Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/176

PSYCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD. 165 absolute self-consciousness, and this absolute self-conscious- ness is the realisation and manifestation of itself, and as material for philosophy exists only in so far as it has realised and manifested itself in man's conscious experience, and if psychology be the science of this realisation in man, what else can philosophy in its fulness be but psychology, and psychology but philosophy ? These questions are stated only to suggest the end which we shall endeavour to reach. I shall not attempt to answer them directly, but to consider first the relations of Psycho- logy to Science, and hence to Philosophy ; and secondly to Logic. (1) The Relation of Psychology to Science. Psychology is the completed method of philosophy, because in it science and philosophy, fact and reason, are one. Philosophy seems to stand in a double relation to Science. In its first aspect it is a science the highest of all sciences. We take one sphere of reality and ask certain questions regarding it, and the answers give us some one science ; we find in the process that this sphere of reality can only artificially be thus iso- lated, and we broaden and deepen our question, until finally, led by the organic connexion of science with science, we ask after the nature of all reality, as one connected system. The answer to this question constitutes philosophy as one science amid the circle of sciences. But to continue to re- gard it in this way is to fail to grasp the meaning of the process which has forced us into philosophy. At the same time that philosophy is seen as the completion of the sciences, it is seen as their basis. It is no longer a science ; it is Science. That is to say, the same movement of thought and reality which forces upon us the conception of a science which shall deal with the totality of reality forces us to recognise that no one of our previous sciences was in strict truth science. Each abstracted from certain larger aspects of reality, and was hence hypothetical. Its truth was con- ditioned upon the truth of its relations to that whole which that science, as special science, could not investigate with- out giving up its own independent existence. Only in this whole is categorical truth to be found, and only as cate- gorical truth is found in this whole is the basis found for the special sciences. Philosophy as the science of this whole appears no longer therefore as a science, but as all science taken in its organic systematic wholeness, not merely to which every so-called special science is something subordinate, but of which it constitutes an organic member. Philosophy has no existence except as the organic living unity and bond