Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/19

 8 J. DEWEY : becoming of certain definite forms of knowledge, say Space, Time, Body, External World, &c., &c., may (in ideal, at least, if not yet as matter of actual fact) be accounted for, as the product of a series of events. Now he supposes that, because the origin of some or all of our knowledge or conscious experience, knowledge of all particular things and of all general relations, can be thus accounted for, he has thereby accounted for the origin of consciousness or know- ledge itself. All I desire to point out is that he is always accounting for their origin within knowledge or conscious experience, and that he cannot take his first step or develop this into the next, cannot have either beginning or process, without presupposing known elements the whole sphere of consciousness, in fact. In short, what he has been doing, is not to show the origin of consciousness or knowledge, but simply how consciousness or knowledge has differentiated itself into various forms. It is indeed the business of the psychologist to show how (not the ideas of space and time, &c., but) space, time, &c., arise, but since this origin is only w r ithin or for consciousness, it is but the showing of how knowledge develops itself; it is but the showing of how con- sciousness specifies itself into various given forms. He has not been telling us how knowledge became, but how it came to be in a certain way, that is, in a certain set of relations. In making out the origin of any or all particular knowledges (if I may be allowed the word), he is but showing the elements of knowledge. And in doing this, he is performing a twofold task. He is showing on the one hand what place they hold within experience, i.e., he is showing their special adequacy or validity, and on the other he is explicating the nature of consciousness or experience. He is showing that it is not a bare form, but that, since these different element* arise necessarily within it, it is an infinite richness of relations. Let not the psychologist imagine then that he is showing the origin of consciousness, or of experience. Ther. nothing but themselves from which they can originate. He is but showing wind (fir// <i/r, and, since they arc, what they always have been. I hope that it has now been made plain that the polemic against the attempt of the psychologist to account for the origin of conscious experience does not originate in any desire to limit his sphere but, simply to call him away from a meaningless and self-contradictory conception of the psychological standpoint to an infinitely fruitful one. The psychological standpoint as it has developed itself is this : all that is, is for consciousness or knowledge. The business