It is only on the basis, further, of an intellectualistic psychology that such a subjectivistic conception is possible. If the voluntaristic psychology and the doctrine of "the unconscious" be accepted--and certainly the psychological facts on which the latter is based must be accepted, whether the metaphysical conclusions are or not[98]--we have no basis whatever for this doctrine that clearness holds within the mind, but that without all is uncertain. Really, only a little part of our mental life is in consciousness at any given moment. The "stream of consciousness" is but a narrow thing, and the unity of the individual mind is a unity, not of consciousness, but of _function_. As Goethe somewhere says, we know ourselves never by reflection, but by action. And often does it happen that a sympathetic friend, or even an observant enemy, may interpret more accurately our actions than we ourselves can do, and may measure more accurately the strength of a given motive for us than we can ourselves. In a certain sense, our knowledge of other minds is inference. We see other men's actions, or hear their voices, or watch the muscles of their faces, and so, indirectly, get at their thoughts and feelings. But, in much the same sense, our knowledge of their actions, or of their voices, is inference too. For we must interpret the image on the retina, or the sense excitation in the ear. But practically, neither is inference, if by inference be meant a consciously made judgment from premises of which we are conscious. In a casual walk with a friend, where conversation flows smoothly on easy topics, one is as _immediately_ conscious of his friend's thoughts and feelings, expressed in the conversation, as he is of the scenes that present themselves by the way, or even of the thoughts that arise within himself.[99] The significance of this conclusion is not quite the same as that which might be expected from the context from which I have taken the doctrine under criticism. The feelings of men with reference to economic goods are facts of definite, tangible nature, and subject-matter of social knowledge. But we have not yet reached a standard or source of social value. No homogeneous "labor jelly," or "pain jelly," or "utility jelly,"[100] made up by averaging arithmetically, or adding arithmetically, individual efforts or pains or pleasures, will solve our problem for us--as indeed I have been at pains to show in what has gone before. The purpose of the foregoing criticism is primarily to clear the ground for a conception of social organization which is more than mechanical, and in which the individual is both less and more than a self-sufficient monad. FOOTNOTES: [88] This criticism applies to the teachings of James Mill, J. S. Mill, and other sensationalist followers of Hume, even more than to Adam Smith. But see Professor Albion W. Small's _Adam Smith and Modern Sociology_, Chicago, 1907, esp. p. 51.