Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/30

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 19 The case stands thus : We are to determine the nature of everything, subject and object, individual and universal, as it is found within conscious experience. Conscious experience testifies, in the primary aspect, my individual self is a " transition," is a process of becoming. But it testifies also that this individual self is conscious of the transi- tion, that it knows the process by which it has become. Iii short, the individual self can take the universal self as its standpoint, and thence know its own origin. In so doing, it knows that it has its origin in processes which exist for the universal self, and that therefore the universal self never has become. Consciousness testifies that consciousness is a result, but that it is the result of consciousness. Conscious- ness is the self-related. Stated from the positive side, con- sciousness has shown that it involves within itself a process of becoming, and that this process becomes conscious of itself. This process is the individual consciousness ; but, since it is conscious of itself, it is consciousness of the uni- versal consciousness. All consciousness, in short, is self- consciousness, and the self is the universal consciousness, for which all process is and which, therefore, always is. The individual consciousness is but the process of realisa- tion of the universal consciousness through itself. Looked at as process, as realising, it is individual consciousness ; looked at as produced or realised, as conscious of the pro- cess, that is, of itself, it is universal consciousness. It must not be forgotten that the object of this paper is simply to develop the presuppositions which have always been latent or implicit in the psychological standpoint. What has been said in the way of positive result has been said, therefore, only as it seemed necessary to develop the meaning of the standpoint. It must also be remembered that it is the work of Psychology itself to determine the exact and concrete relations of subject and object, individual and uni- versal within consciousness. What has been said here, if said only for the development of the standpoint, is therefore exceedingly formal. To some of the more concrete problems I hope to be able to return at another time.