Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/492

ILLUSORY PSYCHOLOGY. 491 is occupied with the proximate real conditions of conscious- ness ; and the knowledge of these has to be derived from the content of consciousness simply. Consequently you cannot put psychology into the place of philosophy without subor- dinating questions of pure analysis to questions of genesis ; and you cannot do the latter without, inadvertently indeed but none the less surely, reversing or confusing the true and only real order of knowledge, as it is founded in nature, and manifested in the process of consciousness, which is the process of experience. Similarly the question whether consciousness is individual or universal presupposes that the meaning of these two terms has been at least roughly ascertained. It can be ascertained only by an examination of the content of consciousness simply, that is, by perception of differences, perception of samenesses, classification and grouping. The same is true of every general term which language contains. It follows that, since nothing but a content of consciousness simply is the logical and historical foundation or datum of knowledge, the sole ultimate test of the correctness of knowledge is analysis of the content, and not a pre- supposition either about its nature as individual or universal, or about its source or real condition as depending either on an individual or on an universal being. Now this analysis of consciousness as a content simply is, what nothing else is, an appeal to experience and experience alone, in the strictest sense of the term. And this circum- stance distinguishes it sharply from every other branch of intellectual work. Every other branch of knowledge has presuppositions derived from this branch, has a portion of the field of labour marked out for it by reference to dis- tinctions which are established by analysis simply. In this respect the analytical branch stands to the rest in the relation of whole to parts. Just as the content of any individual's consciousness, taken simply as content, is all- embracing, in the sense of all objects being within its purview, so this subjectively analytic branch of knowledge embraces in its purview all the other branches of knowledge, in the sense that it knows in what part of its own field they have their points of origin and departure. Psychology has its point of origin and departure in the conception of the real condition or conditions first originating and then governing the course of consciousness in a real being. It follows that psychology can only then be based on experience alone, when its presuppositions are derived from metaphysic. Presuppositions it must have ; and metaphysic is the only means of securing for these an experiential basis.