PROBLEMS OF GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 639 



we call the duality of subjective and objective factors is the result. 

 The Herbartian psychology, if we leave its metaphysical assump- 

 tions aside, as we well may, is still the classic example of this 

 type. This is the psychology which most easily falls into line with 

 physiology, and is apt in consequence to have a materialistic bias. 

 Another school, which we may call "subjectivist," or perhaps "ideal- 

 ist," recognizes indeed the necessity of a subject from the outset 

 whenever we talk of experience, but recognizes it, not because the 

 actual existence of this subject is part of the facts, but because 

 psychical phenomena, it is said, are unthinkable without a sub- 

 stratum to sustain their unity. This is the psychology that still - 

 notwithstanding the brave words of Lange cannot get on without 

 a soul. I call it " idealist," because it tends to treat all the facts of 

 immediate experience as subjective modifications, after the fashion 

 of Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley. The hopeless impasse, into 

 which the problem of external perception leads from this stand- 

 point, is a sufficient condemnation of subjective idealism. Further, 

 and this I take to be the main lesson of Kant's "Refutation of 

 Idealism," such bare unity of the subject will not suffice to ex- 

 plain the unity of experience. In a chaos of presentations, with- 

 out orderly sequence or constancy, we might assume a substantial 

 unity of subject; but it would be of little avail, as the facts of 

 mental pathology amply show. Returning now to the presentationist 

 standpoint, the one obvious objection to that is its incomplete- 

 ness. As I have elsewhere said/ it may be adequate to nine tenths 

 of the facts, or better perhaps to nine tenths of each fact, but 

 it cannot either effectively clear itself of, or satisfactorily explain, 

 the remaining tenth. No one has yet succeeded in bringing all the 

 facts of consciousness, as Professor James thinks we may, under 

 the simple rubric: "Thought goes on." Impersonal, unowned 

 experience, a mere Cogitatur, is even more of a contradiction than 

 the mere Cogito of Descartes. 



But of late there have been attempts to mediate between these 

 antitheses, so that, to use Hegelian phraseology, their seeming 

 contradiction may be aufgehoben. Noteworthy among such at- 

 tempts is the so-called "actuality theory" of Wundt, already more 

 or less foreshadowed by Lotze. There is, I fear, a certain vagueness 

 in Wundt's view, due perhaps to his general policy of non-committal; 

 at any rate, I am not sure that I understand him. I prefer, therefore, 

 to suggest what seems to me the true line of mediation in my own 

 way. A relation in which only one term is known, it is said, is 

 a contradiction. Yes, for knowledge it certainly is. But the objection 

 only has force' if we confound experience with knowledge, as the 

 term " consciousness " makes us only too ready to do. If, however, 

 1 Modern Psychology, Mind, [X. S.] vol. n, p. 80. 



