Part 8 (1/2)
[Footnote 9: If the two Literatures were studied, as they might be, by means of expositions and translations, the Greek would be first as a tiling of course. Historians of the Latin authors are obliged to trace their subject, in every department, to the corresponding authors in Greece.]
[Footnote 10: No doubt the cla.s.sical languages would have been required, to some extent, in matriculating to enter college. This arrangement, however, as regarded the students that chose the modern languages, would have been found too burdensome by our Irish friends, and, on their expressing themselves to that effect, would have been soon dispensed with.]
[Footnote 11: One possible consequence of a Natural Science Degree might have been, that the public would have turned to it with favour, while the old one sank into discredit.]
V.
METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES.[12]
By ”Metaphysical Study,” or ”Metaphysics,” I here mean--what seems intended by the designation in its current employment at present--the circle of the mental or subjective sciences. The central department of the field is PSYCHOLOGY, and the adjunct to psychology is LOGIC, which has its foundations partly in psychology, but still more in the sciences altogether, whose procedure it gathers up and formulates. The outlying and dependent branches are: the narrower metaphysics or Ontology, Ethics, Sociology, together with Art or Aesthetics. There are other applied sciences of the department, as Education and Philology.
The branches most usually looked upon as the cognate or allied studies of the subjective department of human knowledge are, Psychology, Logic, Ontology, Ethics. The debates in a society like the present will generally be found to revolve in the orbit thus chalked out. It is the sphere of the most animated controversies, and the widest discordance of view. The additional branch most nearly connected with the group is Sociology, which under that name, and under the older t.i.tle, the Philosophy of History, has opened up a new series of problems, of the kind to divide opinions and provoke debate. A quieter interest attaches to Aesthetics, although the subject is a not unfruitful application and test of psychological laws.
My remarks will embrace, first, the aims, real and fact.i.tious, in the study of this group of sciences; and next, the polemic conduct of such study, or the utility and management of debating societies, inst.i.tuted in connection therewith.
[PSYCHOLOGY AND LOGIC FUNDAMENTAL.]
The two sciences--PSYCHOLOGY and LOGIC--I consider the fundamental and knowledge-giving departments. The others are the applications of these to the more stirring questions of human life. Now, the successful cultivation of the field requires you to give at least as much attention to the root sciences as you give to the branch sciences. That is to say, psychology, in its pure and proper character, and logic, in its systematic array, should be kept before the view, concurrently with ontology, ethics, and sociology. Essays and debates tending to clear up and expound systematic psychology and systematic logic should make a full half of the society's work.
Does any one feel a doubt upon the point, as so stated? If so, it will be upon him to show that Psychology, in its methodical pursuit, is a needless and superfluous employment of strength; that the problems of ethics, ontology, &c., can be solved without it--a hard task indeed, so long as they are unsolved in any way. I have no s.p.a.ce for indulging in a dissertation on the value of methodical study and arrangement in the extension of our knowledge, as opposed to the promiscuous mingling of different kinds of facts, which is often required in practice, but repugnant to the increase of knowledge. If you want to improve our acquaintance with the sense of touch, you acc.u.mulate and methodize all the experiences relating to touch; you compare them, see whether they are consistent or inconsistent, select the good, reject the bad, improve the statement of one by light borrowed from the others; you mark desiderata, experiments to be tried, or observations to be sought.
All that time, you refrain from wandering into other spheres of mental phenomena. You make use of comparison with the rest of the senses, it may be, but you keep strictly to the points of a.n.a.logy, where mutual lights are to be had. This is the culture of knowledge as such, and is the best, the essential, preparation for practical questions involving the particular subject along with others.
To take an example from the question of the Will. I do not object: to the detaching and isolating of the problem of free-will, as a matter for discussion and debate; but I think that it can be handled to equal, if not greater advantage, in the systematic psychology of voluntary power.
Those that have never tried it in this last form have not obtained the best vantage-ground for overcoming the inevitable subtleties that invest it.
The great problem of External Perception has a psychological place, where its difficulties are very much attenuated, to say the least of it; and, however convenient it may be to treat it as a detached problem, we should carry with us into the discussion all the lights that we obtain while regarding it as it stands among the intellectual powers.
It is in systematic Psychology that we are most free to attend to the defining of terms (without which a professed science is mere moons.h.i.+ne), to the formulating of axioms and generalities, to the concatenating and taking stock of all the existing knowledge, and to the appraising of it at its real value. If these things are neglected, there is nothing that I see to const.i.tute a psychology at all.
[DISCUSSIONS IN LOGIC PROPER.]
