CHAPTER III.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CRITICISM
AND THE DISTINCTION OF SUBJECT AND OBJECT.

§ 49. Two diametrically opposite opinions are prevalent in regard to the psychological basis of Criticism, and of the Absolutism to which it has given rise. The late Dr. Caird wished to exclude psychology altogether from Criticism. Professor James, Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, and other noncritical writers consider the Kantian and Hegelian standpoint, on the other hand, to be essentially pychological, and reject it precisely because, in their opinion, it is vitiated by a psychological fallacy. Professor James accuses Green and Caird of what he calls the psychologist's fallacy, i.e., the fallacy of reading into psychological states before analysis all that the psychologist finds in them when that analysis is complete. Attempts have also been made to treat the Criticism of Kant on the same lines as the Enquiry of Locke, since both Kant and Locke held that an examination of the faculty of cognition was necessary by way of introduction to a study of philosophy. The latter view is certainly wrong; for though there is a prima facie resemblance between the Lockian and the Kantian enquiries, the standpoint of Locke is essentially different from that of Kant. Dr. Caird has pointed out, Locke examines the understanding "very much as we might examine a telescope to discover whether there was a flaw in its construction which might distort our vision of the objects seen through it;"^{1} while Kant examines the nature of mind with a view to discover in it the a priori forms which are presupposed by knowledge, without which knowledge is impossible, and by which in this sense it is limited. The position of Kant is, therefore, very different from that of Locke.

§ 50. On the other hand, Dr. Caird seems to me to carry his dislike of the psychological position too far when he endeavours to dispense with the psychologist's aid altogether in epistemology, on the grouud that the knowledge of mind presupposes a knowledge of matter. Mind, he says, presupposes matter, both as its organ, and as the environment about which it thinks. Without matter there would be no objects, and therefore no knowledge. Hence, to understand mind in the sense in which we contrast it with matter " (i.e., in the psychological sense) "implies that we already understand the material world, and to base our knowledge on our psychology would, therefore, be to base it on what is the latest and most complex result."^{2} Thus, for Dr. Caird, there is a distinction between the relation of subject and object as presupposed by the possibility of knowledge, and the relation of mind and matter as objects of knowledge; and it is with the former, and not with the latter, that Criticism is concerned." Criticism has to deal with the knowledge of mind only in so far as mind is presupposed in everything known or knowable; i.e., in so far as the principles which are involved in the relations of objects to a conscious self are the latent presuppositions of all knowledge, the principles through which everything else must be known, and by means of which, therefore, every other kind of knowledge must be tried."^{3} But can psychology and epistemology be separated from one another so completely as this? As sciences treating of different topics, the one of knowledge and truth, the other of psychical processes as such, they are undoubtedly distinct; yet the subject which is treated of in epistemology and the 'mind' with which psychology is concerned are surely one and the same. Again, if a priori forms and 'latent presuppositions' and principles of a psychological order are involved in all knowledge, how are we to examine them unless we know what they are; and how are we to know what they are unless our 'Criticism' is preceded by an introspective examination and a psychological analysis of our own acts of cognition? Whence does Criticism learn the functions of its categories, of substance, causality, reciprocity and the like, if not from its reflection on human thought-processes? Granted that there is in consciousness an a priori element, that each self-conscious being "has within him the general plan for a self-consistent natural system," and that this plan is a kind of framework upon which all knowledge is built, which is common to all minds, and constitutes the general form of all knowledge; granted all this, how, may I ask, does it come about that Criticism has learnt the nature of this framework? How, indeed, does it know that such a framework exists except by a study of cognition as it actually takes place in human minds? It may be that this 'scheme which we carry about with us' is, in a sense, unconscious, i.e., "it may never be reflected on (by the ordinary man) or made the object of attention for itself," and few, perhaps, may "know that they have it in their minds at all, and fewer still be able to define and describe it."^{4} Yet, if such exists, it must at times have been reflected on, since Criticism claims to have analysed it and bases its theory of the constructive and constitutive activity of thought largely on the results of that analysis.

