Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/17

6 J. DEWEY : become as an infant to enter the true psychological kingdom. If I will only go back to that stage, I shall find a point where knowledge has not yet begun, but where sensations must be supposed to exist. Owing to our different standing, since these sensations have to us been covered with the residues of thousands of others and have become symbolic of them, we cannot tell what these sensations are ; though in all probability they are to be conceived in some analog}' to nervous shocks. But the truth of our psychological anatysis does not depend upon this. The fact that sensations exist before knowledge and that knowledge comes about by their organic registration and integration is undisputed. And I can imagine that I am told that if I would but confine myself to the analysis of given facts, I should find this whole matter perfectly simple that the sensations have not the remotest connexion with any sort of ' metaphysics ' or an- alogy with things-in-themselves, and that we are all the time on positive scientific ground. I hope so. "We are certain ly approaching some degree of definiteness in our conception of what constitutes a sensation. But I am afraid that in thus defining the nature of a sensation, in taking it out of the region of vagueness, my objector has taken from it all those qualities which would enable it to serve as the origin of knowledge or of conscious experience. It is no longer a thing-in-itself, but neither is it, I fear, capable of accounting for experience. For, alas, we have to use experience to account for it. An infant, whether I think myself back to my early days or select some other baby, is, I suppose, a known object existing in the world of experience; and his nervous organism and the objects which affect it, these too, I suppose, are known objects which exist for consciousness. Surely it is not a baby thing-in-itself which is affected, nor a world thing-in-itself which calls forth the sensation. It is the known baby and a known world in definite action and reaction upon each other, and this definite relation is precisely a sensation. Yes, we are on positive scientific ground, and for that very reason we are on ground where the origin of knowledge and experience cannot be accounted for. Such a sensation I -ily form some conception of. I can even imagine how such s-nsations may hy their organic registration and integration bring about that knowli which I may myself possess. But such a sensation is not prior to consciousness or knowledge. It is but an element in the world of conscious experience. Far from being that from which all relations spring, it is itself but one relation the relation between an organic body, and one acting upon