those belonging to nature, he cannot legitimately take any notice of this agency. But in constructing a science of himself man occupies more than the position of a mere observer, for his observation of his own phenomena is an act, and as this act belongs to himself whom he is studying, he is bound to notice it; and, moreover, as this act of observation must be performed before it can be observed, man is thus compelled to be an agent before he is an observer; or, in other words, must himself act or create the great phenomenon which he is to observe. This is what he never does in the case of the physical sciences; the phenomena here observed are entirely attributable to nature. Man has nothing to do with their creation. In physics, therefore, man is, as we have said, a mere observer. But in philosophy he has first of all to observe his own phenomena (this he does in the free act of his ordinary consciousness): he thus creates by his own agency a new fact, the fact, namely, of his observation of these phenomena; and then he has to subject this new fact to a new and systematic observation, which may be called the reflective or philosophic consciousness.
The observation of our own natural phenomena (observatio simplex) is the act of consciousness; the observation of the observation of our own phenomena (observatio duplex), or, in other words, the observation of consciousness, is philosophy. Such are our leading views on the subject of the method