To understand mind in the sense in which it is opposed to matter does imply that we already understand the material world, to some extent at least; but it does not follow from this that our knowledge of matter is prior to our knowledge of mind, still less that our knowledge of mind and matter in opposition is prior to all cognitive experience. Internal and external perception, consciousness of our own mental acts, and of changes in our environment develop side by side, and only through the continual contrasting of subject and object is knowledge possible. We cannot discuss the conditions of knowledge unless we know what knowledge is, and this we cannot know except in our own experience. The epistemologist must start from certain data, and the data which he needs for his purpose are clearly those of empirical psychology, which is merely an orderly and classified arrangement of the functionings of the human mind which may be verified by anyone who will reflect.

§ 51. The psychological aspect of Criticism was recognised by Kant, who distinguished two questions which Criticism has to answer, the psychological question as to the existence in the mind of the forms which we use in Cognition, and the transcendental question as to the validity of these forms. The discussion of the first question Dr. Vailinger calls a Transcendental Psychology. It is a psychology inasmuch as it is an analysis and a classification of the processes of cognition; and it is transcendental in that the classification is made with a view to discussing the relations of the forms, thus classified, to phenomena or to the object of knowledge. The latter problem is of course of primary importance in Criticism, since its aim is to discover the conditions of the possibility of knowledge. But, though Criticism is thus primarily and essentially an epistemology, it may in truth be said to have a psychological basis, since it presupposes a psychological analysis of cognition. Later Criticism seems to borrow even more from psychologist. It attempts to trace the development of mind from a state of vague consciousness in which discrimination and distinction are at a minimum, through a consciousness of objects posited by itself to a consciousness of itself as mind. And this process, though attributed by later critical philosophers to the Absolute, is at bottom a general, if somewhat mystical, account of the development of individual human minds; and therefore may be said to lean upon psychology.

§ 52. How, then, can we account for Dr. Caird's refusal to admit that Criticism involves psychology? It would seem to be due, in the first place, to the narrow view which he takes of the latter science. Not only does he describe it as 'the latest and most complex product' of knowledge; but he defines it as a science which treats only of the knowledge which man has of himself "as a human being, distinguished from other human beings, from the animals and from nature in general, and standing in definite relations to each of them." Yet psychology is more than this. It is not merely comparative, it is introspective: it is a study of mind and of mental operations in general. It treats not only of man's relations to other conscious beings, but also of his knowledge of himself as a thinking, willing, and self-conscious subject. Hence it includes a knowledge of man, "regarded simply as a self, the thinking subject which is implied in all objects of knowledge."^{5}

Another reason why Dr. Caird excludes psychology from Criticism is that he wrongly identifies the psychological with the Lockian standpoint in regard to knowledge. He complains that in the psychological or Lockian view of knowledge, consciousness of objects is reduced to consciousness of the states of our own minds. We are thus involved in a closed cycle. The mind is imprisoned within itself and knows nothing of the world without. Hence psychology becomes the sum-total of all possible knowledge. This error Criticism claims to have remedied by substituting for the closed cycle of our own ideas the closed cycle of the intelligible world and by insisting that though we cannot know objects except in relation to a conscious self, yet knowledge must always be knowledge of objects.^{6} The argument here used is valid, and the Lockian view is certainly an error which needs correction; but it is curious that Dr. Caird should have refused admit psychology as the basis of the Critical Theory of Knowledge because psychology, in his opinion, does not recognise the distinction of subject and object; for it is precisely because Criticism recognises this distinction as fundamental in knowledge that Professor James and Mr. Shadworth Hodgson maintain that "Kantian philosophy, and those philosophies which have, as it were, sprung from its loins, never get beyond the psychological point of view."^{7} At any rate, all psychology is not Lockian psychology; and that objective reference which Locke seems to deny to our ideas by the introspective psychologist fully admitted. True, the latter takes as the object of his present Thinking his own thought-processes and ideas. But introspection, so far from implying a confusion between thought-processes and their objects, on the contrary, reveals the psychological fact that all ideas have objective reference; and not only is the object of thought, whether internal or external, always regarded by us as distinct from our thoughts about it, but in most cases it is regarded as distinct from and external to ourselves. And whatever metaphysicians may have to say about the validity of this distinction, if any distinction is psychological, certainly the distinction of subject and object is such, for it appears as the universal characteristic of all human cognition and indeed of all conscious ness of which we have any experience.

