Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/83

THE METAPHYSICAL METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY. 71 conditions, that is, with real existents and their actions so far as they stand in causal relations to each other, and to other phenomena which depend on those relations, meaning by other phenomena such as are described by unanalysed terms of common life, an eclipse, for instance. Earth, moon, and sun, in certain relations, are what we have now called real existents ; an eclipse is a resulting phenomenon. Thus it is that the philosophical distinction between the questions what and how comes, which is the guiding principle of philosophical method, gives rise, when applied to experi- ence, to the distinction between nature and genesis in the objects of experience ; and, in further application to experi- ence, compels the further distinction of conditions of genesis, into conditions cognoscendi and conditions existcndi ; and still farther, institutes on this basis a division of labour, or chart of the functions proper to philosophy, psychology, and the rest of the positive sciences. Each of the two classes of conditions rests on a basis of analysis. In every series of conditions we begin by analysing a given thing ; and the analysis of it will be either an analysis qua content of consciousness, or an analysis qua existent ; but in either case it will be analysis. The analysis of real existents will be into things really existent, and the analysis of contents of con- sciousness will be into other contents of consciousness. In either case, the members of analysis may be called, for con- venience, conditions of the nature of the thing analysed, con- ditions of what it is, or, to use a Scholastic phrase, its con- ditions essendi. The whole method of philosophy may thus be summed up and characterised, as consisting in the deter- mination of experience, under the three heads of conditions, essendi, cognoscendi, existcndi. In conclusion I must touch on a point which perhaps you may think I should have done better to begin with, why the method which I have attempted to describe should be called the metaphysical method. I think I can now show you that the name is absolutely right, and exactly expresses what it ought to express, and implies what it ought to imply. In the first place, it is applied to the method which comes after the physical method, which is that of all positive science including psychology, counting from the original basis of all, which is ordinary knowledge, or knowledge in the form of common-sense. Science with its physical method comes next after that knowledge, and philosophy with its method comes next after scientific knowledge and completes it. This method is also the direct opposite of the physical, as I have shown above, and the name metaphysical includes and suggests this opposition.