# The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Psychology, Epistemology, and Metaphysics

THE
PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
PSYCHOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS.
IN what is called in the widest sense "philosophical" discussion it is tolerably well known by this time that a fruitful source of confusion and controversy has been the mixing up of psychological with strictly philosophical or metaphysical questions. This is one of the current criticisms upon the English school of thinkers as represented by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and their successors in the present century like the Mills. It is said that when we ask them for a philosophical theory of knowledge and existence, they reply with an account of the growth of consciousness in the individual sentient organism. There is a great measure of truth in this criticism. The fault of these philosophers lies, however, not in their exclusively psychological attitude, — for in that case their theories would stand as psychology, and we should look for our philosophy elsewhere, — but in their unconscious shifting from one point of view to the other. They are far from being pure psychologists; there is a great deal of philosophy or theory of knowledge in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. But they speak sometimes from one point of view, sometimes from the other, without being aware that the two points of view are different. This criticism, however, — though it is specially true of English philosophy, — applies more or less to philosophical writers in general, and hence it is encouraging to note that within quite recent times a sense of the need of greater precision has shown ​itself in the most varied quarters, English as well as continental, among empiricists as well as transcendentalists. Strenuous attempts have been made to differentiate the various questions embraced under the general term "philosophy," and assign each as a subject of inquiry to a separate science or discipline.
In this way there has been constituted what, so far as the name goes, is a new science, though the inquiries grouped under it have formed part of philosophical investigation since a very early time. This is the science which, for the last thirty years or so, the Germans have come to call distinctively Erkenntnisstheorie, or theory of knowledge. Theory of Knowledge has been the circumlocution largely adopted by English writers who have wished to enforce the distinction between these inquiries and the investigations of psychological science. But as the distinction has come more to the front, the need of a single word has been felt, — were it only, as Hamilton pointed out in the case of psychology, that we may be able to form an adjective from it, — and accordingly just as psychology supplanted the more cumbrous designations such as science or philosophy of mind, so the excellent and in every way unobjectionable title of epistemology will, in all probability, permanently take the place of the less convenient designation "theory of knowledge."
But it will be asked what is the subject of this new science, or rather what particular philosophical inquiries are to be isolated and grouped under it? To this it may be answered generally that epistemology is an investigation of knowledge as knowledge, or, in other words, of the relation of knowledge to reality, of the validity of knowledge. This, at least, is the fundamental question to which other epistemological discussions are subsidiary. The precise bearing of this definition is best seen by a contrast between epistemology and psychology in their mode of dealing with the same subject-matter; for, in a sense, the fact of knowledge belongs to psychology as much as to epistemology. This contrast has been lucidly expounded within the last few years by several writers. But the ​difference in point of view is very fairly stated by Locke, though he was one of the worst sinners in practically confounding what he had theoretically distinguished. The distinction between psychology and epistemology, indeed, is the distinction between the Second Book of the Essay and the Fourth, and this Locke explains in his Introduction as follows: "First, I shall inquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes, and is conscious to himself he has in his mind; and the ways whereby the understanding comes to be furnished with them." This is pure psychology — what, he asks, are the mental states which constitute the individual mind, and into what elementary facts may they be analyzed — of what primitive facts may the more complex be the result? "Secondly [he proceeds], I shall endeavor to show what knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it." This is the question of epistemology: What knowledge can I have of the world of men and things, by means of my mental states?
Psychology, according to Locke's way of putting it, deals with "ideas," which he defines as "the immediate objects of the mind in thinking"; it treats ideas as mental facts which have an existence of their own in consciousness. Epistemology deals with the "knowledge" which we reach by means of these ideas or immediate mental facts. It takes the ideas not as themselves bits of fact, but as signs or symbols of some further reality; it takes them, in short, as ideas of things. Hence the word "idea," taken even in the wide sense in which it is used by Locke, is not a good one to employ in a psychological reference; for it inevitably contains this epistemological implication, this reference of the mental state to something beyond itself. "States of consciousness," as Mr. Ward suggests, would be a more appropriate and colorless designation for the objects of psychological science. The psychologist deals with psychical events merely as such; the world of conscious states is the ​reality with which alone he is concerned, and each state of consciousness is a real fact in that world — a fact occurring at a definite time and in a definite set of connections with other psychical facts. The interconnections of this factual world, the laws of the happening of psychical events, are what the psychologist has to investigate.
