Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/74

6'2 SHAD WORTH H. HODGSON. analysis of the stream of consciousness, without assumptions, is the whole business and function of philosophy. But while, on the one hand, the function of philosophy is thus reduced to a point, and is so simple that every one can perform it, seeing that reflection on his own consciousness is within the reach of every one, yet on the other hand the range of object-matter, over which it extends, is vast in the extreme, being whatever falls into the content of a single consciousness, and every consciousness is the subjective counterpart or mirror of an universe. By taking experience on its subjective side, without hypothesis as to its origin or the origin of its parts, we have a means of examining its whole content in detail, comparing, classifying, and analys- ing, not only its parts, but the relations of its parts to one another. Not only the external world comes before us for examination in this way, but the various modes of con- sciousness itself ; its feelings, pleasures, pains, emotions, aesthetic perceptions of beauty, poetic imaginations, voli- tions, actions, judgments ; including all kinds of theories and conceptions and imaginations in science, art, ethic, and politic. Ethical theories founded on ideas of right and wrong, good and evil, advantage and disadvantage ; and religious beliefs which transcend the boundaries of the seen world ; everything is part of the content of consciousness, and in order to be grasped firmly must be approached by examining that content closely. The present method, therefore, has the keys of practical as well as speculative theory. Ethic, which stands at the head of all theories relating to practice, cannot be successfully treated unless it is based on a foundation of experience subjectively analysed, since what is true of external experience (so called) is true also of internal. Yet how often do we see Ethic approached off-hand as an independent inquiry, assuming the nature and existence of individuals as things already known, and then basing itself on some supposed set of self-evident first prin- ciples, always found sooner or later, and usually very soon, to be in hopeless conflict with some other self-evident set. But more cannot be said on the range of subjects depen- dent on subjective analysis of experience, without applying the method as well as describing it, which would be beyond my present scope. Now it is plain, that no man can be required to give or entertain a theoiy as to hoiv he can have experience, at the same time that he is having it and attending to what it is. The experience must be taken as given. It is our datum. But in using, with Kant, the word given, I am not to be