§ 53. This will, I take it, be generally admitted so far as our experience goes; but the pragmatist denies that the distinction is ultimate, and hence with Mr. Hodgson, accuses Kantian philosophies of never transcending the psychological point of view. All philosophies of 'pure' experience regard the distinction of subject and object as the product of mental development either in the individual or in the race. It is a datum of our experience, but not of pure experience. The ultimate data of experience consist of process-contents of consciousness, but not of process-contents of consciousness as distinguished from realities. Consciousness and perception cannot themselves be perceived except in contradistinction from reality, and therefore not until reality and real existence have a meaning for us. Mr. Hodgson therefore concludes that the distinction of subject and object belongs to a more complex kind of knowledge from which it is possible to abstract.^{8}

In considering this objection we may remark, in the first place, that it is not quite clear what Mr. Hodgson means by saying that consciousness can only be recognised as such in distinction from reality, for surely consciousness itself is a reality. He may mean that consciousness can only be recognised as such in distinction from what is nonconscious, or he may be referring to the distinction of the conscious self from all that is not the conscious self, or to the distinction between the self, psychical corporeal, and the rest of the universe, or, again, merely to the distinction between thought and its object, whatever that object may be. In the latter case the distinction is certainly fundamental for thought, since thought, without objective reference, is not thought at all, and it would seem that the distinction arises in consciousness as soon as we begin to reflect. But in neither case is the distinction ultimate, if by 'ultimate' is meant that it appears at the dawn of conscious life, for to mere sentient experience there is doubtless no such distinction. Hence, in regard to those absolutists who identify being and thought, the objection that they never transcend the psychological point of view has some foundation, since, asserting, as they do, that the relation of objects to a conscious self, or, in other words, the subject-object distinction, is the latent presupposition of all knowledge, they are unable to explain the apparent evolution of self-consciousness in the individual. For if there is nothing but thought, and if for thought the subject-object distinction is ultimate, how is it that it is not for several years that an infant is able to make this distinction?

§ 54. The statement that the subject-object distinction is not ultimate may mean, however, not that it is not ultimate for all forms of consciousness, but that it is not ultimate as a fact. And in this sense the statement would be endorsed, not only by pragmatic philosophers of 'pure' experience, but also by many philosophers who adopt the standpoint of Absolutism, who admit Immanence as a fundamental principle, and whose method is that of a critical regress, but who, nevertheless, prefer to regard being, not as thought, but rather, with Fichte, as an Indifference-point, with Mr. Wallace, as 'potential consciousness' in which ego and non-ego are not distinguished, or, with Mr. Bradley, as Sentient Experience. Yet to all alike the doctrine opens the way to difficulties, not only metaphysical, but also psychological. If the subject-object distinction is not a fact, how does such a distinction arise in consciousness? If ego and non-ego are ultimate one, how is it that they appear to be distinct?

The genetic psychologist can trace the genesis of the ideas of 'self' and of an 'external world,' but his skill is of no avail to Absolutism. The ordinary solution, scil., that the distinction of ego and non-ego arises from the contrast between the active and passive aspects of consciousness, apart from the difficulties inherent in such an explanation, is of no use to the absolutist. For why should passivity appear as a limitation of the ego by a non-ego? If it be due to something outside us, the non-ego itself is (according to the doctrine of Immanence) outside knowledge; and if it arise from within, and be due to the nature of mind, its origin is every bit as much a mystery as the distinction which it is said to explain. Mr. Bradley gives the problem up, as he does so many other problems of interest and importance, on the ground that he is not bound to explain everything so long as he is consistent in what he does explain. But though the reply refugio in mysterium, like that of a Deus ex machina, is convenient and may be acceptable from the point of view of thought-economy, it can hardly be satisfactory to the true philosopher. The inability of absolutists to account for the origin of the subject-object distinction must count heavily, therefore, against their interpretation of reality, and especially against the doctrine of Immanence, to which that inability is due. For if Immanence is false, the difficulty vanishes, since subject and object, ego and non-ego, are then distinct, not only for thought, but in reality; while that the intellect is capable of understanding the meaning and implication of the data of experience, or, in other words, of apprehending in them the nature of real objects, is presupposed as the condition of the possibility of knowledge.