It is only for the psychologist, however, that mental states are interesting on their own account, as subjective realities or facts. To every one else they are interesting only for what they mean, for the knowledge they give us of a world beyond themselves. Viewed in themselves, the mental states are, as it were, only instrumental; by them, as Locke says, the understanding hath knowledge. They are merely a mechanism by which a world of men and things is somehow revealed to me. It is only for the psychologist, I say, that the investigation of this mechanism, as a mechanism, has an interest. To all the rest of mankind ideas or presentations are interesting only for the knowledge they give us of a reality beyond themselves. In point of fact, we never pause to consider them as what they are in themselves, — we treat them consistently as significant, as ideas of something, as representative or symbolic of a world of facts. Now it is from this latter point of view that epistemology considers ideas.
Of course this distinction, even the manner of stating it, is far from being new. Not to go further back, it is drawn with great clearness in the writings of Descartes and his followers. In fact, considerable emphasis is laid upon it in the Cartesian philosophy, and a special terminology is employed to designate it. "Ideas," says Descartes himself, "may be taken in so far only as they are certain modes of consciousness," and so regarded, "they all seem in the same manner to proceed from myself." That is to say, they are all subjective functions or psychical events. But they may also be considered "as images, of which one represents one thing and another a different." So far as the idea is taken simply as an act or function of the mind, ​a subjective fact, it is said by the Cartesians to have "esse formale seu proprium"; so far as it is taken in its representative capacity, as standing for some object thought, it is said to have an objective or vicarious being — esse objectivum sive vicarium. There is a tendency in the Cartesian school to appropriate the term "idea" in the first or psychological sense, and to use "perception" in the epistemological reference. Perception is certainly a term which should be the exclusive property of the epistemologist; and it is satisfactory, therefore, to note that the most recent psychologists seem inclined to substitute for it the term "presentation." But the term "idea" also, as we have seen, belongs more appropriately to epistemology, and so pre-eminently of course do such terms as "knowledge" and "cognition." As already indicated, the best general psychological equivalent is states of consciousness, mental states, psychical functions.
In accordance with what has been said, Epistemology may be intelligibly described as dealing with the relation of knowledge to reality. Of course, if we take reality in the widest sense, our cognitive states are also part of reality; they also are. The wildest fancy that flits through the mind exists in its own way, fills out its own moment of time, and takes its individual place in the fact-continuum which constitutes the universe. But, as we have seen, this aspect of mental facts may be conveniently neglected, and hence reality in the above phrase comes to be used in a narrower sense. It means not necessarily physical or material realities, but realities which have a different fashion of existence from the fleeting and evanescent mode of psychical states — beings or things which are in some sense permanent and independent, which at all events have a reality different in kind from that of mental states. This reference of ideas to a world of reality beyond themselves is what is meant when knowledge is contrasted with reality, and when question is made of the relation of the one to the other.
