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Some pages earlier he says: "From the standpoint of its definite aim any act is petty in comparison with the totality of natural events. What is accomplished directly as the outcome of a turn which our action gives the course of events is infinitesimal in comparison with their total sweep. Only an illusion of conceit persuades us that cosmic difference hangs upon even our wisest and most strenuous effort" (262). It seems clear to me that the conceit referred to in the last sentence can only be the same as the "conceit of carrying the load of the universe." The conceit of thinking that "cosmic difference" hangs upon anything we do, even the wisest and most demanding, is evidently only verbally different from the conceit of thinking that we carry "the load of the universe." 

Wiki MarkupThis becomes evident, at any rate, as soon as we avoid supposing that Dewey somehow means to deny that our acts do in fact make a difference to the whole, and, in _that_ sense, make a "cosmic difference." He's explicit in saying, "In a genuine sense every act is already possessed of infinite import," and, "When a sense of the infinite reach of an act physically occurring in a small point of space and occupying a petty instant of times _\[sic\]_ comes home to us, the _meaning_ of a present act is seen to be vast, immeasurable, unthinkable" (262, 263). So Dewey's point is in no way to deny that our acts make a difference to the cosmos, but only that they can make the kind of difference involved in the universe's continuing to exist and its no longer existing at all.

Recognizing this, however, in no way effects my earlier, insight that the conceit in question covers both atheism or natural impiety and the radical self-misunderstanding of sin in all its forms, including the attempts at selfcontrived security, the "wisdom" and the "righteousness," and thus the "boasting," of the "natural man."

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