THE KIGHT WAY IN PSYCHOLOGY. 



20 



pretence to a complete criticism of the original datum ; my 

 purpose is accomplished if I have shown that some attention 

 must be paid to it, in order that our psychology may start 

 securely. 



But I may just point out that the philosopher, equally with 

 the physicist and the psychologist, is powerless without some 

 given fact or facts. He cannot reason upon nothing. And his 

 first premiss must precede his reasoning ; he cannot create it by 

 reasoning. If he does not really believe and hold as certain 

 truth, the threefold reality, the individual self, other selves, and 

 the common environment, he must find some other standing 

 ground. How can he even try to find this, without relying upon 

 the threefold reality ? It seems to me that he is stale-mated, 

 he cannot move. Meantime, 1 think that we may truthfully say, 

 that our given reality receives universal assent — the assent 

 expressed in more than words — the assent of all human activity 

 in every direction ; not in ordinary life only, but in the more 

 exact and systematic work of the sciences ; and even in meta- 

 physics also, for the philosopher, however he may speculate, 

 really builds upon the three certitudes just like the rest of 

 us. 



10. Guiding rules. — We come out of our preliminary reflection 

 with clear right to take ourselves as the given facts of our 

 psychology. And I think we have gained something more than 

 this. We seem now to be able to lay down two rules for our 

 procedure — (1) Our study must keep close to the given 

 facts ; and (2 ) we must take the facts as they are given ; we 

 must not remove them from their context. These rules seem 

 to shut us up to one method. The first forbids us to substitute 

 anything else in the place of ourselves, as the subject-matter of 

 psychology. The second forbids us to separate the self from its 

 environment. In other words, we have to renounce, or to 

 subordinate, the processes of abstraction, dissection, or analysis ; 

 and to study the real living self in his actual life in connection 

 with his fellows and in connection with the external world. It 

 will not be a breach of these rules, if w T e attend to some part or 

 aspect of the self at one time, and another part at another time : 

 but it will be violation of the rules if we attend to them as 

 having an independent existence. The parts or aspects whatever 

 they may be — sensations, presentations, ideas, emotions, 

 faculties — exist only in the self; apart from it they are nothing- 

 real, nothing intelligible. 



11. The concept of the Self. — Bearing these rules in mind, we 

 ask — what is the Self ? We have no complete answer — else 



