Mind (its reality, identity, permanence, etc.), and the relations of Mind and Body. It will, perhaps, be advantageous to state at once the position which Professor Ladd is concerned to maintain in this work. It is that of common-sense Dualism. "Body is in reality different from the mind, and these two are constantly influencing and causing changes of states in each other" (p. 235). And against the advocates of psychology without a soul he strenuously insists "that the phenomenon to be explained [in perceptive activity] is not that 'sensations are,' or even that 'perception is'; but that I perceive, by sight or otherwise, this or that thing, etc." (p. 75).

In dealing with the standpoint of Psychology in the first two chapters, the author has no difficulty in showing the questionable metaphysical assumptions involved in the procedure of the very writers who most loudly profess to abjure metaphysics altogether. The inconsistencies of M. Flournay and Professor Höffding are used by Professor Ladd to point his moral with great effect. There are two methods justifiable in dealing with mental phenomena. One may "take for granted, at least to begin with, the existence both of things and of minds, the reality of causal relations between the two, and the possibility of knowing both what they and their relations really are.… But again, it is equally legitimate that the writer on scientific psychology … should adopt some definite metaphysical point of view, … and that he should then make such use of it as can be shown to be helpful or necessary in the explanation of mental phenomena" (pp. 41, 42). The author's quarrel with Professor James, who seems to adopt the former of these alternatives, is based upon the charge that, while the latter refuses to avail himself of a soul in his psychology, and professes to hold fast to the "blank unmediated processes," he is really guilty of ascribing "all sorts of most highly conjectural performances" to the brain in the supposed interests of scientific explanation (p. 27). Whether or not use is to be made inside psychology of the concept of the Ego as an active agent, is a question which must be decided, it seems to me, purely on methodological grounds. If such a conception affords the most complete explanation of all the mental processes, it requires no further vindication. Even if it were metaphysically absurd—like 'atoms,' 'stored energy,' etc.—the psychologist would have no cause to trouble himself so long as it proved fruitful. Considerations of expediency, however, seem to make against