CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXPERIENCE 267 



the course and method of this achievement is a 

 significant and indispensable affair. 



Democracy is possible only because of a change 

 in intellectual conditions. It implies tools for get 

 ting at truth in detail, and day by day, as we go 

 along. Only such possession justifies the surrender 

 of fixed, all-embracing principles to which, as uni- 

 versals, all particulars and individuals are subject 

 for valuation and regulation. Without such pos 

 session, it is only the courage of the fool that 

 would undertake the venture to which democracy 

 has committed itself the ordering of life in re 

 sponse to the needs of the moment in accordance 

 with the ascertained truth of the moment. Modern 

 life involves the deification of the here and the 

 now ; of the specific, the particular, the unique, 

 that which happens once and has no measure of 

 value save such as it brings with itself. Such dei 

 fication is monstrous fetishism, unless the deity be 

 there ; unless the universal lives, moves, and has its 

 being in experience as individualized. 1 This con- 



is perhaps a suitable moment to allude to the ab 

 sence, in this discussion, of reference to what is some 

 times termed rational psychology the assumption of a 

 separate, substantialized ego, soul, or whatever, existing 

 side by side with particular experiences and &quot; states of con 

 sciousness,&quot; acting upon them and acted upon by them. In 

 ignoring this and confining myself to the &quot;states of con 

 sciousness &quot; theory and the &quot; natural history &quot; theory, I 

 may appear not only to have unduly narrowed the concerns 



