660 EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 



solution of those general speculative problems which arise in our 

 meditation upon the nature of consciousness and the world of 

 knowledge. Once establish the conditions under which conscious- 

 ness is manifested, by determining the special laws of mental 

 functioning and tracing the course of its evolution, and the last 

 stronghold of speculation will be taken. A scientific psychology 

 will replace those philosophies of mind which, while seeking to 

 make plain the nature of mental processes and their relation to 

 the world at large, have but replaced real by fictitious problems, 

 and darkened understanding thereby. 



This expectation is necessarily unrealizable, not because of the 

 mechanical difficulties of the work, which may be insurmount- 

 able, but because it is based upon a misconception of the scope 

 of empirical psychology and of the relations which exist between 

 its conclusions and those of metaphysical interpretation. Psych- 

 ology we call a descriptive science because it is an analytic study 

 of mental functions. The fullest possible account of mind from 

 this point of view will still leave untouched the whole problem 

 of an object of knowledge and of the origin of the order which 

 appears within the content of consciousness. The advance of 

 psychological science may legitimately entail a succession of philo- 

 sophical reconstructions by rendering untenable the forms in which 

 those most general relations of existence have hitherto been cast; 

 but can never hope to supersede the function of either epistemo- 

 logy or metaphysics by supplying the conclusions toward which 

 their analyses are directed. The break is as absolute as that 

 between mind and matter. Nerve-physiology can never hope to 

 discover consciousness, nor psychology to reach the region of meta- 

 physics; not because any part or aspect of mental phenomena is 

 excluded from the field of scientific investigation, but for the reason 

 that there exists a problem to which the very nature of his assump- 

 tions precludes approach. This is the interpretation of the place 

 and meaning of consciousness, together with the whole realm of 

 phenomenal existence of which it forms a part, in the ultimate 

 system of things which constitutes the universe of reality. 



So long as the assumption which lies at the basis of all science 

 namely, the existence of an object of knowledge continues, 

 no condition is conceivable in which there will not be the same 

 demand which exists to-day for an epistemological analysis of 

 the foundations of knowledge and for a metaphysical interpreta- 

 tion of reality. The reduction of experience to a field which can 

 be regarded from a single point of view can be accomplished only 

 through ignoring the existence of the problem of knowledge. The 

 process of consciousness must be treated as self-existent and sub- 

 jected to a wholly internal analysis. Yet in the adoption of such 