§ 55. The same difficulty also confronts the pragmatist, if, in addition to his Pragmatism, he adopt a philosophy of pure experience, as most would seem to do. In attempting to answer the difficulty, however, he takes a somewhat different line from that of the Absolutist. Assuming, with a singularly whole-hearted enthusiasm, the doctrine of Evolution, he replies, with Dr. Schiller, that the distinction of subject and object is the product of an evolutionary process, and assigns its origin to just that moment when the human mind passed from the sentient to the intelligent level of consciousness. Or, to put the matter in another way: the subject-object distinction is due to thought and thought is but a higher (i.e., a more useful) form of sentience. But in the first place evolution, as a general doctrine, is not yet established; and even if it were, that thought should, by some mysterious process, evolve itself from sentience, is wholly incomprehensible. They are, indeed, intimately connected, and in perception seem to act together as a functional unit; but, taken in abstraction -- as we must take them when, as psychologists, we are treating scientifically of their relations one to another -- feeling is essentially different from thought. By thought we break up the unity of the presented object; we distinguish it from ourselves and from other things; we abstract from it characteristics which are common to a class; we apprehend the relations of these characteristics one to another; and we join them together to form concepts of the most varied and intricate complexity. The senses, on the other hand, do none of these things. By them we get feelings and frame pictures; but for sentience there are no universals, no relations, no conscious analysing and synthesising of characteristics, no distinguishing of subject and object, and no unities in difference which we apprehend as such. Hence the doctrine that thought has been, or is, evolved from mere sentient experience is untenable, unless we suppose that the being, in which this evolution takes place, has already in potentia the faculty of thought. From 'pure' experience, as such, the power of rational thought cannot have been evolved, nor yet the distinction of subject and object. Granted an embryonic human mind, in which intellectual powers are latent, it is conceivable that intellectual functions should appear in the course of its development. It is conceivable also that the distinction of subject and object should, in this sense, have been 'evolved,' given real subjects and real objects and the power of the former to apprehend the significance of certain sense-data. But the evolution of intellect from a lower form of consciousness in which it was not even present in potentia is a sheer impossibility.

§ 56. Granted, however, for the sake of argument, that this is not so, it is still impossible for the pragmatic philosopher of pure experience to account for the subject-object distinction. It is a fact that at some time or other we begin to distinguish objects from ourselves and to regard the latter as external and independent of both body and mind. And the usual explanation of this is that it is our way of distinguishing between states of consciousness in which we feel resistance but ourselves are comparatively passive, and states of consciousness in which we are aware of our own activity. For, in the former, what is experienced is beyond our control, and so independent, while, in the latter, we can modify the content of consciousness pretty much as we please. Again, what is comparatively permanent in consciousness we regard as part of ourselves, and what is transient, changing from moment to moment, we regard as external. But, even granted that our belief in an external world is valid, this account of its origin presents many difficulties. For instance, it is not only in the perception of what we call 'external' objects that we are passive, but also when enduring a pain in any part of the body, and as such pains are also, as a rule, independent of our control, they ought to appear external. Again, the bodily 'tone' can afford but a meagre basis for the distinction in question, since it is only in a very broad sense that it can be said to be constant, comprising, as it does, sensations which arise from ever-varying bodily conditions and emotions and moods, the inconstancy of which is notorious. Hence, unless it be admitted that the mind can, by some sort of intuition, apprehend the significance of these and other sense-data -- a significance which does not exist in a philosophy of 'pure' experience -- our explanation breaks down. Doubtless certain experiences of the sentient order are succeeded by belief in an external world, but to identify these psychological antecedents of belief, which are revealed only by psychological analysis, with the belief itself is to be guilty of the psychologist's fallacy. For belief in an external world and the sensation-complexes which are supposed to give rise to it are not the same thing; and, as M. Boutroux says, "we have no more right to identify belief in external reality with the sense experiences which, so the psychologist says, result in such a belief, than we have to identify man with the chemical elements of which his body is composed."

