80 COSMIG PHILOSOPHY, [ft. ii, 



we may, the most we can ever ascertain is that certain nerve- 

 changes succeed certain other nerve-changes or certain ex- 

 ternal stimuli in a certain definite order. But all this of 

 itseK can render no account of the simplest phenomenon of 

 consciousness. As Mr. Spencer well says, " such words as 

 ideas, feelings, memories, volitions, have acquired their several 

 meanings through self-analysis, and the distinctions we make 

 between sensations and emotions, or between automatic acts 

 and voluntary acts, can be established only by comparisons 

 among, and classifications of, our mental states. The thoughts 

 and feelings which constitute a consciousness, and are abso- 

 lutely inaccessible to any but the possessor of that con- 

 sciousness, form an existence that has no place among the 

 existences with which the rest of the sciences deal. Though 

 accumulated observations and experiments have led us by 

 a very indirect series of inferences to the belief that mind 

 and nervous action are the subjective and objective faces of 

 the same thing, we remain utterly incapable of seeing, and 

 even of imagining, how the two are related. Mind still 

 continues to us a something without any kinship to other 

 things." 



Thus we conclude that psychology — though, from the 

 objective point of view, it may be regarded as a branch of 

 biology in the same abstract sense in which biology may be 

 regarded as a branch of geology, and geology as a branch of 

 astronomy — has nevertheless an equal claim with any of 

 these to be ranked as a distinct science. From the sub- 

 jective point of view it has a superior claim to any of the 

 others. Since here the phenomena studied are directly given 

 in the consciousness of the investigator, there arises a dis- 

 tinction more fundamental than those by which the various 

 departments of objective science are marked off from each 

 other. And, indeed, without some of the data furnished by 

 this unique subjective science, it is impossible to obtain ths 

 premises of philosophy ; as will at once be Admitted, on 



