Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/490

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ILLUSORY PSYCHOLOGY. 489 ceeding as psychology is. To take its method from philo- sophy would be to contradict the very claim advanced. Another point. If psychological science is identified with philosophy as its method, and the name psychology is trans- ferred to it with that signification, what name is to be given to that positive and special science, which takes its stand upon the results of physiology or biology, and studies the phenomena of sentience and consciousness in connexion with their proximate conditions in individual living organ- isms ? Mr. Dewey will not, I imagine, deny that this is a genuine and fruitful department of positive science, or that it has several close connexions with allied or subordinate branches. Now this branch of positive and special science, which I do not profess to have described fully, but have per- haps described sufficiently to designate the science intended without ambiguity, is now known as psychology. But if this name is to be transferred to the method of transcendental philosophising, not only must this positive science look about for a new name for itself, but also the whole nomenclature of its allied and subordinate sciences will be thrown into con- fusion ; I mean such sciences as comparative psychology, race-psychology, psychophysic and the like ; unless indeed the'y too, with probably biology, physics, .chemistry, and even (who can say ?) kinetics, statics, and kinematics, or even (what is to hinder ?) geometry, arithmetic, and the calculus, are to be handed over to a free d priori treatment, based on the presuppositions of transcendentalism. At any rate psy- chology itself (I mean that science which now bears the name) would inevitably suffer from the confusion wrought by the proposed transfer. Psychology as it now stands, and named by the name it now bears, is entirely in harmony with all the old landmarks of thought, and its position with the position of the other sciences. However important may be the points on which different psychological schools are at variance, and that they are extremely important is evident from the nature of the two main directions just mentioned, which may be respectively named materialist and immaterialist, they all agree in the main point of the position and purpose of the science itself. It is to examine the laws of the origin and development of sentience and of consciousness, in all their modes and operations, in connexion with their proximate real conditions, in the individual, whether the conditions or the individuals be of a material or of an immaterial nature. Whatever may be the nature of the agent indicated by the first part of the name of the science, whatever may be the 33