The distinction of subject and object, self and not-self, internal and external, can be explained, then, neither by the pragmatic philosopher of 'pure' experience, nor by the absolutist, no matter whether the latter identifies reality with thought or with sentient-experience, or with any other of its manifold characteristics. Yet such distinctions, whether ultimate or not, are among the data of our experience. And if 'to get beyond the psychological point of view' means to deny the validity of these distinctions, it were better to stay where we are rather than to adopt a doctrine which declares such glaring facts to be so hopeless a mystery.

§ 57. To return, however, to the psychology of Criticism. Psychological data are presupposed by Criticism, no less than by other theories of knowledge; nor do I think that this could have been called in question by the late Dr. Caird had he rightly understood the standpoint of the psychologist. A knowledge of the processes of cognition is necessary in order to construct a theory of knowledge, and that knowledge must be gained by an introspective study of perception and thought as it takes place in the human mind. Yet it is false to say that Criticism never gets beyond the psychological point of view, for its enquiry is in regard to the conditions and presuppositions of knowledge. Indeed, we may say of Criticism, what Fichte said of his own philosophy, that, in essence, it is neither a psychology, nor a political science, nor yet a theory of morals, but a Wissenschaftslehre, a theory of knowledge. For this theory of knowledge human psychology provides the data; and the human character of the problem was recognised by Kant, who never confuses human with divine knowledge. But, unfortunately, later Criticism, beginning with Fichte himself, lost sight of this significant distinction The metaphysical and critical aspects of the theory became more and more prominent, till at last the real basis of Kant's Apriorism was forgotten, and a human psychology was converted into a psychology of the Absolute. In Absolutism, so all-absorbing has the idea of Absolute knowledge and Absolute truth become, that the more pressing problems of human knowledge and human truth are neglected, and absolutists content themselves with the assertion that somehow or other, but in a very imperfect way, the knowledge which belongs to the Absolute is reproduced in finite centres of experience, more commonly known as human minds. Absolutism forgets that to assign the metaphysical conditions of knowledge is but a means to an end, and that the primary question for the epistemologist is to determine how far human cognition is valid and objective. This is unfortunate, for, as the pragmatist says, what we are most concerned with is human truth, not Absolute truth; human knowledge, not knowledge in general. To ascertain the conditions which make knowledge possible is but part of the problem of epistemology, which should also apply these conditions in the concrete in order to ascertain the nature, extent and validity of human claims to truth. That human knowledge is not simply experiencing without something experienced and a somebody who experiences it, that it implies a metaphysic, and without a metaphysic cannot be understood, I fully agree; but a metaphysic of the Absolute or of the Universe in general is not the final aim of the theory of knowledge. Absolutism is right in regarding psychology as of secondary importance, since its function is merely to furnish us with data. But the function of a metaphysic of the Absolute is also of secondary importance in a Wissenschaftslehre, and should not be allowed to obscure the end and purpose of the latter, which is to discover the conditions of human knowledge and to ascertain the criterion of human truth. Kant's view of the function of epistemology was sound, and whatever we may think of his metaphysics or of the solution which he gives to the problem of knowledge, it must be granted that he was faithful to the true instinct of an epistemologist. Throughout his three Critiques, it is the solution of the problems of human knowledge that is ever before his mind. From beginning to end it is with human knowledge alone that he is concerned, and his final purpose to determine the extent and sense in which that knowledge is valid, is ever kept in view.

§ 58. In regard to the psychological data of which Absolutism makes use, there is, for the most part, nothing peculiar or distinctive. It has not a psychology of its own, but accepts in general the data which are revealed by introspection, though the latter, when described by a believer in the Absolute, are often tinged by the Absolute point of view. The different objects and qualities which we perceive, for instance, and which belong apparently to an outside world, are described as differences which break out within the unity of a felt or experienced whole. Of this, more later; but, for the present, it is sufficient that in the main Absolutism is careful to distinguish between what is a datum of experience and what is not. It does not claim that its a priori forms and categories are experienced as such in our cognitive acts. They are implied therein, for without them knowledge would be impossible; but they are not introspective data. On this point no fault can be found with Absolutism. The exigencies of a satisfactory theory of knowledge and of the universe at large may necessitate the assertion that the objects of knowledge are not material and independent objects, but rather ideas immanent within the universal mind by whose thought-activity they are posited or produced. But such an assertion clearly belongs to theory, and is not an experimental fact; nor does it pretend to be other than what it is. Material, concrete and individual things are interpreted as appearances, and common-sense belief in the reality of such things is declared to be invalid. But the existence of such beliefs is not denied. They are rejected because they are said to be full of contradictions, and because they are inconsistent with the only theory which seems to be able -- in the opinion of many -- to give a consistent and satisfactory explanation of the universe, of which human knowledge is but an aspect or a part.

