whether it
has any 'objective truth.' But we cannot allow psychology to have the
last word in determining the truth or falsehood of religious or
spiritual experience. The extravagant claims of this science to take the
place of philosophy must be abated.

Psychology is the science which describes mental states, as physical
science describes the behaviour of matter in motion. Both are abstract
sciences. Physical science treats nature as the totality of things
conceived of as independent of any subject; psychology treats inner
experience as independent of any object. Both are outside any idea of
value, though it is needless to say that the votaries of both sciences
trespass habitually, and often unconsciously. Both are dualisms with one
side ignored or suppressed. When psychology meddles with ontological
problems--when, for instance it denies the existence of an Absolute, or
says that reality cannot be known--it is taking too much upon itself,
and has fallen into the same error as the materialism of the last
century. On such questions as the immortality of the soul it must remain
silent.

Faith in human immortality stands or falls with the belief in _absolute
values_. The interest of consciousness, as Professor Pringle-Pattison
has said in his admirable Gifford Lectures, lies in the ideal values of
which it is the bearer, not in its mere existence as a more refined kind
of fact. Idealism is most satisfactorily defined as the interpretation
of the world according to a scale of value, or, in Plato's phrase, by
the Idea of the Good. The highest values in this scale are absolute,
eternal, and super-individual, and lower values are assigned their place
in virtue of their correspondence to or participation in these absolute
values. I agree with Muensterberg that the conditional and subjective
values of the pragmatist have no meaning unless we have acknowledged
beforehand the independent value of truth. If the proof of the merely
individual significance of truth has itself only individual importance,
it cannot claim any general meaning. If, on the other hand, it demands
to be taken as generally valid, the possibility of a general truth is
acknowledged from the start. If this one exception is granted, the whole
illusory universe of relativism is overthrown. To deny any thought which
is more than relative is to deprive even scepticism itself of the
presuppositions on which it rests. The logical sceptic has no _ego_ to
doubt with.