Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/15

4 J. DEWEY I sensation has its sole existence as known ; and to suppose that it can be regarded as not known, as prior to knowledge, and still be what it is as known, is a logical feat which it is hoped few are capable of. Hume, just as much as Locke, assumes that something exists out of relation to knowledge or consciousness, and that this something is ultimately the only real, and that from it knowledge, consciousness, ex- perience come to be. If this is not giving up the psycho- logical standpoint, it would be difficult to tell what is. Hume's " distinct perceptions which are distinct existences," and which give rise to knowledge only as they are related to each other, are so many things-iii-themselves. They existed prior to knowledge, and therefore are not for or within it. But it will be objected that all this is a total misapprehen- sion. Hume did not assume them because they were prior to and beyond knowledge. He examined experience and found, as any one does who analyses it, that it is made up of se> tions ; that, however complex or immediate it appears to be, on analysis it is always found to be but an aggregate of grouped sensations. Having found this by analysis, it was his business, as it is that of every psychologist, to show how by composition these sensations produce knowledge and experience. To call them things-in-themselves is absurd they are the simplest and best known things in all our ex- perience. Now this answer, natural as it is, and conclusive as it seems, only brings out the radical defect of the procedure. The dependence of our knowledge upon sensations or rather that knowledge is nothing but sensations as related to i other is not denied. What is denied is the correctness of the procedure which, discovering a certain element in know- ledge to be necessary for knowledge, therefore concludes that this element has an existence prior to or apart from know- ledge. The alternative is not complex. Either the^e sensa- tions are the sensations which are known sensations which are elements in knowledge and then they eannot be employed to account for its origin ; or they can be employed to account for its origin, and then are not sensations as they are known. In this case, they must be some- thing of which nothing can be said except that the;, known, cm not in consciousness that they are thing>-in- themselves. If, in short, these sensations are not to he made ' ontological,' they must be sensations known, sensal which are elements in experience; and if th <>nly for knowledge, then knowled-v is wherever th. 'id they cannot account for its origin. The supposed objection i upon a distinction between sensations as they are known,