RELATIONS OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 659 



raent must hinge upon the consideration of method and method 

 alone. If psychology adopts the assumptions and criteria of posi- 

 tivism, of which question is no longer made, its place is amongst 

 the descriptive sciences, though the bulk of that organized body 

 of knowledge in which the work of every science must result lies 

 still in futuro. 



In establishing its position as an inductive science, however, 

 one has answered the question . concerning the relation of psycho- 

 logy to philosophy in one of its bearings only. There still remains 

 to be considered their mutual relations to the whole system of 

 legitimate problems which human consciousness presents, and the 

 validity of their respective methods in approaching them. 



The early history of every science is confused by an admixture 

 of fable and false interpretation. Wherever a gap in our know- 

 ledge exists, these airy fabrics are woven; whenever discovery 

 throws its solid connections across the hiatus, they are brushed 

 aside to be reconstructed elsewhere. These pseudo-explanations 

 commonly employ the terms of speculative thought, and appeal 

 to the realities with which the philosopher deals. In homologat- 

 ing philosophy with such a fringe of speculation its function is 

 wholly misconstrued. Philosophy supplements science, but by 

 no such process of interpolation. The hypothetical completion 

 of the web of empirical knowledge, at which these fables aim, be- 

 longs essentially with the descriptive sciences, however wild its 

 assumptions or fantastic the order which it imaginatively con- 

 structs. When the borders of science thus become confused through 

 a failure to discern the absolute discontinuity of scientific explan- 

 ation and philosophical interpretation, there arises a false hope 

 that by patience in perfecting the methods of science and thorough- 

 ness in their application the whole range of problems which the 

 world presents to our intelligence may progressively be solved. 

 Finality is indeed inconceivable either in the nature of the specific 

 problems to be solved or in the adaptation of method to their in- 

 vestigation. The limitation of the scientist at any time, however, 

 is but the correlative of the stage which his analysis of phenomena 

 has then reached, and is not due to any insufficiency of his method 

 per se. 



In consequence of this belief the position has been taken again 

 and again in the intellectual history of the world that all reality 

 is the object of positive knowledge and that naturalistic science 

 is the single method of approach to every conceivable problem. 

 Whatever justification this attitude had in relation to the func- 

 tion of physical science it possesses in an intensified form in esti- 

 mating the part which a thorough experimental investigation of 

 the phenomena of consciousness may be expected to play in the 



