Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/207

187 THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 187 tive of their kind, are meant, this will do no harm, and may even do some good.* The inaccuracy of introspective observation has been made a subject of debate. It is important to gain some fixed ideas on this point before we proceed. The commonest spiritualistic opinion is that the Soul or Subject of the mental life is a metaphysical entity, inac- cessible to direct knowledge, and that the various mental states and operations of which we reflectively become aware are objects of an inner sense which does not lay hold of the real agent in itself, any more than sight or hear- ing gives us direct knowledge of matter in itself. From this point of view introspection is, of course, incompetent to lay hold of anything more than the Soul's phenomena. But even then the question remains. How well can it know the phenomena themselves ? Some authors take high ground here and claim for it a sort of infallibility. Thus Ueberweg : " When a mental image, as such, is the object of my apprehension, there is no meaning in seeking to distinguish its existence in my con- sciousness (in me) from its existence out of my consciousness (in itself) ; for the object apprehended is, in this case, one which does not even exist, as the objects of external perception do, in itself outside of my consciousness. It exists only within me." t And Brentano : " The phenomena inwardly apprehended are true in themselves. As they appear— of this the evidence with which they are apprehended is a warrant — so they are in reality. Who, then, can deny that in this a great superiority of Psychology over the physical sciences comes to light ?" And again : " No one can doubt whether the psychic condition he apprehends in himself be, and be so, as he apprehends it. Whoever should doubt this would have reached that finished doubt which destroys itself in de- stroying every fixed point from which to make an attack upon knowl- edge, "i: Others have gone to the opposite extreme, and main- tained that we can have no introspective cognition of our f Logic, § 40. I Psychologic, bk. ii. chap. iii. §§ 1, 2.
 * Compare some remarks in Mill's Logic, bk. i. chap. in. §§ 2, 3.