ence in point of view is very fairly stated by Locke, though he was one of the worst sinners in practically confounding what he had theoretically distinguished. The distinction between psychology and epistemology, indeed, is the distinction between the Second Book of the Essay and the Fourth, and this Locke explains in his Introduction as follows: "First, I shall inquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes, and is conscious to himself he has in his mind; and the ways whereby the understanding comes to be furnished with them." This is pure psychology — what, he asks, are the mental states which constitute the individual mind, and into what elementary facts may they be analyzed — of what primitive facts may the more complex be the result? "Secondly [he proceeds], I shall endeavor to show what knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it." This is the question of epistemology: What knowledge can I have of the world of men and things, by means of my mental states?
Psychology, according to Locke's way of putting it, deals with "ideas," which he defines as "the immediate objects of the mind in thinking";[1] it treats ideas as mental facts which have an existence of their own in consciousness. Epistemology deals with the "knowledge" which we reach by means of these ideas or immediate mental facts. It takes the ideas not as themselves bits of fact, but as signs or symbols of some further reality; it takes them, in short, as ideas of things. Hence the word "idea," taken even in the wide sense in which it is used by Locke, is not a good one to employ in a psychological reference; for it inevitably contains this epistemological implication, this reference of the mental state to something beyond itself. "States of consciousness," as Mr. Ward suggests, would be a more appropriate and colorless designation for the objects of psychological science. The psychologist deals with psychical events merely as such; the world of conscious states is the
- ↑ Second Letter to the Bishop of Worcester. So, again, Essay, Bk. II, c. 8, 8: "Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding."
