284 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



novel ideas. So far, their activity has consisted mostly in 

 criticising the positions taken up by other leading psycho- 

 logists, most of whom, they maintain, have not sufficiently 

 liberated themselves from the metaphysical bias, and are 

 continually falling back into fanciful speculations. The 

 philosopher who has done most to give the general reader 

 some conception of the deeper meaning which lies hidden 

 behind the forbidding terminology of Avenarius is the 

 Danish professor, Harold Hoffding, who, in two recent 

 works on ' Modern Philosophers ' and ' Philosophical 

 Problems,' refers at some length to the ' Critique of 

 Pure Experience.' From these expositions we gather 

 that the way adopted by Avenarius lies in the direction 

 of a minute analysis of the physiological basis of the 

 psychical processes. As such, it would hardly be accept- 

 able to psychologists in this country, who have persist- 

 ently upheld the introspective method, aided indeed by 

 indications and suggestions furnished by physiology. 



But the persistent polemics which are carried on 

 abroad, as to the intrusion of metaphysics into psycho- 

 logical research, are indicative of a tendency of thought 

 which, though continually criticised, will nevertheless 

 continually recur. The question as to the essence, the 

 quid proprium, of the inner life, will always be asked, and 

 if psychology, as the analysis of " individual " or of " pure " 

 experience, cannot give it, it will have to be sought else- 

 where. Further, the position of the individual mind, or 

 rather of individual minds in their collective existence as 

 human society, in the whole economy of nature, and the 

 developments of history, is also a question of such abid- 

 ing interest that it will become inevitable to try to gain 