This way of putting the epistemological problem may be said to beg the question at issue between Idealism and Realism — inasmuch as the terminology is incompatible with those ​idealistic theories which deny, or seem to deny, the existence of any such extra-conscious reality as is here spoken of. In truth, however, this is not so; for in any case this dualism seems to exist, and so, if not justified, it has to be explained away. Subjective idealism, accordingly, must have an epistemology of its own, even if it be only of a negatively critical character. For indeed no theory can deny the contrast between the present content of consciousness and that which it symbolizes or stands for. No theorist takes the particular mental state as independent and self-sufficient; he cannot avoid referring it beyond itself. But if he is a subjective idealist, say like Mill, he will try to avoid the acknowledgment that this reference of present consciousness beyond itself carries us beyond consciousness altogether. He will explain it as a reference of a particular mental state to a permanent law of connection between mental states, and thus convey the impression that the reality to which the subjective consciousness refers is still in a manner within that consciousness. This does not appear to me to be an adequate account of the facts, but what I am concerned to show just now is only that the epistemological question is not determined out of hand by the way in which it has been defined. The essential epistemological contrast is as fully recognized by Mill as any Realist could wish to see it. Take his own words in evidence: "The conception I form of the world existing at any moment, comprises, along with the sensations I am feeling, a countless variety of possibilities of sensation. . . . These various possibilities are the important thing to me in the world. My present sensations are generally of little importance, and are, moreover, fugitive; the possibilities, on the contrary, are permanent, which is the character that mainly distinguishes our idea of Substance or Matter from our notion of sensation." This reference of the "fugitive" content of consciousness to a "permanent," which is somehow beyond it (a reference which Mill admits and emphasizes), is just what we ordinarily mean by knowledge, and as such it constitutes the problem of epistemology. But the unavoidable acknowledgment of this contrast, of this reference, does not imply any decision as to the ​nature of the "permanent," or the precise sense in which the "beyond" is to be understood. It may be Mill's permanent possibilities of sensation, it may be the unconscious matter of popular philosophy, it may be an infinite number of monadic consciousnesses, or it may be a system of divine or objective thought. These are further questions, to be determined partly by epistemology, partly by metaphysics, but they all equally presuppose that epistemological dualism which can be denied only by a theory which would be content with the momentary presentations of sense, as they come and go in hopeless entanglement and disarray.
To recapitulate, then. Psychology, assuming the existence of a subject or medium of consciousness, seeks to explain, mainly by the help of association or processes practically similar, how out of the come-and-go of conscious states, there are evolved such subjective facts as perceptions, the belief in an independent real world, and the idea of the Ego or subject himself. It investigates how such ideas and beliefs come to pass, but it does not touch the further question whether they are well-founded or no. They may be a correct account of the real state of things, or they may be illusions; but anyway they are beliefs, subjective facts which may be shown with probability to have arisen in a certain way. And that is enough for psychology which, so far as it sticks to its own last, does not seek to go beyond the inner world of the subject. The external world, so far as psychology treats it, is simply a complex presentation in consciousness, a subjective object: with the extra-conscious or trans-subjective psychology ex vi termini can have no concern. Belief in a trans-subjective world may, indeed, — must, in fact, — be treated by the psychologist. But that belief, again, he treats simply as a subjective fact; he analyzes its constituents and tells us the complex elements of which it is built up; he tells us with great precision what we do believe, but so far as he is a pure psychologist he does not attempt to tell us whether our belief is true, whether we have real warrant for it. On that point he is dumb.
If it is objected that this view of psychology, as limited to ​the subjective world, is insufficient, seeing that in great part of his work the psychologist is bound to assume the correlation of mind and body, and the existence of an external cause of impressions, I reply that, on its physiological or experimental side, psychology simply places itself at the point of view of the other sciences. It is now as purely objective as it was before purely subjective. It takes up its position in the object from the outset, and treats subjective facts themselves as objective, i.e. as mere appendages or accompaniments of the objective facts of nerve and brain. Psychology is thus either purely subjective or purely objective in its standpoint, according as we look at it. What it does not deal with is the nature of the relation between the subject and the object, which is exemplified in every act of knowledge.
Now it is the essential function of epistemology to deal with this very relation, to investigate it on the side of its validity, its truth. With what right do we pass beyond our subjective states? What is the ground of our belief in an independent world? Our cognitive states appear to refer themselves to a reality which we know by their means. Epistemology does not, like psychology, rest in the appearance. It seeks to determine whether the appearance is true, and, if true, in what sense precisely it is to be understood. The point on which psychology is dumb, forms the central problem of epistemological science. What is reality, the epistemologist asks. Is there any reality beyond the conscious states themselves and their connections? If there is, in what sense can we be said to know it? Is knowledge, inference, or belief, the most appropriate word to use in the circumstances? The fundamental question of external perception thus broadens out into a general consideration of the foundations of belief. And, accordingly, the whole inquiry might be fitly enough so described in a more generalized fashion namely, as an inquiry into "the foundations of belief." So it is described by Mr. Arthur Balfour in the sub-title of his Defence of Philosophic Doubt, a book which may be regarded as one of the most brilliant of recent English contributions towards an epistemology or theory of knowledge in the strict sense of ​these terms. Mr. Balfour expressly defines his subject-matter as "a systematic account of the grounds of belief and disbelief," and he is at pains in his introductory chapter to distinguish the inquiry most carefully from psychology, on the one hand, so far as that investigates merely the growth and causes of a belief, and on the other hand from metaphysics or ontology.
