An outline of psychology / by Edward Bradford Titchener.

  • Titchener, Edward Bradford, 1867-1927
Date:
1897
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An outline of psychology / by Edward Bradford Titchener. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    362/372 (page 344)
    § ioi. The Mind of Metaphysics.—We might consider that our task is now completed. We have our science in outline before us; the problems that arise out of it we have passed on to another philosophical discipline, to metaphysics. Nevertheless, it is not satisfactory to ask questions and receive no sort of answer. We will con- clude, then, with a glance at the opinions of modern metaphysicians upon the point at issue. The given fact from which a theory of the universe must set out is the concrete, individual human experience. This experience is at first neither subjective nor objective, neither experience of the self nor experience of the world, the not-self. It is single and undifferentiated. By slow degrees, however, it divides into halves: subject and object stand over against each other, as separate things, the ob- ject taking shape much more quickly and definitely than the subject (cf § i). When the division has been com- pleted, and mankind has reached a sufficiently high stage of development, each half is taken as the basis of a group of special sciences. The objective half is abstracted from the whole and worked up in the natural or physical sci- ences : the subjective half is abstracted from the whole and worked up in the mental or philosophical disciplines. The former treat of experience, by abstraction, as inde- pendent of the experiencer: the latter treat of it, by a similar abstraction, solely in its dependence upon the ex- periencing individual. Metaphysics is the science (p. 118) which unifies and harmonises the principles and laws of all the other sci- ences. Its task is, then, to take the conclusions reached by way of the two abstractions from experience just men- tioned, the conclusions of both the natural and the mental