nable position. He "cares not what the sects may brawl." He "holds no form of creed." There may be a reality lying beyond his consciousness or there may not: that is no concern of his: he is as determined to hold by the indubitable fact that there is in his own consciousness a series of states, as Shylock to have 'law' and nothing but 'law.' His one task is to examine this series as well as he can, and to find out by analysis what are the elementary or primitive 'states,' out of which the whole complex structure of his own consciousness has been evolved. No doubt the psychologist finds, in the course of his analysis, that he has the consciousness of an external world, and the belief in its 'trans-subjective' reality; but that consciousness and that belief are for him only a 'complex presentation,' existing nowhere but in his own mind. It is, of course, part of his duty to explain how within his own consciousness the idea of a 'trans-subjective world,' and the conviction of its existence, have grown up; but, if he is wise, he will refuse to budge one step further.
So far all seems clear. The psychologist is sure of his own mental states, but he is not responsible for what they 'mean,' or, indeed, whether they 'mean' anything. But Mr. Seth drops a remark, almost parenthetically, which brings back the old obscurity and confusion, and blurs, if it does not efface, the clear-cut lineaments of Psychology. Psychology, he says, has an experimental or physiological side, and here it is "as purely objective as it was before purely subjective." This is perplexing, and not only perplexing, but disappointing. The pure individual subject, alone in a 'God-like isolation' with his own states, seems to have been invaded by that 'trans-subjective world' of which he knows nothing. Thus Psychology, false to itself, has become Epistemology, if not even Metaphysic. Why should it thus gratuitously forsake its impregnable fortress? By what right can a science, which "ex vi termini can have no concern" with "the extra-conscious or trans-subjective," speak of "objective facts of nerve and brain"? Are these facts 'states of consciousness,' and, if not, how can the psychologist know anything about them? The psychologist may very
