Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/481

 480 S. H. HODGSON : Dewey justifies on experiential grounds the existence of an universal consciousness, or in what he imagines the relation between the individual consciousness and the universal one to consist. He tells us at p. 17 " that consciousness is the unity of the individual and the universal," and also that " since consciousness does show the origin of individual and universal consciousness within itself, consciousness is there- fore both universal and individual ". But he prudently postpones the question of how this is to a future opportunity. The obvious reason here is, that he does not know. For if he had known this, he could not possibly have given the account of the relation between them which he has given, meagre and vague as that account is ; nor could he possibly have maintained that the existence of an universal conscious- ness is a matter of fact bound up with conscious experience. He falls into the common and perhaps even favourite fallacy of first generalising his own consciousness and making an ens logiciim of it, and then reconverting it into a really existent consciousness with the attribute of omniscience. He imagines his own general conception of consciousness realised in an individual case adequate to the generality of the conception, that is, an indefinitely great consciousness, which he calls the universal consciousness or self. It will fairly be expected that I should show how this logical and generalising process takes place without really transcending the individual consciousness generalised. This will not be difficult. The process is extremely simple, though it cannot be said to be commonly understood. Conscious experience comes to an individual, any individual, whom we will call A, in a varied stream of states and changes, sensa- tions, emotions, thoughts, feelings, desires, volitions, and so on, out of which the world of every day or ordinary experi- ence, as it is called, is gradually built up, and which embraces everything, without exception, of which the individual can think, or to which he can even so much as advert in thought. Prior to this stream, or beyond this stream, there is nothing, 110 possibility of assuming either its individuality or its universality, or distinguishing these two conceptions from each other, or even of distinguishing Subject from Object. The universality of the stream in this sense, meaning its property of being all-embracing, Mr. Dewey has well seen and insisted on. But secondly, note this further circumstance. The stream of consciousness as it comes to A is, as a matter of fact, a fact which we learn from itself on examination of it, an individualised stream, and occurs in perceptual order. Exactly