§ 59. On the other hand, there is some truth in the pragmatist's statement that Absolutism neglects many of the characteristics of human cognition. In spite of the prominent place assigned in Hegel's philosophy to the Idea which is at once the Ground and telos of the Universe, purposes and needs are much neglected by Absolutism, and their relation to Cognition is not adequately discussed. Absolutism is inclined to take a purely intellectual or rational view of the universe, and to subordinate Will to Thought. That a theory of the universe must satisfy our whole nature in its intellectual, emotional, and volitional sides alike, is not denied; but practically in the construction of the metaphysics of Absolutism mention is seldom made of emotional needs or of the purposes which express themselves in the strivings of our will. The reason of this omission is obvious. The Second Critique of Kant does not form part of the foundation upon which Absolutism has been built, and it was in this Critique that Kant treated of the value of human ideals. Moreover, when Reality and Thought are regarded as one, and when, in place of human knowledge is substituted the knowledge which pertains to the Absolute, it is but natural that human purposes and human needs, whose force is felt by us largely because we are finite beings, should be overlooked in the absorbing interest of that one Being who is all-perfect and all-complete, who embraces and realises in himself all that exists; and who, consequently, has neither needs nor postulates, since his nature is not finite. Cognition in the Absolute is prompted, not by purposes and needs which seek their realisation in something outside; but exists because the Absolute realises itself in itself and for itself.

§ 60. In the Criticism of Kant, on the other hand, where knowledge is, as I have said, regarded not from the Absolute, but from the human point of view, neither is the function of purposes and needs obscured by intellectualism, nor does Kant go to the other extreme and make the principle of postulation universal, as do the pragmatists; though he assigns to it a function, the scope of which is sufficiently, if not too great. For him, as for Professor James, all metaphysical theories are postulates, based on ideals which human purposes and needs prompt us to strive to realise. Metaphysics is matter, not of knowledge, but of faith. Nor can it be said that Kant makes the mind as passive in its acts of cognition as it is supposed to be in the theory which treats it as a tabula rasa. His categories are not merely receptacles into which phenomena are poured like molten liquid into a mould. Doubtless Kant's treatment of Space and Time and his table of Categories lend themselves somewhat to this view; but to limit thus his conception of the function of mind is to distort his meaning. For he insists again and again upon the constructive activity of thought. Thought, both speculative and practical, is essentially active, imposing its forms on nature; as speculative it constructs from confused perceptive data its world of experience, and as practical it moulds the rebellious impulses of the sensuous order into harmony with the autonomous dictates of reason.

The psychology of Kant, therefore, seems to me to be far more complete than the psychology of Absolutism. Its chief defect is that Kant isolates too much the functions of the various cognitive faculties, and neglects to treat of their relations one to another. Sense-data are synthesised under the forms of Space and Time, and again under the categories; but of the relation of the forms of Space and Time to the categories, or to the schemata of the imagination under which, provisionally, they are grouped, or, yet again, to the principles of reason, Kant has nothing to tell us. He assumes that all these faculties function in harmony, but how this harmony is brought about he does not say, nor does he assign any sufficient reason for the necessity of the many and varied functions, which, for him, are involved in an act of cognition. Neither does the absolutist throw any light upon these unsolved Kantian problems. Instead, neglecting what Kant did insist upon -- the purposive nature of human thought, he has become a pure intellectualist and so has evoked a pragmatic reaction.

{1} Critical Philosophy of Kant, p. 10.

{2} Ibid.

{3} Ibid., p. 11.

{4} Ibid., pp. 18, 19.

{5} Critical Philosophy of Kant, p. 11.

{6} Ibid., pp. 12-15.

{7} The Metaphysics of Experience, vol. i., p. ix.

{8} The Metaphysics af Experience, vol. i., p. 16.