he world of realities. The increasing use of the term
"consciousness" as an equivalent for mind, in the supposition that there
is an inner world of conscious states and processes, independent of
any relationship to nature and society, an inner world more truly and
immediately known than anything else, is evidence of the same fact.
In short, practical individualism, or struggle for greater freedom of
thought in action, was translated into philosophic subjectivism.

2. Individual Mind as the Agent of Reorganization. It should be obvious
that this philosophic movement misconceived the significance of
the practical movement. Instead of being its transcript, it was a
perversion. Men were not actually engaged in the absurdity of striving
to be free from connection with nature and one another. They were
striving for greater freedom in nature and society. They wanted greater
power to initiate changes in the world of things and fellow beings;
greater scope of movement and consequently greater freedom in
observations and ideas implied in movement. They wanted not isolation
from the world, but a more intimate connection with it. They wanted to
form their beliefs about it at first hand, instead of through tradition.
They wanted closer union with their fellows so that they might influence
one another more effectively and might combine their respective actions
for mutual aims.

So far as their beliefs were concerned, they felt that a great deal
which passed for knowledge was merely the accumulated opinions of the
past, much of it absurd and its correct portions not understood when
accepted on authority. Men must observe for themselves, and form their
own theories and personally test them. Such a method was the only
alternative to the imposition of dogma as truth, a procedure which
reduced mind to the formal act of acquiescing in truth. Such is the
meaning of what is sometimes called the substitution of inductive
experimental methods of knowing for deductive. In some sense, men
had always used an inductive method in dealing with their immediate
practical concerns. Architecture, agriculture, manufacture, etc., had
to be based upon observation of the activities of natural objects, and
ideas about such affairs had to be checked, to some extent, by results.
But even in such things there was an undue reliance upon mere
custom, followed blindly rather than understandingly. And this
observational-experimental method was restricted to these