Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/484

 ILLUSORY PSYCHOLOGY. 483 sciousness is not the consequence of any assumption which we have power to make or abstain from making. It is done for us by nature, and we find it out when we reflect on our consciousness philosophically. Mr. Dewey seems to think that, by refraining at the outset of psychology from assuming that we are individuals, the possibility is opened of our being the universal consciousness (p. 8 at top). He seems also to think that, because conscious- ness is one in point of kind, therefore the individual and the universal consciousness cannot be two in point of number (p. 17 at top) a short cut indeed to the Deification of the individual. Now there are many assumptions which we have to use care, often anxious care, and take much trouble and acquire painful instruction in order to avoid. But our own individuality is not one of them. We cannot transcend our own consciousness, however much we may generalise it. Generalising it alone, therefore, can never land us in the belief, still less in the knowledge, of an universal conscious- ness different in any respect from our own. Its generalisa- tion is merely another way, the logical or conceptual way, of representing its individuality, of what in actual experience is perceptual. Our belief or our knowledge of the existence of other conscious beings besides ourselves is always drawn from something else over and above the mere generalisation. We always have positive grounds, real or fallacious, for filling up the margin, above spoken of, with similar instances. The general term man, for instance, has a wide margin which admits of many varieties, and many real men, being included under the term. This whole group of real men I would call its logical comprehension, though I believe there is not com- plete agreement among logicians as to the nomenclature. There are positive grounds, all drawn ultimately from A's own consciousness, for A's belief in the existence of real men besides himself. But what are A's grounds for belief in the existence of an universal conscious being other than A himself? This is what we would gladly learn from Mr. Dewey ; but Mr. Dewey contents himself with replying that it follows from the "presupposition of English Psychology". It were to be wished that some other basis than a " presup- position of English Psychology" should be found for Mr. Dewey's conclusion, that "the individual self" "has its origin in processes which exist for the universal self, and that therefore the universal self never has become" (p. 19) ; or, as we find it stated at another place, after replying to the theory of Eeasoned Realism, " the solution is that the con-