http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/2987245

Personality the beginning and end of metaphysics and a necessary assumption in all positive philosophy

"When the search after reason has been given up, the true reign of reason will have begun. To those who think thus, metaphysics is, of course, a remnant of barbarism, only a little removed from the fetishism that flourished in the infancy of the race; or, at the best, it is but a puerile amusement which, when one becomes a man, that is a Positivist, ought to be put away. Now it is the purpose of the present essay to offer some suggestions tending to show that this estimate of metaphysics is incorrect--that its failures in the past have been chiefly due to false methods and illegitimate starting-points--and that pure phenomenalism, without some admixture of metaphysical elements, is an unthinkable absurdity. It would be well at the outset clearly to distinguish between three words, --viz., Psychology, Philosophy, and Metaphysics, which are frequently used as more or less synonymous. I do not deem it expedient to make psychology, as Mansel does, a branch of metaphysics concerned with the facts of consciousness as such, the other branch being termed ontology, or that which is concerned with the facts of consciousness in relation to the realities of which those facts bear testimony. If there be an entity, call it vital principle, ego, or what not, that can be distinguished in thought from the passing states of consciousness, that principle belongs to metaphysics, just as does the principle, if there be one, which underlies external phenomena. Some facts of consciousness, as we shall see, are noumenal and metaphysical, and psychology should, in my judgment, take cognisance only of phenomena. For then, again, as in the case of philosophy, we should have a word and a science in regard to which there will be little dispute. For example, both Mill and Lewes recognise the possibility of a science of psychology and the importance of the introspective method. They differ only in this, that Mill would place it among the hierarchy of sciences, while Lewes would make it a branch of biology. Comte, it is true, denies the legitimacy of psychological science, and maintains that introspection can only lead to illusion. I hope to show presently that the denial of an ego always leads to contradictions and absurdities; but the additional denial of introspection involves the theory of knowledge in such manifest and hopeless difficulties, that it is now accepted by very few writers of repute. A science of psychology, without any distinct recognition of metaphysical elements, has been clearly sketched by J.S. Mill. Such a science is not directly concerned with speculations regarding the mind's own nature. It understands, by the laws of mind, those of mental phenomena"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

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