Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/228

214 R. B. HALDANE : The final chapter deals with mysticism, and it is worth while to quote its final words. " We have the truth of life. Its realities are subjective acts, linked together by the cate- gories of personality, giving us values and ideals, harmony and unity, and immortality. But we have, as one of the duties of life, the search for the truth of science, which transforms reality in order to construct an impersonal system, and gives us causal explanation and order. If we force the system of science upon the real life, claiming that our life is really a psychophysical phenomenon, we are under the illusion of psychologism. If, on the other hand, we force the views of the real life, the personal categories, upon the scientific psychophysical phenomena, we are under the illusion of mysticism. The result in both cases is the same. We lose the truth of life, and the truth of science. The real world loses its values, and the scientific world loses its order ; they flow together in a new world controlled by inanity and trickery, unworthy of our scientific interests, and unfit for our ethical ideals." These sentences express the point of view of this part of the book. Under mysticism the writer classes all attempts at a supernatural interpretation of the phenomena of hypnotism, thought reading, and spiritualism. Many of the allegations of fact on which mysticism founds itself may be true. The vice of the thing is the attempt to impose " teleological categories upon the psychological facts ; that is upon constructions which are formed for the purpose of the mechanical cate- gories only". This theme Prof. Miinsterberg works out at some length by the aid of illustrations. He has obviously devoted a good deal of attention to the investigation. For the claims of mysticism to have reached the supernatural he has nothing but contempt. The miserable results of so- called communications from another world disgust him. But he is quite prepared to find a place in science for many of the phenomena which have been brought to light by so-called psychical research. He is free from the prejudice that the ambit of the world of reality is coincident with the sphere of the categories of mechanism. liead as a whole Psychology and Life is a very remarkable book. In it the writer attempts the criticism of categories one of the most important and least understood duties of philosophy from a new point of view. To those who have not followed the development of the second branch of post- Kantian inquiry, it will seem startling to find the will brought into such prominence, and to read of ' over-individual ' action. But if, and it is open to question, this kind of language is