There is one fact that prevents all investigators from seeing the genuine state of affairs in psychology. This is the empirical character of its constructions. It must be torn off from psychology’s constructions like a pellicle, like the skin of a fruit, in order to see them as they really are. Usually empiism is taken on trust, without further analysis. Psychology with all its diversity is treated as some fundamental scientific unity with a common basis. All disagreements are viewed as secondary phenomena which take place within this unity. But this is a false idea, an illusion. In reality, empirical psychology as a science of general principle—even one general principle—does not exist, and the attempts to create it have led to the defeat and bankruptcy of the very idea of creating an empirical psychology. The same persons who lump together many psychologies according to some common feature which contrasts with their own, e.g., psychoanalysis, reflexology, behaviorism (consciousness—the unconscious, subjectivism—objeetivism, spiritualism—materialism), do not see that within such an empirical psychology the same processes take place which take place between it and a branch that breaks away. They do not see that the development of these branches themselves is subject to more general tendencies which are being operative in and can, in consequence, only be properly understood on the basis of the whole field of science. It is the whole of psychology which should be lumped together. What does the empiricism of contemporary psychology mean? First of all, it is a purely negative concept both according to its historical origin and its methodological meaning, and this is not a sufficient basis to unite something. Empirical means first of all “psychology without a soul” (Lange), psychology without any metaphysics (Vvedensky), psychology based on experience (Høffding). It is hardly necessary to explain that these are essentially negative definitions as well. They do not say a word about what psychology is dealing with, what is its positive meaning.

However, the objective meaning of this negative definition is now completely different from what it used to be. Once it concealed nothing—the task of the science was to liberate itself from something, the term was a slogan for that. Now it conceals the positive definitions (which each author introduces in his science) and the genuine processes taking place in the science. It was a temporary slogan and could not be anything else in principle. Now the term “empirical” attached to psychology designates the refusal to select a certain philosophical principle, the refusal to clarify one’s ultimate premises, to become aware of one’s own scientific nature. As such this refusal has its historical meaning and cause—we will dwell upon it below—but about the nature of the science it says essentially nothing, it conceals it. The Kantian thinker Vvedensky (1917, p. 3) expressed this most clearly, but all empiricists subscribe to his formula. Høffding, in particular, says the same. All more or less lean towards one side—Vvedensky provides the ideal balance: “Psychology must formulate all its conclusions in such a way that they will be equally acceptable and equally binding for both materialism, spiritualism, and psychophysical monism.”

From this formula alone it is evident that empiricism formulates its tasks in such a way as to reveal their impossibility. Indeed, on the basis of empiricism, i.e., completely discarding basic premises, no scientific knowledge whatever is logically and historically possible. Natural science, which psychology wishes to liken through this definition, was by its nature, its undistorted essence, always spontaneously materialistic. All psychologists agree that natural science, like, of course, all human praxis, does not solve the problem of the essence of matter and mind, but starts from a certain solution to it, namely the assumption of an objective reality which exists outside of us, in conformity with certain laws, and which can be known. And