Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/100

" ILLUSOEY PSYCHOLOGY." 87 3. And finally upon this point, I know of no perception which is not made what it is by conceptual elements within it. Mr. Hodgson well says that " every act of attention to a percept is the commencement of a generalisation " (p. 481). But it cannot be possible that Mr. Hodgson supposes that perceptions are given to us prior to attention, and that this is an activity which super- venes, the perception once formed. Correct psychology seems to teach that the attention the active connexion between the mind and a given psychical complex is necessary to interpret, to make it a percept. And unless there are two utterly different kinds of atten- tion, generalisation must be thus introduced, and a universal ele- ment be present in the percept. I cannot believe accordingly that Mr. Hodgson's attempt to set up individuality of conscious- ness as opposed to universality is successful, whether it proceeds by distinguishing the perceptual order from the conceptual, or by distinguishing the stream of consciousness as given from the con- tent of that consciousness as interpreted. At all events, I hope it is clear that this conception of universality of consciousness is not that of an individual indefinitely magnified. I should still be compellad to ask, What is this individual which is magnified ? and if I deal with facts and not with analytic abstractions, I find it to be bound up through and through with universal factors, nay con- stituted by its relation to the universal factor. One word more, and I have done with this point. The universality of conscious- ness stands just where its individuality does. An individuality is " given " in the sense that every consciousness has a unique in- terest ; so universality is "given" in the sense that every conscious- ness has a meaning. But the experience of the world as a fact, like the experience of the individual stream as a fact, is a con- structed product. And the philosophical interpretation of the fact that there is a world of experience is still more remote from being immediate or given. In each of these three stages it stands just where individuality does. n. I can treat but briefly of the other point : the relation between Psychology and what Mr. Hodgson calls Metaphysic and what I called Logic. Mr. Hodgson seems to think that upon my theory no place can be left for physiological psychology, for race-psycho- logy, &c., &c. They would, however, be left just where they are now as special methods for determining the conditions and genesis of various factors in conscious experience. When Mr. Hodgson says that Metaphysic abstracts from the fact that consciousness is individually conditioned (pp. 490 and 493) he simply suggests the point which was uppermost in my mind when I wrote the article on " Psychology as Philosophic Method ". Metaphysic or Logic does abstract from the indivi- dual, which conditions the content. As thus abstract, it cannot furnish the final method of philosophy, for as abstract it makes an