266 CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXPERIENCE 



arrangement comes, our estimate of the nature 

 and importance of psychology will mirror the 

 change. 



When man s command of the methods that con 

 trol action was precarious and disturbed; when 

 the tools that subject the world of things and 

 forces to use and operation were rare and clumsy, 

 it was unavoidable that the individual should sub 

 mit his perception and purpose blankly to the 

 blank reality beyond. Under such circumstances, 

 external authority must reign ; the belief that hu 

 man experience in itself is approximate, not in 

 trinsic, is inevitable. Under such circumstances, 

 reference to the individual, to the subject, is a re 

 sort only for explaining error, illusion, and uncer 

 tainty. The necessity of external control and ex 

 ternal redemption of experience reports itself in a 

 low valuation of the self, and of all the factors and 

 phases of experience that spring from the self. 

 That the psychology of medievalism should appear 

 only as a portion of its theology of sin and salva 

 tion is as obvious as that the psychology of the 

 Greeks should be a chapter of cosmology. 



As against all this, the assertion is ventured 

 that psychology, supplying us with knowledge of 

 the behavior of experience, is a conception of de 

 mocracy. Its postulate is that since experience 

 fulfils itself in individuals, since it administers 

 itself through their instrumentality, the account of 



