Volume I.
Number 5.
September, 1892.
Whole
Number 5.
THE
PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
PSYCHOGENESIS.
EVERY unsophisticated man is a natural realist, that is, he believes, on the one hand, in the reality of the extended, space-occupying objects which make up the material world; and, on the other, in the reality of those feelings, ideas and volitions which are the contents of his personal consciousness and make up his mental world. The materialist and the idealist alike are the products of reflection aiming at the reduction of all phenomena to a fundamental unity, which reason seems to require. The distinction between objects-of-consciousness and consciousness-of-objects cannot be obliterated, however, by any legitimate process. We have, then, these two phases of reality firmly fixed in the field of thought. The materialist says that unconscious objects-of-consciousness generate consciousness-of-objects. The idealist says that consciousness-of-objects sufficiently explains objects-of-consciousness. Either thesis may appear plausible from different points of view. Both stand in need of explicit confirmation. The truth is, that there are no known objects-of-consciousness without consciousness-of-objects, and there is no consciousness-of-objects without objects-of-consciousness. In other words, a human being is at the same time a conscious intelligence and a living organism furnished with sense-organs. In him two correlated series of phenomena are co-existent, the phenomena of consciousness, which with Mr. Huxley we may call "psychoses"; and the phenomena of organic movement, which we may call "neuroses." So far as