For on this side also the line requires to be drawn. If epistemology is not to be confounded with psychology on the one hand, neither is it to be identified with metaphysics on the other. The prevalent confusion in English philosophy between the two first has been well exposed by Kantian and Hegelian writers, but some of them have themselves fallen into a new confusion between epistemology and metaphysics. A considerable section of my last course of Balfour Lectures was devoted, indeed, to showing that English Neo-Kantianism, as it ​has come to be called, seeks to establish metaphysical positions by arguments which are purely epistemological; and therefore unconvincing when stretched beyond their proper application. And in this respect I have seen no reason, during the years that have elapsed, to change the views I then expressed. For it must not be forgotten that the question which epistemology finds before it is the relation of the individual knower to a world of reality a world — whose very existence it is bound to treat at the outset as problematical. How, or in what sense, does the individual knower transcend his own individual existence and become aware of other men and things? It is this relatively simple and manifestly preliminary question which epistemology has to take up. Subjective states are plainly our data; it is there we have our foothold, our pied à terre; but unless we can step beyond them, metaphysics in any constructive sense can hardly make a beginning. Epistemology, if its results are negative, necessarily leads to a thoroughgoing scepticism; but if its results are positive, it only clears the way for metaphysical construction or hypothesis. The mere fact that we believe ourselves to have successfully made the leap from the subjective to a real which is independent of our subjectivity, does not reveal to us off-hand the ultimate ground or essence of that real. Epistemology, in short, has to do entirely with the relation of the subjective consciousness to a trans-subjective world which it knows or seems to know. Metaphysics has to do with the ultimate nature of the reality which reveals itself alike in the consciousness which knows and the world which is known. The categories of the one are subjective and trans-subjective (conscious state and real being); the categories of the other are pre-eminently essence and appearance.
It is true we use some categories in both connections; but if we look more carefully we shall find that they bear a totally different sense in the two cases, and grievous is the damage that has ensued to philosophy from the failure to keep the two senses separate. The much-abused term "phenomenon" is one of those double-faced words; phenomenon in a metaphysical reference is the manifestation or revelation of an essence or ​indwelling reality. When the poet speaks of "a Presence which disturbs him with the joy of elevated thoughts, a motion and a spirit which impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought," he is metaphysically contrasting the essential Spirit with the universe of intelligences and intelligibilia, which are its manifestation or phenomenon. Natura naturata, in the old phrase, is the phenomenon of natura naturans. If, with Goethe, we say that nature is the garment of God by which we see Him, we make nature the phenomenon of a divine essence. If we take atoms and the void as our metaphysical principia, then the human consciousness and the variegated face of nature as it appears to that consciousness are phenomena of what Berkeley calls the materialist's "stupid thoughtless somewhat." If we say with the Hegelians that Thought is the ultimate reality which manifests itself alike in nature and man, we are engaged with the same metaphysical contrast; if we say Will with Schopenhauer or the Unconscious with Hartman, it is still the same it is a metaphysical contrast, a metaphysical problem, which engages us. But phenomenon has also come to be used in an epistemological reference, and then it means, and ought to be restricted to mean, the subjective state as contrasted with the trans-subjective reality known by means of that state. In that sense, familiar to us from Kant, to say that we know only phenomena means that we know only our own conscious states and cannot know "things-in-themselves," that is to say, the trans-subjective realities of which our states are the evidence. Here it is obvious the use of the term "phenomenon" is quite a new one. Nor is the epistemological thing-in-itself to be identified with the metaphysical essence. For even if we possessed that knowledge of trans-subjective realities which Kantianism denies, we should still be dealing only with phenomena in the metaphysical sense with the particular existences of the universe, not with the essence or universal of which they are the expression. When such a serious ambiguity is discovered lurking in a term which is so freely bandied about as "phenomena," it may well be doubted whether the controversialists ​are always clear as to the sense in which they mean it to be taken.
