PSYCHO-PHYSICAL METHOD 113 



of events ; on the one hand the world of matter and 

 motion, and on the other the world of consciousness, 

 the physical and the psychical worlds. 



Are we then to exclude the study of the facts of 

 immediate experience, the states of our own conscious- 

 ness, from the realm of science ? 



At one time this was the prevalent view and practice ; 

 the physical world was regarded as the exclusive object 

 of scientific study, and the realm of psychical events was 

 the field of metaphysics, i.e. the study of that which is 

 v not physical. So that we had an opposition of physics, 

 or science on the one hand and metaphysics on the 

 other. 



But this usage of the term metaphysics, and this 

 exclusive application of the term science to the study of 

 the physical world, has now passed away. It is recog- 

 nized that a branch of study should be classed as a 

 science, not in virtue of the nature of the things with \ 

 which it is concerned, but rather in virtue of the method 

 by which it pursues knowledge. 



Shortly after Bacon and his followers, the founders 

 of the Royal Society, had established physical science 

 on an empirical basis, by applying the scientific method 

 of observation, induction, deduction and verification, 

 John Locke, one of the brightest ornaments of this 

 University, being imbued with the same scientific spirit, 

 introduced this same empirical method into the study 

 of that other great realm, the psychical world, and 

 so carved out from the body of speculative opinion 

 the science of mind or empirical psychology. Then 

 for nearly two hundred years these two great orders 

 of existence, the physical and the psychical, continued 

 to be studied by the scientific method, but indepen- 

 dently of one another, as though the two realms, the 



