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 title, 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 factitious, in the study of this group of sciences; and next, the polemic conduct of such study, or the utility and management of debating societies, instituted 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 space 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 accumulate 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 analogy, 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.