252 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



86. 



Disappear- 

 ance of 

 psychology 

 in the older 

 sense. 



The process of generalisation, of the sublimation of 

 thought out of the concrete into the abstract regions, 

 had, however, a very detrimental effect upon the study 

 of all those questions which deal with the life and 

 nature of the individual mind or soul. Psychology, in 

 the older sense of the term, as an analysis of the human 

 mind, i.e., of the individual mind, had really disappeared. 

 The data of consciousness were only discussed in a criti- 

 cal spirit and with the object of leading beyond an 

 individualistic conception, of overstepping or transcend- 

 ing the limits of the self (or ego), and of conceiving such 

 words as consciousness, mind, self, and idea in a more 

 general and impersonal sense as denoting at once the 

 unity and community of many minds, many selves, and 

 many ideas. It was only by elevating the philosophical 

 point of view above the consideration of the empirical 

 world of many things, many minds, and many ideas into 

 the sphere of the systematic unity of all and into a 

 higher hierarchy of ideas that Fichte l found it possible 



ledge and faith, variously repre- 

 sented in the philosophies of Kant, 

 Jacobi, and Fichte, it had to over- 

 come this disturbing dualism, the 

 mere subjectivity of religion ; finally, 

 as against Spinozism, renovated in 

 German philosophy by Schelling, 

 the absolute or universal substance 

 was not to be dogmatically placed 

 at the entrance of the system as an 

 empty conception, but it was to be 

 understood in its development in 

 nature, the individual mind, and 

 the mind of mankind. It was to 

 be a subject, i.e., a spirit. "The 

 mind which knows itself in its 

 development as such is science. 

 There is its reality and the realm 

 which it creates out of its own 

 elements" (Hegel's 'Werke,' vol. 



ii. p. 15). In this and similar 

 passages contained in the preface 

 to the 'Phenomenology' lies, as 

 Kuno Fischer (loc. cit., p. 293) says, 

 "the whole of Hegel's philosophy." 

 1 That Fichte's philosophy, for 

 which he invented the new term 

 " Wissenschaftslehre," was some- 

 thing very different from the ordi- 

 nary psychological treatment of 

 mental phenomena, was emphati- 

 cally stated by Fichte in the earlier 

 expositions of his doctrine. Yet if 

 we advance to the study of his later 

 writings, through which he gained 

 a popular as well as an academic 

 reputation, we find that Fichte 

 himself recognised more and more 

 the necessity of leading up from the 

 position of introspective psychology 



