the duty of analysing the varied and complex forms in which they are related in special cases. And when, on the other hand, he identifies the opposition of subject and object with the distinction between self and not-self, in analysing the self into its varied factors he ignores the aspect of character or subjectivity which is the fundamental feature whereby a self is distinguished from all other objects.[1] To this separate treatment of these allied distinctions we may ascribe both the misleading plausibility and the complete failure of his attempted re-establishment of a scientific realism.
In conclusion I may sum up my criticisms of Avenarius’ theory of the introjectionist argument. He gives two quite distinct and conflicting statements of it. Both cannot be true, and, as I have tried to show, both are in some degree false. If introjection is interpreted in the wider sense as covering the distinction between inner and outer, perceiving and perceived, it is a quite legitimate distinction, and one which has been formulated by Avenarius himself as the relative opposition of characters and contents. Animism, as the recognition of this duality and a first attempt to define it, is not so much the source of the subsequent errors of philosophy as the beginning of its positive development. And lastly, animism does not originate in the introjectionist argument but in the interpretation of a very special set of concrete phenomena. Avenarius, therefore, has not succeeded in proving either that introjection in this abstract form is a fallacy or that its concrete embodiment in animism is the ultimate source of metaphysical error. If, on the other hand, introjection is identified with subjective idealism, it is undoubtedly a fallacy, involving that self-contradictory alternation between the realistic and the idealistic attitudes which Avenarius has so acutely and suggestively analysed. As a title for this particular fallacy the term ‘introjection’ is entirely satisfactory. When Avenarius, however, presents the introjectionist argument as the generating cause of subjective idealism, his thinking is evidently perverted by a false view of the development of knowledge. He has again been misled by his confusion of animism with subjectivism, and so has been compelled to represent the latter as a universal illusion of the human mind. Such a view is refuted both by the facts of anthropology and by the actual history of philosophy. Subjectivism is a purely philosophical development which is based on physical and physiological considerations and which did not take definite form until modern times.
- ↑ For a fuller treatment of this important point, see previous article, pp. 20-21, 28-29.
