306 The Unity of the Organism 



along in a path fixed by inner consciousness. Private con- 

 sciousness is an incidental outcome of experience of a vitally 

 objective sort; it is not its source. Undergoing, however, 

 is never mere passivity. The most patient patient is more 

 than a receptor. He is also an agent a reactor." . . . 

 Again the italics are mine. I take the liberty to end the quo- 

 tation at "reactor" though the remaining part of the sen- 

 tence is important for Dewey's particular purpose. But my 

 aim is different. I want to fix attention on the two state- 

 ments italicised for the purpose of showing how my hypo- 

 thesis connects with Dewey's general conception of experi- 

 ence. When Dewey says life endures only as supported by 

 the environment, he is speaking in very general terms, having 

 reference, I imagine, more to social and other bulk aspects 

 of environment. My hypothesis, on the contrary, makes the 

 dependence of life on environment exceedingly specific in that 

 it undertakes to show the particular thing in the environ- 

 ment, namely, the respiratory part of the atmosphere, which 

 is physiologically basal to self-development and self-pre- 

 servation. The Self which traditional philosophy has strug- 

 gled so hard to understand is literally, the human organism, 

 according to my hypothesis. And when in this discussion I 

 speak of it as reacting with the respiratory air to produce 

 consciousness, I am using the verb to react in a very specific, 

 physico-chemico-biological sense, while Dewey is using it in 

 a general sense, and explicitly at least, with only a psy- 

 chological implication. 



The "self" which I am suggesting does indeed imply 

 "another" no less unequivocally than does the "self" of ad- 

 vanced social psychology. But the "self" and the "other" 

 implied by my hypothesis differ from those of current philo- 

 sophical theory in that the roots of both are not only in 

 the social relationships of the human species, but extend 

 right on through these into sub-human relationships, even 

 down into the very constitution of inorganic nature. The 



