The other way in which psychology gets a foundation and ulterior certainty is different, and goes deeper. After all, the “scientific” method is only a way in which the facts of a given sphere are presented in thoroughgoing interconnexion, each reduced to an exact multiple or fraction of some other, by an inimitably continued subtraction and addition of an assumed homogeneous element, found or assumed to be perfectly imaginable (conceivable). But we may also consider the province in relation to the whole sphere of reality, may ask what is its place and meaning in the whole, what reality is in the end driving at or coming to be, and how far this special province contributes to that end. If we do this, we attach psychology to philosophy, or, if we prefer so to call it, to metaphysics, as in the former way we established it on the principles generally received as governing the method of the physical sciences. This—the relation of psychology to fundamental philosophy—is a question which also turns up in dealing with Ethics. There is on the part of those engaged in either of these inquiries a certain impatience against the intermeddling (which is held to be only muddling) of metaphysics with them. It is clear that in a very decided way both psychology and ethics can, up to some extent at least, be treated as what is called empirical (or, to use the more English phrase, inductive) sciences. On many hands they are actually so treated: and not without result. Considering the tendency of metaphysical inquiries, it may be urged that it is well to avoid preliminary criticism of the current conceptions and beliefs about reality which these sciences imply. Yet such beliefs are undoubtedly present and effective. Schopenhauer has popularised the principle that the pure empiricist is a fiction, that man is a radically metaphysical animal, and that he inevitably turns what he receives into a part of a dogmatic creed—a conviction how things ought to be. Almost without effort there grows up in him, or flows in upon him, a belief and a system of beliefs as to the order and values of things. Every judgment, even in logic, rests on such an order of truth. He need not be able to formulate his creed: it will influence him none the less: nay, his faith will probably seem more a part of the solid earth and common reality, the less it has been reduced to a determinate creed or to a code of principles. For such formulation presupposes doubt and scepticism, which it beats back by mere assertion. Each human being has such a background of convictions which govern his actions and conceptions, and of which it so startles him to suggest the possibility of a doubt, that he turns away in dogmatic horror. Such ruling ideas vary, from man to man, and from man to woman—if we consider them in all their minuteness. But above all they constitute themselves in a differently organised system or aggregate according to the social and educational stratum to which an individual belongs.