Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/270

256 CRITICAL NOTICES: on the one hand and " objects " on the other, and that the whole distinction with its far-reaching consequence has arisen from the " intra-subjective " intercourse of man and man by a sheer con- fusion seems to admit of no rejoinder. There are only two points where one might perhaps have desired fuller explanation or dis- cussion. While fully agreeing with Prof. Ward's contention that individual experience exhibits not a dualism but a duality in unity of subject and object, may not one demur to his rather contemp- tuous rejection of the " presentationist " view that even this duality is psychologically an outgrowth of a simpler state of things (vol. ii. pp. 122-123). What I mean is this. We seem only to be conscious of the distinction between subject and object in an experience when the content of the experience exhibits some one element of quality which is, in virtue of its interest, distinguished from the accompanying mass of sensation and feeling ; where this distinc- tion within the content of experience fails to make itself felt, as for instance, when a persistent pain seems of itself to abolish consciousness of everything else, or when we pass in listening to music into a state of reverie in which consciousness for the time being seems to consist of nothing but the mere succession of tones, do we not seem to have reached a stage at which there is for immediate experience neither subject nor object, but only psychical content ? If the existence of such selfless states be once admitted, it would be easy to see how the mere fact that different elements in the continuum of consciousness change with varying rapidity would lead to the discrimination of a relatively permanent mass of organic sensation and accompanying feeling-tone from the rapidly varying perceptual contents which from time to time occupy the "focus" of consciousness. Hence it might perhaps be doubted whether the "presentationist" view of the growth of the subject- object relation out of simpler and less differentiated experiences does not deserve rather more courteous treatment than Prof. Ward accords to it. The second point to which I have referred is a metaphysical one of some importance. After explaining the way in which our conception of the " objective world," as it is for science arises from the attempt to weld into one harmonious system the contents of my own experience and those of other human experi- ences, Prof. Ward goes on to raise the further question, to what experience is this " objective" world then an object? The answer is, of course, the "objective" world, as we think of it in our science, though independent of the individual's experience is de- pendent on and an object to Bewusstsein uberhaupt "universal experience ". So far, so good ; but there seems to remain a still more important question upon which Prof. Ward, as I understand him, has pronounced no judgment. Is this "universal experience " a reality, in the same sense in which individual experience is a reality, or is it a mere " regulative ideal," useful for methodological purposes in the construction of a scientific scheme, but conceivably without any counterpart in reality ? In other words is the world