Psychology, on the contrary, has as its subject of treatment the total , content of, experience in its immediate character. The only ground, then, for the division between natural, science on the one hand, and psychology and the mental sciences on the other, is to be found in the fact that all in the fact that all experience contains as its factors a content objectively presented, and an experiencing subject. Still, it is by no means necessary that logical definitions of these two factors should precede the separation of the sciences from one another, for it is obvious that such definitions are possible only after they have a basis in the investigations of natural science and of psychology. There can be no assumption knowledge of the conditions upon which the distinction is based, or of the definite characteristics by which one factor is to be distinguished from the other. Even the use of the terms object and subject in this connection must be regarded as the application to the first stage of experience, of distinctions which are reached only through developed logical reflection.
Natural science seeks to discover the nature of objects without reference to the subject.
The knowledge that it produces is therefore mediate or conceptual . In place of the immediate objects of experience, it sets concepts gained from these objects by abstracting from the subjective components of our ideas. This abstraction makes it necessary continually to supplement reality with hypothetical elements. These objective processes in their objective character, independent of the subject, can therefore never be a part of experience. Science makes up for this lack of direct contact with the objective processes, by forming supplementary hypothetical concepts of the objective properties of matter.