But, indeed, the time-honored title of Idealism itself covers a double entendre of a similar description, according as it is used metaphysically or epistemologically. Metaphysically, Idealism is opposed most ordinarily to Materialism; in the widest sense it is the opposite of what may be called the mechanical and atheistic view of the universe, whatever special form that may take. Is self-conscious thought with its ideal ends, — the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, — the self-realizing End that works in changes and makes it Evolution? or are these but the casual outcome of a mechanical system — a system in its ultimate essence indifferent to the results which in its gyrations it has unwittingly created and will as unwittingly destroy? Is thought or matter the prius? Is the ultimate essence and cause of all things only "dust that rises up, and is lightly laid again"; or is it the Eternal Love of Dante's Vision — "the love that moves the sun and the other stars"? That is the fundamental metaphysical antithesis. If we embrace the, one alternative, however we may clothe it in detail, we recognize the universe as our home, and we may have a religion; if we embrace the other, then the spirit of man is indeed homeless in an alien world. In the plain, impressive words of Marcus Aurelius — "the universe is either a confusion and a dispersion, or it is unity and order and providence. If it is the former, why do I care about anything else than how I shall at last become earth? But if the other supposition is true, I venerate, and I am firm and I trust in Him who governs." Marcus Aurelius expresses the difference from the religious or practical side; from the speculative side the difference is, as I have said, a metaphysical one, and all the theories which support the latter alternative may be embraced under the generic name of Idealism.
​Quite distinct from this metaphysical Idealism, however, is the epistemological Idealism which is opposed, not to Materialism, but to Realism. Here the question at issue is not the problem of the ultimate constitution of the universe; it is the question of the theory of knowledge — in its most obvious and easy form, — the question of the external world and the nature of the existence we are prepared to assign to it. Has it any existence beyond the minds of the conscious beings who perceive it, or is percipi its whole esse? Does the actual and possible experience of conscious beings constitute an exhaustive account of its modus essendi? Is it a mere phenomenon, a mental appearance, or does it possess in some sense an extra-conscious reality of its own? The question might be more exactly formulated, for as soon as we essay a solution we find that it involves not only the existence of what we usually call the external world, but all existence whatever beyond my conscious states. It includes, therefore, the validity of my belief in the existence of other conscious beings. But the question itself and its details are not at present before us: we are not called upon at this stage to do more than indicate its general nature. It is obvious that we are here in the presence of a set of problems of a widely different range and import from the metaphysical problem indicated a minute or two ago. We are dealing with the preliminary question of the extent and validity of knowledge — in a word, with epistemology, not with metaphysics or ontology. It is equally obvious that epistemological Idealism does not coincide with the metaphysical Idealism sketched above. Berkeley is usually classed as a subjective Idealist in the epistemological sense; and if we accept this classification, we might say that in his case the two senses of Idealism happen to fit the same person. But Berkeley is NOT a consistent subjective idealist: he is only an immaterialist. He believes in the real trans-subjective existence of other finite spirits, and of God the infinite Spirit, and it is his epistemological Realism in these respects that enables him to reach his metaphysical Idealism — his conviction of order and reason at the heart of things. Consistent epistemological idealism must ​be Solipsism at the best; indeed, it is Hume, not Berkeley, that is in this sense an idealist of the purest water, and Hume is not so much as a Solipsist. It might easily be shown that epistemological Idealism inevitably conducts us in consistency to scepticism of the Humian or an essentially similar type. Where a so-called Idealism fails to reach this goal, it is in virtue of the realistic elements which it inconsistently adopts into its system. Such a line of argument would form a convincing proof from history of the distinction on which I am insisting between epistemology and metaphysics. For scepticism is, of course, so far from being allied to metaphysical Idealism that it would rather require to be bracketed with materialism. Though, of course, not dogmatic like the latter, it ranks with it as a philosophy of despair. If epistemological Idealism is thus twin brother of Scepticism, it is plain, on the other hand, from what I have said, that a thinker may be, epistemologically, a strenuous Realist, and at the same time an Idealist in the broad metaphysical sense of the term. He is such an Idealist if he recognizes that all the real individuals whose trans-subjective existence he maintains are "moments in the being" of an intelligently directed Life. Indeed, as has been hinted, it is only in virtue of epistemological Realism that we can avoid Scepticism and so much as begin our journey towards metaphysical Idealism.
