Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/237

217 THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 217 miglit learn the complexion of its thoughts ; but, as we should have no realities outside of it to compare them with, — for if we had, the Mind would not be Absolute, — we could not criticise them, and find them either right or wrong ; and we should have to call them simply the thoughts, and not the knowledge, of the Absolute Mind. Finite minds, how- ever, can be judged in a different way, because the psychol- ogist himself can go bail for the independent reality of the objects of which they think. He knows these to exist out- side as well as inside the minds in question ; he thus knows whether the minds think and knoiv, or only think ; and though his knowledge is of course that of a fallible mortal, there is nothing in the conditions that should make it more likely to wrong in this case than in any other. Now by what tests does the psychologist decide whether the state of mind he is studying is a bit of knowledge, or only a subjective fact not referring to anything outside itself? He uses the tests we all practically use. If the state of mind resembles his own idea of a certain reality ; or if without resembling his idea of it, it seems to imply that reality and refer to it by operating upon it through the bodily organs ; or even if it resembles and 023erates on some other reality that implies, and leads up to, and terminates in, the first one, — in either or all of these cases the psychologist admits that the state of mind takes cognizance, directly or remotely, distinctly or vaguely, truly or falsely, of the reality's nature and position in the world. If, on the other hand, the mental state under examination neither resembles nor oper- ates on any of the realities known to the psychologist, he calls it a subjective state pure and simple, possessed of no cog- nitive worth. If, again, it resemble a reality or a set of realities as he knows them, but altogether fail to operate on them or modify their course by producing bodily motions which the psychologist sees, then the psychologist, like all of us, may be in doubt. Let the mental state, for example, occur during the sleep of its subject. Let the latter dream of the death of a certain man, and let the man simulta- neously die. Is the dream a mere coincidence, or a veri- table cognition of the death? Such puzzling cases are