120 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



of organic development, expresses in its own nature the essential 

 truth of that development, comprehends in itself all the earlier 

 (aufgehobene) stages. Hence in its own unfolding it is absolutely 

 free, that is to say, self-determining. From the Darwinian stand 

 point, on the contrary, the nature of thought must be explained 

 by ascertaining the part which it plays in the life of the organism. 

 Thought, instead of being regarded as the end and determinant 

 of organic development, is a product and (more importantly) a 

 moment, or factor, in that development, a factor whose exist 

 ence and nature are throughout conditioned by the part it has 

 to perform in organic life. How this initial attitude toward 

 the nature and place of thought affects the treatment of the more 

 important problems of logical theory, it will shortly be our task 

 to consider. 



In the second place, it is inevitable that the new evolutionary 

 logic should be distinguished from absolute idealism by a charac 

 teristically empiricistic temper; and this we find to be the case. 

 In various respects, the pragmatists of today may justly be 

 claimed as the modern representatives of the school of Berkeley 

 and Hume. This is notably true as regards the place accorded 

 by them to the science of psychology, which with them becomes 

 again the corner-stone of philosophy. That their method and 

 their theoretical results exhibit marked differences from those of 

 the older empiricists is largely to be explained as a consequence 

 of the enormous development of scientific method in general 

 and of psychological science in particular. Speaking broadly, 

 we may say that this development has meant the emancipation 

 of psychology from the presuppositions of the old dogmatism. 

 Perhaps the chief conception that has thus been outgrown is 

 the idea of analysis into elements assumed as final. 1 In psy- 



^ Current sensationalism is a result to which we are led by empirical analysis; 

 and its sensations are simple processes abstracted from conscious experience, last 

 terms in the psychologyical study of mind. The associationism of the English 

 school is a preconceived theory, and its sensations are, accordingly, productive 

 and generative elements, first terms in a logical construction of mind.&quot; Titchener, 

 Lectures in the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes, p. 34. 



