184 



PSYCHOLOGY. 



lie reflects on his own conscious states, how much truer is it 

 when he treats of those of others ! In German philosophy 

 since Kant the word Erkenntnisstheorie, criticism of the 

 faculty of knowledge, plays a great part. Now the psychol- 

 ogist necessarily becomes such an Erkenntnisstheoretiker. 

 But the knoAvledge he theorizes about is not the bare 

 fuuclion of knowledge which Kant criticises — he does not 

 inquire into the possibility of knowledge vherhaupt. He 

 assumes it to be possible, he does not doubt its presence 

 in himself at the moment he speaks. The knowledge he 

 criticises is the knowledge of particular men about the 

 particular things that surround them. This he may, upon 

 occasion, in the light of his oivn unquestioned knowledge, 

 pronounce true or false, and trace the reasons by which it 

 has become one or the other. 



It is highly important that this natural-science point 

 of view should be understood at the outset. Otherwise 

 more may be demanded of the psj-chologist than he ought 

 to be expected to perform. 



A diagram will exhibit more emphatically what the 

 assumjjtions of Psychology must be : 



1 

 The 



Psychologist 



The Thought 

 Studied 



The Thought's 

 Object 



Tlje Psycholo- 

 gist's Reality 



These four squares contain the irreducible data of 

 psychology. No. 1, the psychologist, believes Nos. 2, 3, 

 and 4, which together form his total object, to be realities, 

 and reports them and their mutual relations as truly as he 

 can without troubling himself with the puzzle of how he 

 can report them at all. About such ultimate jDuzzles he in 

 the main need trouble himself no more than the geometer, 

 the chemist, or the botanist do, who make precisely the 

 same assumptions as he.* 



Of certain fallacies to which the psychologist is exposed 

 by reason of his peculiar point of view — that of being a 



* On the relation between Pyschology and General Philosophy, see G. 

 C. Robertson, ' Mind,' vol. viii. p 1, and J. Ward, ibid. p. 153 ; J. Dewey, 

 ibid. vol. IX. p. 1. 



