49° POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



on certain scientific developments became warped. He perceived that 

 Schelling's " Naturphilosophie " exercised profound influence upon 

 much of biological science as it then stood. Physiology looked like 

 an ally of idealism, therefore he would exclude it rigidly from psy- 

 chology, as a sure source of trans-experiential contamination. On this 

 he spoke with no uncertain sound — physiology, as he saw it, was no 

 fit friend for a mathematico-empirical psychology. " Physiology, as an 

 empirical doctrine, has attained a height which nobody can despise. 

 Moreover it proceeds in the light of modern physics. Nevertheless, 

 it has eagerly sucked up, as the sponge sucks up water, that philosophy 

 of nature which knows nothing, because it began by construing the 

 universe a priori. Towards this error no science has proved so weak, 

 so little capable of resistance, as physiology." 155 The very end for which 

 Herbart toiled so strenuously is obscured from him by his suspicion of 

 physiological tendencies. Truly the time-spirit plays us humans queer 

 tricks ! 



Free from these negative considerations, Beneke brought psychology 

 another stage nearer science. He excluded Herbart's metaphysic, 

 demanded concrete treatment of consciousness as the one road to real 

 knowledge, and placed all the other philosophical disciplines in a posi- 

 tion of dependence upon psychology. His pivotal doctrine exhibits 

 clearly the possibility of scientific procedure in psychology. It may be 

 put as follows. Experience presents two sides — an " outer " and an 

 " inner." The former consists of sensational phenomena, or, as Hume 

 would have said, " sensations, passions and emotions as they make their 

 first appearance in the soul." The latter includes everything that 

 relates to memory, imagination, thought and ratiocination. Thus sci- 

 ence, which deals with the " outer," reaches indirect knowledge of 

 being, while psychology, thanks to its immediate contact with its object 

 ("inner"), arrives at knowledge of true reality. Consequently, by 

 analogy from our own selfhood, we can acquire relatively sufficient 

 knowledge of other men, this sufficiency dwindling, so to speak, as we 

 descend in the scale of existence. Accordingly, positive science is con- 

 fined to observation, but psychology considers knowledge — an inference 

 from this same observation. Therefore the methods of science apply 

 as much in the one sphere as in the other. In short, consciousness 

 originates the dualism between soul and body, mind and objects. Cor- 

 poreal processes become conscious in us, and thus fall under direct 

 perception : 



There is no kind of corporeal process which can not under certain circum- 

 stances become conscious, and as a conscious tiling be perceived by us directly. 

 . . . Such a revolutionary change of a thing usually not a psychical apprehen- 

 sion to a psychical apprehension, would be unthinkable were it the case that 

 their being was in fundamental opposition: we are thus led all the more to the 

 conclusion that both kinds of powers in their innermost nature stand very close 



18 " Werke," VI.. p. G5. 