It follows, therefore, that nothing can be more essential to clear thinking than to keep these two sets of questions apart; yet I am afraid that they are constantly interchanged. In particular it seems to me that this is the case with many of the English thinkers, who profess a general allegiance to Kant or Hegel. The English neo-Hegelians convey the impression that in order to reach a metaphysical, or, as they call it, a spiritual, Idealism, it is at least necessary to deny the reality of " things-in-themselves." Metaphysically they mean by this, as I perfectly well understand, that the external world is not to be taken as an independent fact, existing, so to speak, on its own account, and having only accidental relations with the rest of the universe. The universe is once for all a whole, and the external world, as the Hegelians put it, is essentially related to ​intelligence; in other words, it is not a brute fact existing outside the sweep of the divine life and its intelligent ends. In all this I most heartily agree with the neo-Hegelians. Whether we can absolutely prove so much or no, it is certain that so much is involved in every constructive system of metaphysics; and certainly we cannot believe less without lapsing into scepticism. If we put this metaphysical sense upon the words, then I most certainly believe, in Berkeley's phrase, that "the absolute existence of unthinking things are words without a meaning." There is no metaphysical thing-in-itself, no res completa, except the universe regarded as a self-existent whole. The thinker who leaves anything outside in this way makes confession of speculative bankruptcy. But though the unrelated thing-in-itself can have no place in metaphysics, it is quite otherwise with the epistemological thing-in-itself, if we are to designate trans-subjective reality by this ill-omened phrase. The existence of the latter must be asserted as strenuously as that of the former must be denied. All my fellow-men are things-in-themselves to me in the epistemological sense, — extra-conscious realities, — and I fail to see how we can draw any hard and fast line at them.
Hence, as I have argued on a previous occasion, anything which tends to confuse the two questions is to be deprecated: we cannot deal with the two in the same breath without confusing the issues. Our epistemological premises will not bear our metaphysical conclusion. Epistemology starts, and must start, from the individual human consciousness — the only consciousness known to us. If, however, it be pointed out to a neo-Hegelian that the epistemological assertions which he makes as to the relation of knower and known are plainly untenable as applied to this consciousness, we are met by the rejoinder that they are not meant to be understood of any subjective or individual consciousness, but of a so-called universal or divine consciousness. It is not my purpose at this stage to discuss the satisfactoriness of this hypothetical divine epistemology as a metaphysic of existence, but I would point out that by this procedure, illegitimate as I consider it, the real question of ​epistemology is burked. That question is very fairly put by Professor Huxley in a page of his little book on Hume. In pursuance of a favorite line of thought, he is skilfully balancing Idealism and Materialism against one another in such a way as to leave both problematical, and in stating the case in favor of what he calls Idealism, he uses the following expression: "For any demonstration that can be given to the contrary effect, the 'collection of perceptions' which makes up my consciousness may be an orderly 'phantasmagoria generated by the Ego, unfolding its successive scenes on the background of the abyss of nothingness." With Professor Huxley's own view we have nothing to do here, but simply with the statement quoted, namely, that there is no logically coercive proof of any real existence beyond the subjective consciousness. Idealism is used by Professor Huxley in its epistemological sense, and is equivalent with him to Solipsism. His position amounts to this: that reason does not force us to go beyond the circle of our own consciousness: all that is may be a skilfully woven system of my individual presentations and representations. This is the true question of epistemology; that, at least, which it has first to settle. But to judge from the writings of the neo-Kantians and Hegelians, one would hardly gather that individual knowers existed at all. The subjective consciousness seems suppressed; they often speak as if knowledge were not a subjective process at all. In Hegel himself, just for this reason, there is no epistemology; we hear nothing of individuals, but only of the universal process in which objective thought comes to consciousness of itself.
