Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/179

168 J. DEWEY : about any consciousness which is out of relation to time. The case is just here : if philosophy will deal with the abso- lute consciousness conceived as purely eternal, out of relation to time, then the existence of that which constitutes the actual content of man's experience is utterly inexplicable ; it is not only a mystery, but a mystery which contradicts the very nature of that which is, ex ////i>ot/ic*i, the absolute. If philosophy does deal with the eternal absolute conscious- ness as for ever realised, yet as for ever having time as one of its organic functions, it is not open to any one to bring charges against psychology as philosophy, for this and 110 more psychology does. The question just comes to this : If we start from reason alone we shall never reach fact. If we start with fact, we shall find it revealing itself as reason. The objection to an account of fact or experience as philosophy is but a preju- dice, though historically considered a well-grounded one. On the one hand, it has arisen because some partial account of experience, or rather account of partial experience, has been put forth as the totality, and just because thus put forth as absolute has lost even the relative validity which it possessed as partial. Such is the procedure of Empiricism. On the other hand, we have had put forth as matter of fact certain truths declared to be immediate and necessary and intuitive, coming no one knows whence and meaning no one knows what. The aversion to immediacy, to " uiide- duced " fact, as given us by the Iiituitionalists, is certainly a well-grounded one. But neither of these objections lies against psychology as account of the facts of experience. Men are mortal, and every actual account of experience will suffer from the defects of mortals, and be but partial, no doubt ; unfortunately we are none of us omniscient yet. But the very essence of psychology as method is that it treats of experience in its absolute totality, not setting up some one aspect of it to account for the whole, as, for example, our physical evolutionists do, nor yet attempting to determine its nature from something outside of and beyond itself, as, for example, our so-called empirical | chologists have done. The vice of the procedure of botli is at bottom precisely the same the abstracting of some one element from the organism which gives it meaning, and setting it up as absolute. It is no wonder that the organism always has its revenge by pronouncing this abstracted ele- ment "unknowable". The only wonder is that men should still bow in spirit before this creation of their own abstracting thought, and reverence it as the cause and ground of all