Theory of the psychical and the physical presents many phases in recent thought. On the one hand, the problem is still discussed more or less in its original ontological form, in which mind and matter are regarded as different orders of existence, one being more real than the other, or both being equally valid phases of an underlying reality. The writings of Schultz, Strong, Marvin, and Stratton illustrate this tendency. The chief difference between recent and older writings of this sort is

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... the arguments have become more detailed and more subtle. On the other hand, the problem is being approached by certain other writers rather from the methodological point of view. The attempt is made to get back of the problem as it is ordinarily stated, in the hope that an investigation of the setting of the problem may suggest the line along which to seek a solution. In this group may be put the recent writings of Ostwald, Maudsley, Forel, Baldwin, Adamson, Mackenzie, Ladd, Mead, Dewey, and Bawden. Of course, it is impossible in any absolute way to separate the ontological and the methodological sides. Nor do these recent discussions reveal any such complete separation. But there is an evident tendency to free the methodological statement sufficiently to objectify the problem. The very significance of the shifting of the attention thus to the presuppositions of the problem is that thereby we get a better understanding of the problem itself, /. e., the methodological considerations are instrumental, not final. What the ultimate solution, in terms of some new conception of the nature of the problem, will be, it is perhaps premature to attempt to foresee. But that this is the true logic of the current controversies is shown in the attempt of such a writer, for example, as Ostwald 1 to reinterpret the whole of reality from the dynamic standpoint, i. e., from the standpoint of the energistic physics. And if recent psychology is right in its insistence upon activity as the fundamental category of experience, and in its insistence that all conscious states are acts, here is a basis for the reinterpretation of the whole philosophy of the psychical and the physical.