that such assertions can be made as those quoted above. Mind, as studied by the psychologist-mind as a mere fact or phenomenon-grounds no inference to anything beyond itself. The
distinction between mind viewed as a succession of “states of consciousness ” and the further aspect of mind which philosophy considers was very clearly put by Croom Robertson, who also made a happy suggestion of two terms to designate the' double point of view:
"We may view knowledge as mere subjective function, but it has its full meaning only as it is taken to represent what we may call objective fact, or is such as is named (in different circumstances) real, valid, true. As mere subjective function, which it is to the psychologist, it is best spoken of by an unambiguous name, and for this there seems none better than Intellection. We ma then say that psychology is occupied with the natural function of Yntellection, seeking to discover its laws and distinguishing its various modes (perception, representative imagination, conception, &c) according to the various circumstances in which the laws are found at work. Philosophy, on the other hand, is theory of Knowledge (as that which is known) ."-“ Psychology and Philosophy, ” Mind (1883), pp. 15, 16. The confusion of these two points of view has led, and still leads, to serious philosophical misconception. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that, in the English school since Hume, psychology superseded properly philosophical inquiry. And we find even a thinker with a wider horizon like Sir W. Hamilton encouraging the confusion by speaking of “ psychology or metaphysics, ” 1 while his lectures on metaphysics are mainly taken up with what belongs in the strictest sense to psychology proper, with an occasional excursus (as in the theory of perception) into epistemology. The distinction between psychology and theory of knowledge was 'first clearly made by Kant, who repeatedly insisted that the Critique of Pure Reason was not to be taken as a psychological inquiry. He defined his problem as the quid juris or the question of the validity of knowledge, not its quid facti or the laws of the empirical genesis and evolution of intellect ion (to use Croom Robertson's phraseology). Since Kant philosophy has chiefly taken the form of theory of knowledge or of a criticism of experience. Not, indeed, a preliminary criticism of our faculties or conceptions such as Kant himself proposed to institute, in order to determine the limits of their application; such a criticism ab extra of the nature of our experience is essentially a thing impossible. The only criticism which can be applied in such a case is the immanent-criticism which the conceptions or categories exercise upon one another. The organized criticism of these conceptions is really nothing more than the full explication of what they mean and of what experience in its full nature or notion is. This constitutes the theory of knowledge in the only tenable sense of the term, and it lays down, in Kantian language, the conditions of the possibility of experience. These conditions are the conditions of knowledge as such, or, as it may be put, of objective consciousness-of a self-consciousness of a world of objects and through them conscious of itself. The inquiry is, therefore, logical or transcendental in its nature, and does not entangle us in any decision as to the conditions of the genesis of such consciousness in the individual. When we inquire into subjective conditions we are thinking of facts causing other facts. But the logical or transcendental conditions are not causes or even factors of knowledge; they are the statement of its idea. Hence the dispute between evolutionist and transcendentalist rests, in general, on an ignoratio elerichi; for the history of the genesis of an idea (the historical or genetic method) does not contain an answer to-though it may throw light on-the philosophical question of its truth or validity. Speaking of this transcendental consciousness, Kant goes so far as to say that it is not oi the slightest consequence “ whether the idea of it be clear or obscure (in empirical consciousness), no, not even whether it really exists or not. But the possibility of the logical form of all knowledge rests on its relation to this apperception as a faculty or potentiality ” (Werke, ed. Hartenstein, 578 note). Or, if
I It is true that he afterwards modifies this misleading identification by introducing the distinction between empirical psychology or the phenomenology of mind and inferential psychology or ontology, ¢.e. metaphysics proper. But he continues to use the terms “ philosophy, " ' metaphysics, " and “mental science " as synonyHOUS-
we return to the distinction between epistemology and psychology, by way of illustrating the nature of the former, we may take the following summing up by Professor James Ward in a valuable article on “ Psychological Principles ” in Mind (April 1883, pp. 166, 167): “ Comparing psychology and epistemology, then, we may say that the former is essentially genetic in its method, and might, if we had the power to revise our existing terminology, be called biology; the latter, on the other hand, is essentially devoid of everything historical, and treats, sub specie aeternilatis, as Spinoza might have said, of human knowledge, conceived as the possession of mind in general.” Kant's problem is not, in its wording, very different from that which Locke set before him when he resolved to “ inquire into the original, certainty and extent of human knowledge together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion and assent.” Locke's Essay is undoubtedly, in its intention, a contribution to the theory of knowledge. But, because time had not yet made the matter clear, Locke suffered himself to digress in his second book into the psychological question of the origin ef our ideas; and his theory of knowledge is ruined by the failure to distinguish between the epistemological sense of “ idea ” as significant content and the psychological sense in which it ir applied to a fact or process in the individual mind. The same confusion runs through Berkeley's arguments and vitiates his conclusions as well as those of Hume. But appearing with these thinkers as the problem of perception, epistemology widens its scope and becomes, in Kant's hands, the question of the possibility of experience in general. With Hegel it passes into a completely articulated “ logic, ” which apparently claims to be at the same time a meta physic, or an ultimate expression of the nature of the real.
This introduces us to the second part of the question we are seeking to determine, namely the relation of epistemology to metaphysics. It is evident that philosophy as theory of knowledge must have for its complement philosophy as metaphysics (ontology) or theory of being. The question of the truth of our knowledge, and the question of the ultimate nature of what we know, are in reality two sides of the same inquiry, and therefore our epistemological results have to be ontologically expressed. But it is not every thinker that can see his way with Hegel to assert in set terms the identity of thought and being. Hence the theory of knowledge becomes with some a theory of human ignorance. This is the case with Herbert Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable, which he advances as the result of epistemological considerations in the philosophical prolegomena to his system. Very similar positions were maintained by Kant and Comte; and, under the name of “ agnosticism ” (g v.), the theory has popularized itself in the outer courts of philosophy, and on the shifting borderland of philosophy and literature. The truth is that the habit of thinking exclusively from the standpoint of the theory of knowledge tends to beget an undue subjectivity of temper. And the fact that it has become usual for men to think from this standpoint is very plainly seen in the almost universal description of philosophy as an analysis of “ experience, ” instead of its more old-fashioned designation as an inquiry into “ the nature of things.” As it is matter of universal agreement that the problem of being must be attacked indirectly through the problem of knowledge, this substitution may be regarded as an advance, more especially as it implies that the fact of experience, or of self-conscious existence, is the chief fact to be dealt with. But if so, then self-consciousness must be treated as itself real, and as organically related to the rest of existence. If self-consciousness be treated in this objective fashion, then we pass naturally from epistemology to metaphysics or ontology. (For, although the term “ ontology ” has been as good as disused, it still remains true that the aim of philosophy must be to furnish us with an ontology or a coherent and adequate theory of the nature of reality.) But if, on the other hand, knowledge and reality be ab initio opposed to one another-if consciousness be set on one side as over against reality, and merely holding up a mirror to it—then it follows with equal naturalness that the truly real must be something which lurks unrevealed
