§ 1. The Psychological Point of View.—Let us suppose that a man is engaged in examining a material object. Let us say that lie is testing the quality of a cigar. He looks at it; he feels it; he puts it to his ear and listens to the crackle which is a mark of dryness; he smells it before commencing to smoke; if ho is not discouraged by these preliminaries, he may then proceed to smoke it; he thus brings into play the functions of smelling and tasting. Now in describing the man's procedure, we have had to use words such as examining, testing, looking, feeling, listening, smelling, and tasting. These are all terms standing for psychological facts.

So far as the man is preoccupied with the object, he will not think of his own acts of looking, feeling, listening, etc. The qualities of the cigar itself are what he is aware of throughout the process. He is not aware of his own sensations, as such; sensations are qualifications of his own consciousness, and not of the cigar; inasmuch as he is thinking of the cigar, he does not think about sensations.

On the other hand, the bystander who describes what the man is doing, naturally uses psychological terms. He is thinking, not only of the cigar, but the man in relation to it. What he has to describe is just this relation in its varying phases; he is not concerned with either the man or the cigar independently of each other. He thinks of the cigar merely as an object to which the man's activity is directed; and in consequence he thinks of the man as a subject which becomes aware of the qualities of this object, and adjusts his actions accordingly. But the man himself takes no note of the fact that the cigar is an object, and that he is a subject; he could not take note of the one fact without taking note of the other. But he is so wholly absorbed in the object, that he does not stop to consider its relation to himself as subject; in other words, though it is an object to him, he does not think of it as such. His point of view is essentially the same with that of the physical sciences. The point of view of the spectator is essentially that of psychology. Psychology is concerned with the relation of what is perceived, or in any way thought of, to the percipient or thinker.

It thus appears that psychology must take into account not only the subject but also the object. This is necessary because subjective states and processes cannot be adequately described without reference to their objects. It is impossible to name a thought without naming it as the thought of something or other. But psychology is only concerned with objects, if and so far as they are necessarily implied in the existence of corresponding states and processes in the subject.. The object with which it has to deal is always an object as perceived or thought about bysome individual at some time. Of course, an object is always actually much more than this; the sensible qualities of the cigar belong to it both before and after the man has seen, smelt, touched, and tasted it. Not only is this true as a physical fact; but it is also recognised by the subject himself in perceiving or thinking about the object. The man only perceives the odour of the cigar in actually smelling it; but he regards it as a permanent quality, existing and persisting independently of his momentary perception. The question never occurs to him unless he begins to philosophise or psychologise. But if anybody should tell him that the odour, flavour, texture, dampness, or dryness of the cigar, only exist in the moment in which he thinks of them or perceives them, he would at once recognise, though perhaps dimly, that he had perceived them or thought of them as being something different from what they are now said to be. He had perceived them or thought of them as having a permanence and independence which is entirely irreconcilable with the supposition that they exist only if and so far as he is actually perceiving or thinking of them. But psychology is mainly concerned with the perceiving or thinking itself, and it therefore only takes account of the object so far as it is actually perceived or thought of. It is concerned, in the first instance, not with what is known, but with the process of knowing, not with what is willed, but with the process of willing, not with what is agreeable or disagreeable, but with the process of being pleased or displeased. Hence it takes no account of the object, except in so far as somebody is supposed to be actually knowing it or willing it, or being satisfied or dissatisfied with it. For the physical sciences the object is something that is to become knowing for psychology it is something which is actually in process of being known. Psychology is the science of the processes whereby an individual becomes aware of a world of objects and adjusts his actions accordingly.