Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/24

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 13 The essence of Subjective Idealism is that the subject con- sciousness or mind, which remains after the " object world has been subtracted," is that for which after all this object world exists. Were this not so were it admitted that this subject, mind, and the object, matter, are both but elements within, and both exist only for, consciousness we should be in the sphere of an eternal absolute consciousness, whose partial realisation both the individual " subject " and the " external world " are. And I wish to show that this is the only mean- ing of the facts of the case ; that Subjective Idealism is but the bald statement of a contradiction. This brief digression is for the purpose of showing that, to Subjective Idealism, the consciousness for which all exists is the consciousness which is called mind, Ego, " my being". The point which I wished to make was that this identifica- tion is self-contradictory, although it is absolutely necessary to this form of Idealism. I shall be brief here in order not to make a simple matter appear complicated. How can consciousness which gives rise to the "two kinds" of con- sciousness be identified with either of them ? How can the consciousness which in its primary aspect exists in time as a series of psychical events or states be the consciousness for which a permanent world of spatially related objects, in which " all sentient beings participate," exists ? How can the " mind " which is denned by way of " contrast," which exists after the object world has been " subtracted " be the mind which is the whole, of which subject and object are alike elements ? To state that the mind, in the first instance, is but the remainder from the totality of conscious experience " minus the object world, and to state also that this object world is itself a part of mind," what is that but to state in terms a self-contradiction ? Unless it be to state that this way of looking at mind, "in the first instance," is but a partial and unreal way of looking at it, and that mind in truth is the unity of subject and object, one of which cannot be subtracted from the other, because it has absolutely no existence without the other. Is it not a self-contradiction to declare that the " scope of mental science " is subject con- sciousness or mind, and at the same time to declare that "both subject and object are parts of our being," are but "two kinds" of consciousness? Surely Psychology ought to be the science of our whole being, and of the whole con- sciousness. But no words can make the contradiction clearer than the mere statement of it. The only possible hypothesis upon which to reconcile the two statements that mind is consciousness with the object world subtracted, and that it