of all that was—as such it appears to the causal standpoint; on the other hand, it is an expression of all that is to be. The future is only apparently like the past, but in its essence always new and unique, (the causal standpoint would like to invert this sentence) thus the actual formula is incomplete, germ like so to say, in relation to what is to be.
To get any conception of this expression of what is to be we are forced to apply a constructive interest to it. I almost felt myself tempted to say, “a scientific interest.” But modern science is identical with the causal principle. So long as we consider the actual mind causally, that is scientifically, we elude the mind as a Becoming. This other side of the psyche can never be grasped by the exclusive use of the causal principle, but only by means of the constructive standpoint. The causal standpoint reduces things to their elements, the constructive standpoint elaborates them into something higher and more complicated. This latter standpoint is necessarily a speculative one.
Constructive understanding is, however, differentiated from scholastic speculation because it imposes no general validity, but only subjective validity. When the speculative philosopher believes he has comprehended the world once for all by his System, he deceives himself; he has only comprehended himself and then naïvely projected that view upon the world. In reaction against this, the scientific method of the modern world has almost put an end to speculation and gone to the other extreme. It would create an “objective” psychology. In opposition to such efforts, the stress which Freud has placed upon individual psychology is of immortal merit. The extraordinary importance of the subjective in the development of the objective mental process was thus first brought adequately into prominence.
Subjective speculation lays no claim to universal validity, it is identical with constructive understanding. It is a subjective creation, which, looked at externally, easily seems to be a so-called infantile phantasy, or at least an unmistakable derivative of it; from an objective standpoint it must be judged as such, in so far as objective is regarded as identical
