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SOCIOLOGY AS DISTINCT FROM SOCIAL SCIENCES 49
which the humanistic studies rest that the scientific treatment
 of psychical facts is not necessarily psychology. Psychological
 processes have a definite content, but this content
 may be the subject-matter of a great many different
sciences. The sciences of language, art, morals, and religion
 treat such content of psychological processes in abstraction
 from those processes.
There is only a difference in degree between the humanistic
 studies and the sciences of external nature. Even
the latter deal in the last analysis with facts of the mental
life, with occurrences within the mind. The discovery of
an astronomical or chemical truth, or the mental reproduction
 of this truth, is an event of consciousness which a
complete psychology might deduce from purely psychological
 conditions and developments. These sciences of external
 nature come into existence by choosing as their subject-matter,
 not the psychic processes, but the relations
between their contents.
No actuality can be scientifically comprehended in its
immediate totality. It must be viewed from a series of different
 standpoints and regarded as a multiplicity of mutually
 independent scientific contents. The fact that in
the psychical occurrence process and content are a unitary
totality does not abolish the methodological and epistemological
 requirement of differentiating between the form
of the process on the one hand and the content of the process
 on the other hand. And this differentiation is not
only required for those psychical occurrences whose contents
 synthesize in an independent, objective spatial world,
but also for those occurrences whose contents do not build
an independent spatial world. In the first case the differentiation
 would yield psychology and the sciences of external
 nature. In the second instance the differentiation
yields psychology and the humanistic sciences.