Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/48

34 F- H. BRADLEY : qualify the history of the soul. But," it may be added, " agreeing with you so far we are then driven to dissent very widely, for we think that more than mere phenomenal laws of happening is admissible, and is necessary for explanation, aud we do not see on what principle you should object to more if it works." Now, I reply, if this were said, and if this really were meant, I should be satisfied on the whole, because I think that the issue once raised in this way must be decided in favour of the cause which I adopt. But I will venture to add a few words in order to make the issue still clearer. If the end and scope of psychological explanation is defined as above, I do not object to anything that is offered, so long as and so far as it works, and so long as it is offered merely as something which works. But I must insist that nothing does work except so far as and so long as you use it as a mere law of happening. And hence I object to your " more " because it is most certainly useless and almost cer- tainly hurtful. Even if you had the absolute truth about the soul you could not for our purpose, so far as I see, use it as the absolute truth, unless indeed we take the absolute truth to consist in mere laws of Empirical happening. For it is only these laws which you can use here however much more you may possess. And hence if you will produce your " more " I will undertake to show of it one of two things. It is useful in psychology just so far as it really is not used as more than, or as anything else than, a law of phenomena. Or otherwise it is really not useful in psychology at all, but is a false and mischievous pretence of knowledge. The question of " dispositions " will furnish, I think, a good illustration of my meaning. A disposition, I should say, in psychology is a mere way of stating that when some things have happened there will be a "tendency" for other things to happen we may expect them to happen, that is, under favourable conditions and, so far as these tendencies are reduced to rule, they are used properly to explain the occurrence of particular facts. On the other hand a psy- chologist may think that he knows what a disposition really is, and may be prepared with a more or less elaborate theory of its nature. Or again without asserting knowledge he may propose to use an avowed fiction. In either of these cases the test to be applied is the same. So far as the " real truth " or the fiction serves as a law to explain the pheno- menal sequence, it is admissible within psychology, and beyond that it is illegitimate. 1 A disposition for instance 1 This attitude of avowed ignorance would of course by some psycho- logists be considered improper. Prof. Ward (Psychology, p. 48), for