secured only when Psychology is considered from the point of view of the experient, as the Psychology of the first and final cause. 4. IN WHAT RELATION DOES PSYCHOLOGY STAND TO § 20. Inductive Psychology stands to Metaphysics in precisely the same relation as the physical sciences. Physical Science abstracts at the start from all considerations that are indifferent to it, and makes just such assumptions with regard to its subject-matter as it requires for its own best development. These postponed considerations and conventional assumptions are then taken up by the metaphysician, and furnish food for his reflection. In such relation there seems no room for ambiguity. Inductive Psychology has its abstract, limited point of view, e.g., its deterministic assumption, and is therefore amenable to metaphysical control in precisely the same sense as in the science of mechanics. But the Psychology of first causes is not so simply related to Metaphysics. For it has this in common with Metaphysical inquiry that both it and Metaphysics are equally interested in the fundamental assumption as to the nature of Experience upon which assumption its whole superstructure is based. The two sciences seem to meet in the Theory of Knowledge, or to use a truer and more inclusive expression, in the Theory of Experience. Is this more inward Psychology, then, to be classed as an offspring of Metaphysical Inquiry, or as more closely related to the Natural Science of Inductive Psychology? In our opinion it is still a scientific Psychology and not a Metaphysics. For (1°), though concerned with its own assumptions it is not concerned with the assumptions of any other Science, whereas Metaphysics is concerned with assumptions in general; (2°) its aim is to explain causally, so far as it is able, and from the inside, what Inductive Psychology explains, so to speak, descriptively and from the outside. Its subject-matter is therefore the data of psychical experience and in so far as it has such specific data, is more akin to a Science than to a Metaphysics. Moveover (3°), it does start with an assumption as to the nature of Reality suited to its own peculiar problem, and the mere fact of this assumption being made seems to constitute a barrier-fact between the Science of first causes and Metaphysics, even though the function of Metaphysics be conceived as purely critical, and not as consisting in the reconstruction of Reality on a basis free from all assumptions. Assuming then that we are entitled to regard the Psychology of first causes as a Science and not as a Metaphysic, it remains for us to point out that the distinction between the two Psychologies, the inductive and as we may here suitably call it-the synthetic1 Psychology, affords a basis for a corresponding distinction in the relation of Metaphysics to Psychology. The essence of the inductive method is that it starts with a medley of disconnected facts or data, and aims at discovering hypotheses wherewith to connect and explain the facts. These hypotheses are relatively to the facts they seek to explain fluctuating and unstable. Inductive procedure in a word starts with that which is to be explained and aims at explanations which are always hypothetical and liable to be superseded by others. That which gives unity and explanatory coherency to inductive science is just this hypothetical, fluctuating element. Synthetic procedure, on the other hand, starts not with the something that has to be explained, but with the explanatory factors themselves, and its endeavour is to justify the explanatory function of these factors. Hence, whereas the unifying explanatory element in inductive procedure is hypothetical, it is accepted in synthetic procedure as the fundamental fact or factor. This distinction made, Metaphysics, it seems, may, according as its procedure is inductive or synthetic, become the abstract science of ultimate hypotheses, or the concrete science of the First Synthesis, Cause, or Universal 1 Synthetic in the teleological, not in the abstract logical, sense of the term. Agency, the science of the Absolute in the sense of the Whole. This science of a Synthetic Metaphysic would stand to Psychology in some such relation as the Science of the First Cause to the Science of first causes. But the result is not here the important point; rather the nature of the relation. From which end, we ask, are we to start in our endeavour to pass from Synthetic Psychology to Synthetic Metaphysics; from the Absolute or from the Individual's Experience? It seems to me that we must start from the latter. A Science of synthesis may find its culminating triumph in an all-inclusive and explanatory Theism but it must surely grow out of much humbler considerations. Immediate individual experience is the one true vital synthesis whence all such synthetic effort must assuredly start, for it is that which is everpresent with us as the fountain-head of all our knowledge. To be fruitful and progressive all synthetic Science whose aim is to reconstruct the Real according to its own nature, without abstracting from any essential feature of Reality as it is known to us, must be rooted in the immediate experience of the individual first cause, and grow out thence in some specific way. And if such growth should eventually bring with it not only the larger vision of Reality, but a simultaneous growth out of the individualistic starting-point altogether, is this not both natural and logically inevitable? The roots of a tree grow and ramify pari passu with the branches, and the mustard-tree of the Kingdom of Knowledge is assuredly no exception to this universal law of Expansion. The one essential safeguard of concrete synthetic science we take to be this, that it should from the very outset cleave to Reality, grasp, that is, at something which shares the nature, though it share not the fulness, of the Absolute. If the limitedness of its point of view compels it to grapple itself to Reality by the help of some assumption, the assumption merely interprets the nature and scope of its contact with Reality, and does not signify an abstract remove of one or more degrees from such living contact with the Real. Once at grasp with Reality, the logic of growth will surely justify it in bringing wider and yet wider reaches of the Real within its compass, in passing from one relative whole of Experience to another and yet another, each more comprehensive and organic than the one preceding it, until some fruitful vision of the whole be reached. In some such way as this, perhaps, might the Psychology of first causes prepare the way for the Philosophy of the First Cause. IV THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION By G. E. UNDERHILL I. THE PROBLEM 1. The relation of Philosophy to the Sciences. 2. Within what limits does the process of Evolution hold good? 3. The meaning of Evolution. 4. a, Becoming. II. PRESUPPOSITIONS OF EVOLUTION 5. b, One and Many. 6. c, Things. 7. d, Time and Space; e, Force. III. GAPS IN NATURE AND IN KNOWLEDGE 8. Science, though it assumes the homogeneity of matter and that Natura non facit saltum, recognises the gaps between the inorganic and the organic, and between life and mind. IV. EVOLUTION IN THE INORGANIC SPHERE 9. Science regards even the chemical elements as evolved from homogeneous matter according to eternal laws of motion. 10. Science (a) never deals with origins, (b) aims to express differences of quality in terms of quantity. II. But differences of quality, though they have quantitative aspects, are not mere differences of quantity: they are no less real and no more phenomenal than differences of quantity. 12. The aspects of things, with which mechanical science deals, are products of mental creation and are measured by standards which again are products of mental creation. 13. Thus mechanical science limits its Evolution to the changes of position and shape of homogeneous particles of matter according to eternal laws of motion. 14. Natural Selection may be regarded as due to Chance, if by Chance is meant a cause or causes unknown to human calculation. But blind' Chance is not a possible object of science. |