Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/73

V. ON THE DISTINCTION OF INNER AND OUTER EXPERIENCE. BY GEOKGE GALLOWAY. WE may regard this problem from two points of view. In the first place we may treat the question simply from the historical standpoint, and try to show the causes which led to the gradual separation of experience into two different spheres, an outward and an inward. From the nature of the case such an investigation must be largely psychological. It cannot in itself be taken as determining the ultimate validity of the distinction, though it may furnish facts which an epistemological theory must take into consider- ation. But, in the second place, we can try to determine the real meaning and value of the distinction in the ultimate nature of things ; and this of course will be a problem for metaphysical discussion. A larger inquiry of this kind may furnish the conclusion that experience is fundamentally one, and that outer and inner are only different phases or stages in its development. Or it may lead us to conclude that the contrast we make and act upon in our ordinary conduct is based upon a real difference which is more than one of degree. It will be convenient for us to consider first of all the genesis of the distinction. For ordinary thought nothing seems more obvious than the difference between outer and inner experience. And one naturally assumes that a distinction, which he draws himself so readily, was always drawn with the same facility. But undoubtedly this cannot have been the case. If we dis- tinguish two grades of experience, the former perceptual and therefore concrete and individual, the latter conceptual or generalised, it will only be at the second stage that the distinction is consciously made. The separation into two spheres, inner and outer, and the apt reference of experi- ence to one or other of them, imply some development of the power of generalisation. To a merely perceptual con-