Hegelianism, in fact, offers an eminent example of the confusion between Epistemology and Metaphysics on which I am dwelling. With Hegel the essence of the universe is thought here in the subject and thought there in the object; and there is some temptation therefore to think that this metaphysical identity absolves us from the epistemological inquiry. But that is not the case. However much the objective world and ​the individual knower may be identical in essence, the objective thought which he recognizes is still trans-subjective to the individual knower, just as much beyond his individual consciousness, as if it were the crass matter of the Natural Dualist; and the question how we reach this trans-subjective, how we transcend the individual consciousness, has still to be faced. The epistemological dualism, in other words, remains in full force, and only if that is satisfactorily surmounted, can we have any guarantee for our metaphysical monism, for the asserted identity of thought and being. Far be it from me to say, however, that Hegel and the neo-Hegelians are the only sinners in this respect. If Hegel swamps Epistemology in Metaphysics, the Realism of Scottish philosophy often errs as much in an opposite direction. In answer to Hume it insists (most rightly, as I think, in principle, though not always happily in point of expression) upon an epistemological dualism of subject and object as the fundamental fact of knowledge. But when it proceeds forthwith to treat this epistemological dualism of knowledge and reality as a metaphysical dualism between mind and matter, between two generically different substances, it falls at once into most unphilosophical crudities. Dualism in knowledge is no more a proof of metaphysical heterogeneity than identity of metaphysical essence in Hegel's sense can be taken as eliminating the epistemological problem.
The problem of knowledge and the Real, then, is the question which Epistemology has to face. As stated by Professor Huxley, and indeed as stated in any form, it is apt to appear fantastical and frivolous to the common-sense mind; but if it were so, it would hardly have formed the central problem of modern philosophy, I am convinced at least that unless it is probed to the bottom, we can have no clearness as to the foundations of knowledge and belief; and without such clearness we can hardly expect to make satisfactory progress in philosophy.
Andrew Seth.
University of Edinburgh.
* ↑ Second Letter to the Bishop of Worcester. So, again, Essay, Bk. II, c. 8, 8: "Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding."
* ↑ Third Meditation.
* ↑ As regards a name for the inquiry thus isolated and defined, Mr. Balfour proposes the term Philosophy, acknowledging at the same time that this application is not exactly sanctioned by usage. If it were at all possible to appropriate the general term, Philosophy, in a specific sense, there might be much to say for this innovation. Many arguments in its favor might be drawn even from the vague sense which the term bears in current usage. In modern times, and within the present century in particular, Philosophy is very frequently used in the schools as equivalent to Epistemology or Theory of Knowledge. But in spite of this, it seems to me hopeless (and undesirable) to cut ourselves loose from the tradition of more than two thousand years, which associates the term irrevocably with metaphysical or ontological speculation. By metaphysics or ontology I mean some kind of theory or no-theory of the ultimate nature of things. Such a metaphysical theory is that to which all other philosophical inquiries lead up, that in which they culminate, and it seems to me undesirable to define philosophy in such a way as to exclude from its scope what has hitherto been considered its heart and soul. I confess, indeed, that if we are to narrow the term at all, I should be inclined to identify philosophy rather with metaphysics or ontology. The claim on behalf of epistemology, as I take it, is that it lays the substructure; it is the necessary preliminary alike of science and of metaphysics. But it may as fairly be argued on the other side that the ultimate or culminating science has the best claim to the time-honored title. Happily, however, we are not reduced to an aimless wrangle of this description, for Epistemology is just the single term we want. Philosophy will doubtless remain in its indefiniteness as a generic title, associated now more closely with theory of knowledge, now more closely with metaphysics; while epistemology (overlapping into logic), metaphysics or ontology, and ethics (which as metaphysic of ethics is connected in the most intimate way with any ultimate theory of things) while these three at least, to mention no more at present, are covered by her ample ægis.
* ↑ Hegelianism and Personality.
* ↑ A fuller analysis of the use of the term "phenomena" in Kantian and positivistic thought would bring some of these inconsistencies instructively to light. For the plausibility of the quasi-scientific agnosticism which is so widely spread in our periodicals and popular philosophy depends in great part on a systematic confusion between the two different senses of the word.
* ↑ Hume (English Men of Letters), pp. 80-81.
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