Dewey recognized the need of an empirical method in philosophy, but failed to show specifically how psychology could deal with philosophical problems. He appears to have conceived that sensation and meaning, facts and forms, were present in experience or 'Consciousness,' as if this were some total understanding which retained the elements in a fixed union and order. While, according to his method, the forms of this universal consciousness could not be considered apart from the particulars in which they inhered, they might be studied by a survey of experience, a direct appeal to consciousness, in which 'form and content are equal.' He seems to have held that truth is given in immediate experience. A study of reality as immediately given, therefore, to psychological observation, would provide an account of the eternal nature of things, as they stand in the universal mind. Dewey did not attempt a criticism of the categories and methods which psychology must employ in such a task. Had he done so, the advantages of a critical method might have occurred to him. FOOTNOTES: [2] Vol. XI, pp. 1-19; pp. 153-173. [3] "Illusory Psychology," _Mind_, Vol. XI, 1886, p. 478. [4] "The Psychological Standpoint," _Mind_, 1886, Vol. XI, p. 2. [5] _Ibid._, p. 7. [6] _Op. cit._, p. 8 f. [7] "Psychology as Philosophic Method," _Mind_, 1886, Vol. XI, p. 157. [8] _Ibid._, p. 160. (Observe that this is a direct reference to Berkeley.) [9] _Op. cit._ [10] _Op. cit._, p. 161. [11] _Ibid._ [12] Third Edition, p. 54. [13] _Mind_, Vol. XI, p. 166 f. [14] _Ibid._, p. 166. [15] _Ibid._ [16] _Op. cit._, p. 170. [17] _Ibid._ [18] _Op. cit._, p. 172. [19] _Ibid._ [20] _Op. cit._ CHAPTER II THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT The "psychological method," as so far presented, is an outline which must be developed in detail before its philosophical import is revealed. For several years following the publication of his first articles in _Mind_ Dewey was occupied with the task of working out his method in greater detail, and giving it more concrete form. His thought during this period follows a fairly regular order of development, which is to be sketched in the present chapter. In 1887 Dewey published in _Mind_ an article entitled "Knowledge as Idealisation."[21] This article is, in effect, a consideration of one of the special problems of the "psychological method." If reality is an eternal and all-inclusive consciousness, in which sensations and meanings are ordered according to a rational system, what must be the nature of the finite thought-process which apprehends this reality? In his previous articles Dewey had proposed the "psychological method" as an actual mode of investigation, and questions concerning the nature of the human thought-process naturally forced themselves upon his attention.