LECTURE  I

§ I. Philosophical ANTicip.iTiONS of Psychology. § H. Spiritual¬
ism AND Materialism. § IIL Methods and Aids of Psycho¬
logical Investigation.

§  I

PSYCHOLOGY, even in our own day, shows more clearly
than any other experiential science traces of the con¬
flict of philosophical systems. We may regret this influence
in the interest of psychological investigation, because it has
been the chief obstacle in the way of an impartial examination
of mental life. But in the light of history we see that it was
inevitable. Natural science has gradually taken shape from a
natural philosophy which paved the way for it, and the effects
of which may still be recognised in current scientific theory.
That these effects are more fundamental and more permanent
in the case of psychology is intelligible when we consider the
problem which is set before it. Psychology has to investigate
that which we call internal experience,—i.e., our.own sensation
and feeling, our thought and volition,—in contradistinction to the
objects of external experience, which form the subject matter
of natural science. Man himself, not as he appears from with¬
out, but as he is in his own immediate experience, is the real
problem of psychology. Whatever else is included in the circle
of psychological discussion,—the mental life of animals, the
common ideas and actions of mankind which spring from simi¬
larity of mental nature, and the mental achievements of the
individual or of society,—all this has reference to the one
original problem, however much our understanding of mental
life be widened and deepened by the consideration of it. But
the questions with which psychology thus comes into contact
are at the same time problems for philosophy.    And philosophy

B

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