Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/13

V J. DEWEY : well, clearly, conscientiously and thoroughly. English philo- sophy cannot now be what it would have been, if (to name only one of the writers) the late Prof. Green had not written. And now that the differences and the grounds for them have been so definitely and clearly stated, we are in a condition, I think, to see a fundamental agreement, and that just where the difference has been most insisted upon, viz., in the standpoint. It is the psychological standpoint which is the root of all the difference, as Prof. Green has shown with such admirable lucidity and force. Yet I hope to be able to suggest, if not to show, that after all the psychological stand- point is what both sides have in common. In this present paper, I wish to point out that the defects and contradictions so powerfully urged against the characteristic tendency of British Philosophy are due not to its psychological stand- point but to its desertion of it. In short, the psychological basis of English philosophy has been its strength : its weak- ness has been that it has left this basis that it has not been psychological enough. In stating what is the psychological standpoint, care has to betaken that it be not so stated as to prejudge at the out- set the whole matter. This can be avoided only by stating it in a very general manner. Lot Locke do it. " I thought that the first step towards satisfying several inquiries the mind of man was very apt to run into was to take a view of our own understandings, examine our own powers, and see to what things they were adapted." (Book i., ch. 1, 7.) This, with the further statement that " Whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks " is an I< ; fixed the method of philosophy. We are not to determine the nature of reality or of any object of philosophical inquiry by examining it as it is in itself, but only as it is an element in our knowledge, in our experience, only as it is related to our mind, or is an ' idea ' . As Prof. Eraser well puts it, Locke's way of stating the question "involves the funda- mental assumption of philosophy, that real things as well as imaginary things, whatever their absolute existence may involve, exist for us only through becoming involved in what we mentally experience in the course of our self-con se: lives" (Berkeley, ]>. 20). Or, in the ordinary way of putting it, the nature of all objects of philosophical inquii be fixed by finding out what experiene ibont them. And psychology is the scientific and tic account of this experience. This and this only do I understand to be essential to the psychological standpoint, and, to avoid misunderstanding from the start, I shall ask the reader not