Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/21

10 J. DEWEY : cedure. There are in particular two interpretations by which it has evaded the necessary meaning of its own work. The first of these I may now deal with shortly, as it is nothing but our old friend x, the thing-in-itself in a new guise. It is Seasoned or Transfigured Realism. It sees clearly enough that everything which we know is relative to our consciousness, and it sees also clearly enough that our consciousness is also relative. All that we can know exists for our consciousness ; but when we come to account for our consciousness we find that this too is de- pendent. It is dependent 011 a nervous organism ; it is de- pendent upon objects which affect this organism. It is dependent upon a whole series of past events formulated by the doctrine of evolution. But this body, these objects, this series of events, they too exist but for our consciousness. Now there is no ' metaphysics ' about all this. It is positive science. Still there is a contradiction. Consciousness at once depends, upon objects and events, and these depend upon, or are relative to consciousness. Hence the fact of the case must be this : The nervous organism, the objects, the series of events "-s 1,-nuini are relative to our conscious- ness, but since this itself is. dependent, is a product, there is a reality behind the processes, behind our consciousness, which has produced them both. Subject and object as known are relative to consciousness, but there is a larger circle, a real object from which both of them emerge, but which can never be known, since to know is to relate to our consciousness. This is the problem : on one hand, the relativity of all knowledge to our consciousness ; on the other, the dependence of our consciousness on something not itself. And this is the solution : a real not related to consciousness, but which has produced both consciousness itself, and the objects which as known are relative! to con- sciousness. Xow all that has been said in the first part of this article has gone for naught if it is not seen that such an argument is not a solution of the contradiction, but a state- ment of it. The problem is to reconcile the undoubted relativity of all existence as known, to consciousness, and the. undoubted dependence of our ovn consciousness. And it ought to be evident that, the only way to reconcile the ap- parent contradiction, to give each its rights without denying the truth of the other, is to think them together. II' th; done, it will be seen that the solution is that the conscious- ness to which all existence is relative is not our consciousn. and that our consciousness is itself relative to consciousness in general. But Reasoned .Realism aitempts to solve 1 the