As to the other fundamental science, LOGIC, the same remarks may be repeated. Of debated questions, a certain number pertain properly to logic; yet most of these relate to logic at its points of contact with psychology. Since we have got out of the narrow round of the Aristotelian syllogism, we have agreed to call logic _ars artium_, or, better still, _scientia scientiarum_, the science that deals with the sciences altogether--both object sciences and subject sciences. Now this I take to be a study quite apart from psychology in particular, although, as I have said, touching it at several points. It reviews all science and all knowledge, as to its structure, method, arrangement, cla.s.sification, probation, enlargement. It deals in generalities the most general of any. By taking up what belongs to all knowledge, it seems to rise above the matter of knowledge to the region of pure form; it demands, therefore, a peculiar subtlety of handling, and may easily land us, as we are all aware, in knotty questions and quagmires.
Now what I have to repeat in this connection is, that you should, in your debates, overhaul portions or chapters of systematic logic, with a view to present the difficulties in their natural position in the subject. You might, for example, take up the question as to the Province of logic, with its divisions, parts, and order--all which admit of many various views--and bring forward the vexed controversies under lights favourable to their resolution. Regarding logic as an aid to the faculties in tackling whatever is abstruse, you should endeavour to cultivate and enhance its powers, in this particular, by detailed exposition and criticism of all its canons and prescriptions. The department of Cla.s.sification is a good instance; a region full of delicate subtleties as well as ”bread-and-b.u.t.ter” applications.
It is in this last view of logic that we can canva.s.s philosophical systems upon the ground of their method or procedure alone. Looking at the absence, in any given system, of the arts and precautions that are indispensable to the establishment of truth in the special case, we may p.r.o.nounce against it, _a priori_; we know that such a system can be true only by accident, or else by miracle. We may reasonably demand of a system-builder--Is he in the narrow way that leadeth to truth, or in the broad way that leadeth somewhere else?
I have said that I consider the connection between Logic and Psychology to be but slender, although not unimportant. The amount and nature of this connection would reward a careful consideration. There would be considerable difficulty in seeing any connection at all between the Aristotelian Syllogism and psychology, but for the high-sounding designations appended to the notion and the proposition--simple apprehension and judgment--of which I fail to discover the propriety or relevance. I know that Grote gave a very profound turn to the employment of the term ”judgment” by Aristotle, as being a recognition of the relativity of knowledge to the affirming mind. I am not to say, absolutely, ”Ice is cold”; I am to say that, to the best of my judgment or belief, or in so far as I am concerned, ice is cold. This, however, has little to do with the logic of the syllogism, and not much with any logic. So, when we speak of a ”notion,” we must understand it as apprehended by some mind; but for nearly all purposes, this is a.s.sumed tacitly; it need not appear in a formal designation, which, not being wanted, is calculated to mislead.
[APPLIED OR DERIVATIVE SCIENCES.]
With these remarks on the two fundamental sciences of our group, I now turn to the _applied_ or _derivative_ sciences, wherein the great controversies stand out most conspicuous, which, in fact, exist for the purpose of contention--Ontology and Ethics. These branches were in request long before the mother sciences--psychology and logic--came into being at all. They had occupied their chief positions without consulting the others, partly because these were not there to consult, and partly because they were not inclined to consult any extraneous authority. By Ontology we may designate the standing controversies of the intellectual powers--perception, innate ideas, nominalism _versus_ realism, and noumenon _versus_ phenomenon. I am not going to p.r.o.nounce upon these questions; I have already recommended the alternative mode of approaching them under systematic psychology and logic; and I will now regard them as const.i.tuents of the fourfold enumeration of the metaphysical sciences.
The Germans may be credited for teaching us, or trying to teach us, to distinguish ”bread and b.u.t.ter” from what pa.s.ses beyond, transcends bread and b.u.t.ter. With them the distinction is thoroughly ingrained, and comes to hand at a moment's notice. If I am to review in detail what may be considered the practical or applied departments of logic and psychology, I am in danger of trenching on their ”bread-and-b.u.t.ter” region. Before descending, therefore, into the larder, let us first spend a few seconds in considering psychology as the pursuit of _truth_ in all that relates to our mental const.i.tution. If difficulty be a stimulus to the human exertions, it may be found here. To ascertain, fix, and embody the precise truth in regard to the facts of the mind is about as hard an undertaking as could be prescribed to a man. But this is another way of saying that psychology is not a very advanced science; is not well stored with clear and certain doctrines; and is unable, therefore, to confer any very great precision on its dependent branches, whether purely speculative or practical. In a word, the greatest modesty or humility is the deportment most becoming to all that engage in this field of labour, even when doing their best; while the same virtues in even greater measure are due from those engaging in it without doing their best.